66 Degrees North

by Michael Ridpath

  He would be back.

  Harpa had been mean to Markús, snapping at him for not tidying up his trucks. Later, when they were reading one of the poems in Vísnabókin, favourites from her own childhood, Markús had had to point out that she had read the same verse twice.

  After he was in bed she had paced around the house, desperate to go for a walk on the beach at Grótta at the end of the Seltjarnarnes promontory, but unwilling to leave Markús alone in the house. She thought of calling her mother to babysit, but she couldn’t face the explanations, the small lies hiding the much bigger lie.

  So in the end she had poured herself a cup of coffee and sat at the kitchen table staring out of the window, watching night settle over Faxaflói Bay, forcing herself to remain still. She was in a kind of a trance. Inside she was screaming. Outside she was motionless, frozen.

  Gabríel’s death would never leave her. In some strange way, his death, or her part in it, had lodged itself somewhere inside her. It had bided its time for a few months, but now it was growing like some ghastly tropical parasite, eating her up from the inside.

  That evening, she had been unable to look Markús directly in the eye. Those big, trusting, honest brown eyes. How could she tell him that his mother was a liar? Worse than that, a murderer?

  How could she live her life never being able to look her son in the eye?

  She wanted to throw back the kitchen chair and scream. But she didn’t move. Didn’t move a muscle. Didn’t even raise the cup of cold coffee in front of her to her lips.

  Where the hell was Björn?

  She stared out into the gathering darkness, at Gabríel Örn lying there on the ground in the car park just off Hverfisgata, blood from his skull mingling with dirt in the slush.

  She heard her own screams.

  ‘Shush, Harpa, shush.’ Björn’s voice was calm, and authoritative. Harpa stopped screaming. She sobbed instead.

  He crouched down beside Gabríel. ‘Is he dead?’ Harpa whispered.

  Björn frowned. By the way he moved his fingers around Gabríel’s throat, pressing on one spot and then another, Harpa could tell that he couldn’t find a pulse.

  Harpa pulled out her phone. ‘I’ll call an ambulance.’

  ‘No!’ Björn instructed her, his voice firm. ‘No. He’s dead. There’s no point in calling an ambulance for a dead person. We’ll all end up in jail.’

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ said Frikki.

  ‘No. Wait! Let me think,’ Björn said. ‘We need a story.’

  ‘No one will know it was us,’ said Sindri. ‘Let’s just go.’

  ‘They’ll know Harpa called him just before he came out,’ Björn said. ‘Phone records. The police will interview her. Perhaps someone was with him, someone who knows he was going to meet her.’

  ‘Don’t tell them anything, Harpa,’ Frikki said.

  ‘Oh, God,’ said Harpa. She knew she would tell the police everything.

  ‘Quiet!’ Björn urged. ‘Let’s calm down. We need a story. An alibi for everyone. First let’s get him out of the way. And try not to get his blood on your clothes.’

  Sindri, Frikki and Björn dragged Gabríel into the small car park and laid him between two parked cars.

  ‘Harpa needs to go to B5,’ Ísak said. The others looked at him. ‘She needs to go to B5 right away. She needs to make a fuss about something so they remember that she is there. Start an argument with someone. Me perhaps. There is no connection between us, the police won’t suspect anything.’

  ‘But where was she before?’ Sindri asked.

  ‘With me,’ Björn said. ‘We met at the demonstration. She came back with me to my brother’s place. Things went wrong: she called her old boyfriend, wanted to see him.’

  ‘She waited at the bar for him and he never came,’ Ísak said.

  ‘What are we going to do with the body?’ Sindri asked.

  ‘I can move it somewhere,’ said Björn.

  ‘Fake a suicide,’ said Ísak. ‘I don’t know, a fall? Hang him somewhere?’

  ‘That’s horrible,’ Harpa said. ‘I think I am going to be sick.’

  ‘I’ll take him down to the sea for a swim,’ said Björn. ‘Sindri, you can help me. OK, give me your phone number, Harpa. You go to B5 with Ísak, but make sure you arrive separately. Make a fuss, but try not to get thrown out; we need you there as long as possible. I’ll get rid of the body now and call you in an hour or two. Then you can come back to my brother’s place with me. We can go through the details of your story then.’

