Cold Comfort

“Understood,” Gunna said, reflecting what an opportunity such an arrangement provided for scams of all kinds to be set up. “It’s a very security-conscious operation.”

“Of course. Rich people in smart houses don’t trust foreigners in their homes,” Justyna said with a mischievous smile that lifted the fatigue from her face. “Too many criminals come from other countries.”

Gunna brought the car to a halt in a puddle that widened visibly as the rain pelted down from a belt of black sky chased by a distant blue promise of sunshine to come. She waited, toying with the idea of going for a hot dog at Bæjarins Bezta, until the sight of Skúli running through the rain towards her put the idea out of her mind.

“Not going to drip everywhere, are you?” she asked as Skúli sat in the passenger seat trying not to shake excess water from his head. “Can’t help it. I’m soaked.”

“You could have waited a couple of minutes. But it’s all right, this is a rental car,” Gunna told him as the rain stopped beating on the roof and sunlight began to glimmer again on the puddles.

“You rent cars?” Skúli asked.

She hauled the Golf out into the stream of traffic and kept pace behind a lorry as it trundled towards the harbour. “When there aren’t enough in the pool, they rent a few for us to use.”

“A fine use of taxpayers’ cash,” Skúli observed, and lapsed into silence as Gunna drove the short distance to pull up outside Kaffivagninn. They sat in the café as a second wave of rain hammered on the iron roof over their heads.

“What’s happening at Dagurinn, then?” Gunna asked when Skúli had made short work of a sandwich. He shrugged.

“No idea. I’m on compulsory unpaid holiday. Got to keep the wage bill down, or so they say.”

“Oh, right. I thought you were still at work.”

“I am. I’m doing some freelance stuff for Reykjavík Voice.

And Dagurinn doesn’t mind?”

“Dagurinn can go to hell,” Skúli said with a sudden flash of anger. A new side to him, Gunna thought. “It wouldn’t be a surprise if there’s no job to go back to when my two months off are up, so what the hell?”

“And this other one you’re working on, what’s that?”

“It’s a freesheet with daily news on the web, half in English, half in Icelandic. It’s not bad, but the money’s lousy.”

Gunna nodded and wondered at the change that had come over Skúli since the previous summer, when he had been finding his feet in his first real job since leaving university. Iceland’s financial crash had taken him by surprise, and Gunna had followed his growing disillusionment.

“But at least Reykjavík Voice is more or less independent and we’re not just plugging Rich Golli’s business interests and political chums, which is more or less what Dagurinn is there for,” Skúli grumbled.

“Will you go back to Dagurinn if you can?” Gunna asked.

“I’ll have to. Jobs aren’t easy to find, and even though it’s shit, if there is a job once my mandatory unpaid holiday is over, I’ll still have to stick with it. Unless Rich Golli’s closed it down by then.”

“Ach, you’ll be all right,” Gunna tried to reassure him. “Things’ll pick up soon enough.”

“Yeah. That’s the Icelandic way, isn’t it? ‘It’ll work out’ is what everyone always says. But I don’t know …”

“When the force finally decides to employ a press spokesman, I’ll put in a word for you,” Gunna said with a thin smile.

“Would you?” Skúli asked, the serious tone of his reply taking her by surprise.

“Of course. I don’t know if they’d even look at it, what with the state of the finances. There’s nothing spare anywhere. I’m even bringing in light bulbs and toilet paper myself now and again.”

“For Christ’s sake,” Skúli muttered. “You realize the amount of money the taxpayer will eventually have to fork out for the Icesave thing would be enough to run the Greater Reykjavík police force for more than a hundred years?”

“No, I didn’t,” Gunna admitted. “I’m afraid that with those sorts of figures it just becomes telephone numbers, completely unreal. Anyway, do you have anything you can tell me?”

“About Svana Geirs?”

“Anything from a new angle would be useful.”

Skúli sipped his coffee and grimaced.

“Strong.”

“Good grief. What do you expect in a dockers’ café? And people wonder why the descendants of the Vikings have become a bunch of weaklings,” Gunna observed seriously. “Now, Svana?”

“Prostitution,” Skúli said quietly, wiping his mouth and looking around him.

“You’re joking.”

“Nope. From what I can gather, and absolutely nobody wants to be quoted or interviewed on this, you understand, Svana Geirs had turned herself into a top-class hooker.”

“Bloody hell. That explains a few things,” Gunna said as Skúli put down his mug, fumbled in his coat pocket for a notebook and flipped through it.

“Here we are,” he said, reading with his finger on the page. “‘A skilled and enthusiastic purveyor of some highly specialized services who really enjoyed her work’ is what one bloke I spoke to said with a huge grin on his face, so I got the impression he was speaking from personal experience.”

“And who’s this guy?”