66° North E-Book

Michael Ridpath

• Herausgeber: Corvus
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

From the million-copy bestselling author, perfect for fans of Stieg Larsson, Anne Holt, and The Killing. "Michael Ridpath is on the war path, trouncing the Scandinavians on their home turf. This is international thriller writing at its best, fine characters, page turning suspense and a great, fresh location." PETER JAMES Iceland 1934: Two boys playing in the lava fields that surround their isolated farmsteads see something they shouldn't have. The consequences will haunt them and their families for generations. Iceland 2009: the credit crunch bites. The currency has been devalued, savings annihilated, lives ruined. Revolution is in the air, as is the feeling that someone ought to pay the blood price... And in a country with a population of just 300,000 souls, where everyone knows everybody, it isn't hard to draw up a list of those responsible. And then, one-by-one, to cross them off. Iceland 2010: As bankers and politicians start to die, at home and abroad, it is up to Magnus Jonson to unravel the web of conspirators before they strike again. But while Magnus investigates the crimes of the present, the crimes of the past are catching up with him.

Leseprobe

66° NORTH

MICHAEL RIDPATH

66° NORTH

First published in Great Britain in 2011 by Corvus, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Copyright © Michael Ridpath 2011.

The moral right of Michael Ridpath to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-84887-400-8 (hardback) ISBN: 98-1-84887-401-5 (trade paperback)

eBook ISBN: 978-0-85789-420-5

Printed in Great Britain.

Corvus An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd Ormond House 26-27 Boswell Street London WC1N 3JZ

www.corvus-books.co.uk

for Julia, Laura and Nicholas

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Author’s Note

CHAPTER ONE

January 2009

ICELAND WAS ANGRY. As angry as it had ever been since the first Vikings stepped ashore in Reykjavík’s smoky bay one thousand years before.

And Harpa, Harpa was angrier still.

She stood with four thousand other Icelanders in the square outside the Parliament building shouting, chanting, banging. She had brought a saucepan and a lid, which she beat together. Others had all kinds of kitchen implements, as well as tambourines, drums, whistles, a trawler’s foghorn, anything that could make a noise. A tiny old lady next to her stood straight and defiant, banging her Zimmer frame against the ground, yelling, her eyes alight with fury.

The din was chaotic. The earlier rhythm of the crowd had deteriorated into a cacophony of anger, disjointed chants of ‘Ólafur out!’, ‘Rotten Government!’ and the simple ‘Resign!’. It was the middle of January and it was cold – there was a dusting of snow on the ground. Making noise kept Harpa warm. But the shouting and banging also gave vent to the anger and the hatred that had been boiling inside her for months, like volcanic steam spitting out into the cold air from the country’s geothermal depths.

It was getting dark. The flares and the torches that many had brought with them glowed brighter in the failing light. Lights blazed inside the Parliament, a small building of blackened basalt.

The people had gathered, just as they had gathered every Saturday for the previous seventeen weeks, to tell the politicians to do something about the mess that they had got Iceland into. Except this was a Tuesday, the first day of the Parliamentary session. The protests were becoming more insistent, the noise of the people was building up to a crescendo, the Prime Minister and the government had to resign and call elections. Ólafur Tómasson, the former Governor of the Central Bank and now Prime Minister, who had privatized the banks and then connived at them borrowing more – much more – than they could ever repay, he had to resign too.

This was the first time Harpa had been to one of these demonstrations. At first she hadn’t approved of them, thought violence and conflict was not the Icelandic way, that the demonstrators didn’t understand the complexities of the situation. But, along with thousands of other Icelanders, she had lost her job. She could do the sums, she knew that the debt the Icelandic banks had run up would take the nation decades to pay off. Markús, her son, was only three. He would still be bailing them out when he was forty.

It was wrong! It was so wrong.

Ólafur Tómasson was to blame. The other politicians were to blame. The bankers were to blame. And Gabríel Örn was to blame.

Of course she had played her own part. That had kept her away from the earlier demonstrations. But now as she banged and shouted, the guilt just added to her fury.

Proceedings had started in an orderly way, with rousing speeches by a writer, a musician and an eight-year-old girl. Icelandic flags had been waved, protest banners fluttered, the atmosphere was more carnival than riot.

But people were angry and getting angrier.

The police in their black uniforms and helmets formed a line in front of the parliament building, ushering in the politicians through the mob. They carried batons, shields and red canisters of pepper spray. Some squared up to the crowd, broad and tall. Some bit their lips.

Eggs and pots of skyr, Icelandic yoghurt, flew through the air. Protesters dressed in black, their faces covered in balaclavas or scarves, ran at the police line. The crowd surged. Some people, many people, shouted for the protesters to leave the police alone. Others cheered them on. The police lines buckled. Now it wasn’t just yoghurt being thrown, it was flagstones as well. A police-woman fell to the ground, blood running down her face.

Whistles blew. The black uniforms raised their canisters and squirted pepper spray into the throng.

The crowd recoiled. Harpa was sent reeling backwards and tripped over the man behind her. For a moment she thought she was going to be trampled. A boot crunched her leg. She lay on her back and raised the saucepan in an attempt to protect her face. Anger turned to fear.

Powerful arms lifted her to her feet and pulled her back from the crowd.

‘Are you all right? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to knock you over.’

The man was lean and strong, with thick dark eyebrows and deep blue eyes. Harpa felt a jolt as she looked up at him. She couldn’t speak.

‘Here, let’s get back out of this.’

She nodded and followed the man as he pushed back through the mob towards the edge of the square, where the crowd was more sparse. The hand on her arm was broad and callused, a fisherman’s hand, her father’s hand.

‘Thank you,’ Harpa said, bending to rub her shin where the boot had dug into it.

‘Are you hurt?’ He smiled. A stiff, reserved smile, but betraying concern.

‘I’ll be OK.’

A kid barged past them, spluttering as he ripped off his balaclava and rubbed his eyes. He couldn’t have been more than fourteen. Another protester tipped back the boy’s head and poured milk into his eyes to soothe them.

‘Idiot,’ Harpa said. ‘All this isn’t the police’s fault.’

‘Perhaps not,’ said the man. ‘But we need the politicians to take notice. Maybe this is what it will take.’

