Michael Ridpath: 66 Degrees North

They had been crawling and sliding for five minutes when Hallgrímur suddenly heard a grunt ahead of them.

‘What was that?’ Hallgrímur turned to Benedikt.

‘I don’t know,’ Benedikt squeaked. A look of terror on his face.

‘It sounds like some kind of animal.’

‘Perhaps it’s the Kerlingin troll come down from the Pass.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Hallgrímur. But he swallowed. The grunting was getting louder. It sounded like a man.

Then there was a short, high pitched squeal.

‘That’s Mother!’ Hallgrímur wriggled forward, ignoring Benedikt’s whispered pleas to come away. His heart was beating. He had no idea what he would see. Could it really be his mother, and if so was she in some kind of danger?

Perhaps the berserkers were walking through the lava field again.

He hesitated as the fear almost overcame him, but Hallgrímur was brave. He swallowed and wriggled on.

There, on a cushion of moss in a hollow, he saw a man’s bare bottom pumping up and down over a woman, half dressed, her face, surrounded by a pillow of golden hair, tilted directly towards him. She didn’t see him; her eyes were shut and little mewling sounds came from her parted lips.

Mother.

Mother seemed to be in a good mood at dinner that evening. Father had returned from the fell having found the ewe stuck in a gully.

His mother was very fond of her children, or most of them. She was proud of Hallgrímur’s obedient little brother, and of his three sisters, whom she was raising to be hard working, honest and capable women about the farm.

But Hallgrímur. She just didn’t like Hallgrímur.

‘Halli! How did you scratch your knees?’ she demanded.

‘I didn’t scratch them,’ Hallgrímur said. He always denied everything stubbornly. It never worked.

‘Yes you did. That’s blood. And they are dirty.’

Hallgrímur looked down. It was true. ‘Er, I fell coming up the stairs.’

‘You were playing in the lava field, weren’t you? When I specifically told you to do your schoolwork.’

‘No, I swear I wasn’t. I was here all the time.’

‘Do you take me for an idiot?’ His mother raised her voice. ‘Gunnar, will you control your son? Stop him lying to his mother.’

His father didn’t seem to like Hallgrímur much either. But he liked his wife even less, despite her beauty.

‘Leave the boy alone,’ he said.

His mother’s good mood was long gone. ‘To your room, Halli! Right now! And don’t come down until you have finished your homework. Your brother can eat your skyr .’

Hallgrímur stood up and looked mournfully at the dish of skyr and berries he was abandoning. He sauntered towards the hallway and the stairs.

He paused at the door.

‘You are right, Mother. I did go to play in the lava field with Benni.’

He was pleased to see his mother’s cheeks flush.

‘I saw you and Benni’s father,’ he went on. ‘What were you doing?’

‘Out!’ his mother cried. ‘To your room!’

That night, after all the children were in bed with the lamps snuffed out, Hallgrímur heard his father shouting and his mother sobbing.

The little boy fell asleep with a smile on his face.

Wednesday, 16 September 2009

SERGEANT DETECTIVE MAGNUS Jonson of the Boston Police Department closed his eyes as he slipped into the deliciously warm water. His body tingled after the thirty lengths he had done and the shock of warm water after cold air. It was six degrees Celsius in the outside air, but forty degrees in the geothermally heated tub. Steam hovered a couple of feet above the Olympic sized pool, which was crowded with serious swimmers. It was six o’clock, rush hour in the open-air Laugardalur Baths, as Reykjavík’s men and women gathered after work for a swim and a chat. The fact that they were outside and nearly naked on a cold grey September evening didn’t bother any of them.

‘Ooh, that feels good,’ said the tall, skinny man who slid in beside Magnus. ‘You’re a fast swimmer.’

‘I’ve got to get rid of the energy somehow, Árni,’ Magnus said. ‘And the aggression.’

‘Aggression?’

‘Yeah. I’m not used to sitting around in a classroom all day.’

‘What you mean is you would rather be running around the streets of Boston blasting punks with your three fifty-seven Magnum?’

Magnus glanced at his companion. Despite living in Reykjavík for four months, Magnus was never entirely sure when Icelanders were being serious. It was a particular problem with Árni Holm. He was good at the deadpan irony. On the other hand he occasionally said the most spectacularly stupid things. ‘Something like that, Árni.’

‘I hear your course is pretty good. There’s a waiting list of people to sign up for it. Did you know that?’

‘You should come.’

‘I’m on the list.’

Magnus was teaching a course at the National Police College on urban crime in the United States. He enjoyed being an instructor; it was something he had never done before and it turned out he was good at it.

He had been seconded to the Icelandic police at the request of the National Police Commissioner who was worried about big-city crime hitting his small country. Not that crime was unknown in Iceland. There were drugs aplenty and Friday and Saturday nights brought a regular haul of drunks into the cells at police headquarters. And of course there had been the winter demonstrations outside the Parliament that had culminated in the ‘pots-and-pans’ revolution which overthrew the government and stretched police resources to their limits.

But the Commissioner feared that it was only a matter of time before the kind of crimes that occurred in Amsterdam or Copenhagen or even Boston arrived in Reykjavík. Foreign drug gangs. Knives. Maybe even guns. And he wanted his men to be ready for it. Hence his request for an American police detective with practical experience who spoke Icelandic.

There weren’t a whole lot of those among America’s big-city police forces. Magnus, who had left Iceland for the States at the age of twelve with his father, fitted the bill, and when he had been shot at as a witness in a police corruption scandal he had been sent to Reykjavík as much for his own safety as for what he could do for the Icelanders.

‘Anything going on at CID?’ he asked Árni.

‘We have a bird thief.’

‘A bird thief?’

‘Someone has been stealing exotic birds. Parrots mostly, and budgerigars. There are scarcely any left in Reykjavík now. It’s a big problem. This man, and we think it is a man not a woman, is very clever.’

‘I thought you just did violent crimes?’

‘You go wherever they need you. Burglaries have doubled in the last six months and they have had to lay off twenty uniforms. The kreppa . You know what I’m talking about, you’ve seen the cost-cutting at the police college.’ Kreppa was the Icelandic term for the financial crisis, and Icelanders’ current favourite topic of conversation.

‘Got any leads?’

‘Some. Not enough. I’m confident we will crack the case by the end of the week. When will you be joining us? I’m sure we could use your expertise.’

‘Two more months, I think,’ Magnus sighed. The Commissioner had insisted that Magnus do six months of the one-year basic-training course at the police college before he was given a badge. Magnus had grudgingly accepted. It was hard to argue with the Commissioner’s point that it was impossible to uphold the law if you didn’t know what it was.

So he had spent most of the previous four months as a student and part of it teaching. He preferred the teaching.