66° North

by Michael Ridpath

  ‘You mean it was a decoy?’

  ‘Looks like it.’

  ‘Did you try out an Icelandic accent on your witness?’

  ‘Yes. We took her to the Icelandic Embassy and she listened to some of the people there. She thinks the courier she saw could have had an Icelandic accent. But he spoke very good English.’

  ‘Interesting.’

  ‘Yeah. Of course he could have been a genuine courier from one of Gunnarsson’s Icelandic contacts in London, but we haven’t discovered anyone who was trying to deliver anything to him at home.’

  ‘What about the killer himself? Was he speaking Icelandic?’

  ‘We did try the girlfriend with the Icelanders from the embassy. She thought the language she heard might have been Icelandic, but she was stretching it. She didn’t really know.’

  ‘And the motorbikes?’

  ‘Nothing. But we traced the gun: it was used in a gang shooting in Lewisham two months ago – that’s in south London. No one was killed or even injured. But that probably just means the gun was second hand. I’ve brought a list of Icelandic citizens we know that Gunnarsson was in contact with in London. Can we go through that?’

  ‘Sure. And I have fixed up an appointment with the Special Prosecutor into financial crimes. That might give you an idea of where Óskar and Ódinsbanki fit into the inquiries into the banking crisis last year.’

  ‘Good. Thank you. Have you turned up anything?’

  ‘Nothing on a Russian angle,’ Magnus said. He considered telling Piper about Harpa, but Baldur had been quite explicit. The fact that Harpa had once had sex with Óskar about four years ago was not yet a conclusive link. Reykjavík was a small place, and although that didn’t quite mean that everyone had slept with everyone else, that kind of coincidence could not be ruled out.

  Four years? Harpa had a three-year old son. Hmm.

  ‘Magnus?’

  Magnus shook his head. ‘Sorry. It’s nothing.’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  ‘WELCOME TO ICELAND, Sharon,’ said the chief superintendent.‘My name is Thorkell. And this is Inspector Baldur who is in charge of the investigation from our end.’

  Thorkell was beaming at Piper, who fell under his charm instantly. They were in the chief’s office on the top floor of the building, with a view of the windswept bay and Mount Esja, standing strong and immobile against the gale. Thorkell’s round face was all pink-cheeked smiles. Baldur eyed Piper suspiciously.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  ‘How long are you planning to be with us?’ Thorkell asked.

  ‘I’ve left it open,’ Piper said. ‘Probably just a day or so, but I can stay longer if necessary.’

  ‘I doubt it will be,’ said Thorkell. ‘We haven’t found any Icelandic link at our end have we, Magnus?’

  Magnus recognized a question requiring the answer no when he heard one. ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Any breakthroughs at your end?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Piper. ‘But we can’t rule out that Gunnarsson was murdered by an Icelander.’

  ‘Mr Julian Lister is incorrect. We are not all terrorists,’ said Baldur in halting English. Julian Lister was the British Chancellor of the Exchequer.

  ‘I didn’t know there were any terrorists in Iceland,’ said Piper. ‘We have no idea what the motive for Óskar Gunnarsson’s murder was, but there are no signs of terrorism.’

  ‘Good, good,’ said Thorkell. ‘Sharon, I would like you to come with me to meet Óskar Gunnarsson’s family. He was an important man here in Iceland, and it would be good for them to see what is being done to find his killer.’

  ‘I would be happy to,’ said Piper.

  ‘What was all that terrorism crap?’ Piper said as they left Thorkell’s office.

  ‘Yeah, you’ll find the Icelanders are a bit sensitive about that these days,’ Magnus said. ‘When all the banks blew up last year, the Brits seized the UK assets of one of them under anti-terrorist legislation. Some people here think that that caused the two biggest banks to go bust. The British government put out a blacklist of terrorist organizations with the Icelandic banks appearing just beneath Al-Qaeda, the Taliban and North Korea. A lot of Icelanders were very upset. They set up a petition on the web with pictures of ordinary people saying they weren’t terrorists. There’s still a whole lot of anger at your Prime Minister and Julian Lister.’

