Cold Comfort by Quentin Bates

Author:Quentin Bates
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781616950545
Publisher: Soho Press
Published: 2011-02-14T10:00:00+00:00

Monday 22nd

MORNING WAS NOT far off when Gunna parked Gísli’s Range Rover outside and quietly opened the front door to the silent house. The only sound to be heard was the muted ticking of the kitchen clock. Her hands and feet, chilled in the hours spent searching Bjartmar’s garden under the glare of floodlights, had thawed on the drive home, but the fatigue of the long day and the shock of seeing Bjartmar’s mangled corpse, eyes wide open and staring into the distance, had left her drained.

She hung her coat and fleece on the back of a kitchen chair, stretched her arms high above her head and breathed in deeply. She closed her eyes and lifted her chin, squaring her shoulders and trying not to visualize the man’s last terrified moments.

She had finally been ordered home, along with Eiríkur and Helgi. Nothing but faint footprints had been found in the grass, so, leaving the technical team engrossed in the scene of crime, she and Eiríkur had joined the group of uniformed officers conducting house-to-house enquiries, trying to locate anyone who might have been aware of anything.

An elderly gentleman walking a small dog recalled seeing a man striding uphill from the crime scene, but could give no description beyond the fact that he was tall and dressed in dark clothing. The enquiries stretched into the neighbouring streets and revealed only that a shabby white van had been parked there for a while, but nobody recalled the number, or even when it had arrived or departed.

Gunna pulled off her T-shirt and unbuttoned her jeans, then stood in front of the open fridge to take a long pull at a carton of the orange juice that she always tried to remember to buy for Laufey.

She wriggled out of her jeans, sodden past the knees, and rolled them into a ball with the T-shirt. Feeling sweaty and dirty after hours in the drizzling rain, on an impulse she clicked off the main light, leaving only the light over the stove on, stripped off the rest of her clothes and stuffed everything into the washing machine. She squatted and poured powder into the drawer, set the machine to run, and padded to the shower, where the sulphurous hot water soothed the knotted muscles of her shoulders.

It was much later when she crawled into bed, draping one arm over Steini’s sleeping form.

“Y’all right?” he enquired drowsily. “Tough job?”

“Yup. Exhausted.”

She squeezed him gently and Steini snaked an arm behind him to rest a hand on her thigh as he began to snore musically again.

THE NEWLY PROMOTED chief inspector Sævaldur Bogason took charge of the briefing. Gunna yawned as he preened at the front of the room, and noticed with interest that Ívar Laxdal stood at the back.

“Right, people,” Sævaldur said loudly, calling the room to order, even though everyone there was already sitting in silence and waiting for him to start. “The deceased, Bjartmar Arnarson, killed at twenty-one forty last night, two rounds from a shotgun at extremely close range.

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