Cold Comfort

“Yup. Pretty much done and dusted. Diddi admits he did it. All three cashiers and the bloke whose hand he sliced have identified him. But we don’t have the knife he used, we don’t have the million or so in cash and we don’t know how he disappeared after leaving the bank.”

“So, Sævaldur has it all tied up, apart from the bits he doesn’t?” she asked wryly.

Helgi shrugged. “That’s more or less it. But Diddi turned up in Casualty the other day babbling that it wasn’t Ommi who beat him up. Which is what tells me that it was. So I have an idea that if Diddi doesn’t know where Iceland’s latest Jesse James is hiding, that’s probably where the cash disappeared to.”

“Seems logical,” Gunna agreed.

“The woman who saw him in Borgarnes the day he absconded said he was with a young woman, and the description matches our Ommi’s girlfriend, Selma. Better still, I searched around and found that Selma’s mother’s car, which is a flashy 5-series BMW, was caught by the speed camera at Fiskilækur going north and again that afternoon in the Hvalfjördur tunnel going back to Reykjavík. So Selma’s mum gets two speeding fines in one day and the timing fits perfectly.”

“So Selma needs to answer a few questions?”

“Doesn’t she just?”

“And when are you going to ask them?”

“As soon as I can find the bloody girl. She’s been off work for months, supposedly sick, and she’s not at home with her mum, who says she has no idea where her daughter is.”

Gunna stood up and looked out of the window of the twoperson office that now contained three desks.

“Going out for a minute, Helgi. If Johnny Depp shows up, just ask him to get undressed and wait for me, would you?”

The Economic Crime Unit’s offices were larger than Serious Crime’s, as well as being in a building around the corner on Raudarárstigur instead of in the old Hverfisgata police station. The Economic Crime officers all looked young and fresh, although the young man who took Gunna aside had bags under his eyes. She extended a hand.

“Gunnhildur. Serious Crime.”

“Ah. We all know who you are. I’m Björgvin.”

“Busy?” she asked.

“And how. If there were another dozen of us, we’d still have more than enough to keep them at work.”

“All right. I’ll keep it quick. Bjartmar Arnarson. Can you tell me anything about him?”

Björgvin filled a plastic cup from the water cooler and sipped. “What do you need to know?”

“I need to know who might want to try to kill his wife, and why.”

“That fire in the Setberg?”

“That’s the one. Apart from a few parking tickets, the man has a squeaky-clean record.”

Björgvin grimaced. “He’s as sharp as a knife, I’ll give him that. He’s been up to his eyeballs in all kinds of dirty tricks but has always kept himself at enough of a distance to avoid too much investigation, let alone any kind of a case to be built against him.”

“All right. Background?”

“Unusually for the crimes we investigate here, he’s not a lawyer or a banker. He was a wheeler-dealer of some kind for a few years and the drug squad took an occasional interest in him, but nothing concrete. He owned part of a place called Blacklights at the end of the nineties.”

“I remember it well,” Gunna said grimly.

“Bjartmar was doing all right for himself, but things really took off when his dad died. Our boy inherited a boat in the Westmann Islands with a few hundred tonnes of cod quota. He promptly sold the lot and became straight virtually overnight. You remember when the banks were privatized?”

“Around 2000?”

“That’s it. Suddenly everything changed. They started lending stupid amounts to homeowners. Bjartmar saw what was happening and put all his fish money into property, bought up land and houses all over the city. Within a year, property prices had gone through the roof. He bought and sold dozens of properties and made an absolute killing. That’s when he became respectable.”

“And started wearing a suit?”

“That’s it. Got himself a trophy wife at the same time and started making even more money when he set up a property agency. You must know it, Landex? They advertise all the time, or used to. Business must have taken a hit recently, but I’m sure he has a good bit salted away somewhere. We know he has significant deposits overseas, as Landex had been expanding into Mediterranean property as well. The Spanish operation is called Sandex. Right on the beach.” Björgvin squeezed the empty cup until it crackled and dropped it into a bin by the water cooler.

“So how respectable is Bjartmar? Is he all legal these days?”

“It’s hard to tell. I doubt it. But he’s not involved with any of the banks or the financial institutions in a serious way and he’s nowhere near the top of our list of priorities. He can be confident that Economic Crime won’t be knocking on his door for a few years yet, unless it’s linked to laundering cash or avoiding currency controls, in which case we’d jump on him. But he’s too smart for that.”

“Well, thanks for your time,” Gunna said with a smile. “That certainly helps me out on the man’s background.”