  Harpa nodded. She pulled herself together and set off for Bankastraeti and the bar, Ísak following by a different route.

  Even though the plan was made up on the spot and there were plenty of holes in it, it worked. Harpa could never have thought of it. It took Ísak’s brains and Björn’s calm.

  She had coped with the police questioning well. If it hadn’t been for Björn she would have cracked. He gave her the strength and determination to stick with her story. And now she was going to have to go through it all again, but this time she wasn’t sure she would be able to do as good a job.

  She heard a motorbike approaching fast along Nordurströnd. She heard it come to a stop outside the house.

  Her heart leapt. She ran out of the house and threw herself into the arms of the driver even before he had a chance to take his helmet off.

  ‘Oh, Björn, I’m so glad you are here.’ She began to sob.

  He slipped off the helmet and stroked her hair. ‘There, there, Harpa. It’s all going to be OK.’

  She pulled back. ‘It’s not going to be OK, Björn. I killed someone. I’m going to hell. I’m in hell.’

  ‘There is no hell,’ Björn said. ‘You feel guilty, but you shouldn’t. Of course killing people is wrong, but you didn’t mean to kill him, did you? It was an accident. People die in accidents.’

  ‘It wasn’t an accident,’ said Harpa. ‘I attacked him.’

  ‘The whole thing happened because Sindri and that kid egged you on. They were the ones who made you call him up and get him to come out and meet you. What we both did wrong was to go along with them. Look at me, Harpa. You’re not a bad person.’

  But Harpa didn’t look at him. She pressed herself into Björn’s leather-clad chest. She wanted to believe him. She wanted so desperately to believe him.

  CHAPTER TEN

  November 1934

  HALLGRÍMUR LOOKED OUT over the snow as he made his way to the barn where the sheep were huddled together for the winter. He had to check on the hay.

  It was ten o’clock and just getting light. The snow, which had fallen a few days before, glowed a luminescent blue, except at the top of the far mountains where the rising sun painted it red. He could still see the dark shapes of the twisted rocky waves of the Berserkjahraun. The warmth of the lava stone meant that the snow always melted there first.

  A cold wind whipped in from the fjord. Hallgrímur saw a small figure tramping his way across the snow towards the little church. Benni.

  Hallgrímur hadn’t seen much of his friend over the past few weeks, but he felt sorry for him. Benedikt’s father’s disappearance had taken everyone by surprise. His mother had not the faintest clue where her husband might have gone. Search parties went out everywhere: over the Bjarnarhöfn Fell in case he had been looking for a lost sheep, along the shore in case he had fallen into the sea, over the Berserkjahraun, into the towns of Stykkishólmur and Grundarfjördur. When nothing turned up, the search went further afield: over the mountains to the south and the Kerlingin Pass, along the coast to Ólafsvík, the sheriff down in Borgarnes was informed.

  There was no sign of him anywhere.

  Hallgrímur had joined in the search parties, sticking closely to his father wherever he went. He was amazed and impressed by his father’s determination to help, the long hours he spent on the fells looking for a body he knew lay at the bottom of a lake only a few kilometres away.

  The atmosphere at Bjarnarhöfn was awful. His
father and mother didn’t talk. The hatred was palpable. Hallgrímur’s brother and sisters assumed it was grief and shock. Only Hallgrímur knew the real reason.

  The boy hated his mother for what she had done with Benni’s father. And, although he knew it was wrong, he couldn’t help admiring his father for doing something about it.

  Of course things were much worse at Hraun. Benni’s mother had been demented with worry, but she was a strong woman and she didn’t let the farm slip. Neighbours were eager to help.

  Where had Benedikt’s father gone? The theories became more and more wild. The two wildest were that he had emigrated to America with a woman, and that the Kerlingin troll had got him.

  More sober heads assumed he had somehow fallen into Breidafjördur and been swept away into the ocean.

