66 Degrees North

Ingileif pushed through the crowd in the square outside the Parliament building, searching for the large frame of Sindri. There were a few hundred people there. The atmosphere was different to that of the demonstrations Ingileif had attended over the winter. The crowd was more serious. The anger was there, but it was more muted. There were no pots and pans, no foghorns, no anarchists in balaclavas, and very few police. Less excitement, more quiet determination.

Ingileif soon spotted Sindri’s brown leather hat and grey pony-tail and pushed herself into a space beside him. Sindri was chatting randomly to those around him when he noticed her.

‘Ingileif?’

She turned and gave him a big smile. ‘Sindri! I’m not surprised to see you here.’

‘It’s an important issue,’ Sindri said.

‘Very,’ said Ingileif. ‘Do you know who the speakers are?’

‘Old windbags,’ Sindri said. ‘I don’t know why I bothered to come. They’ll talk about refusing to pay the British, but that’s all it will be, talk.’ He gestured at the crowd. ‘Take a look around you. I was hoping for some revolutionary spirit. People who are prepared to do something. This lot look like they’re at church listening to a sermon.’

‘I know what you mean,’ said Ingileif. ‘We need to scare them.’

Sindri focused on her with interest.

‘Scare who?’

‘The British, of course,’ Ingileif said. ‘Make them believe that unless they give us a better deal the people will revolt. We’ve done it before. We can do it again.’

‘Dead right,’ said Sindri. Ingileif could see he was looking at her with a mixture of admiration and, well, lust. That was OK.

A woman, one of the organizers, picked up a loudspeaker and made a little speech about how she was speaking for everyone there when she noted the horror the Icelandic people felt about the shooting of Julian Lister.

‘We are not terrorists, Mr Lister!’ Sindri bellowed in Ingileif’s ear. The refrain was familiar to the crowd from the previous autumn, but no one took it up. Those standing around him turned to frown. A few people hushed him.

‘Pathetic,’ Sindri muttered. Ingileif muttered too.

There was a series of speeches, some of them inspiring to Ingileif’s ear, but Sindri didn’t like them. He grumbled louder and louder, until finally he said, ‘I can’t stand this any longer.’

‘Neither can I,’ said Ingileif.

‘This country is so spineless,’ said Sindri.

‘You wrote a book about all this, didn’t you?’ said Ingileif. ‘Can you tell me about it?’

Sindri smiled. ‘With pleasure. Let’s get a coffee.’

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

THE HUT STOOD alone in the lonely valley. Bjorn coaxed his pickup truck down towards it, rattling and jolting over the potholes. The road was appalling, and Bjorn was amazed that Harpa hadn’t been wakened by the lurching.

This road had always been bad. For years, no, centuries, it had been the most direct route from Stykkisholmur south to Borgarnes. It wound around twisted volcanic rocks, including the famous Kerlingin troll with her haul of stone babies over her shoulder. But then the government had built a new road in a parallel pass just a few kilometres to the west. There was now no reason for anyone to come this way. The road had deteriorated rapidly.

The hut was old, perhaps a hundred years old, and had been built to provide shelter for travellers stranded in the pass. Bjorn had stayed there a couple of times with his uncle and aunt when he was a kid, just for fun. It had been built on a knoll, to remain above snowdrifts, a short distance from what remained of the road. Rocky walls rose up on either side of the valley, down which streams and waterfalls tumbled before accumulating in a larger stream that ran beside the road. There were patches of grass and some moss, but the valley was mostly grit, stone and bare rock. Although there had been clear skies during the drive up from Reykjavik, here in the mountains moisture ruled. Mist swirled around the rocks, the air was full of the muffled tinkle of running water.

The door to the hut was open; it was never locked in case travellers needed its shelter. Inside it was surprisingly clean. There were signs of recent habitation: a gum wrapper on the floor, an empty half-bottle of vodka on a window sill. Drovers, no doubt: Bjorn was pretty sure the rettir had taken place the week before around Helgafellssveit. There was a stove, and a ladder led up to a sleeping loft. Bjorn had driven from Reykjavik straight to his home in Grundarfjordur and loaded the pickup with supplies. He had sleeping bags, bed rolls, wood for the stove, food and other camping equipment. Enough to keep them both going for three days.

He had also brought plenty of rope.

He settled the still slumbering Harpa in a sleeping bag in the loft, and lit a fire in the stove. He put some water on to boil for coffee.

He checked his phone. No signal: hardly surprising. That could be a problem. He would need to communicate with the others in the coming couple of days, and that would involve driving back down the pass towards Stykkisholmur until he got a signal.

He made the coffee and took it outside. He sat on the step of the hut watching the light seep out of the moist valley as dusk fell. A raven flapped down the valley on the far side of the stream, its croak sinking into the mist.

The place was eerie. Bjorn smiled as he remembered the night he and his cousins had slept in the hut when they were kids. The frisson of fear. There was not just the Kerlingin troll waiting for them. There was a story, well known among the kids in the area, of an empty bus being driven through the pass. The driver had felt the presence of something behind him and turned to see the bus full of people.

Ghosts.

But Bjorn felt safe here. More importantly, he felt Harpa was safe. He wished that the two of them could stay here for always, away from the world outside, the world of the kreppa and bankers and corrupt politicians. The world he had decided to stand up and fight against.

Could he make Harpa understand what he and the others had done? He could try.

There was no sound from her. In theory the drug was supposed to wear off in eight hours. In practice, Bjorn thought Harpa would be out all night.

The pub in Shoreditch was crowded and there was barely enough room for the eight students squashed around two tables pushed together. Sophie hardly knew most of the others, but when her friend Tori had asked her out for a drink she had agreed to come. She had spent an unproductive afternoon in the library.

She was worried about Zak. The only response to her texts she had received so far was one line: It doesn’t look good. She wished he would talk to her more instead of clamming up.

There were three other girls and four guys around the table. She didn’t know the guys very well, although they all studied politics with her. The conversation had moved on from Big Brother to Julian Lister. She was barely listening.

‘So is he going to make it?’

‘They say he’s going to be fine.’

‘I heard he was still critical.’

‘No, it was on the radio this evening. They now think he’s going to make a full recovery.’

‘So who did it then?’

‘Al-Qaeda.’

‘But they use bombs not bullets.’

‘Al-Qaeda. Operating out of Holland.’

‘Holland?’

‘Yeah, they saw a motorbike with Dutch number plates hanging about right where he was shot.’

‘It’s the Icelanders.’