Trap

by Lilja Sigurdardóttir

  Her tears began to flow freely as soon as she submerged herself in the hot water. Tómas’s dismay as it dawned on him that he was expected to go with his father, the vindictive grin on Adam’s face as he told her she could find her own way into town, and her own despair all now assailed her mercilessly. She was back at zero, back at square one, but even worse off than before. There was no chance now of easily negotiating access to Tómas with Adam. She would be lucky to see him at all. Life without Tómas was going to be almost unbearably empty.

  What’s more she was expected to travel to Amsterdam the following week and bring back a big shipment. That’s the way it would be over the coming weeks and months, just as it had been during the months before she had made a run for it.

  She sank deeper into the hot water, immersing herself completely. She held her breath until she felt that her lungs were about to burst, then exhaled underwater, sending a flurry of air bubbles to the surface. She waited for a moment in the complete silence, her mind on the border between consciousness and some kind of intangible reality. By the time she had hauled herself up, out of the water, and had filled her lungs again, she had a new plan; a new strategy to escape from the trap.

  13

  ‘Why’s he doing that?’ Tómas asked, his eyes darting in confusion from Sponge to Húni Thór and his father as they rocked with laughter. He had been playing with Teddy from the moment they arrived home from the airport that morning, and the dog had been obedient and delighted to see him, his tail wagging as he shared the breakfast his father prepared.

  The doorbell rang and as soon as Rikki the Sponge and Húni Thór came in, the dog went wild. He jumped at Sponge, energetically rooting around him, not with delight as he had when Tómas had come home, but sniffing around him and pushing his nose into him. Then he froze, standing still and staring at Sponge, and occasionally barking and scratching at him. No matter how much Tómas tried to get him to come into his bedroom, the dog seemed mesmerised. It wasn’t funny, Tómas thought, although his father and his two friends laughed and laughed as if this was the funniest thing in town.

  ‘Maybe he’s sick,’ Tómas said, and a shadow of anxiety settled on his heart.

  ‘He’s not sick,’ his father said, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye.

  ‘Why are you laughing? It’s not funny,’ Tómas said, trying to pull the dog away from Sponge.

  ‘Well, Tómas, I was wondering if we shouldn’t call him Door Sniffer.’

  They burst out laughing again – Sponge so hard that he had to hold on to one of the kitchen units to stop himself from collapsing onto the floor.

  Tómas was furious. ‘He’s not called Door Sniffer! That’s one of the Yule Lads!’

  ‘Or we could call him Pointer?’ Sponge suggested, still weak with laughter.

  ‘Or Nosy?’ Húni Thór added.

  ‘Yeah, or Sherlock?’

  ‘Stop it!’ Tómas yelled. ‘His name’s Teddy! And I’m taking him with me to Mum when I go and live with her, because you keep laughing at him!’

  His father’s laughter ended abruptly. He took the ball that he had said the dog could only play with on special occasions, patted his leg and tugged at the lead, and Teddy caught the ball, magically losing interest in Sponge.

  ‘Take him into your bedroom and let him play with the special ball,’ his father said. ‘The dog lives here. He’s not going to your mother’s place.’

  ‘No, that’s not a good idea,’ Sponge added, his expression serious until he could no longer contain his laughter.

  Tómas could hear them laughing in the kitchen as he shut his bedroom door behind him and threw the special ball for Teddy.

  14

  Agla was walking on air as she emerged from her car outside her house. The sky had shaken off the clouds and the sun shone through, and even though it was low in the sky, she felt this was a good omen. She didn’t make a habit of thinking along such lines. She wasn’t the superstitious type, unlike Sonja, who could see portents of all kinds of events everywhere. But Agla was happy and that chimed perfectly with the sun, which was making a valiant effort to climb into the sky. Ingimar’s proposition the previous night now seemed less ridiculous than it had as she had lain awake after he’d left. It could even provide a way out of her predicament. It was as if the sunshine and Sonja had between them triggered a spark of hope inside her.

