Cage

by Lilja Sigurdardóttir

  They sat at a table by the window, and although his back was bent and his movements stiff, there was such a dignity to him, Sonja still saw him as the tall, imposing man in a customs uniform who had taken her and the huge shipment of drugs in her case to one side.

  Sonja hadn’t had much of an appetite, but once she started, she immediately felt hungry and ate the cutlets with gusto, along with the potatoes, onion gravy and salad, and finished by gnawing the bones.

  ‘I’m frightened that I’m no longer needed,’ she said in a low voice, dabbing at her lips with a napkin.

  Bragi nodded and handed her a bowl of stewed rhubarb with cream. She put it away quickly, and finally felt that she was full. Bragi nodded towards the flasks of coffee at the far end of the dining room, so she fetched two mugs.

  ‘Then it’s your only opportunity to get out of this business,’ Bragi said, sipping coffee through a lump of sugar that he held between his teeth. ‘You’re fortunate to get even one such opportunity.’

  He was right. Somewhere in this situation was hidden a chance to get out, even though she couldn’t see it right now. Or perhaps she didn’t want to see it? She finished the coffee in her mug and put it down on the table. Bragi reached across and gently patted the back of her hand.

  ‘There’s a chance somewhere out there to extricate yourself from this vicious circle. You just need to want to grab it.’

  Sonja swallowed the lump in her throat. He always saw through her. They understood each other. He was her conscience and she was the black stain on his.

  88

  The Grill Bar’s dining room had long been one of Agla’s favourite places. Its old-fashioned elegance, the chrome fittings and the star-speckled ceiling made her feel at home, and while in general she had nothing against change, there were some things that should remain unaltered. She ordered an alcohol-free cocktail, sipping it while she waited, and thought over the morning’s events. She had been dressed up in fishing gear and about to head out of town towards Borgarfjörður when Elísa had appeared in the corridor outside her room at Vernd, in tears of despair. She had been asked to provide a urine sample. Agla had taken the beaker out of her hands and resolved things.

  ‘There you go,’ she said, back in the corridor, handing over the warm sample beaker. ‘Nobody should be able to tell it’s not yours.’

  ‘Was it the amphetamine cook who helped you get me home yesterday?’ Elísa had asked, and Agla smiled as she finally understood the big man’s nickname. ‘I don’t remember much apart from you and the cook putting me to bed.’

  ‘There’s nothing to remember,’ Agla said. ‘We came and fetched you from a party.’

  ‘Did I call you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Agla said. ‘You called, so Kent came with me to collect you.’

  She had no intention of explaining the real circumstances under which they had found Elísa. She seemed to be plagued by enough guilt as it was. Then she had leaned on Agla and wept in her arms. After the night’s sleep Agla was free of the tension in her throat – her thoughts were clear, and she felt strangely contented with her arms around Elísa’s trembling shoulders.

  ‘Hello there, Agla!’ Ingimar said warmly as he marched into the Grill Bar with William Tedd and another man Agla had never seen before at his heels.

  ‘Mike Linane, Agla Margeirsdóttir. Agla, Mike,’ Ingimar said.

  Agla offered Mike a hand. His grip was soft and warm. This was a handsome older man, expensively dressed and with a beautiful smile. The chairman of the Meteorite Metals board. She knew he wouldn’t have much to say this evening. She had often used members-for-hire herself to man the boards of various companies. For a while she had even put the janitor at the building she owned in Luxembourg on the boards of a few. All that was needed was to look good in a suit and to have a clean record. She hugged William and kissed him, French-style, three times on the cheeks. She hoped that he would forgive her for what she was about to do; he was the one man who came close to being a friend.

  They had made themselves comfortable around the table when Jón joined them. The others appeared surprised by his appearance, and he seemed taken aback to see them too. Agla watched, admiring how they all pretended that nothing was wrong. She had told Ingimar that it was about Meteorite, but she had told Jón nothing. Once they were all seated, William ordered a bottle of wine, but Agla placed a hand over her glass, even though this was an evening to celebrate.

