Trap

by Lilja Sigurdardóttir

  Sonja took the piece of paper from his hand and turned on her heel. After the stale mustiness inside the house, the crisp, clean air outside was like a cool, refreshing drink. She took a few deep breaths and felt her body relax a little as the oxygen flowed through her veins. It was looking like executing her plan was going to be easier than she had expected.

  17

  As Bragi opened his eyes he sighed with happiness. Valdís had come home and he could feel her presence, even though she wasn’t in the double bed with him, but in the hospital bed that had been set up in the living room. He could smell the ointment Amy used on her all the way through the house. The radio was turned low, playing a Viennese waltz, and he could hear the indistinct sound of Amy’s voice as she talked to Valdís in a mixture of English and Icelandic while she tended to her.

  This was the fourth day that she had spent at home and over these four days his satisfaction had increased dramatically. He had been making plans to bring her back home for a long time; it seemed remarkable to him that it was almost as much of a challenge to take someone out of a nursing home as it was to find them a place in one to begin with. His plan had worked out, though, almost exactly as he had intended it to. Since Sonja’s disappearance, however, the money side of things had become a problem, but he was confident she would show up again – the ties that bound Icelanders to their homeland were strong.

  In addition to that, she was such a unique specimen, with nerves of such steel and so practical in her approach that it had taken him a long time to figure out her methods. A person like her was of too much value to whoever was pulling the strings, they would hardly allow her to stay missing for long. It was a shame, he thought, as he had a certain sympathy for her; it was clear to him that she’d been acting under duress.

  Bragi put on his dressing gown over his pyjamas and went into the living room. Valdís sat on the bed and Amy knelt in front of her, painting her toenails. He smiled. This was how he wanted her final stretch on Earth to be: secure and looked after by people who showed compassion and understanding, and a little spoiling wouldn’t do any harm either. Valdís had spoiled him and the children for all those years.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said, planting a kiss on the top of Valdís’s head.

  Not long ago she had stopped speaking altogether, but she smiled a little and pointed at Amy, crouching in front of her.

  ‘I know,’ Bragi said. ‘Amy really looks after you.’

  Amy looked up and Valdís’s smile broadened. This was as good as it could get. It was as sweet as he had imagined it would be.

  In the kitchen he put some coffee on and dropped two slices of bread in the toaster, and then went back to the bedroom to check his uniform. He was on evening shifts now, so his mornings were relaxed. Before Valdís had come home, he would have spent every free morning on his feet, washing the car or pottering with something that needed to be fixed, but now he enjoyed just being at home, relished being able to relax. That was what Valdís had always done: helped him relax.

  The doorbell rang, and he walked into the hall to open the front door. It was with huge surprise – having just been thinking about her, and wondering when she might show up again – that he saw Sonja standing outside.

  ‘Hello Bragi,’ she said with a small smile.

  He looked her up and down for a moment, taken by how beautifully dressed she was, then, saying hello back, he stepped aside and beckoned her in. He shut the door to the living room, where Valdís and Amy were, and gestured that Sonja should go into the kitchen.

  She took a seat at the kitchen table without a word, while he – equally silent – poured coffee into a cup and put it on the table along with a carton of milk. She splashed milk into her coffee, sipped, and then coughed.

  ‘I could do with your shift timetable for the next month,’ she said, looking up at him calmly.

  He nodded, understanding. He took the printout that hung on the door of the fridge and handed it to her, not hesitating for a moment, even though it meant a betrayal of the values he had held dear throughout his customs career. There was another thing he held dearer: the promises he had made to Valdís and that he had made to himself when they first got married – that he would take care of her in sickness and in health.

  Sonja studied the printout, nodded to herself, folded it and put it in her bag. Her hand came out of the bag holding a phone, which she handed to him.

  ‘I’ll send a heart if everything is all right, and an exclamation mark if anything has gone wrong and I can’t make it. That way you’ll know whether or not to expect me.’