  Hallgrímur walked over the snow-covered home meadow down to the church. It was little more than a hut, with black painted wooden walls and a red metal roof. There was no spire, just a white cross above the entrance. It was surrounded by a low wall of stone and turf, and a graveyard of a mixture of old grey headstones and newer white wooden crosses. Hallgrímur’s ancestors lay there. One day, in the far off future, perhaps in the twenty-first century if he was lucky, Hallgrímur would join them.

  There was no pastor of Bjarnarhöfn. The pastor at Helgafell, the small bump in the distance near the town of Stykkishólmur, held services there once a month.

  Hallgrímur opened the door. Benni was sitting in the front pew, staring at the altar. He had a book on his lap. Hallgrímur recognized it, it was Benedikt’s copy of the Saga of the People of Eyri.

  ‘Hello,’ said Hallgrímur, joining him. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I am trying to pray,’ said Benedikt.

  ‘What for?’ said Hallgrímur. ‘They won’t find him.’

  ‘For his soul.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Hallgrímur. He had never quite got to grips with the concept of soul. ‘Are you all right, Benni?’

  ‘No. I feel so bad for my mother. She has no idea what happened to Dad and she will never find out. Unless I tell her.’

  ‘You can’t do that,’ said Hallgrímur.

  ‘Why not?’ said Benedikt. ‘I think about it all the time.’

  ‘It will get us into trouble.’

  ‘Not very much trouble,’ said Benedikt. ‘We didn’t kill him.’

  Hallgrímur frowned. ‘It would get my father into a lot of trouble.’

  ‘Perhaps he deserves it.’ Benedikt glared at Hallgrímur.

  ‘And your father, too. I know he’s dead, but everyone thinks he’s a hero. They won’t think that if they know what he did.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  The two boys stared at the altar and its simple cross.

  ‘Benni?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘If you do tell anyone, I will kill you.’ Hallgrímur didn’t know why he made the threat: it just came out of nowhere. But he knew he meant it. And the fact that he had uttered it in the church gave it greater meaning.

  Benedikt didn’t answer.

  ‘Tell me a story from in there, Benni,’ Hallgrímur said, tapping the book on Benedikt’s lap.

  ‘All right,’ said Benedikt. He was still staring ahead at the altar, not looking at Hallgrímur. ‘Do you remember Björn of Breidavík?’ Benedikt didn’t need to open the book: he knew all the stories.

  ‘The one who went to America and became a chieftain?’

  ‘Yes. Do you want to know why he went there?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘There was a beautiful woman called Thurídur who lived at Fródá. It’s near Ólafsvík.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Even though she was someone else’s wife, Björn kept on going to see her. He loved her.’

  ‘Oh.’ Hallgrímur wasn’t sure he liked the sound of this story.

  ‘Thurídur’s brother was a great chieftain called Snorri who lived at Helgafell.’

  ‘Yes, you have told me about him.’

  ‘Well, Snorri was angry with Björn and had him outlawed so he had to leave Iceland.’

  ‘That was then,’ Hallgrímur said. ‘My father couldn’t have got your father outlawed. That doesn’t happen any more.’

  Benedikt ignored him. ‘A few years later Björn returned to Breidavík and went back to seeing Thurídur. This time Snorri sent a slave to kill Björn, but Björn caught the slave and had him killed instead. There was a big battle between the families of Björn and Snorri on the ice below Helgafell. In the end Björn left Iceland of his own accord. He ended up in America with the Skraelings.’

  ‘Perhaps your father should have gone to America,’ said Hallgrímur.

  Benedikt turned away from the altar to look straight at Hallgrímur. ‘Perhaps Björn should have killed Snorri.’

  Friday, 18 September 2009

  Magnus carried the two cups of coffee from the counter and sat down opposite Sigurbjörg. They were in a café on Borgartún. He had called her early, catching her just as she arrived in her office, and she had agreed to see him for a few minutes before the working day began in earnest.

  He had woken up at four-thirty thinking about what Sigurbjörg had told him back in April, and had been unable to get back to sleep. Denial wasn’t going to work. He had heard what he had heard and he was going to have to make sense of it. The sooner the better.

  The café was busy with office workers loading up on caffeine, mostly to go, so there were a few seats available.