  ‘Can’t say I blame them,’ said Piper. ‘Lister got the elbow over the summer, but the Prime Minister is still there.’

  ‘Anyway, let’s take a look at your list.’

  Back in the Violent Crimes unit, Magnus introduced Piper to Árni and Vigdís. Vigdís deigned to say ‘good afternoon’ in English.

  ‘So, Sharon, how do you like Iceland?’ Árni asked her, a look of eager anticipation on his face.

  ‘Er, windy,’ said Piper. ‘I haven’t really seen very much of it yet. I’d like to see a tree.’

  Vigdís rolled her eyes. There was a famous moment in Icelandic folklore when an over-eager reporter had asked Ringo Starr that very question as he was getting out of his aeroplane at the Reykjavík City Airport.

  Árni could have been that reporter.

  ‘I don’t think we’ll have time to find you a tree,’ said Árni. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Let’s see that list of names,’ Magnus said.

  They spent a couple of hours at it. Magnus’s team didn’t cover themselves with glory. He himself had barely heard of any of them. Árni insisted on making bold statements and wild guesses about them that turned out to be wrong. And Vigdís, who knew her way around the police files and seemed to recognize most of them, insisted on having everything translated into Icelandic.

  Magnus had called her on it, he still could not believe that she only spoke Icelandic, to which she simply replied: ‘Jeg taler dansk.’

  But nothing leapt out at them beyond the fact that Óskar knew all the most important people in Iceland’s business world, which wasn’t exactly surprising. Piper was clearly disappointed.

  ‘We’ll take the list to the Special Prosecutor’s office,’ Magnus said. ‘See if they can come up with something.’

  The Special Prosecutor into Financial Crimes had an office around the corner from police headquarters. He was a burly, fresh-faced man in his forties with an air of solidity about him. Magnus had read about him. He was the former chief of police of a small town outside Reykjavík. None of the more obvious candidates among the many lawyers in the capital itself could take the job since they were either married or related to the suspects, so the government had looked outside to fill the role. The man they had chosen had zero experience of international fraud, but he did have a good reputation for hard work and integrity.

  He was reading from one of a pile of files on his desk. There were several piles more behind him. Electric cables ran between the papers over the floor, connecting up to a mess of computer equipment. The office had a feel of haphazard industry to it.

  They spoke in English.

  ‘Can you tell us something about your investigations into Óskar Gunnarsson?’ Magnus began.

  ‘Certainly,’ said the Prosecutor. ‘We haven’t narrowed down our focus on to him specifically yet, but we are looking closely at Ódinsbanki, as we are all the other banks.’

  ‘Fraud?’ Magnus said. ‘Money laundering?’

  ‘Nothing that straightforward, I’m afraid. It’s more market manipulation: lending money to related companies and individuals to buy shares in the bank.’

  ‘Is that illegal?’ Piper asked.

  The Prosecutor shrugged. ‘That is the big question. It’s certainly wrong, and in many countries it would definitely be against the law. But Iceland doesn’t have very sophisticated securities legislation. It partly depends how many of these transactions were publicly disclosed.’

  The Prosecutor picked up a pencil and drummed it on his desk. ‘It’s also how the Icelandic banks managed to grow so big so fast. One investment company borrowed money to invest
in another, which borrowed yet more money to invest in a third, which borrowed money to invest in the banks that were lending them the money in the first place. Before you know it a hundred million krónur has become ten billion.’

  ‘Sounds complicated,’ said Piper.

  ‘It is. Especially when it’s all done through a web of holding companies in the Virgin Islands. It’s going to take us years to unravel it all.’

  ‘Years? So it wasn’t the case that Óskar Gunnarsson was just about to be prosecuted for something?’ Piper asked.

  ‘No. Certainly not yet. Perhaps down the line. We are not going to be rushed. The public may want blood, but if we do bring a prosecution, I want it done properly.’

  Although he was wearing a dark suit, the Special Prosecutor looked uncomfortable in it. It didn’t fit quite right. Magnus thought of Colby’s investment banking and hot-shot lawyer friends back in Boston. They would run rings around this guy. But he knew better than to underestimate the value of patient, dogged police work. It would be interesting to see what happened. And he admired the Icelanders for going outside the establishment for their prosecutor.

