‘Is everything all right?’ she asked.
Maggi rolled onto his back again. ‘Of course, everything’s fine,’ he said, and smiled.
She smiled back at him, pleased that he had looked over at her, relieved that he had laughed.
‘I’m just concerned that work is eating up every minute of your time. Last night you came home in the middle of the night and now you’re crawling into bed at nine o’clock, bringing paperwork from the office with you.’
María breathed a sigh of relief. If that was all that was bothering him, then it would be best to let sleeping dogs lie. Best to keep quiet about that ridiculous incident with Agla.
‘You’re right,’ she said, put the annual report she had opened to one side and wriggled closer to him. ‘Is Yrsa’s book any good?’
‘Bloody good,’ Maggi said, putting it down and switching off the light. He turned to her, wrapped his arms around her and pulled her tight. María lay still, enjoying the closeness while she waited for him to fall asleep so she could sneak into the other room with the stack of paperwork from the bedside table and make another effort to figure out the contents.
These were the certified annual reports for the last ten years, including one that hadn’t been in the Voice of Truth’s folder. It was the latest one. She had briefly scanned the financial outcome and seen that for the first time in a decade, the smelter had turned a profit. That in itself was odd, in the first year following the financial crash. The exchange rate had certainly changed, but she had a suspicion – a strong one – that the currency restrictions imposed during the crisis had played a larger part. It had become more difficult for the smelter to pay its parent company’s invoices overseas since the central bank had decided that it needed to approve all major payments leaving the country.
85
There was one message on Bragi’s phone; he grunted his satisfaction when he saw the little heart. Everything was going according to plan. Sonja would arrive on the afternoon flight from London and he would ensure that there would be no trouble – no random checks around this flight. And tomorrow there would be an envelope on the floor by the door containing enough to keep Valdís for four months. He had already saved enough to pay Stephanie and Amy for several months, but sooner or later Valdís would need overnight care as well, and that would be even more expensive. So it would be worth putting as much by as he could. Her pension and his salary were enough to keep them going, so far, but from August he would retire and then he would need their savings. But Sonja had assured him that there would be more trips now, so that would be more cash for him.
He pushed the phone to the back of his locker and locked it. The aircraft would be in the air by now and it would be on the runway in two and a half hours. He could keep the staff busy until then, and there was nothing unusual about slowing things down – having them clear up and getting paperwork done, while he looked after the arrivals hall himself. He strolled out of the locker room and wrote the day’s tasks on the whiteboard. He went through the passenger list, checked on Sonja and then wrote on the board that he wanted one passenger in twenty checked from the Copenhagen flight that was landing before hers. That way the boys would be happy to take a break by the time the London flight landed and would jump at the chance of a breather when he came to relieve them. Maybe he could even splash out on Danish pastries for the coffee break to encourage them to not return to their posts too quickly. But that might be a little too obvious. It didn’t pay to depart too often from routine behaviour. It would arouse suspicion.
He was still pondering the pastry idea when the office door opened and two of the customs officers he recognised from Reykjavík came in, followed by a drug-squad officer with a sniffer dog.
‘Well, good morning,’ he said, trying to appear cheerful, as his mind started to go into overdrive.
‘G’day, g’day,’ one of the customs officers said and the other echoed him. ‘G’day.’ The three of them crowded around the coffee machine, which immediately and loudly began to grind beans to order.
‘To what do we owe this honour?’ Bragi asked and felt pressure mounting in his head.
‘Just the usual,’ the drug-squad officer said. He dropped heavily into a chair, picked a biscuit from the packet on the table, snapped it in two and gave half to the dog, which chewed it into the carpet.
‘Increased security status, or what?’
‘Nope. Just a tip-off on the drugs hotline just now. A big shipment coming through.’
‘So,’ Bragi said. ‘Copenhagen?’
‘Nope,’ the drug-squad officer said and dipped the remaining half of the biscuit into his coffee. ‘London.’
86
Bragi’s hands shook so hard that he dropped the phone as he picked it up, so it clattered to the floor and came apart. It would be just his luck if this wretched phone were to break just as he needed to rely on it. On his knees on the floor, he picked up the parts of the phone and tried to figure out how they fitted together. The phone didn’t appear to be broken, but the back had fallen off and there was a loose square piece that had to be the battery. He made a couple of attempts to slot it all together, and realised there was no point in hurrying. His hands were shaking so much that he could hardly control them, and his head felt as if it was going to burst. He could hardly think.
He realised eventually that inside the phone were three little square electrical contacts that had to match those on the battery, so everything at last fitted together and it easily snapped into place. He pressed the ON button three times before the phone responded. Then it took a while to start up and connect to the mobile network.
