Death in Dalvik

One

It was a gorgeous, crisp, clear November evening in the valley just outside Dalvík when Dísa came home from school to learn that her family would have to sell the farm.

Dísa’s ancestors had tended the gentle slopes of Blábrekka for centuries. Five centuries: her grandfather could proudly and plausibly trace his descent to one Brandur Kolgrímsson who had purchased the farm in 1613. But the farm was much older than that — the ancient Book of Settlements reported its settlement early in the tenth century by one Ulf Blue Cheeks. Blábrekka stood a few kilometres outside the modern fishing village of Dalvík, at the base of a mountain overlooking the deep, dark waters of Eyjafjördur and the low island of Hrísey. The fjord pointed northwards to the Arctic Circle, which hovered invisibly thirty kilometres out to sea.

The sun had just slipped behind the mountain to the west; its rays painted the undersides of the clouds and the snow on the upper slopes of the surrounding hills a soft pink, with odd bruises of purple.

As Dísa walked up the snow-ploughed track to the farmhouse, Bonnie and Clyde looked up and snorted over their fence, cocking their ears towards her while their breath misted in the cold. She waved, and it seemed to her that Bonnie nodded back. Bonnie was Dísa’s horse and Clyde belonged to her younger sister, Anna Rós.

Who came tumbling out of the front door, coat flapping, tears streaming down her cheeks.

‘Anna? What’s up?’

‘I’m going to see Clyde,’ Anna Rós sobbed as she pushed past Dísa.

Dísa had thrown the odd tantrum in her time, but it was unlike Anna Rós to get upset over nothing. It must be something.

‘Hi!’ Dísa called out as she dumped her bag in the hallway and took off her hat, boots and coat. She entered the kitchen, which had been the warm heart of the farmhouse for centuries. Her mother looked up from the table with a strained face, and her grandmother clattered dishes in the sink.

Definitely something. ‘What’s up with Anna Rós?’

Grandma didn’t answer, didn’t even turn around. Mum looked into her coffee cup.

Dísa waited.

Mum glanced at the bent back of her own mother. ‘Come with me. I’ve got something to tell you.’

‘Is it Dad?’ Dísa asked, her imagination leaping to her father hundreds of kilometres away in Reykjavík.

‘No,’ said Mum with a tight smile. ‘And Grandpa’s OK too. Nobody’s ill. But I do have bad news.’

She led Dísa through to the living room. She sat on the sofa, and Dísa perched on the edge of her grandfather’s armchair, eyeing her mother nervously.

‘So what is it? What’s Anna Rós freaked out about?’

‘We’re going to have to sell the horses,’ Mum said. ‘We can’t keep them up any more.’

‘Oh.’

Dísa wasn’t exactly surprised. She had been aware of her family’s money issues since she was a little girl. She dimly remembered a nice house in Reykjavík, and holidays to Spain and Greece, back when her parents were still married, before the kreppa, the financial crash that had ruined their lives as well as those of so many other Icelanders.

Her father had worked for one of the banks, where he had been seriously successful, until he wasn’t. But he had broken some law that even now Dísa didn’t understand, and had spent a couple of years in jail for whatever crime he had committed. There had also been a girlfriend in those heady days, an admin assistant at the bank, who had been uncovered along with the fraud. And a foreign-currency mortgage that had devoured the family’s nice house in Fossvogur.

Mum had taken Dísa and Anna Rós, and run away back to Dalvík and her own parents’ farm at Blábrekka.

Mum’s family were rich — big people about town. Brandur’s descendants had always been important landowners in the area. Mum’s own grandfather had made plenty of money from Dalvík’s fishing boom, as well as from the farm. The farmhouse itself was big by Icelandic standards, with a barn, built in the 1980s, large enough to house several hundred sheep.

But as she had got older, Dísa had realized that her grandparents were not as rich as everyone thought. Machinery wasn’t fixed, a couple of outbuildings had been left to fall down, there was a leak in the roof of the garage, and paint peeled from the ceiling of the living room above her.

In the last couple of years, she had asked questions and divined some answers. Encouraged by Dad, Grandpa had sold his fishing quota and half of the farm’s land to the big fishing company that now dominated Dalvík. With the proceeds, he had bought shares. Shares that had briefly gone up and then come crashing down. Also, Grandpa wasn’t that great a farmer. He was a lovely man, but he just wasn’t practical — Dísa could see that. Two outbreaks of scrapie in the valley in the last twenty years had taken their toll on the flock and the farm finances. If it wasn’t for the labourer who came in most days to help, she doubted the sheep would make it through the winter.

Mum was a doctor, though, an anaesthetist at the hospital in Akureyri, and she made a decent salary, Dísa supposed. Enough to keep the farm above water. Dísa supposed.

‘No wonder Anna’s upset.’ Dísa was spending less time on Bonnie these days, and she would miss her, but Clyde was everything to Anna Rós. And actually Mum loved riding as well. ‘I’m sorry,’ Dísa said.

Mum bit her lip, brushing a strand of her red hair out of her eyes. ‘It’s not just the horses,’ she said. She swallowed. ‘I haven’t told Anna Rós this yet, but it’s the farm as well.’

‘What! Does Grandpa know?’

