Michael Ridpath: 66 Degrees North

The water jets began to bubble and Árni closed his eyes and leaned back. Magnus took the opportunity to examine the scar on Árni’s chest. The surgeon at the National Hospital had done a good job of patching him up. Magnus had seen many plugged bullet holes that looked a lot worse.

Magnus had worked with Árni on a case immediately after his own arrival from Boston four months before. Árni was not known as Reykjavík’s best detective, some said that he only had the job because his uncle, Chief Superintendent Thorkell Hólm, was head of CID. At times he had frustrated the hell out of Magnus, but Magnus liked him and admired his loyalty.

And he would never forget that Árni had taken a bullet for him.

They pulled themselves out of the hot tub, and went for a cold shower followed by a warm one.

As they were getting dressed in the changing room Árni checked his phone. ‘A call from Baldur,’ he said, examining the display. He pressed a couple of buttons and put the phone to his ear.

Inspector Baldur Jakobsson was the head of the Violent Crimes Unit. A good, traditional Icelandic cop, he was suspicious of Magnus and his big-city methods. Magnus understood, but he still thought he was a pain in the ass.

It looked to Magnus like a big breakthrough with the macaw. Árni’s eyebrows shot up as he listened, and his Adam’s apple started bobbing wildly. His cheeks flushed with excitement.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes… Yes. Yes, right away.’

Magnus’s interest was piqued.

‘What was that?’ Magnus said, as soon as Árni hung up.

‘I’ve got to get back to headquarters,’ Árni said. ‘You know Óskar Gunnarsson?’

‘I think so,’ Magnus said. ‘Isn’t he a banker?’ That was Magnus’s problem. Although he had done a good job of brushing up on his language so he was fluent with barely an accent, Reykjavík was a small town where everyone knew everyone else. Apart from Magnus who had never heard of anyone.

Árni hurried to pull on his clothes. ‘Ex-CEO of Ódinsbanki. He was fired a year ago. He’s under investigation by Financial Crimes and the Special Prosecutor. Anyway, he was shot dead in London last night.’

‘Is there an Icelandic angle?’

‘The British cops haven’t found one yet, but Baldur wants us all out checking.’

‘I bet he does.’

‘You should get yourself involved,’ Árni said, as he pulled on his jacket. ‘With the foreign angle.’

‘Baldur won’t like it,’ Magnus said.

‘Since when has that stopped you?’ said Árni, as he grabbed his bag and hurried out of the changing room.

Magnus unlocked the front door of the little house in 101, the postcode for the centre of Reykjavík. The outside walls were cream concrete, and like most Icelandic houses the roof was brightly painted corrugated metal, in this case lime green. The house actually belonged to Árni and his sister, although only his sister Katrín lived there. Magnus paid her a very reasonable rent.

Magnus climbed the stairs to his room. He pulled a Viking beer out of the refrigerator, flopped into a chair and opened it. Icelanders might not drink during the week, saving their efforts for heroic binges at the weekend, but Magnus was enough of an American cop to need a beer when his shift ended.

His body tingled after the swim. The room was small, but it was enough for Magnus. He didn’t have much stuff. Before coming to Iceland he had shared a place with his former girlfriend, Colby, but he had always felt a guest, his possessions overwhelmed by hers. He did have books, though, which spilled out from the bookshelf along one wall on to the floor. In the middle of this chaos stood in a neat row his beloved sagas, in Icelandic, many of them bought by his father many years ago, their pages ragged with use.

Outside his window, a couple of blocks up the hill, the Hallgrímskirkja lurked, its sweeping spire clad in scaffolding like a spaceship ready for launch, surrounded by gantries.

Magnus sighed as he sipped the cold fizzy liquid. That was good.

In Boston, a shift would frequently include a dead body. Solving the crime didn’t usually involve random shooting of bad guys, as Árni had suggested, but it did take a whole lot of talking to people: people whose lives had just been destroyed by the loss of someone they loved, people whose lives were already destroyed by the hell that was their everyday existence, witnesses who wanted to talk, witnesses who didn’t. Most of the time was spent on making sure the prosecution case went smoothly, the witness statements were typed up accurately and the forensic evidence was all in the proper place with the chain of evidence intact.

It was long hours, painstaking, frustrating, depressing, but Magnus could never get enough of it. Every victim had a family, someone who cared that they had died, and Magnus would do his best for that someone.

Of course he knew that he was doing it for himself as well. His own father had been murdered in a small town just outside Boston when Magnus was twenty and a student at college. The local police had got nowhere in solving the crime, and neither had Magnus, despite spending the best part of a year trying. In fact, he was still trying; he had never given up. That was why Magnus had joined the Boston Police Department. That was why he always had the energy for another dead body.

And now here he was, in Iceland. On his arrival in the spring he had been thrown into a case, a very interesting case, but since then there had been nothing but teaching and studying. The orange Penal Code lay on his desk by the window. He knew probably three-quarters of it by now.

It wasn’t as if the boys in the Violent Crimes Unit downtown had had much to do. In June a man had been found stabbed to death in the street at four on a Sunday morning. The first cops to the scene had solved the crime, figuring that the eighteen-year-old kid out of his skull on speed, waving a knife soaked in blood around his head and shouting how he would kill anyone else who came near him was a likely suspect.

Magnus had given his word to Snorri Gudmundsson, the National Police Commissioner, that he would stay for two years. He owed it to him for providing him with refuge when the Dominican gang from back home were after him, and to Árni for taking a bullet when the hit man they sent to Reykjavík had caught up with him.

Of course the Dominicans knew where he was now. Their boss might be in Cedar Junction jail back in Massachusetts, put there with the help of Magnus’s testimony, but there were plenty of gang members still at large. Magnus hoped that now that he had done his stint as a witness he was no longer a target, but he couldn’t be sure. He could never be sure.

But it was going to be hard to stick it out in Reykjavík. Four months and he was already climbing the walls.

Árni was right though. He should make a call. Try to get assigned on to this Óskar Gunnarsson case. You never knew, there might be something in it. It would make a change. And it might be interesting to deal with the British police.

But who to call? Baldur would just say no, that was for sure. Magnus knew the Commissioner would take his call, but he wanted to save that access for when he really needed it. Thorkell Holm, head of CID, was his best bet. It would piss Baldur off, but that was just tough.

He took out his phone, called the police switchboard and asked to be put through.

Then he heard a giggle.

He looked up.

There was a naked woman lying on his bed.

‘Ingileif! What the hell are you doing here?’

She threw off the covers and bounded over to him in the chair. ‘You didn’t see me, did you? What kind of cop are you when you can’t even spot a woman lying under your bed covers, desperate for sex?’