66 Degrees North

by Michael Ridpath

‘I’ll look after her,’ said Magnus. It did seem a bit of a waste of time, but it would be nice to have a native English speaker around.

  ‘So what now?’ said Vigdís.

  Magnus leaned back in his chair and thought. It was quite likely that there was indeed no Icelandic connection, but they had to keep an open mind; more than that, they should operate on the basis that there was a link, otherwise they would definitely miss one if it did exist.

  There were still people to talk to, files to read. But he asked himself the key question: from what he had learned so far, what felt wrong?

  ‘Árni?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Tell me more about Gabríel Örn’s death.’

  ‘I’m sure that doesn’t have any relevance.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘OK,’ said Árni. ‘It was last January, right at the peak of the demonstrations. The department was stretched to the limit. We were all out there on the lines, even the detectives, we were working round the clock. We were knackered.

  ‘Anyway, a body washed up on the shore at Straumsvík by the aluminium smelter. It was naked. The clothes were found ten kilometres up the coast, just by the City Airfield, next to that bike path that runs along the shore. It was Gabríel Örn Bergsson. It turned out he had sent two suicide texts before he went for a swim, one to his mother who raised the alarm, and another to his ex-girlfriend, Harpa Einarsdóttir, who didn’t, or not until the following morning.

  ‘I went to interview Harpa. She had some story about how she was supposed to meet him at a bar, but he never showed up.’

  ‘And you didn’t believe her?’

  ‘She had an alibi. She was seen at the bar, waiting. In fact she got in some kind of argument there. But no, it didn’t seem quite right.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Árni scrunched up his face, frowning deeply, painfully. ‘I don’t know. Nothing I can put my finger on. That’s why I said it was irrelevant.’

  ‘Were they sure it was suicide?’

  ‘The pathologist had some slight doubts, I think. As did Baldur. But they were pretty much squashed from on high.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘There was a revolution going on,’ said Vigdís. ‘And up till then it was peaceful. If Gabríel Örn had been murdered on the night of those demos, it would have put an entirely different flavour on the whole situation. The politicians, the Commissioner, everyone was shit scared that things would turn seriously violent. We all were.’

  ‘Árni, let me tell you something,’ Magnus said. ‘If your gut tells you something, listen to it. It may turn out to be wrong, it often will, but every so often it will be the best evidence you’ve got.’

  Árni sighed. ‘All right.’

  ‘Where does this Harpa woman live?’

  ‘Seltjarnarnes. I can call her to see if she’s in?’

  ‘No, Árni. We are going to surprise her.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  HARPA LIVED IN one of a row of identical white houses facing the bay. Small, but expensive enough in the boom times, Magnus thought. Not now though.

  When she answered the door Magnus got the firm impression that she had been expecting to hear from the police. For a second she looked panicked, before badly feigned surprise kicked in.

  She was in her late thirties, with pale skin, pale blue eyes and dark curly hair reaching down to her shoulders. She had been pretty once, and no doubt could be pretty again, but at that moment she looked tense and worn out. Two deep creases lined her face either side of her mouth, and two smaller notches like deep cuts separated her eyebrows. At first Magnus thought she was wearing make-up, until he realized that the smudges around her eyes were fatigue.

  Árni introduced himself and Magnus. They took off their shoes and went through to the kitchen.

  A grey-haired man was kneeling on the floor with a curly-haired little boy. They were playing with toy cars and a garish plastic multi-storey car park.

  The man pulled himself to his feet, wincing as he did so. He was short, with a broad, hard face criss-crossed with wrinkles. He appeared to be in his late sixties. ‘What’s this about?’ he asked in a gruff voice, squaring his shoulders as he faced up to the detectives.

  ‘We are investigating the death of Óskar Gunnarsson,’ Árni said.

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘This is my father, Einar,’ said Harpa.

  Magnus addressed him directly. ‘It’s your daughter we would like to speak to, Einar. We would prefer to talk to her alone.’

  ‘I’ll stay,’ said the man.

  ‘She is over eighteen,’ said Magnus. ‘She doesn’t need a parent present.’

  He could feel Harpa tense next to him.

  ‘She became quite upset the last time you lot interviewed her,’ Einar said. ‘I don’t want that to happen again.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Dad,’ said Harpa. ‘I’ll be much better this time. Why don’t you take Markús down to the harbour?’

