‘Police or TV?’ he wondered.
‘Channel Three, I think. Must be nice working in TV, just a quick jaunt in a helicopter and back home to do a ninety-second report.’
The procession picked up pace as it approached the sprawl of Hvalvík. At the Please Drive Carefully sign a hundred metres outside the village’s furthest house, a small group of police officers stood resolutely in the middle of the road.
The marchers whooped as the procession drew to a halt and the group at the front went ahead to confer. Lára stepped forward and was rewarded with a scowl from the senior police officer and a grin from the juggler as she raised her camera.
‘We’re just going straight through the town and out the other side. Anything wrong with that?’ the juggler demanded.
‘I’d like to know where you’re planning to go after that. I’m warning you right now that I will have no alternative but to make arrests if there is any trespassing on private land.’
Skúli had his recorder in his hand and tried to edge closer. Apart from the calm senior officer, the five police officers appeared ill at ease. Lára shot half a dozen frames of the juggler and the senior policeman facing each other, and this was enough for one of the younger policemen, who detached himself from the group.
‘Who are you?’ he demanded.
‘Press,’ Lára retorted. ‘You know that, Gummi.’
‘Press cards?’
Lára pulled out a wallet, flipped it open in front of his face and quickly closed it again. With a touch of pride, Skúli showed his very new press card.
‘Identification?’ the policeman snapped at a tall man who appeared to have come from nowhere.
‘Very sorry. I don’t speak your language,’ the man replied smoothly in English.
‘Papers, please. Do you have a press card?’ the policeman asked more politely this time and the man delved into an inside pocket to draw out a laminated card.
‘From Germany?’
The man nodded.
‘Newspaper?’
‘News magazine.’
‘OK.’
Satisfied that he had done his duty, the policeman rejoined the group where the senior officer and the juggler were still sparring.
‘Are you able to assure me that there will be no attempts to enter private land?’
‘This is an entirely peaceful protest. I can assure you that Clean Iceland has no intention of carrying out any illegal acts.’
‘I’m pleased to hear it. But before I can allow you to carry on with this gathering, I have to be sure that there is no intention to provoke a confrontation. If I have reasonable suspicion, then I will prevent you from continuing.’
‘You mean you’re prepared to stop a peaceful gathering making its way along a public road? I’m sure that will look good on the news, and there’s more than just a few local hacks here today,’ the juggler pointed out.
Skúli felt a close presence and glanced sideways at the tall man with German press credentials.
‘Can you tell me what they are saying?’ the man murmured.
‘Well, it’s just a game really,’ Skúli replied. ‘They want to go up to the construction site and the police can’t really stop them.’
‘Why not?’
‘Like the guy in the hat said, it’s a peaceful demo and unless they have a really good reason to believe there’s something illegal likely to happen, then they can’t stop them from using the road.’
‘Is that enough?’
‘Yes, probably,’ Skúli said slowly. ‘It’s hard to say how the police will handle this and it’s not easy to see exactly who’s in this group. I think there are a lot of people here who aren’t part of Clean Iceland.’
‘Who, then?’
‘There are people here from Asia and South America, places where InterAlu already does business. And there seem to be some kind of professional activists, people who were at that big camp at Heathrow airport in England last year.’
‘Do you know which ones they are? They might be worth talking to.’
‘They’re everywhere. Most of the foreigners are experienced campaigners. Hey, which magazine did you say you were working for?’ Skúli asked, turning to find that the man had silently disappeared.
The march drifted cheerfully past Hvalvík and along the gravel road to the smelter site on the industrial area. A bevy of police cars preceded the marchers and a small convoy of cars followed, with an ambulance bringing up the rear. The music died away and the mood darkened as the village dropped out of sight and they approached the chain link fence where Gunna and Haddi were waiting for them with a group of men in high-viz jackets behind the fence. Skúli was suddenly glad of his anorak as a cloud bank blotted out the sun.
The colourful crowd gathered at the fence around the site where they joined hands and chanted slogans. There was little for the police to do other than watch and stop a group from lighting a fire to grill hot dogs.
A low podium of crates and planks was erected and a small sound system rigged up so that representatives of Clean Iceland could speak to the whole gathering. A Green Party MP spent too long at the microphone and by the time he had finished, the crowd were becoming restless. Then the juggler stood up to take the microphone, speaking in clear but accented English.
‘We’re here today to protest against an environmental crime that is taking place in our country and against our will. Unfortunately the members of the government who have allowed this to happen by giving away the birthright of the people they were elected to serve are not here today,’ he declaimed in a ringing voice. ‘We invited them. We invited the Minister for Environmental Affairs, Bjarni Jón Bjarnason, to meet us here. We had hoped these people would be here to answer our questions, but it seems they have better things to do. Other business to attend to. More national assets to sell off to big business. More dirty deals to be done.’
He paused. The crowd roared. The juggler’s voice rose in fury.
‘These men and women are guilty! These people are criminals! They’ll sell our birthright and line their own pockets with a lot more than thirty shitty pieces of silver and expect us to keep quiet and accept this! I’m warning you here and now,’ he said as his voice dropped.
‘Warning you here and now,’ Skúli muttered, scribbling down the juggler’s words in his notebook, even though his recorder was running. Lára stood behind him shooting frame after frame, trying to capture the depth of the juggler’s passion. The man’s eyes bulged in anger and the veins along the side of his neck stood out like wires.
‘We do not accept this. You will be made to answer for these crimes and there will be much to answer for. Mark my words, Bjarni Jón Bjarnason and your cronies, one day you will be called to account for this.’
He swept an arm behind him towards the silent bulldozers and the arc of broken ground inside the fence where the vast steel-framed building was taking shape. He stepped down, drained, as the crowd whooped and cheered.
A grey woman in a traditional sweater took the stage and spoke sensibly about how successful the march had been, before asking people to start returning to Hvalvík and the buses that had been ordered to take them back to town. With evening upon them, the crowd moved willingly and Gunna let herself relax. She raised a hand to the site manager, who had spent the day standing with his posse of booted heavyweights inside the wire, and got into the station’s better Volvo with Haddi at the wheel.
‘Job done, no problems, eh, Haddi?’
‘Pleasant enough day out, I suppose.’
‘Home, then, if you please.’
‘Very peaceful. It’s hard to predict what these freaks are going to do, but they were fine,’ Haddi grumbled, annoyed by the disturbance to his normal routine.
‘Oh, come on. It’s not as if we have a problem with these people. I’d rather deal with this lot than the Saturday night drunks.’