‘Bah, it’s pathetic!’ A deep voice rumbled from just behind them. Harpa and her rescuer turned to see a broad-shouldered middle-aged man with puffy eyes, a scrappy grey beard and ponytail, frowning down on them. His stomach hung out over his jeans and he was wearing a broad-brimmed leather hat. Harpa thought she recognized him from somewhere, but she wasn’t sure.

‘What do you mean?’ said Harpa.

‘Icelanders are pathetic. This is the time for a real revolution. We can’t just sit around and talk politely about change and bang our pots and pans. The people need to take control. Now.’

Harpa’s eyes widened as she listened. With the fisherman next to her, her fear was diminishing and the anger reappearing. He was right, damn it. He was right.

‘Aren’t you Sindri?’ the fisherman asked. ‘Sindri Pálsson?’

The man nodded.

‘I’ve read your book. Capital Rape.’

‘And?’ The big man raised his eyebrows.

‘I thought it was a bit extreme. Now I am not so sure.’

The big man laughed.

Now Harpa knew where she had seen his face. He had been a punk rocker in the early eighties, a one-hit wonder and had re-emerged two decades later as an Icelandic anarchist writer.

‘My name is Björn,’ the fisherman said and held out his hand. Sindri shook it.

‘And you?’ Sindri asked Harpa. She could smell alcohol on his breath and she recognized the look of interest in his eyes as he examined her. She might be an unemployed single mother in her late thirties, but men still liked what they saw, especially older men.

‘Harpa,’ she said, glancing quickly at the man named Björn as she did so. He smiled. God, he was attractive. There was something about him, or maybe it was just something about her, the afterglow of letting out all that anger.

He was certainly more attractive than Gabríel Örn. Pity he was a fisherman. Rule one ever since she had been a teenager was don’t date fishermen.

‘Ólafur out!’ Sindri roared suddenly, punching a fist in the air.

The big man was a magnificent sight, bellowing his lungs out, his ponytail bobbing.

Harpa glanced at Björn. ‘Ólafur out!’ she shouted.

Night fell. The protest intensified. The older protesters left: the proportion of demonstrators with their hoods up and faces covered increased. The Christmas tree in the middle of the square toppled: in a moment it was on fire. Drums beat, people danced. Harpa and Björn stuck to Sindri, who moved through the throng chatting to all and sundry between bellows. Following him, Harpa felt part of the crowd, and her anger flared again.

Finally, the police had had enough. ‘Gas! Gas!’ the crowd shouted.

A moment later something stung Harpa’s eyes. She bent over and Björn pulled her away. Something tickled her throat. They ran back out of the square, surrounded by hundreds of people, escaping before all but a particle or two of the gas reached their lungs. They lost Sindri for a moment, and then found him talking to a young man with his shirt off plunging his face into a bucket of water. The boy had spiky red hair and his torso glowed pink in the cold and the light of the flares. Sindri seemed to be congratulating him and slapping him on his back. The boy was shivering, but he was angry and the anger was keeping him warm.

They were standing a couple of hundred metres away from the square, right next to the impressive statue of Ingólfur Arnarson, who was that first Viking settler to step ashore in Reykjavík’s smoky bay.

‘At least the gas doesn’t bother him,’ said Sindri. ‘If the country was still run by people like him they’d know exactly what to do with the bankers and the politicians.’

Harpa admired the statue’s strong muscles. ‘I wonder if he really looked like that,’ she said.

‘He always seemed a bit camp to me,’ said Sindri. ‘The way he’s leaning on his shield, sticking his hip out.’

‘Oh, no,’ said Harpa. ‘He’s all man.’

‘He was probably short and fat with a double chin,’ said Björn.

The three of them laughed.

‘Come back to my place for a drink,’ Sindri said to Harpa and Björn. ‘It’s just around the corner.’ They exchanged glances: if you will, so will I.

‘OK,’ said Harpa. So they followed Sindri, together with the boy who was still bare chested, waving his shirt in the air in disgust.

‘Another one, Harpa?’

Harpa nodded as Sindri refilled her glass from the brandy bottle. Her head was pleasantly fuzzy, the alcohol adding to the chemicals released by her own body during the glorious turmoil of the demonstration. It was weeks since she had had a proper drink. She had always been suspicious of people who drank in the middle of the week, but this was no ordinary Tuesday.

They were in Sindri’s small flat, the five of them: Sindri, Harpa, Björn, the red-haired boy and a short, neatly dressed man, young enough to be a student, who had latched on to them somewhere along the way. The boy’s name was Frikki, and the student’s Ísak.

Sindri was enjoying himself, playing to the small crowd, and in particular playing to her. He had seated her next to him on a tatty sofa, Björn and Ísak the student sat on old armchairs facing them, and Frikki was slumped on the floor. The flat was a dump: small, cracked ceiling, scratched wooden floor, books, newspapers, magazines and ashtrays filled with cigarette stubs everywhere. There was washing-up in the sink in the alcove of the room that acted as a kitchen. The only things brightening up the place were three or four landscapes dotted around the walls, the biggest of which portrayed a farmer carrying an unconscious girl over the moors.

They had finished a bottle of red wine and were on to the brandy.

Harpa played up to Sindri; she was flattered by the attention and what he said was interesting. But it was Björn she was most aware of. He sat coolly listening to Sindri, calm, composed and furious. He wasn’t trying any of the classic male competition for her attention, but she did catch him shooting the occasional glance at her.

She was enjoying herself. For a moment she felt guilty about leaving Markús, but her mother would be very happy looking after him. She was always telling Harpa to stop moping around, to get out more and meet a man. She was right. Since Gabríel Örn had betrayed her, Harpa had spent nearly all her time cooped up in her little house in Seltjarnarnes.

‘I know I don’t look like it,’ Sindri was saying, ‘but I am a farmer. Or at least my family are farmers. Until the bank forces them to sell up, that is.’

‘What happened?’ Harpa asked.

‘Everyone’s getting squeezed,’ Sindri said. ‘Even the farmers. My brother, who runs the farm now, can’t make his payments. So it’s finito.’ Sindri made a throat-cutting sign with his forefinger. ‘Just like that. A farm that has been around for generations, that was mentioned in the Book of Settlements, is destroyed. It breaks my heart.’

It was Harpa’s understanding that farms were one of the few sectors of the economy actually doing well with the fall of the króna, but she didn’t want to contradict Sindri in full flow.

He turned to her. ‘It is the farmers who are the real soul of Iceland. Like Bjartur there.’ He pointed to the painting of the peasant carrying the girl. ‘I did that, you know.’