  ‘I’ll see that anyway from the passenger list the Analysis team sends for each shift,’ he said.

  But she shook her head. ‘Sometimes I pull out at the last minute,’ she said. ‘If I get a gut feeling that something’s not right.’

  ‘Very wise,’ Bragi agreed, his own calmness taking him by surprise. Even though he was about to embark on a criminal career, that wasn’t how it felt. ‘I’ll do the same and send an exclamation mark if you need to pull out,’ he said. ‘That’s if the sniffer dogs are brought in unexpectedly or if Analysis is up to anything suspicious.’

  He suddenly remembered the bread he had put in the toaster.

  ‘Would you like some toast?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, please. That would be nice.’

  She sat in silence as he buttered the toast and cut slices of cheese, his thoughts unexpectedly going back to when his sons had been small and he had done the same for them.

  He brought the breakfast over and they sat at opposite sides of the kitchen table and munched for a while without speaking.

  ‘There’s something else,’ she said, as she swallowed her last piece. ‘It would help if I could get rid of the competition. It’s someone else bringing in gear for the same people. And what’s good for me is good for you.’

  ‘You have a name?’

  ‘I do.’

  She took a slip of paper from her bag and handed it to him. He read it, imprinted Axel Jónsson’s name on his memory, screwed up the paper and tossed it into the kitchen sink.

  ‘I’ll check him out,’ he said, and got to his feet.

  ‘The same terms as before,’ she said. ‘You get what you want.’

  Bragi grunted his agreement. He knew he could trust her. He had known that from the moment he had come home to find the envelope she had dropped though his letterbox; an envelope stuffed with cash and a hand-written apology.

  ‘My wife has come home,’ he said. ‘She has advanced Alzheimer’s. I want her to be here with me for the time she has left.’

  She looked into his eyes and smiled quickly.

  ‘That’s beautiful,’ she said. ‘It’s a wonderful thing to love someone so much.’

  18

  ‘You look cheerful,’ Elvar, the defence lawyer, said, smiling happily.

  Agla gave him a smile back and knew perfectly well what was going through his mind. She had been far from cheerful recently. A couple of times he had tried to cheer her up in an avuncular tone that, oddly enough, suited this young man surprisingly well. But it hadn’t helped. She had stuck with the bottle and the powder, letting his words wash over her without taking the slightest notice. With hindsight, it was clear that he had been getting nervous at the prospect of defending her.

  ‘Thanks. I’m feeling a lot brighter,’ she said. ‘Everything you’ve been doing looks good and you can go ahead and take on all the assistants you need for this.’

  Elvar nodded. ‘I’ve brought in an accountant to go over things with me, and it would be good to have one more person, mainly to prepare for the bank’s damages case.’

  Elvar’s hand dropped onto the pile of documents on his desk so Agla could see just how much paperwork needed to be examined to prepare for the damages lawsuit.

  ‘Don’t worry too much about that,’ she said. ‘It needs minimal attention. The case will be dismissed by the county court.’

  ‘What?’ Elvar said and stared
at her doubtfully.

  ‘That’s right,’ Agla assured him. ‘Put all your effort into my defence; the damages claim doesn’t matter.’

  She had no way of explaining it in any greater detail, as she had no idea herself how exactly the bank’s former chief executive, Jóhann, was going to get the case thrown out. But it was a favour he had promised her, and she presumed he’d manage it through his various contacts.

  ‘How do you know it’ll be dismissed?’ Elvar said. ‘How…?’ He seemed for a moment to be lost for words. ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘Let’s just say that the elves made me a New Year’s promise,’ Agla said, and winked.

  He stared at her, his face alive with questions, slowly fading into a semblance of disappointment. That was one of the things she liked so much about him: he never showed that he was judging her, he just showed disappointment. His expression was that of a parent who has realised, through the discovery that a pack of biscuits has been stolen from the corner shop, that their offspring has failed to inherit their own moral compass.

