‘Nothing here,’ he sighed. ‘Not a damned thing.’
His walkie-talkie burst into life, telling them that the aircraft had been cleared.
Vilhelmina shrugged her shoulders. ‘Do you think she’s carrying it internally?’ she asked.
‘That wouldn’t be a surprise,’ Bragi said, sitting down and rubbing his knee.
90
It wasn’t the first time that Sonja had waited at the clinic in Keflavík for the radiographer to arrive to X-ray her. The unfortunate woman had only just gone home when she had been called back.
When she saw Sonja, she gave her a tired smile. ‘Hello, again,’ she said.
‘Hello,’ Sonja said apologetically. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt your dinner, but customs seem to like me.’
Since the exclamation mark had appeared on the screen, it had been all she could do to remain calm. Bragi had explained to her when they had started their cooperation how to behave if she were to be arrested; and that the best approach was to stay calm, but to ask at intervals why she had been picked, and when she would be able to go home. This gave an impression of innocence, he said. She had followed his instructions, and asked a couple of times while the customs officers interrogated her and reduced her luggage almost to tiny particles. Then they had brought in a man with a dog that had sniffed her, apparently without detecting anything suspicious. Sonja was relieved that she had stuck with her careful precautions that Nati thought had been way over the top. The tiniest grain clinging to someone’s clothes would be enough to alert the dog, but she seemed to have got away with it. And if they were searching her and her luggage, they couldn’t have found the package in the aircraft’s cabin.
‘Why did you pick me out?’ she asked yet again while she sat and waited with the young customs officer for the doctor to finish examining the X-rays of her stomach.
‘We had a tip-off,’ he said. ‘An anonymous tip-off.’
‘That’s really weird,’ she said, but she knew there was nothing weird about it.
Adam had tipped them off: no doubt an anonymous call to the dope hotline or straight to the customs service. That meant that he must have worked out that she had been behind the arrests of his two couriers, and his conversation with Nati must have pushed him over the edge. She would have loved to have seen the look on his face as Nati had informed him that Sonja was taking over his role, and that must be the explanation for why he had been so amiable when he had allowed her to visit Tómas. He had already decided that he was going to inform on her and the visit had been an opportunity for Tómas to say farewell to her.
She closed her eyes, leaned back and rested her head against the wall. The mist of surrender that had wrapped itself around her since the flight to Mexico made way for a new emotion, which generated so much heat within her that for a moment she felt the blood boil in her veins. She was angry. She was livid, and the desire to fight back was rekindled in her.
‘I think I know who’s behind all this,’ she said to the customs officer. ‘Maybe you should have a word with Adam Tómasson and suggest that he shouldn’t be making anonymous allegations about his ex-wife.’
‘What?’
‘I’m afraid you’ve got yourself caught up in a rather bitter custody dispute,’ she said as the doctor appeared in the corridor.
‘Nothing internal,’ she told the customs officer.
Sonja leaned forwards and pulled the tape from around her ankles.
91
María parked in a space at the filling station on Sæbraut and left the car running while she went inside. It wasn’t something she normally did, being generally a tireless proponent of green values, but she had felt such a chill since getting out of bed that she decided to keep the car warm. The outside temperature was only eight degrees and although the sun shone practically around the clock, there was still a long way to go before summer arrived.
She bought a SIM card, paid for it in cash and hurried back out to the car. She ripped open the packaging and inserted the card into her phone, replacing the usual one. Then she drove the remaining few metres to the special prosecutor’s office, but before she got out of the car she punched in the Luxembourg number that she hadn’t been able to identify. This was the only remaining unidentified number on the spreadsheet of Agla’s calls. She listened to the high tone, the short pause and then a lower tone – usual when calling an overseas mobile number. There was no reply and María dropped her phone into her pocket in disappointment.
Her chagrin was lifted as she went into the office and saw the statement she had requested from the central bank. She ripped open the envelope and took an extra little tour out of the office again, in order to throw the envelope in the paper-recycling bin, inspecting the document as she went. It was a record of payments of more than half a billion krónur made by Icelandic companies to overseas entities over the preceding months. She placed a ruler over the first page of the statement and slid it slowly downwards. There was nothing remarkable to be seen on the first page, and nothing on the second. It was on the third page that she found what she had been looking for. This was a large payment made at the end of April – by the aluminium company in Iceland to its parent company overseas, and tagged in the central bank’s system as a repayment on the loan made for start-up costs. She marked the line with a highlighter and continued down the page, then the next, and the next, until she had gone back eight months. There was no other comparable payment to be seen. This had to be a new payment on a new loan.
María jumped as her mobile phone rang. The unregistered SIM card was still in place, and the number that appeared on the screen was the one she had been trying to call, registered in Luxembourg.
‘Hello?’ María said nervously.
‘Hello. Who’s that?’ a man’s voice asked in English, but with a strong Icelandic accent.
María ended the call, switched off the phone and took out the SIM card. Now she knew what she had needed to find out. There was no need to ask the person’s name. She recognised the voice from the recordings Finnur had given her of Agla’s calls.
