Chilled to the Bone Read Online Free

he said as the back door of the ministry building loomed. Jóel Ingi turned to face Már. “I’ll do a few discreet checks,” he said, keeping his nerves under control, his hand on the door and his mind already focused uncomfortably on what had happened to his computer.
    T HE EXPRESSION ON the minister’s political adviser’s face showed that the meeting was not going to be a happy one.
    “Is there any link to these men?” Ægir Lárusson demanded in a tone caustic enough to strip paint from the wall.
    “Not as such,” Már Einarsson replied.
    “And what does that mean, or is it just bullshit?”
    Már winced. People with political rather than ministry backgrounds could be tiresomely rude. “It means that as far as we know, there are no links.”
    “As far as you know? So you mean there could be? What am I going to tell my boy in there when he’s up on his hind legs and one of those hairy-legged lesbians asks him straight out if those four terrorists came to Iceland?”
    “There was no evidence that they were terrorists,” Már protested. The man was simply too crude.
    “Or if the press get hold of even a whisper of this?” Ægir’s voice was rough, with a scratched quality that reminded Már of fingernails scraping down a wall. His face was redder than Már had ever seen in a man who was seldom far from an angry outburst.
    “Listen. There’s one of those lesbians with hairy armpits in the office next to mine. She’s the human rights and gender equality officer, and if she gets a sniff of this, even a hint, she’ll raise the roof, and I personally will ensure that your pickled testicles are lovingly put in a jar for your wife to keep by her bed as a shriveled memento of what could have been. Understand? Now, will you tell me just what ‘as far as we know’ means in plain language?”
    Már took a deep breath. “There’s nothing on paper. Not a scrap. I’ve checked records and been through the archives. There were phone conversations at the time. There are no notes and no memos here. I can’t speak for the minister,” he said in an attempt to hold his own.
    “I’ll speak for my boy. But?”
    “But what?”
    “I can see it in your face. You were about to say ‘but …’ weren’t you? So, but what?”
    Már took a deeper breath. “There were emails. I’ve alreadydone some housekeeping on that score. There’s nothing here. But …”
    “You’re doing it again,” Ægir snapped.
    “There’s a laptop. It went missing.”
    “When?”
    “Not long ago. A few days before Christmas.”
    The expected outburst didn’t materialize. Instead, there was an even more disturbing silence while Ægir sat down and placed his hands together on the deck, intertwining his fingers. “Then I would suggest, Már, that you and your people set about finding that laptop with all due speed. That is, providing your wife doesn’t want to abandon every ambition she has of arranging the seating plans at ambassadorial dinners in Paris or Washington one day in the distant future. Because the alternative is that she might end up as a fishery officer’s wife in Bolungarvík, possibly in the not-too-distant future.”
    “I have already …”
    “Don’t tell me what you’ve done,” Ægir cut in. “Just let me know when it’s fixed.”
    T HE GIRL LOOKED uncomfortable in the shabby magnolia-painted canteen that contrasted with the understated opulence of the hotel’s lobby and sumptuous rooms. Gunna smiled and wished that Yngvi would stop fidgeting.
    “
Hæ
, my name’s Gunnhildur Gísladóttir, and I’m a detective sergeant in the city police. What’s your name?”
    “Valeria Hákonarson,” the girl replied uncertainly through dark eyes that flickered toward Yngvi in his suit, which was beginning to look a lot less smart than it had a few hours earlier.
    “Where are you from, Valeria?” Gunna asked. “You speak Icelandic well enough, don’t you?”
    “I’m from Romania, but I’ve been here for a