66 Degrees North

by Michael Ridpath

  66 Degrees North

  Michael Ridpath

  Iceland 1934: Two boys playing in the lava fields that surround their isolated farmsteads see something they shouldn't have. The consequences will haunt them and their families for generations. Iceland 2009: the credit crunch bites. The currency has been devalued, banks nationalized, savings annihilated, lives ruined. Grassroots revolution is in the air, as is the feeling that someone ought to pay…ought to pay the blood price. And in a country with a population of just 300,000 souls, in a country where everyone knows everybody, it isn't hard to draw up a list of exactly who is responsible. And then, one-by-one, to cross them off. Iceland 2010: As bankers and politicians start to die, at home and abroad, it is up to Magnus Jonson to unravel the web of conspirators before they strike again. But while Magnus investigates the crimes of the present, the crimes of the past are catching up with him.

  Michael Ridpath

  66 Degrees North

  The second book in the Fire and Ice series, 2011

  for Julia, Laura and Nicholas

  CHAPTER ONE

  January 2009

  ICELAND WAS ANGRY. As angry as it had ever been since the first Vikings stepped ashore in Reykjavík’s smoky bay one thousand years before.

  And Harpa, Harpa was angrier still.

  She stood with four thousand other Icelanders in the square outside the Parliament building shouting, chanting, banging. She had brought a saucepan and a lid, which she beat together. Others had all kinds of kitchen implements, as well as tambourines, drums, whistles, a trawler’s foghorn, anything that could make a noise. A tiny old lady next to her stood straight and defiant, banging her Zimmer frame against the ground, yelling, her eyes alight with fury.

  The din was chaotic. The earlier rhythm of the crowd had deteriorated into a cacophony of anger, disjointed chants of ‘Ólafur out!’, ‘Rotten Government!’ and the simple ‘Resign!’. It was the middle of January and it was cold – there was a dusting of snow on the ground. Making noise kept Harpa warm. But the shouting and banging also gave vent to the anger and the hatred that had been boiling inside her for months, like volcanic steam spitting out into the cold air from the country’s geothermal depths.

  It was getting dark. The flares and the torches that many had brought with them glowed brighter in the failing light. Lights blazed inside the Parliament, a small building of blackened basalt.

  The people had gathered, just as they had gathered every Saturday for the previous seventeen weeks, to tell the politicians to do something about the mess that they had got Iceland into. Except this was a Tuesday, the first day of the Parliamentary session. The protests were becoming more insistent, the noise of the people was building up to a crescendo, the Prime Minister and the government had to resign and call elections. Ólafur Tómasson, the former Governor of the Central Bank and now Prime Minister, who had privatized the banks and then connived at them borrowing more – much more – than they could ever repay, he had to resign too.

  This was the first time Harpa had been to one of these demonstrations. At first she hadn’t approved of them, thought violence and conflict was not the Icelandic way, that the demonstrators didn’t understand the complexities of the situation. But, along with thousands of other Icelanders, she had lost her job. She could do the sums, she knew that the debt the Icelandic banks had run up would take the nation decades to pay off. Markús, her son, was only three. He would still be bailing them out when he was forty.

  It was wrong! It was so wrong.

  Ólafur Tómasson was to blame. The other politicians were to blame. The bankers were to blame. And Gabríel Örn was to blame.

  Of course she had played her own part. That had kept her away from the earlier demonstrations. But now as she banged and shouted, the guilt just added to her fury.

  Proceedings had started in an orderly way, with rousing speeches by a writer, a musician and an eight-year-old girl. Icelandic flags had been waved, protest banners fluttered, the atmosphere was more carnival than riot.

  But people were angry and getting angrier.

  The police in their black uniforms and helmets formed a line in front of the parliament building, ushering in the politicians through the mob. They carried batons, shields and red canisters of pepper spray. Some squared up to the crowd, broad and tall. Some bit their lips.

  Eggs and pots of skyr, Icelandic yoghurt, flew through the air. Protesters dressed in black, their faces covered in balaclavas or scarves, ran at the police line. The crowd surged. Some people, many people, shouted for the protesters to leave the police alone. Others cheered them on. The police lines buckled. Now it wasn’t just yoghurt being thrown, it was flagstones as well. A police-woman fell to the ground, blood running down her face.

