‘Yes, there seems to have been someone who made her smuggle dope.’
‘Shit.’ Kent stared ahead with a concerned expression.
‘What?’ Agla asked. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Just. The Boss. That’s what’s the matter. Poor Elísa.’
Kent still had a distant look on his face as he slowly pulled his sleeve back down.
‘So who is this Boss?’
‘The Boss manages pretty much all of the drugs in Iceland. It doesn’t matter if it’s coke, or speed or E, or whatever. If you follow the trail far enough, you get to the Boss. And everyone seems to know, except the police. I don’t know if they’re stupid or if they’re getting a cut. Considering how the Boss works, that wouldn’t come as a surprise. It’s all well organised.’
‘Elísa said the other day that once she had finished her sentence she would be free of the Boss and the smuggling, so it’s not certain she’s still caught up in all that,’ Agla said, but she’d hardly finished her sentence before Kent snorted dismissively.
‘She can believe what she wants,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘But it’s not that simple. Nobody ever is free of the Boss.’
83
It was a quarter to ten by the time Kent pointed to the right and she turned off Kringlumýrarbraut. He had made a few calls asking where a party might be found. This had led them to two places; Agla was still trying to digest what she had witnessed – she was made numb by the effort.
At the first place they had climbed the neat stairs of a three-storey building to an apartment that was so ankle-deep in garbage – they literally had to wade through it. The door hadn’t been locked and Kent had just walked in. She had followed in the lee of his rawboned bulk, into the unknown. Everyone in the place was asleep. One of the two men asleep on the sofa in the living room raised his head and looked up as they entered. The atmosphere in the apartment was stifling, with a sour blend of sweaty bodies and garbage that was beginning to smell bad. Kent went straight towards the bedrooms. In one of them he approached a girl who was sleeping face down and rolled her over to see if it was Elísa. Then he turned her back to lie on her front.
‘So she doesn’t choke on her own puke,’ he explained.
They then tried the other bedroom, where three people lay on a narrow double bed. Closest to them was a good-looking, dark-haired young man, bare-chested and with the needle still hanging from his red-mottled arm.
‘Prescription dope,’ Kent said as the door closed behind them on the way out. ‘The junkies buy it from old or sick people who can’t afford to eat. Then there are a few guys who’ll sell prescription drugs for a fuck. Sometimes they sell access to girls who are knocked out. Great fun,’ he said with quiet sarcasm, turning to her. ‘Are you all right?’
Agla nodded, trying to hold back the nausea. The smell and the image of the slack face of the young man on the bed triggered an unexpected chain of thought: she imagined a woman holding a picture of a young man with a handsome smile, just graduated from college and looking to the future with optimism in his eyes. It was a ridiculous thought, but the weight of it remained until the nausea passed. Maybe somewhere, someone was looking for this young man.
The second place was the home of someone linked to the Boss, Kent had told Agla, and she saw immediately that it had a very different atmosphere. Lively music could be heard from outside the two-storey wooden house with its colourful corrugated iron cladding, which sat in the Thingholt district of the city. As soon as they stepped inside they were met by a young woman with a tray of drinks. Kent turned and looked at Alga as if he was waiting to see if she would take one, but she shook her head and he did the same. For a second Agla wondered if he would have taken a drink if she hadn’t been with him. But he wouldn’t have been there if it wasn’t for her.
The house had been restored to its original style, and with surprise, Alga admired the artworks on the walls. Whoever lived here was no lightweight. In the living room the furniture had been pushed aside and a group of people danced on the wooden floor, which trembled beneath them. Kent threaded his way through the kitchen to the stairs, and had just placed a foot on the lowest step when a musclebound man in a tight T-shirt hurtled down the stairs and took a position on the third step, arms folded.
‘What the fuck do you want?’ he demanded, staring from beneath knitted brows at Kent, biting his teeth so hard together that the muscles in his broad jaw bulged.