  ‘I guess I don’t want to know any more about this,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ she replied. ‘You don’t.’ She felt a brief pang of guilt, and wanted to do something to make amends, but the moment passed.

  ‘It’ll be fine, Elvar,’ she said and watched as he seemed to sag in his chair, as if all the energy had been drawn from his young body, out through his smartly pressed clothes.

  She felt sorry for him. He had been keen to take on her defence. It was every young lawyer’s dream to defend a ‘bankster’, to get to grips with a big case, to carve a career around events that would go down in history. But when it came down to it, it was as if he had somehow decided that she was innocent, that justice was on her side and he simply needed to demonstrate that. Maybe it was because she was a woman. Maybe he had come to the conclusion that she was a victim in all this, that she had inadvertently managed to get caught up in the bank management’s market manipulation, and that he could somehow save her.

  But over the last few months, as the reality became clearer, it seemed that little by little his aspiration to see justice done had ebbed away. Agla sighed. It was tough being young, she thought. By the time her defence was ready, there would doubtless be little left of his lofty ideals.

  19

  There was a queue at Múlakaffi, even though it was almost one o’clock, but Sonja decided to put up with the wait. She was longing for a proper meal, and there was fried fish on today’s menu: old-fashioned, fresh-caught fish fried in breadcrumbs with onions and potatoes, just like her mother had always made. The thought of her mother gave her a moment’s heartache, but it passed quickly. She was used to directing her thoughts away from all the strife between them and concentrating on something else. It was disconcerting, though, that it was often food that, in some way or another, triggered thoughts of her mother.

  She took a seat by the door and wondered if she would be able to finish the portion piled high on her plate. On any normal day the toast and cheese with Bragi would have kept her going into the afternoon, but this time the jet lag was catching up with her, and as she became tired it was as if her body cried out for extra fuel and her appetite doubled. The café was full of the tradesmen who habitually came for the solid food that would keep them going through a day of hard work. There was one other woman in the place, dressed in office clothes – presumably someone working for a company in the district. She toyed with the idea of what these people might be thinking about her. She was probably too smartly dressed for Múlakaffi. Normally she made an effort not to stand out too much from the crowd, not to be too noticeable, but this time she was too tired to worry about it.

  She made short work of the fish, as she did so, making a mental list of everything she would need to do before next week’s trip. She would need to book somewhere to stay in Amsterdam, buy a vacuum-packing machine online and use the PayPal account to pay for it all. That was a safer option than using a credit card, as the Icelandic authorities were still enforcing currency controls – most likely as a pretext for snooping into people’s affairs – and there was always the chance that the purchase of a vacuum-packing machine in Amsterdam could attract attention. She would need to book flights, and the return one would have to be on a day when Bragi would be on duty. She would also need to get her sun-bleached hair freshened up; it paid dividends to look smart, as an unkempt appearance at customs was as good as asking for trouble. And she would have to get in touch with Adam, to let him have the new mobile number and to get the contact number for the pick-up in Amsterdam. She would try to talk to him about Tómas. She couldn’t bear to be without Tómas for long. That would simply hurt too much.

  20

  The lunchtime rush hadn’t begun as Agla walked tentatively into the changing room at the Laugardalur outdoor swimming baths. Decades had passed since she had last swum. It took her a while to work out how the metal disk the woman at reception had handed her fitted the locker door, and a helpful traveller showed her how it was done. The locks on the old lockers had been easier to deal with. It was just as well that little else had changed since her last visit: so she easily found the showers; she rolled up her towel and put it on the towel rack that was where it had always been and stood under the nearest shower.

