Michael Ridpath - 66 Degrees North

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 translating 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.’

‘Let me guess,’ said Sharon. ‘One of yours didn’t.’

‘My father was an American soldier of some kind at Keflavík air base. I never met him. My mother never talks about him. But because of him people don’t believe that I am who I am.’

‘I believe you are an Icelander, Vigdís,’ Sharon said. ‘A very nice Icelander. And a good copper. That’s important, you know.’

‘Have you ever been to America?’ Ingileif asked. They were all speaking English now.

‘Not yet.’ Vigdís tried and failed to suppress a smile.

Ingileif noticed. ‘But?’

‘I’m going next week. Tuesday. To Nýja Jórvík . New York.’

‘What are you going to see?’ Árni asked.

‘ Who are you going to see?’ Ingileif corrected him.

‘A guy,’ Vigdís admitted.

‘Not an American, surely?’ said Magnus.

‘No, an Icelander,’ said Vigdís. Her smile broadened. ‘He’s the brother of an old friend from Keflavík. He works for a TV company. I met him when he was visiting his family here over the summer.’

‘Sounds good,’ said Piper.

‘How are you going to deal with the language issues?’ Magnus asked.

‘She’ll be OK,’ said Árni. ‘As long as she stays drunk all the time, she can speak English.’

‘I’ll have to think about that,’ said Vigdís. ‘You’re right, it’s an important point of principle.’

A phone chirped from somewhere. Everyone glanced at each other, then Sharon reached into her bag. ‘Hello.’

She listened and straightened up. ‘This is DS Piper,’ she said, carefully. Magnus felt sorry for her. It was always tough getting a call from the station when you had had a few.

‘Yes, Charlie is my son… You are holding him for what?… Tooting police station?… He did what to an officer?… Did you call my husband?… The problem is I’m not in the country at the moment, I’m in Iceland… If I were you I would lock him up and throw away the key.’ She hung up.

‘Trouble at home?’ asked Ingileif.

‘Charlie is in trouble again. He thinks he can rely on me to bail him out, literally. But not this time. This time he’s going to get what’s coming to him.’ She leaned back into the bench and closed her eyes.

Her phone rang again. She ignored it. ‘Is she asleep?’ said Ingileif.

Magnus picked up the phone. ‘Hello?’

‘Can I speak to my mum?’ It was a young male voice.

‘She’s kinda busy right now,’ said Magnus, glancing at the woman lolling opposite him.

‘Who the fuck are you?’ the voice shouted. ‘Are you shagging my mum? I want to speak to her!’

‘One moment.’ He put his hand over his phone. ‘Sharon? It’s your son.’

Sharon opened her eyes. ‘You know what? Tell him I’ll talk to him in the morning.’ She closed her eyes again.

‘Night, night, Charlie,’ Magnus said. ‘Sleep well.’

May 1940

THE SUN WAS shining over Ólafsvík as Benedikt rode Skjona out of the town back towards Hraun. He had been representing his family at his cousin Thorgils’s confirmation – his mother couldn’t afford to spend the time away from the farm.

The talk in Ólafsvík had been all about the invasion of Iceland the previous week by the British. Opinion was divided. Some people thought it was better to be invaded by the British than the Germans. Others saw no reason why Iceland couldn’t be left alone, they had no part in a war fought on a continent a thousand kilometres away. But everyone was hoping for a boom to match that of the Kaiser’s war. Fish, wool and lamb prices were already rising, and people thought that with the British around, Icelandic exports would be protected.

Of course no one had actually seen a British soldier. They were all two hundred kilometres away in Reykjavík. Benedikt smiled to himself. He could imagine Hallgrímur preparing himself to fight off any British invaders that tried to cross the lava field to Bjarnarhöfn.