Magnus shook his head. What was she really doing? He never really knew where he was with Ingileif. It unsettled him.
He wondered what to do next. He should probably put in an appearance at the police college some time during the day. They wouldn’t be expecting him, but the Commissioner might check up. He had cancelled his teaching for the week, but he had a law class after lunch which he was supposed to attend: he probably ought to show up for that. That was several hours away.
But he couldn’t just walk away from the Óskar Gunnarsson case. And he was intensely curious to read that thick file on the Benedikt Jóhannesson murder. The café on Borgartún where he had met Sibba was close by. He decided to get himself a cup of coffee and look at it more carefully.
Benedikt was murdered between Christmas and New Year 1985, on 28 December, to be precise. He lived on Bárugata, a street in Vesturbaer just to the west of downtown Reykjavík. It was five o’clock in the evening, it had already been dark for an hour and a half, and it was snowing.
Benedikt’s adult son, Jóhannes, had stopped by the house later that evening, and found his father lying in the hallway, dead.
Unsurprisingly, a major investigation was launched, led by one Inspector Snorri Gudmundsson, the current Big Salmon himself. It was thorough, boy was it thorough. Because of the snow, very few people were out and about, and those that were couldn’t see anything. The only person identified near the house at the time acting suspiciously was a fourteen-year-old schoolboy. He claimed he was trying to find shelter to light a cigarette. Nothing Snorri could do would shake him from this story.
Forensics produced nothing, although since the case was twenty-five years old the report was much less detailed than Magnus was used to. There were no signs of a break-in, implying perhaps that Benedikt knew his attacker. There were a couple of footprints in the hallway, which was slightly unusual. In Iceland guests would always take off their shoes when they entered a house. Size forty-three. Which was about nine in the US system, Magnus guessed. About average for a man. If, of course, they belonged to the murderer.
The investigation got nowhere, but that wasn’t for want of trying. Snorri was an energetic investigator, and Magnus could guess the pressure he was under. The file was bursting with interviews, including one with the famous writer Halldór Laxness, Magnus noticed. Benedikt had no real enemies, but any rivals were interviewed and alibis checked. There was one notoriously sensitive fellow writer whose most recent book Benedikt had reviewed with heavy irony. The writer claimed he was at home alone reading all evening. Despite his lack of an alibi, and all Snorri’s efforts, there was no proof linking him to the murder.
It turned out Benedikt had had a brain tumour. There was an interview with a doctor at the hospital who had told Benedikt in February of that year that he had only six months to live. Timing a little out, thought Magnus, but not by much. Questions had been asked, but none of Benedikt’s friends or children seemed to know anything about it. He had kept the knowledge to himself.
The tumour must have been quite advanced when he died. Magnus wished he had the pathologist’s report. It was pretty clear from the file that Benedikt had been stabbed, but the search for a knife with a three-inch blade had turned up nothing. With any luck the report would show up on Magnus’s desk in the next day or two.
Snorri had then begun to interview every burglar who had ever been arrested in Reykjavík; a major undertaking that had taken weeks. Magnus was amused to see that Baldur Jakobsson’s name appeared on the bottom of many of the reports of these interviews. There was no mention of any interviews with anyone at Bjarnarhöfn. Why should there be? It was decades since Benedikt had lived at Hraun.
Snorri could not find a single hard lead. No suspects, nothing. Twenty-five years on, the murder of Benedikt Jóhannesson was still a complete mystery.
Magnus tucked the file away in his briefcase, and left the café. There was one more thing he wanted to check about his grandfather.
The National Registry was right on Borgartún. As befitted the very heart of the national bureaucracy, it was the scruffiest building on the street. Magnus had some difficulties with the clerk, who regarded his Boston Police Department badge with scepticism. He still hadn’t got himself an official Reykjavík Metropolitan Police badge, and he wouldn’t until he graduated from the police college. However, the clerk smiled when he mentioned that he was working with Vigdís Audarsdóttir, whom she clearly knew, gave Vigdís a quick call at police headquarters, and then asked Magnus what he wanted.
