Free Chilled to the Bone by Quentin Bates Page A

somewhere in Eastern Europe and was only recently released. I did a story about him a while ago because he didn’t want to be repatriated and finish his sentence in Iceland as people normally do. He fought quite hard not to be sent home and he also fought against being deported from wherever it was once he was released. I’m trying to remember what his real name is. I tried to get an interview with him once he was finally sent back to Iceland—before Christmas, I think—but he wouldn’t have it.”
    “Hróbjartur,” Gunna supplied, her memory jogged back into gear. “Hróbjartur Bjarnthórsson.”
    “Yeah. Isn’t it a terrible name?” Skúli said with a smile. “It doesn’t get much more nineteenth century than Hróbjartur Bjarnthórsson. It’s like something out of Laxness. Now I’m wondering why you’re interested in him and if there’s anything you can tell me?”
    “Not right away. He’s been snooping around a case I’m working on and I want to know why.”
    “This is about the thing at the Gullfoss? The shipowner who was found strapped to the bed?”
    Gunna gave him another hard stare. “You don’t know anything about that, do you, Skúli? I’m not asking, by the way. I’m telling you that you haven’t heard anything, especially from me.”
    Skúli shrugged. “Fair enough. It’s not exactly something I can print in
Reykjavík Voice
. But I do shifts at
Dagurinn
, and they were knocking together Jóhannes Karlsson’s obituary last night. Nothing to worry about,” he said hurriedly. “Just the usual crap about which farm his grandparents came from and how many grandchildren he had.”
    Gunna started uncomfortably at the mention of grandchildren.
    “Nothing about him paying a hooker to tie him to a bed in a smart hotel,” Skúli added.
    “There’d be hell to pay if you did.”
    “But there are rumors.”
    “Like what?”
    Skúli scratched his nose and looked about him theatrically, reassuring himself that apart from the two of them, the only other person in the café was the proprietor, yawning behind his counter.
    “There’s nothing concrete, but you know what
Reykjavík Voice
is like. It’s seething with gossip. It seems that it’s the latest scam. Man books a kinky escort, she ties him up and disappears with his wallet after taking a couple of compromising photos,presumably as insurance. Simple as that. It seems one guy wanted his fun in the wardrobe, but she locked him inside it and stole his wallet. It’s been going on for a while and it’s all ‘somebody knows someone who heard something from …’ You know?”
    “Yeah. I know, Chinese whispers that don’t stand up in court.”
    “I thought it was just an urban myth until this thing at Hotel Gullfoss happened yesterday. Not that we journos know any more than the police,” he said with a sly smile. “Although now some of us know that Bigfoot Baddó is involved. Not that we’d say a word out of place.”
    A T LUNCHTIME J ÓEL Ingi went for sushi. It wasn’t something he did often, nor did he like it particularly, but the others enthused about the delights of raw fish and he joined the group of four at a small, smart place on Laugarvegur that had yet to become popular. Once it did, they would probably abandon it and find somewhere else, Jóel Ingi thought, enjoying the unaccustomed slow pace of the meal, made slower by his lack of skill with chopsticks, which he did his best to disguise.
    The two women in the group departed together for the restaurant’s bathroom, leaving Jóel Ingi and Már with Sævar, a translator from the next floor. Jóel Ingi daydreamed as the other two talked British football, something he had never been able to muster interest in. Coffee arrived as the two women returned, and Katrín from the press office sat down opposite him and smiled. Jóel Ingi liked her. Katrín had a sense of humor that seemed irrepressible. A short, round woman who he decided had never seen the inside of a gym in her