‘Really?’ Agla wiped her mouth with a napkin and looked over at María.
She wasn’t as smart and immaculate as usual. Her blouse was creased, she looked as if she had tied her hair back without thinking about it, and had completely forgotten any kind of make-up.
‘You’re the worst kind of bankster,’ María hissed, so furious that she was hardly able to catch her breath.
Agla put down her fork and sipped from her glass of water. ‘Is this something new?’ she said calmly. ‘I seem to recall hearing it from you before, when I was being interrogated.’
‘I have the answer to the question I’ve been asking for a long time,’ María said. ‘The question of where the money came from to begin with.’
Agla picked up her fork, dug it into the salad and took a mouthful. It was better if she ate while María talked. That would stop her from saying anything.
‘I have a theory about all this,’ María continued. ‘My theory is that you, the chief executive, Jóhann, and Adam conspired to set up a way of sending money out of the country for a certain aluminium company, so it could send the profits abroad and get away without paying tax in Iceland.’
And to get lower power costs, Agla thought, taking another mouthful of salad. Cut-down energy prices were part of the contract with the government, as long as the smelter was run at a loss. But María naturally didn’t know that, as the contracts were secret.
‘So I reckon that you three, the top guns at the bank, conspired to take the smelter’s secret pile of cash and send it around the world, letting it reappear here as foreign investment in the bank, so it would lift the share price.’
Right enough, except that we didn’t take the money. We borrowed it, with Ingimar’s permission, Agla thought as she chewed. She said nothing out loud.
‘Then everything crashed and the money disappeared,’ María said and squeezed out a rictus grin that was probably supposed to be a sarcastic smile. ‘And that made Ingimar the aluminium king an unhappy man.’
You’re smarter than I thought you were, Agla thought as she took another mouthful and chewed patiently while waiting for María to continue.
‘But now, after the financial crash, and with no way to launder cash out of the country by the usual methods as you did before, you did Ingimar a favour by inventing a debt for a loan that was never taken.’
Agla flinched. She coughed and took a gulp of water. She hadn’t suspected that María had been snapping so close at her heels.
‘Pepper, caught in my throat,’ she apologised.
But María snorted with derision. ‘And now all of the smelter’s profits go straight into the overseas parent company’s coffers, and that giant company pays no tax in Iceland, because our sweet little smelter that eats up almost all of the country’s emissions quota is run at an artificial loss. You must be so proud of yourself, Agla. You really are a national treasure.’
María stood up and was about to march away when she caught her foot against the chair. It clattered to the floor. There was a moment’s silence as the diners in the restaurant stopped talking and looked up. María bent over, righted the chair and walked out. Agla felt sorry for her. She had put all her cards on the table but there had been no trump card at the end. She had no evidence, no witnesses, no case to investigate.
Agla pushed the remains of her salad together on her plate and finished it. Her cheeks were glowing, and the shame now always made itself felt in a stinging rash on one cheek, as if she had been just been slapped. But she shook off the feeling. There was no reason to be ashamed; this was how business was done these days, and plenty of theorists had struggled to understand it. The country was wide open – all of its resources were for sale at knock-down prices, and if she hadn’t taken advantage of the situation, then someone else would have. That’s the way life worked. There was no cause for regret, and she wasn’t doing anything that others hadn’t done as well.
If María had known that they had also owed a hard-as-nails crime syndicate a few hundred million right after the financial crash, and that only yesterday she had paid off the debt via Adam’s account in Tortola, then, maybe, she would have had something to be ashamed of.
106
At Sonja’s request, they met at the city library, as she hadn’t wanted him to come to her home while Tómas was there. Now that she saw him, she knew that she had made the right decision. He had arrived straight from prison. He was wearing creased tracksuit bottoms, his hair was uncombed and he had stubble on his face. He didn’t come across as the man she knew. He even stooped as he walked over to where she sat in the library’s reading room by the main door.
‘You brought the paperwork?’ he asked, sitting down opposite her.
She nodded, handing him the documents. He glanced at them, took the pen she offered and signed.
‘Will there be dad’s weekends?’ he asked.
Sonja nodded again. ‘Of course there are dad’s weekends. I’m not the arsehole you are.’
She regretted being so crude the moment the words had passed her lips, and unusually, there was no vociferous retort from Adam. He merely grunted quietly, as if he agreed with her.
‘Maybe we can start after a month or so, once the statements and all that stuff are done, and I’m not likely to be locked up again.’
‘Okay,’ Sonja said. ‘I’ll tell Tómas.’
‘How did you explain it to him?’ Adam asked, looking up for the first time to meet her gaze.
‘I told him that you had made a mistake at the bank.’
‘A mistake?’ Adam looked relieved.
Maybe he had expected that she would have told Tómas some horror story about him, but that hadn’t even occurred to her. While Tómas was angry with his father, she had no desire to feed the fire of his anger, knowing that this would only hurt Tómas even more.
‘That’s right. A mistake,’ Sonja said, half expecting him to thank her.
But he shook off his dejection and gave her a teasing smile. ‘How’s it going with the dog?’ he asked.