Mum shook her head. ‘He should do. It’s staring him in the face, but he refuses to see it. He hopes that if he ignores things, they will just get better of their own accord. Thetta reddast is his motto.’ It was a phrase often heard on the lips of Icelanders: things will sort themselves out. A tear ran down her mother’s cheek. ‘There’s a massive mortgage on Blábrekka. I’ve done my best to keep everything under control with my salary, but it’s just not enough. We have to face facts. We’re going to have to sell.’

‘Can Dad help?’

‘What do you think?’ Mum said, her voice bitter. ‘Dad has no money, you know that. The man’s useless.’

Dísa flinched. Mum noticed, and Dísa could see she was considering apologizing, but decided not to.

A host of questions flooded Dísa’s brain. Where would they live? Could they even afford a smaller place in Dalvík? What would happen to the animals? To the horses?

How would Grandpa take it?

Badly. Very badly.

‘I’m sorry, Dísa.’ Mum sniffed and a tear wriggled down her cheek. ‘I’ve tried everything. I really have. You must believe me.’

‘I know you have, Mum.’ Dísa slipped next to her mother on the sofa and held her tight; Mum buried her head in her daughter’s chest. Grandma drifted to the doorway from the kitchen, her face a mixture of anger and concern, and then she withdrew. She did as much work as Grandpa around the farm, probably more. She had put most of her life into the place. But Dísa knew it would be Grandpa whose distress would take precedence.

Dísa ran her fingers through her mother’s hair. ‘Maybe I can help,’ she said.

The sobs turned into a chuckle. ‘You’re going to have to work for a hundred years at the petrol station,’ Mum said, sitting up. Dísa did a few hours behind the counter there to earn some pocket money, in addition to the time she put in helping out on the farm. And her homework.

‘How many hundred years? How much would it take?’

Mum closed her eyes. She hesitated.

‘I’m sixteen, Mum,’ Dísa said. ‘I understand money. You can tell me.’

Mum smiled. ‘Yes, you do understand money. I wish it had been you working at the bank, not your father, then we wouldn’t be in this mess.’

Dísa fought back the sharp comment that this provoked. It was true, Dad had screwed up badly, but then so had Grandpa, from what Dísa could tell. Dad wasn’t as evil as Mum constantly made out. Nor as useless.

‘Ten million krónur to get us through next year. Probably twenty million to get rid of the mortgage and put the farm back on a commercial footing.’

‘Whoa!’

‘See what I mean about the petrol station job?’

Dísa did the sums in her head. ‘Twenty-one years,’ she said. ‘Not a hundred.’

‘We barely have twenty-one days.’

Dísa hugged her mother. ‘Is Anna Rós still outside? I’ll go and see her.’

Mum nodded. ‘OK. But remember she doesn’t know about the farm yet. The horses are bad enough for her.’

Dísa put on her boots, hat and coat and went outside. The sky had turned from pink to a deep, deep blue; blackness wasn’t far away. She trudged through the snow to where Anna was hugging Clyde’s neck in the field.

The snow on the slopes of the mountain glimmered a lighter blue in the gathering darkness. Blábrekka meant ‘blue slope’. Grandpa said that the farm had been named that after the colour of Ulf’s cheeks, or possibly his buttocks, but Dísa had always believed it referred to the colours of the hillside in the night.

A couple of hundred metres below, on the other side of the road, the river lazily wound its way down towards the sea, pausing in pools of glimmering silver.

Dísa thought of all the generations who had pulled salmon out of those waters, who had rounded up the sheep every autumn from the great mountain above her, who had looked out at the wall of fells lining the far side of the fjord.

The farm wasn’t for her, never would have been for her, but it had always been assumed by the family that Anna Rós would eventually take it over. She would do a good job — she loved animals and was willing to work hard at all hours to look after them.

Dísa opened the gate and approached her sister.

‘Oh God, Dísa! I can’t bear it! I’m going to miss Clyde so so much!’

Dísa pulled Anna Rós towards her. Even though she was probably fully grown by now, Anna Rós was fifteen centimetres shorter than Dísa’s one metre ninety.

The two sisters were very different, but despite that, or perhaps because of it, they got on well. There was no rivalry. Anna Rós was pert and blonde and loved to laugh. She had plenty of friends, and, increasingly, male admirers.

Dísa thought of herself as mousy, albeit a very tall mouse. She was quiet, academic; nobody disliked her, but she was not exactly popular. She was sensible, pretty good at volleyball, very good at maths.

‘Don’t worry, Anna,’ said Dísa. ‘I’ll sort it.’

‘How?’ said Anna Rós, her large moist eyes appealing with hope. She never underestimated her big sister. ‘How, Dísa?’

Dísa smiled. ‘I’ve got an idea.’

Dísa slipped upstairs to her room and flipped up the lid of her computer. She opened up the graph she checked at least once a day. Along the x-axis lay a series of dates, starting at 1 Jan 2017 and continuing along to 28 Nov, that day’s date. Along the y-axis were a range of dollar numbers, rising from $1,000 to $10,000. A yellow, jagged line sloped inexorably upwards from the lower number towards the higher.

Bitcoin.

The price of one bitcoin at that instant was $9,815.

She switched to a simple spreadsheet. She owned 31.931 bitcoin.

Which at the current price was worth $313,403 or, and here she had to type in the current Icelandic exchange rate, thirty-three million krónur. That was up over twelve thousand dollars on the previous day.

