Free Chilled to the Bone by Quentin Bates Page B

life, she didn’t attract him in the same way that his wife’s spare, bony frame drove him wild, but there was no denying that Katrín was fun in a way that Agnes could never be.
    Jóel Ingi remained distant, answering the questions Katrín laughingly set him. Her friend, a wiry girl called Ursula, wasdefinitely more his type, he felt. The only one of the group not from the ministry, she seemed reluctant to engage in conversation with him, apparently preferring to talk to Már. Although he noticed her stealing the occasional glance his way.
    “Hey, Jóel Ingi,” Katrín grinned as the waiter placed tiny cups of Icelandic coffee in front of them to smother the subtle sushi flavours. “Chelsea v Spurs on Saturday. I’m sure you’ll be glued to that, won’t you?” she joked. “Spurs to win, you think?”
    Jóel Ingi lifted his eyes to smile back at her and shook his head, about to speak. But as he looked at her laughing eyes and past her through the restaurant windows, a familiar parka and baseball cap combination strolled along the opposite side of the street, stopped to look into a shop window and carried on.
    “Shit! I was joking about the football,” Katrín said in alarm as the color drained from Jóel Ingi’s face and the coffee cup stopped an inch from his lips.
    S ECONDS AFTER LEAVING Skúli to return to editing the next week’s TV listings, Gunna had her phone to her ear. She was relieved that the continuing snow promised by the deep grey clouds brooding a scant few feet above the rooftops of downtown Reykjavík was holding off releasing its payload.
    “Eiríkur? Hi, Gunna,” she said needlessly, as if Eiríkur had not already seen her number appear on his phone. She was cursing herself for not having spent the previous evening looking through Hróbjartur Bjarnthórsson’s file, but Gísli’s bombshell had pushed everything else out of her mind, and she reminded herself that first Laufey would have to be told of her big brother’s predicament, and then the rest of the family. She wondered if her elder brother Svanur had yet been told of his stepdaughter’s pregnancy, and the circumstances.
    “Chief? You there?” Eiríkur asked, concerned. Gunna realized that her phone was at her ear while her mind was elsewhere.
    “Sorry, Eiríkur. Brain’s gone to mashed potato today,” she said, smothering her growing irritation at herself and trying to concentrate. “Look, priority. No messing about. Jóhannes Karlsson’s wife must have been told by now. I want access to his bank details as soon as possible, preferably within an hour. Any unauthorized transactions and all that. You know the score.”
    “Anything suspicious?”
    “Anything out of the ordinary, especially anything yesterday, considering he was probably dead around lunchtime. Understand?”
    “Understood.”
    “But quick, Eiríkur. There are more people than just us sniffing around. Okay?” Gunna instructed, putting her phone away and approaching the hotel, where a bulky man with a black frown on his face was huddled in a padded coat, smoking a cigarette under the NO SMOKING sign.
    “This is a non-smoking zone,” she snapped and the man glared back at her, took a final pull and flicked the butt into the slush in the gutter.
    “How would you like to mind your own business?” he invited and quailed as Gunna opened her wallet in front of him.
    “City police,” he said in the same sharp tone as before. “I believe you wanted a word with me. You are?”
    “Hákon Hákonarson,” he said once they were inside the hotel’s lobby. “My wife works here and she was questioned twice yesterday. I just wanted to make it plain that this is unjustified and it’s not right for you people to harass her like this.”
    Gunna nodded in agreement, suppressing the dislike that she’d instinctively developed for this corpulent man and his pompous manner. “If she had been interviewed twice, then I might agree with you, but there was one short