  The waiter brought menus and with Ingimar and William discussing the eight-course option and Jón complaining that it was all too much, Agla decided to cut to the chase.

  ‘I’m not going to be dining with you, gentlemen,’ she said. ‘I just wanted to inform you, face to face, that Meteorite Metals is under new ownership. It’s always so unpleasant to get that kind of news over the phone.’

  Jón stared at her inquiringly, and Ingimar raised an eyebrow. William sat expressionless, waiting to hear more, while Mike the chairman was still eyeing the menu hungrily. There was no doubt in her mind that they thought she’d brought them here because she wanted to be a part of their scheme, that they would haggle over dinner and at the end of the evening they would sell her a small stake in exchange for an exorbitant amount of money.

  ‘What do you mean by new ownership?’ Ingimar asked, shifting in his chair, obviously uncomfortable. Ingimar always coped badly with losing control.

  ‘As of midnight I’m the main shareholder in Meteorite Metals. It’s a pretty neat system you’ve cooked up there.’

  ‘That’s impossible!’ Jón burst out. His eyes seemed about to pop out of his narrow face, but at the same time an understanding smile appeared on William’s.

  ‘Could Pierre’s salmon fishing trip to Iceland have had anything to do with this?’

  His smile now turned to a pained rictus.

  ‘Yes. Pierre and I cast a few lines together today,’ Agla said. ‘Just about the time he landed a twenty-pounder, the bank offloaded its share in this scam. It was relieved to do so, as it’s a pretty dubious business, what with stockpiling aluminium contravening all kinds of international regulations.’

  The men sat in silence while Mike looked from one to the other, his face one big question.

  ‘Enjoy your evening, gentlemen,’ Agla said as she stood up. ‘The bill is on me.’

  She was almost out in the corridor when she turned; with a smile she walked back to the silent men around the table.

  She leaned close to Ingimar’s ear.

  ‘I assume that María and I will have our ID numbers reinstated tomorrow morning,’ she whispered to him.

  89

  It was the first time that Ingimar had used the safe word to stop her halfway through a flogging. They hadn’t been going long enough for the endorphins to kick in with their rush of wellbeing. Instead he had been overflowing with stress and adrenaline, while the pain in his back was becoming unbearable. Although she had stopped the second he had used the safe word, a quarter of an hour had passed during which he had sat on the sofa and cried like a baby.

  ‘I need painkillers,’ he said, and she went to the kitchen, returning with a couple of tablets and a glass of water.

  ‘If this is connected to me being busy when you called yesterday, you know I have a life outside of all this.’

  Ingimar shook his head.

  ‘No, no, no, my sweet. It’s not about you. It’s another problem that’s biting my arse.’

  ‘Tell me,’ she ordered, arms folded as she stood in front of him.

  ‘You know I need you to … I don’t know exactly how to put it: bring me down a peg or two.’

  ‘To remind you what a worthless little worm you really are.’

  ‘That’s it.’ Ingimar smiled. ‘To put it in a nutshell, there’s another woman who brought me down quite a few pegs this evening. Let’s say she whipped me thoroughly in a piece of business.’

  ‘That’s just as well, maggot,’ she said, and he nodded.

  ‘Perhaps,’ he said thoughtfully.
‘Perhaps it serves me right. It may well be that it’s healthy to not win every time.’

  She sat at his side, stroked his hair and inspected his back.

  ‘You’re all right,’ she said.

  He got to his feet.

  ‘I’ll make the usual deposit,’ he said.

  ‘There’s no need,’ she said. ‘You didn’t get anything for your money.’

  She held out his shirt to help him into it.

  ‘No arguments,’ he said, lifting a hand with one finger raised to indicate that he wouldn’t listen to her protests. As if he was ready to accept charity from a skint student! This evening had been terrible enough already.

  ‘Show your face again when your pride’s getting too much for you,’ she ordered. ‘Worm.’

  He smiled and kissed her cheek.

  He would return when he was back to his usual self. He hoped he’d soon feel well enough to require her services again. Hopefully Agla hadn’t ruined this for him as well.