It was Ingimar.
92
‘Not the face,’ Adam told Rikki. ‘But you can kick her legs.’
Sonja’s hands were tied behind her back and she crawled across the floor on her front, pushing herself with her feet, while the dog growled in the corner where it had been told to wait. They had searched everywhere, but with no luck. The dog had pawed at the fridge, but she knew that was because it could smell traces from when she had kept stuff in the freezer compartment a couple of times.
‘Where’s the fucking gear?’ Rikki yelled, delivering one kick after another to her legs so that she rolled over onto her side. He kicked her back and belly until she again lay on her chest. Then he started again on her legs.
‘Customs took it,’ Sonja gasped, one more time.
It was true enough, although she wasn’t going to tell them that it had been her customs officer who had taken the shipment and hidden it behind a false ceiling in one of the airport corridor toilets, where it was waiting for Sonja to pick it up on her next arrival in the country.
‘It would have been all over the news if customs had it, and you’d be on remand. So where the fuck is the gear?’
‘I had to leave it on the plane and customs must have picked it up,’ she said, the last word turning into a howl of pain as Rikki let fly with his boot at her back and the pain went right through to her belly.
‘What’s the name of the customs guy you’re paying off?’ There was nothing abnormal about Rikki’s voice, and there was no indication that he was out of breath after battering her with kicks like a footballer. They knew that she had her own contacts in customs, and had known it for a while, but she’d die before she would give them Bragi’s name.
‘What the fuck did you say to Nati about me?’ Adam hissed like an angry cat.
‘Nothing,’ Sonja gasped.
‘What’s this bullshit that you’re working direct with Nati a
nd I’m out of the loop?’
‘She doesn’t trust you anymore because you lost two shipments.’
‘That’s your fault, you fucking bitch,’ Adam roared. ‘You were the one who put customs on to my guys!’
Sonja expected him to kick her himself, but he held back. He had never laid a finger on her. It was as if there was something inside him that always stopped him at the last moment. But he had no hesitation in letting Rikki do it for him. He nodded to Rikki, who kneeled down, gripped her chin and began stuffing a huge bath sponge into her mouth. She felt as if her jaw was about to be dislocated, but he continued forcing the sponge with his thumbs until the whole thing was in her mouth.
Gradually her whole body went numb and all her thoughts focused on drawing breath. Her nose was blocked up with tears and blood, and neither air nor sound could make their way past the sponge, so her cries ended up somewhere deep in her belly. She tried to push the sponge out with her tongue, but that made her retch, so she stopped, concentrating on breathing through her nose. A heavy kick caught her chin and turned her over onto one side and she instinctively tried to scream, but no sound left her. This violence had become uncannily quiet. Rikki’s kicks became harder and rhythmic, as if he was keeping time with a metronome inside his head.
‘Not the face,’ she heard Adam repeat, and for some bizarre reason she felt a moment’s gratitude, even though she knew that it wasn’t for her benefit that he didn’t want to leave too many obvious marks.
She again cursed herself for opening the door. There was little sense in having two chains and a locking bar across the door when she was fool enough to open it. It was because Adam had seemed so relaxed when she saw him through the spyhole – standing there, tapping at his phone, as he always did when he had to wait. She had genuinely thought that he was coming to her to negotiate in some way, to make some sort of offer; a suggestion of how they could make peace and work together. But she should have known that Adam would never admit defeat of his own accord.
The beating stopped for a moment, but she had hardly drawn breath before Rikki pulled her upright by her hair. Unable to steady herself with her hands, her hair took her entire weight. She was surprised it was still rooted in her scalp by the time she was finally on her feet. Behind her now, Rikki kicked her feet from under her so that she fell forwards, crouched on the floor and Adam stepped close to her.
‘You think you’re so smart,’ he said in a low voice. ‘You think you can take my guys out of the game, steal my shipment, strike a deal of your own with Nati and then have the nerve to send the cops to my house.’
If Sonja’s mouth had not been stuffed full with the sponge, she would have roared back at him that he should have the sense not to be giving anonymous tip-offs to the drugs hotline. Of course the police had arrived to question him after she had told the customs officer about the custody dispute, and she had added a few tearful sobs into the bargain. So it served him right to get a visit from the law, if only to remind him not to make false accusations.
Adam reached out to her face, pinched her jaw hard and pulled out the sponge. This took her by surprise. She gulped down air, and immediately retched as it felt that she was dragging something deep from her throat.
‘Fuck, but you’re disgusting,’ Adam whispered. ‘I don’t understand how I could have ever loved you.’
There was pain in his words, and the same strange logic returned to her. She pitied him; felt sorry for the depth of his rage, the painful anger that was all her fault when all was said and done – just the same as her anger was his fault.
Rikki loosened the straps around her arms and her fingers tingled as if they had been burned, as the blood returned to her veins.
‘You’re going to tell Nati that you got it all wrong. There’s no question that you’re able to run anything here. You can’t cope with it. You have no people, no protection, nothing. You’re an idiot if you think you can take over from me.’
