Cage

by Lilja Sigurdardóttir

  ‘I promise,’ Elísa whispered and smiled awkwardly. ‘I promise not to fuck things up.’

  She pulled away and picked up her case, two plastic bags and a couple of extra garments she hadn’t been able to fit anywhere.

  ‘I’ll come and get you when you’re released,’ she said from the doorway, and grinned with a mixture of shyness and teasing impertinence.

  Agla smiled back. In a week Elísa would drive up to the prison in the Tesla, and Agla would walk out of the turnstile gate, ready to breathe in the aroma of Elísa’s tousled hair and the Tesla’s leather upholstery. For the first time she was not only free of the fear of being released from the cage, but was actively looking forward to it.

  53

  The source lived in Morgantown in West Virginia, so it was convenient for María to drop by on her way to Washington for the next morning’s flight home. She had arranged to meet him at a coffee house, as after the incident at the rest area, she had no desire to meet a trucker anywhere other than in a public place.

  She had arrived early and had been to a bank to fetch the thousand dollars that was his price for the information, according to Marteinn, who had found the source and set up the meeting.

  Marteinn hadn’t wanted to explain in too much detail what he had done, but it seemed that he had managed to hack into Meteorite’s staff lists, identified some of the drivers then been through their social media pages until he found one who had let negative comments about his work slip out. Using this as a starting point, Marteinn judged that this man would be likely to spill the beans on his employer. He turned out to be right. The man was prepared to tell María everything she wanted to know about the trucking operation, in return for anonymity and a thousand dollars. María had to admit that it was smart of Marteinn to find a source this way. Her own approach would have been to call every driver on the list, which would not have led to such a quick, accurate result.

  This driver turned out to be nothing like the one who had threatened her at the rest area the night before. This man was young and small, neat and well dressed, with a strong smell of aftershave about him that reminded María of something – she just couldn’t think what. He shook María’s hand courteously as he introduced himself, and she took a seat opposite him and slid the envelope across the table.

  ‘I appreciate this,’ he said, folding the envelope away into his jacket pocket. ‘What do you want to know about Meteorite?’

  María had made notes on her phone of the questions she wanted to ask, but had no need to look at them. She knew precisely what to ask.

  ‘Why do you drive the trucks into the warehouses and out again without loading or unloading?’

  It was the key question, and the one most in need of an answer.

  ‘Because all the stores are full,’ the driver said. ‘Although the Massachusetts store is normally empty. That’s where the aluminium arrives before it’s shipped out to storage somewhere else. There are new stores being built and they’re filled up as soon as they are ready.’

  María nodded and made a note of Massachusetts. So there were more warehouses than the three she already knew about.

  ‘Why all the driving in and out all day long?’

  ‘That’s because there are international rules that say there has to be a flow of aluminium. So the load I bring in is booked into the store and then booked out again. The stores are all run under different names, so the metal is booked as going from one company to another so it doesn’t look like aluminium is piling up. But in reality, Meteorite owns all the stores.’

  ‘Do you have any idea how many stores there are altogether?’ María asked hopefully.

  ‘I don’t,’ he said, pausing for a moment’s thought as he counted on his fingers. ‘I’ve been to at least fifteen, and I’ve heard other drivers mention at least a couple more.’

  María swallowed the saliva that had formed in her mouth as if she had been starving and could smell a delicious meal cooking somewhere close by. This was big news. This was the scoop she had waiting on for so long. She shifted in her seat, but tried to appear calm so as not to startle the driver.

  ‘And who owns all this aluminium? Do you have any idea who’s behind it?’

  ‘Different people. There are funds that trade in metals, some companies, sometimes the smelters themselves. You can see it all on the transport documentation that goes with each delivery.’

  María could feel her heart jolt in disappointment. She had been sure that she had solved the mystery for Agla at the same time as coming up with a major news story of her own. She had been certain that there had to be a single entity stockpiling all this aluminium.

