sold his quota and his boat,
Bjorn had been fishing with his uncle since the age of thirteen. He was a natural, they said he could think like a cod, and he was also quick to understand and make the most of the new technology that was becoming available for mapping the sea bed and locating shoals of fish. Soon he had paid down most of his debt. Then he borrowed more to buy the quota of another small fisherman in Grundarfjordur. The quota applied to the proportion of a catch and not to a particular boat, so the secret to profitability was to own as high a level of quota as one boat could sustain. Then, in 2007, he took down another loan to buy a third small quota and some state-of-the-art electronics for
His old school friend from Grundarfjordur, Simon, who had become a banker rather than a fisherman, and who had just left one of the Icelandic banks to join a hedge fund in London, advised him. The thing to do was borrow in a mixture of Swiss francs and yen, because the interest rates were low and the Icelandic krona would stay strong. It was what Simon was doing on a major scale at his hedge fund, and he was making a fortune.
Bjorn took his friend’s advice and for a while things worked out fine. Then the krona began to depreciate, and although the interest rate was still low, the size of his loan in kronur was growing fast. The
He received a good offer for his quota and his boat from a large company in Akureyri in the north. He took it, and paid down the bank as much as he could. And now he was begging for work from anyone who would take him on. He had an excellent reputation as a fisherman, but he found it difficult to shut up and take orders when he had his own views on where the fish were and how to catch them, so some of the captains, like Gusti, saw him as a threat. But Bjorn could still just about make a living and he could still go out to sea.
He had lost his boat and his dreams. All he had wanted since he was a boy was to own a fishing boat and hunt the fish. And now it was denied him.
When he had seen Simon one Friday night in Reykjavik a month after the banks collapsed, his friend was surprised at Bjorn’s misfortune. Simon had unwound that trade the previous spring and gone the other way. His fund had made millions.
Bastard.
Bjorn hadn’t seen Simon since then.
Now the politicians were talking about joining the European Union. They promised that Icelandic fish would be kept safe for Icelandic fisherman, but Bjorn knew that within a decade the Spanish, the French and the British would have helped themselves to his country’s carefully husbanded stocks, leaving nothing for the Icelanders.
And all this had been caused by a bunch of speculators sitting on their fat arses in overheated offices borrowing money they didn’t have to buy stuff they didn’t understand.
Bastards.
Bjorn’s father, a postman and a lifelong communist, was right after all. They were all bastards.
The wind was picking up. Small clouds skipped across the blue sky above, and even in the sheltered harbour the little fishing boats bobbed, creaked and rattled. Bjorn walked back down the quay to Kaffivagninn, the cafe used by the fisherman. It was almost empty. He glanced around, looking for Einar who often hung around there, eager to share a yarn with anyone who would listen, but he couldn’t see him. He bought himself a coffee and
He was glad he had come down the night before. There was no doubt she needed him. He treated her well. Unlike Gabriel Orn. Harpa spoke about him sometimes in the middle of the night. That man was scum. He had taken her for granted, mistreated her, in a way that Bjorn would never have done.
Bjorn was worried about how Harpa would handle further police questions. It would put a lot of pressure on her, especially since they both had thought that they had got away with it in January. They had made some mistakes when they had covered up Gabriel Orn’s death. Sending the suicide text message from Gabriel Orn’s phone was one: Bjorn had regretted it as soon as he had pressed send. It drew unnecessary attention to Harpa.
He had done all he could to bolster her courage, make her believe in herself. He blamed the others: Sindri, the student, the kid. They were the ones who wanted to attack Gabriel Orn. They had used her, manipulated her to reel in a banker for them to abuse. It wasn’t her fault.
Their stories had hung together under the initial police investigation: there was no reason why they shouldn’t now. All they needed was their luck to hold and Harpa’s courage not to fail her.
Magnus, Vigdis and Arni were in the small conference room in the Violent Crimes Unit, the papers from the Gabriel Orn Bergsson file spread out on the table in front of them. Arni had been involved in the initial investigation, but Vigdis hadn’t, and Magnus appreciated her independent point of view.
‘So, what do you think?’ Magnus asked her.
‘I don’t like the bed,’ Vigdis said. ‘It was unmade when we checked Gabriel Orn’s flat the next day. He had already been sleeping in it when Harpa called. She woke him up, he got dressed, and went out to meet her.’
‘Except he didn’t go to meet her,’ Magnus said. ‘He went off to the sea two kilometres away and drowned himself.’
‘And why would he do that?’ Vigdis asked. ‘It seems to me one of two things happened. Either Harpa told him something on the phone that so upset him that he felt an immediate desire to drown himself, or he didn’t kill himself at all. Someone else put him in the water.’
‘The pathologist’s report is inconclusive,’ Magnus said. ‘He wasn’t shot and he wasn’t stabbed and it didn’t look like he was strangled. But he could have been struck somewhere – the body was so battered by its time in the sea that the pathologist couldn’t tell.’
‘The report doesn’t say whether Gabriel Orn was breathing when he went in the water,’ Vigdis said.
‘To be fair, that’s a hard one to figure out,’ Magnus said. ‘You get water in the lungs either way.’
‘What if Harpa had told Gabriel Orn something about Odinsbanki?’ Arni said. ‘Maybe she was going to cooperate with the authorities. Put him in jail. Maybe he couldn’t face that?’
Magnus glanced at Vigdis. She was frowning. So was he.
‘There’s nothing from his parents or his new girlfriend that suggests that he was any more worried about what was going on at Odinsbanki than anyone else. He hasn’t been implicated in anything apart from a few bad loans. No fraud. No gambling debts. Some drugs use, but nothing out of control. Why him? Why not any of the other bankers in this town?’
Arni shrugged.
‘And let’s say he suddenly decides at midnight to kill himself. There are many quicker and easier ways of doing it.’
‘Perhaps he went for a walk,’ Arni said. ‘Got more and more miserable the further he went. Found himself near the sea. Decided to end it there and then.’
‘Possible,’ said Vigdis.
‘But unlikely,’ said Magnus.
‘The witnesses’ stories stack up,’ said Arni. ‘Isak Samuelsson, the kid who had the fight with Harpa. And Bjorn Helgason, the fisherman.’
‘Who has a criminal record.’
‘Two assaults when he was nineteen and twenty,’ Vigdis said. ‘On a night out in Reykjavik both times. There is nothing unusual about a fisherman getting drunk and into a fight.’
‘What about this motorcycle gang he’s a member of. The Snails?’ Magnus smiled. ‘Is that the Icelandic for Hell’s Angels?’
Vigdis shook her head. ‘Some of them would like to be, but they are much tamer than that. A lot of them are fishermen, but they have all kinds of people as members, even some lawyers and bankers. They just get dressed up in leathers and ride around the country together.’
‘And his brother? Who he was supposed to be staying with?’
‘He’s credible,’ Arni said. ‘His name is Gulli: he runs a small decorator’s business. He was out all night. Came home in the morning, saw Harpa as she was going out. He said Bjorn stays with him regularly when he comes down to Reykjavik for the weekend, but they often go out separately. ’
‘That leaves us with Harpa,’ Magnus said. ‘The weak link.’
Baldur stuck his head into the conference room. ‘What time does the British policewoman arrive?’