‘It’s good,’ said Harpa. And it was. You could tell the brush-strokes were by an amateur, but the painting managed to portray nobility in a harsh but beautiful landscape.

‘The farmers and the fishermen,’ Sindri went on, taking the compliment in his stride. ‘Men who will work hard in tough conditions, who save, who fight to earn a living on the fells or on the waves. And not just men, women. We have the toughest, most independent women in the world. We have needed them to survive. And now these bankers, these lawyers, these politicians, all they know how to do is spend and borrow, spend and borrow. The kids of today don’t know how to do real work, what it’s like to tramp over the fells in a howling gale looking for lost sheep.’

‘Some of us do,’ said Frikki. ‘Until two weeks ago I spent all my waking life in a hellhole of a kitchen producing food for these guys to eat. And the prices they would pay! Ten thousand krónur for some swordfish flown in from the Pacific when we have perfectly good fish of our own all around us.’

‘Sorry, Frikki,’ Sindri said. ‘You are right, not everyone has forgotten. There are many of us perfectly good Icelanders still willing and able to do real jobs. We have always been here. It’s just no one has listened to us.’

Harpa wondered whether Sindri had ever done a ‘real job’ since he had left the farm. But he had a point. He was just the kind of guy she would have dismissed with contempt as an ignorant idealist a couple of months before, but now she thought he had a point.

‘What chance have I of finding a real job?’ Frikki asked. ‘There’s nothing out there.’

‘What about you, Björn?’ Sindri asked.

‘I’m a fisherman,’ Björn said. ‘From Grundarfjördur. I rode down here on my motorbike this morning for the demonstration. And I agree with you, Sindri. I go out as often as my quota will allow, and I still can’t earn enough to pay off my debts. There are many like me. The banks told us to borrow in foreign currencies because the interest rates were lower. And now they say that not only have my own debts doubled because of the collapse of the króna, but I have to pay off all the money the banks borrowed from the British and the Dutch to lend to me too. It’s absurd. Mad.’

Harpa felt distinctly uncomfortable with the way the conversation was going.

Someone else had noticed her discomfort. ‘What about you, Harpa?’ It was Ísak, the student. He was watching her closely. She could tell he had somehow guessed what she was, or what she used to be, despite the months of unemployment. Was it the way she spoke, her clothes, something about her attitude? Harpa didn’t like him. There was something creepy about his cool detachment, something at odds with the outrage of the rest of them. But she had to answer his question.

‘Like Frikki I have lost my job.’

‘Jesus!’ Sindri snorted. ‘Another one!’

‘And what job was that?’ Ísak asked quietly.

Harpa could feel herself blushing. Embarrassment. Shame. Guilt. They all washed over her. She felt they were all looking at her, but she avoided them, staring down into her glass of brandy, letting her dark curly hair flop down to hide her eyes.

There was silence. Björn coughed. She looked up to meet his eyes.

She had to accept who she was. What she and people like her had done. How she had been used as well.

‘I was a banker. I worked for Ódinsbanki until two months ago when I was fired by my boyfriend. Somehow I never quite managed to get hold of all the cash everyone else had. And what cash I did have was tied up in Ódinsbanki shares which are now worthless.’

‘Didn’t you see it coming?’ asked Ísak.

‘No. No, I didn’t,’ said Harpa. ‘I believed it all. The story that we were all financial geniuses, younger and quicker and smarter than the others. That we were the Viking Raiders of the twenty-first century. That we took calculated risks and won. That the wealth was here to stay. That this was just the beginning of the prosperity, not the end.’ She shook her head. ‘I was wrong. Sorry.’

There was silence for a moment.

‘Capitalism carries the seeds of its own destruction,’ said Ísak. ‘It’s as true now as it was a hundred and fifty years ago when Marx first said it. You wrote about that, Sindri.’

Sindri nodded, clearly pleased at the reference to his book. ‘At least we have heard an apology,’ he said.

‘We’re all screwed,’ Björn said. ‘All of us.’

‘Can’t we do something?’ said Frikki. ‘Sometimes I’d just like to beat the shit out of these guys.’

‘I know what you mean,’ said Björn. ‘The politicians aren’t going to do anything, are they? Is Ólafur Tómasson really going to lock up all his best friends? They appoint these special prosecutors, but they’ll never get hold of the bankers. They all disappeared to London or New York. And they want our money to clean up their mess.’

‘It’s true,’ said Harpa. ‘Óskar Gunnarsson is the chairman of my bank. He’s been skulking in London the whole time. He hasn’t been seen in Reykjavík for the last three months. But some of the others are still here. I know they still have money stashed away.’

‘Like who?’ said Ísak.

‘Like Gabríel Örn Bergsson, my former boss. When he was encouraging me to take out a loan from Ódinsbanki to buy shares in it to prop up the stock price, he was selling those very same shares himself. When he made bad loans to companies in the UK, it was me who took the blame, even though I had told him not to do the deals. And when the bank was nationalized and they brought back the old rule that two people in a relationship couldn’t work together, it was me who was fired.’

‘Sounds like a nice guy,’ said Björn.

Harpa shook her head. ‘You know, he never was a nice guy, really. He was funny. He was successful. But he was always a bastard.’

‘So where is he right now?’ asked Ísak.

‘You mean at this minute?’ said Harpa.

Ísak nodded.

‘I’ve no idea,’ Harpa said. ‘It’s a Tuesday night. He must be at home – I’m quite sure he wasn’t at the demo. He lives in one of those apartments in the Shadow District, just around the corner.’

‘Do you think he knows where the money is?’

‘Maybe,’ said Harpa. ‘Yeah, maybe.’

‘Why don’t we ask him?’ said Ísak.

Sindri smiled, the puffy skin under his eyes rumpling. ‘Yeah. Get him over here. Let him tell us where those thieving bastards have hidden the money. And he can try to defend how he treated you. How he treated all of us.’

‘Yeah. And I’ll smash his face in,’ Frikki slurred.

Harpa’s immediate reaction was to refuse. It wasn’t as if Gabríel would ever tell a bunch of drunk strangers the details of the complicated network of inter-company loans that Ódinsbanki had set up. They wouldn’t understand him even if he did. But on the other hand… On the other hand why shouldn’t Gabríel meet the people he had screwed? Own up to who he was as she had just done? Why the hell shouldn’t he? The bastard deserved it, boy did he deserve it. Revenge feels good when you have had a couple of brandies.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘But it will be difficult. I’m not sure how I can get him to come here.’