  Whistles blew. The black uniforms raised their canisters and squirted pepper spray into the throng.

  The crowd recoiled. Harpa was sent reeling backwards and tripped over the man behind her. For a moment she thought she was going to be trampled. A boot crunched her leg. She lay on her back and raised the saucepan in an attempt to protect her face. Anger turned to fear.

  Powerful arms lifted her to her feet and pulled her back from the crowd.

  ‘Are you all right? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to knock you over.’

  The man was lean and strong, with thick dark eyebrows and deep blue eyes. Harpa felt a jolt as she looked up at him. She couldn’t speak.

  ‘Here, let’s get back out of this.’

  She nodded and followed the man as he pushed back through the mob towards the edge of the square, where the crowd was more sparse. The hand on her arm was broad and callused, a fisherman’s hand, her father’s hand.

  ‘Thank you,’ Harpa said, bending to rub her shin where the boot had dug into it.

  ‘Are you hurt?’ He smiled. A stiff, reserved smile, but betraying concern.

  ‘I’ll be OK.’

  A kid barged past them, spluttering as he ripped off his balaclava and rubbed his eyes. He couldn’t have been more than fourteen. Another protester tipped back the boy’s head and poured milk into his eyes to soothe them.

  ‘Idiot,’ Harpa said. ‘All this isn’t the police’s fault.’

  ‘Perhaps not,’ said the man. ‘But we need the politicians to take notice. Maybe this is what it will take.’

  ‘Bah, it’s pathetic!’ A deep voice rumbled from just behind them. Harpa and her rescuer turned to see a broad-shouldered middle-aged man with puffy eyes, a scrappy grey beard and ponytail, frowning down on them. His stomach hung out over his jeans and he was wearing a broad-brimmed leather hat. Harpa thought she recognized him from somewhere, but she wasn’t sure.

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Harpa.

  ‘Icelanders are pathetic. This is the time for a real revolution. We can’t just sit around and talk politely about change and bang our pots and pans. The people need to take control. Now.’

  Harpa’s eyes widened as she listened. With the fisherman next to her, her fear was diminishing and the anger reappearing. He was right, damn it. He was right.

  ‘Aren’t you Sindri?’ the fisherman asked. ‘Sindri Pálsson?’

  The man nodded.

  ‘I’ve read your book. Capital Rape.’

  ‘And?’ The big man raised his eyebrows.

  ‘I thought it was a bit extreme. Now I am not so sure.’

  The big man laughed.

  Now Harpa knew where she had seen his face. He had been a punk rocker in the early eighties, a one-hit wonder and had re-emerged two decades later as an Icelandic anarchist writer.

  ‘My name is Björn,’ the fisherman said and held out his hand. Sindri shook it.

  ‘And you?’ Sindri asked Harpa. She could smell alcohol on his breath and she recogn
ized the look of interest in his eyes as he examined her. She might be an unemployed single mother in her late thirties, but men still liked what they saw, especially older men.

  ‘Harpa,’ she said, glancing quickly at the man named Björn as she did so. He smiled. God, he was attractive. There was something about him, or maybe it was just something about her, the afterglow of letting out all that anger.

  He was certainly more attractive than Gabríel Örn. Pity he was a fisherman. Rule one ever since she had been a teenager was don’t date fishermen.

  ‘Ólafur out!’ Sindri roared suddenly, punching a fist in the air.

  The big man was a magnificent sight, bellowing his lungs out, his ponytail bobbing.

  Harpa glanced at Björn. ‘Ólafur out!’ she shouted.

  Night fell. The protest intensified. The older protesters left: the proportion of demonstrators with their hoods up and faces covered increased. The Christmas tree in the middle of the square toppled: in a moment it was on fire. Drums beat, people danced. Harpa and Björn stuck to Sindri, who moved through the throng chatting to all and sundry between bellows. Following him, Harpa felt part of the crowd, and her anger flared again.

