Frozen Assets

‘Yeah, but who?’ Gunna asked, pulling off the surgical gloves she had worn inside the flat to pick through the sparse contents of the kitchen cupboard.

‘I don’t ask too much. If someone wants a room for a while. .’ He shrugged.

Gunna squared her jaw and shoulders, putting on her grimmest expression. ‘And who’s in this one?’ she growled.

‘Big guy. Don’t know his name. Only saw him a few times.’

‘When did you see him last?’

‘A while ago.’

‘How long a while?’

‘Not sure. Before the weekend, anyway.’

‘Name?’

‘Dunno.’

‘He rented a room and you don’t know his name?’

The photographer looked deeply uncomfortable. ‘Well, yeah. I don’t ask too many questions, y’know?’

‘No, I don’t. That’s why I’m asking. Don’t make this harder than it has to be,’ Gunna said quietly while the other officers were out of earshot. ‘Look, you come clean on this and I won’t have to say anything to anybody about tax-free income. OK?’

Beaten, the photographer looked at the floor and twisted his hands. ‘All right. The place is rented by a guy called Jón Oddur for some foreign guy to use. He pays every month on the dot in cash. I don’t know the guy at all. He was at school with my brother, that’s how he came to me.’

‘Good man. What’s this guy look like?’

‘Jón Oddur? Beefy. Short hair, thin on top. Goatee. Always looks nervous. Only saw the foreign bloke a few times, tall guy, fair hair, quiet.’

‘Well done. That wasn’t so hard, was it? Now, when’s the rent due next? Because I think you might be disappointed.’

At the station, Matti had laid his head on the table and was fast asleep. He jerked it sharply up as Gunna slapped the tabletop with the flat of her hand.

‘Now that you’re awake, Matti, and I have your full attention, tell me why you did a runner.’

Matti kneaded his eyes with his knuckles as he struggled to make it back from sleep. ‘Scared, y’know? He’s a scary bloke, is Hardy.’

‘How so?’

‘He’s just. .’ Matti fumbled for words. ‘He’s quiet. Doesn’t say much. He’s cool. But when he tied some guy up in knots and broke his arm, bloody hell, that opened my eyes a bit.’

‘Explain.’

‘That was a while ago. One moment he’s just stood there chatting to this bloke and the next the feller’s on the ground screaming. Hardy says to the guy: ‘‘This is a message to your friend to make it stop.’’ And he’s stood there smiling with one hand through the guy’s arm, twisting it. The poor feller was like a sack of spuds when Hardy finally let him up.’

‘Any idea who this was?’

Matti shook his head.

‘Do you know someone called Arngrímur Örn Arnarson?’

‘Should I?’’

Gunna placed a blow-up of the man’s national archive photo on the table. ‘Lived at a place called Grund, just outside Borgarnes.’

Matti hesitated. ‘Well, I did take Hardy there,’ he admitted finally. ‘But I didn’t go in. Just waited by the car.’

‘When was this?’

‘Not sure. Week before last?’

‘So why did you run for it?’

‘Scared. When I rang him up and said the coppers had been checking up on me, he went all quiet and said we should meet, and I don’t know why, but it didn’t seem right, so I thought, shit, best get out of the city for a while,’ Matti explained, words tripping over themselves as they tumbled out.

Gunna glanced at her watch and Matti continued. ‘I knew he’d seen me with the girls, y’know, driving them to places and that. And I know he knew me and Marika, y’know, sometimes. . So I thought he might go and scare her, so I went and got her, told her it was a bit of a holiday, so off we went.’

‘To Auntie Lóa at Álfasteinn?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Sorry, Matti, I have to go. Look, you’re free to go later when you’ve made a statement, but I need to be able to reach you, so don’t go too far.’

‘I can’t,’ Matti said bitterly. ‘The taxi’s still in Hólmavík because your lot brought me down here in a cop car. Now I’d better go and tell Nonni the Taxi why his car’s not here.’

‘You do that. You’re living at Ugly Tóta’s still?’

Matti groaned. ‘If she hasn’t filled my room up with Latvians. Unless I can stay in a cell here for a day or two?’ he asked with hope in his eyes. ‘Like, until you’ve caught him?’

‘Is he really your cousin?’ Bára asked. They were standing outside in the car park, having left Matti to go back to sleep in a cell.

‘He is, I’m afraid,’ Gunna admitted. ‘And he’s been a pain in the arse to everyone around him since the day he was born. Now, you heard what he said: ‘‘This is a message to your friend to make it stop.’’ Egill Grímsson and Einar Eyjólfur were both killed discreetly, if we can describe it that way. But Arngrímur was different. I don’t think Hårde intended to kill him at all, just provide a painful message. Do you get the impression that this was maybe a message for someone else?’

‘Hard to tell. Who is this a message for, do you think?’

‘What do you think?’

‘I’d say Skandalblogger,’ Bára said with conviction.

‘Why?’

‘We know Hårde’s worked for Spearpoint. Sigurjóna Huldudóttir and Bjarni Jón are constantly being skewered by the blogger, and the whole country reads it.’