Cold Comfort

The injured man looked balefully back but said nothing. He fumbled with his uninjured hand for the remote control and his eyes glazed as the TV blared into life.

By the reception desk, Gunna and the nurse sat on a sofa for waiting relatives behind a coffee table stacked with thumbed gossip magazines in a variety of languages.

“So, what can you tell me about this guy?”

The nurse shrugged. “His jaw’s broken in a couple of places and I don’t suppose he’ll ever be able to eat or speak easily again. The other injuries are broken ribs, broken fingers on one hand, plus some cuts and bruises across his face and shoulders that’ll heal quickly enough. He’s been given a beating, as far as I can see, and a very heavy one. Somebody really wanted to hurt him.”

Gunna scribbled quickly. “He was brought in yesterday?”

“About six.”

“No ideas who may have done this?”

“Nothing at all.”

“Right. I need your name for the notes.”

“Sjöfn Stefánsdóttir.”

“I don’t think I’ve seen you before. Been here long?”

“Just a few months. We moved here from Akureyri.”

“I see. Well, welcome to the wonderful Reykjanes Peninsula.”

“Thanks. I’d have preferred to stay in the north, but my husband got a job down here, so here we are.”

“I’m from the Westfjords, and I’ve never really got used to it here. It rains all the bloody time instead of snowing properly.”

“Not looking forward to next winter.”

“At least there’s a whole summer ahead of us yet. But down here winter just means the rain’s a bit colder than in summer. Anyway, I’ll have to leave it there for now. I’ll be back to ask our boy a few more questions.”

Gunna extracted a card from a pocket in her folder. “I’d appreciate it if you could give me a call if anything changes.”

“Been busy already?”

“Yup.”

“Tell me, then,” Gunna said, shrugging off her coat and wondering if she was overdressed. After years in uniform, deciding what to wear every morning wasn’t easy. The suits she had bought were too dressy for anything but formal wear, and she was already falling back on the comfortable, shapeless things that she habitually wore at home, or simply going to work in uniform. She reflected that, being in charge, maybe she ought to be a little more careful about dressing than her colleagues. Helgi always wore the same corduroy trousers and plain jacket that looked as if they had been inherited from an elderly relative, while Eiríkur, the youngest detective, shamelessly wore jeans to work.

“All right,” Helgi said, scanning his notes. “Svana Geirs. Real name Svanhildur Mjsll Sigurgeirsdóttir, born in Höfn eighteenth of December 1976, making her thirty-three,” he added, peering across at Gunna.

“You really were top of the class in maths at school, weren’t you?”

“I was,” Helgi replied, letting the sarcasm go over his head. “According to the technical team, we have a single wound to the head and secondary injuries where the victim hit the floor.”

“Which we knew already.”

“Yup. Undoubtedly the cause of death, as Miss Cruz will tell us later, along with every detail of the young woman’s physiology. We have plenty of fingerprints and quite a few full palm prints, at least half a dozen sets,” Helgi continued. “We’ll find out soon enough if any of them match anyone we already know, but my feeling is that none of them will.”

“Why’s that?” Gunna demanded. “What’s your reasoning?” she asked more softly.

“Just intuition, I suppose,” Helgi replied. “I get the impression that this wasn’t premeditated, happened on the spur of the moment, and whoever did it simply ran for it. Hence the open door.”

“You may well be right, Helgi. Do we have a time of death?”

“Miss Cruz says that Svana had probably been dead between three and six hours, and she may be able to narrow that down for us.”

“So we can reckon she was knocked on the head between twelve and three.”

“That’s it.”

“What background did you manage to unearth?”

“Ah, fascinating. Svana Geirs started out as a model, Miss South Coast when she was a teenager, then was part of a pop group called the Cowgirls in the nineties, though they didn’t do all that well. You know the ones, playing all over the country in bars and whatnot? Don’t you remember Eurovision about twelve, fourteen years ago? She sang the Icelandic entry and came nineteenth or something. Nowhere near the top, did abysmally, like they always do. Then she tried her best with a solo career and a bit of acting but didn’t get far. For five or six years she was on TV with the boob-bouncing fitness show. That ended three years ago. Since then, she doesn’t seem to have done a lot, although she’s part owner of a fitness club on Ármúli.”

“Which one?”

“Fit Club.”

“That’s a new one on me. So where did you find all this out?”

“I asked my daughter,” he admitted.

“Ah. Fine police work, Helgi.”