Now he was facing the possibility that Sonja could be caught, and the thought hit him that he could also be in danger. They had never discussed whether or not she would keep quiet about how he had helped her. He had assumed that she was the type who could be expected to do that. She had been to his home and had seen Valdís. She knew why he needed the money. It had never occurred to him that she would implicate him. But now, it felt as if all of the things he had previously taken for granted had been swept away. His dissatisfaction with the nursing home where Valdís had been looked after, the fact that he had missed her terribly, and his concerns over the bruises that had appeared on her body were suddenly all minor considerations in comparison to what could be awaiting them. All of a sudden, he was facing the prospect that Valdís could die alone and abandoned while he was in prison. That would be his gratitude to her for a whole lifetime of care – a whole lifetime of love.
When the little icon had finally appeared in the corner of the screen, Bragi opened the messages and sent an exclamation mark to Sonja’s phone. But that single exclamation mark seemed too little, considering how serious the situation was, so he sent a second message with a row of three exclamation marks. She could hardly misunderstand that.
He sighed. The aircraft would be landing before long, so his warning was already far too late.
He put the phone back in the locker and leaned against the wall so as not to faint. His legs had turned to jelly and he felt dizzy. He was too old for this kind of stress. He should have thought things through more carefully before he had started off on this stupidity. He must have been out of his mind to have gone down this road.
87
The landing was an unusually bumpy one and the aircraft bounced on the runway a couple of times – so hard that the fittings rattled and Sonja was shaken about in her seat. The weather outside seemed to be fine and the blue spring light showed in merciless detail the bare landscape that still needed a few more warm days before it would take on a light-green hue.
She switched on her phone and it pinged at her twice. Maybe it was her imagination, but she felt there was a note of desperation in those sharp pings. Her heart sank as soon as she saw the exclamation mark, and it lurched as she saw the second message, with a row of the punctuation marks. This had to be something serious.
The aircraft taxied slowly up to the terminal. As usual
the passengers were on their feet the instant the seat belt light had been switched off, pulling bags from the overhead lockers. There was little that Sonja could do. Maybe the exclamation marks meant there were dogs carrying out spot checks in the terminal. Maybe they would be waiting for her at the end of the jetway. The shipment was in the laptop case that was at her feet. She had taken no special measures this time to hide it other than to place the vacuum packs into empty coffee packs that she had then wrapped up in clingfilm. This had made a single flat package that fitted comfortably in the bag next to her laptop. The packages themselves were airtight in many layers of plastic and carefully sealed. She had refused to drop her standards, even when Nati had stood over her and laughed at her precautions.
It was impossible to be sure if the packages were dog-proof, as they had been packed so recently that it was not certain that the smell of cocaine had yet made its way through the three layers. But as she had no idea what the exclamation marks meant, she could hardly leave the aircraft with the shipment. The couple next to her were already on their feet and pushing their way into the gangway between the rows of seats to search for their bags. Sonja took an instant decision: she dropped to her knees, took the life vest from under the middle seat, took the flat package from her laptop bag and slipped it into the lifevest compartment.
Sonja felt the fresh air flood into the aircraft as the doors opened. A moment later the throng of passengers began to move, so she stood up in front of the aisle seat and pretended to be looking for something in the overhead locker. She quickly glanced around to check if anyone might be watching her, and when she was sure nobody was taking any notice, she put the life vest in the locker. Then she picked up her laptop case, waited her turn and joined the queue leaving the aircraft cabin. The drugs would be found before long, and the passenger list would show that this had been her seat, so this last-minute effort would probably not do much good. But it would at least buy her time – a little head space in which to think.
88
‘I know her by sight. It’s best if I go with you to pick her up at the jetway,’ Bragi said to the younger of the two Reykjavík customs officers. ‘You two go through the baggage with the dog. I don’t want to hold passengers up longer than necessary, so it’s best to check the bags quickly, but do it well.’
The drug-squad guy shrugged his shoulders, as if he was someone who only turned up at work so as to get paid and had little interest in what happened. The older of the customs officers looked at Bragi curiously.
‘How come you know this Sonja Gunnarsdóttir by sight?’ he asked.
Bragi leaned back in his chair until it was balanced on its two back legs, a ploy to make himself appear relaxed. ‘That’s the strange thing about this,’ he said. ‘I’ve picked her out of the line before now. She had nothing on her, but there was something suspicious about her.’
‘Suspicious? How so?’
‘Well, I’m not sure I know myself. There was just something about her that didn’t ring true.’ He smiled apologetically, and one of the young customs officers came to his rescue.
‘We reckon that Bragi has a sixth sense. It’s uncanny how he manages to pick out the smugglers just by staring at them.’
There was pride in the young man’s voice and for some reason, it grated with Bragi. These youngsters who looked up to him would be in for a disappointing surprise were they to discover the truth.
‘I don’t know if it’s anything as dramatic as a sixth sense,’ he said with a laugh. ‘More likely it’s just years of experience.’
‘Fair enough,’ the older customs officer said, jerking his head to tell the drug-squad guy with the dog to come with him. ‘Landing in five minutes. Let’s get things going.’
Bragi felt how feeble his legs were as he got to his feet and set off with the younger customs officer, who chattered without a break about how he had always dreamed of a posting to Keflavík airport and how he was going to apply for a transfer as soon as he had more experience. When they were in the passage, the youngster slowed down – apparently out of consideration for Bragi – and they arrived at the top of the jetway just as the aircraft’s engines stopped. Bragi wondered if Sonja had switched on the phone straightaway and had seen his warning, or if she was leaving the aircraft without any idea of what was waiting for her.
