María tiptoed along the passage. To her right were locked doors, probably leading to offices, while ahead there was another door. She tried the handle and was pleased to find it was unlocked; she was relieved not to have to do any more damage. Easing the door open she found herself in a vast storage area. There was a row of illuminated green EXIT signs overhead, clearly intended to show drivers the way out. They cast a dim light across the space, which was far from empty. In fact, the opposite was true. This cavernous building was stacked to the roof with tightly stacked aluminium bars, criss-crossing each other like a huge, three-dimensional puzzle. Running through the centre of the space, from the exit doors next to her, all the way to the entrance at the far end of the building, was a clear strip that reminded her of a swept mountain road after a heavy snowfall; it was just wide enough for a truck to pass through, beneath the towering stacks of metal.
María pulled out her phone and took a picture of the area. But it was too dark, so she switched the flash on to take another, and emailed it to Agla:
The warehouse is packed! There are thousands of tonnes here!
She had just tapped the send button when she became aware of rapid footsteps behind her. Someone took hold of her shoulder, at the same time gripping her arm and propelling her forwards so that she cried out in pain, then landed on her knees on the concrete floor.
36
Anton sat helplessly while Júlía wept. They had been playing Yahtzee, sitting side by side on his bed, and Radio Edda played from his computer’s speakers. The station’s phone-in was in progress, and one listener after another had called in to describe the overwhelming threat from Islam.
‘Those bastards want Sharia law, hate Jews, they want to Islamicise the West and they support Hamas, which is hell-bent on destroying Israel. Those Muslims love Hitler because he killed Jews,’ one furious caller railed. ‘And we’re supposed to accept this scum that wants to murder the Jews? Are we going to watch history repeat itself?’
‘They should all be sent home! What are they doing here in Iceland if they don’t want to be Icelandic? In Iceland we eat pork and we wear normal hats, not these rags that their women wear,’ rasped an elderly woman Anton had often heard before during phone-ins.
‘Now they’re demanding that we stop making pork available in schools. Next they’ll start blowing us up if we don’t do what they want!’ yelled the latest caller, who was quite obviously drunk. Anton’s mother would yell in just the same way when she been drinking, even if everyone around her agreed with what she said. In just the same way, the Radio Edda presenter sympathised with the opinions of the drunk caller, but they still felt the need to shout.
‘They want to circumcise women,’ said an older woman in a measured tone. ‘How are we, who have fought for women’s rights, supposed to accept that? Get rid of the lot of them, I say.’
‘What on earth is the future going to look like?’ Júlía sniffed.
Anton stroked her back in a helpless attempt to reassure her.
‘I don’t know,’ he whispered. And it was true – he had no idea. The way things were shaping up was alarming. For a moment he wondered whether or not to tell Júlía about the bomb, to give her some hope. The struggle would provide hope. Maybe it would reassure her to know that he was planning to take matters into his own hands. Surely she would be pleased that he had no intention of doing nothing as society fell apart around them. But maybe she would be even more afraid. She was such a sensitive soul.
‘Don’t cry,’ he whispered, placing his arm around her shoulders and squeezing. Her hair smelled so sweet – not exactly of shampoo but more of blossoming flowers. For a moment his thoughts wandered and he imagined burying his face in her hair.
As if she sensed what was in his mind, she stood up.
‘I’m so frightened,’ she said and sniffed. ‘I don’t know how it’s going to end if things continue like this.’
She was right. Things couldn’t go on as they were. He would have to find a solution to the detonator problem. He just had to, and sooner rather than later, as her birthday was approaching.
‘Is everything all right?’ his father asked from the door.
‘Yes,’ Anton replied.
‘Why are you crying, my dear?’ he asked, clearly worried. ‘Isn’t Anton behaving himself?’
Júlía wiped her eyes and smiled at his father.
‘It’s all right. Anton is always good. There’s just something else that I’m sad about.’
‘Let me know when you need a lift home,’ his father said.
Júlía smiled at Anton.
‘Shouldn’t we finish the game?’ she asked. ‘I’m winning.’
It was just as well that his father had interrupted them. It had stopped him telling Júlía about the bomb. Now wasn’t the right time. He had to wait until her birthday, when it would be set off.
37
Agla dried the dishes listlessly. Neither of them had said a word since Elísa had announced after dinner that she and Agla would clear up. The bookkeeper, whose turn it was to wash up, had stood up and left the room in obvious relief, and Elísa appeared to pay no attention to the looks of surprise on the faces of the other women. Agla thought that Elísa had made the suggestion to ensure the two of them were alone in the kitchen, and that there must be something she wanted to talk about. But she hadn’t yet said a word.
Elísa rinsed the last plate but one and handed it to Agla, who toyed with the thought of mentioning the dishwasher. This was a constant subject of discussion; or, rather, the lack of a dishwasher was the source of endless speculation. The prison authorities seemed to have been provided with funding to build a new prison, but not to furnish it, so this large, white building was a coldly empty place. It had occurred to Agla simply to buy the required furniture and give it to the prison, but that would lead to a media storm. Bankers sitting out sentences were carefully observed, and whatever they did was interpreted negatively and plastered over the newspapers.
