‘Jesus!’ Sindri snorted. ‘Another one!’
‘And what job was that?’ Ísak asked quietly.
Harpa could feel herself blushing. Embarrassment. Shame. Guilt. They all washed over her. She felt they were all looking at her, but she avoided them, staring down into her glass of brandy, letting her dark curly hair flop down to hide her eyes.
There was silence. Björn coughed. She looked up to meet his eyes.
She had to accept who she was. What she and people like her had done. How she had been used as well.
‘I was a banker. I worked for Ódinsbanki until two months ago when I was fired by my boyfriend. Somehow I never quite managed to get hold of all the cash everyone else had. And what cash I did have was tied up in Ódinsbanki shares which are now worthless.’
‘Didn’t you see it coming?’ asked Ísak.
‘No. No, I didn’t,’ said Harpa. ‘I believed it all. The story that we were all financial geniuses, younger and quicker and smarter than the others. That we were the Viking Raiders of the twenty-first century. That we took calculated risks and won. That the wealth was here to stay. That this was just the beginning of the prosperity, not the end.’ She shook her head. ‘I was wrong. Sorry.’
There was silence for a moment.
‘Capitalism carries the seeds of its own destruction,’ said Ísak. ‘It’s as true now as it was a hundred and fifty years ago when Marx first said it. You wrote about that, Sindri.’
Sindri nodded, clearly pleased at the reference to his book. ‘At least we have heard an apology,’ he said.
‘We’re all screwed,’ Björn said. ‘All of us.’
‘Can’t we do something?’ said Frikki. ‘Sometimes I’d just like to beat the shit out of these guys.’
‘I know what you mean,’ said Björn. ‘The politicians aren’t going to do anything, are they? Is Ólafur Tómasson really going to lock up all his best friends? They appoint these special prosecutors, but they’ll never get hold of the bankers. They all disappeared to London or New York. And they want our money to clean up their mess.’
‘It’s true,’ said Harpa. ‘Óskar Gunnarsson is the chairman of my bank. He’s been skulking in London the whole time. He hasn’t been seen in Reykjavík for the last three months. But some of the others are still here. I know they still have money stashed away.’
‘Like who?’ said Ísak.
‘Like Gabríel Örn Bergsson, my former boss. When he was encouraging me to take out a loan from Ódinsbanki to buy shares in it to prop up the stock price, he was selling those very same shares himself. When he made bad loans to companies in the UK, it was me who took the blame, even though I had told him not to do the deals. And when the bank was nationalized and they brought back the old rule that two people in a relationship couldn’t work together, it was me who was fired.’
‘Sounds like a nice guy,’ said Björn.
Harpa shook her head. ‘You know, he never was a nice guy, really. He was funny. He was successful. But he was always a bastard.’
‘So where is he right now?’ asked Ísak.
‘You mean at this minute?’ said Harpa.
Ísak nodded.
‘I’ve no idea,’ Harpa said. ‘It’s a Tuesday night. He must be at home – I’m quite sure he wasn’t at the demo. He lives in one of those apartments in the Shadow District, just around the corner.’
‘Do you think he knows where the money is?’
‘Maybe,’ said Harpa. ‘Yeah, maybe.’
‘Why don’t we ask him?’ said Ísak.
Sindri smiled, the puffy skin under his eyes rumpling. ‘Yeah. Get him over here. Let him tell us where those thieving bastards have hidden the money. And he can try to defend how he treated you. How he treated all of us.’
‘Yeah. And I’ll smash his face in,’ Frikki slurred.
Harpa’s immediate reaction was to refuse. It wasn’t as if Gabríel would ever tell a bunch of drunk strangers the details of the complicated network of inter-company loans that Ódinsbanki had set up. They wouldn’t understand him even if he did. But on the other hand… On the other hand why shouldn’t Gabríel meet the people he had screwed? Own up to who he was as she had just done? Why the hell shouldn’t he? The bastard deserved it, boy did he deserve it. Revenge feels good when you have had a couple of brandies.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘But it will be difficult. I’m not sure how I can get him to come here.’
‘Couldn’t you say you had something you needed to discuss with him?’ Sindri said.
