‘Garðar, they’ve opened the safe!’ Sigurdís called out as she burst in on the morning meeting taking place in the incident room.
‘Great news,’ Garðar replied. ‘Did they say anything about the contents?’
‘Not yet,’ Sigurdís replied. ‘I gave the technical team strict instructions not to touch anything inside the safe. I told them everything would have to be checked for fingerprints or other forensic evidence to establish who might have handled the contents, in case that turns out to be important.’
‘Excellent. Call forensics and ask someone to meet you at the apartment to fetch what’s inside the safe. We’ll go through it here so we won’t be disturbing the apartment any more than we already have. And that way we’ll also save ourselves some time going back and forth.’
Sigurdís was happy to have received this task, and immediately went to call forensics. Then she grabbed her jacket and rushed out to her car.
‘Well, we did it in the end,’ said the elated young technician. Sigurdís knew he’d been working with the manufacturer without a break to open the safe. ‘I didn’t touch anything once we had cracked the locks, just like you said. Didn’t dare leave a fingerprint behind in case I’d be a suspect,’ he grinned.
‘Fantastic job. Many thanks. Go home and get some rest. You’ve earned it,’ she said.
She snapped on some gloves and cautiously opened the door of the safe. The contents took her by surprise, even though she hadn’t formed any specific ideas about what might be in there. There were stacks of banknotes – bundles of five-thousand-króna and hundred-dollar notes. Sigurdís had never seen so much money in one place. The safe also contained memory sticks, envelopes and documents.
When the forensics team arrived a few minutes later, she couldn’t contain her curiosity and stood close by, holding her breath as they packed everything into a big plastic container.
Sigurdís held back her excitement as she carried the container out to her car. She knew that Garðar and the team were keen to know what the safe contained, but she couldn’t resist having her own look at the contents ahead of the others, so at the first opportunity on the way back to the station, she pulled over at a drive-through place. She was still wearing the gloves she’d put on at the apartment, so was able to carefully examine each item in the container.
Apart from the money – she had no idea what it might add up to – she found a stack of transfer receipts from the Chase Bank in the USA. The first was from August 2004, and the last was dated September 2008. They were for amounts from a thousand dollars up to three thousand, paid into an account at Chase over those four years. There were also two memory sticks and a bundle of documents that looked to be contracts.
Her attention was also drawn to a creased slip of paper. It appeared to have been crumpled up and then flattened out again. There was a phone number on it, beginning with +1, so it had to be an American number.
‘What’s so important about these transfers that they need to be so carefully hidden. And who hides a phone number in a locked, hidden safe?’ she muttered to herself.
She decided to note down the key information on the transfer receipts, and also the phone number, just in case she didn’t get to be involved in investigating the contents of the box.
Her phone rang; Halla’s name was on the screen.
‘Hi, sweetheart,’ she said. ‘You’ll be working, so I’ll get straight to the point. Could you get in touch with Einar? Ideally come and see him? He’s been like he’s seen a ghost these past couple of days, like he’s had a shock of some kind. Have you spoken to him recently?’
‘Not since Tuesday evening. He suggested I come over for dinner sometime soon. But I’ve been so busy, I forgot to call you to arrange it. He was fine when I spoke to him – happy with school and this new job he’s found.’
‘Exactly. He’s always so positive and cheerful that I’m wondering whether something’s happened. I’m worried about him. Have you heard anything from your mother?’
‘No. Nothing more than our usual courtesy calls on her birthday and at Christmas. Apart from that, she doesn’t call me any more than I call her. But you know all about that. Why do you ask?’
‘Ach … Just wondering if she had been calling the two of you and if that might have upset him.’ Halla paused for a moment, as if thinking what to say. ‘Look, I don’t always tell you this, but I do call her regularly. And visit her too. She’s my sister, after all, and life hasn’t been kind to her. So I feel I need to check up on her and make sure she’s coping with everything. But there’s nothing to report really. She’s been fine recently. She talks about some TV serial she spends half of every day watching. So she’s doing something, even if she rarely goes out. And she seems to be taking her medication. I just worried that she might have spoken to Einar and that would explain his mood. Anyway,’ Halla seemed to dismiss her own concerns, ‘you’re busy, and I have to run myself. Please try and get hold of Einar. I’m not getting through to him.’
Sigurdís knew that Halla had long been concerned that her sister bore a grudge against her for applying for, and getting custody of, her and Einar. This was despite their mother’s doctor making it clear to them that she felt that after what had happened, she didn’t deserve to have children and accepted that it was best for them to be with Halla. At the time it was considered that she was so ill with depression and some kind of PTSD that she was in no state to look after them anyway. Sigurdís remembered feeling relieved that her mother hadn’t put up a fight; there was no doubt in her mind that Einar would have gone to her if she had asked him to. He was so good-natured, he wouldn’t have wanted to cause his mother even more distress by leaving her. He also recalled little of what had happened to him, so didn’t blame her for any of it, as Sigurdís did.
But she had to give her mother credit for having their best interests at heart when she agreed they should live with Halla. She did the right thing for us in the end, Sigurdís thought.
She heard her phone ping and saw a text message from Viktor:
What is taking you so long?
She hurriedly put everything away, started the engine and set off, with the box at her side, which she hoped would provide some clue as to what had happened to Óttar.