Michael Ridpath - 66 Degrees North

Magnus tramped along the cycle path by the shore of the bay. The Benedikt Jóhannesson files were stuffed in a briefcase at his side. A gentle breeze coming in from the water tingled his cheeks. The sky was a soft pale blue, and the giant rampart of rock that was Mount Esja glowed softly. There was a smattering of snow along the ridge of its summit, the first of the year.

Magnus needed the air. After leaving the Commissioner’s office, he had gone straight back across the road to police headquarters. He explained to Vigdís what had happened, and extracted a promise from her to keep him informed of what she and Árni turned up. The news that Magnus had been taken off the case seemed to make her even more determined to break it. Magnus was impressed.

As long as they kept their heads down, he thought there was a good chance that she and Árni would make progress. If Baldur didn’t stop them.

Magnus was angry: angry at the Commissioner, angry at Sharon Piper, and what was worse for his emotional equilibrium, angry at himself.

He kept walking as he pulled out his phone and called her.

‘Piper.’

‘It’s Magnus.’

‘No news on Virginie Rogeon, I’m afraid. Her husband still hasn’t checked in with his employer.’

‘Damn! I really needed something firm to tie Ísak into this case.’

‘We’ll get there.’

‘It might be too late.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The National Police Commissioner here got a call from your anti-terrorist unit.’

‘Oh.’

‘Yes, oh.’

‘Was he upset?’

‘You could say that. I’m off the case.’

‘You’re what? Oh, Magnus, I’m sorry. Did he give you a bollocking?’

‘I don’t know what a bollocking is, exactly, but he was pretty pissed. Sharon, why did you do that when I specifically asked you not to? I knew what would happen. I thought I could trust you.’

‘Oh, come on, Magnus, think about it. I had to do it. If there was any chance at all that you were on to something, I’d look like a right idiot if I hadn’t told people back here. Don’t worry, they’re not taking it too seriously, or else there would be a plane load of them on the way to Reykjavík. They are focusing on the Dutch angle.’

‘Dutch angle?’

‘Yes. A farmer saw a guy the day before the shooting. He was nosing around in the woods from where the shots were fired. The farmer thought he had gone for a pee. They found a hole in the earth big enough to contain a rifle; they assume the man must have been burying it. The man’s motorbike had Dutch number plates.’

‘Did he give a description?’

‘Not much. Just that the guy was wearing a light blue jacket.’

‘What have the Dutch got against your Chancellor?’ Magnus asked.

‘There is a Muslim community in Holland. Although it could just as easily be someone passing through.’

‘Al-Qaeda?’

‘That’s their favourite theory so far. Although Al-Qaeda tends to prefer blowing people up to shooting them.’

‘Interesting.’

‘I am really sorry, Magnus. I appreciate you taking me into your confidence.’

‘Don’t give me that bullshit, Sharon! I trusted you and you screwed me. It’s that simple.’

‘I did what I thought I had to do.’

‘Yeah, right. Well, keep me in the loop. And talk to Vigdís; she’s still on the case at our end. Especially if you do get a firm ID on Ísak. I’m thinking maybe he was preparing the ground in London for someone else. The guy who pulled the trigger.’

‘I see what you mean,’ said Sharon. ‘I’ll bear it in mind. Sorry, Magnus.’

‘Yeah.’ Magnus hung up.

Sharon’s contrition took some of the sting off Magnus’s anger. He liked her. What was that word she had used? Bollocking? He’d never heard that one before.

For some reason what rankled most about the Commissioner’s ‘bollocking’ was the crack about Magnus not being a real Icelander. That was because it was partially true. But he knew that even if he had spent his whole life in the country he would still have alerted Sharon to the possibility that Ísak might have been in Normandy. He would always put finding the truth before political niceties, whether he was in Boston or in Iceland.

That was just the way he was.

What was the Commissioner thinking of anyway? Magnus hated it when his bosses talked about the ‘bigger picture’, the ‘political angle’. Justice wasn’t like that. The law wasn’t like that. If someone broke the law, especially if that someone had murdered someone else, then it was Magnus’s duty to bring him to justice. Not just Magnus’s duty, everyone else’s.

Simple. Once politics took precedence over the law, things fell apart. He’d seen it in Boston and now he was watching it in Iceland.

He wondered whether the Commissioner would follow through on his threat to send him back to America. Perhaps that would be a good thing. Perhaps the Commissioner was right, Magnus wasn’t a true Icelander at all. This wasn’t where he belonged: he belonged on the streets of Boston, processing the dead bodies with holes in them.

He could go back to Boston, and Ingileif could go to Germany. That would be good for her. But it would be a shame. He still didn’t know what kind of relationship he had with her. Her explanation that it was because of him that she wanted to stay in Iceland surprised him. And pleased him.

He walked on towards Borgartún, the avenue lined with the gleaming new bank headquarters. Just in front of it, in its own green island surrounded by roads and modern offices, was the Höfdi House. It was an elegant white wooden mansion built at the beginning of the twentieth century, and famous as the meeting place of Reagan and Gorbachev in 1986. It was also the place where Ingileif had asked him to meet her to talk about the case he was working on when he had arrived in Iceland the previous spring. The place where Ingileif changed in his eyes from being another witness to something more.

He realized that in his mind the Höfdi House would always be connected with her.

He crossed the road and sat on the wall outside the house. He pulled out his phone again and called up her number.

‘Hi, it’s me.’

‘Oh, hi, Magnús, I’m with a customer.’

‘OK. Do you want to go out to dinner tonight?’

‘I’d love to, but I can’t. I’m going to the public Icesave meeting in the Austurvöllur square.’

‘You are?’

‘Yes. Don’t sound so surprised. I’ll come to your place when I get back. It might be late. Very late. Got to go.’

That was strange. Typically strange. An exhibition at a gallery or a party for the beautiful people, Magnus could understand. But a political meeting? Although Ingileif shared the average Icelander’s anger at the Icesave bail-out loan, until that moment, she had shown no interest in getting actively involved. And what was that about being late?

Magnus shook his head. What was she really doing? He never really knew where he was with Ingileif. It unsettled him.

He wondered what to do next. He should probably put in an appearance at the police college some time during the day. They wouldn’t be expecting him, but the Commissioner might check up. He had cancelled his teaching for the week, but he had a law class after lunch which he was supposed to attend: he probably ought to show up for that. That was several hours away.

But he couldn’t just walk away from the Óskar Gunnarsson case. And he was intensely curious to read that thick file on the Benedikt Jóhannesson murder. The café on Borgartún where he had met Sibba was close by. He decided to get himself a cup of coffee and look at it more carefully.

Benedikt was murdered between Christmas and New Year 1985, on 28 December, to be precise. He lived on Bárugata, a street in Vesturbaer just to the west of downtown Reykjavík. It was five o’clock in the evening, it had already been dark for an hour and a half, and it was snowing.