  ‘You’re sure?’ María asked, staring hard at the driver’s face as he nodded emphatically.

  ‘Absolutely sure,’ he said.

  ‘But why would all these different companies suddenly decide to start stockpiling the aluminium they produce, or buying it up so there’s a world shortage? It’s a weird coincidence.’

  ‘No. It’s not a coincidence,’ the driver said. ‘Meteorite pays them to store it.’

  54

  Agla had to tell María to speak slowly and clearly, as her internet connection seemed to be poor and the Bleep app didn’t seem to be able to keep the sound quality clear. The image broke up into blocks and pixels, but Agla could just make out that María was on the move, holding the phone in front of her with one hand while she steered with the other. Now was exactly the time when a proper phone would have been handy, one on which they could have held a normal conversation, but that wasn’t an option at Hólmsheiði. Instead she sat hunched in the library with the screen turned away from the all-seeing eye on the ceiling, so that no one would realise she was using the computer to make a call. Fortunately, by now the warders trusted her completely and only checked on her every couple of hours.

  ‘The owners store the aluminium in the warehouses, get a payment for taking delivery of it, and immediately apply to have it released, which can take a long time. Sometimes that can take close to two years. And then they simply put it straight back into storage to get another payment, instead of selling it. It takes a week to get aluminium into storage, and never less than a year to get it out again. So the overall storage time for all the metal gets longer and longer. And Meteorite buys more and more warehouses as they fill up. Strictly speaking, they’re not stockpiling it, but they’re still restricting the flow onto the market, and that’s how the price of the aluminium available on the open market rises.’

  Now Agla was starting to see a clearer picture.

  ‘I’d bet…’ she called into the screen in the hope that María could hear her. ‘I’d be ready to bet that the payments from Meteorite for storing aluminium from the Icelandic smelter go direct to the smelter’s parent company abroad. That way the parent company doesn’t care if the smelter sells its production very slowly – they still get an income from the storage payments. Undoubtedly other smelters do the same thing. It’s better for the parent company to get paid for storing production, and then they can always sell it later for the same or more than they would get for it today. It’s absolutely brilliant!’

  Bleep lost the connection and some interference came out of the speaker.

  ‘What did you say?’ Agla asked.

  ‘Everyone except the taxpayer comes out a winner,’ María repeated. She always had to make some kind of point like that, Agla reflected. ‘Just as long as there’s no tax paid on production in Iceland.’

  ‘The taxpayer just wastes it on some crack-brained nonsense,’ Agla said in irritation.

  ‘Like building prisons…?’ María said and the connection was lost.

  That was typical of both María and Bleep. It was as if both of them had conspired to break the connection before Agla could come back with a suitable riposte. This Bleep software wasn’t as good as Skype or FaceTime, but had the advantage of being encrypted so that any trace of a conversation was erased as soon as it ended. As far as Agla was concerned, the
prison authorities had no need to be concerned over things they knew nothing about.

  Agla checked the clock. It was finally time to call Elísa. She rang the bell and when Ewa appeared, she let her know that she needed to make a call. She waited by the phone in the hallway for a little while, until Ewa had gone over to chat to Vigdís, so neither of them would be listening in.

  ‘Hæ. How are you?’ she whispered when Elísa answered.

  ‘Agla, you’re awesome! Your lawyer brought an iPhone 7 for me! You’re something else; any old phone would have been enough for me. And the car! Jesus! I hardly dared get in. This isn’t real! You should have seen their faces at Vernd when the guy came and handed me the keys.’

  ‘How are you feeling?’ Agla broke in.

  ‘Well, just great. It’s half past five and I’m fine, just waiting for dinner. I’m on the rota to wash up tonight, and then I’ll go for a drive around town with my friend. We’ll go and get ourselves ice cream somewhere, but I promise I won’t let her eat it in the car, so don’t worry.’

