66 Degrees North

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

MAGNUS WOKE UP thinking about Ingileif. Or rather he didn’t know what to think about Ingileif.

Her accusation that he was jealous of her, that he suspected her of seeing other men, was ironic. In Magnus’s previous relationship, with Colby, the lawyer in Boston, he was always the one who was being controlled. Colby wanted to regularize the relationship, to get married, to send Magnus off to law school. He was relieved to get away from that, and indeed that was one of the many things that attracted him to Ingileif. She was independent, she did what she wanted, and she allowed him to be the same way.

So if she went off to parties with her beautiful friends, what business was that of his?

Except he didn’t like the idea of her sleeping with other men. And he wasn’t even sure whether her anger with him was because she did occasionally do that and she thought it none of his business, or because he didn’t know her well enough to trust her to stay away from other men.

Which all showed she had a point. He didn’t really know her.

She wanted to go to Germany. He was likely to be sent back to the States. It was fun while it lasted, but it was over. Face it. Move on.

But rather than be braced by this thought, it depressed him.

Ingileif was part of the life he was building in Iceland. Unpredictable, beautiful, untameable.

Mind you, he had been right to be angry at her. A defence lawyer in the States would run rings around a prosecution if they ever found out what she had done. Iceland had a less adversarial system, it would be a judge who would question the evidence and how it had been obtained. But if the whole case collapsed because of Ingileif’s activities, Magnus would be buying a one-way ticket back to Boston.

Yet she had found out something. There was to be another victim: Ingolfur Arnarson.

There was a slight chance that this might be the target’s real name, a very slight chance. Much more likely it was a codename.

Ingolfur Arnarson was famous as the first settler in Iceland. He had sailed there from Norway in 874, and as he approached the island he had cast his wooden ‘home pillars’ into the sea, vowing to settle wherever they washed up. It took three years for his slaves to find them, but eventually they were discovered in a smoky bay, Reykjavik: reykur meaning smoke and vik bay. A fine statue of the Viking stood on a mound downtown.

The question was, who did the name Ingolfur Arnarson represent in the twenty-first century?

There were a number of obvious candidates. The young men who had built up business empires overseas in the previous decade were known in Iceland as utrasarvikingar – literally ‘Outvasion Vikings’. They recalled the great Vikings who had set forth from Norway a thousand years before to use their youth, vitality and aggression to make their fortunes. Men like Ingolfur Arnarson.

And like Oskar Gunnarsson. As he himself had recognized by commissioning the sculpture of a Viking riding a Harley Davidson in the lobby of his family office.

The trouble was there were several other candidates for Ingolfur. But which one did Sindri have in mind?

People would have to be warned, which meant that Magnus was going to have to admit how he came upon the information. He could imagine Baldur’s ridicule, quite justified, of Magnus’s investigative techniques. For a moment Magnus thought about claiming that the information came from a confidential informant. But that wouldn’t wash.

He made himself a cup of coffee and called Vigdis at the station. She had just got in. He told her what Ingileif had been up to the previous night.

‘Impressive work,’ said Vigdis. ‘Unconventional.’

‘Damn stupid, if you ask me,’ said Magnus.

‘And probably if you ask Baldur,’ said Vigdis. ‘But at least we know for sure Sindri is involved.’

‘Any ideas who Ingolfur Arnarson might be?’ Magnus asked. He outlined his own view that it might be one of the Outvaders.

‘I think you are right,’ said Vigdis. ‘I don’t know whether one of them is more like Ingolfur than any of the others. I don’t know them well enough, they all seem like a bunch of greedy fat cats to me. The Special Prosecutor might have an idea.’

‘Yes, I remember him talking to me about them. Or there’s Oskar’s sister Emilia,’ said Magnus. ‘She probably knows them all personally. Find out what she thinks.’

‘OK. We should also go through the phone book, just in case. There are bound to be some people whose real name is Ingolfur Arnarson.’

‘Worth checking. And you could ask Frikki when you speak to him again this morning. Let’s hope he’s more talkative after his night in the cells.’

‘We’re going to have to tell Baldur,’ said Vigdis. ‘These people are in danger. Or at least one of them is. And we don’t know which one.’

‘Leave it with me,’ said Magnus.

‘Before you go, I saw Bjorn’s brother yesterday. He was in Tenerife for a week with his girlfriend, came back Monday. Iceland Express confirms it. They both flew out, they both flew back.’

‘Well, that pretty much rules him out,’ said Magnus. ‘Speak to you later.’

He took a deep breath and called Baldur. He told him about Ingileif, Sindri and Ingolfur Arnarson. He got the ridicule he expected, but not for the reason he expected it.

‘Do you really think I’m going to take any notice of this information?’ Baldur asked.

‘Well, yes,’ said Magnus. ‘We need to warn all the Outvaders we can find. Their lives might be in danger.’

‘These are still some of the most important people in the country. And you want me to put them on high alert on the basis of the ravings of a drunken fantasist trying to get a woman into bed?’

‘He’s not necessarily a fantasist,’ said Magnus.

‘Oh yes he is,’ said Baldur. ‘We’ve been watching Sindri on and off for at least a decade. He talks big, but he doesn’t do anything. People like Sindri never do anything. And when they get drunk they just talk bigger.’

‘So you think that Sindri was just boasting?’

‘Show me evidence that he wasn’t.’

‘We saw him with Bjorn and Harpa at the demonstrations in January.’

‘Which proves nothing.’

‘All right,’ said Magnus. He had been reluctant to make the phone call in the first place. If Baldur didn’t want to respond to it, there was nothing much more Magnus could do.

Perhaps Vigdis would get something out of the kid.

Sophie sat at the back of the small lecture theatre. European Human Rights. She had no idea what the lecturer was saying, her concentration had wandered within the first minute.

The seat next to her was empty. It was usually where Zak sat, but Zak was… Zak was where, exactly? She had no idea.

She had scarcely slept all night. She had called his mobile and texted him at regular intervals without reply, and then, first thing in the morning, she had called his home number.

His mother had answered. To the polite question ‘how are you?’ the woman had answered, ‘fine’. She wasn’t supposed to be fine, she was supposed to be dying, but maybe she was just being polite in return. But when Sophie had asked to speak to Isak, she was told he had disappeared on a camping trip.

Then his mother had asked whether there was anything wrong with Isak, and Sophie had answered, truthfully, ‘I don’t know.’

Sophie was worried about what Josh had said the night before about Zak asking about Julian Lister’s holiday arrangements. That was very strange: she could think of no plausible explanation. She knew that Zak hadn’t actually shot the ex-Chancellor himself, he was at home in London on Sunday. Although he had gone to church that day. And Sophie knew for a fact that Zak didn’t believe in God.

Something was up. All her instincts were screaming at her that something was up.