‘Elísa,’ Kent said, not turning a hair at the man’s attitude. It was a strange position. The big man was two steps higher and looked down at him, while Kent stepped onto the lowest step so that he was very close to the man, but no longer looking up at him.
‘There’s no Elísa here,’ the man retorted, biting down hard again, and without looking away. Kent held his eyes for a moment, and then stepped back and down, backing slowly into the kitchen behind.
‘Let’s go,’ he said, gently taking Agla’s arm, and she meekly let herself be led.
‘Kent Cook,’ the man called out behind him. ‘Kent the Cook is here to cook up something smooth for all of us!’
A gale of laughter followed them out, and Agla could feel the tension in Kent’s body relax as he let go of her arm.
‘How do you know that guy?’ Agla asked when they were back in the car.
‘I don’t know him,’ Kent replied drily.
‘At any rate, he knows you and he knows you’re a cook.’
‘I’m not a cook,’ Kent said.
‘Oh? So Cook is a family name?’
‘No. Hermannsson.’
‘All right.’
Agla understood from his tone of voice that the name the muscle man had called out after him wasn’t going to be explained, but that didn’t matter. It now seemed unlikely that they would find Elísa before Vernd’s eleven o’clock curfew.
‘We’ll check out one more place,’ Kent said, pointing her towards the Kópavogur road, and Agla put her foot down.
84
‘Sprint!’ Anton called out as he overtook Júlía by the statue of Tómas Guðmundsson on the bench by the lake, and he heard her wince. This was their second circuit, alternating jogging and sprinting, and he was starting to tire. All the same he forced himself to continue, and hearing Júlía’s footsteps behind him spurred him on. At Skothúsvegur he had to stop as there was a car in the road, so Júlía caught him up.
‘Gotcha,’ she said, slapping him on the back as she shot across the road and down towards the Hljómskáli gardens on the other side. He drew on his reserves of energy and was about to catch her up, when she realised he was close behind, shifted up a gear and left him standing.
‘I give up!’ he called out to her, and she slowed her pace, turned and jogged back towards him.
‘Woo-hoo! I win!’ she crowed, hands in the air as if she were completing a marathon.
‘I let you win,’ he laughed.
She pretended to be angry, jumping on his back and getting him into a headlock.
‘I won! Admit it! Go on, admit it!’
He spun around a few times to try and shake her off, then tried to reach around to tickle her, but her headlock was too strong, so he stepped onto the grass and leaned down to try and dislodge her. He turned over to twist free, but she tightened her hold.
‘I let you win,’ he laughed. ‘Because you’re such a bad loser.’
Júlía shrieked and boxed his ears a couple of times until he pretended to submit.
‘All right! All right, you won!’
In a second they were lying on the grass, their clothes damp with sweat, their breath coming hard, and all of a sudden Júlía, normally so physically hesitant, pressed herself against him, kissed his neck, slid a hand under his shirt and ran her fingers up his back. They kissed and kissed, until she pushed him away and jumped to her feet.
‘Sprint home!’ she said, setting off. He ran and caught her up, taking hold of her hand, but not with his little finger. That was too trivial now that they had broken all the rules by rol
ling on the grass together, so he took her whole hand in his and squeezed it tight.
‘I love you,’ he said.
She stared at him with a serious look on her face, smiled beautifully, but said nothing, letting go of his hand and setting off again. He jogged thoughtfully behind her. He could perfectly understand her unwillingness to say that she loved him; it was too binding, such words were too strong, and things with her dad were the way they were, after all. Once the bomb had gone off, everything would be different. Then she would see the world differently, and then she would certainly tell him what he wanted to hear.
85
‘Take it easy, will you! I’m not the first one to take a turn on her tonight!’
‘That’s supposed to be some kind of excuse, is it?’ Kent snarled, tightening his grip.