  ‘I’m not worried,’ Agla said, although that wasn’t completely true. The car wasn’t a concern, but the thought of Elísa going for a drive with a friend troubled her. She hoped it wasn’t Katrín, the former squeeze; and she hoped it wasn’t one of Elísa’s druggie friends, who might be a bad influence on her.

  ‘Tomorrow I’ll start looking properly for a place to live. It’ll be easier now I can meet people face to face, because everyone who advertised a room for rent online was a bit strange when I said I was calling from Hólmsheiði…’

  ‘But you have the house,’ Agla said. ‘You can stay there for as long as you want.’

  ‘Oh.’ Elísa fell silent for a moment. ‘You were serious about me moving in there?’

  ‘Of course,’ Agla said, surprised at how Elísa had misunderstood her.

  ‘I thought you were just doing that so I could be registered somewhere, so I’d be allowed out on probation.’

  ‘No, my sweet. You can have the house. I have an apartment somewhere else, so the place is empty. And it’s crazy for you to be holed up in a room when there’s a house going begging.’

  Elísa said nothing and Agla waited with growing trepidation. That wretched house was probably too much for any woman, and like a fool, she was trying to pass it on to Elísa. She would probably be no keener on the house than Sonja had.

  ‘But of course you don’t need to move in there, if you’d prefer to find yourself a room somewhere else. I was just trying to help you out; a way of solving your problem,’ Agla said quickly.

  ‘Shhh, Agla,’ Elísa whispered, and sniffed. ‘Of course I want it. Don’t be daft. I’m just having a bit of a cry.’

  Agla wondered what she could say. She had no idea what she had done that would make Elísa cry. That had certainly not been her intention. But before she could figure out some way to reply, Elísa coughed and spoke.

  ‘Hey!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s going to be fucking brilliant fun when you’re out and we’ll be together at Vernd and free. Or, y’know, freer.’

  ‘What sort of fun?’ Agla whispered, and she felt a surge of relief like the kick from a drink. ‘Tell me what kind of thing you’re thinking about.’

  ‘Just, y’know. All sorts…’

  Now Elísa was whispering, and Agla closed her eyes, imagining her face with its shy smile and the teasing flash in her eyes.

  ‘Tell me how,’ Agla said again.

  Elísa giggled into the phone.

  ‘Stop it! Just … you know.’

  ‘I know,’ Agla said and laughed with her. ‘I’m just teasing you.’

  Long after Elísa had put the phone down Agla felt she could hear her breath, the low giggle and her bubbling cheerfulness echo inside her.

  ‘Finished?’ Ewa the warder asked, startling her.

  Agla had been standing there by the phone for a good while, grinning into space like an idiot.

  55

  Sonja stood in the storeroom doorway and stared at the cage. Alex had disinfected it before leaving, so now it was clean and ready for the next candidate in need of a little discipline or a spell of cold turkey. Sometimes she felt as if her whole life revolved around that cage. It had become symbolic of her whole existence, ever since she had walked into Thorgeir’s trap eight years ago and found herself coming to this house to collect a shipment to take to Iceland.

  Sometimes when she looked at the cage it felt as if she herself was its occupant, her existence fenced in by immovable iron bars, but still able to look out through them and see the life she could have had. A life in which Tómas would have lived with her instead of spending much of each year at a boarding school. A life in which Agla would have woken up every morning beside her and cooked a meal every evening.

  Sonja banged the storeroom door shut and locked it. These days it was rare for her thoughts to turn to Agla, which was a relief as she always felt sad when they did. There had been such a powerful attraction between them that it had been painful to end their relationship. She had suffered nightmares for weeks after she had abandoned Agla, and often thought she had caught a glimpse of her on London’s streets, in the shops and even in a car in the street outside as she sat by the window in the evening darkness.

