Cage

by Lilja Sigurdardóttir

  Once she had finished yelling, she tried to get her bearings and keep track of what was going on around her as best she could. It had felt like they had driven around in circles for a long time before she was transferred to another car. She had been treated gently. Someone took her arm and a hand guided her head so she didn’t crack it against the roof of the car as she was pushed into the seat. In this car she could hear two men talking, but was unable to make anything out over the loud music they were playing. Then there was a long drive, some of it clearly on an unmade road, as the car shook and juddered. But now, after a long time in this dark cell, she was beginning to doubt the evidence of her own senses; her mind seemed to present different versions of her travels. Maybe that second car hadn’t been a car at all, but an aircraft, and the gravel road not an unmade track but turbulence in the air. It wasn’t just the signs in English that indicated they were in America rather than Iceland, but the shape of the door handle, the little dark window with its bars, the carpet on the floor and the smell of disinfectant that flowed into the travel toilet in the corner when she pressed the button on it. There was nothing she could put her finger on, but there was something American about the strange blend of menthol and flowers.

  It took some time before her eyes became accustomed again to the gloom. Once she could again make out shades of grey in the darkness, she crawled over to the tray and sat down by it. The food was the only thing that had changed during the three or four days she had been here. She groped cautiously for the tray to see what was on offer today. The first couple of times she had ignored food in protest against this bizarre captivity, but by the third time she had been so ravenous that she had swooped on the food so eagerly that she had upset the glass of orange juice, and now there was a patch by the door that was so sticky, she stuck to it if she sat there.

  This time the food seemed to be some kind of meat fried in breadcrumbs; two thin slices that sat on the plate along with three lukewarm potatoes. There was something cold in a tub next to the plate and María tasted to be sure that it was coleslaw. It seemed to be hospital food, or a dinner tray from an old people’s home. She used a little of the water in the flask to rinse her hands and wiped them on her trousers. She put one of the potatoes in her mouth and then took a bite of one of the slices of meat. She had given up using the plastic cutlery that came with the tray, and ate with her fingers instead, except for the dessert, and then she used the plastic spoon. Dessert! This looked to be either lunch or dinner, so there had to be a dessert. There was always a dessert with a cooked meal. She felt around with her hands, but there was no dessert to be found. She passed her hands over the tray and was certain there was nothing more than the plate of food, the tub of coleslaw and the flask of water. The tears flowed and she burst into sobs. She couldn’t understand why she was in tears over a missing piece of pie or cake, but in some odd way she saw the missing dessert as a deep betrayal. She had looked forward to eating the entire meal at a slow, leisurely pace, while she thought of something other than the fact that she was locked away in a dark cell, practically a dungeon that could be anywhere. Somehow the dessert was the most important part, a kind of sticking plaster for her own miserable circumstances, a final pleasure that she could string out as long as she could.

  María sniffed hard and wiped her nose on her sleeve. She must be suffering from Stockholm syndrome, or some kind of condition that makes captives so crazy that they’re grateful for the slightest display of kindness from their captors; such as a tub of dessert. She ate a second potato and bit into the second piece of meat, and felt over the tray for the fork to eat the coleslaw. It had been cut too fine and was too moist for fingers. Her fingers came to a halt on something plastic, and she felt it to be sure if it was the knife or the fork. It turned out to be a spoon. The tears flowed again, falling down her cheeks. How vindictive it was to put a spoon on the tray but no dessert?

  She carefully put the salad tub down and crawled on all fours towards the mattress in the corner. She would finish eating later. Now she was going to curl up on the grubby bed and cry. Her hand touched something and it rolled away. She stopped instantly and patted in front of her with her palm, moving forwards and feeling the floor with both hands. Her right hand touched a round plastic tub and she stopped. She picked the tub up and could feel that it had an aluminium cover. This was the dessert! It must have fallen over and rolled off the tray when the man had pushed it into the cell with his foot.

  María’s heart beat faster as she rolled the tub in her fingers. This meant far more than just the all-important final piece of a meal. The plastic tub itself gave her a clue as to where she was. With her limited sense of time and space she had become completely lost, unsure now whether she was in Iceland or in America.

  57

  Oddur still looked as if he couldn’t believe his own eyes. His forehead was furrowed right up into his hairline, so that in the morning light he looked like an old man weighed down with worry. He ran his thumb back and forth along the edge of the wad of notes, as if it were a pack of cards he was about to shuffle.

  Anton fidgeted on the bench. The old cemetery was still mostly grey-brown, but some newly sprouted grass around the graves was starting to give the dead leaves on the ground some competition and the lichens seemed about to change colour. He was cold and wanted to get this business out of the way before anyone came along to disturb them.

  ‘So we’re all square?’ he said, getting to his feet.

  Oddur remained on the bench, fondling the notes in his hands.

  ‘What did you say it was that you’re going to blow up?’ he asked.

  Anton felt his patience ebb away.

  ‘Nothing you need to worry about,’ he said, his voice sharp. ‘Just an old shed. Something a bit special for the girlfriend. Something she’ll never forget.’