Dísa smiled.

It looked like she wouldn’t have to work in the petrol station for twenty-one years after all.

Two

Dísa had received her original five bitcoin only eleven months before, back in January when the price was still about a thousand dollars. It had been a gift from Dad.

He had summoned her to meet him in Akureyri for lunch. A secret lunch. Dísa had argued, but Dad had insisted. Dísa seriously hated keeping secrets from her mum. It was a Saturday, and she had had to lie that she was going shopping with her friend Kata, adding a hint that there might be boys involved. That was pure manipulation of her mother; Mum was worried that she didn’t have a boyfriend yet, and had been dropping encouraging hints about how Dísa should be spending more time with boys. Mum liked Matti, Kata’s new boyfriend, and wanted her daughter to find one like him.

It was a foul January day. The remains of week-old snow slopped around the pavements. A low, heavy, grey cloud squashed the fjord and obliterated the mountains around the town, even stooping to threaten the twin spires of Akureyri’s dramatic church. Despite its northern location, Akureyri was supposed to be one of the sunniest places in Iceland. Not that day.

As Dísa walked from the bus stop to the restaurant on Skipagata where she was supposed to meet Dad, she wondered what his agenda was. Could it be that he had a plan for some kind of reconciliation?

Like so many kids of divorced parents, it was what Dísa wanted most in the world. She loved her dad, she loved Mum, memories of her early childhood of security and comfort warmed and nourished her.

She knew it was pointless to dream that dream; although she suspected Dad would have had a go, there was no way Mum was up for it. Mum was unforgiving, and there was plenty that would need to be forgiven. Dísa firmly believed that there had been a time when Mum loved Dad, and that she could remember it, but that time was long gone.

Yet, even though she knew it would never happen, Dísa consciously decided not to give up hope. It sustained her. It allowed her not to take sides, not to nod in agreement when her mother slagged off her father for the hundredth time, not to agree with her father about her mother’s hard heart.

What else might it be? Some news he wanted Dísa to break to the family in her role as family mediator? Bad news? Was he ill? Cancer? Good news? Did he want to announce a girlfriend? A marriage? A baby?

Dísa’s blood ran cold. That might be good news for him, but it would screw the chances of a reconciliation with Mum.

So it was with a touch of anxiety that she checked the restaurant for her father.

He was sitting at a table by the window, which overlooked the cloud-shrouded harbour and the fjord reaching into the murk beyond. He waved to her, and scrambled to his feet so he could give her a kiss.

A couple of years before, he had given himself a complete makeover. He had been a slim, sleek banker, with longish dark hair brushed back and gelled. Even in the two years he spent in Kvíabryggja minimum security prison he continued to look sleek. But on his release, he fell apart: the hair became longer and lanker, the chin unshaved, and a little belly appeared above his jeans.

He had found it difficult to get work during that time — the new, staid, boring banks didn’t want the old flashy bankers. Dísa knew there had been drink, and guessed there had been drugs.

But tourism was booming, and eventually Dad had reinvented himself from Ómar Baldvinsson the smooth bankster, to Óm the hip, if slightly paunchy, tour guide, who could drive you into Iceland’s rugged interior through gushing rivers and over treacherous glaciers. So he shaved his head, a tiny goatee dripped from his chin, an earring of one Viking rune dangled from his left ear, and a tattoo of another snaked up his neck.

But he was still Dad.

‘Hi,’ said Dísa, returning his grin despite her nervousness. She was always pleased to see him.

He had picked a nice restaurant — more expensive than the cheap cafés they occasionally met in — but they both ordered burgers. She and Dad always ordered burgers. And she got a milkshake.

He asked her about school, and her plans for the high school in Ólafsfjördur, the next fishing village down the fjord, that she would be attending the following academic year.

‘You know they call the kids from Dalvík “potatoes”?’

He chuckled. ‘That’s not very nice. What do you call them?’

Dísa blushed. ‘Something much ruder, I’m afraid. But it will be good to get to know a whole new set of people.’

She had made the local volleyball team, and he promised he would come and watch her next time he was in the north. Dad was good at asking questions. His interest in her and her life was always genuine.

But Dísa interrupted him, her curiosity demanding satisfaction. ‘So what do you want, Dad?’

Dad took a deep breath, and smiled. It wasn’t bad news, at least as far as he was concerned. A girlfriend, then. Or a wedding.

‘Have you heard of bitcoin?’

That took her by surprise. ‘Bitcoin? No.’

‘It’s a new kind of currency. A digital currency.’

‘OK. Whose digital currency?’

‘Nobody’s. Or rather everybody’s.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s not like the króna or the dollar, which is issued by central banks, and controlled by central banks. If the government runs out of dollars, they can just print more of them. Or they can make them worthless.’

‘The American government would never do that,’ Dísa said.

‘Not now,’ said Dad. ‘But have you ever seen a Confederate dollar? Or those old marks they had in Germany before the war, when people were wheeling bundles of cash around in wheelbarrows? Just last year the Indian government scrapped all their large-denomination banknotes overnight. And our own króna only just survived the kreppa.’

‘All right,’ said Dísa, intrigued by the idea. ‘But money must be backed by somebody, surely? Some government promise, or a vault full of gold, or something.’