‘Couldn’t you say you had something you needed to discuss with him?’ Sindri said.

‘At a bar, maybe. Or at his house. But not with a bunch of strangers.’

‘Get him to meet you at a bar in town and we’ll stop him on the way,’ said Ísak. ‘Bring him back here.’

Harpa considered Ísak’s suggestion. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘I’ll give it a go.’

It was nearly midnight. The bars in Reykjavík would still be open, but it would be hard to force Gabríel out.

She pulled out her mobile phone and selected his number. She was surprised she hadn’t deleted him from her address book. He should have been deleted totally from her life.

‘Yes?’ he answered with little more than a croak.

‘It’s me. I need to see you. Tonight.’

‘Uh. What time is it? I’ve just gone to sleep. This is ridiculous.’

‘It’s important.’

‘Can’t it wait?’

‘No. It’s got to be right now.’

‘Harpa, are you drunk? You’re drunk, aren’t you?’

‘Of course I’m not drunk!’ Harpa protested. ‘I’m tired and I’m upset and I need to see you.’

‘What is it? Why can’t you tell me over the phone?’

Harpa’s brain was fuzzy, but an idea was emerging. ‘It’s not the kind of thing you can discuss over the phone.’

‘Oh, my God, Harpa, you’re not pregnant are you?’

Gabríel had obviously stumbled on the same idea.

‘I said not over the phone. But meet me at B5. In fifteen minutes.’

‘All right,’ said Gabríel and hung up.

Harpa rang off. ‘Done,’ she said. B5 was a bar on Bankastraeti, a street that rose eastwards up a gentle hill from Austurvöllur, the square outside the Parliament building, to Laugavegur, the main shopping street. She and Gabríel Örn used to go there with their friends on Friday nights. ‘I know the way he will take, we can cut him off.’

‘Let’s go,’ said Frikki.

Sindri’s flat was on Hverfisgata, a scruffy street that ran parallel to Bankastraeti and Laugavegur, between those roads and the bay. As they spilled out into the open air, Harpa felt exhilarated. The frustration and misery of the last few months were pouring out. Sure, the bankers and the politicians were to blame, but one man was most to blame for ruining Harpa’s life.

Gabríel Örn.

And in a moment he would come face-to-face with the ordinary decent people whom men like him held in such contempt. He would try and weasel out of it, but she wouldn’t let him. She would force him to stand in front of them and apologize and explain what a shit he was.

The cold didn’t sober Harpa up, but it energized her. She led the way, hurrying the others on. The Skuggahverfi or Shadow District was a new development of high-rise luxury apartments that lined the shore of the bay. Only a few had actually been finished before the developers had run out of money; they looked down on their half-completed brethren, and the condemned buildings surrounding them, like Sindri’s place, yet to be demolished. She was only about a hundred metres from the spot where Gabríel Örn would cross Hverfisgata on his way to B5.

A couple of snowflakes fell. It was late, but there were still people on the street, jazzed up by the demonstrations. Down at the bottom of the hill towards the square outside Parliament, flames rose out of a wheelie bin, illuminating hooded shadows flitting around it, and two firecrackers went off.

Harpa led them down one of the little side streets off Hverfisgata, on the route she knew Gabríel would take. Sure enough, there he was, head down against the snow.

She stopped in front of him. ‘Gabríel Örn.’

He looked up in surprise. ‘Harpa? I thought we were going to meet at the bar?’

Harpa felt a surge of revulsion as she saw his face. He was a couple of years younger than her, a little flabby around the jowls and neck, fair hair thinning. What had she ever seen in him?

‘No, I want you to come with us.’

Gabríel Örn glanced behind her.

‘Who are these people?’

‘They are my friends, Gabríel Örn, my friends. I want you to talk to my friends. That’s why you have to come back with me.’

‘You are drunk, Harpa!’

‘I don’t care. Now come with us.’

Harpa reached out to grab Gabríel on the sleeve. Roughly he shook her off. Frikki growled and strode up to him. The boy wasn’t wearing a coat, only his Chelsea football shirt, but he was too drunk to care.

‘You heard her,’ he said, stopping centimetres away from Gabríel. ‘You’re coming with us.’ He reached out to grab the lapel of Gabríel’s coat. Gabríel pushed him back. Frikki swung at him, a long wide arc that someone as sober as Gabríel had no trouble avoiding. Gabríel was a good fifteen centimetres shorter than Frikki, but with one hard jab upwards, he caught Frikki on the chin and felled him.

As Frikki sat on the ground, rubbing his jaw, Harpa was surprised. She had never expected Gabríel to be capable of such physical prowess.

Gabríel turned to go.

The anger exploded in Harpa’s head, a red curtain of fury. He was not going to walk away from them, he was not.

‘Gabríel! Stop.’ She reached out to grab him, but he pushed her back. She lurched into a low wall surrounding a small car park. On the wall was an empty Thule beer bottle. She picked it up, took three steps forward and, aiming for the bald spot on the back of Gabríel Örn’s head, brought it crashing down.

He staggered, swayed to the right and fell, his head bouncing off an iron bollard at the entrance of the little car park with a sickening crack.

He lay still.

Harpa dropped the bottle, her hand flying to her mouth. ‘Oh, God!’

Frikki roared and ran at the prone body of Gabríel Örn, launching a kick hard into his ribs. He kicked him twice in the chest and once in the head before Björn grabbed him around the waist and flung him to the ground.

In a moment, Björn was on his knees examining Gabríel Örn.

The banker was motionless. His eyes were closed. His already pale face had taken on a waxy sheen. A snowflake landed on his cheek. Blood seeped out of his skull beneath his short thin hair.

‘He’s not breathing,’ Harpa whispered.

Then she screamed. ‘He’s not breathing!’

CHAPTER TWO

August 1934

‘AAAGH!’ Hallgrímur swung his axe as they came at him. Eight of them. In a frenzy, he chopped off the leg of the first warrior, and the head of the second. His axe split the third’s shield. The fourth he hit in the face with his own shield. Swish! Swish! Two more down. The last two ran away, and who could blame them?

Hallgrímur flopped back against the stone cairn, panting, the fury leaving him drained. ‘I got eight of them, Benni,’ he said.