  She went upstairs and walked through the large rooms that surrounded the imposing hallway. The cleaners had gone and the place smelled of soap and vanilla-scented candles. She glanced at the clock; Alex would be about to land in Amsterdam to catch his connecting flight. Once Tómas was in the car with him, she would call and let him know of the change of itinerary. This time she was going to have them fly direct from Zürich to London, and then weave a puzzle with trains and cars on the way from the airport. Giving them an extra two- or three-hour flight would try her patience too much; she was bursting with anticipation at the prospect of seeing Tómas again.

  She started as the doorbell chimed, and then remembered that this had to be the delivery she was expecting from the shop. On the intercom screen she could see a new delivery man standing on the steps with a box in his arms.

  She pressed the intercom button.

  ‘Leave the box by the door,’ she said.

  The delivery man looked around in surprise, and then he saw the camera over the door. For a moment it was as if they looked at each other through the lens, and for a second Sonja was taken by his surprised brown eyes. But as they so often did, her senses were deceiving her. It was all too easy to convince yourself that you could know someone from their eyes. She had learned from bitter experience that there could be a single-minded determination to kill hidden behind innocent brown eyes.

  ‘There’s a tip for you under the flower pot. Thank you.’

  She waited for a while after the delivery man had gone before she cautiously opened the door, brought the box inside and then shut and locked the door again. As she brought the box into the kitchen, her phone rang and she saw it was Alex calling.

  ‘Any changes to the itinerary?’ he asked.

  ‘Not yet,’ Sonja replied.

  ‘It’s a lot better for me if I know in advance what the route is, so I can be prepared,’ he said. ‘You could try trusting me.’

  She could hear in his tone that he realised it was a hopeless suggestion.

  ‘There’s nobody I trust,’ Sonja said and put the phone down.

  It was true. There was nobody she could trust completely, although Alex would certainly be at the top of the list if she were forced to put her life in someone else’s hands; he had been ever since he had put himself between her and her rival’s hitman, taking a bullet in his side in the process. But she knew exactly how the Mexicans worked, and also knew there was nobody who couldn’t be bribed or tortured. So she would never be able to trust anyone again.

  She put the shopping away and went into the long, high-ceilinged living room that had once been Mr José’s dining room, where he had received guests and where the tiger had also lived in its cag
e.

  Everything was ready for Tómas’s arrival, even down to their favourite Shakira CD in the player, although they no longer danced on the sofa when they were together. The joy that had always been a feature of their reunions had gradually faded over the years, replaced by a certain mutual guardedness, which they both hid well, but which prevented them from being completely open with each other. All the same, it didn’t do any harm to have Shakira ready, just in case Tómas came home in a particularly good mood. All she would need to do was to press the play button and they would both abandon themselves to the delight of being together.

  June 2017

  56

  The flash from the doorway was so bright, it was painful; María felt as if the light cut deep into her head. She rubbed her eyes and waited for them to acclimatise to the darkness again. This was the tenth or eleventh time this had happened – that the door to the dim corridor opened, the silent figure of a man appeared in the doorway and then there was a blinding flash as he took a photograph. After that she heard the sound of him pushing a tray of food across the floor with his foot.

  Each time the man opened the door, she tried her hardest to read the sign on the wall in the passage behind him, but it disappeared when she was dazzled by the flash. It seemed to say Evacuation Route, and then there was some smaller lettering that she hadn’t been able to make out, although she was sure it was in English too. The sticker on the door was also in English, and when the bag had been removed from her head and she was thrown in here, she had seen something to the effect that these doors must always be kept locked.

  She knew she had to be in Iceland. She had taken a flight home and it had landed at Keflavík airport, where two policemen were waiting to arrest her. They had spoken in Icelandic and apologised for the handcuffs when they saw the bruises on her wrists. Looking out of the car window, she had seen that they were driving out of the airport area, and were heading for Reykjanesbraut – the long, straight road leading into town, when the officer in the passenger seat had leaned back and pulled a cloth bag over her head.