It took her only a moment to confirm what Magnus had suspected. Although Hallgrímur Gunnarsson of Bjarnarhöfn in Helgafellssveit had a kennitala, or national identity number, he had never been issued with a passport.
Björn ordered himself a second cup of coffee from the counter. This place was expensive. You’d never pay that much for a cup of coffee in Grundarfjördur.
He took it back to the table he had been occupying for the last twenty minutes. He was in the café in the upper reaches of the Pearl, a grey bulbous building squatting on top of Reykjavík’s hot-water storage tanks. It was situated at the summit of a small hill overlooking the whole city. It had been chosen because the approach road up to the building from the main thoroughfare was open and empty. Impossible not to spot a car following you.
It had taken him a little longer to reach Reykjavík in the pickup than on his motorbike, but Björn had driven fast. He tended to drive fast when he was tense. And there was no doubt he was tense. He would soon be face-to-face with Harpa. He hoped he had the courage to see his plan through.
Through the broad expanse of glass he looked west out across to the sea, itself gleaming a pearly grey in the sunshine. In the foreground was the irregular crossed triangle of the runways of the Reykjavík City Airfield. And the spot where Björn had dumped Gabríel Örn’s body nine months before.
But before he faced Harpa, Björn had some people to see. Where the hell were they?
‘Björn! How’s it going?’
Björn felt a heavy pat on his shoulder, and turned to see Sindri and behind him the neat figure of Ísak.
‘Let me get some coffee,’ said Sindri. ‘We have a lot to talk about.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
‘WERE YOU FOLLOWED?’ Sindri asked Björn as he sat down with his coffee.
‘No. You were right, this is a good place.’
‘We’ve got to make sure the cops don’t see us together,’ said Sindri.
‘I don’t understand what Ísak’s doing here,’ said Björn, frowning.
‘He just arrived back in Iceland yesterday,’ said Sindri.
‘Why?’
‘The British police might be on to me,’ Ísak said. ‘One of them came to my house to interview me. Wanted to know whether it was me who had been asking Óskar’s neighbours where he lived. She didn’t push it, but she’s suspicious. So I thought I’d come back here. Make it that bit more difficult for her.’
‘The cops here are asking awkward questions too,’ Sindri said. ‘There’s a big red-haired bastard called Magnús who won’t leave us alone. Some kind of American.’
‘I told my mother things were getting on top of me and I needed to get away for a few days,’ Ísak said. ‘Go camping in the hills. Sort myself out. I borrowed her car, she’s too ill to drive it these days.’
‘Did she believe you?’
‘She knew I was acting a bit weird, but she didn’t know why and I didn’t tell her. That’s the best way to deal with parents. Never explain. Keep them guessing.’ Ísak sipped his coffee and glanced at Björn. ‘So, Sindri tells me there’s a problem with Harpa?’
Björn didn’t like Ísak, never had. He was too cool. Too self-possessed for a student. Sindri wore his passion on his sleeve. Ísak’s was in there, it had to be to do the things they were doing, but it was a cool, calculated determination to follow a carefully worked out plan. It was as if Ísak was trying to win an intellectual argument and willing to go to any lengths to pro
ve himself right. Björn wasn’t trying to prove anything: he was just bringing justice upon those people who had destroyed his life and the lives of so many other Icelanders.
‘Yes,’ he said, turning to Sindri. ‘She’s got this idea that we, or rather you, Sindri, are behind the shooting of Óskar and Lister. She spoke to the kid Frikki the other day; he was the one who put the idea in her head. She suspected me as well, but she seems to believe my innocence now. Anyway, she wants to go to the police.’
‘You have to tell her not to,’ said Sindri. ‘She’ll just get herself locked up.’
‘She thinks there might be another victim,’ said Björn. ‘She wants to stop us before we get to one.’
‘She thinks, she doesn’t know,’ said Sindri.
‘Yes. But she’s going to talk to them. I know she is.’
‘So what are you going to do?’ asked Ísak quietly.
