Michael Ridpath - 66 Degrees North

Forcing himself back to the present, Magnus asked around at the offices of the local fishing companies. They knew Björn Helgason, but hadn’t seen him for a couple of weeks. They were pretty sure that he wasn’t on a Stykkishólmur boat.

As he walked out along the quay, Magnus considered what to do next. He could drive back westwards along the peninsula to Ólafsvík and Rif to ask around for Björn. Or he could drive back home. Or…

Or he could see Unnur.

He knew deep down he had already taken the decision. That was one reason why he had driven all the way up here to look for Björn. That was why he had checked Stykkishólmur rather than Ólafsvík. Who was he kidding? He was here to see his father’s mistress.

Tracing someone in a small Icelandic town is not difficult. He returned to the fishing office, borrowed a phone directory, and looked under ‘U’ for Unnur – the Icelanders listed people under their first names.

She lived in a neat white house on top of a cliff overlooking the harbour. It was just beside Stykkishólmur’s modern church, which was an extraordinary edifice: a cross between a white Mexican adobe church and a space ship. It had been under construction the whole time Magnus lived around there. It was a different kind of interplanetary rocket to the Hallgrímskirkja in Reykjavík, but it made Magnus wonder if there was some kind of strange intergalactic theology behind Icelandic church design.

Weird.

Magnus sat outside the house for a couple of minutes. Perhaps, finally, he was getting close to understanding why his parents had split up. And maybe, just maybe, why his father had been murdered. He took a deep breath, got out of the car and rang the doorbell.

It was answered by a grey-haired woman with blue eyes, fine cheekbones and pale, translucent skin. Magnus had calculated that if she was the same age as his mother Unnur would be fifty-eight. She looked about that age, but she had a graceful beauty about her. Magnus couldn’t reconcile her with the woman he dimly remembered from his childhood. She must have been a stunner in her time. In Magnus’s father’s time.

‘Yes?’ She smiled hesitantly.

‘Unnur?’

‘That’s me.’

‘Do you mind if I speak with you for a few minutes? My name is Magnús Ragnarsson.’ Magnus waited a beat for the name to register. ‘I am Ragnar Jónsson’s son.’

For a moment, Unnur seemed confused. Then her lips pursed.

‘Yes, I do mind,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to talk to you.’

‘I want to speak with you about my father.’

‘And I don’t want to talk to you about him. That was a long time ago and it has nothing to do with you.’

‘Of course it has something to do with me,’ Magnus said. ‘I have only just found out about the affair. It explains things about my childhood, about my mother and my father. But there is still a lot I don’t understand.’

The woman hesitated.

‘I know it will be painful for you, and for me too. But you are the only person who can help me. I don’t talk to my mother’s family any more, or rather they won’t talk to me.’

Unnur nodded. ‘That doesn’t surprise me.’ She took a deep breath. ‘All right. But my husband is due back soon. He works at the hospital. When he returns, we change the subject, OK?’

‘OK,’ said Magnus.

Unnur led him into the living room, and disappeared to get some coffee. Despite her initial hostility, she couldn’t skip on this basic prerequisite of Icelandic hospitality. Magnus scanned the room. It was comfortable and, like every Icelandic living room, it had the full complement of family photographs. One wall was lined with books in Icelandic, Danish and English. Through a big picture window there was a magnificent view over the grey waters of Breidafjördur, dotted with flat islands, and the silhouettes of the mountains of the West Fjords on the far side.

Unnur moved a pile of exercise books off the sofa to make room for Magnus. ‘Sorry. Marking.’

He sat down.

‘I think I could just about recognize you,’ Unnur said. ‘Your hair’s a bit darker, it used to be really red. You must have been seven or eight then.’

‘I don’t really remember you,’ said Magnus. ‘I wish I recalled more of that time in Reykjavík.’

‘Before everything went wrong?’ Unnur said.

Magnus nodded.

‘So, what can I tell you?’ she asked as she poured Magnus some coffee. Her face was hard and firm, almost defiant.

‘Can you tell me something about my mother?’ Magnus said. ‘What she was really like? I have two different memories of her. I remember warmth and laughter and happiness in our house in Reykjavík. Then distance – we didn’t see her very much, my brother and I stayed up here with my grandfather and she was in Reykjavík a lot of the time. At the time I thought she was always tired; now I am pretty sure she was drunk.’

Unnur smiled. ‘She was good fun. Really good fun. We were at school together, here in Stykkishólmur.’

‘I went to school here as well,’ Magnus said.

‘It was a good school,’ Unnur said. ‘It still is. I teach there now – English and Danish. Anyway we became best friends when we were about thirteen, I suppose. Margrét was smart. She loved to read, as did I. And the boys liked her. We both spent a summer together in Denmark at a language school, which was fun. And we decided we wanted to go to Reykjavík and become teachers.’

Unnur was warming up. ‘We had a blast. We shared a flat together in 101; we had a great time. We both qualified and started teaching in schools in Reykjavík, different schools. Margrét met your father, they fell in love, got married, and I moved out to make room for him. We got along very well, the three of us. We were all good friends.’

Unnur paused. ‘Are you sure to want to hear this?’ she asked Magnus.

‘Yes. And please tell me the truth, however unpleasant it is. Now I am here I want to know.’

‘All right. That was when your mother started to drink. I mean we all drank, although in those days it was mostly spirits, it still wasn’t legal to sell beer in Iceland and wine was almost unheard of. But Margrét began to drink more than us. At the time, I didn’t know why. She wasn’t unhappy with her life, and up till then she didn’t seem to be unhappy with Ragnar.’

‘At the time?’

‘Yes. I’ve thought about it a lot since then, and perhaps I do know the reason.’ Unnur took a deep breath. ‘Her father was a brute. I was scared of him at school, I’ve always been scared of him. And he had a weird relationship with Margrét. He was fond of her, doted on her, yet he was very strict. He had a strong psychological hold over her: that was why she wanted to move away to Reykjavík, I am sure. He messed with her head.’

That didn’t surprise Magnus.

Unnur took a sip of coffee. ‘Anyway, then you and Óli showed up. Your mother was fine most of the time, but then she would get depressed about something, drink a lot and give Ragnar a hard time. A very hard time.’

She bit her lip. ‘And now we come to the difficult bit. Ragnar used to confide in me about her. One time, they had been having a massive fight about him going to America. He had done a fellowship at MIT for a couple of years, before he met your mother, and they wanted him back to teach. It was some strange branch of mathematics, topology or something?’

‘Riemann surfaces.’

‘She changed her mind and didn’t want to go. They had a major row about it. He and I had a drink together, and then, well…’ She hesitated. ‘Well. I had always fancied him ever since I had first seen him. I always wished he had chosen me. I was wrong, very wrong. So was he. We have no excuses.’ She looked straight at Magnus. ‘I’m not going to make excuses to you, of all people.’