‘Yes, and you got me too,’ said his friend, rubbing his mouth. ‘It’s bleeding. One of my teeth is loose.’

‘It’s just a baby tooth,’ said Hallgrímur. ‘It was coming out anyway.’

He relaxed and let the weak sun stroke his face. He loved the feeling right after he had gone berserk. He really felt that there was so much repressed anger in him, so much aggression, that he was a modern berserker.

And this was his favourite spot. Right in the middle of the twisted waves of congealed stone that was Berserkjahraun, or Berserkers’ Lava Field. It was a beautiful, eerie, magical place of little towers, folds and wrinkles of stone, speckled with lime green moss, darker green heather, and the deep red leaves of bog bilberries.

The lava field was named after the two warriors who had been brought over to Iceland as servants from Sweden a thousand years before by Vermundur the Lean, the man who owned Hallgrímur’s family’s farm, Bjarnarhöfn. The Swedes had the ability to make themselves go berserk in battle, when with superhuman strength they could smite all before them. They proved a handful for the farmer of Bjarnarhöfn, who passed them on to his brother Styr at Hraun, Benedikt’s farm on the other side of the lava field.

There had been trouble between Styr and his new servants, and the berserkers had ended up buried under the cairn of lava stone and moss, right where Hallgrímur was leaning.

Of course Hallgrímur had grown up knowing the story of the two berserkers, but his friend Benedikt had just started reading the Saga of the People of Eyri, and had come up with all sorts of new details, the best of which was that one of the berserkers had the same name as him, Halli. At eight, Benedikt was two years younger than Hallgrímur, but he was a brilliant reader for his age. Their favourite game had become to stalk the lava field pretending to be the berserkers. It worked quite well, Hallgrímur thought. Benedikt came up with the stories, but Hallgrímur was much better at going berserk. And that was, after all, the point.

‘What shall we do now?’ he asked Benedikt. It was more of a command for Benedikt to come up with another game than a question.

‘Any sign of your parents?’ Benedikt asked.

‘Father won’t be back for ages. He’s gone to look for a ewe on the fell. I’ll just check for Mother.’

The cairn was in a depression, out of sight of grown-ups, which made it such a good playing place. Hallgrímur climbed the ancient footpath between the two farms, which had been hewn out of the lava a millennium before by the berserkers themselves, and looked west towards Bjarnarhöfn. It was a prosperous farm, nestling beneath a waterfall which tumbled down the side of Bjarnarhöfn Fell. It was surrounded by a large home field, bright green against the brown of the surrounding heath. A tiny wooden church, little more than a black hut, lay between the farm and the grey flatness of Breidafjördur, the broad fjord dotted with low islands. Just up from the shoreline were wooden racks on which lines of salted fish hung out to dry. Hallgrímur could see no sign of life. His mother had said she was going to clean the church, something she did obsessively. This seemed a pointless activity to Hallgrímur, since the pastor only held services there once a month.

But there was no reasoning with his mother.

He was supposed to be in the room he shared with his brother, doing arithmetic problems. But he had sneaked out to play with Benedikt.

‘All right,’ said Benedikt. ‘I have heard that Arnkell’s men have stolen some of our horses. We must find them and free the horses. But we must take them by surprise.’

‘That’s a good idea,’ said Hallgrímur. He wasn’t entirely sure who Arnkell was, he was probably a chieftain from the saga. Benedikt would know the details.

They crept southwards through the lava field. It had spewed out of the big mountains to the south several thousand years ago, ending up in the fjord just between the two farms at a place called Hraunsvík, or Lava Bay. For several kilometres it flowed in a tumult of stone and moss, twenty or thirty metres above the surrounding plain. It was possible to crawl along the wrinkles of the lava, to slither through cracks, to lurk behind the extraordinary shapes that reared upwards. There was one spot where the lava seemed to form the silhouettes of two horses standing together, when viewed from a certain angle. That was where they were heading.

They had been crawling and sliding for five minutes when Hallgrímur suddenly heard a grunt ahead of them.

‘What was that?’ Hallgrímur turned to Benedikt.

‘I don’t know,’ Benedikt squeaked. A look of terror on his face.

‘It sounds like some kind of animal.’

‘Perhaps it’s the Kerlingin troll come down from the Pass.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Hallgrímur. But he swallowed. The grunting was getting louder. It sounded like a man.

Then there was a short, high pitched squeal.

‘That’s Mother!’ Hallgrímur wriggled forward, ignoring Benedikt’s whispered pleas to come away. His heart was beating. He had no idea what he would see. Could it really be his mother, and if so was she in some kind of danger?

Perhaps the berserkers were walking through the lava field again.

He hesitated as the fear almost overcame him, but Hallgrímur was brave. He swallowed and wriggled on.

There, on a cushion of moss in a hollow, he saw a man’s bare bottom pumping up and down over a woman, half dressed, her face, surrounded by a pillow of golden hair, tilted directly towards him. She didn’t see him; her eyes were shut and little mewling sounds came from her parted lips.

Mother.

Mother seemed to be in a good mood at dinner that evening. Father had returned from the fell having found the ewe stuck in a gully.

His mother was very fond of her children, or most of them. She was proud of Hallgrímur’s obedient little brother, and of his three sisters, whom she was raising to be hard working, honest and capable women about the farm.

But Hallgrímur. She just didn’t like Hallgrímur.

‘Halli! How did you scratch your knees?’ she demanded.

‘I didn’t scratch them,’ Hallgrímur said. He always denied everything stubbornly. It never worked.

‘Yes you did. That’s blood. And they are dirty.’

Hallgrímur looked down. It was true. ‘Er, I fell coming up the stairs.’

‘You were playing in the lava field, weren’t you? When I specifically told you to do your schoolwork.’

‘No, I swear I wasn’t. I was here all the time.’

‘Do you take me for an idiot?’ His mother raised her voice. ‘Gunnar, will you control your son? Stop him lying to his mother.’

His father didn’t seem to like Hallgrímur much either. But he liked his wife even less, despite her beauty.

‘Leave the boy alone,’ he said.

His mother’s good mood was long gone. ‘To your room, Halli! Right now! And don’t come down until you have finished your homework. Your brother can eat your skyr.’

Hallgrímur stood up and looked mournfully at the dish of skyr and berries he was abandoning. He sauntered towards the hallway and the stairs.

He paused at the door.

‘You are right, Mother. I did go to play in the lava field with Benni.’

