Cold Comfort (A Sergeant Gunnhildur Novel, Band 2) - Softcover

Buch 2 von 6: Gunnhildur Mysteries

Bates, Quentin

 
9781616952037: Cold Comfort (A Sergeant Gunnhildur Novel, Band 2)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1616952032 ISBN 13: 9781616952037
Verlag: Soho Crime, 2013

Inhaltsangabe

Officer Gunnhildur, recently promoted from her post in rural Iceland to Reykjavík’s Serious Crime Unit, is tasked with hunting down escaped convict Long Ommi, who has embarked on a spree of violent score-settling in and around the city. Meanwhile, she’s also investigating the murder of a fitness guru in her own city-center apartment. As Gunna delves into the cases, she unearths some unwelcome secrets and influential friends shared by both guru and convict. Set in an Iceland plagued by an ongoing financial crisis, Gunna has to take stock of the whirlwind changes that have swept through the country—and the fact that at the highest levels of power, the system’s endemic corruption still leads, inevitably, to murder.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Quentin Bates lived in Iceland for ten years before moving back to the UK in 1990, where he became a full-time journalist at a commercial fishing magazine. He and his wife frequently return to Iceland, where they have many friends, including several in the Reykjavík police.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Prologue

Freedom tasted good. To Long Ómar Magnússon freedom
tasted of hot dogs with ketchup and onions and washed down
with a cold can of malt. He thrust out long legs beneath the
café’s plastic table and belched luxuriously. A woman with a
brood of children at the next table turned her head and
frowned, but he met her stare and she thought better of saying
anything.

“Where are we going now, Ommi?” asked the tubby girl at
his side.

“Town. Your place.”

“We can’t go there,” she wailed. “Mum’ll go mad if she sees
you. She knows you’re not out for another year.”

“Good behaviour, Selma. Tell her I’ve been a good boy and
now I need some fun.”

He drained the can of malt and stood up, shaking his legs.
“Come on. There’s stuff to do.”

Selma hauled herself to her feet and trotted towards the
door with Ommi towering beside her. As she squealed in surprise,
the woman with the brood of children again turned her
head in irritation, in time to see a broad hand stretched down
to cup a buttock, half under Selma’s short skirt. The woman
opened her mouth to speak, but before she had decided what
to say, the pair had gone, with Selma’s squeaks receding into
the distance.



Thursday 11th

“Laufey!”Gunna called for the second time.

“Laufey Oddbjörg Ragnarsdóttir! School!”

She brushed her teeth hurriedly and examined herself critically
in the mirror. Time for a haircut, she thought. Good
teeth, strong nose, thick eyebrows . . . Cupping a hand to lift a
mouthful of water, she swirled and spat as Laufey appeared in
the mirror behind her.

“Finished, sweetheart. All yours.”

Laufey nodded blearily and said nothing.

Gunna switched on the radio and waited for the kettle to
boil while Channel 2’s morning talk show chattered in the
background. Laufey shambled back to her room and shut the
door behind her.

“If she’s gone back to bed. . .” Gunna muttered.

The kettle steamed itself to a climax and clicked off as
Gunna poured cereal into a bowl.

“Laufey!” she called again. The bedroom door opened and
Laufey appeared, dressed and holding her school bag. “You’ll
have to be a bit smarter getting up if you’re going to college in
Keflavík next year.”

“Reykjanesbær, Mum. You shouldn’t call it Keflavík any
more.”

“Keflagrad they call it at the station, there’s so many foreigners
there now.”

“Mum, that’s a bit racist, isn’t it?”

Gunna sighed. “Maybe, but it’s too early in the morning to
argue about it. D’you want some breakfast? There’s cereal or
skyr.”

Suddenly the radio caught her attention and she turned the
volume up quickly.

