Season of the Witch (33 page)

“I’m in a good place” is all Jóa will say.

And that’s enough, really.

Café Amor on the corner is overflowing with people as we slide slowly past and into Strandgata. Café Akureyri looks much the same.

“What about you?” Jóa asks.

“I’ve been fine. Broadly speaking.”

“But what about the broads? Not so much?”

I look at her out of the corner of my eye, eliciting a smile.

“Broadly, I’d say I’m going through a dry patch.”

“Taking a break there too?”

“I don’t know, Jóa. I just…”

Goddamn! That car’s too close behind us. He seems to be tailgating us.

“I just don’t think I’m ready to get into something that may be too much for me. It’s a full-time job keeping the thirst at bay. One thing at a time, Jóa.”

“You’re awfully averse to commitment, Einar. I think it must be some kind of phobia. Really!”

“Quite possible,” I say.

As I speak, there’s a bump from the rear of the car.

“What the hell is that?” asks Jóa, glancing back. “Did the bastard rear-end us?”

We’re nearly at the end of Strandgata, passing more nightspots—Vélsmidjan and Oddvitinn. At the corner I pull over without warning and stop the car.

“Son of a bitch!” I exclaim as the car that’s been following us inches past. It’s the same car that I saw when we went into the newspaper offices. The same one that was still there when we came out. Agnar Hansen sneers at us from the open rear window, giving us the finger as he passes by. The black Honda screeches to a halt, the doors are flung open, and Ivo and Gardar jump out.

“Holy shit!” I say, scrambling back into the car and forcing my way out into the passing traffic. I head up Strandgata, back toward the square.

“What is it?” asks Jóa in alarm. “Who were they?”

“It’s the Reydargerdi gang,” I explain. I don’t tell her what Óskar at Hotel Reydargerdi said to me about the threesome being out for revenge in Akureyri.

Jóa looks back. “They’re still following us. They’re a few cars back.”

As I reach the corner of Strandgata and Glerárgata, I’m not sure what direction to take. I don’t like the idea of being stuck in the downtown traffic with those lunatics, so I turn right onto Glerárgata. I drive as fast as I can, and before we know it, we’re in
the Hlídar district. When we reach my place and Polly’s—which was briefly Jóa’s place too—I park, but not in my usual space. I choose a spot a little farther down.

“Jóa,” I say, trying to light a cigarette with hands that are trembling. “I know Heida’s place is in the other direction, but I don’t think we should tempt fate. Come in with me. Let’s wait and see whether we’ve managed to shake them off.”

Silently we get out of the car and listen. The district is quiet—a dormitory suburb, peacefully asleep.

Then we hurry indoors, close all the curtains, and switch on the bare minimum of lights.

Jóa calls Heida to let her know what’s happened, and I go into the bedroom to check on Polly. She’s asleep with her head under her wing.

“I do envy you, little Polly,” I remark. “You’re so safe and carefree, in your cage.”

You shake it to the left,
and shake it to the right,

resounds from the speakers—a simple but catchy sixties hit, by what wasn’t at that time called a girl band.

Was life ever that simple?

Jóa has dug up from our landlady’s music collection a CD called
Girls with Guitars
. For some reason that makes me think of Girls with Guns—a very risky juxtaposition. It’s nearly 4:00 a.m. We’ve been sitting talking, listening to music, and completely forgotten the danger we seemed to be in a few hours ago.

Now Jóa’s in her room and I’m alone, reclining on the sofa in the living room, enjoying a cigarette and listening to the girls armed with their guitars.

They are the lonely,
sing Pat Powdrill & the Powerdrills. Never heard of them. Good song, though.

I’m not certain, but I think I hear a noise from the room I share with Polly.

No one in this world of confusion
Tries to understand…
the girls go on.

Suddenly the bedroom door flies open and Gardar Jónsson is standing over me, lanky and ungainly, wearing his
White Power!
shirt.

Electrified, I stumble to my feet.

There are those who know
What heartache can bring.
They are the lonely…

Gardar hobbles over to the audio system and switches it off.

