These guys are professionals.
‘Wake up, shithead!’ says one of the men and he strikes Jón Karl a blow with a rubber truncheon on his right thigh, just above the knee.
Jón Karl lifts his head and opens his eyes. He knows they won’t stop beating him until he comes to and talks to them. He doesn’t know what they want, but he knows they won’t let him go until they’ve got what they want, whatever it is. If they’re going to let him go at all. The only thing Jón Karl wants to find out is how the hell he can get out of this alive and, without telling them anything about anything, whether he knows something about something or not.
‘Where’s the gambling joint?’
Gambling joint? What fucking gambling joint?
The questioner is hidden in a whirling haze, standing wide-legged in front of Jón Karl, who narrows swollen eyes and waits for confused colours and wavering outlines to take on a clearer form.
‘Where is it?’ says the man in a growling bass voice, slapping Jón Karl with a hand the size of a bear’s paw.
The slap that comes snaps through flesh and bone and resonates through Jón Karl’s body like a copper gong, waking him from the stupor of the knockout blow. His blood fairly boils in his veins, his muscles swell and in his head flare the fires of evil, revenge and blood letting. The plastic bands tighten round his ankles and wrists; there is a creaking in the chair and the floor it is bolted to; he grinds his teeth and his bloodshot eyes bulge halfway out of their sockets.
‘I’ll kill the lot of you!’ he spits, spraying blood and a tooth onto the unpainted wooden floor.
‘You’re not killing anyone today,’ says the deep-voiced man lighting a cheap cigar.
The voice and the dim outline of the man are familiar to Jón Karl. He stares into a thunder cloud through humming mist and tries to dig information from his confused brain, while little by little the dark cloud takes on the form of a man.
Black leather jacket, black hair and eyes like black holes in a face like a fierce guard dog.
This man is none other than Óðin R Elsuson, the thirty-five-year-old legend of the Reykjavík underground, by far the oldest of the hard guys and debt collectors who still have some power and the most dangerous of them all; a full-blooded lowlife and merciless thug who trusts nobody, fears nothing and lives according to the devil-inspired maxim ‘Happy is the man who has dead bodies as friends and ghosts as enemies’.
Behind Óðin are the shapes of men who fade into the gloom and the dark walls.
‘I thought I heard someone crying wolf,’ Jón Karl whispers.
‘What did you say?’ asks Óðin coldly as he pulls Jón Karl’s gun out of the pocket of his leather jacket.
‘Nothing,’ says Jón Karl, snuffling blood up his nose.
Óðin is muscular as a young bull, dark complexioned and so ugly as to be almost handsome. His hair is carefully combed to the back of his head and his brown eyes are widely spaced, lying deep in his coarse, big-boned face that is reminiscent of either a young beast or an old man, depending on the light.
Jón Karl keeps it hidden, but the minute he recognises the man he loses all hope, like a flame going out in his breast. In the shadow of hopelessness, though, evil awakes from a deep sleep, and it is not concerned about life or death. It feeds off itself and shoves all else aside. It lives and behaves like a fire that grows and grows until it becomes so huge and fierce that it consumes itself and ceases to be.
Evil takes possession of Jón Karl. It growls in his head, pumps black poison into his blood, permeates every nerve and has no aim but to grow and grow, open up and blossom like a hellish spirit in the flesh that encompasses it, whatever the consequences.
Evil is essentially eternal and so has nothing to lose and nothing to win.
‘What a pea-shooter this is,’ says Óðin, handling the gun like a professional. He chews on his burning cigar, spins the cylinder on the gun, stops it with the thumb of his right hand, pulls back the hammer, shoves the barrel against Jón Karl’s knee and immediately pulls the trigger:
Click!
The hammer hits an empty chamber and nothing happens.
Jón Karl jerks, his heart misses a beat and then does a somersault in his breast; his muscles stiffen; his veins, nostrils and pupils dilate, and a hot sweat breaks out on his face and back.
‘You have a reputation as a lucky bastard,’ says Óðin, putting the gun down on a rusty oil barrel. He picks up Jón Karl’s duffel bag, pours its contents on the floor and starts investigating them.
Salty sweat drips into Jón Karl’s eyes. He blinks rapidly and studies the situation. There are three men: Óðin and two assistants, both dark clad and rather similar to each other. One is sitting bent over on a stool, holding his trembling right hand around his bloody right shoulder. This is the one Jón Karl shot in his living room. The other assistant is standing off to Óðin’s side, holding a rubber truncheon. These lads are hardly more than twenty years old. The one he shot is somehow familiar to Jón Karl, but he can’t remember who he is or what he’s called, which says it all about the reputations of these punks. They’re just some Heckle and Jeckle whom Óðin has lured with vague promises, or paid to follow him for a time. Nameless dopeheads who dream of fame and success in the underworld but are going to end up shot, cut and canvas-bagged in some building foundations, at the bottom of the sea or in a lava field where nobody will ever find them.
‘Planning a trip?’ says Óðin as he flips through the family’s passports before tearing them up. ‘I think not.’
‘You can’t break a man who won’t be broken,’ says Jón Karl, and continues studying where he is while he has the time and freedom to do so.
He’s in some kind of shed, an old hovel, garage or storeroom. The walls are plywood or corrugated iron on a wooden frame, insulated with rockwool. There is rockwool in the windows and on the inside of the door. There are tools in a wooden chest on the floor near the door. Every joint on the chair Jón Karl is sitting on is reinforced with metal, but the chair creaks anyway after repeated use. On the floor and walls are black drops, black splashes and black streaks – dried blood that bears ugly witness to this unappealing space.
‘Keep your philosophy to yourself,’ says Óðin as he takes the million crowns out of the envelope and furtively hides them in his clothes. ‘It doesn’t affect me.’
‘I wasn’t talking to you,’ says Jón Karl. He is trying to breathe calmly, relax and think clearly, but all three activities are difficult to achieve in these surroundings and this company.
Jón Karl is barefoot and shirtless; the plastic bands cut into his ankles and wrists, and he knows from experience that it’s almost impossible to break them without scraping away flesh and tendons.
What can he do?
‘Well,’ says Óðin as he takes Jón Karl’s hunting knife and slices through the leg of his sports pants from his ankle to above his knee. ‘We’d better get started.’
Óðin picks up a blue one-litre gas canister with a burner attached and opens the gas halfway.