Cold Comfort Read Online Free PDF Page B

he could get behind the wheel, and talk about picking locks and thieving from peoples houses. The things I could tell you…” Fanney’s voice faded away.
    “Please do,” Gunna invited.
    “You don’t think it’s him as had anything to do with my Skari getting hurt like that?”
    “I’ve no idea,” Gunna admitted. “I’m simply trying to put together some picture of these boys. I came to live here about the time they both left Hvalvík, so I don’t have the local knowledge and the background to go with it.”
    “You’ve been here so long now that people forget you’re not from round here.” Fanney sniffed, and Gunna almost felt a flush of pride at what was an unintentional compliment. “Omar and my lad knocked about as boys do and I suppose they were more troublesome than most. There was never anything bad about Oskar, just high spirits. But that Omar’s a bad lot. They met up in Reykjavík, and his father and I never did find out what it was they got up to there.”
    “Oskar didn’t tell you?”
    “And we didn’t ask. If he didn’t want to say, that was his business.” She sniffed again. “But I’ve no doubt that Omar was up to no good. He always was a wicked bastard, even when he was little.”
    “A H, DECIDED TO join us, have you, chief?” Helgi asked, glasses on the end of his nose and the phone slung precariously between shoulder and ear.
    “Thought I might drop in,” Gunna answered. “Been helping you out, as it happens. Now, where’s Eiríkur? It’s time we put our heads together.”
    “Here, chief,” Eiríkur said cheerfully, standing up behind his partition. “Right then, gather round, gentlemen.”
    Helgi stayed where he was and Eiríkur brought over a stool to sit next to him while Gunna took off her anorak and opened her briefcase.
    “Right. What’s happening with Svana Geirs so far? Eiríkur?”
    “I’m going through all the info the door-to-door enquiries came up with. It was a busy afternoon and the flat’s close to the petrol station and the 11-11 shop up the road, so there was plenty of traffic and we have loads of sightings of suspicious-looking persons. Trouble is we have no idea at all if we’re looking for a man, a woman, young, old or what, so we can’t discount any yet.”
    “Plenty, then?”
    “Too many. Dozens of descriptions, and I’ll bet that most of them were just going to and from the bakery.”
    “Any CCTV?” Gunna asked.
    “Not directly. There’s a camera outside the lawyers’ chambers round the corner in a blind alley. Been through it and there’s nothing to be seen on it at all. The petrol station and 11-11 both have footage that I’m going through now.”
    “Prints from the flat?”
    “A good few, they’re still being worked on. Technical are a bit pushed at the moment.”
    Gunna drummed the table with her fingernails.
    “You might have to push them a bit harder if they don’t get on with it,” she said, and Eiríkur looked dubious.
    “I don’t like to. I know they’re doing what they can, and they’re short-staffed.”
    “Aren’t we all? Any news of the real chief?”
    Örlygur Sveinsson, their superior officer and the man nominally in charge of the unit, while well known to them by reputation, had yet to make an appearance after having been signed off on long-term sick leave.
    “Lying on the sofa being waited on hand and foot while watching Police Academy 12,” Helgi cackled. They were all aware that enforced TV would be little short of torture for a man denied access to the golf course.
    “Fair enough, it’s all down to us, as usual. I have the guy who fitted the burglar alarm in Svana Geirs’ flat coming over this morning to unlock a few things for me, and we need to start interviewing friends and acquaintances. Do we have a list to start with?”
    Helgi laid a sheet of paper on the table, closely packed with names, addresses, phone numbers and indications of what each person’s relationship to the deceased had