  She plucked the newspapers from the post box, took them upstairs, dropped them on the table and made some coffee. While Sonja had been decidedly reserved when they parted, and in fact hadn’t said much at all, at least she was back and had come to Agla for help. That had to mean something. And she hadn’t pushed Agla’s hand off her leg; instead she’d held it in place and absently stroked the back of it. That had to prove something. This had all been through her mind so many times over the years. From the moment they had first touched there had been a desire in her for Sonja that was more powerful than anything she had experienced before, but at the same time she had longed for some event that would bring their relationship to an end before anyone could find out about it. When it had ended – with Sonja’s departure – she had experienced relief blended with pain; a greater anguish than she ever could have imagined. Now, though, she was certain what it was she wanted – even if the feeling remained that her desire was something shameful.

  She took off her jacket, hung it over a chair and opened the first newspaper … to see a picture of herself in handcuffs, being led into the special prosecutor’s office. The newspapers seemed to get a perverse pleasure from using this same photo again and again, whenever there was an opportunity. It was as if this was the only picture of her they had. The pictures of Jóhann and Adam were considerably more tasteful. Jóhann looked to be striding along a street, respectable in an overcoat and with his tie knotted smartly and the bank’s logo pasted in. It had to be an old photo, because in it he had a good deal more hair than he did now. Adam’s picture was a passport photo. Agla avoided looking at it, determined not to let the sight of Adam and all the guilt that it summoned up spoil the joy of having seen Sonja again.

  Although she knew well that Sonja and Adam’s marriage had already been rocky by the time she appeared on the scene, she was still the one who was the homewrecker. And while Sonja had repeatedly told her that she was mistaken, this seemed to be Adam’s take on things. The times they had met after the ruinous financial crisis, after the bank had collapsed, and after Adam had walked in on her and Sonja in bed together, she had never failed to see a look of furious accusation in his eyes.

  Agla scanned the article devoted to the market manipulation case against her, Jóhann, and Davíð, one of Adam’s staff, and she snorted with derision. The journalists had taken a report of one meeting at the bank, which they had found in the special prosecutor’s documents, and represented it as some kind of key moment – the turning point when a conspiracy had been set in motion, sending money around the world and back again in order to buy shares in the bank itself to lift its share price. How little they knew, she thought, and how excited they got over something so trivial. It was such a small matter compared to the overall picture. It wasn’t easy to imagine what the headlines would be if the media ever smelled the slightest whiff of the truth.

  15

  Agla remembered the meeting clearly. What the newspaper had reported was correct: Jóhann had brought out the champagne at the end of the meeting, and Adam had spent most of it laughing like a man possessed. But he had been coked up to the eyeballs and could hardly sit still. The rest of the article was complete rubbish, though. The money they were accused of handling had indeed already been on its round-the-world trip, but that wasn’t what they had discussed.

  ‘Fetch the dwarves,’ Jóhann had ordered, and Davíð immediately got to his feet, went to his office and returned with the notebook. ‘We’ll divide it up between them,’ Jóhann added, lighting a cigar and puffing out a cloud of smoke as Davíð began to read aloud which companies would have to share the burden
of the majority of the bank’s debts; these were the ‘dwarves’, their names derived from Norse mythology.

  ‘Dvalin, Bofur, Bombur, Nóri, Onar, Mjothvithnir, Nali, Víli, Hannar, Austri, Vestri—’

  ‘No. Not Vestri,’ Jóhann broke in. ‘I’ll keep Vestri for myself. Because I’m from the west.’

  Adam laughed loudly, and the boys dutifully laughed with him.

  ‘Draupnir, Hor, Hlévang, Gloin,’ Davíð continued. ‘Yngvi, Eikinskjaldi, Fjalar, Frosti, Finn and Lofar.’

  ‘Excellent!’ Jóhann said with deep satisfaction, dropping his cigar into his coffee cup. Agla knew he found smoking during meetings a particular pleasure, probably because smoking in the building was completely outlawed. Nobody else dared bring tobacco in, let alone light it up.