  Oddur nodded and stood up, drawing out the moment, and Anton wanted to snatch the bag of equipment from him.

  ‘All square?’

  ‘Yep.’ Oddur stuffed the notes into his inside pocket and opened the bag. ‘Here’s the battery. The plate is just to keep it all secure. This is the detonator itself,’ he said, pointing to a little box with a printed circuit board. ‘You just stick the fuse from the dynamite into this hole, clip it together to keep the fuse in place and flip this switch. When this little light goes red, you’re ready to go. When everyone’s a safe distance away, you use this remote control, and bang. It has a range of around a hundred metres.’

  ‘Brilliant. Thanks.’

  Anton made to take the bag, but Oddur seemed reluctant to let it go.

  ‘And you remember what I said about a safe distance,’ he said. ‘The delay is only about forty seconds, unless you use a longer fuse.’

  ‘OK.’

  Anton stood with his hand holding the bag, but Oddur continued to hold it tight. Anton didn’t want to wrench it from his grasp.

  ‘Anything you want to ask?’ said Oddur.

  ‘No.’

  Anton made as if to leave, pulling on the bag a little, telling Oddur that it was time to let go. But he still seemed reluctant to let it out of his hands.

  ‘You want me to go over all that again?’

  Anton grinned and patted Oddur’s shoulder.

  ‘Take it easy, man! It’s not that hard. I got it all the first time. Now we’re all square, right?’

  Oddur finally let go and Anton folded the bag under one arm.

  ‘See ya!’ he said, turning and walking away, but Oddur came jogging up behind him.

  ‘Hey … I was just wondering.’

  Oddur shivered, his hands thrust deep into his pockets.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re not going to use this to kill anyone, are you?’

  58

  It was early in the day when Agla stood outside the prison building, taking deep breaths of cool air. Freedom was as refreshing as a cold drink on a hot day; in fact it was a surprise how much fresher the air seemed outside than it did in the little
exercise yard at the heart of the prison complex. She went to the turnstile gate, pushed her way through with her suitcase in her arms, put it down and went back through the gate to fetch the box and her computer case. It was unbelievable how much junk she had accumulated over a few months, even though she had brought only essentials into prison with her. She put the case on top of the box and stood outside the inner gate. She glanced each way along the road, but there was no sign of Elísa.

  She wondered whether she ought to make the two trips through the outer gate and up to the road, wait with her belongings there, but it would be a nuisance to have to keep ringing the buzzer to be allowed in and out; it would only attract attention that she could do without. After a while she checked her watch. Elísa should have been here to meet her twenty minutes ago. The suspicion crawled into her mind that maybe Elísa wasn’t coming. She decided to give it another ten minutes; half an hour would account for a traffic jam or having to recharge the Tesla. She had no desire to go back inside the prison building. She should have had the lawyer collect her, she told herself. He would have brought her phone and some decent clothes. Instead she was standing here like an idiot in tracksuit bottoms, not even able to call herself a taxi.

  Finally, with heavy steps, she walked back into the building. She could feel every fibre of her body rebelling, sending stomach acid rushing to her throat and giving her an instant flash of heartburn as she opened the door and stepped back inside the prison.

  ‘Could you call a taxi for me?’ she asked.

  Sigurgeir, the officer at the desk, nodded, the look on his face saying that he could have told her Elísa wouldn’t be here to pick her up. It was just as well that he was on duty and therefore wasn’t able to repeat his offer to drive her down to the probation hostel at Vernd, as that would have been one humiliation too much.

  When the taxi driver arrived, he got out of his car by the outer gate, ready to help with her luggage, but sat back inside as soon as he recognised her. No doubt it had already been all over the media that she was about to be released on probation, and there was also no doubt that the entire nation agreed that it was far too early. The boot opened with a click, and she lifted her box and case into it before sitting in the back seat and bidding him a good morning. The driver didn’t return her greeting, but asked abruptly where she wanted to go. Banksters didn’t deserve courtesy, she reflected.

  Outside her apartment building she took some notes from her wallet and weighed up whether or not to ask for a receipt, just to annoy him by forcing him to put it through his books. But instead she added an extra three thousand krónur on top of the fare and told him to keep the change. The boot clicked open, and she barely had time to take her luggage before the car swept away, its boot still open. She took out her keys, went to the shelter at the side of the building and dropped both box and case into the bin. Then she went upstairs with only the computer case on her shoulder.

  This wasn’t the release day she had been expecting. She had indigestion and a headache, but she certainly wasn’t going to sit down and weep bitter tears because some fool of a junkie had let her down. What the hell had she been expecting? That the girl was genuinely fond of her? That a fumble and stolen kisses in the corner of a cell were the basis for something special? Bullshit!

  She cleared her throat hard, stripped off, threw the clothes into the bin and opened the fridge. She had to use all her willpower to resist the sudden longing that gripped her when she saw the bottle of beer on the top shelf, reaching instead for a can of Coke, which she took with her to the bathroom, drinking it as the bath filled. There was no chance that she was going to risk her probation with a beer, or by being a second late for the evening meal or lights-out at eleven. She had no intention of breaking even a single one of the rules and regulations that were all part of being allowed out. She could pee into a bottle whenever they wanted and they wouldn’t find a trace of anything stronger than Coca-Cola.

