Michael Ridpath - 66 Degrees North

It was getting dark and he was hungry. He grabbed his coat and headed outside. Around the corner and up the hill towards the church was Vitabar, the nearest thing the neighbourhood had to a diner. Magnus ordered a burger and a beer. He wolfed the burger down too quickly.

Rather than go back to his apartment he wandered the streets. Any call would come through to his cell phone. He found himself in the square in front of the Hallgrímskirkja. The church rose tall above him, illuminated against the night sky. Beneath it the statue of Leifur Eiríksson, the first European to discover America, stared out over the city to the west.

Sending Magnus home, perhaps.

His phone rang. It was Vigdís.

‘Hi. Did he talk?’ Magnus asked her.

‘No,’ Vigdís said.

‘What do you mean, no? Didn’t he say anything at all?’

‘Nothing. Nothing at all.’

‘What, has he got a lawyer or something?’

‘He doesn’t want one. It’s weird. He just sits there looking miserable. Not arrogant or cocky, you know the way they sometimes are when they think they can keep quiet and you can’t touch them. It looks like he’s just about to cry.’

‘So? Didn’t you make him cry?’

‘Hey, Magnús, cool it,’ said Vigdís.

‘All right.’ Magnus realized Vigdís had a point. He knew she was a good detective. He had to trust her. And there was no harder suspect to interview than one who said nothing at all. ‘Sorry, Vigdís. What’s your gut telling you?’

‘He’s guilty as hell. He knows what we are talking about. I asked him about Gabríel Örn and Óskar and Julian Lister and he showed no surprise at any of it. He knows the names of Harpa and Sindri and Björn. And it seems like he knows he is going to jail.’

‘Then why isn’t he talking?’

‘I don’t know. I think the softly-softly approach will work best. And if that doesn’t do it, we can always try keeping him in overnight.’

‘Is Baldur OK with that?’

‘I’ve squared it with him.’

‘A night in the cells can work wonders,’ Magnus said. ‘I wish I could be there too. Call me if you get anywhere, will you?’

Magnus returned to his apartment, waiting for Vigdís to call again. None came. Nor did he hear from Ingileif. That was strange. The Icesave meeting had taken place in the late afternoon. What was she doing afterwards?

In the end he found solace in a saga, the tried and tested medicine from his adolescence. He picked the Saga of the People of Eyri . Within a few minutes he was lost in the world of the Norse settlers, of Ketill Flat Nose, Björn the Easterner, who had built the first farmhouse at Bjarnarhöfn, Arnkell, Snorri Godi, and Thórólfur Lame Foot. The countryside around Bjarnarhöfn seemed closer and more real in the saga than in his own memory.

At about eleven o’clock his doorbell rang. It was Ingileif.

‘Hi,’ she kissed him as he answered the door. ‘Hi, Katrín.’ She waved at Magnus’s landlady as she climbed the stairs to his room. She tripped on a step. ‘Whoops-a-daisy.’

When they got into his room, she kissed him again. ‘Sorry I’m so late,’ she said.

‘That’s OK.’

‘I’m so drunk.’

Magnus had guessed. ‘Where were you?’ he asked, trying to keep any hint of accusation out of his voice.

‘Solving your case.’

‘What do you mean?’

Ingileif began to unbutton his shirt. ‘I’ll tell you afterwards.’

‘What do you mean, solving my case? Did you see Sindri at the Icesave meeting?’

‘Yup.’ Ingileif smiled. Magnus’s shirt was undone now. Her hands moved down to his pants.

‘You planned to see him all along?’

‘Yup.’

Magnus felt the anger rise. He had specifically told Ingileif not to do that. He backed away.

‘What’s wrong with that?’ Ingileif said. ‘You’d have been so proud of me. He told me everything.’

‘What? What did he tell you?’

Ingileif sat on Magnus’s bed. ‘Everything. How he shot Óskar. And the British Chancellor. Everything.’

‘ He shot the chancellor?’

‘Well, not him, exactly. Him and his friends.’

Magnus sat down next to her on the bed. Angry though he was with Ingileif, he was desperate to know what she had found out. ‘Who are his friends?’

‘I don’t know. I didn’t ask him. But there’s a group of them. He’s the leader. They think capitalism is all wrong. I can tell you all about what’s wrong with capitalism, I listened to hours of it.’

She swayed on the bed, and seemed about to keel over, when she straightened herself up. ‘I placed myself next to him at the Icesave meeting in Austurvöllur. He started talking to me. We went for some coffee. Had some more coffee. Went to his place. Had something to drink. Had some more to drink. Had some more to drink. Then he started to take my clothes off.’

‘And then?’

Ingileif giggled. ‘And then I came home to you, what do you think? He was a little upset. I think he thought I had taken advantage of him.’

‘He might have been right,’ said Magnus.

‘Hey! He admitted that they planned to kill the people they thought were responsible for the kreppa . The chairman of a bank. The British ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer. And other people.’

‘Other people? Like who? Did you find out?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Ingileif. She giggled. ‘I got him to tell me. Ingólfur Arnarson.’

‘Who’s he? Apart from the guy who discovered Iceland.’

‘I don’t know. I suggest you look him up in the phone book and tell him to lock his door. And then you arrest Sindri.’

‘I can’t arrest Sindri,’ Magnus said.

‘Why not?’ Ingileif said. ‘He confessed, didn’t he? I can stand up in court and tell them what he told me.’

‘As evidence that’s useless,’ Magnus said harshly. ‘What do you mean, useless? You’re just jealous.’

‘Jealous? Why would I be jealous?’

‘Yes, jealous. Because I found out more in one night than you’ve been able to find out in a whole week.’

‘That’s ridiculous!’ said Magnus. What really riled him was that there was a germ of truth in what Ingileif said. He was jealous. And she had used illegal methods: she had cheated, not just the law but him. ‘We can’t use any of that evidence. And if the defence attorneys discover there is a link between you and me, which they will, then there is a good chance that the case would be thrown out for entrapment.’

Actually Magnus had no idea whether that would apply in Iceland. But it would certainly have been one hell of a problem in America.

‘How can you be angry with me when I helped you like that?’ said Ingileif. ‘Can you imagine how creepy it is to talk to that lecherous old man for hours, have his hands all over me, when all I’m trying to do is help you?’

‘His hands all over you?’ Magnus asked.

‘You see you are jealous.’

‘Yes, I damn well am jealous!’ Magnus shouted. ‘I didn’t ask you to do all that. I didn’t ask you to seduce Sindri.’

‘I didn’t exactly seduce him. And anyway, I can talk to whoever I want.’

‘Talk, yes. But everything else?’

‘Are you accusing me of sleeping with other men?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Magnus. But it was a question that always nagged at the back of his mind with Ingileif. ‘Maybe. Do you?’

Ingileif stared at him. ‘Do up your shirt. I’m off.’

For a moment Magnus thought of asking her to stay, but only for a moment. Under her rules she could come and go as she pleased. Then so be it.

She went, banging the door behind her.

Wednesday, 23 September 2009