  ‘We have put together a list of Icelanders who we believe Gunnarsson saw in the last few months in London.’ Piper handed the Prosecutor the list. ‘Do you recognize any of the names?’

  The Special Prosecutor peered at the names through his glasses. ‘Yes, I recognize nearly all of them. Businessmen, bankers, lawyers. It’s Iceland’s business elite.’

  ‘How do they operate, this business elite?’ Piper asked. ‘Do they all gang up together to protect their own, or are there rivalries?’

  The Prosecutor laughed. ‘Rivalries would be putting it mildly. Some of these guys bear grudges going back decades. Look, I’m not part of this world, which is why I have this job, but I am beginning to understand it.

  ‘There are the old establishment families, sometimes known as “The Octopus” for the tentacles they wrapped around Icelandic businesses throughout the twentieth century. They owned the shipping companies and the importers and distributors. They are powerful, but low key. Then there are the new guys, the young Viking Raiders who built up the big network of companies over the last decade. They are the guys who bought all those businesses in your country: Hamleys, House of Fraser, Mothercare, the supermarket chain Iceland, Moss Bros, even West Ham United. There are three groups of them and they ended up owning stakes in three of the big banks. And then there is our former Prime Minister, Ólafur Tómasson. Some of these businessmen were his friends, some his enemies, he held serious grudges against some of them, gave others preferential treatment in privatizations.’

  ‘And how does Óskar Gunnarsson fit into all of this?’ Magnus asked.

  ‘He did a good job of being friends with just about everyone. Ódinsbanki wasn’t allied with one group or the other, it did deals with all of them.’

  ‘So he didn’t have any specific enemies?’

  The Prosecutor shook his head. ‘You know, people sometimes talk about the Icelandic mafia. And it’s true that all the big families here in Iceland know each other. But there is absolutely no violence. We are not talking about the Italian mafia here, or the Russian. I suppose it’s always possible that an individual could be violent or a murderer, that’s possible in any society. But as a group, these guys don’t kill people.’

  ‘And what about the Russians? There are rumours in London that the Icelanders were using Russian money.’

  The Prosecutor shook his head. ‘A couple of these Viking Raiders made their money from a bottling plant in St Petersburg in the nineties. That’s perhaps how those rumours started. They probably still have Russian contacts. But the rest, no.’

  Piper sighed. ‘Thank you very much. Let us know if you turn up anything on any of those names.’

  ‘We’ll keep a close eye on Ódinsbanki,’ the Prosecutor said. ‘And if anything like a motive for Óskar’s murder emerges, I’ll let you know. But there is nothing there at the moment.’

  ‘One last question,’ said Magnus.

  The Prosecutor raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Was Óskar a crook?’

  The Prosecutor sighed. ‘He didn’t steal from anyone. He didn’t hurt anyone physically, at least not that I’m aware of. But if he and his friends did set up a web of offshore companies to invest in each other’s companies secretly, he broke the rules. And that is more than just a technicality, it matters. It means the whole edifice of Iceland’s boom was built on deceit.’

  He gave a rueful smile. ‘But you can’t just blame the bankers. All of us Icelanders have to ask ourselves what we were doing borrowing money we could never repay. And we’re just going to have to pay it all back.’

  Magnus leaned back away from the animated chatter around the table. He felt pleasantly drunk. They had all been drinking for hours. They had started off with a couple of bottles of wine at Ingileif’s place before going out to dinner, and then on to a bar on Laugavegur. The evening would cost him a small fortune, but it seemed like the right thing to take the visiting cop out, especially on a Friday night. In the current atmosphere of cost cutting there was no way he could ask the department to spring for it.

  That afternoon, together with Thorkell, Sharon Piper and he had visited Óskar’s parents at their house in Gardabaer. He was struck by how ordinary they were. Whereas Emilía had looked like a wealthy sister of a Viking Raider, their parents were a respectable, unassuming couple. Óskar’s father was still working as a civil engineer for a government department, his mother had retired as an administrator in the tax office. They were both devastated. It was clear that their son had meant everything to them, that they had worshipped him ever since he had been a small boy, given him the self-confidence to succeed.