Adam walked out of the living room with Rikki behind him.
‘Come on, Teddy. Tómas is waiting for you at home,’ Adam called to the dog, which obeyed and followed him out.
Sonja collapsed into a ball and tried to control her breathing as she felt with her tongue back and forth, trying to moisten her sore, bonedry mouth. Adam had not reacted as she had expected he would. She had been sure he would have been more sly, that he would try to negotiate instead of using violence. She had felt that she had been in the stronger position, that Nati’s friendship would protect her. But now she had learned that Nati’s protection did not extend as far as Iceland.
And she had found out where Rikki’s Sponge nickname came from.
93
Sonja didn’t answer when Agla rang the bell downstairs, so she once again rang the top-floor bell and a moment later there was a hiss as the old man upstairs opened the door for her. He seemed to work as a door warden for the whole block. Sonja was more likely to open up if she knocked on the door of her apartment.
She desperately needed to talk to Sonja. She had lain awake every night, running through her mind everything that she wanted to say to her. She was going to tell her about trying to kiss María, and the strip club, and everything. She was going to tell her that over the last few weeks it was as if a blockage inside her had been loosened. It was if the determination not to shift her position on anything, which had long been to her advantage, had gradually softened and thinned, almost without her noticing, until, finally, a hole had been punched through what she now realised was her armour. That was the hole that had allowed Sonja in, all the way to her heart. This was what she wanted to explain in the sweetest tones she had at her command. So it would be as well for Sonja to open the door.
She had been prepared to stand and knock for a long time, as she had often had to do in the past, so she hesitated when she saw that the door was ajar.
‘Sonja!’ she called, rapping on the door frame, but heard no reply.
She stepped over the threshold and had an immediate intuition that something was wrong. The little chest of drawers in the hall was on its side, its top drawer pulled open and the contents spread across the floor.
‘Sonja!’
Maybe someone had broken in, and for a moment it occurred to her that the housebreaker could still be inside. Perhaps it was better not to call too loudly.
There was nobody in the kitchen and nothing unusual to see there, so Agla went cautiously into the living room.
Sonja lay in a heap on the floor, her eyes closed.
Agla dropped to her knees at her side and shook her gently. ‘What happened? Are you hurt? Did you fall? I’m calling an ambulance.’
She fished her Icelandic phone from her handbag and was about to call the emergency line when Sonja’s hand reached gently for hers.
‘Don’t,’ she said, opening her eyes. ‘Don’t call. It was Adam.’
An hour later Agla sat as still as stone on the sofa, stroking Sonja’s head in her lap. She had given her heavy-duty painkillers, made her wash them down with beer, and now Sonja seemed to be about to fall asleep with an ice bag to her cheekbone. Agla watched as the bruises began to appear on her arms. How could a custody battle become so bitter? And why wasn’t it enough for Adam to have custody of the boy; why constantly try to obstruct the little access Sonja had to him? And why on earth had he resorted to violence? She simply didn’t understand it.
As the anger boiled inside her, she felt the guilt she had suffered from ever since Adam had walked in on her in bed with Sonja evaporate. There was no need for her to feel the slightest responsibility for destroying their marriage. Adam didn’t deserve Sonja. A man who could stoop to this didn’t deserve anything.
Sonja breathed deeply now and appeared finally to be asleep, so Agla lifted the ice bag from her cheekbone and pulled the blanket over her. She was so slight and tiny under the blanket that Agla felt a stab of compassion. How could the man have found it in him to beat her?
Agla was proud of being calm under
pressure. When she was angriest was exactly when she was at her most thoughtful. Of course she would have liked to have called in a big, strong man and have him subject Adam to the same treatment he had given Sonja, but there was no sense in that. She had a much better plan in mind that would set Sonja free.
94
María looked startled as Agla stepped into her office.
‘Who let you in?’ she asked in surprise and Agla couldn’t help laughing.
The young man whose desk was right by the door had got to his feet as soon as she appeared, and punched his code into the keypad by the lock, as he had done many times before, letting her in with a smile. Apparently he hadn’t suspected a thing. It obviously wasn’t yet common knowledge among the special prosecutor’s staff that her case had been concluded and she no longer had any reason to be there.
‘They know me well here,’ she said, closing María’s office door behind her and taking the chair facing María’s desk.
María adjusted the collar of her blouse, shuffled papers on her desk into a neat pile and cleared her throat. ‘What can I do for you?’ she asked.
Agla grinned again. This was so much more formal than the last time they had met.
‘I’d really like to have my phone back,’ she said.
Without a word, María pulled open a desk drawer, took out the phone and passed it to her. She was relieved that María hadn’t tried to claim to have had nothing to do with her phone.
‘I don’t suppose you had a warrant for this?’ Agla continued.
María shrugged. Of course she hadn’t had a warrant. If there had been, then she would have arrived with the paperwork and taken the phone legally, without having to resort to play-acting. Agla felt a slight flush in her cheeks as she recalled the incident.
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