  The small boy’s face broke into a wide beam and he started jumping up and down. ‘Harbour! Harbour!’

  Despite himself, Einar’s eyes softened as he struggled to repress a smile.

  ‘Are you sure, my love?’

  ‘Yes, Dad, I’ll be fine.’

  ‘OK, come along then, Markús.’

  The old man held out his big meaty hand, and it enveloped the little fist of the boy. Magnus, Árni and Harpa waited awkwardly while they put on their shoes and coats and went outside.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ said Harpa. ‘My father is a bit overprotective.’

  ‘Nice kid,’ said Magnus.

  ‘Yes. And his grandfather dotes on him as you can see. He’ll be telling him all kinds of stories about his fishing days once they get down to the harbour. Markús loves it although I’m sure he doesn’t understand what Dad is saying: he just likes the rumble of his voice.’

  Magnus and Árni sat at the kitchen table as Harpa poured them some coffee and sat opposite them.

  ‘You heard Óskar was shot in London?’ Árni asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Harpa said, tensing. ‘Yes, I heard it on the radio. It was quite a shock.’

  ‘Did you know him?’

  ‘Yes, I did. He was my boss, or rather my boss’s boss. Oh, I didn’t know him well. But I have had plenty of meetings with him over the years.’

  ‘Did you know him socially?’

  ‘No,’ Harpa said firmly. Too firmly. ‘Absolutely not.’

  The denial piqued Magnus’s interest. Already he could sense that things were not quite right with Harpa. ‘So you were never invited to any of his parties?’

  ‘Um. Yes, yes, I was,’ Harpa said. ‘I suppose I did see him socially at business gatherings within the company. He was good with all his staff. But I wouldn’t call him a friend. And we never met outside work.’

  ‘When was the last time you saw him?’

  Harpa blew air out of her cheeks. ‘I suppose it was the goodbye speech he gave to all the staff the day he left.’ She smiled. ‘Gudmundur Rasmussen, the idiot they brought in to take over when the bank was nationalized, insisted Óskar leave around the back. So Óskar calmly walked around the building and through the front entrance. He’d planned it all before, a bunch of us were waiting for him in the atrium.’ She smiled. ‘It was a good speech.’

  ‘But you haven’t seen him since then?’ Magnus asked.

  ‘No. From what I have read he went straight to London and pretty much stayed there. I don’t think he ever came back to Iceland.’

  Magnus nodded. Harpa was becoming more convincing.

  ‘I’d like to ask you about the death of Gabríel Örn Bergsson,’ Magnus said.

  Immediately Harpa tensed again. ‘Why? That was suicide. What connection can there be with Óskar?’

  ‘That’s a good question,’ said Magnus. ‘Do you know of a possible connection?’

  Harpa’s face betrayed a mixture of confusion and panic. She tilted her head forward to let her curly hair hang over her eyes, and then toss
ed it irritably out of the way. Playing for time. ‘No. No. There can’t be one. I know they both worked for the same bank, but one man killed himself and the other was murdered.’

  ‘Do you know why Gabríel Örn killed himself?’ Magnus asked.

  ‘I don’t. But he was responsible for a lot of bad loans,’ said Harpa. ‘Big losses for Ódinsbanki.’

  ‘But there were plenty of other bankers responsible for losing money last year. They haven’t committed suicide. Why was Gabríel Örn so sensitive?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You knew him intimately. Did it surprise you that he drowned himself?’

  Harpa sighed. ‘Yes. Yes, it did,’ she said quietly. ‘He was usually pretty confident about his talents. Maybe he finally realized what a bastard he was. Maybe he couldn’t look at himself in the mirror.’

  ‘He treated you badly?’

  ‘You could say that. He took all the credit for the good work I did, he was the one who got the big bonuses while I got diddly-squat. He blamed me for the bad deals he did. That infuriated me. I argued against doing all of the three big deals that eventually went wrong, but Gabríel overruled me, said I wasn’t smart enough to see the opportunity. I wasn’t smart enough to stop listening to him, that was the problem.

  ‘Then one day, as a special reward for my achievement at the bank, he told me I had become one of the golden circle of privileged employees who would be allowed to buy stock in the Ódinsbanki on special terms. The bank would lend me the money to do it, at low rates. I knew that it was how he had made tens of millions of krónur over the previous few years and I thought it was my big chance, so I went for it.’