He saw from the look on her face as she emerged from the jetway that she had seen his warning.
‘Could I ask you to accompany us?’ Bragi suggested and lightly took her arm, indicating to the young customs officer that he should lead the way. He had already told him that they would use the staff corridor so as to not arouse the interest of other passengers by going through the arrivals hall. They were approaching the door when Sonja stopped and crouched down to adjust her shoe.
‘Are you all right?’ Bragi asked in a tone of forced concern as he looked down at her.
‘Under seat 19E,’ Sonja whispered as she rose to her feet.
89
‘Take her in,’ Bragi told the young customs officer. ‘And ask the boys to meet me on the plane with the dog. We ought to search it before it gets cleaned.’
He was taking a chance, gambling on the possibility that the young man wasn’t familiar with the airport’s routines. He watched the two of them as they made their way along the staff corridor, and as soon as the door had closed behind them he hurried as fast as his sore knee would take him along the passage. He walked by the wall, against the flow of passengers heading cheerfully for the duty-free store. These had to be the people from the Oslo flight that had been scheduled to land ten minutes behind the London one.
He was out of breath and felt that his head was about to burst from the pressure building up inside it when he reached the jetway – just in time to stop the new crew from going on board. The pilot looked concerned and he checked his watch, and Bragi could tell what he was thinking.
‘There shouldn’t be any delay,’ he said reassuringly as he stepped inside. ‘There’s a dog on the way and he’ll be no time going through the cabin.’
The cleaning crew were already on board and they always started at the far end of the cabin and worked forwards, so there was a clear way to get to row nineteen. E was a middle seat and he leaned forwards to look underneath it. There was nothing to be seen on the floor, so he put a hand underneath and felt that there was something else where the life vest should have been. He lifted out the package and was surprised at how heavy it was. This was no small shipment.
Two of the cleaning crew were in the toilets aft and one was busily picking up rubbish from between the seats. Bragi waited until the man bent down, turned quickly and dropped the package carefully into a rubbish sack that was held open on a metal frame on wheels. He was just in time, because the man straightened up and dropped a handful of litter into the bag, immediately hiding the package inside.
‘Everyone out!’ Bragi called, loud enough for the people cleaning the toilets to hear him.
‘Sorry, what?’ the cleaner with the bag in its metal frame asked. He was a gaunt Pole, or so Bragi assumed – the badge pinned to his creased shirt told him the man’s name was Pavel.
‘Everyone out of the aircraft, please,’ Bragi called. ‘We have a sniffer dog coming. The dog’s on the way.’
He clapped his hands to tell them to be quick. They responded instantly: the man and woman who had been cleaning the toilets dropped everything to the floor as they hurried out. Pavel was clearly about to do as he had been trained, leaving the metal frame with the bag behind, but Bragi snapped at him to take the damned thing out with him and get it out of the way.
Although the man looked at Bragi as if he was insane, he did as he was told, leaving the aircraft with the bin trundling ahead of him.
Bragi sat in the front row of seats to catch his breath. It would do Valdís no good if the stress were to kill him with a heart attack at this moment. He took deep breaths, counting to five with each one in order to slow his heartbeat. He had only done this a f
ew times when the older of the two Reykjavík customs officers and the drug squad guy appeared with the dog.
‘Nothing in the baggage,’ the drug squad guy said, placing the dog in the gangway to search.
‘Has anyone been on board?’ the customs officer asked.
‘The crew hadn’t boarded, and the cleaners had just started when I sent them out,’ he said. ‘I’ll go and have a word with them while you check the cabin.’ He got to his feet and set off up the gangway, nodding to the pilot, who smiled with feigned patience.
The cleaning crew were waiting in a group at the top of the jetway. Bragi snatched the bag from its metal frame, to Pavel’s astonishment, and snapped, ‘Customs!’ Now he would have to think fast.
He marched with the bag straight to a toilet off the corridor. He took the packet from the bag, stood on the toilet seat and tried with difficulty to push aside one of the ceiling tiles, but it was glued in place and he had to punch it. It shifted, but a crack had appeared in it, not that there was anything he could do about that. He shoved the package up into the suspended ceiling and hoped that nobody would notice the crack in the tile. Then he carefully got down from the toilet, picked up the bag and went back to the passage, into the staff corridor and downstairs.
‘My bladder’s killing me,’ he quickly said to Vilhelmina, who had been monitoring the CCTV and who now came to meet him. ‘I seem to have to take a leak every five minutes all day long.’
That was enough to forestall whatever she had been about to say. He emptied the bag onto one of the steel-topped tables, snapped on a pair of latex gloves and began searching through the garbage. There wasn’t much there, just a few sandwich wrappers, two water bottles, an empty jar, one ripped magazine, a couple of chewing gum wrappers and some smaller rubbish.
Trap Page 19