Björn took a deep breath. ‘I’m going to take her away for a couple of days. There’s a hut I know in one of the mountain passes near Grundarfjördur. It’s totally isolated. If I can keep her there for tomorrow and the day after, that will be long enough.’
‘Until we’ve dealt with Ingólfur Arnarson you mean?’ said Sindri.
Björn nodded.
‘How are you going to persuade her to go there?’ Ísak asked.
Björn winced. ‘Charm. Persuasiveness. And if that doesn’t work, Rohypnol.’
‘Rohypnol? Where did you get that?’ asked Sindri.
‘A mate in Reykjavík. A fisherman.’
‘You have dodgy mates.’
Björn shrugged. ‘Don’t we all?’
‘OK,’ said Ísak. ‘That’s fine for the next couple of days. But what happens after that?’
The student was really irritating Björn. But that was the key question. ‘Ingólfur Arnarson is our last target, right? The climax. Once he has been dealt with I can persuade Harpa there is no point in going to the police. There will be no one left at risk. All she will be doing is putting herself and the rest of us in jail.’
‘Do you think she’ll go with that?’ asked Sindri.
‘She might.’
‘And if she doesn’t?’ Ísak asked.
Björn shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It seems to me the police are going to catch us anyway. They are getting closer. They’ve started asking questions about Ísak. Once we’ve got Ingólfur Arnarson maybe we should just accept what’s coming to us.’
‘No!’ said Ísak. ‘When we started this we never intended to give ourselves up at the end. That’s why we chose to operate abroad. The aim was always to walk away once we were finished.’
‘Maybe we’ll start something,’ said Sindri. ‘You know, a real revolution, not a pots-and-pans one.’
‘I think it will take more time,’ said Ísak. ‘It seems to me that the people are too busy apologizing to the British.’
‘How do you know?’ said Sindri. ‘You’ve been in London.’
‘I can read the Icelandic news sites on the Internet.’
‘Yeah, well, there’s other stuff on the web. Some people are getting really angry. There’s an Icesave meeting this afternoon. We’ll see what happens there.’
‘Are you going?’ said Ísak.
‘Of course I’m going,’ said Sindri. ‘I want to be there when it happens.’
Ísak leaned forward. ‘Look, Sindri. I believe that capitalism is dead as much as you do. But whereas Marx and Engels thought it would die through oppressing the workers, it turns out that it is strangling itself through debt. And it’s here in Iceland where there is way too much debt. We’ve OD’d, we’re the first to go. But it’s going to take time for the people to realize that. Which is why we mustn’t be caught. We need to be around for the next few years to see the revolution through.’
Björn watched the two of them argue. He had no views on a revolution. The idea had appealed briefly at first, but all he had really wanted to do was to make sure that the bastards who had ruined his country were brought to justice. Not all of them, that was impossible, but enough of them to make the point.
‘Which brings me back to Harpa,’ Ísak said. ‘We need a better plan.’
‘Like what?’ said Björn. ‘You’re not suggesting we kill her, are you?’
Ísak held Björn’s eyes.
‘Of course Ísak isn’t suggesting that we kill her,’ Sindri said. ‘Are you, Ísak?’
‘No,’ said Ísak, without conviction.
‘Because she’s a totally innocent bystander,’ Björn said. ‘I mean Julian Lister deserves it. Óskar deserved it. Even Gabríel Örn deserved it. But not Harpa.’
‘Of course not,’ said Sindri. ‘Let’s figure it out once Ingólfur Arnarson has been dealt with, eh?’
They agreed to leave the Pearl one at a time. Björn went first, he had things to do.
Sindri and Ísak stared out over the airfield and the Atlantic beyond.
‘You know we are going to have to do something about Harpa,’ Ísak said. ‘Once he drugs her and drags her off somewhere, she’s not going to keep quiet.’
‘She might,’ said Sindri.
‘She won’t,’ said Ísak. ‘You know she won’t.’
‘We can’t kill her, Ísak. Björn’s right. She’s innocent. I can convince myself that killing Óskar or Julian Lister is necessary, that they deserve to die. But not Harpa. She was just the wrong person at the wrong time.’