  90

  ‘It’s good to see you under rather more pleasant circumstances,’ George Beck said.

  Agla smiled. This was much more comfortable than having the glass screen between them up at Hólmsheiði. They had gone to the Jómfrú Scandinavian Kitchen on Lækjargata for Danish-style smørrebrød. George also paid full attention to the beer and schnapps on offer while they had talked through a whole range of subjects that had nothing to do with business, as if this was a premature celebration of their joint success.

  ‘Well,’ George said as the coffee arrived, indicating that it was time to turn to serious matters.

  Agla was prepared. She took from her briefcase a sheet of paper with a short summary concerning Meteorite Metals and handed it to him.

  ‘This is the bottleneck you’ve been looking for,’ she said. ‘This company is sitting on all of the LME-registered stock that hasn’t been in circulation.’

  ‘Stockpiling?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ Agla explained. ‘There are restrictions on stockpiling, so what they have done is to restrict the flow to a trickle, cranking up the price that can be fixed through supply and demand – that’s to say, they’re limiting the amount of unregistered product on the market.’

  George sighed.

  ‘It’s brilliant,’ he said.

  ‘True,’ Agla said, and she had to agree. The scam had been on such a large scale and it had brought in so much cash, she couldn’t deny it was a work of genius. ‘And it’s within legal limits, but only just,’ she added.

  ‘And who is behind all this?’

  ‘That no longer matters. I have arranged to buy the company and I’m prepared to sell it for the right price.’

  ‘Ah, I understand.’ George smiled. ‘So you’re ready with the next move? I expected nothing less of you. And what might be your idea of the right price?’

  Now it was Agla’s turn to smile. She wrote a number on a serviette and pushed it across the table. George picked it up and peered at it. Then he brought it closer, his eyes half closing as he examined it, counting the zeroes. He put the serviette down, half opened his mouth and closed it again, shifted in his chair and cleared his throat.

  ‘Wow.’

  ‘Yes.’ Agla’s smile broadened. ‘As you can imagine, I’ve had to pay out a substantial amount to buy the company, and while it’s run at a colossal loss, there are individuals on both sides who are prepared to pay well to gain control of it: on one side are the large aluminium consumers such as your company; and on the other are those connected to aluminium producers who would be keen to restrict the flow even further.’

  ‘I see.’

  George got to his feet, took out his phone and went outside to the pavement. While he conferred with his people, Agla decided to use the time to take out her own phone and call William. There was a text message from Kent waiting for her on the screen: Can’t find her anywhere.

  Agla had asked him to search around for Elísa. This was no longer about getting her back to Vernd before the curfew. It was too late for that; she’d breached her probation conditions by failing to return to the hostel the previous evening. Now Agla was simply worried about her. She felt the ache welling up in her throat at the thought of Elísa lying helpless somewhere in dubious company and in an even more dubious condition.

  She shook the feeling off and called William’s number. He was cheerful in spite of his defeat, ready to start working towards a deal. Agla had always appreciated how quick he was at taking in the big picture.

  ‘I’d be interested to get a figure – what you’d expect to receive for maintaining Meteorite’s activity unchanged,’ he said. ‘We’re talking a respectable slice of the cake.’

  This was what Agla had wanted to hear.

  ‘It’s worth thinking about,’ she said. ‘But that slice would have to be very respectable, considering the size of the investment.’

  ‘Aren’t you happy, Agla?’ William laughed. ‘If I’d landed a deal like this one I’d be on the way to Las Vegas in a private jet. You have the whole thing in the palm of your hand.’

  Agla smiled to herself. This was no idle description. He was just the type to head for a party in a private jet.

  ‘I’m satisfied,’ Agla replied. ‘I have a few loose ends that need to be tied up, and I need to get rid of this ankle tag, then I’ll join you for a night on the town.’

  ‘Promise?’ William asked.

  ‘I promise,’ Agla said.

  ‘And you’ll send me a figure?’

  ‘I’ll think it over.’

