66° North (3 page)

Harpa led them down one of the little side streets off Hverfisgata, on the route she knew Gabríel would take. Sure enough, there he was, head down against the snow.

She stopped in front of him. ‘Gabríel Örn.’

He looked up in surprise. ‘Harpa? I thought we were going to meet at the bar?’

Harpa felt a surge of revulsion as she saw his face. He was a couple of years younger than her, a little flabby around the jowls and neck, fair hair thinning. What had she ever seen in him?

‘No, I want you to come with us.’

Gabríel Örn glanced behind her.

‘Who are these people?’

‘They are my friends, Gabríel Örn, my friends. I want you to talk to my friends. That’s why you have to come back with me.’

‘You
are
drunk, Harpa!’

‘I don’t care. Now come with us.’

Harpa reached out to grab Gabríel on the sleeve. Roughly he shook her off. Frikki growled and strode up to him. The boy wasn’t wearing a coat, only his Chelsea football shirt, but he was too drunk to care.

‘You heard her,’ he said, stopping centimetres away from Gabríel. ‘You’re coming with us.’ He reached out to grab the lapel of Gabríel’s coat. Gabríel pushed him back. Frikki swung at him, a long wide arc that someone as sober as Gabríel had no trouble
avoiding. Gabríel was a good fifteen centimetres shorter than Frikki, but with one hard jab upwards, he caught Frikki on the chin and felled him.

As Frikki sat on the ground, rubbing his jaw, Harpa was surprised. She had never expected Gabríel to be capable of such physical prowess.

Gabríel turned to go.

The anger exploded in Harpa’s head, a red curtain of fury. He was
not
going to walk away from them, he was
not.

‘Gabríel! Stop.’ She reached out to grab him, but he pushed her back. She lurched into a low wall surrounding a small car park. On the wall was an empty Thule beer bottle. She picked it up, took three steps forward and, aiming for the bald spot on the back of Gabríel Örn’s head, brought it crashing down.

He staggered, swayed to the right and fell, his head bouncing off an iron bollard at the entrance of the little car park with a sickening crack.

He lay still.

Harpa dropped the bottle, her hand flying to her mouth. ‘Oh, God!’

Frikki roared and ran at the prone body of Gabríel Örn, launching a kick hard into his ribs. He kicked him twice in the chest and once in the head before Björn grabbed him around the waist and flung him to the ground.

In a moment, Björn was on his knees examining Gabríel Örn.

The banker was motionless. His eyes were closed. His already pale face had taken on a waxy sheen. A snowflake landed on his cheek. Blood seeped out of his skull beneath his short thin hair.

‘He’s not breathing,’ Harpa whispered.

Then she screamed. ‘He’s not breathing!’

‘A
AAGH
!’ Hallgrímur swung his axe as they came at him. Eight of them. In a frenzy, he chopped off the leg of the first warrior, and the head of the second. His axe split the third’s shield. The fourth he hit in the face with his own shield. Swish! Swish! Two more down. The last two ran away, and who could blame them?

Hallgrímur flopped back against the stone cairn, panting, the fury leaving him drained. ‘I got eight of them, Benni,’ he said.

‘Yes, and you got me too,’ said his friend, rubbing his mouth. ‘It’s bleeding. One of my teeth is loose.’

‘It’s just a baby tooth,’ said Hallgrímur. ‘It was coming out anyway.’

He relaxed and let the weak sun stroke his face. He loved the feeling right after he had gone berserk. He really felt that there was so much repressed anger in him, so much aggression, that he was a modern berserker.

And this was his favourite spot. Right in the middle of the twisted waves of congealed stone that was Berserkjahraun, or Berserkers’ Lava Field. It was a beautiful, eerie, magical place of little towers, folds and wrinkles of stone, speckled with lime green moss, darker green heather, and the deep red leaves of bog bilberries.

The lava field was named after the two warriors who had been brought over to Iceland as servants from Sweden a thousand years
before by Vermundur the Lean, the man who owned Hallgrímur’s family’s farm, Bjarnarhöfn. The Swedes had the ability to make themselves go berserk in battle, when with superhuman strength they could smite all before them. They proved a handful for the farmer of Bjarnarhöfn, who passed them on to his brother Styr at Hraun, Benedikt’s farm on the other side of the lava field.