He was pleased to see his mother’s cheeks flush.

‘I saw you and Benni’s father,’ he went on. ‘What were you doing?’

‘Out!’ his mother cried. ‘To your room!’

That night, after all the children were in bed with the lamps snuffed out, Hallgrímur heard his father shouting and his mother sobbing.

The little boy fell asleep with a smile on his face.

CHAPTER THREE

Wednesday, 16 September 2009

SERGEANT DETECTIVE MAGNUS Jonson of the Boston Police Department closed his eyes as he slipped into the deliciously warm water. His body tingled after the thirty lengths he had done and the shock of warm water after cold air. It was six degrees Celsius in the outside air, but forty degrees in the geothermally heated tub. Steam hovered a couple of feet above the Olympic sized pool, which was crowded with serious swimmers. It was six o’clock, rush hour in the open-air Laugardalur Baths, as Reykjavík’s men and women gathered after work for a swim and a chat. The fact that they were outside and nearly naked on a cold grey September evening didn’t bother any of them.

‘Ooh, that feels good,’ said the tall, skinny man who slid in beside Magnus. ‘You’re a fast swimmer.’

‘I’ve got to get rid of the energy somehow, Árni,’ Magnus said. ‘And the aggression.’

‘Aggression?’

‘Yeah. I’m not used to sitting around in a classroom all day.’

‘What you mean is you would rather be running around the streets of Boston blasting punks with your three fifty-seven Magnum?’

Magnus glanced at his companion. Despite living in Reykjavík for four months, Magnus was never entirely sure when Icelanders were being serious. It was a particular problem with Árni Holm. He was good at the deadpan irony. On the other hand he occasionally said the most spectacularly stupid things. ‘Something like that, Árni.’

‘I hear your course is pretty good. There’s a waiting list of people to sign up for it. Did you know that?’

‘You should come.’

‘I’m on the list.’

Magnus was teaching a course at the National Police College on urban crime in the United States. He enjoyed being an instructor; it was something he had never done before and it turned out he was good at it.

He had been seconded to the Icelandic police at the request of the National Police Commissioner who was worried about big-city crime hitting his small country. Not that crime was unknown in Iceland. There were drugs aplenty and Friday and Saturday nights brought a regular haul of drunks into the cells at police headquarters. And of course there had been the winter demonstrations outside the Parliament that had culminated in the ‘pots-and-pans’ revolution which overthrew the government and stretched police resources to their limits.

But the Commissioner feared that it was only a matter of time before the kind of crimes that occurred in Amsterdam or Copenhagen or even Boston arrived in Reykjavík. Foreign drug gangs. Knives. Maybe even guns. And he wanted his men to be ready for it. Hence his request for an American police detective with practical experience who spoke Icelandic.

There weren’t a whole lot of those among America’s big-city police forces. Magnus, who had left Iceland for the States at the age of twelve with his father, fitted the bill, and when he had been shot at as a witness in a police corruption scandal he had been sent to Reykjavík as much for his own safety as for what he could do for the Icelanders.

‘Anything going on at CID?’ he asked Árni.

‘We have a bird thief.’

‘A bird thief?’

‘Someone has been stealing exotic birds. Parrots mostly, and budgerigars. There are scarcely any left in Reykjavík now. It’s a big problem. This man, and we think it is a man not a woman, is very clever.’

‘I thought you just did violent crimes?’

‘You go wherever they need you. Burglaries have doubled in the last six months and they have had to lay off twenty uniforms. The kreppa. You know what I’m talking about, you’ve seen the cost-cutting at the police college.’ Kreppa was the Icelandic term for the financial crisis, and Icelanders’ current favourite topic of conversation.

‘Got any leads?’

‘Some. Not enough. I’m confident we will crack the case by the end of the week. When will you be joining us? I’m sure we could use your expertise.’

‘Two more months, I think,’ Magnus sighed. The Commissioner had insisted that Magnus do six months of the one-year basic-training course at the police college before he was given a badge. Magnus had grudgingly accepted. It was hard to argue with the Commissioner’s point that it was impossible to uphold the law if you didn’t know what it was.

So he had spent most of the previous four months as a student and part of it teaching. He preferred the teaching.

The water jets began to bubble and Árni closed his eyes and leaned back. Magnus took the opportunity to examine the scar on Árni’s chest. The surgeon at the National Hospital had done a good job of patching him up. Magnus had seen many plugged bullet holes that looked a lot worse.

Magnus had worked with Árni on a case immediately after his own arrival from Boston four months before. Árni was not known as Reykjavík’s best detective, some said that he only had the job because his uncle, Chief Superintendent Thorkell Hólm, was head of CID. At times he had frustrated the hell out of Magnus, but Magnus liked him and admired his loyalty.

And he would never forget that Árni had taken a bullet for him.

They pulled themselves out of the hot tub, and went for a cold shower followed by a warm one.

As they were getting dressed in the changing room Árni checked his phone. ‘A call from Baldur,’ he said, examining the display. He pressed a couple of buttons and put the phone to his ear.

Inspector Baldur Jakobsson was the head of the Violent Crimes Unit. A good, traditional Icelandic cop, he was suspicious of Magnus and his big-city methods. Magnus understood, but he still thought he was a pain in the ass.

It looked to Magnus like a big breakthrough with the macaw. Árni’s eyebrows shot up as he listened, and his Adam’s apple started bobbing wildly. His cheeks flushed with excitement.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes… Yes. Yes, right away.’

Magnus’s interest was piqued.

‘What was that?’ Magnus said, as soon as Árni hung up.

‘I’ve got to get back to headquarters,’ Árni said. ‘You know Óskar Gunnarsson?’

‘I think so,’ Magnus said. ‘Isn’t he a banker?’ That was Magnus’s problem. Although he had done a good job of brushing up on his language so he was fluent with barely an accent, Reykjavík was a small town where everyone knew everyone else. Apart from Magnus who had never heard of anyone.

Árni hurried to pull on his clothes. ‘Ex-CEO of Ódinsbanki. He was fired a year ago. He’s under investigation by Financial Crimes and the Special Prosecutor. Anyway, he was shot dead in London last night.’

‘Is there an Icelandic angle?’

‘The British cops haven’t found one yet, but Baldur wants us all out checking.’

‘I bet he does.’

‘You should get yourself involved,’ Árni said, as he pulled on his jacket. ‘With the foreign angle.’