  ‘There are two ways to straighten out the finances, my children. You either increase revenue or reduce the debt. That’s basic household bookkeeping.’

  With the words household bookkeeping he sent Agla a roguish glance and the boys laughed. No meeting was worth having without making at least one joke at her expense. She didn’t care. They needed it to bolster their self-confidence, to convince themselves that they were better, cleverer and smarter than anyone else, and it didn’t worry her that she was used as the butt of the occasional joke. Jóhann had a knack of keeping on top of their weak points. They were young and greedy, and used so much aftershave that it was sometimes difficult to breathe during meetings with them. Without question, every one of them would have laid down his life for Jóhann.

  ‘You’ll work with the loans department to transfer it all, and make sure it all goes smoothly, won’t you?’ Jóhann whispered to her as he eased the cork out of the first champagne bottle with a small pop. He poured several glasses and handed them around.

  ‘Cheers!’ he thundered, grinning broadly. ‘Here’s to a positive outlook for the bank in the quarterly report!’

  16

  Sonja was busy. Now that she had formed a plan in her mind, she could not relax until she started working on it. She had taken out all the garbage, emptied the laundry basket into the washing machine, opened all the windows and burned one joss stick after another until the smell in the apartment was bearable.

  Now she searched through the wardrobe for something she could wear. Most of her everyday clothes, jeans and T-shirts, had been left behind in the trailer in Florida, but there were three sets of better clothes in the wardrobe, the clothes she wore for overseas trips. The reality was that these were a costume, an outer shell that projected the persona of a woman who could hardly have been more dissimilar to her real self – someone who had never finished college and had drifted into the security of marriage without too much thought; who was passing herself off as a corporate suit, an educated and determined woman with a business career; a woman with vision, a woman who knew what she wanted. She had even gone so far as to establish a fake company, SG Software, as her cover. It provided the reasons for her frequent trips overseas and was a way of laundering the proceeds of what she brought into the country.

  She selected some black trousers, then took a jacket that was part of a grey suit and put it on over a black T-shirt. She put a touch of powder on her cheeks and a little make-up around her eyes, then wound a grey scarf round her neck and put on the silver earrings Agla had given her such a long time ago. The image looking back at her from the mirror looked convincing and smart, but discreetly so.

  She stopped at a filling station on Bústaðavegur, overlooking the Fossvogur valley, which was usually thought of as one of Reykjavík´s greenest spots, but was now bare, with the trees leafless, still in their deep winter sleep. Her mind went back to Florida for a moment – to the year-long greenery it had taken her only a few weeks to take for granted.

  She entered the station and bought two pay-as-you-go SIM cards. One went into her old mobile phone and the other into the phone she had bought for Tómas, but which Adam had handed back, saying that the boy was too young to have it. These were the numbers she would use for anything to do with bringing in merchandise. After a while she would dispose of these and replace them with other anonymous, untraceable numbers. That was how it worked. It was laziness and inattention to this kind of detail that resulted in people being caught out. But she wasn’t someone who got the details wrong.

  As she approached it, Thorgeir’s house looked very different from the last time she had been here. Back then there had been a Christmas party in full swing and an animated reindeer festooned with lights had stood outside. Now the grass was stiff with frost, and the whole district was quiet, the suburb’s inhabitants all at work at this time of the afternoon. The house showed no signs of life. But after she had rung the bell three times with no response and was about to try the door handle, the door opened and Thorgeir peered out. He was dressed in slippers and a checked dressing gown, and his hair was scruffily awry. He had the look of an old man and Sonja had the sudden feeling that the dressing gown and slippers suited his lined face better than the tailored suits he normally wore.

  ‘You,’ he said, looking her up and down with little interest. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘A proposition for you,’ Sonja replied.

  Thorgeir stood aside without replying, indicating that she could come in. She followed him along the corridor, past the kitchen and into the living room. The curtains were drawn across the long picture window, so the room was dark apart from the glow of a single lamp.

