Far North - Michael Ridpath [118]
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: Björn was pretty sure the réttir had taken place the week before around Helgafellssveit. There was a stove, and a ladder led up to a sleeping loft. Björn had driven from Reykjavík straight to his home in Grundarfjördur 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 Stykkishólmur 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. Björn 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 Björn 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, Björn 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.’
That caught Sophie’s attention. The guy talking was tall with longish curly hair. She thought his name was Jeff.
‘The Icelanders! Don’t be stupid,