‘Baldur won’t like it,’ Magnus said.

‘Since when has that stopped you?’ said Árni, as he grabbed his bag and hurried out of the changing room.

*

Magnus unlocked the front door of the little house in 101, the postcode for the centre of Reykjavík. The outside walls were cream concrete, and like most Icelandic houses the roof was brightly painted corrugated metal, in this case lime green. The house actually belonged to Árni and his sister, although only his sister Katrín lived there. Magnus paid her a very reasonable rent.

Magnus climbed the stairs to his room. He pulled a Viking beer out of the refrigerator, flopped into a chair and opened it. Icelanders might not drink during the week, saving their efforts for heroic binges at the weekend, but Magnus was enough of an American cop to need a beer when his shift ended.

His body tingled after the swim. The room was small, but it was enough for Magnus. He didn’t have much stuff. Before coming to Iceland he had shared a place with his former girlfriend, Colby, but he had always felt a guest, his possessions overwhelmed by hers. He did have books, though, which spilled out from the bookshelf along one wall on to the floor. In the middle of this chaos stood in a neat row his beloved sagas, in Icelandic, many of them bought by his father many years ago, their pages ragged with use.

Outside his window, a couple of blocks up the hill, the Hallgrímskirkja lurked, its sweeping spire clad in scaffolding like a spaceship ready for launch, surrounded by gantries.

Magnus sighed as he sipped the cold fizzy liquid. That was good.

In Boston, a shift would frequently include a dead body. Solving the crime didn’t usually involve random shooting of bad guys, as Árni had suggested, but it did take a whole lot of talking to people: people whose lives had just been destroyed by the loss of someone they loved, people whose lives were already destroyed by the hell that was their everyday existence, witnesses who wanted to talk, witnesses who didn’t. Most of the time was spent on making sure the prosecution case went smoothly, the witness statements were typed up accurately and the forensic evidence was all in the proper place with the chain of evidence intact.

It was long hours, painstaking, frustrating, depressing, but Magnus could never get enough of it. Every victim had a family, someone who cared that they had died, and Magnus would do his best for that someone.

Of course he knew that he was doing it for himself as well. His own father had been murdered in a small town just outside Boston when Magnus was twenty and a student at college. The local police had got nowhere in solving the crime, and neither had Magnus, despite spending the best part of a year trying. In fact, he was still trying; he had never given up. That was why Magnus had joined the Boston Police Department. That was why he always had the energy for another dead body.

And now here he was, in Iceland. On his arrival in the spring he had been thrown into a case, a very interesting case, but since then there had been nothing but teaching and studying. The orange Penal Code lay on his desk by the window. He knew probably three-quarters of it by now.

It wasn’t as if the boys in the Violent Crimes Unit downtown had had much to do. In June a man had been found stabbed to death in the street at four on a Sunday morning. The first cops to the scene had solved the crime, figuring that the eighteen-year-old kid out of his skull on speed, waving a knife soaked in blood around his head and shouting how he would kill anyone else who came near him was a likely suspect.

Magnus had given his word to Snorri Gudmundsson, the National Police Commissioner, that he would stay for two years. He owed it to him for providing him with refuge when the Dominican gang from back home were after him, and to Árni for taking a bullet when the hit man they sent to Reykjavík had caught up with him.

Of course the Dominicans knew where he was now. Their boss might be in Cedar Junction jail back in Massachusetts, put there with the help of Magnus’s testimony, but there were plenty of gang members still at large. Magnus hoped that now that he had done his stint as a witness he was no longer a target, but he couldn’t be sure. He could never be sure.

But it was going to be hard to stick it out in Reykjavík. Four months and he was already climbing the walls.

Árni was right though. He should make a call. Try to get assigned on to this Óskar Gunnarsson case. You never knew, there might be something in it. It would make a change. And it might be interesting to deal with the British police.

But who to call? Baldur would just say no, that was for sure. Magnus knew the Commissioner would take his call, but he wanted to save that access for when he really needed it. Thorkell Holm, head of CID, was his best bet. It would piss Baldur off, but that was just tough.

He took out his phone, called the police switchboard and asked to be put through.

Then he heard a giggle.

He looked up.

There was a naked woman lying on his bed.

‘Ingileif! What the hell are you doing here?’

She threw off the covers and bounded over to him in the chair. ‘You didn’t see me, did you? What kind of cop are you when you can’t even spot a woman lying under your bed covers, desperate for sex?’

‘You were hiding!’ Magnus protested.

‘Pathetic.’

She straddled him. Her familiar, delightful breasts shook inches away from his face as she laughed, her blonde hair falling loose over her face.

‘How did you get a key?’

‘Oh, do be quiet, Magnús. I’ve been waiting here half an hour for you. And you have far too many clothes on.’

‘But—’

She kissed him. Deeply. He raised his hands to her bare hips. He didn’t care how she had got in. He wanted her. Now.

A muffled crackling came from his phone, which had dropped to the floor. Ingileif broke away and picked it up.

‘Yes?’

‘Give it to me!’ Magnus cried, reaching for the phone.

Ingileif turned away. ‘I am sorry, Sergeant Magnús is busy right now. He’ll be with you as soon as he has finished. He probably won’t be more than a couple of minutes. Doesn’t usually take him longer than that.’

‘Ingileif!’ Magnus pushed her off his lap and on to the floor. Ingileif triumphantly hit the red disconnect button just before Magnus could grab the phone.

‘That was a Chief Superintendent someone or other,’ Ingileif said. ‘Don’t worry, he said he quite understood.’

Magnus picked her up off the floor and threw her down on to the bed.

It is extremely difficult to make love to a woman who won’t stop laughing.

‘Can I watch LazyTown now?’

Harpa glanced at her son’s plate, which was empty.

‘Did you watch TV at Granny’s house?’

‘No.’ Markús shook his curly head and looked straight at her with his big clear brown eyes. Harpa knew that small children often lied, but not Markús. He never lied, at least not to her. Where did he get that honesty from? Not from his father, that was for sure.

And not from her.

‘All right, off you go.’

Harpa followed her child as he scampered into the living room and she slotted the DVD into the player.

She went back into the kitchen and stacked their dishes in the dishwasher. She liked to eat with her son, even though it was early.