Sonja couldn’t help returning the smile. ‘It doesn’t do any harm to have a coke-sniffing dog about the place,’ she said, although if everything were to work out, it was unlikely that the dog’s talents would be required; Teddy’s role would be simply as a household pet. If the plans were to pan out and she could live up to Sebastian and Húni Thór’s expectations, then there would be no more coke business or anything linked to it in her home.
Sonja took the papers and stood up. ‘Goodbye, Adam,’ she said.
‘Bye,’ Adam responded, and she had the feeling that for the first time she was genuinely saying her goodbyes to him, and that once she had walked out of the library, Adam would really belong to her past.
On the street outside she tapped Thorgeir’s number into her phone, and listened to him answer sleepily. She could visualise him still wearing the same grubby dressing gown.
‘Can you get me some Rohypnol?’ she asked, then repeated the question when he sounded puzzled. ‘Can you get me a dose of Rohypnol that’s enough to put an elephant out of action, and drop it into my postbox?’
‘Yeah, no problem,’ Thorgeir said. ‘When do you need it?’
‘As soon as possible,’ Sonja replied.
‘I didn’t think you lesbians went in for that sort of thing,’ he said, then he put the phone down.
107
The Voice of Truth was nowhere to be seen. Instead, a couple of broad-shouldered men in blue overalls and dust masks were carrying everything out of his apartment on Grettisgata.
María approached the entrance, but didn’t go too close as the foul smell that had previously hung around the door seemed to have been magnified as the stuff that was now filling up a skip of the largest size available was shifted.
‘Is Marteinn here anywhere?’ she asked one of the men in blue.
He put down the black bag in his hands and lifted the mask from his face. ‘No. He’s in the psychiatric ward, yet again. So we’re taking
the opportunity to get rid of all his crap.’
María winced. He had told her that if he were to be locked up in a psychiatric ward again, it would be her fault. But she could hardly be held responsible. Judging by the junk that was being carried out, the man was completely mad.
‘Are there any of his relatives or friends here?’
‘We’re just contractors. But I could try and call the city offices for you and try to find a contact, if it’s important.’
‘No,’ María said. ‘I was just going to give him back something that he lent me.’ She held up the folder containing his information about the smelter.
‘I reckon you can just sling it into the skip. We’re clearing everything out,’ the man in blue said.
‘Everything?’
‘Yep. There’s mould growing on everything, or so I’m told, and there are silverfish everywhere. The whole place needs to be fumigated, so we were told to get rid of the lot. Environmental health.’
‘I understand,’ María said and smiled as the man nodded and replaced his mask before returning to his task.
She stood in confusion on the pavement, unable to decide whether or not to take the folder away with her, when her phone rang.
‘Hello,’ she said.
‘Hello,’ the special prosecutor replied and then began to cough. ‘It all seems to be coming to a head,’ he announced at last.
He sounded uncomfortable and María could almost see him in her mind, pacing the floor as he always did when he needed to concentrate.
‘All what?’
‘Let’s not play games, María. You know what I’m talking about. This solo effort of yours.’
‘There was nothing solo about it,’ María said. ‘I was carrying out an assignment in good faith, something that Finnur asked me to work on, and as far as I was aware, it was with your knowledge.’ She didn’t say she had always harboured her own doubts about it. There had been an uncomfortable feeling inside her the whole time, but she had suppressed it because she wanted the assignment. She had given in to the wayward side of herself that she always fought so hard to tame. She had let her old self take control.
‘That’s a ridiculous thing to say and we won’t go into that any further. I’m just calling now to tell you that you’re on leave.’
‘On leave?’
‘Yes. On full pay, of course.’
‘For how long?’
‘Well, let’s say it’s indefinite. Other people will take over the taxevasion case you were working on, and also the market-manipulation case of yours that came up, involving Adam. We’ll see if this becomes clearer in the next weeks and months, but I’ll naturally understand if you decide to look around for another job.’
‘So what this comes down to is that you’re firing me? Is that what you’re saying?’
‘It’s not worth taking this personally. This can happen to people in this line of work – that they lose direction.’
María ended the call. It went without saying that he would never fire her; that was more dramatic and would attract attention. Sacking someone had to be justified. But placing someone on indefinite leave pending an investigation was more dubious and more of a problem for her.
Lose direction was what he had said, and maybe that was the problem. It could well be that she had lost her bearings and wandered into making a mistake; a mistake from which there could be no escape.
She walked over to the skip and hurled the Voice of Truth’s folder into it. One of the men in blue appeared right behind her with a plastic bin full of paper that he emptied into the skip, burying the folder. This insignificant event suddenly seemed symbolic. The folder disappeared into the rest of the junk, becoming one with it all, so it was impossible to make it out in the pile.
María felt a sudden exhaustion, as if she had just got off a bicycle at the end of a long trip. She sat down on the pavement. There was a crack where the tarmac met the kerb, where one of spring’s heralds – a small dandelion – had forced its way through: it had two leaves and she could see that it was about to open; there was the slight glitter of the yellow flower head. She reached out and was about to pull it up, but decided against it. The weeds would always grow back. Their roots ran so deep.