‘Not necessarily,’ said Dad, grinning. ‘Bitcoin doesn’t have any government or big corporation backing it.’

‘Then how come it’s worth anything?’

‘It’s worth something because of that. No government can mess with it. If you own a bitcoin, it’s yours to keep. No one can change it. No one can take it away from you.’

‘But what exactly is it?’

‘It’s an entry in a database called a blockchain, which cannot be manipulated by anybody. New bitcoins are produced every year, but the amount is strictly limited by the original code. So no one is going to create loads more.’ Dad took a bite of his burger. ‘It was invented by a guy called Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008. No one knows who he is, or even if that’s his real name. But we do know he’s a genius.’

‘And can you buy anything with these bitcoin?’

‘Not much yet,’ said Dad. ‘But that’s going to change very soon. In a digital world, bitcoin is better than cash. You know how in Iceland no one really uses banknotes any more? We use these.’ He pulled out his wallet and held up a debit card. ‘Or nowadays even a phone. We’re way ahead of most other countries, but they will catch up. But even with these digital payments, the big banks take a cut on every transaction. With bitcoin, there will be no banks.’

‘So where is your money if it’s not in a bank?’

‘It’s in the blockchain. You have a wallet address that’s linked to your bitcoin in the blockchain database. To access your wallet, all you need is a private key.’

‘A key?’

‘Not like a metal key. It’s a string of characters like a really long password that gives you access to your blockchain. Mine’s on this.’ He fished what looked like a stubby USB stick out of his trouser pocket. ‘It’s called a “cold wallet”. With this I can access all my bitcoin.’

Dísa took a bite of her burger. ‘So you have some of these bitcoin?’

‘I do,’ said Dad, his eyes twinkling. ‘Rather a lot of bitcoin.’ He gave her a long slow wink, just like he used to do when she was a little girl.

‘How did you manage that?’ Dísa said.

Dad was clearly pleased with her interest. ‘Sharp gave me some a couple of years ago. Technically you are not allowed to buy bitcoin in this country, and you’ve heard of the exchange controls which mean Icelanders can’t own assets overseas.’

‘Sharp is your banking friend, isn’t he? The one who didn’t go to jail?’

‘That’s right. He lives in London. So he has set up a bitcoin wallet for me from over there.’

A suspicion occurred to Dísa. ‘Why did Sharp give you the bitcoin? A birthday present?’

‘Not exactly.’ Dad put on his shifty face.

‘He owed you something? For something you did for him?’

More shifty face. ‘Maybe.’

‘To keep him out of jail?’

Dad cleared his throat. ‘Sharp is a good friend of mine and very smart. He helped me out. And since he gave me the bitcoin, the price has doubled. And I think it’s going to double again. Suddenly the world is going to realize that bitcoin is the currency of the future, and everyone is going to want some.’

Dísa nodded. She still wasn’t sure why he was telling her all this. Maybe he wanted recognition that he wasn’t as useless as his wife was always saying. There was no way Mum would ever admit to that. But his daughter might.

Fair enough. ‘Well done, Dad,’ Dísa said. ‘That was smart.’

Dad popped a chip in his mouth, sat back in his seat and grinned at his daughter. She was right; he was pleased with her compliment.

‘The thing is, Dísa...’ He leaned forward.

‘Yes?’

‘I’d like to give you some.’

‘Some bitcoin?’

‘Yes. Five bitcoin.’

‘Well, thanks, Dad.’ Five bitcoin didn’t sound like much, and they seemed to be very fiddly to look after, but Dísa did appreciate the thought.

‘The price is about one thousand dollars each today.’

‘Oh.’ Then Dísa did the sums. ‘Oh! But that’s five thousand dollars, Dad?’

Dad smiled. ‘I know.’

‘What do you expect me to do with it?’

‘Nothing. Just sit on it. Invest it. Watch it turn into ten thousand.’

‘Wow.’ Dísa swallowed. ‘Thanks, Dad, thanks a lot!’ Then she frowned. ‘What about Anna Rós? Are you going to give her any?’

‘She’s too young. She wouldn’t understand. But I knew you would. You’re good with numbers, and you get money, don’t you?’

‘I suppose I do,’ said Dísa. She had had a semi-serious reputation within the family since the age of seven when she had earnestly announced that she was going to save 10 per cent of her pocket money, and had actually done so.

‘And Jói?’ Jói was Dísa’s half-brother, Dad’s son from a previous brief marriage. He was seven years older than her. He used to stay with them at weekends when they lived in Reykjavík, and he had always been a loyal older brother to her, even after the divorce.

‘Jói doesn’t need the money,’ Dad said. ‘He’s getting a good salary now with that games developer.’

Dad could see her doubts. ‘Please take it, Dísa,’ he said. ‘You know how badly I feel, how badly I will always feel, about letting down you and Anna Rós and, yes, Helga. Mum. This is a small way, a tiny way, I can do something for you. It’s really important to me. If this works as well as I think it will, if bitcoin doubles this year and maybe doubles again next year, then you’ll have enough money for a start in life.’ Dad sighed. ‘And at least I will have given you that.’

Dísa wasn’t sure that she completely understood this bitcoin, or that it was completely legal, but she knew her father. She could see how much this meant to him. How important it was to his pride, which had taken such a battering over the last few years.