The youth stood on his toes, as if he was nailed to the wall, with one of Kent’s hands at his throat and the other squeezing his balls. As far as Agla could make out, Kent was squeezing hard. They seemed to be functioning as one, as if Agla’s fury at what they had found was manifesting itself through Kent’s body; he had reacted precisely as she would have done if only she had the strength. She turned her back to Kent and the boy he was reading the riot act to, and kneeled by the bed. Elísa lay apparently completely unconscious, naked below the waist and with the turquoise Adidas top unzipped and her T-shirt hauled up above her breasts.
Agla could feel the pressure grow in her throat as rage swelled in her heart, and somehow what hurt the most was not what they had come across – the stupid boy who had decided to take advantage of Elísa’s state, or her drugged stupor – it was Elísa’s ribs, clearly visible below her little breasts. She was so thin – far too thin; her young body neglected for so long. And Agla suddenly realised that in all likelihood she would be unable to save her. This was an undertaking too big for her to handle. She pulled down the shirt and zipped up the top, but Elísa’s trousers were nowhere to be seen in the gloomy room, so she pulled the sheet off the bed and wrapped it around her lower half.
‘Can you carry her?’ she asked Kent, who nodded.
‘What are we going to do with her?’ he asked, one hand still around the young man’s throat, and Alga thought she could see his face darkening.
‘I don’t know,’ Agla said, truthfully.
It was rare for her to concede defeat or to be unsure of what to do next, but at this moment she was unable to see any way forward. The best thing they could hope for was to get Elísa to Vernd before curfew. Kent hissed a few well-chosen words into the boy’s ear and let him go, allowing him to limp away, nodding his head ceaselessly.
Kent picked Elísa up, carried her out of the flat and laid her on the back seat of the car. Agla clipped the seat belt together before getting into the front. She needed to regain her composure, and Elísa’s proximity brought back the painful pressure in her throat. Her head swam and she swore.
‘Who the hell gains from all this?’ she asked, half to herself, as Kent sat in the driver’s seat and put out a hand for the keys.
‘Gains?’ he asked, starting the car and driving off.
‘A situation in which everyone loses normally corrects itself, but for it to continue, there has to be someone, somewhere, who has something to gain from it.’
‘You think of life in terms of profit and loss?’ Kent said, winking at her.
Agla nodded.
‘The fundamentals of existence,’ she said.
There was silence in the car, until Kent brought it to a halt by the traffic lights on Miklabraut.
‘Girls like Elísa are used as decoys,’ he said.
‘Decoys? What sort of decoys?’
‘The Boss and all that crowd use girls like Elísa – junkies, kids they can control – and send them off as decoys.’
‘And that means what, exactly?’
‘The decoy goes abroad and is then sent back here on a flight, with a small amount of gear that’s so badly packed that there’s no chance of them not being picked up, while the real mule – who’s often enough on the same flight, with a bigger amount, properly packed and hidden – just goes straight through because customs are busy with the decoy.’
‘I can’t see that Elísa is much use in the state she’s in,’ Agla said, ‘either as a mule or a decoy.’
‘No. They’re working on her now. They’re getting her ready, making sure she’s broken and chaotic. After a few days of pill-popping and speed, she’ll have breached her probation; she’ll be hooked again and then she’ll be offered a quick fix. They’ll ask her to do one flight with some small amount, and in exchange they’ll offer to fix her up in Copenhagen or somewhere with a stack of cash and all her debts paid. She’ll be so fucked up that she’ll believe it. I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve seen it happen.’
It was half past ten as they turned onto Laugateigur.
‘We’ll have to be quick,’ Kent said. ‘At quarter to eleven the night guy will be doing his rounds.’
86
Anton sat on the bench with one arm around Júlía and the other around the shoulders of his English friend, Tommy, while they watched his classmates playing the fool on the square. Somehow he felt that he had outgrown them. All the boys had stripped off their shirts and were in the middle of something that was halfway between a play fight and a wrestling match, the merciless spring sunshine giving their bodies pale-blue sheen. The girls sat on the benches and the flower tubs, chatting and giggling at the boys’ antics. This had been a customary event for as long as the class had been together: to meet on the first sunny day after the end of term, go into town and treat themselves to hot dogs and ice cream. As Tommy was here as well, he had been brought along to join in the fun. It seemed to have been a good idea, as he laughed and laughed at the games the boys played, without taking part himself.