‘At a bar, maybe. Or at his house. But not with a bunch of strangers.’
‘Get him to meet you at a bar in town and we’ll stop him on the way,’ said Ísak. ‘Bring him back here.’
Harpa considered Ísak’s suggestion. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘I’ll give it a go.’
It was nearly midnight. The bars in Reykjavík would still be open, but it would be hard to force Gabríel out.
She pulled out her mobile phone and selected his number. She was surprised she hadn’t deleted him from her address book. He should have been deleted totally from her life.
‘Yes?’ he answered with little more than a croak.
‘It’s me. I need to see you. Tonight.’
‘Uh. What time is it? I’ve just gone to sleep. This is ridiculous.’
‘It’s important.’
‘Can’t it wait?’
‘No. It’s got to be right now.’
‘Harpa, are you drunk? You’re drunk, aren’t you?’
‘Of course I’m not drunk!’ Harpa protested. ‘I’m tired and I’m upset and I need to see you.’
‘What is it? Why can’t you tell me over the phone?’
Harpa’s brain was fuzzy, but an idea was emerging. ‘It’s not the kind of thing you can discuss over the phone.’
‘Oh, my God, Harpa, you’re not pregnant are you?’
Gabríel had obviously stumbled on the same idea.
‘I said not over the phone. But meet me at B5. In fifteen minutes.’
‘All right,’ said Gabríel and hung up.
Harpa rang off. ‘Done,’ she said. B5 was a bar on Bankastraeti, a street that rose eastwards up a gentle hill from Austurvöllur, the square outside the Parliament building, to Laugavegur, the main shopping street. She and Gabríel Örn used to go there with their friends on Friday nights. ‘I know the way he will take, we can cut him off.’
‘Let’s go,’ said Frikki.
Sindri’s flat was on Hverfisgata, a scruffy street that ran parallel to Bankastraeti and Laugavegur, between those roads and the bay. As they spilled out into the open air, Harpa felt exhilarated. The frustration and misery of the last few months were pouring out. Sure, the bankers and the politicians were to blame, but one man was most to blame for ruining Harpa’s life.
Gabríel Örn.
And in a moment he would come face-to-face with the ordinary decent people whom men like him held in such contempt. He would try and weasel out of it, but she wouldn’t let him. She would force him to stand in front of them and apologize and explain what a shit he was.
The cold didn’t sober Harpa up, but it energized her. She led the way, hurrying the others on. The Skuggahverfi or Shadow District was a new development of high-rise luxury apartments that lined the shore of the bay. Only a few had actually been finished before the developers had run out of money; they looked down on their half-completed brethren, and the condemned buildings surrounding them, like Sindri’s place, yet to be demolished. She was only about a hundred metres from the spot where Gabríel Örn would cross Hverfisgata on his way to B5.
A couple of snowflakes fell. It was late, but there were still people on the street, jazzed up by the demonstrations. Down at the bottom of the hill towards the square outside Parliament, flames rose out of a wheelie bin, illuminating hooded shadows flitting around it, and two firecrackers went off.
Harpa led them down one of the little side streets off Hverfisgata, on the route she knew Gabríel would tak
e. Sure enough, there he was, head down against the snow.
She stopped in front of him. ‘Gabríel Örn.’
He looked up in surprise. ‘Harpa? I thought we were going to meet at the bar?’
Harpa felt a surge of revulsion as she saw his face. He was a couple of years younger than her, a little flabby around the jowls and neck, fair hair thinning. What had she ever seen in him?
‘No, I want you to come with us.’
Gabríel Örn glanced behind her.
‘Who are these people?’
‘They are my friends, Gabríel Örn, my friends. I want you to talk to my friends. That’s why you have to come back with me.’
‘You are drunk, Harpa!’
‘I don’t care. Now come with us.’
Harpa reached out to grab Gabríel on the sleeve. Roughly he shook her off. Frikki growled and strode up to him. The boy wasn’t wearing a coat, only his Chelsea football shirt, but he was too drunk to care.