There had been trouble between Styr and his new servants, and the berserkers had ended up buried under the cairn of lava stone and moss, right where Hallgrímur was leaning.

Of course Hallgrímur had grown up knowing the story of the two berserkers, but his friend Benedikt had just started reading the
Saga of the People of Eyri
, and had come up with all sorts of new details, the best of which was that one of the berserkers had the same name as him, Halli. At eight, Benedikt was two years younger than Hallgrímur, but he was a brilliant reader for his age. Their favourite game had become to stalk the lava field pretending to be the berserkers. It worked quite well, Hallgrímur thought. Benedikt came up with the stories, but Hallgrímur was much better at going berserk. And that was, after all, the point.

‘What shall we do now?’ he asked Benedikt. It was more of a command for Benedikt to come up with another game than a question.

‘Any sign of your parents?’ Benedikt asked.

‘Father won’t be back for ages. He’s gone to look for a ewe on the fell. I’ll just check for Mother.’

The cairn was in a depression, out of sight of grown-ups, which made it such a good playing place. Hallgrímur climbed the ancient footpath between the two farms, which had been hewn out of the lava a millennium before by the berserkers themselves, and looked west towards Bjarnarhöfn. It was a prosperous farm, nestling beneath a waterfall which tumbled down the side of Bjarnarhöfn Fell. It was surrounded by a large home field, bright green against the brown of the surrounding heath. A tiny wooden church, little more than a black hut, lay between the farm and the grey flatness of Breidafjördur, the broad fjord dotted with low islands. Just up
from the shoreline were wooden racks on which lines of salted fish hung out to dry. Hallgrímur could see no sign of life. His mother had said she was going to clean the church, something she did obsessively. This seemed a pointless activity to Hallgrímur, since the pastor only held services there once a month.

But there was no reasoning with his mother.

He was supposed to be in the room he shared with his brother, doing arithmetic problems. But he had sneaked out to play with Benedikt.

‘All right,’ said Benedikt. ‘I have heard that Arnkell’s men have stolen some of our horses. We must find them and free the horses. But we must take them by surprise.’

‘That’s a good idea,’ said Hallgrímur. He wasn’t entirely sure who Arnkell was, he was probably a chieftain from the saga. Benedikt would know the details.

They crept southwards through the lava field. It had spewed out of the big mountains to the south several thousand years ago, ending up in the fjord just between the two farms at a place called Hraunsvík, or Lava Bay. For several kilometres it flowed in a tumult of stone and moss, twenty or thirty metres above the surrounding plain. It was possible to crawl along the wrinkles of the lava, to slither through cracks, to lurk behind the extraordinary shapes that reared upwards. There was one spot where the lava seemed to form the silhouettes of two horses standing together, when viewed from a certain angle. That was where they were heading.

They had been crawling and sliding for five minutes when Hallgrímur suddenly heard a grunt ahead of them.

‘What was that?’ Hallgrímur turned to Benedikt.

‘I don’t know,’ Benedikt squeaked. A look of terror on his face.

‘It sounds like some kind of animal.’

‘Perhaps it’s the Kerlingin troll come down from the Pass.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Hallgrímur. But he swallowed. The grunting was getting louder. It sounded like a man.

Then there was a short, high pitched squeal.

‘That’s Mother!’ Hallgrímur wriggled forward, ignoring Benedikt’s whispered pleas to come away. His heart was beating. He had no idea what he would see. Could it really be his mother, and if so was she in some kind of danger?

Perhaps the berserkers were walking through the lava field again.

He hesitated as the fear almost overcame him, but Hallgrímur was brave. He swallowed and wriggled on.

There, on a cushion of moss in a hollow, he saw a man’s bare bottom pumping up and down over a woman, half dressed, her face, surrounded by a pillow of golden hair, tilted directly towards him. She didn’t see him; her eyes were shut and little mewling sounds came from her parted lips.

Mother.

Mother seemed to be in a good mood at dinner that evening. Father had returned from the fell having found the ewe stuck in a gully.

His mother was very fond of her children, or most of them. She was proud of Hallgrímur’s obedient little brother, and of his three sisters, whom she was raising to be hard working, honest and capable women about the farm.