‘These guys,’ he spluttered, shaking his head as he laughed.
‘They’re a great bunch,’ Anton said.
Tommy was like Anton – he seemed to be older than he was. He wore proper shirts instead of T-shirts and he read articles on the internet instead of watching TV. Anton surprised himself by having no desire to join in the fun. Instead he was satisfied to sit and watch, feeling Júlía’s warmth against his side.
‘When are you going to invite me to London to meet your friends?’ he asked, but wanted to bite his tongue the moment he saw the look on Tommy’s face.
‘Then you’ll have to come to the school I go to in Switzerland,’ Tommy said, and coughed, unscrewed the cap on a bottle of Coke and took a sip. ‘I don’t have any friends in London.’
‘Yeah, I’d forgotten what a jet-setter you are,’ Anton said, hoping to make up for his awkward question. He should have known better; Tommy had told him that he only rarely spent time in London with his mother, and there was something unpleasant about the whole arrangement. He should have taken care – he knew how uncomfortable questions about his own mother were. He turned to Júlía, to somehow put an end to an embarrassing situation.
‘Not tomorrow, but the next day,’ he whispered in her ear.
‘What?’
‘It’s your birthday the day after tomorrow,’ he said and smiled.
‘You’re more excited about my birthday than I am,’ she said, elbowing him gently in the ribs.
‘We’re going somewhere really special for dinner,’ he said. ‘And there’s a birthday present coming that is something you’d never guess in a million years.’
‘You don’t need to, well … make a meal of it. There’s no need to get excited about my birthday.’
‘You’re going to be sixteen,’ he said, grinning. ‘Sweet sixteen.’
Júlía laughed. ‘You’re the best there is,’ she said, leaning in close beneath his arm.
‘You’re such a pair of sweeties!’ called one of the girls, blowing them a kiss, and the others did the same. Júlía giggled, and Tommy gave Anton a slap on the back that told him he was the big guy. Anton smiled with pride. The tw
o of them were somehow on a different level to the other youngsters. Maybe Júlía had always been on another level; she had always been different to the other girls, more serious. Now, in the square, under the spring sunshine, he understood why she had chosen him from among all the other boys in the class. He sat quietly on the bench with her, birthday celebrations on his mind, while the others strutted around and played the fool, with nothing on their minds beyond persuading as many girls as possible to suck them off.
‘Not tomorrow, but the next day,’ he whispered and kissed Júlía’s cheek. ‘Not tomorrow but the day after you’ll get your birthday present.’
87
Sonja felt more depressed than she had for a long time, and the knot of anxiety in her belly grew with every hour that passed. Sebastian and Húni Thór had clearly emptied the store in an organised and efficient way, because she had spoken to everyone she imagined might have an idea about such a large shipment coming to Iceland, and they either knew nothing or were too frightened to say. The other option was so tough, Sonja couldn’t allow herself to think it all the way to its conclusion. This was that everyone knew what was going on, but she had been taken out of the game.
She badly needed Bragi’s help, so she had Rikki the Sponge drive her up to Lindargata, where she told him to collect her in two hours. Bragi wasn’t someone she would open up to completely, but that wasn’t what she was seeking. There was something about him that brought her down to earth – an authoritative, reliable energy about him that calmed her down. As they walked side by side to the lift in the sheltered accommodation apartment block where he now lived, she felt the tangle of nerves inside her soften. Bragi walked with a frame, painfully slowly, and although she longed to stride along the corridor, this leisurely amble was what she needed, enabling her to breathe deeply and tell him the news from London.
‘Cutlets today,’ Bragi said, smiling, as they went into the canteen. ‘You chose the right day.’
Cage Page 20
