Read Summerchill for Free Online

hoping. He’s a good guy, but, y’know?’
    ‘Yeah. I know Danni of old.’
    ‘This was part of the package from the start and he should have told you before you started the job, all right? The plan was for the showroom and the office to be fitted out. Danni said he knew someone he could trust to do a good job, not cut any corners, and who wasn’t too keen to give anything extra to the taxman. Am I right?’
    ‘Right enough,’ Logi agreed.
    ‘So, we still need the office in the corner,’ Rafn said. ‘I’m asking you, Logi. Can you do it? Can you finish the job?’
    ‘I reckon so. But we’d have to start right away. I’m working up country on Monday. So’s Tadeusz, and Marek’s leaving the country on Sunday.’
    ‘So if you start right away, can you get it finished?’
    ‘I reckon so. If the price is right,’ he said, feeling Rafn stiffen.
    ‘How much extra?’
    ‘Half a million. The boys’ll need two hundred thousand each, and I need the timber and the boards here in an hour or two.’
    Rafn’s smile was forced. ‘I think we can do that.’
    Logi fished in his pocket and handed him a note. ‘There’s the list. You can get it all from Bauhaus or anywhere, just so long as it’s here right away. That way you’ll have your office built by Sunday.’
    ‘Danni’ll sort it all out.’
    ‘Cash up front? I won’t get the boys to do the job otherwise.’
    ‘Like I said, Danni’ll sort it out.’ Rafn seemed relaxed again. ‘Now, I’ll tell you exactly what we’re looking for.’
    The flat in Straumsbær was on the second floor. It was bathed in warm evening sunlight, as was the girl in tight white clothes who opened the door for him.
    ‘Aníta Sól?’ Helgi asked. ‘I’m Helgi Svavarsson from CID. You called earlier about Axel Rútur?’
    She stepped back to let him in and perched on the edge of a sofa as white as her trousers; hair so bleached it looked as if it had been spun from the same material.
    ‘When did you last see him?’
    ‘He went out about half seven-ish last night, said he’d be an hour or so.’
    ‘He didn’t say where he was going?’
    ‘He never tells me.’
    ‘All right,’ Helgi said, deciding to try a new tack. ‘Where do you think he might have been?’
    Aníta Sól shook her head and looked into the distance. ‘I don’t know. He wasn’t going to the gym, because he’d already been and it wasn’t a training night.’
    ‘What training is that?’
    ‘He does this martial arts stuff, fighting in a cage.’
    Helgi frowned. ‘Mixed martial arts, you mean?’
    ‘Yeah. That’s it. He goes to that three or four times a week.’
    ‘But not last night? Where does he train?’
    He looked around the pristine living room and realized that the cups and shields on the sideboard were for tournaments.
    ‘It’s a place in the business park on Fossháls. It’s above that car place.’
    ‘So tell me about Axel’s movements? Where does he work?’
    ‘He’s a doorman at a couple of nightclubs in town.’
    ‘Which ones?’
    Aníta Sól looked blank. ‘Different ones, I think. Highliners, sometimes, and the one that was closed down a while ago.’
    ‘Sugarberries?’ Helgi asked with distaste.
    ‘That’s the one.’
    ‘So he works for Mundi Grétars?’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘The man he works for. Is that his name?’
    ‘I don’t know. He doesn’t tell me things like that. He normally works with a guy called Stebbi.’
    ‘Stefán, OK. Whose son?’
    ‘I don’t know. But he trains at the MMA place with him.’
    Helgi was starting to wonder if the girl lived in some kind of cocoon, considering how little she knew about her boyfriend’s movements.
    ‘And you? Where do you work?’
    ‘Hairways.’
    ‘What’s that?’
    ‘A hairdressing salon. It’s in Smáralind,’ Aníta Sól said in a tone that indicated her amazement that Helgi hadn’t heard of it.
    ‘Anything unusual about Axel Rútur’s movements in the last few days? He didn’t go anywhere different, or