  She crushed the aluminium can and weighed it in her hand. She would have to focus her mind on aluminium over these coming days. She would systematically concentrate on this pale, lightweight metal that so many people seemed to want to own. The best remedy for mental turmoil, she reminded herself, was a complex problem to solve.

  59

  The yoghurt was wonderfully sweet; much sweeter than any she’d had before, and the obviously synthetic fruit taste was a clue that this was an American product. There were many brands of yoghurt in America that María had never tasted, but she had tried practically every one available in Iceland, and this one wasn’t familiar. She stretched her tongue as deep as she could into the tub and used her fingers to clean it out. She was going to keep hold of this and try to read the lettering on it the next time the door opened and some light was let in.

  If this meal had been lunch or dinner, then there would be a snack next – one for either the afternoon or evening, so now she just had to wait. She lay down on the mattress, the yoghurt tub still in her hand, and spread the blanket over her, more to give herself a feeling of security than because of the cold. The cell was neither hot nor cold; instead there was a steady warmth that told her that this place wasn’t dealing with the Icelandic climate’s fluctuating temperatures.

  She lay still and tried to control her train of thought. She needed to trace things back to their origins – to what had put her in this position. Her interest in aluminium producers and how some of them worked went back a long way, all the way to her time with the special prosecutor’s office, when she had done her best to get to grips with the extent of the whole aluminium issue. While she understood that every company wanted to maximise its profits, there was something about the way these international corporate giants treated tiny, stupid Iceland that made her furious. One smelter produced as much pollution as all the cars in the country put together; the Icelandic energy companies had made huge investments so they could provide the smelters with enough power, which the energy companies sold to the smelters at knockdown rates. All of this had been done under the pretence that the smelters would generate jobs and revenue for Iceland; but the fact of the matter was that some smelters brought in labour from overseas and a significant chunk of any profits they made remained abroad. The foreign parent companies invoiced their Icelandic subsidiaries for hefty sums, which meant these subsidiaries’ books showed minimal profits, and the parent companies avoided paying almost any tax in Iceland.

  ‘Cooking the Books Still in Fashion’ could be a good headline for an article in The Squirrel. She could detail how little had changed since Halldór Laxness first spoke about this phenomenon back in the forties; and demonstrate that Iceland had then been in much the same position as other former colonial nations that found themselves newly independent – easy meat for international finance and greedy traitors.

  Now one such company was engaged in an even worse kind of swindle, that wouldn’t withstand much scrutiny. And that’s why she was here, locked away to keep her quiet. She hardly dared imagine how long her incarceration would last.

  She woke up sensing Maggi’s presence, instinctively put out a hand to feel for him, and had a few happy seconds before she realised where she was. She breathed in deeply through her nose in the hope that the dream had left some trace of his smell; the scent she always woke to in bed in the mornings; the aroma of security and love. But the only smell was from the lousy floral disinfectant in the travel toilet, blended with her own sweat, which filled her with revulsion. It wasn’t the heat that was making her sweat, but the stress. Initially she had hammered on the door in the illogical hope that she might be let out; then later she’d been haunted by the recurring nightmare that she could find herself locked away for a very long time.

  She couldn’t be sure how long she had dozed. There was no way to estimate the passing of time. She crawled towards the door – she found it safer to be on all fours. Her sense of balance had worsened, and every time she stood up she felt faint and struggled to concentrate. She sat by the door, on the
side that opened, so that she would be able to hold the yoghurt tub in the triangle of light that would shine in first, and read the lettering on it. That would remove all doubt as to which country she was in.

  She kept the tub clamped between her legs so as not to lose it and reached out to count the trays that she had piled up by the wall next to the stacks of plates and cups. To begin with she had been too upset to clear up after meals, but after she had stepped on a fork and hurt her foot, she took to piling everything by the wall. Her fingers passed over the stack of trays as she counted under her breath.

  ‘Meal, snack, meal, snack, meal, snack.’

  If this were to be an accurate way to gauge the passage of time, then she would have to know how many meals were served each day, which was impossible as she no longer had a sense of time. She also couldn’t know if there was a regular interval between meals; or if there was a longer interval that indicated a night. But if she were to guess three snacks and two meals a day, then this had to be her third day. It was unnerving to think that despite her discomfort and the fear that plagued her, she was in fact precisely where she had always dreamed of being: at the centre of events.

  All her work up to this point, first at the special prosecutor’s office and later as a journalist, had centred around examining events from outside – an observer desperately looking for explanations, searching for experiences that would provide her with understanding. Now that was exactly what she had been given. She was part of the course of action, a genuine participant in a series of events that one day would be examined by journalists and prosecutors.

  It could have been that only a moment had passed; but at the same, it could have been a whole lifetime before the door opened. Sitting in the darkness, she was startled when she heard the key turn in the lock, and she immediately raised the yoghurt tub, taking care to concentrate on it and not be dazzled by turning her face to the light.