Baldur sat back in his chair. Magnus knew Baldur didn’t like him, and this would be a chance for him to slap him down and send him back to college. Magnus had worked for bosses in Boston who would have done just that. But Baldur was an old-fashioned cop, a cop who respected gut instinct. The question was whether he respected Magnus.
‘Here’s what you do. Keep digging for a couple more days, the three of you. But dig quietly, do you understand? Keep this to the three of you, don’t talk about it even around the station. I don’t want to find myself defending a terrorist scare to the Commissioner. And if you don’t find hard evidence, we drop the case. Understand?’
‘I understand,’ said Magnus.
Sophie turned off the radio in the kitchen and rinsed out her coffee cup. She was in full procrastination mode, and she knew it. She should have been in the library hours ago. She had an essay on the rise of social inequality under socialist governments to write, and there was a ton of reading she still hadn’t done.
She didn’t know where her motivation had gone. It was the beginning of her final year and she really had to crank things up. Maybe living with Zak wasn’t such a good idea after all. He had no trouble with the work, he was very smart and had a genuine passion for politics, especially the old Marxist thinkers that were going out of fashion. His tutors loved him; he reminded them of the good old days when LSE was a hothouse of radical politics, and not just a passport into investment banking. He had iron discipline, but she just liked to hang around him wasting time.
She wondered what the police wanted with him. When she had asked he hadn’t answered. But she thought she knew what it was: Zak did some small-time drug dealing, just supplying his friends, but it helped him make ends meet. After the credit crunch the previous year the grants and loans from the Icelandic government didn’t go nearly as far as they used to.
After the detective had left, Zak had seemed tense. Sophie should probably tell their house mates about the visit: make sure the house was clean of anything incriminating if the police decided to come back and search the place.
Now, to work. Fortified with new resolve, she headed for the front door, only to see it open.
‘Zak? What are you doing back here?’
He looked worried. ‘I thought you were going to the library,’ he said.
‘I am. What’s up?’
He pushed past her on his way to his room. ‘It’s Mum. I just got a call from Dad. She’s getting worse.’
‘Oh, no!’ said Sophie, following him. She knew all about his mother’s cancer. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘I’m going back to Iceland,’ Zak said, pulling a bag out of his wardrobe.
‘When? Now?’
‘Yeah. I might get a flight today if I hurry.’
‘Is it that bad? I mean, is this, like…’ Sophie couldn’t bring herself to say ‘the end’.
‘I don’t know, Soph, I really don’t know. It might be. I’ve got to get home.’
He was looking away from her as he said this.
‘Come here,’ said Sophie, holding out her arms. He ignored her. ‘Come on.’
Slowly, reluctantly, he stood up and let her hug him. Sophie was mildly offended as he pushed her away. Sometimes he just put up barriers and she didn’t like it. But how could she know what it was like to have your mother die?
She watched him pack. The silence was awkward. She was aware that he really didn’t want to talk about his mother. ‘They reckon there’s a chance Lister’s going to make it after all,’ she said. ‘I just heard it on the radio.’
‘Pity,’ said Zak.
‘You don’t really mean that!’ said Sophie, shocked. ‘I know he called you all a bunch of terrorists, but he’s not a bad man.’
‘So you say,’ said Zak. ‘There’s a whole country that he bankrupted that might disagree.’
Sophie took a deep breath. She had never seen Zak so tense. She wanted so badly to reach out and comfort him.
The policewoman’s visit troubled her. She considered asking him about it again, but rejected the idea. It would only upset him more. She watched helplessly as he finished his packing. He was very quick. She felt an irrational dread overwhelm her, as though he were leaving her for good.
‘How long will you be gone?’ she asked.
‘Don’t know. I won’t know until I see how bad she really is.’
‘Well, let me know once you see her. Have you told the uni?’
‘Oh, I’ll do that later. Actually, could you tell McGregor for me? I’ll talk to him myself in the next day or two.’
Dr McGregor was head of the Politics Faculty.
‘Yeah. Sure.’
Ten minutes later Zak was gone. Sophie sat at the kitchen table and burst into tears.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
DÍSA SENT HARPA home. The fresh air invigorated her as she hurried along the shore of the bay. To her right a small dark cloud was rolling over the Hallgrímskirkja and unloading its contents on the city centre. An easterly breeze was blowing the cloud towards Seltjarnarnes.
She played over what she would say to Björn. She had to call him. It was a conversation she wasn’t looking forward to.
She beat the cloud home by a couple of minutes, made herself a cup of coffee and dialled Björn’s number. She hoped he wasn’t out at sea, she needed to get this over and done with.
He answered on the second ring.
‘Hi, it’s me,’ she said.
‘Oh, hi.’ He sounded distracted.
‘Björn, I… I need to talk to you.’
‘OK?’
‘You remember the kid who was with us that night in Sindri’s flat? A boy named Frikki?’
‘Yes, of course I remember him.’
‘Well he came into the bakery the other day, with his girlfriend. And then they came back again today. He seems to think that Sindri is behind Óskar’s death. And the shooting of the British Chancellor of the Exchequer.’
‘That doesn’t make any sense. Why?’
‘He says that Sindri was talking about taking real action against the bankers and against the people who caused the kreppa.’
‘Yes, but he was drunk. We all were.’
Harpa swallowed. ‘And he said that you might be involved.’
‘Me? How? They were shot abroad, weren’t they?’
‘Yeah,’ said Harpa. ‘But he said, or rather his girlfriend said, that you might have flown over to London and France when you told me you were going out on a fishing boat.’
‘Oh, Harpa, that’s just ridiculous!’
And Harpa agreed. When she said it out loud it did sound ridiculous. ‘That’s what I told them.’
‘Good. They’re not going to go to the police or anything, are they?’
‘No, I don’t think so. But…’
‘But what?’
Harpa took a deep breath. Until now she hadn’t voiced aloud her own distrust of Björn. She had never shown any mistrust of him. Ever. But now she had to.
‘Björn. Why did you have your passport with you when you came down to see me last week?’
‘What?’
‘Why did you have your passport? I saw it. In your jacket pocket.’
‘You’re not telling me you believe them?’
‘No. I just want to know about your passport.’
‘Well. Um. I needed it.’
‘To go abroad?’
‘No. For identification purposes. The following morning I had an appointment to see a bank in Reykjavík about a loan to buy a boat.’ His voice was speeding up and gaining in confidence.
Just as if he had stumbled on a good story made up on the spot.
‘Which bank?’
‘Um. Kaupthing.’
‘But they don’t ask for passport ID, do they?’
‘No, I thought it was strange. New rules, probably. Tightening up.’
This sounded all wrong to Harpa. ‘So then you went out on a boat for the next few days?’