Cage

by Lilja Sigurdardóttir

  He knew that his father was up and about, because he could hear the clack as the newspaper was pulled free of the letterbox, but instead of the morning shower and the usual routine, he could smell waffles. He leaped out of bed. These days were the best days, the ones when his father didn’t go out, but instead pottered around the kitchen well into the morning. Anton pulled on his dressing gown and followed the waffle smell down the stairs.

  ‘Bon appetit!’ his father said, placing a stack of waffles on the table, along with butter and cheese. This was their personal foible. His mother liked her waffles with jam and cream, but he and his father buttered their waffles and put cheese on them.

  ‘Did you look into all that stuff about me going to sea?’ Anton asked.

  ‘Isn’t youth work enough for you this summer, my lad?’

  ‘Yes, I’ll do that. But there are only five weeks on offer and there’s no money in it.’

  ‘You know that money isn’t a problem in this house,’ his father said.

  Anton had heard it all before. This wasn’t the first time they had been through this. Before long the lecture would come about how dangerous fishing was, and that he was so precious. He would have to find a way to explain to his father, without going into detail, that this summer would see his life change direction. Soon everything would change, and he would take on adult responsibilities, be his own master.

  ‘You went fishing when you were my age. You talk about it all the time.’

  ‘You and I are different characters,’ his father said. ‘We have very different backgrounds.’

  ‘But, Dad, you always said that fishing was what made a man of you.’

  His father sighed. He looked at Anton for a while, shook his head, grinned, and nodded his head.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I give up.’

  ‘Promise?’ Anton wanted to hear him say it. His father had said several times that he’d look into it, that they’d see, and made all kinds of excuses. This was the first time that he had come clean.

  ‘Yes. I give up.’ He took out his phone, tapped at the screen and passed it to Anton. ‘That’s a twenty-five-metre trawler with a steel hull,’ he said as Anton peered at the picture. ‘I’ve bought it for us, you and me, so we can go fishing together this summer.’

  ‘What do you mean? You own this boat?’

  ‘That’s right. I’ve had a hankering for a while to get back into the fishing business, and since I can’t seem to rid you of this obsession with the sea, then I’ll go as well and can keep an eye on you. We’ll take on a skipper, I’ll sail as mate and we’ll be fishing for langoustine off the east from Hornafjörður.’

  A whole series of questions spun through Anton’s mind. This wasn’t something he had expected.

  ‘What about Mum?’

  ‘We’ll find a home help to look after her,’ his father said quickly. It was obvious that he had thought things through.

  ‘And me? What’s my job on the boat?’ he asked, suddenly fearful that he would be given some stupid, old-fashioned title such as ‘ship’s boy’ or ‘deckie learner’, or something like that.

  ‘You’ll be the deckhand,’ his father said.

  Anton breathed a sigh of relief. Deckhand was fine. That was something serious, something grown up. He put out his hand to his father’s, who took it and squeezed.

  ‘Thanks, Dad,’ he said. It wasn’t quite as cool to be at sea on his own father’s boat, but if those were the conditions on offer, then it was still better than messing about with youth work or some other rubbish all summer.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ his father said. ‘Soon it’ll be time for you to take over waffle-making duties as well. My little boy’s becoming a man.’

  Anton was sure that his father was proud of the stubbornness he had shown, despite until now having been completely opposed to all of his dreams of going fishing.

  ‘Cool boat,’ Anton said, adding a generous layer of butter to a waffle and placing a couple of slices of cheese on top.

  ‘Forward wheelhouse, three winches for twin-rig trawling. Built in 2000. It’s coming here from Scotland.’

  Anton bit into his waffle, and butter leaked out, down his chin; he wiped it off with the back of his hand. He looked at the picture of the boat and imagined himself coming ashore with a sea bag on his shoulder, Júlía waiting for him on the quay. She would kiss him and look at him as his father was doing right now, seeing him not as a boy but as a man. After the explosion, everything would be different.

  79

  Ingimar had overindulged in the waffles and felt uncomfortably full as he went upstairs to shower. All the same, it had been good to spend the morning with Anton. It wasn’t often that the lad allowed him any insight into his thoughts. He was unnervingly cagey and often seemed troubled. Part of this was undoubtedly down to his mother. It wasn’t good for a youngster to live under these conditions. Maybe his yearning for the sea was a need for some sort of escape, a desire to get away from home. And maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea. This would be summer fishing so bad weather was unlikely and Ingimar would be there himself to keep an eye on the boy, to steer him clear of the most dangerous tasks. Maybe what he had said himself was right – some heavy work would toughen Anton up.

  All this fatherly sensitivity, which always came over him when he was close to the boy, was washed away in the shower and while he shaved his mind turned to practical matters. He had already ensured that the María problem would now resolve itself. It didn’t matter what accusations she threw at him, as far as the police would be concerned she would just appear increasingly unhinged. He was secure, as he always was. His understanding of how life in general functioned was clear. Sometimes this filled him with a sense of loneliness, as he seemed to be one of the few people who had this level of comprehension. He often felt that he was the director in a theatre where it had been decided in advance that the show would be a success. Sometimes all he needed to do was say a few words to nudge things in the right direction. The image of Marteinn came to mind – weeping and crouched before him – along with the emotion that he had experienced as he laid a hand on the man’s head. Power. Dominance.