  She shook her head. ‘Six months later the shit hit the fan, the stock price fell to zero practically, and the bank was nationalized. But somehow the loan I had taken out was still there.’

  ‘Presumably everyone else suffered too?’

  Harpa’s laugh had no humour and a tinge of hysteria. ‘A lot of us did. But not the true “golden circle”. While we were buying, they were selling. Gabríel sold three-quarters of his shares and had paid down all his loan.’

  ‘So you dumped him?’ Magnus asked.

  ‘I didn’t know anything about that at that stage.’ Harpa sighed. ‘He dumped me. There used to be a rule in all the banks that staff in a relationship couldn’t work together. After Gudmundur arrived, that rule was reinstated. Guess who had to go?’

  ‘Tough,’ Magnus said.

  ‘Yes. Though once I had left, my friends told me Gabríel was having an affair with a twenty-three-year-old trainee anyway. It was very convenient for him.’

  Harpa’s bitterness had overwhelmed her initial confusion.

  ‘Can you tell me what happened the night he died?’

  ‘Killed himself, you mean?’

  ‘Died.’ Magnus repeated himself firmly.

  ‘But I told your colleague in January.’

  ‘Tell us again,’ said Magnus. He had pulled out his notebook. Árni’s notes from that first interview, which Magnus had skimmed on the way to Seltjarnarnes, were very sketchy.

  Harpa hesitated, as if looking for a way out. There wasn’t one.

  ‘I went to the demonstration that afternoon in the Austurvöllur square outside the Parliament building. I met a man there, Björn Helgason. After the tear gas broke up the protest, I went back to his place.’

  ‘Where was that?’ Magnus asked.

  ‘Up the hill by the Catholic Cathedral. Actually it was his brother’s flat. Björn lives in Grundarfjördur; he was staying with his brother so he could attend the demo.’

  ‘Was Björn’s brother there?’

  ‘No, he was out somewhere or other.’

  ‘Then what happened?’

  ‘We had a drink. We talked. We got to the point where I thought something might happen. But then… then I guess I got cold feet. I felt bad about Gabríel. I needed to see him. So I called him and told him to meet me at B5 on Bankastraeti.’

  ‘What did Björn think about that?’

  ‘He seemed disappointed, but he was a gentleman about it. He insisted on giving me his number.’

  ‘So then what happened?’

  ‘So I walked over to Bankastraeti. Got into B5 and waited. Gabríel never came. By this stage I was a bit drunk. Some student began to annoy me. I slapped him. He slapped me. A couple of guys stepped in to protect me. The barman threw the student out.’

  ‘What was the student’s name?’ Magnus asked, knowing the answer from Árni’s notes.

  ‘Ísak, I think,’ Harpa said. ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘I got a text from Gabríel. It said something like “Gone swimming. Sorry. Goodbye.” I didn’t really understand this, but I was pretty drunk at the time. I think I assumed it was a typical smart-arse Gabríel remark meaning he was standing me up. So I called Björn and asked him to pick me up.’

  ‘What time was all this?’ Magnus asked.

  ‘I don’t know. Midnight? One? Two? I told your colleague at the time.’

  And my colleague didn’t write it down, Magnus thought.

  ‘OK. And where did you go with Björn?’

  ‘Back to his brother’s place,’ said Harpa. ‘And what happened then you can guess.’

  ‘Did you see the brother?’

  ‘I did, but not till the following morning. I saw him on my way out.’

  ‘And what time was that?’

  ‘No idea. Can’t remember. But as I was walking home – I walked the whole way, I do remember that – I started thinking about the text Gabríel sent me. It worried me. I dithered a bit, but once I got home I rang the police.’

  The story was possible, unlikely, but possible. But there was one thing that made no sense to Magnus. ‘Why did you suddenly call Gabríel Örn? You just told me why you hated him, for what seem to me to be perfectly good reasons.’

  ‘Er…’ Magnus waited, as Harpa struggled. It seemed to him that she was trying to remember something, rather than figure something out, as if the key thing for her was to repeat what she had said before rather than to come out with the truth.

  ‘I suppose I still loved him,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, come on!’ said Magnus. ‘He’d behaved appallingly to you.’

