Michael Ridpath - 66 Degrees North

‘Oh.’ Hallgrímur wasn’t sure he liked the sound of this story.

‘Thurídur’s brother was a great chieftain called Snorri who lived at Helgafell.’

‘Yes, you have told me about him.’

‘Well, Snorri was angry with Björn and had him outlawed so he had to leave Iceland.’

‘That was then,’ Hallgrímur said. ‘My father couldn’t have got your father outlawed. That doesn’t happen any more.’

Benedikt ignored him. ‘A few years later Björn returned to Breidavík and went back to seeing Thurídur. This time Snorri sent a slave to kill Björn, but Björn caught the slave and had him killed instead. There was a big battle between the families of Björn and Snorri on the ice below Helgafell. In the end Björn left Iceland of his own accord. He ended up in America with the Skraelings.’

‘Perhaps your father should have gone to America,’ said Hallgrímur.

Benedikt turned away from the altar to look straight at Hallgrímur. ‘Perhaps Björn should have killed Snorri.’

Friday, 18 September 2009

Magnus carried the two cups of coffee from the counter and sat down opposite Sigurbjörg. They were in a café on Borgartún. He had called her early, catching her just as she arrived in her office, and she had agreed to see him for a few minutes before the working day began in earnest.

He had woken up at four-thirty thinking about what Sigurbjörg had told him back in April, and had been unable to get back to sleep. Denial wasn’t going to work. He had heard what he had heard and he was going to have to make sense of it. The sooner the better.

The café was busy with office workers loading up on caffeine, mostly to go, so there were a few seats available.

‘I’m glad you called,’ said Sibba in English. ‘I didn’t think you would.’

‘Neither did I,’ said Magnus. ‘It was kinda weird seeing you yesterday.’

‘OBG is a good client of our firm’s, as you can imagine. Do you want to ask me about Óskar Gunnarsson? That might be tricky.’

‘No, no.’ Magnus took a deep breath. ‘I wanted to talk about our family.’

‘I wondered,’ said Sibba. ‘Have you seen any of them since you’ve been here?’

‘Only you that once.’

‘I can understand why you would want to avoid them, especially after the way Grandpa treated you last time you were here.’

Magnus had summoned up the courage to travel back to Iceland when he was twenty, just after his father died. He had hoped to achieve some kind of reconciliation with his mother’s family. It hadn’t worked: the trip was as painful as he had feared.

‘Have you been up to Bjarnarhöfn recently?’ Magnus asked.

‘Yes. I took my husband and the kids to stay in Stykkishólmur for a few days in July with Uncle Ingvar. He’s a doctor at the hospital there. But we visited Grandpa and Grandma a few times.’

‘How are they?’

‘Very good, considering their age. They both still have all their marbles. And Grandpa still potters about on the farm.’

‘But Uncle Kolbeinn does most of the work?’

‘Oh, yes. And he lives in the farmhouse. Grandpa and Grandma have moved into one of the smaller houses.’

Bjarnarhöfn was made up of a number of buildings: barns, three houses and of course the little church down towards the fjord.

‘Has he changed much?’

‘No. He’s pretty much set in his ways.’

‘The old bastard,’ Magnus muttered.

Sibba looked sympathetic. ‘You didn’t enjoy your time at Bjarnarhöfn, eh?’

‘No. You were lucky growing up in Canada, away from them.’

‘I remember visiting when I was a child,’ Sibba said. ‘In fact, I remember staying at Bjarnarhöfn when you and Óli were there. You were both very quiet. Like you were scared of Grandpa.’

‘We were. Especially Óli.’ Magnus winced. ‘It’s still difficult to think about it now. You know Óli and I never talked about it after we went to America? It’s like the whole four-year period was blanked out of our minds.’

‘Until I came along?’ Sibba said. ‘I’m sorry. I should never have told you about your father and the other woman. It just didn’t occur to me that you wouldn’t know, it’s all that the rest of the family ever talked about. But of course I was older than you: you and Óli were just little kids.’

‘I’m glad you did, Sibba. In fact, that’s what I want to ask you about.’

‘Are you sure?’ Sibba said.

‘Yes.’ Magnus nodded. ‘I need to find out what happened in my parents’ lives. It’s been nagging at me ever since Dad was murdered.’

Sibba’s eyebrows rose in surprise. ‘This doesn’t have anything to do with that , does it?’

‘I doubt it. But I’m a cop, I like to ask questions until I get answers. You are the only member of the family I think I could talk to. Grandpa has turned the others pretty much against me.’

Hallgrímur, Magnus’s grandfather, had three sons and a daughter: Vilhjálmur the eldest, who had emigrated to Canada in his twenties, Kolbeinn, Ingvar and Margrét, Magnus’s mother. Sibba was Vilhjálmur’s daughter who had grown up and been educated in Canada, but had moved to Iceland after university, gone to law school and then on to a career as a lawyer in Reykjavík. Magnus had always liked her the most of his mother’s family.

She looked at Magnus closely. ‘So, fire away. I’m not sure how much I can help you.’

Magnus sipped his coffee. ‘Do you know who the other woman was?’

‘I did, but… no… I forget her name,’ Sibba winced, struggling to remember. She shook her head. ‘No. It will come to me. She was Aunt Margrét’s best friend from school. She lived in Stykkishólmur. They both went to teacher training school in Reykjavík.’

‘Was she teaching at the same school as Mom?’

‘No idea.’

‘Did you ever meet her?’

‘No. But I heard about her. I could ask my father, if you like?’

‘That would be great. But do me a favour. Don’t tell him that it was me asking.’

‘OK,’ said Sibba, reluctantly. She checked her watch. ‘I’ve got to go. I’ve got a meeting in five minutes.’

She stood up and kissed Magnus on the cheek. It was a nice gesture. Magnus was short of family in Iceland: there were none left on his father’s side. This was the closest he got.

‘Are you sure you want to know all this?’ she asked.

Magnus nodded. Ingileif was right. ‘I’m sure.’

Björn rode his bike the short distance from Seltjarnarnes down to the harbour. Harpa had left early for the bakery, dropping Markús off with her mother on the way. Björn had told Harpa he was going back to Grundarfjördur to join a trawler that was going out for a couple of days. He had an hour or two to kill, so he went down to his favourite place in Reykjavík.

He parked his bike and strolled along the quayside. There were not many boats around: a large Russian trawler, and a couple from the Westman Islands, plus a few much smaller vessels. The Old Harbour in Reykjavík was of course much larger than Grundarfjördur, but these days it seemed quieter. The concentration of fishing quotas in fewer and fewer hands over the previous twenty-five years meant that there were fewer boats, and those boats that were around spent more time at sea. It was all much more efficient, and Iceland was one of the very few countries in the world whose fishermen made money rather than consuming government subsidies. But this profitability had come at a cost: boats scrapped, fishermen losing their jobs, sometimes whole communities shut down.

Until the kreppa , Björn had been a beneficiary of all this. His uncle in Grundarfjördur had been one of the original recipients of a quota, which had been granted to those men who were fishing between the years 1980 and 1983. The quota represented the right to fish a certain proportion of a total amount of catch set each year by the Marine Research Institute and the Ministry of Fisheries, depending on the level of fish stocks. The fortunate ‘quota kings’ as they soon became known, had either continued to fish, or sold out to larger companies for millions, or sometimes hundreds of millions of krónur. Einar, Harpa’s father, had done just that. Björn’s uncle had sold his quota and his boat, Lundi , to Björn at a low price, but even so, Björn had had to borrow heavily from the bank.