20

Unnar was already at the station when Sigurdís arrived at a quarter to eleven.

‘Is Garðar in his office?’ she asked him, feeling a bit anxious about their conversation of the night before.

‘Yes, he’s in there and making heavy weather of it. I reckon he’s frustrated about our lack of progress on this case, and the media won’t leave him alone. But we’re making a push on the documents from the safe today. Elín is working out an overview of this whole tangle of financial connections so she’s going to need our help tying up the loose ends and filling in the gaps. She’s really plunged into this and I don’t think she’s slept, just deep in all this stuff day and night. It must be wonderful for her and her husband to have Óttar in bed with them!’ Then he suddenly seemed to realise how inappropriate it was to be making a joke of this, flushed slightly and looked away.

‘That would make an interesting love triangle,’ Sigurdís said, throwing him a lifeline, and they both laughed awkwardly. ‘One thing I was wondering,’ she went on. ‘Have Óttar’s movements been tracked through his phone?’

‘We’re looking into that with the network provider. But it’s not as easy as it was to track someone’s whereabouts through their phone – there are some new strict conditions you have to meet. A few years ago it was no problem to check what numbers were in a particular area at a given time. But now the data protection rules say we can’t retrieve that information unless we have good reason to have someone under suspicion. And we can only get broad authorisation in the case of a missing person. I heard Garðar arguing with the legal department about it. But the law is the law, so we have to take a roundabout route these days. It’s all to ensure people’s data stays secure, I suppose.’

‘It’s understandable, now that everything we do can be tracked through some satellite,’ Sigurdís said.

Elín had entered the room so quietly, Sigurdís jumped a bit when she spoke behind her, telling them Garðar wanted everyone working on the case to gather in the meeting room in a few minutes.

As they filed into the room and saw Elín sitting behind the stack of documents, ready to give them her overview, there was a murmur of anticipation about what she might have found there.

‘Óttar went to great lengths to hide his financial shenanigans,’ Elín began as she leafed through the documents from the safe. ‘I’ve rarely seen anything like it. If he hadn’t been murdered, we’d probably never have known a thing about what he was up to. But I think I’ve managed to put together a pattern.’

Going back to the years prior to the financial crisis, Elín told them how Óttar had begun acquiring substantial assets though his tax-haven entities, his old friend Daði Sigurðsson acting as front man so Óttar’s name was connected to none of these purchases. Óttar appeared to have made all the investment decisions, however, and the indications were that he had based these on information that wasn’t publicly available. It seemed to Elín that he had indirectly influenced the decision to sell four state-owned assets at a time when the market was still uncertain and those companies were therefore sold off cheaply.

‘One of them ended up in Daði’s hands, as I have explained before. And this was at the same time as Óttar was lobbying for the introduction of greater transparency in the disposal of state assets. I also found a paper trail showing that when he was a private consultant, before taking the position at the ministry, he worked for several companies that subsequently got into trouble by being over-mortgaged or over-geared – basically had a lot of debt. And while he was in the media spotlight talking about corruption, those companies ended up in his hands, through his friend Daði. So, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a few people who held a grudge against Daði.’

‘Could anyone have found out that Óttar was behind all this?’ Sigurdís asked.

‘I see no indication that anyone knew of all this,’ Elín replied. ‘At least, there’s nothing to that effect in the documents I have seen. That’s something for you to figure out, I guess.’

‘Thank you, Elín,’ said Garðar. ‘That was very useful. It proves what we suspected. Now, I have some news: Daði has been in touch with me this morning. He promised he would if he was tipped off about the media getting hold of any of this information. And it appears they have. He’s been told that the impending exposé that Elín told us about previously will reveal the connection between him and Óttar.’

‘Well there you go, then,’ Elín said.

‘There we go, what?’ Unnar asked.

‘We have a motive for Óttar’s murder,’ Elín said shortly. ‘But, hey, I’m just in financial crime. What do I know?’

Unnar frowned. Sigurdís wondered if he, like herself, wasn’t convinced about this angle on the investigation; it discounted all the information they’d found out about Óttar’s time in the US. ‘What do you think, Garðar?’ Unnar said. ‘Do you want me to try and track down what’s happening with the exposé, and what exactly it will say about Óttar?’

‘No, Elín and I will work on it. I want you to continue talking to Daði’s neighbours. We ought to tie that up, as we can’t completely exclude him yet as a suspect.’