“A prisoner who absconded recently from Kvíabryggja open
prison is still at large and is reported to have been seen in the
Reykjavík area. Police have issued a description of Ómar Magnússon,
thirty-six years old. He’s one-ninety-nine in height,
heavily built, with medium-length brown hair. He has heavily
tattooed forearms and was last seen dressed in jeans and a dark
jacket. People are warned not to approach him, but to report
any sighting to the police on . . .”

Gunna spun the volume dial down to zero.

“Friend of yours, Mum?” Laufey asked slyly.

“Yup, most definitely one of mine right now. Actually, he’s
from here.”

“A criminal from Hvalvík? Really?”
“He left Hvalvík before we moved here. Come on, I’ve got
to go in ten minutes if you want a lift.”

Laufey yawned. “It’s all right. I’ll walk.”

“It’s raining,” Gunna warned.

“S’all right. I’m meeting Finnur and we’ll walk together.”

“Fair enough. I should be back at five, unless something
crops up. I’ll let you know.”

“I might not go to college in Keflavík,” Laufey said suddenly.

“What?” Gunna said, startled.

“I might go to Hafnarfjördur instead. Their psychology
department is better. If you’re driving every day now, you could
give me a lift in the mornings, couldn’t you?”

Gunna thought for a moment of how early they would need
to leave every morning to take Laufey to Hafnarfjördur and
still get herself to work on time.

“Psychology? I thought you wanted to do business studies?”

Laufey frowned. “Business studies is so 2007, just not cool
any more.”

“We’ll see, sweetheart. We can talk it over tonight. See you
later,” Gunna said, sweeping up car keys and her mobile phone.

“Yah, Diddi. Remember this face, do you?”


A look of alarm spread rapidly across the young man’s heavy
features. “Hey, Ommi. Good to see you,” he said, his voice
hollow. “Didn’t know you were out yet.”

“I’m not. Not officially,” Ommi leered, dropping a long arm
heavily across Diddi’s shoulders and sauntering with him along
the deserted street.

“What? Did a runner? So it’s you they’re looking for, is it?
Brilliant!”

“Yeah. Where d’you live now, Diddi?”

“Just round there. Not far.”

“Yeah, Diddi, but where?”

Diddi quailed and blanched. “Just up the road.”

Ommi used the hand draped across Diddi’s shoulders to haul
him round in a half-circle, slamming him face-first against a
raw grey concrete wall, a fist planted squarely over his kidneys.
Diddi wanted to yell for help, but knowing that nothing would
be forthcoming in a neighbourhood where people avoided
involving themselves in other folk’s problems, he steeled himself
to stay quiet.

“What’s the matter, Ommi?” he warbled.

Ommi leaned close. “Diddi, you let us down. You owe.”

“Wha-what’s that, Ommi?”

“You know.”

With one hand Ommi gripped a handful of greasy hair,
swinging with the other to land a smack to the side of Diddi’s
head that raised a whimper and left his victim in a daze. Ommi
loved the satisfying smack of fist on flesh, the rush of adrenalin,
the flush of power. He’d missed this in prison.

“You know,” he repeated. “You owe. Soon you’ll have to pay
up. All debts will be honoured in full. Understood?”

Diddi nodded. Blood was starting to seep from his right ear
on to the shoulder of his denim jacket, and his head was
buzzing. “Yeah, I get it, whatever.”

“Hope so. You haven’t seen me. Don’t know where I am.”

“I didn’t do it, Ommi.”

“That’s what you say,” Ommi hissed, delivering a punch to
the kidneys that left Diddi unable to stand on his own feet.
The whole thing had taken no longer than a minute, and
already Ommi was nowhere to be seen. Cross-eyed with pain,
Diddi wondered if Long Ómar Magnússon had really appeared
and beaten him up in the broad light of morning. The ringing in
his ears and the taste of bile convinced him that it had been all
too real, as he threw up...

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Verlag
Soho Crime
Erscheinungsdatum
2013
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1616952032
ISBN 13 
9781616952037
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
416
Kontakt zum Hersteller
EDITIONS GALLIMARD
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Via Verdi, 8.
Assago Milano
20090
Italien

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