From out of the kitchen window she looked out over Faxaflói Bay. To the right, behind the oil storage tanks, was the city of Reykjavík, a jumble of brightly coloured houses overlooked by the Hallgrímskirkja, its majestic sweeping spire boxed in by scaffolding. Straight across the bay squatted Mount Esja, a horizontal rampart of granite, still free of snow at this time of year. And to the left lay the small town of Akranes, stuck on the end of a peninsula, a thin trail of smoke emerging from its tall cement-works chimney.

Her little house was right on Nordurströnd, the road that ran along the north-eastern edge of the prosperous suburb of Seltjarnarnes, which was perched on its own promontory sticking out into the bay. The house had been expensive because of the view, but Harpa had been able to take out a big mortgage to cover the cost, a mortgage that she had been easily able to service with her banker’s salary. She should have taken a straightforward repayment mortgage, but like many other Icelanders she had chosen a loan where the principal was linked to inflation. The advantage was that the monthly payments were lower.

The disadvantage was that when inflation was high, for example after a massive devaluation of the currency, the value of the loan soon overtook the value of the house.

She had no banker’s salary any more so she couldn’t afford the payments. The house was now worth less than the mortgage. She was going to lose it, that was inevitable. The only reason she hadn’t lost it already was the government’s temporary edict that the banks had to delay foreclosures until November.

What would happen then? Perhaps the bank would be lenient. Or perhaps she and Markús would end up living with her parents like some teenage mother just out of high school.

If her parents could keep their own house, that is. She knew they had financial difficulties – she was after all responsible for them – she just didn’t know how bad they were. And she was too afraid to ask.

Why had she taken out that stupid mortgage? She had an MBA from Reykjavík University. She knew there was a theoretical risk. She had just been sucked up in the mindless optimism of jam today, jam tomorrow that had swept Iceland.

She switched on the news. Something about ministers threatening to resign over the agreement the government had made to repay the four billion euros it had borrowed from the British government to bail out depositors in Icesave, the London Internet operation of one of the Icelandic banks.

Then she heard a name that was all too familiar.

‘The Icelandic banker, Óskar Gunnarsson, former chairman of Ódinsbanki, has been murdered in his house in London. He was shot.’

Harpa froze, the hot water running over the dish she was rinsing.

‘Óskar Gunnarsson was under investigation by the authorities in Iceland over alleged fraud at Ódinsbanki prior to its nationalization nearly a year ago. It is not clear yet whether his murder had anything to do with the alleged fraud.’

Harpa grabbed her laptop and opened it up, looking for more information. As she waited for the computer to boot up, she thought of the charismatic banker. But she also thought of Gabríel Örn. One murdered banker. Another murdered banker.

Would there ever be a time when she didn’t think of Gabríel Örn?

She checked the BBC website. There were a couple more details. The house was in Onslow Gardens in Kensington. Harpa remembered Óskar buying it just before she finished her two-year stint in London in 2006. At that time he was based in Reykjavík, but spent a lot of time in Britain. Someone had entered the house the night before and shot him. His girlfriend was in the house at the time, but was unharmed.

‘Hello?’ Her front door opened with a clatter. ‘Harpa?’

‘I’m in the kitchen, Dad!’

A moment later her father came in. There was a scampering of feet as Markús rushed into the room and leaped at his grandfather. ‘Afi!’

Einar Bjarnason swung the boy around like a feather, laughing as he did so. ‘Hey, Markús! How are you? Pleased to see your old grandfather?’

‘I’m watching LazyTown, Afi, do you want to come see it with me?’

‘In a moment, Markús, in a moment.’

The hard weather-beaten face crinkled in a smile. Einar was a fisherman, and when he was still taking his boat out to sea he had had the reputation as one of the toughest captains in the fleet. But not where his grandson was concerned. Or his daughter.

He opened his arms to hug her. With difficulty she pulled herself away from the computer and went over to him. They were the same height, but he was broad and strong, and it was comforting to feel his big meaty hands on her back.

He had always been tender towards her, but he never used to hug her as much as he had over the last few months.

He knew she needed it.

To her surprise, safe in his arms, Harpa began to cry.

Einar broke away to look at her. ‘What is it? What’s happened?’

‘The boss of Ódinsbanki has been murdered. Óskar Gunnarsson.’

‘He probably deserved it.’

‘Dad!’ Harpa knew that her father disliked bankers with a passion, especially those who had fired his beloved daughter, but that was a bit callous, even for him.

‘I’m sorry, love, did you know him?’

‘No, not really,’ Harpa said. ‘A bit.’

Einar was looking straight at her, his blue eyes seeing right into her soul. He knows I’m lying, Harpa thought in panic. Just like he knew I was lying when I talked to the police about Gabríel Örn. She felt herself blush.

She stepped back and collapsed on a kitchen chair and started to sob.

Einar poured a cup of coffee for both of them and sat down opposite her. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

Harpa shook her head. She tried, and succeeded, to control her tears. Her father waited. ‘How was the fishing?’ she asked him.

She meant the fly-fishing. Einar had had to give up sea-fishing fifteen years before when a wave had broken over the Helgi and flung him against a winch, breaking his knee. He had spent a few years managing the boat from land before selling it and his quota for hundreds of millions of krónur. Since then he had been a wealthy retired fisherman. Until he had listened to his daughter, that is.

At first, he had invested the money in high-interest accounts at Ódinsbanki, which gave him plenty of income to live on. But some of his mates were making a fortune speculating on currencies or investing in the booming Icelandic stock market. He had asked his clever daughter who worked for a bank for advice.

She had told him to steer clear of the currency speculation and of investing in the racier new shares on the stock exchange. But bank stocks, they were safe. And she could recommend Ódinsbanki. It was the smartest of all the Icelandic banks.

And so Einar had put all his savings in Ódinsbanki shares. Shares which were all but worthless when the government nationalized the banks the previous autumn.

Harpa wondered how he could still afford to go fly-fishing.

‘I didn’t catch much. And it rained most of the time. But I’m going again over the weekend. Maybe my luck will change.’ He put his arm around his daughter. ‘Are you sure there is nothing you want to tell me?’

For a moment Harpa considered it. Telling him everything. His love for her was unconditional, wasn’t it? He would stand by her whatever she had done. Wouldn’t he?

But what she had done was awful. Unforgivable. She had certainly never forgiven herself, could never possibly forgive herself in the future. He was a good man. How could he forgive her?

She couldn’t bear it if he didn’t.

So Harpa shook her head. ‘No, Dad. There’s nothing.’