  Finally, the police had had enough. ‘Gas! Gas!’ the crowd shouted.

  A moment later something stung Harpa’s eyes. She bent over and Björn pulled her away. Something tickled her throat. They ran back out of the square, surrounded by hundreds of people, escaping before all but a particle or two of the gas reached their lungs. They lost Sindri for a moment, and then found him talking to a young man with his shirt off plunging his face into a bucket of water. The boy had spiky red hair and his torso glowed pink in the cold and the light of the flares. Sindri seemed to be congratulating him and slapping him on his back. The boy was shivering, but he was angry and the anger was keeping him warm.

  They were standing a couple of hundred metres away from the square, right next to the impressive statue of Ingólfur Arnarson, who was that first Viking settler to step ashore in Reykjavík’s smoky bay.

  ‘At least the gas doesn’t bother him,’ said Sindri. ‘If the country was still run by people like him they’d know exactly what to do with the bankers and the politicians.’

  Harpa admired the statue’s strong muscles. ‘I wonder if he really looked like that,’ she said.

  ‘He always seemed a bit camp to me,’ said Sindri. ‘The way he’s leaning on his shield, sticking his hip out.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Harpa. ‘He’s all man.’

  ‘He was probably short and fat with a double chin,’ said Björn.

  The three of them laughed.

  ‘Come back to my place for a drink,’ Sindri said to Harpa and Björn. ‘It’s just around the corner.’ They exchanged glances: if you will, so will I.

  ‘OK,’ said Harpa. So they followed Sindri, together with the boy who was still bare chested, waving his shirt in the air in disgust.

  ‘Another one, Harpa?’

  Harpa nodded as Sindri refilled her glass from the brandy bottle. Her head was pleasantly fuzzy, the alcohol adding to the chemicals released by her own body during the glorious turmoil of the demonstration. It was weeks since she had had a proper drink. She had always been suspicious of people who drank in the middle of the week, but this was no ordinary Tuesday.

  They were in Sindri’s small flat, the five of them: Sindri, Harpa, Björn, the red-haired boy and a short, neatly dressed man, young enough to be a student, who had latched on to them somewhere along the way. The boy’s name was Frikki, and the student’s Ísak.

  Sindri was enjoying himself, playing to the small crowd, and in particular playing to her. He had seated her next to him on a tatty sofa, Björn and Ísak the student sat on old armchairs facing them, and Frikki was slumped on the floor. The flat was a dump: small, cracked ceiling, scratched wooden floor, books, newspapers, magazines and ashtrays filled with cigarette stubs everywhere. There was washing-up in the sink in the alcove of the room that acted as a kitchen. The only things brightening up the place were three or four landscapes dotted around the walls, the biggest of which portrayed a farmer carrying an unconscious girl over the moors.

  They had finished a bottle of red wine and were on to the brandy.

  Harpa played up to Sindri; she was flattered by the attention and what he said was interesting. But it was Björn she was most aware of. He sat coolly listening to Sindri, calm, composed and furious. He wasn’t trying any of the classic male competition for her attention, but she did catch him shooting the occasional glance at her.

  She was enjoying herself. For a moment she felt guilty about leaving Markús, but her mother would be very happy looking after him. She was always telling Harpa to stop moping around, to get out more and meet a man. She was right. Since Gabríel Örn had betrayed her, Harpa had spent nearly all her time cooped up in her little house in Seltjarnarnes.

  ‘I know I don’t look like it,’ Sindri was saying, ‘but I am a farmer. Or at least my family are farmers. Until the bank forces them to sell up, that is.’

  ‘What happened?’ Harpa asked.

  ‘Everyone’s getting squeezed,’ Sindri said. ‘Even the farmers. My brother, who runs the farm now, can’t make his payments. So it’s finito.’ Sindri made a throat-cutting sign with his forefinger. ‘Just like that. A farm that has been around for generations, that was mentioned in the Book of Settlements, is destroyed. It breaks my heart.’

  It was Harpa’s understanding that farms were one of the few sectors of the economy actually doing well with the fall of the króna, but she didn’t want to contradict Sindri in full flow.

