Michael Dibdin - And then you die

'I was just wondering how best to describe it, but actually if s very similar to that of the consul here, except that I deal in much less well-known names. High-quality olive oils, cheeses, dried mushrooms, honeys and preserves from small organic producers. It's a low-volume, high mark-up business. If the restaurants and boutique stores want the best, they have to come to me, but equally I have to come over every so often to…'

Borunn Sigurdardottir held up her hand and Zen turned off the flow.

'Do you have any commercial competitors?' 'Virtually none. As I said, this is very much a niche market, and I've just about cornered it.' 'What about personal enemies?' 'None that I know of.'

The woman made more notes whose length seemed out of all proportion to Zen's replies. Then she raised her startling blue eyes to Snaebjorn Gudmundsson and spoke at some length.

The consul stood up and looked at Zen.

'Let's go,' he said.

'What about my passport?'

'She needs to keep it for now. I'll explain outside.'

Zen assumed that this meant outside in the corridor, or at best back in the packed lounge with the other waiting passengers, but to his surprise Gudmundsson led the way through a set of double doors into the fresh air.

And fresh it was, too! Tangy, salted gusts swept across the car park in front of them with such boisterous energy that they almost knocked the two men over. The consul pointed to the left and strode off towards a small red Fiat which he unlocked. Zen stowed his cabin bag in the boot and got in to the car.

'Now then, I think it's time I explained the situation,' Snaebjorn Gudmundsson said when they were sheltered from the wind.

'It’s time someone did,' Zen replied pointedly.

'Feel free to smoke,' Gudmundsson remarked. 'I can smell it on

your clothing. A very pleasant odour which brings back happy memories of my misspent youth. No thanks, I've given up myself, but I remain a child of the Sixties. E proibito proibire and all that. So please go ahead.'

Zen lit a cigarette and rolled down the window slightly, creating an instant gale inside the car. The consul closed Zen's window and opened his own, on the leeward side.

'As you know,' he said, 'your flight was diverted here due to technical causes of a routine nature. Normally it would just have been a question of a few hours' delay at most for the necessary maintenance work to take place. But at the point when the passengers were being disembarked to facilitate this work – unblocking toilets can be a very smelly business – one of them failed to respond to the directions of the cabin crew. A doctor was summoned and subsequently pronounced him dead.'

"The one who was sitting in my place,' said Zen.

'Exactly. A certain Angelo Porri. This has placed the authorities here in a very difficult position. They of course have no wish to delay anyone's journey any longer than is necessary, but in the unlikely event that the cause of death turns out not to have been natural, everyone who was on board the plane will naturally become an important witness if not a potential suspect.'

'Yes, I see.'

'The corpse has been taken to a hospital in the city, where it will shortly undergo a post-mortem. Once that is concluded, you and your fellow passengers will most likely be free to leave.'

'And in the meantime?'

'For the time being, the rest of the passengers will remain in the holding area. They will be told that the repairs are taking longer than had been anticipated.'

Zen braved the wind long enough to throw his butt out of the window.

'So I'm being singled out for special treatment. Why?'

Snaebjorn Gudmundsson started the engine.

'This afternoon I received two telephone calls relating to my position as Italian consul. This in itself was highly unusual. I have to say that the position is an honorary one which I fill partly because it gives me a certain cachet in business and government circles here that is useful to my job with the Gruppo Campari. Even that is largely a part-time activity. My real work is quite different.' 'And what’s that?' 'I'm an artist.'

They drove out of the car park on to a dual-carriageway road.

'The first call was from the police here at the airport’ Snaebjorn Gudmundsson went on. 'They explained that an Alitalia flight had been diverted…'

'That’s the second time you've used that word’ Zen pointed out. 'Diverted from where?'

'From its flight in mid-Atlantic, of course’

Zen laughed.

'So what is this, Atlantis?'

'This is Iceland’

'I don't see any ice.'

'No, Greenland's the icy one. Some people say the original settlers deliberately named them like that, so as to send potential invaders to the wrong address. At any rate, as I was saying, the first call I received was from the airport authorities. They simply asked me to be prepared to come out to Keflavik in case any of the Italian passengers required assistance or refused to reboard the plane. People sometimes react in odd ways to emergency landings, even if the reason is completely routine’

'Someone said the lavatories were blocked. How did that happen?'

'The mind boggles. But apparently they were, and you can imagine what the result would have been. Anyway, the really interesting call I got was the second one. That was from the Foreign Ministry in Rome, which just about knocked me over. From time to time someone from the embassy in Copenhagen pops up to check that I'm not fiddling my expenses, but as far as direct contact goes that's about it. And here was a senior official at the Ministry -I didn't catch his name, but you could tell by his manner that he wasn't a subordinate – phoning me in person to brief me about a certain Dottor Pier Giorgio Butani who was travelling to Los Angeles on the diverted plane.'

Zen looked stolidly out of the window at the landscape through which they were passing, an undifferentiated jumble of jagged rocks of every size and shape separated by patches of boggy moor.

'What did they tell you about me?' he asked at last.

'Just that you were a VIP and that I was to accord you every possible assistance and protection during your enforced stopover here. I am not quite sure what they meant by "protection", but since it now appears that the delay to your flight may not be as brief as was first thought, I have obtained permission from the police to spare you a return to that squalid waiting area and take you somewhere more comfortable, Borunn Sigurdardottir will call on my cellphone if the flight's cleared for departure, and I can have you back at the airport in twenty minutes.'

They were now entering the outskirts of a settlement whose planned sprawl was more orderly but no more attractive than that of the eroded lava fields through which they had just passed. It all looked quiet neat, functional and dull. These outer suburbs were succeeded by an older section, equally sterile and monotonous, but with buildings of stone and brick rather than concrete.

They went to a cafe on a pedestrianized street in what appeared to be the centre. Some people at the next table were eating slabs of pallid fish or meat smothered in an anonymous sauce, with boiled potatoes and a scattering of shrivelled vegetables. Zen thought longingly of the lasagne and the beef he had turned up his nose at on the plane, then ordered a cheese sandwich and a beer and tried to collect his thoughts. Despite his earlier volubility, Snaebjorn Gudmundsson now seemed quite prepared just to sip his coffee and not interrupt this process. Indeed, most of the other couples in the cafe" were sitting in a profound but seemingly unstressful silence which in Italy would have been the height of bad form.

There was a lot of information to process. First of all, he was in a remote northern country of which he knew absolutely nothing, starting with its exact geographical location. Secondly, the man who had taken his seat on the plane was now dead of causes as yet unknown. The parallels with the fate of Massimo Rutelli were disturbingly obvious, although fortunately not as yet to the Icelandic police. Thirdly, it was unclear when or even whether he would be free to resume his journey, and what action if any his sponsors at the Foreign Ministry might take about this. But what was finally most disturbing was that there was absolutely nothing that he could personally do to affect the outcome. Such powerlessness induced both frustration and anxiety. Zen had always found that happiness came from throwing himself into some, activity, even if it turned out later to have been futile. Work was relaxing, whereas this enforced, problematic and conditional idleness threatened to wreck his nerves in no time at all.