Michael Ridpath: 66 Degrees North

‘Like Frikki I have lost my job.’

‘Jesus!’ Sindri snorted. ‘Another one!’

‘And what job was that?’ Ísak asked quietly.

Harpa could feel herself blushing. Embarrassment. Shame. Guilt. They all washed over her. She felt they were all looking at her, but she avoided them, staring down into her glass of brandy, letting her dark curly hair flop down to hide her eyes.

There was silence. Björn coughed. She looked up to meet his eyes.

She had to accept who she was. What she and people like her had done. How she had been used as well.

‘I was a banker. I worked for Ódinsbanki until two months ago when I was fired by my boyfriend. Somehow I never quite managed to get hold of all the cash everyone else had. And what cash I did have was tied up in Ódinsbanki shares which are now worthless.’

‘Didn’t you see it coming?’ asked Ísak.

‘No. No, I didn’t,’ said Harpa. ‘I believed it all. The story that we were all financial geniuses, younger and quicker and smarter than the others. That we were the Viking Raiders of the twenty-first century. That we took calculated risks and won. That the wealth was here to stay. That this was just the beginning of the prosperity, not the end.’ She shook her head. ‘I was wrong. Sorry.’

There was silence for a moment.

‘Capitalism carries the seeds of its own destruction,’ said Ísak. ‘It’s as true now as it was a hundred and fifty years ago when Marx first said it. You wrote about that, Sindri.’

Sindri nodded, clearly pleased at the reference to his book. ‘At least we have heard an apology,’ he said.

‘We’re all screwed,’ Björn said. ‘All of us.’

‘Can’t we do something?’ said Frikki. ‘Sometimes I’d just like to beat the shit out of these guys.’

‘I know what you mean,’ said Björn. ‘The politicians aren’t going to do anything, are they? Is Ólafur Tómasson really going to lock up all his best friends? They appoint these special prosecutors, but they’ll never get hold of the bankers. They all disappeared to London or New York. And they want our money to clean up their mess.’

‘It’s true,’ said Harpa. ‘Óskar Gunnarsson is the chairman of my bank. He’s been skulking in London the whole time. He hasn’t been seen in Reykjavík for the last three months. But some of the others are still here. I know they still have money stashed away.’

‘Like who?’ said Ísak.

‘Like Gabríel Örn Bergsson, my former boss. When he was encouraging me to take out a loan from Ódinsbanki to buy shares in it to prop up the stock price, he was selling those very same shares himself. When he made bad loans to companies in the UK, it was me who took the blame, even though I had told him not to do the deals. And when the bank was nationalized and they brought back the old rule that two people in a relationship couldn’t work together, it was me who was fired.’

‘Sounds like a nice guy,’ said Björn.

Harpa shook her head. ‘You know, he never was a nice guy, really. He was funny. He was successful. But he was always a bastard.’

‘So where is he right now?’ asked Ísak.

‘You mean at this minute?’ said Harpa.

Ísak nodded.

‘I’ve no idea,’ Harpa said. ‘It’s a Tuesday night. He must be at home – I’m quite sure he wasn’t at the demo. He lives in one of those apartments in the Shadow District, just around the corner.’

‘Do you think he knows where the money is?’

‘Maybe,’ said Harpa. ‘Yeah, maybe.’

‘Why don’t we ask him?’ said Ísak.

Sindri smiled, the puffy skin under his eyes rumpling. ‘Yeah. Get him over here. Let him tell us where those thieving bastards have hidden the money. And he can try to defend how he treated you. How he treated all of us.’

‘Yeah. And I’ll smash his face in,’ Frikki slurred.

Harpa’s immediate reaction was to refuse. It wasn’t as if Gabríel would ever tell a bunch of drunk strangers the details of the complicated network of inter-company loans that Ódinsbanki had set up. They wouldn’t understand him even if he did. But on the other hand… On the other hand why shouldn’t Gabríel meet the people he had screwed? Own up to who he was as she had just done? Why the hell shouldn’t he? The bastard deserved it, boy did he deserve it. Revenge feels good when you have had a couple of brandies.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘But it will be difficult. I’m not sure how I can get him to come here.’

‘Couldn’t you say you had something you needed to discuss with him?’ Sindri said.

‘At a bar, maybe. Or at his house. But not with a bunch of strangers.’

‘Get him to meet you at a bar in town and we’ll stop him on the way,’ said Ísak. ‘Bring him back here.’

Harpa considered Ísak’s suggestion. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘I’ll give it a go.’

It was nearly midnight. The bars in Reykjavík would still be open, but it would be hard to force Gabríel out.

She pulled out her mobile phone and selected his number. She was surprised she hadn’t deleted him from her address book. He should have been deleted totally from her life.

‘Yes?’ he answered with little more than a croak.

‘It’s me. I need to see you. Tonight.’

‘Uh. What time is it? I’ve just gone to sleep. This is ridiculous.’

‘It’s important.’

‘Can’t it wait?’

‘No. It’s got to be right now.’

‘Harpa, are you drunk? You’re drunk, aren’t you?’

‘Of course I’m not drunk!’ Harpa protested. ‘I’m tired and I’m upset and I need to see you.’

‘What is it? Why can’t you tell me over the phone?’

Harpa’s brain was fuzzy, but an idea was emerging. ‘It’s not the kind of thing you can discuss over the phone.’

‘Oh, my God, Harpa, you’re not pregnant are you?’

Gabríel had obviously stumbled on the same idea.

‘I said not over the phone. But meet me at B5. In fifteen minutes.’

‘All right,’ said Gabríel and hung up.

Harpa rang off. ‘Done,’ she said. B5 was a bar on Bankastraeti, a street that rose eastwards up a gentle hill from Austurvöllur, the square outside the Parliament building, to Laugavegur, the main shopping street. She and Gabríel Örn used to go there with their friends on Friday nights. ‘I know the way he will take, we can cut him off.’

‘Let’s go,’ said Frikki.

Sindri’s flat was on Hverfisgata, a scruffy street that ran parallel to Bankastraeti and Laugavegur, between those roads and the bay. As they spilled out into the open air, Harpa felt exhilarated. The frustration and misery of the last few months were pouring out. Sure, the bankers and the politicians were to blame, but one man was most to blame for ruining Harpa’s life.

Gabríel Örn.

And in a moment he would come face-to-face with the ordinary decent people whom men like him held in such contempt. He would try and weasel out of it, but she wouldn’t let him. She would force him to stand in front of them and apologize and explain what a shit he was.

The cold didn’t sober Harpa up, but it energized her. She led the way, hurrying the others on. The Skuggahverfi or Shadow District was a new development of high-rise luxury apartments that lined the shore of the bay. Only a few had actually been finished before the developers had run out of money; they looked down on their half-completed brethren, and the condemned buildings surrounding them, like Sindri’s place, yet to be demolished. She was only about a hundred metres from the spot where Gabríel Örn would cross Hverfisgata on his way to B5.

A couple of snowflakes fell. It was late, but there were still people on the street, jazzed up by the demonstrations. Down at the bottom of the hill towards the square outside Parliament, flames rose out of a wheelie bin, illuminating hooded shadows flitting around it, and two firecrackers went off.