  ‘You’re sitting here in the dark,’ she said. It wasn’t a question; it was a statement directed at the wretched figure he presented.

  ‘Yeah. I’ve been out of the loop since I was arrested. They haven’t spoken to me since I was released from custody,’ he said. ‘And they got themselves another lawyer while I spend my time here like a condemned man. And that fucking mouthy bastard Rikki the Sponge is back in with them.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Sonja raised an eyebrow as she looked around for somewhere to sit. Thorgeir swept a pile of clothes off the leather sofa and waved her towards it.

  ‘Why’s Rikki called Sponge?’ she asked pleasantly, as if trying to make conversation over an awkward cup of coffee.

  ‘You mean you don’t know?’

  ‘No. It’s only recently I found out they call him Sponge.’

  ‘Then I’m certainly not the one to explain it to you,’ Thorgeir snorted as he dropped into an armchair, on top of the clothes and the pizza box that already occupied it.

  ‘Fair enough,’ Sonja said and leaned forwards to make sure she had eye contact with him. It wasn’t easy, as he constantly looked aside and his gaze flitted around the room as if he was following butterflies.

  Coming down off the coke, Sonja thought to herself, deciding that wouldn’t do any harm. At least it was going to be better than having him pumped up with self-important arrogance.

  ‘We could work together, the two of us,’ she said, trying hard to make her voice sound friendly as she spoke to this man who she hated so deeply. He had been Adam’s ally; together they’d tricked her, so she had no doubt that a large portion of the misery she had recently endured could be laid at Thorgeir’s door. But now she had to replace hatred with pragmatism.

  ‘I can’t get free of Adam,’ she said, tensely conscious of the risk she was taking in revealing her thoughts to Thorgeir. ‘So my only option is to find some kind of hold over him. And for that to happen I need to be a more important link in the chain.’

  Thorgeir’s tiny, narrowed eyes stopped moving for a moment and he stared at a point above her head while he thought.

  ‘You want to stamp out the competition,’ he said, looking into her face now and smiling. Sonja nodded and he laughed. ‘Fucking hell, but you’re a piece of work! Adam has no idea what kind of a fucking witch he’s dealing with.’ He paused, calculating. ‘I’m in for a quarter of your take.’

  ‘A quarter’s too much,’ Sonja said. In her mind she’d already established her negotiating position. ‘Let’s say a tenth. And if we’re smart,
we might be able to take out their new lawyer so you get your old job back.’

  Thorgeir jumped to his feet and started pacing back and forth in front of her. From his face Sonja could tell he was thinking over his options. If he said no, she was in trouble – having now revealed her plans to him.

  To her relief he replied in an upbeat, happy tone of voice. ‘Add some merchandise on top of my share and we’re talking.’

  Sonja didn’t hesitate. ‘Done,’ she said. It would be no problem to let him have a small amount of cocaine. She always diluted each shipment anyway.

  ‘This cunt pushes a hard bargain,’ Thorgeir laughed, extending a hand to shake on the deal, but she stood up without paying his outstretched hand any attention.

  ‘My name’s not cunt. My name’s Sonja,’ she said sharply.

  ‘Okay, okay,’ he said, his hands spread wide, and he laughed as he followed her to the front door.

  She turned, looked into his eyes and waited. He seemed to have forgotten what they had just agreed a moment before. A hard comedown from coke, Sonja thought and pointed towards the telephone table by the door, where a notepad lay.

  ‘Yeah, of course.’ He opened the table drawer and rooted through it for something to write with. He finally found a pen and scrawled down a name, then ripped the sheet from the pad and handed it to her. ‘I’ll give you the other name when you’ve proved you keep your word.’

  ‘The other one?’ she said in surprise. ‘You mean there’s only two others who are importing?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Thorgeir said and laughed. ‘How much coke do you think is needed in Iceland?’

  ‘A lot,’ Sonja said, still in a state of surprised shock. ‘I thought there was plenty of demand.’

  ‘There are a few big customers who get through a kilo or more a year, but most of them are just after a few grams. So there are no big amounts needed.’