Season of the Witch (15 page)

“I’d like to thank our local members of parliament and you, the people of Reydargerdi and the surrounding area, for attending this meeting and raising so many interesting points. I assure you that these issues will be given serious attention by the town council in the future, just as they have in the past.”

“I declare this meeting closed,” adds Anna Thóroddsdóttir, slipping a tissue down between her heavy breasts.

WHO WILL PROTECT OUR CHILDREN FROM INTERNATIONAL CRIME?
asked Reydargerdi people at a heated public meeting yesterday.
Town authorities under attack.
Optimism about the future of the community
overshadowed by concerns over social problems.

That is my introduction to my article, which is ready to send in by dinnertime.

I take a breath and nibble at deep-fried chicken pieces that I picked up from a global fast-food franchise on my way back to the office.

Next on the agenda: Dead Body. Missing Person.

On the TV and radio news the police are saying nothing.

I call the police station, giving my name. I’m put through to a woman who tells me nothing.

I ring the station again and, without giving my name, ask for Ólafur Gísli Kristjánsson. He’s unavailable.

I consider my options, then go out onto the stairs and climb the worn wooden steps to the third floor. I am met by a strong odor of cauliflower with a dash of garlic and fish. I hear muffled barking and a low mumble of the weather forecast on the radio. It sounds as if a cloudy night is expected, with falling temperatures.

I knock at the door.

Karólína half opens the door. “Ásbjörn Grímsson!” she calls out. “It’s the intrepid Einar for you!”

And with that, she is gone.

I hear Ásbjörn apologizing to Pal because he’s got to leave the room.

“I’m sorry to disturb you at mealtime,” I say as Ásbjörn waddles to the door.

He makes no reply, chewing on a tattered toothpick.

“It looks as if the police aren’t going to give any information about the body this evening,” I tell him. “I can’t get hold of Ólafur Gísli. He’s not taking calls. I was wondering if you could do something?”

He keeps gnawing on the toothpick.

“Well?” I ask. “Can you?”

“Go down to the office. I’ll call in a minute.”

No, no, don’t invite me in,
I think as I make my way back down the stairs.

While I wait, I blow clouds of smoke out of the open window to the wall opposite.

The phone rings. “Wait a bit,” says Ásbjörn. “He’ll call you in a few minutes.”

“Great,” I reply. “Thank you.”

“Actually, he said he thought you’d been rather argumentative down at the junkyard on Saturday.”

“Argumentative? I was just asking obvious questions. He can hardly expect me to stop being a reporter just because you put in a word for me. Can he?”

“Calm down, Einar. Then he said it would probably be best if you were as argumentative as possible with him in public, and he’ll argue back. That will make it harder for anyone, his lot or the other media, to pinpoint where your information is coming from. If there is any information.”

“He’s absolutely right.”

“But everything has to go through me. Completely confidential.”

“I agree to that.”

I think to myself that this will give the former news editor a little bit of self-respect and influence. I can allow him that. So long as I get the news stories.

“Hey, Ásbjörn,” I add before we end the conversation. “While I remember. Are you still getting those mysterious phone calls?”

“No,” he replies. “Strangely enough, they stopped after I told you about them.”

“Good,” I say. “Then my intervention has worked.”

I picture his perplexed expression. “What intervention?”

“Just let me know if the phone calls start again.”

“What goddamned intervention?”

“I’m sorry, that’s absolutely confidential. Everything has to go through me.”

Then I hang up, with a silly smirk.

____

After waiting half an hour, with the news editor down south hassling me about missing my deadline, I receive information from my confidential source and write the following article:

BODY AT AKUREYRI JUNKYARD
BELIEVED TO BE SKARPHÉDINN VALGARDSSON

The body that was discovered on Saturday morning at Krossanes near Akureyri, at the scrap metal yard, is believed to be Skarphédinn Valgardsson, a 19-year-old student at Akureyri High School. He had been missing since Wednesday evening. On Holy Thursday the high school drama group was to have given its first performance of
Loftur the Sorcerer
at Hólar, with Skarphédinn in the title role. An extensive search, organized by the Akureyri police, began around midday on Thursday and led to the discovery of the body nearly two days later. According to
Afternoon News
sources, preliminary indications are that the circumstances of the young man’s death are suspicious. The body is believed to have been moved after death. Other aspects of the matter are, at this point in time…

I delete the last few words and write instead:

Other aspects of the case remained unclear when the
Afternoon News
went to press.

What happened on Good Friday?

Jóa and I stand shivering in the cold wind sweeping across Town Hall Square, trying to get some of the very few passers-by to answer the
Question of the Day
from Akureyri a day later than usual. The sky is overcast. The mountains, gray and forbidding. The waters of the fjord, ruffled. The passers-by are in much the same condition. Jóa and I too.

It takes us half an hour to get five answers.

A little boy:
Jesus died.

A teenage girl:
Nothing in particular. I watched a video.

A middle-aged man:
Something in the Bible…no, don’t remember.

An elderly lady:
Christ was crucified.

A young boy:
I went to a party and then to the Sjallinn disco. Didn’t open till after midnight. What is it with these weird rules about holiday openings?

Yep. What is it?

I don’t know. But what I do know is that events that took place two thousand years ago in Holy Week haven’t helped us understand the suffering in our own lives. Whatever the clergy say. After sending in the answers to the
Question of the Day
, I do my best to put together some small local news stories. Shopkeepers in the town center are uneasy about plans for a new mall in the suburbs. Bench vandals caught red-handed. Ten drug arrests on Easter Monday.

