Free Frozen Assets by Quentin Bates Page A

you?’
    â€˜Plenty, thank you,’ Skúli said gratefully. He had noticed the broad gold ring on Gunna’s finger and wondered why she had never mentioned a husband. ‘How did you wind up in a place like this?’
    â€˜You mean, what’s a girl like you doing in a nice place like this?’
    â€˜Yeah. I mean, no,’ Skúli stumbled. ‘Sorry. That’s not what I meant. Are you from around here originally?’
    Gunna smothered a grin. Making the lad gabble with embarrassment was becoming a source of light relief during an otherwise dull day.
    â€˜No. I’m not from round here. I’m from Vestureyri.’
    â€˜What? Right up there in the western fjords? Wow. So, why Hvalvík?’
    â€˜All right, here we go. I was brought up in Vestureyri, worked in the fish when I was twelve, all that stuff. When I was nineteen one of my uncles suggested I could be a copper for the summer. I thought — why not? My mum was happy to babysit for me. I gave it a try as a probational constable for a few months and got a kick out of it. Less money than working in the fish, but a lot more interesting.’
    â€˜So you stayed with it?’
    â€˜Yup. Applied to the police college and was accepted straight away. There weren’t many women going into the force then, so they were glad to get applications, although my family weren’t too pleased when I moved south for the winter so I could go to college.’
    Skúli decided to try Gunna’s tactic and sat in silence for her to continue.
    â€˜So, we moved back west in the summer and I was on the force in Vestureyri for a few years. Then I met Raggi and moved south to live with him, and transferred to the city force.’
    Skúli sat in expectant silence, already chastened once, while Gunna’s face hardened.
    â€˜After my husband died I was on compassionate leave and then sick leave for the best part of a year. The posting at Hvalvík came up and I applied and got it, which was something of a surprise. And I’ve been here ever since,’ Gunna concluded with a deep breath.
    â€˜What, er — what happened?’
    Gunna glanced at him sharply and Skúli felt he had been slapped. ‘Are you listening or not?’
    â€˜Listening.’
    â€˜Like I said, it was an accident. I don’t want to talk about it. You can look it up in the cuttings, February 2000. That’s the end of the potted biography, and I don’t expect to see any of that in print. Understood?’ Gunna instructed with a chill in her voice.
    â€˜Understood.’
    â€˜The rain’s stopped,’ Gunna observed, looking out at the sun bursting through the ragged clouds. ‘If you’ve finished eating, we can be on our way.’

5
    Saturday, 30 August
    â€˜He got pissed and passed out, fell in the water. Drowned while unconscious,’ said the barrel-chested man squeezed into the passenger seat.
    â€˜Sævaldur, we know that,’ Gunna told him sharply. ‘How the hell did he get from a bar in Reykjavík to Hvalvík harbour? He didn’t drive and he was already so drunk he could hardly walk. So who helped him?’
    Sævaldur Bogason yawned and tried to stretch. Gunna frowned, drumming on the wheel with the fingers of one hand. She wondered whether or not to call home and find out if Laufey was out of bed. She stifled the idea straight away, telling herself that there was practically no chance that her daughter would be awake at this early hour of a Saturday morning without a particularly good reason.
    Gunna forced her thoughts back to Einar Eyjólfur. She was concerned that her interviews at Spearpoint had yielded nothing concrete beyond a picture of a young man who kept very much to himself and did his job well. Unusually, he had no immediate family and only a small circle of friends made up mostly of past and present colleagues from work, with the exception Dísa had mentioned of Egill