“Fucking teenybopper shit you’re listening to, motherfucker,” remarks Agnar Hansen as he enters the room. His hair is tied back in a ponytail, and he’s wearing black leather pants and a matching jacket. He takes a seat in the armchair facing the sofa with a joint in his mouth.

From the bedroom I hear shrieks of terror. Agnar and Gardar share a look of complicity. I’m frozen to the sofa.

Ivo Batorac stands in the doorway, his heavy frame dressed in black as before. His bluish fist is raised, and between his sausage-like fingers a tiny head peeps out. Polly is silent now, but her head is rhythmically bobbing, and her beak is wide open. Ivo and Gardar take up their positions on either side of the seated ringleader.

“So you’re fucking a parrot are you, you little queer?” sneers Agnar. The light gleams on his orthodontic retainer and yellowish teeth.

“You’re right as usual, Mr. Hansen,” I say, willing my voice not to shake, although my heart feels as if it’s going to explode in my chest. “But she’s a girl bird. Polly.”

They cackle with glee. Their dilated pupils and wired posture tell me they’ve taken something other than sedatives tonight.

“Since sex is the first thing you think of when you see a parrot,” I go on, tempting fate, “I’m not surprised you’ve got complexes.”

Gardar charges over to me and kicks me hard in the shin. A current of agony shoots up into my head like a bolt of lightning.

“Come, come,” I say, gritting my teeth against the pain. “Must keep a sense of humor. And it’s nice of you to drop in, boys. The door’s behind you—just as a matter of interest. There’s no need for respectable guests like you to be scrambling in through the window and out again the same way.” I think:
They must have got the address from directory assistance. But how could I be so careless as to leave the window open!

“We’ll leave when we want to. And by whatever way we want to,” Gardar replies.

“Why on earth didn’t you ring the doorbell? I’d have invited you in and served up tea and cakes, no trouble at all. I’m quite forgetting my manners. What would you gentlemen like?”

They’re not sure what to make of this.

“Well,” I say, speaking louder. I focus on poor little Polly, who is lying quietly in Ivo’s ham-like fist.

“To what do I owe the honor, and pleasure, of this visit? What can I do for you?”

“We were looking for someone else here in Akureyri,” Agnar informs me. “But we couldn’t find him, so we thought we’d drop in on you.”

“How delightful.”

“Who ratted us out to the cops?” he asks.

“How would I know?”

Gardar Jónsson prepares to whack my leg again, but Agnar stops him with a gesture.

“It’s obvious from your articles that you’ve got contacts. You really ought to tell us what you know. Otherwise you’ll be left with an ex-parrot to fuck.”

They snigger.

I’d like to tell him I’m surprised to hear that he can read. I’d like to point out that people who commit violence against a parrot ought to go back to their usual hobby of tearing the wings off flies.

“Well, I simply assumed it must have been someone who saw you at that party,” I loudly announce, trying to think of the next move in this dangerous game.

“Don’t assume. Just tell us who it was.”

I can’t think of my next move.

“Ivo, squash the bug,” Agnar orders him, his gaze unflinching on me.

Ivo instantly obeys. Polly squawks in pain, or terror. The shrill sound cuts through me like a knife, as if I were the one caught in Ivo’s fist.

“No, no!” I shout. “I’m just trying to remember whether I heard anything about it.”

My raised voice has yielded the desired result. Behind my three unwelcome guests, I see the door to Jóa’s room opening. She stealthily moves down the hall in her stockinged feet.

“Wait, wait,” I stall. “Could it have been that Fridrik Einarsson?”

Jóa silently draws closer.

“No. No way. We own that moron. We own all that crowd.”

“So who—”

Suddenly Ivo and Gardar are thrown off balance as Jóa swings a foot into the back of their knees. She bashes both in the neck, and they collapse in a heap on the floor. Ivo automatically puts out both hands to break his fall, and Polly makes her escape. She flutters up to the curtain rail, where she perches, angrily screeching. Next Jóa turns her attention to Agnar Hansen, sitting lumpenly in his chair. She grabs him by the neck and hauls him out of the chair without any resistance. I jump to my feet to help her. Together we drag Agnar over to the sofa and dump him there. Jóa sits on his head to restrain him. He struggles and kicks, but soon gives up, as his head is held immobile under Jóa’s formidable rear.