  ‘I’m glad you called,’ said Sibba in English. ‘I didn’t think you would.’

  ‘Neither did I,’ said Magnus. ‘It was kinda weird seeing you yesterday.’

  ‘OBG is a good client of our firm’s, as you can imagine. Do you want to ask me about Óskar Gunnarsson? That might be tricky.’

  ‘No, no.’ Magnus took a deep breath. ‘I wanted to talk about our family.’

  ‘I wondered,’ said Sibba. ‘Have you seen any of them since you’ve been here?’

  ‘Only you that once.’

  ‘I can understand why you would want to avoid them, especially after the way Grandpa treated you last time you were here.’

  Magnus had summoned up the courage to travel back to Iceland when he was twenty, just after his father died. He had hoped to achieve some kind of reconciliation with his mother’s family. It hadn’t worked: the trip was as painful as he had feared.

  ‘Have you been up to Bjarnarhöfn recently?’ Magnus asked.

  ‘Yes. I took my husband and the kids to stay in Stykkishólmur for a few days in July with Uncle Ingvar. He’s a doctor at the hospital there. But we visited Grandpa and Grandma a few times.’

  ‘How are they?’

  ‘Very good, considering their age. They both still have all their marbles. And Grandpa still potters about on the farm.’

  ‘But Uncle Kolbeinn does most of the work?’

  ‘Oh, yes. And he lives in the farmhouse. Grandpa and Grandma have moved into one of the smaller houses.’

  Bjarnarhöfn was made up of a number of buildings: barns, three houses and of course the little church down towards the fjord.

  ‘Has he changed much?’

  ‘No. He’s pretty much set in his ways.’

  ‘The old bastard,’ Magnus muttered.

  Sibba looked sympathetic. ‘You didn’t enjoy your time at Bjarnarhöfn, eh?’

  ‘No. You were lucky growing up in Canada, away from them.’

  ‘I remember visiting when I was a child,’ Sibba said. ‘In fact, I remember staying at Bjarnarhöfn when you and Óli were there. You were both very quiet. Like you were scared of Grandpa.’

  ‘We were. Especially Óli.’ Magnus winced. ‘It’s still difficult to think about it now. You know Óli and I never talked about it after we went to America? It’s like the whole four-year period was blanked out of our minds.’

  ‘Until I came along?’ Sibba said. ‘I’m sorry. I should never have told you about your father and the other woman. It just didn’t occur to me that y
ou wouldn’t know, it’s all that the rest of the family ever talked about. But of course I was older than you: you and Óli were just little kids.’

  ‘I’m glad you did, Sibba. In fact, that’s what I want to ask you about.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Sibba said.

  ‘Yes.’ Magnus nodded. ‘I need to find out what happened in my parents’ lives. It’s been nagging at me ever since Dad was murdered.’

  Sibba’s eyebrows rose in surprise. ‘This doesn’t have anything to do with that, does it?’

  ‘I doubt it. But I’m a cop, I like to ask questions until I get answers. You are the only member of the family I think I could talk to. Grandpa has turned the others pretty much against me.’

  Hallgrímur, Magnus’s grandfather, had three sons and a daughter: Vilhjálmur the eldest, who had emigrated to Canada in his twenties, Kolbeinn, Ingvar and Margrét, Magnus’s mother. Sibba was Vilhjálmur’s daughter who had grown up and been educated in Canada, but had moved to Iceland after university, gone to law school and then on to a career as a lawyer in Reykjavík. Magnus had always liked her the most of his mother’s family.

  She looked at Magnus closely. ‘So, fire away. I’m not sure how much I can help you.’

  Magnus sipped his coffee. ‘Do you know who the other woman was?’

  ‘I did, but… no… I forget her name,’ Sibba winced, struggling to remember. She shook her head. ‘No. It will come to me. She was Aunt Margrét’s best friend from school. She lived in Stykkishólmur. They both went to teacher training school in Reykjavík.’

  ‘Was she teaching at the same school as Mom?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘Did you ever meet her?’

  ‘No. But I heard about her. I could ask my father, if you like?’