  He found his phone and called her.

  ‘Already?’

  She seemed taken by surprise, and he was no less surprised to hear noise in the background.

  ‘Yes. Circumstances are such now that I think I need it.’

  He twisted his upper body so he could see his back in the mirror. There were still wheals there from the last time, but that wouldn’t be a problem.

  ‘I’m abroad, coming home tomorrow,’ she said. ‘How about late tomorrow evening?’

  Her manner was unusually formal, so it was clear that she was in company. Normally she would have told him to get his arse over there right away and not forget what a shabby and insignificant worm he was. That was her script; it reminded him that he was mortal.

  ‘Thank you, ma’am. I’ll accept whatever you have to offer,’ he whispered.

  ‘That’s just as well for you,’ she retorted and hung up.

  Ingimar felt a shiver of the anxiety; it was part of the anticipation – what he always felt when he was on the way to her.

  80

  In some inexplicable way María could sense Marteinn’s presence as she sat at her desk in The Squirrel’s office and hammered at the keyboard. It wasn’t an uncomfortable sensation; quite the opposite: it was something of a comfort to be in the place where he had spent the last moments of his life.

  As soon as she entered the office, she had looked in their secret place – behind a wall panel by the radiator – and saw that he had done as she had asked and put all the information relating to the case there. She felt a warm glow as she held the printouts and the flash drive containing the data in her hands, and made herself a solemn promise to do the best job she possibly could on this story, and to do it for both of them. It was the least she could do for Marteinn, after she had let him down so badly just when he was at his most
vulnerable.

  María had cried herself to sleep the night before, lying in the narrow bed in the summer house. She wanted to believe that her tears were for Marteinn, but in fact it was the bra hanging from a hook on the back of the door that had set her weeping again. It all mixed together in one deep well of sorrow inside her – Marteinn’s miserable death and the new woman Maggi had clearly spent time with in the summer house.

  Reading through what she had written the night before, when she had sat on the porch under the midnight sun, wrapped in a blanket with her laptop on her knees, she was surprised just how much anger there was in her words. She could see that it needed to be toned down and framed in neutral terms, so that the piece wouldn’t read as a hysterical rant. A measured, impartial viewpoint was essential. While it was difficult not to be caught up in her fury at the financial bandits sucking the country dry, she needed to remain impassive. She needed to employ her journalist’s detachment in order to keep clear of the maelstrom and look at things dispassionately. She would redraft it all in the third person, which would also increase the chances of one of the larger media wanting to buy her report. The Squirrel needed to establish itself in people’s minds as a medium for genuine investigative journalism.

  The course of events as she had described them read like a foreign thriller. She imagined people sitting, glued to their screens as they learned how The Squirrel’s journalist, María Gunnhildur Jónudóttir, had investigated a case that pitted her against ruthless people with a great deal to lose; then the gun at her cheek, the incarceration in a dark cell, the smelter’s spin doctor inviting himself into her home… Into this she would weave a detailed account of how the aluminium produced in Iceland didn’t find its way onto the market, but instead was destined to be stockpiled in warehouses in America so that the parent company and a few greedy men in Iceland could push their profit margins through the roof.

  She would leave Agla out of it, as she had been asked to, as she wasn’t a directly involved party but had simply been brought in to investigate. The account would refer only to an unnamed source. There were plenty of other names she could drop in there; one smelter, one international bank, as well as Ingimar Magnússon, who was so closely connected to Iceland’s business and politics. The big names would be the ones that would sell her report.

  If everything went well, the piece might attract some attention. Maybe it would raise awareness of how these large multinationals behaved; how they used blackmail and every other dirty trick to channel all that wealth into the pockets of a few individuals, when by rights it belonged to Iceland.

  81

  Landing at Keflavík airport never failed to give Sonja a jolt of nerves, even though she had stopped carrying shipments herself long ago. Somehow she still felt there was the chance of being picked up – at the jetway, by the baggage carousel, or at the customs gate. To an extent she missed the elation that had followed every delivery she’d successfully brought through here in the past. But now she got her kicks from bigger business than a few hundred grams of cocaine.

  The next piece of business was to figure out how Húni Thór was planning to bring the whole of her store’s contents to Iceland in one go. There were two routes, air and sea, and she would have to be genuinely imaginative to work out exactly how he was planning to go about it. If he had discovered a new route, then she needed either to be able to make use of it herself, or wreck it for him so that she could make her own position secure. She could not accept Húni Thór and Sebastian cutting her out. She knew as well as anyone that once such a move had been made, it was customary to eliminate the person who was no longer needed.