Gardar struggles to his feet and over to the window, where he tries to recapture Polly, who is scampering back and forth on the curtain rail. Ivo seems dazed, but he raises himself up to a sitting position. He grasps his pancake face in both hands. I walk over to him and pick up a weighty cut glass ashtray from the table. I hold it threateningly above his shaven head.

“Excellent work, Jóa,” I say.

“Those martial arts courses finally came in handy,” she comments with a broad grin.

“Gardar,” I say in my best laconic drawl, in keeping with the American thriller I seem to be living in at the moment, “stop that. Leave the bird alone. Or I’ll smash your boss’s head into pizza, and spread Ivo’s brain matter on for relish. And then I’ll make you eat it. I think I’ve got some parmesan cheese in the fridge to go with it.”

“OK.” A strangled cry of pain from Agnar. “Back off, guys.”

Gardar stops dead and stands awkwardly at the window. I walk over to him and kick him in the shin. He winces in pain.

“You stay there,” I say to Gardar, then return to Ivo, who is cowering on the floor. I place the ashtray against the back of his
head so he can feel the weight of it. The vibration of his tense muscles indicates that he is recovering. “You. Ivo. Cool it.”

I turn back to Jóa, who is sitting on Agnar Hansen with an ironic smile on her lips. I think she’s enjoying this.

“Look out!” she shouts.

At that moment, Ivo reaches up with both hands and grabs me by the throat. I have no option but to slam the ashtray down on his head. He bellows like an elephant and drops to the floor. The ashtray is not broken by the impact, but Ivo is bleeding from a cut to the scalp.

“Cool it, I said,” I scold him. I quickly dash to the bathroom and fetch a towel. Ivo seems to be out of it, but when I place the towel on his head he automatically grasps it.

“Now then,” Jóa cheerfully observes. “I think we’ve had enough of the party games, haven’t we?”

Agnar groans his agreement.

“Einar, shouldn’t we be calling the guests of honor?”

“The police?” I ask, brandishing my phone.

“No! No! Please, man, don’t call the cops. Please, fucking please!” Agnar whines.

“Listen, lamebrain,” Jóa counters, “do you think you can break into innocent people’s home in the middle of the night, make violent threats, take one of the family hostage, and then just walk away?”

“Please, ma’am,” whimpers Agnar. “We’re sorry. Please.”

“I know you losers are involved in collecting drug debts,” I say. “I’m sure you’re proud of yourselves. But if you think you can treat us the way you treat those poor fuckers who owe you money for drugs, then you’ve got another think coming.”

“Nobody owes us any money,” says Gardar, still standing motionless at the window. Polly has taken up a position directly above him on the curtain rail. “We don’t sell drugs.”

“No. I’m sure idiots like you three are users rather than pushers. Am I right?”

Gardar makes no reply, but Agnar mumbles something that sounds like agreement.

“So you collect drug debts for other people now and then?”

Agnar is silent.

“Mostly to work off your own debts?”

Another mumble from Agnar.

“Ugh! Fucking fuck!” exclaims Gardar. A small dropping has landed on his nose. He looks up. On the curtain rail sits Polly, tail feathers gracefully raised.

Swearing, Gardar wipes Polly’s little gift away with the back of his hand. Jóa chortles, bumping up and down on Agnar’s head. He gags, and black slime seeps from his mouth onto the sofa cushion.

“Jóa, honey,” I observe with a smile. “I think you’ve squashed Agnar’s skull so much that the drug-addled mush of his brain is leaking out his mouth.”

“Stop it! Stop it!” howls Agnar in between coughing and gagging.

“Who are you collecting drug debts for?”

Ivo’s head moves. Just as a precaution, I lightly tap the cut on his head with the ashtray. He stops moving.

Nobody seems to want to answer the question.

“Agnar, you said just now that you owned all that crowd at the party. Why is that?”