To reject the bitcoin would be to reject him.

And that was something Dísa was determined not to do.

‘All right, Dad. I’ll take it. Thank you,’ she said. ‘It means a lot to me that you would do this for me.’

Dad beamed. He took out another USB stick, this one pink. Dísa flinched at the colour. He must have got one specially for his little girl. But she decided not to make a fuss.

‘This is your cold wallet. It’s called a cold wallet because it’s offline — a hot wallet is online. Your wallet address and your private key are on here. I’ll email you instructions for how to get access to your bitcoin.’

‘OK.’

‘Be very careful with that. Your wallet address doesn’t matter so much. It’s like your address on the blockchain or your bank account details; you give it to people to tell them where to pay you. But if you lose the private key, you lose the bitcoin.’

‘Can’t I ask for another one?’

‘No. Remember, no one is in charge of bitcoin. It’s all down to you. Without the private key, no one can access your coin. Ever. So I suggest you make a paper copy of the key and hide that somewhere in case you lose the wallet — it’s like a super-cold wallet. I’ve hidden mine at the summer house.’ He chuckled. ‘The hidden people can look after it.’

The summer house was a tiny cabin on the shore of Apavatn, a lake an hour and a half to the east of Reykjavík, which Dad had bought in the good days before the crash.

‘Figure out a hiding place for the wallet and the paper back-up. You can password-protect the wallet; just hide the paper copy well.’

‘I will.’

‘And lastly, don’t tell Helga.’

‘But — Dad! I hate keeping stuff from her. Just like I hate keeping stuff from you.’

‘I know, my love. But I simply don’t trust her.’

‘Seriously? Don’t trust her? With what? The bitcoin?’

‘Yes,’ said Dad, nodding. ‘It’s a condition of me giving this to you. You must promise me.’

Dísa almost threw the USB stick back at him. A condition. Conditional love. Family distrust.

God, she was sick of it.

But it was five thousand dollars — half a million krónur — and that could come in very handy.

Dad was worried. He knew she might reject his gift. Reject him.

‘OK,’ said Dísa. ‘But I have one condition of my own.’

‘Yes?’

She held up the pink USB stick, the ‘cold wallet’ as Dad called it. ‘Next time we meet you get me one of these in silver. Or gold.’

That evening, Dísa spent several hours on her computer getting to grips with bitcoin. There were a number of websites on which you could trade bitcoin, known as exchanges, and its price seemed to jump up and down wildly. Mostly up.

There were other coins too, known as ‘cryptocurrencies’. These were even more volatile than bitcoin, and went up in price even faster. And there was a community of bitcoin enthusiasts all over the internet — more than enthusiasts: bitcoin lovers. According to their posts, they loved the cryptocurrency for one of two reasons — either because it was making them a lot of money, or because it demonstrated that individuals could now use a currency completely free of government interference.

Dísa was fascinated. She watched the price of her bitcoin spike up and then down every evening after school — mostly up. She read up on trading strategies: moving averages, trends, Fibonacci numbers, relative strength indices. All these indicators suggested that bitcoin was going up, up, up and would continue to do so.

But there were other cryptocurrencies that were moving up in price even faster. There was one called Ethereum, which people said was going to become just as important as bitcoin; it might even take over from it. In February she sold her bitcoin on an exchange and bought Ethereum, for a price of about thirteen dollars per Ethereum coin. Within a month, the price had doubled, and it kept shooting up. Dísa checked her phone several times a day, watching the price, cheering it on. By late spring the price of one Ethereum coin had risen to almost two hundred dollars.

That was literally fifteen times the price she had paid for it not even four months before. Fifteen times! Her Ethereum was now worth over eighty thousand dollars.

Dísa was transfixed. She watched the Ethereum price on her phone at school and then on her laptop in the evening when she got home. Some mornings she would wake up and the price had gone up 10 per cent overnight, and the whole day was good. Until, in the evening, the price plummeted 5 per cent. She could easily make or lose a thousand dollars between Mathematics first lesson in the morning and English last lesson in the afternoon.

The school year ended at the end of May. Her mother was disappointed with her report card, and so was she. Her mother and grandparents commented on how much time she spent on her phone, but, like most parents, they had no idea what she was doing on it.

In June, Dísa decided to take back some control of her life. She sold the Ethereum, and bought back the staid old bitcoin, vowing to limit herself to checking the price once a day, twice max. To her dismay, the Ethereum price continued to rise, breaking three hundred dollars, before slumping down to the price she had sold it for.

Thanks to the profits from her foray into Ethereum, her five bitcoin had now become thirty-two. The notional value of the digital codes stored on her little patch of blockchain was now approaching a hundred thousand dollars.

Which was a massive amount of money for a sixteen-year-old girl. She was rich!

But although she had enjoyed watching the value of her bitcoin grow — had become obsessed with it — she didn’t really believe in it. Despite what the enthusiasts proclaimed, it wasn’t like it was real money. You couldn’t buy anything with it.

She didn’t even know how she could turn it into krónur. Although the government had repealed the law about Icelanders transferring assets abroad, it was still technically illegal to buy or sell bitcoin.

So over the summer she still did a stint behind the counter at the petrol station. Earning fifteen hundred krónur an hour.

