‘Not bad at all,’ Lára replied, scrolling through them and holding the camera up so that Dagga could share them.
‘He’s good-looking, isn’t he?’
‘Who?’
‘Kolbeinn, the juggler guy,’ Lára said. ‘Didn’t you notice him? I couldn’t stop taking pics of him without his shirt on. Gorgeous, I thought.’
‘Passionate type,’ Dagga agreed. ‘Great-looking and has no idea of it. Hey, Skúli, what do you think? Lára was saying that juggler is just luscious. She reckons he can leave towels all over her bathroom floor whenever he wants.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t know. .’ Skúli muttered, flushing and dropping back behind in embarrassment.
‘Well, I don’t know,’ he heard Dagga say. ‘I like that young policeman you had the pics of this morning.’
‘Gummi? Very young and innocent, I thought.’
‘Nothing like teaching a young dog new tricks. I was hoping he’d take my name and address.’
Skúli rolled his eyes and let himself drop even further behind.
As the marchers made their way home and night began to fall, heavy cloud rolled in off the Atlantic and settled low, shrouding the hills and hugging the mountainsides. It was almost fully dark as two figures emerged from the hillside overlooking the construction site, hauling themselves from shallow hiding places scooped in the ground where their friends had half-buried them.
They silently made their way to the part of the fence where security cameras had the most awkward angles to cover and quickly snipped at the wire until a hole big enough to crawl through had been made. Inside the compound they vanished, returning without the backpacks they had set out with. They rapidly patched the fence to hide their tracks and vanished back up the slope where they unearthed a pair of mountain bikes that had been hidden for them in the loose gravel. Swinging legs over, they bounced down the track towards Hvalvík.
They were long gone when flames began to lick hungrily at the row of trucks and bulldozers, as well as the site manager’s new Landcruiser, which the activists had felt was just as legitimate a target.
Sunday, 14 September
The site manager could hardly speak through his fury. The previous day’s demonstration had cost a day’s work, but at least it had been peaceful. He had been called out in the early hours to find that his fleet of vehicles was wrecked and the security guards had seen nothing. His first phone call had been to the agency that had supplied them and his second had been to Spearpointto demand a more reliable replacement.
Gunna arrived with Haddi from Hvalvík to find Bjössi already at work. A couple of uniformed officers were looking over the burnt-out vehicles and Haddi went to keep them company. Bjössi was sitting in the site manager’s office interviewing the latest in a procession of the site staff.
‘Hi, Bjössi. How goes it?’
‘Ah, Gunna. At last,’ Björn replied, turning away from the miserable-looking man sitting opposite him. ‘Make us some coffee, will you? And a few doughnuts wouldn’t come amiss.’
‘You, dear friend, can kiss my arse and make your own coffee.’
‘No offence, Gunna. We few remaining male chauvinist pigs have to try and make a stand now and again.’
‘None taken. How are you getting on?’
‘Bloody terrible. They’re all Polish or Portuguese, or some such foreigners. Their Icelandic is as good as my Swahili, so it’s all in English.’
‘Your English is all right, isn’t it?’
‘My English is fine, but theirs isn’t,’ Bjössi grumbled. ‘Anyway, any luck your side?’
‘Not a peep. Nobody saw a thing last night between here and Hvalvík. I’ve spoken to every farmer along the way and there’s not a thing. Even that old nosy parker Jóhann at Fremribakki, who’s up at five every single morning in case he misses out on something, says he hasn’t seen or heard a soul since the march went past yesterday.’
Bjössi jerked a thumb at the door and the man sitting opposite him scuttled out without a backward glance.
‘So, what have we got, then?’ Gunna asked, examining the office noticeboard.
‘Nothing, it seems, unless forensics find something around the wreckage. I reckon they just used good old-fashioned rags soaked in petrol, lit a fire under each one and then got out quick.’
‘So, no witnesses, because the security guards were playing poker in one of the sheds all night, and not a hope of finding footprints or anything that could be definitely linked to these guys, not after the number of people who were tramping around here yesterday.’
‘It’s going to take a while, this one,’ Bjössi said with satisfaction, leaning his bulk back on two legs of the site manager’s chair so that it creaked in protest. ‘I expect we’ll come across them sooner or later, but it won’t be through anything we do here. Someone will blab or want to settle a score eventually.’
‘You know, I’m wondering how they got clear without being seen. The fires started around midnight, so it was pretty dark. It’s a good long walk from here even into Hvalvík. If we can find out how they did that, we’d be a step or two closer.’