‘You heard her,’ he said, stopping centimetres away from Gabríel. ‘You’re coming with us.’ He reached out to grab the lapel of Gabríel’s coat. Gabríel pushed him back. Frikki swung at him, a long wide arc that someone as sober as Gabríel had no trouble avoiding. Gabríel was a good fifteen centimetres shorter than Frikki, but with one hard jab upwards, he caught Frikki on the chin and felled him.
As Frikki sat on the ground, rubbing his jaw, Harpa was surprised. She had never expected Gabríel to be capable of such physical prowess.
Gabríel turned to go.
The anger exploded in Harpa’s head, a red curtain of fury. He was not going to walk away from them, he was not.
‘Gabríel! Stop.’ She reached out to grab him, but he pushed her back. She lurched into a low wall surrounding a small car park. On the wall was an empty Thule beer bottle. She picked it up, took three steps forward and, aiming for the bald spot on the back of Gabríel Örn’s head, brought it crashing down.
He staggered, swayed to the right and fell, his head bouncing off an iron bollard at the entrance of the little car park with a sickening crack.
He lay still.
Harpa dropped the bottle, her hand flying to her mouth. ‘Oh, God!’
Frikki roared and ran at the prone body of Gabríel Örn, launching a kick hard into his ribs. He kicked him twice in the chest and once in the head before Björn grabbed him around the waist and flung him to the ground.
In a moment, Björn was on his knees examining Gabríel Örn.
The banker was motionless. His eyes were closed. His already pale face had taken on a waxy sheen. A snowflake landed on his cheek. Blood seeped out of his skull beneath his short thin hair.
‘He’s not breathing,’ Harpa whispered.
Then she screamed. ‘He’s not breathing!’
CHAPTER TWO
August 1934
‘AAAGH!’ Hallgrímur swung his axe as they came at him. Eight of them. In a frenzy, he chopped off the leg of the first warrior, and the head of the second. His axe split the third’s shield. The fourth he hit in the face with his own shield. Swish! Swish! Two more down. The last two ran away, and who could blame them?
Hallgrímur flopped back against the stone cairn, panting, the fury leaving him drained. ‘I got eight of them, Benni,’ he said.
‘Yes, and you got me too,’ said his friend, rubbing his mouth. ‘It’s bleeding. One of my teeth is loose.’
‘It’s just a baby tooth,’ said Hallgrímur. ‘It was coming out anyway.’
He relaxed and let the weak sun stroke his face. He loved the feeling right after he had gone berserk. He really felt that there was so much repressed anger in him, so much aggression, that he was a modern berserker.
And this was his favourite spot. Right in the middle of the twisted waves of congealed stone that was Berserkjahraun, or Berserkers’ Lava Field. It was a beautiful, eerie, magical place of little towers, folds and wrinkles of stone, speckled with lime green moss, darker green heather, and the deep red leaves of bog bilberries.
The lava field was named after the two warriors who had been brought over to Iceland as servants from Sweden a thousand years before by Vermundur the Lean, the man who owned Hallgrímur’s family’s farm, Bjarnarhöfn. The Swedes had the ability to make themselves go berserk in battle, when with superhuman strength they could smite all before them. They proved a handful for the farmer of Bjarnarhöfn, who passed them on to his brother Styr at Hraun, Benedikt’s farm on the other side of the lava field.
There had been trouble between Styr and his new servants, and the berserkers had ended up buried under the cairn of lava stone and moss, right where Hallgrímur was leaning.
Of course Hallgrímur had grown up knowing the story of the two berserkers, but his friend Benedikt had just started reading the Saga of the People of Eyri, and had come up with all sorts of new details, the best of which was that one of the berserkers had the same name as him, Halli. At eight, Benedikt was two years younger than Hallgrímur, but he was a brilliant reader for his age. Their favourite game had become to stalk the lava field pretending to be the berserkers. It worked quite well, Hallgrímur thought. Benedikt came up with the stories, but Hallgrímur was much better at going berserk. And that was, after all, the point.
‘What shall we do now?’ he asked Benedikt. It was more of a command for Benedikt to come up with another game than a question.
‘Any sign of your parents?’ Benedikt asked.
‘Father won’t be back for ages. He’s gone to look for a ewe on the fell. I’ll just check for Mother.’
