Far North - Michael Ridpath [4]
Harpa felt distinctly uncomfortable with the way the conversation was going.
Someone else had noticed her discomfort. ‘What about you, Harpa?’ It was Ísak, the student. He was watching her closely. She could tell he had somehow guessed what she was, or what she used to be, despite the months of unemployment. Was it the way she spoke, her clothes, something about her attitude? Harpa didn’t like him. There was something creepy about his cool detachment, something at odds with the outrage of the rest of them. But she had to answer his question.
‘Like Frikki I have lost my job.’
‘Jesus!’ Sindri snorted. ‘Another one!’
‘And what job was that?’ Ísak asked quietly.
Harpa could feel herself blushing. Embarrassment. Shame. Guilt. They all washed over her. She felt they were all looking at her, but she avoided them, staring down into her glass of brandy, letting her dark curly hair flop down to hide her eyes.
There was silence. Björn coughed. She looked up to meet his eyes.
She had to accept who she was. What she and people like her had done. How she had been used as well.
‘I was a banker. I worked for Ódinsbanki until two months ago when I was fired by my boyfriend. Somehow I never quite managed to get hold of all the cash everyone else had. And what cash I did have was tied up in Ódinsbanki shares which are now worthless.’
‘Didn’t you see it coming?’ asked Ísak.
‘No. No, I didn’t,’ said Harpa. ‘I believed it all. The story that we were all financial geniuses, younger and quicker and smarter than the others. That we were the Viking Raiders of the twenty-first century. That we took calculated risks and won. That the wealth was here to stay. That this was just the beginning of the prosperity, not the end.’ She shook her head. ‘I was wrong. Sorry.’
There was silence for a moment.
‘Capitalism carries the seeds of its own destruction,’ said Ísak. ‘It’s as true now as it was a hundred and fifty years ago when Marx first said it. You wrote about that, Sindri.’
Sindri nodded, clearly pleased at the reference to his book. ‘At least we have heard an apology,’ he said.
‘We’re all screwed,’ Björn said. ‘All of us.’
‘Can’t we do something?’ said Frikki. ‘Sometimes I’d just like to beat the shit out of these guys.’
‘I know what you mean,’ said Björn. ‘The politicians aren’t going to do anything, are they? Is Ólafur Tómasson really going to lock up all his best friends? They appoint these special prosecutors, but they’ll never get hold of the bankers. They all disappeared to London or New York. And they want our money to clean up their mess.’
‘It’s true,’ said Harpa. ‘Óskar Gunnarsson is the chairman of my bank. He’s been skulking in London the whole time. He hasn’t been seen in Reykjavík for the last three months. But some of the others are still here. I know they still have money stashed away.’
‘Like who?’ said Ísak.
‘Like Gabríel Örn Bergsson, my former boss. When he was encouraging me to take out a loan from Ódinsbanki to buy shares in it to prop up the stock price, he was selling those very same shares himself. When he made bad loans to companies in the UK, it was me who took the blame, even though I had told him not to do the deals. And when the bank was nationalized and they brought back the old rule that two people in a relationship couldn’t work together, it was me who was fired.’
‘Sounds like a nice guy,’ said Björn.
Harpa shook her head. ‘You know, he never was a nice guy, really. He was funny. He was successful. But he was always a bastard.’
‘So where is he right now?’ asked Ísak.
‘You mean at this minute?’ said Harpa.
Ísak nodded.
‘I’ve no idea,’ Harpa said. ‘It’s a Tuesday night. He must be at home – I’m quite sure he wasn’t at the demo. He lives in one of those apartments in the Shadow District, just around the corner.’
‘Do you think he knows where the money is?’
‘Maybe,’ said Harpa. ‘Yeah, maybe.’
‘Why don’t we ask him?’ said Ísak.
Sindri smiled, the puffy skin under his eyes rumpling. ‘Yeah. Get him over here. Let him tell us where