  He turned to her. ‘It is the farmers who are the real soul of Iceland. Like Bjartur there.’ He pointed to the painting of the peasant carrying the girl. ‘I did that, you know.’

  ‘It’s good,’ said Harpa. And it was. You could tell the brush-strokes were by an amateur, but the painting managed to portray nobility in a harsh but beautiful landscape.

  ‘The farmers and the fishermen,’ Sindri went on, taking the compliment in his stride. ‘Men who will work hard in tough conditions, who save, who fight to earn a living on the fells or on the waves. And not just men, women. We have the toughest, most independent women in the world. We have needed them to survive. And now these bankers, these lawyers, these politicians, all they know how to do is spend and borrow, spend and borrow. The kids of today don’t know how to do real work, what it’s like to tramp over the fells in a howling gale looking for lost sheep.’

  ‘Some of us do,’ said Frikki. ‘Until two weeks ago I spent all my waking life in a hellhole of a kitchen producing food for these guys to eat. And the prices they would pay! Ten thousand krónur for some swordfish flown in from the Pacific when we have perfectly good fish of our own all around us.’

  ‘Sorry, Frikki,’ Sindri said. ‘You are right, not everyone has forgotten. There are many of us perfectly good Icelanders still willing and able to do real jobs. We have always been here. It’s just no one has listened to us.’

  Harpa wondered whether Sindri had ever done a ‘real job’ since he had left the farm. But he had a point. He was just the kind of guy she would have dismissed with contempt as an ignorant idealist a couple of months before, but now she thought he had a point.

  ‘What chance have I of finding a real job?’ Frikki asked. ‘There’s nothing out there.’

  ‘What about you, Björn?’ Sindri asked.

  ‘I’m a fisherman,’ Björn said. ‘From Grundarfjördur. I rode down here on my motorbike this morning for the demonstration. And I agree with you, Sindri. I go out as often as my quota will allow, and I still can’t earn enough to pay off my debts. There are many like me. The banks told us to borrow in foreign currencies because the interest rates were lower. And now they say that not only have my own debts doubled because of the collapse of the króna, but I have to pay off all the money the banks borrowed from the British and the Dutch to lend to me too. It’s absurd. Mad.’

  Harpa felt distinctly
uncomfortable with the way the conversation was going.

  Someone else had noticed her discomfort. ‘What about you, Harpa?’ It was Ísak, the student. He was watching her closely. She could tell he had somehow guessed what she was, or what she used to be, despite the months of unemployment. Was it the way she spoke, her clothes, something about her attitude? Harpa didn’t like him. There was something creepy about his cool detachment, something at odds with the outrage of the rest of them. But she had to answer his question.

  ‘Like Frikki I have lost my job.’

  ‘Jesus!’ Sindri snorted. ‘Another one!’

  ‘And what job was that?’ Ísak asked quietly.

  Harpa could feel herself blushing. Embarrassment. Shame. Guilt. They all washed over her. She felt they were all looking at her, but she avoided them, staring down into her glass of brandy, letting her dark curly hair flop down to hide her eyes.

  There was silence. Björn coughed. She looked up to meet his eyes.

  She had to accept who she was. What she and people like her had done. How she had been used as well.

  ‘I was a banker. I worked for Ódinsbanki until two months ago when I was fired by my boyfriend. Somehow I never quite managed to get hold of all the cash everyone else had. And what cash I did have was tied up in Ódinsbanki shares which are now worthless.’

  ‘Didn’t you see it coming?’ asked Ísak.

  ‘No. No, I didn’t,’ said Harpa. ‘I believed it all. The story that we were all financial geniuses, younger and quicker and smarter than the others. That we were the Viking Raiders of the twenty-first century. That we took calculated risks and won. That the wealth was here to stay. That this was just the beginning of the prosperity, not the end.’ She shook her head. ‘I was wrong. Sorry.’

  There was silence for a moment.

  ‘Capitalism carries the seeds of its own destruction,’ said Ísak. ‘It’s as true now as it was a hundred and fifty years ago when Marx first said it. You wrote about that, Sindri.’