Reykjavik Nights

43

The drug squad was extremely interested in the thief’s account. It was still early morning when the detectives sat down with the young man, whose name was Fannar and who had no previous record. It didn’t take them long to persuade him to cooperate. Fannar had never been arrested before, never needed a lawyer and was keen to avoid prison if he possibly could — as he said himself. They took advantage of his inexperience and almost childlike naivety. In fact, the interview went so smoothly that by the time the detectives paused for lunch he had told them all he knew about the brothers, Ellert and Vignir; how to go about scoring drugs from them and why he owed them money. They were particularly interested to hear that the brothers had ordered the robbery. The Reykjavík police had not encountered this method of debt collection before.

Fannar’s life had been a sad mess since his early teens: he had started drinking heavily, had dropped out of school, then started taking drugs — dope, mainly — and had fallen in with a bad crowd who kept him supplied. His parents had done everything in their power to make him quit, but his habit had only grown worse and he had plunged ever deeper into the abyss. From time to time they had succeeded in locking him in the house, getting him to a doctor or into a home for delinquents, once even managed to get him admitted to Kleppur, the mental hospital, but it was all futile. Instead of coming to his senses, Fannar took harder, more expensive drugs, and was in serious trouble by the time Erlendur tackled him outside the abattoir.

CID immediately ordered close surveillance for the brothers and over the next few days gathered sufficient information for their arrest. They had been smuggling pills and powder, resin, amphetamines and the increasingly popular marijuana on cargo ships. They would bag them up and they’d be ready to sell. Originally the brothers had worked as crew members on the ships, smuggling small quantities of alcohol, but the drugs proved far more lucrative and took up less space on board. The brothers had established contacts in both Hamburg and Boston, and now had no fewer than five men working for them on various ships. The drugs were stashed either in an old baiting shed at Grandi, to the west of Reykjavík harbour, or at a property in the Vogar district, where they ran a carpentry workshop. Both premises were rented from landlords who had no involvement with smuggling or drug dealing and were stunned when the police knocked on their doors to inform them that their tenants were dealers. The brothers had covered their tracks so well that the police had been totally unaware of their existence.

Some of this they gleaned from Fannar’s statement, the rest from police contacts in Reykjavík’s rather half-baked underworld. Among other things, the investigation revealed that the brothers had recently received a shipment from Boston. When the police arrived with back-up from Customs and Excise, the haul was found as yet untouched in the baiting shed. The brothers had been under surveillance for only three days before the arrests took place. They seemed to have become remarkably lax about security. The police decided their moment had come when the brothers went to check up on their goods. They did not resist arrest. They mostly seemed astonished at getting caught, though they did try to assert that the contents of the shed did not belong to them; they only rented it.

It would be an exaggeration to claim that the arrest of Ellert and Vignir uncovered a complex network of dealers and suppliers, since the brothers had worked more or less independently, apart from two or three other contacts in Iceland and the men on the ships. Although they had made a huge profit from their imports, they were careful to show no sign of it, continuing to work as carpenters, scrupulously filling in their tax returns, and avoiding buying new cars or anything else that might suggest they were wealthier than they appeared. Not one króna of their illegal earnings was paid into their bank accounts. This had caused them something of a headache. In the few years they had been in business, they had amassed a vast quantity of banknotes which they kept in plastic bags and boxes, some stored in the bait shed and workshop, the rest at home. Their profits had partly financed the house they moved into on Fálkagata.

As the police gathered more information about Ellert and Vignir, there was one thing that struck them. The men employed unusually brutal methods to call in their debts. Although they had never been charged, various cases of assault could be attributed to them now that their identity was known. They also had someone only too happy to do their dirty work. This individual was well known to the police; it was none other than Ellidi, the thug Erlendur had encountered in Austurvöllur Square when searching for people who knew Hannibal. Ellidi was brought in for questioning and remanded in custody as a result.

In the end a total of eight men were arrested after Fannar named the brothers. Prior to the arrests, it was thought inadvisable, in the interests of the investigation, for Fannar to be on the streets, so the police had applied for permission to detain him for breaking into the jeweller’s. The only person he was allowed to see was the solicitor he had finally got around to hiring.

When Erlendur looked in on him in the cells at Hverfisgata, Fannar was in a terrible state, exhausted from being pumped for information about the brothers all the time, unable to sleep or eat. He now deeply regretted the burglary and the fact that he had snitched on Ellert and Vignir.

‘I should have kept my mouth shut. They’ll find out who grassed them up and then... shit! I don’t know what I was thinking. What was I thinking?’

‘I doubt you’re even on their radar,’ Erlendur said to reassure him. ‘They would have been exposed sooner or later.’

‘Yes, but it’s happened now, and they’ll find out it was me.’

‘Try not to worry about it.’

‘Do you think I’ll be allowed to go home when it’s over?’

‘To be honest, I can’t tell you,’ said Erlendur. ‘Probably. You’ll be charged with burglary, but I don’t know if you’ll have to do time for that.’

‘One of the cops said I’d avoid the nick if I helped them.’

‘You shouldn’t believe everything you’re told.’

‘Shit, I never should have blabbed.’

‘You don’t happen to know if the brothers were acquainted with a man called Hannibal?’ asked Erlendur.

‘Hannibal. No. Who’s he?’

‘They never mentioned the name?’

‘They never mentioned anything except how much I owed them,’ said Fannar. ‘I only met them the once. Didn’t usually score direct from them. All they told me was how big my debt was and how I could pay it off.’

‘By breaking into the shop?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where do you suppose they got the idea from?’

‘Saw it on TV, some series they’re always watching. Thought it was cool.’

‘What series was that?’

‘Can’t remember... bloke in a wheelchair... Don’t watch TV myself.’

‘Ironside?’

‘That’s the one.’