But while she was serving hot dogs, the price of her bitcoin was powering ahead. It broke four thousand dollars in the middle of August when she returned to school and six thousand at the end of October. It looked like it would reach ten thousand by December.

So yes, Dísa could save the family farm.

If only she could figure out how to turn the bitcoin into real money.

Three

Inspector Magnús Ragnarsson looked up at the open window, ten feet above the ground, and marvelled. How could people be so stupid?

He was standing at the back of a hangar-like building on the old US Naval Air Station right next to the international airport at Keflavík, which had been converted into a data centre. With its cheap geothermal energy and its even cheaper cold air for cooling, Iceland was developing a niche for itself as a place to store the ever-growing data produced by billions of smartphones and computers around the world. A video of baby Chung’s first steps, an analysis of Jorge’s browsing history, back-ups of Bloomfield Weiss’s foreign exchange trades were all stored in sheds like these.

But this particular unit had housed 104 computers that were devoted to an altogether different purpose: mining bitcoin. Until the night before, when someone had driven out to this bleak spot, avoided disturbing the security guard playing solitaire on his phone, spotted a window open to let in air to cool the machines, found a ladder propped against a wall around the corner, climbed into the building and removed the servers. All 104 of them.

What made the negligence of the data centres more incredible was that a very similar break-in had taken place only the week before at another data centre up the road.

That too had involved computers dedicated to bitcoin mining. Which was something to do with solving cryptographic puzzles to create more bitcoin, the emerging currency of choice for drug dealers and peddlers of ransomware. Bitcoin was based on something called a blockchain. For the blockchain to work, each new bitcoin transaction had to be incorporated into it through solving these puzzles, which involved massive amounts of computer power, and a lot of electricity. The ‘miners’ were paid in new bitcoin created when their computers ground out the solution to the puzzle.

Magnus realized he was going to have to find out more about bitcoin and its miners.

But not right now.

‘Can I leave this with you?’ he said to Sergeant Vigdís, his colleague in CID. ‘I’ve got the afternoon off.’

‘Sure,’ said Vigdís with a grin. ‘And I hope it all goes well with Ási.’

It was a half-hour drive from the data centre through the black roiling lava fields to Álftanes, a little peninsula facing Reykjavík, where Magnus lived. Temporarily.

He parked outside the brown wooden house. A breeze was blowing cold damp air in from the Atlantic — nothing new there for Iceland. There had been snow in the north of the country, but the weather in Reykjavík was its usual changeable self, grey clouds scudding in, dropping diagonally falling rain and scudding out again, leaving glimpses of the sun and glimmering rainbows.

Cold weather for a little kid to be outside, Magnus worried.

Not an Icelandic kid.

He grabbed the plastic football he had bought that morning from the car’s back seat and opened the front door of the house.

‘Hi!’

‘What the hell are you doing here?’ a gruff voice replied from deep inside. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be at work keeping Reykjavík safe for its resident idiots? Or shagging your girlfriend?’

‘And a good afternoon to you,’ said Magnus, pouring himself a cup of coffee from the thermos and taking it into the living room where Tryggvi Thór, his landlord, was reading a book in English. The Boys in the Boat, Magnus saw, something about an American Olympic rowing team. Magnus planned to steal it off him when he had finished.

Tryggvi Thór grunted, furrowing his thick dark eyebrows as he read, the corners of his lips pointing downward in something close to a scowl. Magnus sat down opposite him and sipped his coffee.

‘All right, I’ll have a cup,’ Tryggvi Thór said.

Magnus poured him one.

Silence.

‘How’s the rape case going?’ Tryggvi Thór asked eventually.

‘Not good,’ said Magnus. That was another frustrating case, which he had been working on with Vigdís for most of the week.

‘They’re always tricky.’

‘Yeah. It’s the damn phones.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s a he-said-she-said. He says she gave consent; she says she didn’t. He says she’s been sending him texts begging to see him; she says she did want to see him, but she didn’t want to have sex with him.’

‘Sounds familiar.’

Magnus sighed. ‘His lawyer says she wants to see the victim’s phone.’

‘And the victim says no?’

‘She says her phone is private and there are things on there she doesn’t want anyone to see. Things that have nothing to do with the case. So she wants to back out of the prosecution. She says she doesn’t see why, just because someone raped her, she has to lay out her entire personal life before a court of strangers.’

‘Do you believe her? That the messages have nothing to do with the case?’

‘I think so. I can’t be sure. But I’m damned sure she’s telling the truth. She said no and then the bastard raped her anyway. She scratched him on the neck — we’ve got the evidence for that. But unless we can persuade her to turn over her phone, the bastard will walk free. And that really pisses me off. We never used to have this problem, but now it’s happening all the time.’

Tryggvi Thór shook his head. ‘I always hated rape cases.’

Tryggvi Thór had been a policeman, a detective like Magnus, in the Reykjavík CID. He had been kicked out of the force under a cloud in the 1990s and had escaped to Uganda to run a school. But after the death of his African wife, he had returned to his late parents’ home in Álftanes.

Magnus had returned to Iceland himself earlier that summer for a second stint with the Reykjavík Metropolitan Police — he had been away from Iceland for five years, back in his old job in homicide for the Boston Police Department. Given the tourist boom and the season, it had been a nightmare trying to find accommodation in Reykjavík. Magnus had been investigating a robbery with violence at Tryggvi Thór’s house when the retired cop had offered him a room. Magnus had accepted.