My article about the body at the junkyard is all over the front page, and my piece about developments in Reydargerdi is featured on the back page, with the main article inside. Although it’s always satisfying to get a scoop, I’m feeling a bit down. No doubt an effect of the gray weather, combined with the fatigue from my long working hours of late.

Just for something to do, I call Hannes.

“Excellent coverage today, sir,” he says. Perhaps all I wanted was to hear him say that.

“But I’m getting tired of rushing back and forth to Reydargerdi,” I protest. “Trausti seems to be obsessed with the situation there.”

“Whatever the reason, you’re writing good copy. Something is brewing there.”

“True,” I admit. “Something is brewing there. But isn’t Trausti motivated purely by politics?”

“His motivation isn’t your problem. You simply go there and write your articles, which are nonpolitical.”

I want to try testing Hannes a little. Since the merger, when the
Afternoon News
became a part of the Icelandic Media Corporation, there have been allegations that Hannes, and by extension the newspaper, is a mere puppet of the Social Democratic Union, now in opposition in parliament. I’ve never asked Hannes before,
although I’ve wanted to for a long time. I decide to jump in: “Tell me, Hannes, was Trausti Löve your choice as news editor? Did you press for him to be appointed?”

He buys himself time by lighting a cigar.

“An appointment of that nature, when new stockholders become involved in a media enterprise, will always be a compromise of some kind. There were various different views that had to be reconciled.”

He’s obviously not going to answer. “Why don’t you answer my question, Hannes? Did you suggest Trausti?”

“Now, Einar, you know I can’t discuss with you what happens at meetings between the editorial board and the owners.”

“Would it be wrong of me to draw the conclusion that, if it had been your idea, you would tell me?”

“Well…”

“Did the Owner—with a big O—want Trausti appointed?”

“Fortunately the company has many owners—with a small o. And when they join forces, they can be big too.”

“But not as big as the big one?”

“As I said, certain viewpoints have to be reconciled with regard to important decisions about the running of any paper. A person who gets his or her way on one issue will back down over another. That’s the way it works. As one of the smaller stockholders, I exert my influence as I see best for the paper. That’s the way it is, my good sir. Simply the way it is.”

“Well, if that’s the way it is, I would urge you to exert your influence as soon as possible to kick that clown out of the news editor’s chair. You could keep Trausti Löve on to write about men’s fashion or restaurants and wines.”

He exhales his cigar smoke. “We shall see. Let’s give him a chance. Like others have had. You’ve made mistakes of your own
over the years, as we all have. And you were offered second—and third—chances.”

I realize that my dislike and contempt for Trausti have gotten out of control. I’ve reached a point where I’d like to see him destroyed.
My desires are powerful and boundless. And in the beginning was desire. Desires are the souls of men,
said Loftur the Sorcerer.

In a white concrete building on Skipagata, a few minutes’ walk from the
Afternoon News
offices, the
Akureyri Post
has its offices on the second floor, above an optometrist’s shop. They seem to be on a similar scale to us. But their offices reflect that incomprehensible obsession in modern design with tearing down all partitions between individual workspaces, to create a single “large, bright, dynamic space.” In practice it means that everyone is thrown together. You can’t have a telephone conversation—in fact, you can hardly draw breath, let alone sneeze—without throwing the whole workplace into disarray. Or have a smoke. No doubt it’s
as in the neighboring countries.
I’d rather have my own little private closet, thanks very much.

As I enter the “space,” which is only a pretentious word for a room, I find Jóa sitting there with her feet up on Heida’s desk. At two other desks, people are trying to work. The glass-and-steel desks with their steel-and-leather chairs would look at home in a nightclub. Everything neat and tidy.

“Hello,” I whisper, as if I were in a library. “How’s it going?”

“Fine,” answers Heida with a smile, in her normal voice.

Maybe it is possible to get used to a “space” like this, I think.

Jóa is quite at ease. “Let’s have a coffee,” she says, pointing to a door at the back. Hey, one ordinary room has survived.

The coffee room at the
Akureyri Post
is five times the size of my office, painted white, with more steel/glass/leather furnishings.

“Did you do a promotional deal with the Furniture Store?” I ask Heida. “Furniture for advertising space?”

“Actually, that’s exactly what I did,” she replies as she starts the coffeemaker. “Necessity is the mother of interior decoration.”

We sit on the steel and leather and discuss the latest local events.

Then I ask Heida: “Have you heard anything new about the Skarphédinn Valgardsson case? What do your contacts say?”

She looks me right in the eye. “Do you think I’d tell you? Let you steal my scoops?”

“Sorry. But I get the impression that the
Akureyri Post
isn’t big on reporting so-called negative news. Raking up the dirt like we do down south.”

“No, true enough. We want to present a positive picture of life in Akureyri. That’s what our clients like. But of course we report on what happens here. And we’ll have a story on the case in Thursday’s paper.”

“It’s debatable whether it’s responsible to display responsibility without falsifying reality.”

“Hmmm…”

“But it’s OK to soften it a little?”

She smiles. “You should try being me for a few months. You’d be a changed man after such a course of treatment.”

“A better man?”

“A different man.”

“Einar doesn’t want to change,” interjects Jóa. “He thinks all change is the devil’s work.”

“Nonsense!” I retort. “Look at me: I haven’t had a drop of alcohol for two months.”

“All right,” Jóa continues. “Maybe it’s more accurate to say that you see change as entailing a sacrifice of the accrued rights of your personality.”

I can only laugh. “I think there’s something in your analysis, Jóa. Maybe even quite a lot.”

“But this Skarphédinn case,” says Heida. “It’s only just begun, of course. And as a weekly paper, we don’t have much chance of a scoop, not in competition with you on the daily papers. Let alone radio and TV.”