  A few nervous foreigners were taking showers behind curtains, which were also something new – the last time she had been here, the showers had been open. Although a few stalls had been fitted with these curtains, the clearly Icelandic women went straight to the open shower stalls they were used to. They were mainly older women, on their way back in from the pool and their morning gossip session in one of the hot tubs. Agla noticed that they all wore Speedo or Adidas swimsuits, so her rose-patterned one was clearly far behind the times. She wondered whether to wrap herself in her towel and go to reception to rent a costume, something dark blue or black – something less noticeable – but she decided against it. Going to reception with a problem was going to turn more heads than being seen on the poolside in a brightly coloured outfit. And she was here on an errand, not to attract any kind of attention.

  She emerged from the changing room at the same moment as the former bank manager, Jóhann, appeared from the men’s changing room. They nodded to each other and both headed outside, towards the hot tubs, neither of them having to wait for a signal from the other, but making their way, almost step for step, to the furthest hot tub from the building – the hottest one, which was somehow fitting to start with.

  Agla struggled to get into the water, her feet numb with cold from the short walk along the ice-cold poolside, and she felt herself smart in the searingly hot water. Jóhann waded in as if he were used to it, bellowing and puffing. That was the way he did everything, with fuss and noise. Agla had found a seat and was just getting comfortable when Adam came along. He was as good-looking without clothes as he was in them – his body was lean and he carried himself well, as if he completely trusted his bare feet not to take a false step or slip on the ice that formed in the steam by the side of the pool. He stepped into the tub and walked down the steps and into the water without catching his breath or his expression changing, as if the temperature change had no effect on him.

  He nodded to Jóhann and focused on Agla. ‘Hello,’ he said, checking out her body with such a piercing gaze that Agla could almost hear what he was thinking: What does she have that I don’t?

  Even if he had asked it out loud, she could not have given him an answer. She could have compiled a long list of Sonja’s delightful attributes, but she still had no idea what it was that Sonja had seen in her. That remained a mystery.

  This wasn’t a comfortable place to be. She would have been happier not being so scantily dressed in front of Adam, but this was the only place she could think of that she could be certain neither of them could hide a microphone. Jóhann was notorious for the recordings that he used ruthlessly, both to get the better of business rivals and to keep his own staff in line.
This was exactly the kind of affair in which it would pay not to take such risks.

  ‘Ingimar came to see me,’ she said. It was as well to get straight to the point. She would be boiled alive if she had to stay for long in this heat.

  ‘What was that all about?’ Jóhann snapped, just as Adam muttered, ‘Shit.’

  ‘You’re toxic, Jóhann,’ she replied. ‘You’re being investigated for the third time so there’s nothing you can do for him.’

  Jóhann hung his head and mumbled something unintelligible.

  ‘And Adam has been giving him chickenfeed,’ she continued.

  ‘That’s because I’m dealing with creditors who are just as tough as he is,’ Adam hissed. ‘We agreed that it was a priority to keep them sweet.’ The veins in his neck bulged in anger and beneath the water’s surface he clenched his fists as if he needed to use force to keep them from punching her face.

  ‘Ingimar has a proposition,’ Agla said. ‘Something that could free us of some of the big debt – maybe even all of it if we play our cards right.’

  She could almost see Adam’s anger subside at her words. But Jóhann got straight to the point.

  ‘What kind of proposition?’ Jóhann asked and Agla toyed for a moment with the idea of telling him about the version she had thought over in response to Ingimar’s proposal – to hear his thoughts on it. That had been the way they had done things when they had worked together, running ideas past each other, each considering the other’s judgement. But she decided against it. It would be safer if she was the only one to know how the game would be played out.

  ‘Ingimar suggests that I deal with his side of things and you two keep the special prosecutor off my back. Look after your own people.’

  ‘You’re already in the shit,’ Adam said, and she could make out a grin, threatening to appear on his face.

  ‘Yes and no,’ Agla said. ‘The investigation as far as my affairs are concerned is over – as long as I’m not caught up in any other cases. So I only need to deal with one prosecution and one sentence in the next few years. Apart from that, I’m free.’