  She would think it through in the unlikely event that George and his people didn’t come on board. A deal with William and Ingimar was her Plan B.

  ‘My people and I are amenable to reaching an agreement – one that we believe you’ll be fully satisfied with,’ George said as he returned. He looked relieved, and waved for the waiter to bring him another schnapps.

  ‘I’m pleased to hear it,’ Agla said.

  In fact she hadn’t been concerned at all; a consortium of one of the world’s largest soft-drinks producers, a leading international aircraft manufacturer and a computer giant wouldn’t hesitate to pay out money to ensure its access to vital raw material. She would happily knock half a billion krónur off the figure she had written on the serviette, and everyone would then feel they had come out a winner. This was one of the largest deals she had pulled off, and all without having to do much for it. But William had been right. She wasn’t particularly happy.

  91

  María was deep in printing out annual reports and information about Meteorite, highlighting key points in yellow, when her computer pinged a warning that sounded like a virus alert. When she looked more closely, however, she saw that it was a piece of software that Marteinn had installed for her so that she could monitor websites she wanted to keep an eye on. She could instruct it to alert her whenever a particular word or phrase was posted.

  This time it was from MarketWatch – a new mention of Meteorite Metals. She clicked the link and a news item opened, detailing trading in a majority shareholding in Meteorite and changes to the board of directors. María stared at the names of the two entities that had bought the Paris bank’s holding in the company. These were names that she knew well, and had long been familiar with. This went all the way back to her time at the special prosecutor’s office. Although at the time it had been difficult to prove who the owner was, she knew perfectly well that Agla owned both companies.

  ‘Explain this to me,’ she snapped into the phone the moment Agla answered. ‘Explain to me how you’ve become the owner of a semi-bankrupt aluminium storage company. What the actual fuck?’ Agla laughed as if it were funny and this only made María increasingly furious. ‘Don’t tell me you’re working with Ingimar to corner the aluminium market?’

  ‘Hey, take it easy. You don’t think I wanted to dig into this purely for the investigative journalism? If all the soft drinks company had wanted was information, they would have simply employed a private e
ye, or an excellent journalist such as yourself. When a company like this brings in someone like me as a consultant, it means they want to see involvement.’

  ‘And what then? Are you going to take over where that bastard Ingimar left off and sit there with all the world’s aluminium stocks under your bed?’

  ‘No, not at all, María. This is just a move in the game. I’m not contemplating involvement in any business, neither aluminium nor anything else.’

  ‘Aha.’ Now María understood. ‘I imagine the soft drinks people will be prepared to buy Meteorite off you for a decent price?’

  ‘Now you’re learning!’ Agla said. ‘Send me an invoice for everything you’ve done, and don’t be shy when it comes to the figure.’

  ‘Fucking disgusting! Everything you touch is revolting!’

  María’s voice shook with rage. Suddenly the feeling she had long had about Agla, ever since she had cost her her job at the prosecutor’s office, came bursting to the surface. The woman was simply poison. Everything she touched turned out badly for everyone except herself. María had been burned by her dealings with her, and now Agla was about to make some astronomical amount of money from an affair that had cost María untold pain and, possibly, Marteinn his life. But Agla would land on her feet like some infernal cat that nobody could ever stop.

  María yelled with all the power she had in her. It was good to scream and be angry, it blanketed the powerlessness and the disappointment. Anger was as good as a painkiller for sorrow.

  92

  Ewa the warder was at reception and seemed genuinely pleased to see Agla again.

  ‘How are you?’ she asked, after looking her up and down.

  ‘I’m just fine,’ Agla said, placing her bag and coat in the storage locker. It was quite true: she was feeling good, and after the relief of knowing that Elísa was back in prison and not dead somewhere, she could finally allow herself to enjoy her triumph with the successful Meteorite deal. Less than an hour after she had heard that Elísa was back at Hólmsheiði, having broken her probation conditions, George had called to let her know that his company had agreed to co-operate with another large aluminium user and accept her original offer for Meteorite Metals. That meant an extra few hundred million krónur she hadn’t been expecting.