The cairn was in a depression, out of sight of grown-ups, which made it such a good playing place. Hallgrímur climbed the ancient footpath between the two farms, which had been hewn out of the lava a millennium before by the berserkers themselves, and looked west towards Bjarnarhöfn. It was a prosperous farm, nestling beneath a waterfall which tumbled down the side of Bjarnarhöfn Fell. It was surrounded by a large home field, bright green against the brown of the surrounding heath. A tiny wooden church, little more than a black hut, lay between the farm and the grey flatness of Breidafjördur, the broad fjord dotted with low islands. Just up from the shoreline were wooden racks on which lines of salted fish hung out to dry. Hallgrímur could see no sign of life. His mother had said she was going to clean the church, something she did obsessively. This seemed a pointless activity to Hallgrímur, since the pastor only held services there once a month.
But there was no reasoning with his mother.
He was supposed to be in the room he shared with his brother, doing arithmetic problems. But he had sneaked out to play with Benedikt.
‘All right,’ said Benedikt. ‘I have heard that Arnkell’s men have stolen some of our horses. We must find them and free the horses. But we must take them by surprise.’
‘That’s a good idea,’ said Hallgrímur. He wasn’t entirely sure who Arnkell was, he was probably a chieftain from the saga. Benedikt would know the details.
They crept southwards through the lava field. It had spewed out of the big mountains to the south several thousand years ago, ending up in the fjord just between the two farms at a place called Hraunsvík, or Lava Bay. For several kilometres it flowed in a tumult of stone and moss, twenty or thirty metres above the surrounding plain. It was possible to crawl along the wrinkles of the lava, to slither through cracks, to lurk behind the extraordinary shapes that reared upwards. There was one spot where the lava seemed to form the silhouettes of two horses standing together, when viewed from a certain angle. That was where they were heading.
They had been crawling and sliding for five minutes when Hallgrímur suddenly heard a grunt ahead of them.
‘What was that?’ Hallgrímur turned to Benedikt.
‘I don’t know,’ Benedikt squeaked. A look of terror on his face.
‘It sounds like some kind of animal.’
‘Perhaps it’s the Kerlingin troll come down from the Pass.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ said Hallgrímur. But he swallowe
d. The grunting was getting louder. It sounded like a man.
Then there was a short, high pitched squeal.
‘That’s Mother!’ Hallgrímur wriggled forward, ignoring Benedikt’s whispered pleas to come away. His heart was beating. He had no idea what he would see. Could it really be his mother, and if so was she in some kind of danger?
Perhaps the berserkers were walking through the lava field again.
He hesitated as the fear almost overcame him, but Hallgrímur was brave. He swallowed and wriggled on.
There, on a cushion of moss in a hollow, he saw a man’s bare bottom pumping up and down over a woman, half dressed, her face, surrounded by a pillow of golden hair, tilted directly towards him. She didn’t see him; her eyes were shut and little mewling sounds came from her parted lips.
Mother.
Mother seemed to be in a good mood at dinner that evening. Father had returned from the fell having found the ewe stuck in a gully.
His mother was very fond of her children, or most of them. She was proud of Hallgrímur’s obedient little brother, and of his three sisters, whom she was raising to be hard working, honest and capable women about the farm.
But Hallgrímur. She just didn’t like Hallgrímur.
‘Halli! How did you scratch your knees?’ she demanded.
‘I didn’t scratch them,’ Hallgrímur said. He always denied everything stubbornly. It never worked.
‘Yes you did. That’s blood. And they are dirty.’
Hallgrímur looked down. It was true. ‘Er, I fell coming up the stairs.’
‘You were playing in the lava field, weren’t you? When I specifically told you to do your schoolwork.’
‘No, I swear I wasn’t. I was here all the time.’
‘Do you take me for an idiot?’ His mother raised her voice. ‘Gunnar, will you control your son? Stop him lying to his mother.’
His father didn’t seem to like Hallgrímur much either. But he liked his wife even less, despite her beauty.
‘Leave the boy alone,’ he said.
His mother’s good mood was long gone. ‘To your room, Halli! Right now! And don’t come down until you have finished your homework. Your brother can eat your skyr.’
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