‘Sindri, it would be nice if the world worked like that, but you know it doesn’t. If a revolution is to be successful, its leaders must be ruthless. You know that. You’ve read your history. Lenin, Trotsky, Mao, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, even the Africa National Congress in South Africa. There are times when innocent people have to die for the revolution to succeed. Sure, you keep those deaths to a minimum. But you don’t back away from them. Because if you do, you are letting down the people.’
‘Yeah, but this is Iceland, not Russia.’
‘Sindri, I’ve read your book. Three times. It’s good, it’s very good. My father is a member of the Independence Party. He was a Minister. I’ve seen the complacency of the establishment in Iceland, the way they have been seduced by the capitalists, the way that what was one of the most decent, egalitarian societies in Europe has changed into one of the most unequal. My father and his mates were responsible for that. Capitalism is a sickness, and our country has got that sickness very bad. We’re close to death.’
Sindri frowned.
‘You can’t be squeamish, Sindri. You of all people should know that. You taught me that. From the moment that banker Gabríel Örn died, we crossed a line. We can’t go back over it now, not after Óskar Gunnarsson. We’re committed. But at least we are doing it all for a purpose. Don’t sabotage that purpose now. Otherwise everything else we have done becomes a waste of time. Then we really will have been murderers.’
Sindri shook his head and folded his arms. ‘I won’t be a part of killing anybody.’ He corrected himself. ‘Anybody who’s innocent.’
Ísak smiled. ‘Fair enough. I’ll take care of it. I’ve got to disappear anyway, I may as well go up to Grundarfjördur. If I don’t do it there will be no revolution. Capitalism will crush Iceland. And it will be our fault. We will be responsible. Are you going to stop me?’
Sindri didn’t say anything. He avoided Ísak’s eyes.
‘I’m going now,’ said Ísak. ‘You leave in another ten minutes.’
CHAPTER THIRTY
IDENTIFYING THE NURSE was easy. Árni showed the photograph to the woman at reception in the National Hospital. ‘Oh, that’s Íris,’ she said. Within a couple of minutes Árni was in a quiet corner of one of the endless corridors, talking to the woman with the round face and the snub nose.
‘I remember him,’ the nurse said. ‘He’d got tear gas in his eye. He was in quite a lot of pain, that stuff is no joke. He had this idiotic idea that I should get two raw steaks and place them on his eyes. He said he knew where to get some. He was quite insistent.�
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‘Did you do it?’ asked Árni.
‘Of course not,’ said the nurse, glancing at Árni as if he was an idiot.
Árni smiled encouragingly. That happened to him quite a lot. Smile and move on, was his motto.
‘I gave him a solution of water and sodium bisulphate. Tear gas wears off of its own accord in a few minutes.’
‘Did the boy say what his name was?’ Árni asked.
‘He may have done. I don’t remember it if he did.’
‘You didn’t keep a record anywhere? Notes?’
‘No. Just treat one and move on to the next one.’
Pity, Árni thought. ‘Do you recognize any of these people?’ Árni asked, showing the nurse photos of Harpa, Björn and Sindri.
‘No,’ said Íris, studying them. ‘Actually, I think I recognize the big guy with the ponytail. I saw him wandering around in some of those protests.’
‘But you didn’t see him talking to the boy?’
‘No.’ The woman shook her head.
Árni pulled out another photograph, a still from the RÚV video showing Sindri standing behind the nurse as she tended the boy.
‘I see him now, but I didn’t notice him then,’ she said. ‘Or hear what he said.’
Árni replaced the photographs. ‘Thank you for your help.’ As he walked away from the nurse, he considered the next step. He wasn’t actually any closer to identifying the boy.
Suddenly he had a brainwave.
He turned. The nurse was just disappearing around a corner of the corridor.
‘Íris?’ He ran after her.
‘Yes?’
‘One last question. Where did the boy think he could get the steak?’
‘Oh, I remember that. The 101 Hotel. He said he used to work there as a chef.’
Björn drove the pickup to the bakery on Nordurströnd. He knew that what he was about to do would change his relationship with Harpa for ever.
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