108
Bragi sat for a little while in the car outside the house, taking in the sight of the ambulance and the police car parked in the driveway. There were no blue lights and nobody was in a hurry, as there was no reason to hurry when a sick and elderly woman had parted company with life.
He had been driving along Reykjanesbraut on his way home when Amy had called in tears, saying she had been unable to wake Valdís after her afternoon nap. He had remained calm, had called for an ambulance, and it was only then that he realised that he had long been ready for this moment.
Now that he sat outside the house it was a relief that it had happened as it should have, as he had wanted it to. Valdís’s life had ended in a secure and loving environment, in their home, in the house where they had lived for a quarter of a century, and in the best possible way. It was every elderly person’s wish that death would come quickly and in their sleep. He hadn’t expected this right away. He had imagined that it wouldn’t happen for a few months, even a year, and he had always imagined that he would be at her side.
His knees almost gave way as he walked the short distance to the front door. The pain had somehow been magnified, as if Valdís’s existence had been a panacea, which was now gone.
‘Would you like to sit with her for a while before the undertakers get here?’ the amiable police officer asked Bragi once he had hugged Amy, who was still weeping silently, and had accepted a cup of the coffee that the policeman had been thoughtful enough to make.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I should say goodbye.’
He went into the living room and lowered Valdís’s hospital bed down to its lowest setting so he could sit on the bed beside her. There was nothing to tell him that she wasn’t just sleeping deeply, other than a blue tinge to her lips and the fact that her slim frame seemed to have wasted away to something even thinner. He reached for the hairbrush on the bedside table, unpicked her braids and gently brushed her hair. This silver hair had once glowed golden in the sun of their honeymoon in Italy and he had delighted in holding handfuls of it as they had romped on the hotel bed, making what would be their first child. His heart lurched. He would have to call the children sooner or later. They would have a long journey ahead of them from Australia.
For a moment it occurred to him to be sorrowful over how long it had been since they had come to see their mother, but he shook off the thought. It had been a long time since she had last recognised anyone, and they were busy with their own lives. They had their own children and loved ones in another country.
Bragi brushed her hair until the silver waves flooded over the pillow. Then he stood up and kissed her; first on the forehead, then each cheek and finally her blue lips.
‘Goodbye, my Valdís,’ he whispered and wiped a tear from his eye. ‘Thank you for everything. I’ll see you again on the other side.’
At least, so he hoped. If the afterlife in which Valdís had believed so firmly was a reality, then his lifelong record of trying to be a decent man might be enough to make up for his short and late-in-life criminal career. He was at least certain that Valdís would put in a good word for him with the Almighty.
109
‘I want pizza,’ Tómas said and pointed at a line on the kids’ menu. ‘Margarine pizza.’
Sonja smiled. She didn’t correct him as she always felt it was so sweet when he said margarine instead of margarita. When he had announced his choice, he stood up and headed for the toilet. He had already drunk a large glass of pop, so there would be a few visits to the toilet over the next hour. Agla gazed at Sonja with a dreamy look on her face, as she had done over the last few days since she had found her beaten and helpless on the floor. It seemed that she had finally decided how she could be around her – what her role in her life
was: her protector. Considering the condition Sonja had been in when she had found her on the floor, it was as well for her to be spoiled a little.
‘Shall I get anything more for you?’ Agla asked, pointing at the salad bar from which Sonja had already helped herself generously.
‘No, thanks. I’ll wait for the steak,’ she said and sent Agla a smile, which she returned.
She had only recently started smiling; it was something Sonja would have to get used to. They gazed into each other’s eyes for a while, and Agla pinched her leg under the table.
‘Which of us is the guy?’ she giggled. This was clearly set to become a standing joke between them. Agla always brought this up when she was in a good mood, in a mood good enough to let herself be teased.
‘You’re the guy,’ Sonja said firmly.
‘Really?’
It never made a difference what answer Sonja gave to the question, Agla never seemed to be satisfied.
‘Yes,’ Sonja said and leaned close to her to whisper. ‘You’re normally on top, you know, when we finish. So you’re the guy.’
‘But when I think about it, then I don’t reckon I am the guy,’ Agla said.
‘You realise this is like asking a pair of chopsticks which one’s the fork?’
‘What?’ Agla stared at her with a look of confusion on her face, but there was no opportunity to take it further as Tómas came back from the toilet and sat at the table.
The next time Agla asked the question, Sonja would claim to be the guy, and the next time after that she’d change her mind again, and so it would go on until Agla would be exasperated, and might even realise that stupid questions invite stupid answers.
‘I’ve decided to pack in my work.’
‘The computer work?’
‘That’s it. I’ve had enough of computers. I can’t be doing these endless foreign trips now that Tómas is living with me.’
In her mind Sonja had prepared a speech about network servers and content management systems and software services. She always did this whenever Agla asked her exactly what it was she did, and then Agla would give up; just as she always gave up as soon as Agla started talking about bank stuff. But this time the speech wasn’t needed, as an eager look appeared on Agla’s face.
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