  They were glad of the visit by the police officer from London. Sharon had done a good job of assuring them that the British police were putting everything into the investigation. She also managed to throw in some of her own questions about any personal problems that Óskar might have had, any enemies, but nothing new had emerged. The parents had met both girlfriends: they were overawed by the Russian, and thought the Venezuelan incredibly exotic. They were clearly proud, but a little anxious about their son’s jet-setting lifestyle. The anxiety had turned to guilt: if they had somehow kept their beloved Óskar in Iceland, he would still be alive.

  It was frustrating. Magnus could feel himself being drawn into the investigation. He wanted to find Óskar’s killer, the person who had taken their son from them. He’d love to fly back to London with Sharon to see the investigation through at first hand, but he knew that Thorkell and the Commissioner would never authorize it. Why should they?

  He wanted there to be an Icelandic link so that he could get properly involved. Perhaps Harpa was that link. His intuition told him that there was more than a common employer and a fouryear-old night of passion connecting Harpa, Gabríel Örn and Óskar. But maybe that was just what he wanted to believe.

  It was a shame he couldn’t talk to Sharon about it.

  There were five of them at the table in the crowded bar: Magnus, Sharon Piper, Ingileif, Árni and Vigdís. Ingileif had abandoned her party with her fashionable clients to join them, which Magnus appreciated, although he suspected it was curiosity that had drawn her.

  As usual, the Icelanders were much better dressed than the foreigners, and when it came to dress sense Magnus was definitely a foreigner. Árni looked cool in a gangly kind of way in a black sweater under a linen jacket. Both Vigdís and Ingileif were wearing jeans, but both looked stunning, with subtle make-up and jewellery, whereas Sharon was wearing the grey pants and pink blouse she had had on all day, and Magnus a checked shirt over a T-shirt and old jeans.

  The conversation was animated but slurred. Árni and Magnus had moved on to whisky, but the women had been drinking wine all night. How many bottles, Magnus had long lost count. Vigdís was quizzing Sharon about what it was like to be a woman in the Metropolitan police, with Árni translati
ng frantically and inaccurately.

  ‘It’s nice to get away for a night or two,’ Sharon said.

  ‘Have you got kids?’ Ingileif asked.

  ‘A couple. My daughter’s at uni, and my son has just left school. No job – says he can’t get one with the recession, which might be true. But he’s been getting into all kinds of trouble recently. He expects me to get him out of it, but I’ve had enough. I don’t know what I did wrong. He was a good kid until three years ago.’

  ‘And your husband?’

  ‘Oh, he can’t control him. He just sits at home now, watching golf on tellie all day.’

  ‘Is he retired?’ Vigdís asked.

  ‘He used to work in a bank, in the back office. He never got paid very much, and they made him redundant in March. He’s tried to get another job, but he’s too old, they say. Fifty-one. So it’s all down…’ She blinked and swayed alarmingly. ‘It’s all down to me.’

  ‘Are the police losing their jobs?’ asked Vigdís, in English. ‘They are in Reykjavík.’

  Árni translated into slurred Icelandic.

  ‘No,’ Sharon said. ‘But they are going to screw us on our pensions, I’m sure of that.’ She blinked. ‘Hang on. You do speak English.’

  Vigdís glanced at Magnus and Árni. She giggled. ‘Only when I’m drunk.’

  Árni translated into Icelandic faithfully. ‘Wait a minute,’ he said in English, looking perplexed.

  ‘Why don’t you speak English when you are sober?’ Sharon asked.

  ‘Because everyone expects me to speak English,’ Vigdís said in a strong Icelandic accent. ‘Because I am black nobody believes I am an Icelander.’

  ‘I had noticed you look a little different from all these others,’ said Sharon. ‘But I didn’t want to say anything.’

  Vigdís smiled. ‘Foreigners are OK. It is the Icelanders that are a problem. Some of them think that it doesn’t matter where you were born, what language you speak, unless your ancestors, all your ancestors, arrived here in a longship a thousand years ago, then you are a foreigner.’