Elísa handed Agla the last plate, and she wiped it dry while Elísa scrubbed the sink clean. This seemed to be unnecessary, so maybe Elísa was dawdling, waiting for Agla to say something.
‘Who’s Katrín?’
She had said it unintentionally, without giving herself time to think.
‘How do you know about Katrín?’ Elísa asked, the sink forgotten.
‘I don’t know anything about her,’ Agla said. ‘I just saw her name on your bank statement the other day when I was helping you. I wondered why you pay her most of the money you get.’
This was true, although Agla did not mention that she had continued to examine Elísa’s bank statements ever since, checking her every transaction.
‘Katrín’s just … sort of, a girlfriend … kind of. We saw each other for a bit, and it didn’t work out. I think she was sleeping with the Boss as well, and then I was arrested in Holland, and all that. It was all a fuck-up.’
Elísa smiled and shrugged as she spoke, as if this were all some trivial matter. But Agla could hear a tremor in her voice; it gave away the hurt beneath – the kind of pain she knew all too well.
‘Oh,’ she said, folding the dishcloth. She wanted to say something encouraging, but nothing suitable occurred to her.
‘Yeah. A massive fuck-up.’
Elísa sniffed hard and turned off the tap.
Agla knew words would do little to assuage the pain of lost love, but this little confidence they had exchanged was too valuable; she couldn’t now walk away as if nothing had happened. She hadn’t experienced intimacy – in any form and with anyone – since the prison doors had closed behind her. In fact, she’d experienced nothing of that nature since her last real conversation with Sonja. As much as she tried to be sincere when she spoke to the prison psychologist, their sessions always seemed to be driven by what she knew she ought to say. But now, she felt all her caution and suspicion drop away, and she wanted to tell Elísa what she had told no one else.
‘There was a wom
an who was important to me as well,’ she said. ‘I bought her a house and tried to get her to move in with me. But she freaked out and disappeared.’
Elísa turned to face her with a look of sympathy on her face.
‘Shit,’ she said, and Agla nodded.
Their eyes met for a moment and Agla could feel her face begin to colour – she had said something that might have been better kept to herself.
But then Elísa smiled. ‘The ungrateful bitch,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘This woman. What an ungrateful bitch, not wanting the house. And you.’
A few minutes later Agla shut the door of her cell, her heart still hammering, as it had since Elísa had added the words ‘and you’ to her sentence. She had said it with vehemence, as if Agla were someone who deserved to be desired; as if Elísa felt that she was desirable. This had taken her by surprise. And there was no teasing behind it: it was clear she wasn’t trying to aggravate Agla or wind her up. She meant it. But Agla wasn’t going to let herself be rattled by this girl. She had no intention of being caught up in any emotional nonsense again.
Agla had hardly finished muttering this, trying to convince herself it was true, when the cell door opened and Elísa stood there, dressed in a singlet. Somehow Agla’s hand stretched out to Elísa’s arm, touching the tattoo, which seemed to come alive beneath her fingers, moving in the flow of warmth. Then Elísa’s lips were on hers, and as quickly as she had appeared, she was gone, leaving Agla with her heart fluttering and a sob in her throat. Damned, damned nonsense.
38
The handcuffs bit deep into her wrists; María quickly realised that they would soon draw blood if she didn’t keep still. In any case, wriggling wouldn’t help. She wouldn’t get these things off by herself. The warehouse’s night watchman clearly had no sympathy for her when she complained that he had put them on too tight.
‘Ma’am, you were trespassing,’ was his retort.
He stood looking at her thoughtfully for a while, before turning and walking away with his phone in his hand, leaving María alone, sitting on the floor, handcuffed to one of the stacks of aluminium. As he opened the door that led to the little office she had come through, she heard him talking on the phone, but the door closed behind him and she could no longer make out what he was saying. He had to be calling the police. Then the lights went out and for a while everything was black.
As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, in the green glow cast by the EXIT signs María was able to make out the stacks of aluminium that towered over her. Every sinew in her body was tense and it was a battle to stay still as her insect bites itched, but the pain in her wrists meant she had no choice. Her bottom was numb from sitting on the concrete floor, and she almost hoped that the police would come quickly to release her from the discomfort. It would be a relief to sit in a patrol car’s soft seats for a while. She bent her knees and tensed her bottom, one side at a time, to keep her circulation going. But although she tried not to move the upper half of her body, her wrists still rubbed against the handcuffs and the pain was such that she was sure they were bleeding. She wished he hadn’t cuffed her with her hands behind her back.
A long time passed, but Maggi finally appeared in her thoughts, and before she could stop them, a few tears ran down her cheeks. If she had genuinely been able to hold her own, maintained her self-discipline and kept the promise she had made to her younger self – to think everything through twice before acting – then she would be asleep at Maggi’s side right now, in their house in Iceland. She would have a few more hours to rest in the warmth from his body, before getting up to make porridge and then go to work at the prosecutor’s office, or even at the Competition Authority. That would be on the dot of eight o’clock. That was the way it would have been if she had not encountered Agla. But because Agla had become part of her life in the aftermath of the financial crisis and upset the delicate balance she had worked so hard to build, now she was sitting handcuffed on a hard concrete floor in a shithole town in Indiana, in the power of men who were obviously working for a big corporation that would stop at nothing to protect its interests.
