As she and Garðar left Halla’s house, Sigurdís knew she could no longer keep quiet about what she had found out in America. It had been weighing on her and he would find out soon anyway what she’d been up to. So as soon as they were in the car she started her narrative.
By the time they reached the station, she was halfway through her account. Garðar hadn’t interrupted her once, the whole time. Now, he switched off the engine, turned to face her, and told her to continue. Sigurdís had never before seen him so lost for words. His expression had been neutral as he drove, but now she could see the tension in the muscles of his jaw as he clenched his teeth and breathed deeply.
‘I don’t know what to say, Sigurdís,’ he said finally, just as Unnar had done. ‘I want to give you an earful for going off on your own without saying anything to me. This is totally inappropriate and goes against every rule of police work. There are reasons for all the procedures, and certainly they don’t allow for you or anyone else to play some kind of game of Dirty Harry.’ He let that sink in for a moment, fixing her with a hard stare. Then he looked forward, out through the windscreen, and sighed. ‘On the other hand, I think you’re on to something.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I have to put up my hands and admit that it feels like I’ve completely lost control of this investigation. We’ve made no progress on Guðmundur and to be honest, we’ve hit a wall.’
He shifted in the driver’s seat, put both hands on the wheel and pushed, pressing himself back into the seat.
‘OK. This is the way we’ll play it. Even though you went rogue, I’ll back you up because I don’t want you to get a black mark for this. Hell, you might be on the trail that we’ve been looking for all this time.’
They got out of the car, and as they went inside and climbed the stairs to the incident room, Garðar suggested that she take a coffee break and get ready for a meeting with Erla. He wasn’t sure it was the moment yet to inform the rest of the team. And he told her to let him know of all her movements from now on. He was responsible for her safety, even though he was gradually realising that she was quite capable of taking care of herself.
She gave him a guilty smile and promised there would be no more solo escapades.
She was walking away when he called out to her, ‘Hey, Dirty Harry!’ She turned, and he continued, ‘I also think we need to talk to the mother and the sister again, Thrúður and Stefanía. They know more than they’re giving away.’