Three months into it, and the arrangement suited them both well. Tryggvi Thór was a grumpy bastard, and Magnus liked to be left alone. They respected each other’s desire not to be bothered. Yet more and more they found themselves talking.

Magnus was coming to realize he actually liked the grumpy bastard.

The doorbell rang.

‘Who’s that?’

‘A friend,’ said Magnus, leaping to his feet. He corrected himself. ‘Two friends.’

He opened the front door. A blonde woman wearing a cream-coloured woolly hat was standing there with a small boy clutching her leg. They both looked nervous.

‘Hi, Ingileif,’ said Magnus.

‘Hi.’ Ingileif hesitated, and then reached up to kiss him on the cheek.

Magnus squatted down on his haunches. ‘Hi, Ási,’ he said to the small boy whose bright blue eyes stared at Magnus from beneath a thatch of red hair.

‘Do you remember Magnús?’ Ingileif asked encouragingly.

The boy shook his head and clung more tightly to his mother’s leg. A wave of disappointment washed over Magnus. It was two months since Magnus had met the little boy for the first and only time, by chance on a Reykjavík street with his mother. Magnus knew that the encounter would have meant much less to the boy than it would to Magnus, but it hadn’t occurred to Magnus that Ási wouldn’t even remember him.

But then, why should he?

‘I thought we could go for a walk?’ said Magnus. ‘It’s not too cold, is it?’

The breeze was whipping Ingileif’s blonde hair around her cheeks, which were blossoming pink in the chill.

Magnus couldn’t help staring at her. Those cheeks were so familiar, the lips, her grey eyes. And that little nick on her eyebrow.

She stared back for a moment that was just about to become awkward when she answered his question. ‘No. We’re dressed for it.’

‘Great. Look, come in from the cold. And just wait a sec while I get something for Ási.’

He ducked back into the living room to pick up the bright orange plastic football he had bought earlier. Tryggvi Thór was on his feet to greet Magnus’s guests.

‘Good afternoon,’ he said to both of them. ‘I’m Tryggvi Thór. Magnús is my lodger.’

‘That’s very brave of you,’ said Ingileif.

‘I’m a brave man,’ said Tryggvi Thór. ‘I take it you and he are old friends?’

‘Old friends,’ Ingileif confirmed.

‘You don’t look like the kind of girl who would be stupid enough to go out with a policeman?’

‘Sadly, I was,’ said Ingileif. ‘Until I came to my senses.’

Tryggvi Thór looked at the little boy. ‘My guess is until about five years ago?’

Ási was four.

‘That’s a very good guess,’ said Ingileif, glancing at Magnus.

‘Don’t worry, he didn’t say anything,’ said Tryggvi Thór. ‘I used to be a detective too. The boy looks just like him.’

‘And I need to separate you two,’ said Magnus. ‘Before you discover all my secrets.’ He put on his coat and hat. ‘Come on.’

They left the house and Magnus led Ingileif and Ási down to the shore. A narrow beach skirted the peninsula, bordered by a sea wall of large rocks. Ducks fussed among the seaweed.

Ási clung on to his mother’s hand.

‘He seems like a miserable old git,’ said Ingileif.

‘He is, he is. I like him.’

‘Just your type. In fact, I can imagine you becoming exactly like him in thirty years.’

‘I’m not sure whether I’m supposed to be flattered or insulted by that,’ said Magnus.

‘Oh, insulted,’ said Ingileif.

She sounded as if she was teasing — she was teasing. But there was a grit of truth there. And Magnus didn’t know what to make of that hard, sharp grit.

Suddenly, his future widened out in front of him like a chasm. He felt a lurch of fear, teetering on its edge. Would his old age be spent in Iceland or America? Who would it be with? Would it be with anyone at all? Would Ási be a part of it?

Or when he was seventy would he still not know who he was, where he was from, whom he was to live his life with?

A bit like Tryggvi Thór then.

Ingileif seemed to read his mind. ‘Sorry.’

‘About what?’ said Magnus, putting on a grin.

‘You went all thoughtful.’

The beach was empty. The sand was a mixture of yellow and black, with black pebbles scattered about, having been tossed by winds and currents this way and that in the several thousand years since they had been spewed out of some volcano. A faint smell from the seaweed draped over sand and rocks shifted in and out of Magnus’s nostrils.

The Reykjanes peninsula stretched out to the west, into the Atlantic, a black mass of frozen folds of lava. The near-perfect cone of the small volcano Keilir pushed upwards just inland from the shoreline. Although it hadn’t erupted for several millennia, it looked perfectly capable of putting on a performance at any moment.

No trees. If there had been trees there several thousand years before, and there probably had been, they had been smothered and choked by the lava, and had never had the opportunity to seed in the sterile landscape again. Only lichen and moss and the odd tuft of yellow grass could gain a foothold out there.

‘How do you like it back in Iceland?’ Ingileif asked.

‘It’s good,’ said Magnus. ‘I’m glad I came back.’

Magnus had been born in Iceland, but had moved to America to follow his father at the age of twelve. He had grown up there and, after the dreadful months following his father’s murder which the local cops couldn’t solve, had joined the Boston Police Department. When the National Police Commissioner of Iceland had come to the US looking for expertise in big-city crime, as the only Icelandic-speaking detective in the US, Magnus was the obvious candidate.