The tears continued to run down her cheeks in a strange blend of regret at losing Maggi and anger at Agla, and at the stupidity of Iceland, a state that couldn’t see the wood for the trees, allowing its resources to be sold at a knock-down price to a corporate giant that was behind sinister goings-on in metal storage units around the world, and which handcuffed innocent journalists. She whimpered to herself through the tears, until the lights came on in the warehouse. Then she quickly sniffed hard, wishing she had a hand free to wipe her face.
The door at the far end of the room opened and the night watchman walked towards her, accompanied by the man María recognised as the one who had spoken so rudely to her earlier in the day. Donald. He had a phone to his ear and was clearly holding a conversation with someone.
‘Yes. It’s the woman who was here today, asking questions. The Icelandic journalist.’
He listened for a moment and took another phone from his pocket. María immediately saw the Squirrel sticker she had stuck on it, in the hope that it would be returned if she were to lose it.
‘Wait a second,’ she heard him say into the phone at his ear before he crouched down in front of her. ‘We need the code for your phone,’ he said politely.
María laughed coldly.
‘Who are you speaking to?’ she demanded. ‘Who’s on the other end?’ she said, louder, so that her voice would be heard by whoever he was in touch with. ‘Go on, call the police!’ she yelled finally.
She was prepared to let the police take a look at her phone, but not these aluminium goons. They had no right to demand to examine it.
Donald nodded to the night watchman, who immediately responded by drawing his pistol and placing the muzzle against María’s cheek.
‘The code for your phone?’ Donald repeated, still managing to sound courteous – his tone at odds with the cold steel against her cheek.
María felt as if she had been plunged into freezing water, and all the blood in her body rushed to her belly as danger threatened. She could hardly speak or move. She was like a frozen waterfall – her whole life came to a halt and the only sign of life inside was the forlorn hope that one day spring would come.
‘The code,’ Donald repeated. Any courtesy had disappeared – his voice had become a hiss. At the same time, the night watchman pressed the gun hard into her cheek so that the sharp pain brought her out of her daze.
‘Twenty-eight-zero-eight,’ she whispered, and saying the number out loud brought the tears back. It was Maggi’s date of birth.
39
It was almost three in the morning when Ingimar’s phone woke him. He felt that he had only just fallen asleep. As so often, in his dreams he had been at sea with a group of other young men, working as a team to shoot a seine net into the water in filthy weather. As he came to, for a moment he missed the camaraderie of the crew. A joint effort could make the hardest of circumstances pleasant.
‘Hello?’ he said into the phone.
He fumbled in the darkness for his reading glasses. Once he had started to wear them, it was as if he could no longer use the phone without putting them on. Somehow, he felt that he could hear better with the glasses on his nose.
‘There’s a problem at the warehouse. The journalist broke in,’ William said.
Ingimar sat up and switched on the bedside lamp.
‘OK, I’ll deal with them direct,’ he said. ‘Wait a second while I find a pencil to write down the number.’
‘Do you want me to text it to you?’ William asked.
‘No, absolutely not,’ Ingimar said quickly. ‘No phone trails to follow, thanks very much.’
He felt in his computer case and found a pen, writing on his arm the number William read out for him.
He got out of bed and made his way quietly down the stairs, not that he needed to as both his wife and his son appeared to be a
ble to sleep through practically anything. He went into his office and closed the door behind him. He sat at the desk, switched on the lamp and hunted through the desk drawer for the small mobile phone he used for just this kind of call. Its battery was flat, so as usual he had to hunt for a charger cable; at least he had sockets fitted to the desk. Otherwise he would have had to crawl along the floor to find somewhere to plug in the wretched thing.
He punched in the number on his arm, and the call was answered on the first ring.
‘I understand you’ve had a visit from my friend,’ he said, and the man on the other end answered with an all-American ‘Yes, sir’.
‘Did she get any documents?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Did she take any pictures?’ he asked.
The man hesitated.
‘We don’t know. Her phone is locked.’
Ingimar sighed silently.
‘Make her give you the access code,’ he said. ‘You might need to be … persuasive,’ he added gently.
The man hesitated again, then agreed. In the background Ingimar could hear a door opening and closing again, and a moment later a woman’s voice, raised to a screech.
‘Who are you speaking to? Who’s on the other end?’ he heard her yell, and he smiled to himself. The fact that she was shouting in English indicated that she had no idea there was someone from Iceland on the line. The shouts came to a sudden end and the man spoke again.
‘We have her phone open,’ he said. ‘She seems to have taken two pictures. I’ll delete them right now.’
‘Good,’ Ingimar said. ‘Check and see if she sent them to anyone.’
There was a pause, and the man confirmed that she did not appear to have sent pictures as text messages or emails, and they were nowhere to be seen in her social media pages.
Cage Page 9
