Far North - Michael Ridpath [42]
‘OK,’ Magnus said, taken aback by the emotion in Baldur’s normally dry voice, but trying not to show it.
‘In January the Metropolitan Police faced the biggest test of its history. By far. We were all working double shifts, every man and woman we could get our hands on was wearing riot gear, we were defending our parliament, our democracy.
‘And we were angry too.’ He glanced at Vigdís. ‘We are citizens and taxpayers. We don’t get paid very much and we never made out during the boom years apart from some of us who spent too much, took on too much debt. Many of us sympathized with the demonstrators. But we had a job to do and we did it as well as we could.’
Magnus listened.
‘We used the most conciliatory tactics we could. We didn’t hit people. We didn’t corral them and beat them up like the British police did a few months later in their anti-capitalist demonstration in London. No one was killed. Then one day it all looked like it was going wrong: the anarchists got the upper hand and started attacking us. They threatened us, they threatened our families. And then do you know what happened?’
Magnus shook his head.
‘They formed a line. The people formed a line to protect the police from the anarchists. You don’t see that in any other country but Iceland. A few days later the government resigned: it all happened without violence.
‘And it was all down to the way we policed the demonstrations. I’m proud of that. The Prime Minister wrote a personal letter of thanks to every police officer who played their part.’
Magnus was impressed. Policing riots was notoriously difficult; it was so easy for one officer to go too far, to make a bad judgement call in the heat of the moment, to panic. He had never faced a riot; he wasn’t at all sure how he would cope with angry protesters throwing stuff at him. He would probably hit them back.
‘You see, if right in the middle of all that a young banker had been murdered, it might have been just the spark that could have set this country on fire.’
Magnus hesitated. He could see Baldur’s point of view. But on the other hand… ‘We don’t know yet whether Gabríel Örn was murdered,’ he said. ‘But it looks very much like he might have been. His family, his parents, his sister, have a right to know. We have a duty to tell them.’
‘Don’t lecture me on what my duty is,’ Baldur growled. ‘You don’t live here, this isn’t your country. I decide what our duty is. And I am telling you to drop Gabríel Örn. Forget about him. And above all don’t mention him to the British police. Do you understand?’
Baldur’s words were like a slap in the face to Magnus. Iceland was his country, dammit. That was a thought, a belief he had clung to through all his years in America. And yet. And yet he hadn’t been in Iceland in January. He hadn’t taken part in the pots-and-pans revolution, either as a participant, or as a policeman or even as an observer. In fact he had scarcely noticed what had been going on – he was deeply involved in a police corruption investigation back in Boston at the time. And what the Icelandic people had achieved, the overthrow of a government through entirely peaceful protest, was impressive, in a typically Icelandic way.
What right had he to mess all that up?
He nodded. ‘I understand.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
MARÍA HALLDÓRSDÓTTIR LIVED in a quiet street in Thingholt, on the other side of the hill from Magnus’s place, facing the City airport. The houses were bigger here, grander by Icelandic standards. The little street was full of Mercedes and BMW SUVs, Land Rover Discoveries and outside María’s house, a white Porsche Cayenne. Magnus’s Range Rover looked quite at home.
The wind had picked up, and Magnus and Vigdís had to lean into it on the short walk from the car to the front door. Magnus rang the bell and María answered in just a few seconds. She was tall, slim, with long dark hair and long legs clad in tight jeans and tan boots.
‘Come in,’ she said. ‘Ingileif is here.’
‘Ingileif?’ Magnus said, surprised.
‘Hi, Magnús.’ Ingileif appeared from a sitting