Far North - Michael Ridpath [117]
He had been observing the house for a couple of hours already. He was convinced there was no protection, no police cars loitering outside, no men in uniform or out of it patrolling the garden. He was pleased to see that the target’s car, a black Mercedes SUV, was parked up by the side of the house, almost out of sight of the road. Behind it was a hedge and some small trees. A possible entry point. Worth checking out later.
As he watched and waited a plan settled in his mind.
The target emerged from the front door of the house and walked around to his car, climbed in, and drove off.
He unfastened the camera, took down his tripod and left.
He knew what he was going to do.
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. Björn coaxed his pickup truck down towards it, rattling and jolting over the potholes. The road was appalling, and Björn 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 Stykkishólmur 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. Björn had stayed there a couple of times with his uncle and aunt when he was