  The terminal was packed with people, and there was a queue for the duty-free store, so while Sonja waited by the carousel for their luggage, she watched Alex to make sure he didn’t leave Tómas to himself, but followed a few steps behind him as he went into the shop, chose some sweets and checked out the electronics on offer. In a few minutes she would have to relax her grip on him and trust that his father would look after him properly. Adam was fully aware of her position and understood the importance of not taking his eyes off the boy, but he never wanted Alex to stay with them, and Sonja found that uncomfortable.

  ‘I bought two boxes of chewing gum,’ Tómas said as he appeared at her side. ‘One for you and one for me. We check on each other every night and whoever finishes first wins, and gets massive jaw muscles.’

  Sonja laughed. Some kind of competition between them every time they were apart had become customary. It gave them both a daily activity that kept them connected. Tómas was the only thing in her life that brought her real joy. Every other piece of business was just for the kick; excitement followed by elation, turn and turn about. This pattern had long dominated her life, like an addiction. Dope could be addictive in so many ways.

  In the arrivals hall Adam stood on the left of the exit door and Rikki the Sponge waited on the right, near the shop. These two former colleagues and friends no longer spoke to each other, and each avoided even glancing in the other’s direction. Sonja briefly hugged Tómas and made him promise to be careful, then she nodded to Alex to indicate that he should follow him all the way to the car with his father. She went over to Rikki the Sponge who took her case and greeted her shortly.

  ‘Heard anything about this business of Húni Thór’s?’ she asked.

  He shook his head.

  ‘Nope,’ he said. ‘Not a whisper. Something weird’s going on. But Thorgeir’s been partying without a break since he came home. He’s lined some girls up, so I hope he’s not going to overdo it again.’

  Sonja nodded and followed Rikki to the car. Thorgeir and his girls weren’t a concern right now. It was the business with Húni Thór that she needed to resolve. Her eyes followed Tómas as he walked at his father’s side to a big 4×4 on the far side of the car park, Alex following behind with Tómas’s case.

  Tómas always seemed happy to go to his father’s, although she knew that father and son didn’t get on particularly well. She supposed that it was a relief to escape her permanent vigilance, the locked doors and the bodyguard. She could understand his feelings; their life should never have come to this. Everything she had done had been with the aim of keeping him with her, but things hadn’t turned out that way, to their shared distress. Now she was dreading having to tell him that he wouldn’t be going back to the same school after the holiday – that he had to change yet again. Now that Sebastian and Húni Thór were plotting something ambitious, she couldn’t risk someone finding him.

  82

  She wondered if she was being hysterical, but Agla felt uncomfortable as Elísa vanished right after dinner. She had said that she would get ready while Agla cleared up, and then they’d go for ice cream and a drive around the city. Agla had taken her teasing smile and the words ‘go for a drive and check out houses’ as meaning that they would go to her house and check out each other between the sheets.

  ‘She answered a phone call and left as soon she had eaten,’ said Kent when Agla asked if he had seen Elísa. ‘She rushed off with the phone to her ear; from the expression on her face it looked as if someone had invited her to a pill-popping party.’

  ‘Pill-popping?’ Agla stared at him with her mouth open, and for a moment Kent stared back at her.

  ‘You do know she’s an addict?’ he said, and Agla nodded. Of course she knew that Elísa was addicted, but it still took her by surprise that she could run off having made other plans. ‘Someone came to get her. I didn’t see the car, though, just heard it,’ Kent continued without putting his book down.

  He was the only prisoner who stayed at Vernd in the evenings. Apart from those who had some housework to do, all the others rushed off somewhere on the stroke of seven o’clock, while Kent sat in the lounge every evening with a book, reading or watching the TV. Agla turned and left the room, then stood in the lobby without knowing what to do. Should she go and look for Elísa, or just swallow her disappointment and use the evening for work?<
br />
  ‘I’ll come with you if you’re going to fetch her,’ Kent said, appearing in the lobby and shrugging a jacket over his shoulders.

  That made up her mind. Agla snatched up her coat and followed him down the steps.

  He sat in the front seat of her car and tapped at his phone. ‘You know who her mates are?’ he asked, and Agla shook her head. ‘Give me the name of someone she knows so I can find her friends online; then I should be able to find out where she is.’

  ‘How on earth can you do that?’ Agla asked. It would be worth knowing what his method was, in case this happened again.

  Kent shot her a tired look as if this was the most ridiculous question imaginable.

  ‘This is my old life,’ he said, tugging up the sleeve of his jacket to show the scars on his arm. ‘It’s not a big world and I know pretty much everyone. Any names?’

  The sight of Kent’s tortured skin made it difficult for Agla to think, so she closed her eyes and tried to remember if Elísa had mentioned any names while telling her far-fetched tales in prison.

  ‘She used to be with a woman called Katrín,’ she said, unable to remember any other names. ‘And she’s talked about some boss.’

  Kent gave her a sharp look, as if she had mentioned the devil himself.

  ‘The Boss? Boss with a capital B?’

  Agla shrugged.