Cold Steal by Quentin Bates Read Free Book Online Page A

taking advantage of the house’s windowless end wall to hop unnoticed over the low fence into the unkempt garden next door.
    He pulled some sheets of glossy paper from his pocket and held them ready in one hand. It wasn’t a great cover, but delivering flyers for a pizza delivery place was at least a reason to be standing next to someone’s front door if he were challenged.
    Orri walked round to the front of the house, stuffed a flyer through the door, listened to the clack of the letterbox echo in the hallway behind it and scratched his head as he tried to remember who lived in this house. He went with confidence down the path and back to the dentist’s house, taking his time stuffing a flyer through the letterbox as he listened for signs of life inside.
    It wasn’t fair, he decided on the way back to the street. People used to leave their cars outside as a decent indication of whether or not they were home. Putting the car in a garage that any normal person would use to store junk was downright unnatural and could confuse an honest housebreaker.
    He continued along the street, posted a few flyers into more letterboxes and made his way back to where he had left his car, disturbed by the sight of the blonde woman in the shower and his mind unable to settle on anything else. He made himself walk at an unhurried pace. He had left the house fifty metres behind him, walking stiffly with his hands deep in his pockets, when a slate grey car swished through the puddles past him, drew up and parked opposite the house. A tall man with a look of furtive excitement jumped out, hurried across the road and looked both ways along the street before disappearing behind the building, along the same path Orri had taken.
     
    Gunna never felt entirely comfortable during her infrequent visits to the financial crimes division. Her own confusion when faced with figures longer than a telephone number and a vague guilt at never having mastered long division left her in awe of people who could look at a company’s annual report and pick holes in it.
    Björgvin looked older than when she had spoken to him last, which was more than year ago. There were hints of grey at his temples and a now permanent furrow in his high forehead, but he still had the same engaging smile.
    ‘Hæ
Gunna. Good to see you,’ he greeted her, mug in hand as he made for his desk. ‘You want one?’
    Gunna shook her head. ‘No, thanks, First smoking, then caffeine. I tell you, it’s no fun being middle aged.’
    ‘Get away with you. Middle aged? I can look up your date of birth easily enough.’
    ‘I’ll save you the trouble. Forty-one and a grandmother. Twice.’
    ‘In that case, congratulations. So what can we do for you? Or is there anything you can do for us, maybe?’
    Gunna sat down, pulled a single sheet of paper from her pocket and unfolded it on Björgvin’s desk.
    ‘I’m hoping we might be able to help each other out here,’ she said, running a finger down the names. ‘Vilhelm Thorleifsson, dead. His business partner is a character called Elvar Pálsson, who’s sometimes in Iceland and sometimes not.’
    One of Björgvin’s eyebrows lifted and he cradled his chin in one hand as she spoke.
    ‘Then we have the dentist and his wife, Jóhann Hjálmarsson and Sunna María Voss.’
    ‘The names ring a bell,’ Björgvin said thoughtfully. ‘A company called Sólfell Investment, which went bankrupt a while ago for quite a few million and with no assets. I’ve encountered Vilhelm Thorleifsson and Elvar Pálsson before. Not recently, but their names have cropped up. This is the character who was murdered in Borgarfjördur, right?’
    ‘That was Vilhelm.’
    ‘He had been involved in some investments, but I gather his business isn’t in Iceland these days. You know the kind of thing with companies owning shares of other companies and the trail going dead in Cyprus or Tortola? He had been a shipbroker a few years ago and did some deals in West Africa,