Summerchill by Quentin Bates Read Free Book Online Page A

what he wanted, and Logi assumed there had to be a good reason, which was no concern of his. He flicked on the lights of the big workshop behind the new showroom, which made up the larger part of the building. There was a pit for working underneath vehicles, as well as steel-topped benches on all sides and a long changing room. There was nothing unusual there, he decided, certain that there was something illegal going on; something it would probably be healthiest to forget all about once the job was done.
    ‘Piece of piss,’ he told himself as he locked up and walked through the thickening darkness to his pickup. At last, with his mind clear of the job, he found himself brooding about the dead man the boys had taken away and presumably disposed of somewhere remote.
    He wondered whether or not to go back to the little house he currently referred to as home. He was nervous about going back there – maybe the big guy who’d arrived last night had even bigger and nastier friends? Logi sat in the pickup with the engine running and tapped the steering wheel with his fingertips as he made up his mind. Home could wait.

Saturday
    Helgi found himself looking for silver Outlanders as he drove to work, but the only one he saw contained a family of five, and he felt it was unlikely to have been stolen from a missing martial-arts instructor.
    He started with a visit to the traffic division to check if the missing Outlander had been located, taking the opportunity for a chat with the couple of motorcycle officers waiting to go out on patrol. Secretly he admired these officers and felt that if he’d joined the force as a younger man, then he would have liked a year or two on traffic duties. Now that he was past forty, he was sure that he’d be told he was too old to ride a bike. Besides which, Halla preferred him to be doing what she was sure was largely safe work behind a desk.
    At his desk, he went through the log for the night and checked the records for Axel Rútur’s friend Stefán’s history. It looked depressingly similar: a couple of arrests for being drunk and disorderly; one break-in, also committed while drunk, and a slew of assault charges. The differences, he noted, were that some of Stefán’s offences were relatively recent, one only a year ago, when a young woman had brought charges against him.
    He made some notes and thought to himself, noting down the name of the officer who had handled the case. He wrote a few lines on a sticky note, stuck it to Gunna’s computer monitor and made his way downstairs.
    ‘Is Hlynur about?’ he asked in the canteen.
    ‘He’s on duty. Check in the car park. If he’s not there, then you’d better give him a call and find out where he is,’ the chief inspector on duty told him.
    Outside in the car park he flagged down a squad car as it drove in.
    ‘Hlynur? A word, if you have a minute.’
    The tall officer’s colleague disappeared inside and Helgi spread out paperwork on the squad car’s bonnet.
    ‘Is there a problem?’
    ‘No, not at all,’ Helgi assured him. He tapped the report he had printed out. ‘This guy here, Stefán Ingason. You remember him?’
    ‘A proper nasty piece of work. The girl withdrew the charges and it never went to court.’
    ‘That’s all straightforward enough. But this guy has come to our attention in connection with something else. What was your take on him? Aside from what’s in your report, that is.’
    ‘He’s been doing some enforcement on the side. It’s as clear as day. It was blindingly obvious this girl had borrowed some money and the interest added up faster than she could pay it back. Stefán went to her flat to persuade her that the debt needed to be paid, and I guess he got carried away and broke her arm.’
    ‘So she called the police?’
    ‘No, the hospital called us. She had a black eye and a few other bruises as well.’
    ‘And she explained what had happened?’
    ‘Yep, in detail. But a week later she withdrew her