But Hallgrímur. She just didn’t like Hallgrímur.

‘Halli! How did you scratch your knees?’ she demanded.

‘I didn’t scratch them,’ Hallgrímur said. He always denied everything stubbornly. It never worked.

‘Yes you did. That’s blood. And they are dirty.’

Hallgrímur looked down. It was true. ‘Er, I fell coming up the stairs.’

‘You were playing in the lava field, weren’t you? When I specifically told you to do your schoolwork.’

‘No, I swear I wasn’t. I was here all the time.’

‘Do you take me for an idiot?’ His mother raised her voice. ‘Gunnar, will you control your son? Stop him lying to his mother.’

His father didn’t seem to like Hallgrímur much either. But he liked his wife even less, despite her beauty.

‘Leave the boy alone,’ he said.

His mother’s good mood was long gone. ‘To your room, Halli! Right now! And don’t come down until you have finished your homework. Your brother can eat your
skyr
.’

Hallgrímur stood up and looked mournfully at the dish of
skyr
and berries he was abandoning. He sauntered towards the hallway and the stairs.

He paused at the door.

‘You are right, Mother. I did go to play in the lava field with Benni.’

He was pleased to see his mother’s cheeks flush.

‘I saw you and Benni’s father,’ he went on. ‘What were you doing?’

‘Out!’ his mother cried. ‘To your room!’

That night, after all the children were in bed with the lamps snuffed out, Hallgrímur heard his father shouting and his mother sobbing.

The little boy fell asleep with a smile on his face.

S
ERGEANT DETECTIVE MAGNUS
Jonson of the Boston Police Department closed his eyes as he slipped into the deliciously warm water. His body tingled after the thirty lengths he had done and the shock of warm water after cold air. It was six degrees Celsius in the outside air, but forty degrees in the geothermally heated tub. Steam hovered a couple of feet above the Olympic sized pool, which was crowded with serious swimmers. It was six o’clock, rush hour in the open-air Laugardalur Baths, as Reykjavík’s men and women gathered after work for a swim and a chat. The fact that they were outside and nearly naked on a cold grey September evening didn’t bother any of them.

‘Ooh, that feels good,’ said the tall, skinny man who slid in beside Magnus. ‘You’re a fast swimmer.’

‘I’ve got to get rid of the energy somehow, Árni,’ Magnus said. ‘And the aggression.’

‘Aggression?’

‘Yeah. I’m not used to sitting around in a classroom all day.’

‘What you mean is you would rather be running around the streets of Boston blasting punks with your three fifty-seven Magnum?’

Magnus glanced at his companion. Despite living in Reykjavík for four months, Magnus was never entirely sure when Icelanders were being serious. It was a particular problem with Árni Holm. He was
good at the deadpan irony. On the other hand he occasionally said the most spectacularly stupid things. ‘Something like that, Árni.’

‘I hear your course is pretty good. There’s a waiting list of people to sign up for it. Did you know that?’

‘You should come.’

‘I’m on the list.’

Magnus was teaching a course at the National Police College on urban crime in the United States. He enjoyed being an instructor; it was something he had never done before and it turned out he was good at it.

He had been seconded to the Icelandic police at the request of the National Police Commissioner who was worried about big-city crime hitting his small country. Not that crime was unknown in Iceland. There were drugs aplenty and Friday and Saturday nights brought a regular haul of drunks into the cells at police headquarters. And of course there had been the winter demonstrations outside the Parliament that had culminated in the ‘pots-and-pans’ revolution which overthrew the government and stretched police resources to their limits.

But the Commissioner feared that it was only a matter of time before the kind of crimes that occurred in Amsterdam or Copenhagen or even Boston arrived in Reykjavík. Foreign drug gangs. Knives. Maybe even guns. And he wanted his men to be ready for it. Hence his request for an American police detective with practical experience who spoke Icelandic.

There weren’t a whole lot of those among America’s big-city police forces. Magnus, who had left Iceland for the States at the age of twelve with his father, fitted the bill, and when he had been shot at as a witness in a police corruption scandal he had been sent to Reykjavík as much for his own safety as for what he could do for the Icelanders.

‘Anything going on at CID?’ he asked Árni.

‘We have a bird thief.’