  ‘Yes,’ Harpa said. ‘But I was a bit drunk, I had never been with a man since Gabríel Örn, I was nervous, scared even. I felt guilty.’

  Magnus shook his head. ‘I don’t believe any of this.’

  ‘I don’t care what you believe!’ Harpa cried. ‘I don’t know what I believe, now. After Gabríel’s death everything changed. I can’t remember why I loved him, I can’t remember how I felt towards him then. The man I loved killed himself! Yes, I hate him. Yes, sometimes I love him. And sometimes I feel guilty. I don’t know why, but I do.’ She fought to control herself. ‘Now I have no idea why I called him. I was a different person then.’

  That, Magnus could believe. It was difficult to imagine how a normal woman would feel if her former boyfriend killed himself, no matter how horrible he had been to her. He knew it wouldn’t be logical; it wouldn’t be consistent.

  But everyone was making an assumption here, an assumption that Magnus was not entirely happy with.

  ‘Harpa,’ Magnus leaned forward, facing her over the kitchen table, ‘do you think there is a chance that Gabríel Örn’s death wasn’t suicide?’

  ‘No,’ said Harpa. ‘No chance at all. It was suicide. It must have been. You investigated it.’

  ‘Did Gabríel Örn have any enemies?’ Magnus asked. ‘Apart from you, that is?’

  ‘What are you insinuating?’

  ‘I’m just asking a question.’

  ‘A lot of people didn’t like Gabríel Örn. He was scum, basically.’

  ‘And the world’s better off without him?’

  ‘No!’ said Harpa, looking close to tears now. ‘No! Not at all! You are twisting my words. His death was dreadful, as was Óskar’s. Now why don’t yo
u go out and find out who killed them?’

  ‘Them?’ said Magnus with half a smile.

  ‘Him, damn you! Óskar! And don’t try to trick me, it doesn’t prove anything. Now please go.’

  ‘Your instincts were right, Árni,’ Magnus said as they drove back downtown. ‘No wonder she didn’t want her father to stay. She’s not telling us the truth.’

  ‘I thought so. Do you think we should have kept him there?’

  ‘No, she would just have clammed up completely,’ Magnus said. ‘Árni, you must take more detailed notes. What you’ve got on that interview in January is useless. You must write down the specifics. That’s how you catch people out, when they get the details wrong.’

  ‘It didn’t seem important at the time,’ said Árni. ‘We were just going through the motions. The Big Salmon was clear that this was suicide and nothing more.’ The Big Salmon was Snorri Gudmundsson, the National Police Commissioner. ‘Also, I was tired. I was in that demo too, you know, but I was the one having skyr thrown at me. They pulled in everyone, including the guys from CID, we did sixteen-hour shifts protecting the Parliament building. I think I had just done twelve hours straight before I was told to investigate this case.’

  Magnus grunted as he skimmed Árni’s notes on the interview with Björn Helgason. That too was brief.

  ‘Did Björn corroborate what Harpa said?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Árni. ‘And he was much more convincing. You are not suggesting we should go and see him in Grundarfjördur, are you? That’s at least two hours away. It would take a whole day to get there and back.’

  Magnus knew that they should. There was a hole in Harpa’s story and Björn was a natural place to start looking for it. But Grundarfjördur was a fair distance away, on the Snaefells Peninsula on the west coast of Iceland. He had his own reasons for not wanting to go anywhere near that area if he could avoid it.

  ‘Maybe later,’ he said.

  The Kría was heading home. It had been a rotten day and tempers were frayed. The crew couldn’t wait to get back to harbour and unload what little there was of the day’s catch, a couple of disappointing hauls of small haddock.

  It was dark. To the right, Búland’s Head rose in massive blackness against the lighter darkness of the cloud-torn sky. Ahead was Krossnes light, the rhythm of its winking so familiar. The crew stood in silence. Gústi, the skipper, had screwed up. He had misjudged the effect of the tide on the seine net and it had drifted on to a known wreck on their third haul of the day, snagging. When Björn had seen where they were fishing, he had suggested they were too close, but Gústi had ignored him. Then they had spent the whole of the rest of the day trying to free the net, before eventually kissing goodbye to two hundred thousand krónur’s worth of equipment. Björn had suggested cutting it after an hour or so, at least then they could have used the spare net to salvage something of the day.