So Sergeant Detective Magnus Jonson became Sergeant Magnús Ragnarsson — Magnus’s father’s first name was Ragnar — as he spent three years attached to the Reykjavík police. His first stint.

Which was where he had met Ingileif.

They stayed together for most of those three years, but when they split up, Magnus had allowed his time in Iceland to come to an end. That was five years ago, now.

‘Why did you come back here?’

‘It wasn’t the same in Boston. It hadn’t changed; I had. You know how obsessed I used to be about investigations? I’ve lost that, or at least I had lost it in America.’

‘Because you had solved your father’s murder?’

‘That’s right,’ said Magnus. Ingileif had always understood him, almost as well as he understood himself. Probably better. He had discovered the key to his father’s murder had been in Iceland all along. Until that point, he had been driven to solve every homicide he came across in an ever-fruitless attempt to solve his father’s murder, or if not to solve it, then resolve it. Which of course he never managed to do.

But after he had dealt with his father’s death, he found the homicide investigations just depressing. And they produced ever-increasing quantities of information that had to be typed into computers.

‘Are you happy now?’

Magnus glanced at Ingileif. Never afraid to ask direct questions.

‘Yes.’ His smile broadened.

Ingileif laughed. ‘That was quick! You’ve only been back a few months. What’s her name?’

‘Eygló. She’s an archaeologist.’

‘She wasn’t a witness on that murder case you were involved in, was she? The one that was in the papers?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Magnús! You must stop doing that! You know it’s unprofessional.’ That was how Magnus had met Ingileif.

‘I know, I know.’

‘Tell me about her.’

Magnus hesitated. His instinct was not to tell his former girlfriend about how wonderful his current girlfriend was. But on the other hand, if he was going to establish a successful long-term relationship with the mother of his son, he was going to have to get over the former-girlfriend bit.

So he did, describing how Eygló had her own eleven-year-old son, about her background as an archaeologist and how she had stumbled into the role of successful presenter of TV documentaries. He tried to avoid sounding too enthusiastic, but didn’t entirely succeed.

‘She sounds perfect for you. You really like her, don’t you?’

‘I do,’ Magnus admitted.

‘I’m glad,’ said Ingileif. She sounded as if she really meant it. Yet somehow she sounded sad as well. Or was Magnus imagining that?

It was his turn to pry. ‘Last time we met, you mentioned something about a guy called Hannes?’

They had only spoken twice since Magnus had been back in Iceland, and not at all when he had been in America. The first time, when they had bumped into each other on Borgartún and Magnus had learned of Ási’s existence, Ingileif had mentioned a husband. The second time, over lunch, she had said the husband had gone off with another woman.

‘Hannes wants to come back. Turns out I’m more interesting than his skinny model. Who’d have thought it?’

‘Are you going to take him?’

‘Don’t know. Not sure.’

Magnus looked across at her. She was walking, head down. Was she avoiding his glance?

They continued on in silence for a bit. The wind whipped in from the ruffled sea, shuffling the layers of white and grey cloud into streaks of blue. Magnus switched to English for the little boy’s benefit. Or rather to exclude the little boy.

There was a question he needed to know the answer to. ‘Does he know that Hannes isn’t his father?’

‘Oh, yes. He calls him Hannes, not Dad. But I have to say that Hannes is very good to him.’

‘Does he know about me?’

‘Who? Hannes or Ási?’

‘Both.’

‘I’ve told Hannes all about you. At the moment Ási thinks he hasn’t got a dad. And I’d like to keep it that way.’ She took a couple of steps. ‘For now, at least.’

Ási had heard his name and looked up at his mother and Magnus.

‘You’re forty-one and a half,’ he said.

Magnus grinned. Ási did remember him after all! They had swapped ages last time they had met. ‘And you are four.’

‘And a half.’

‘And a half.’

Ingileif smiled at Magnus. ‘What are you doing with that football? Are you taking it for a walk? Aren’t you supposed to kick it?’

Magnus dropped the ball to his feet and dribbled it lackadaisically on the sand in front of him, small waves swishing against the shoreline a few metres away.

Ási watched closely, still clutching his mother’s hand. When the ball drifted near Ási’s toes, Ási gave it a poke and sent it skimming across the beach. Magnus scampered after it and passed the ball back to Ási, who let go of his mother’s hand and ran after it.

An hour later, exhausted by all the running, kicking, falling down and laughing, Magnus hauled Ási up on to his shoulders and carried him back to Ingileif’s car. On the other side of Álftanes the large white farmhouse, Bessastadir, that served as the President’s residence stood alone with its church and its flagpole from which Iceland’s flag proudly fluttered. Magnus had come to appreciate being in a country where the President lived on a farm.

‘That was fun,’ he said to her. ‘Thank you for bringing him.’

‘He enjoyed it. And it was good to see you playing, Magnús.’

Magnus lowered the boy off his shoulders and Ingileif strapped him into his car seat. Ási’s eyelids were drooping.

‘Can we do it again?’

Ingileif nodded. ‘Sure. He’d like that. I’ll text you.’

Four

Dísa didn’t get a chance to speak to her mother until the following evening, when Mum got back from her shift at the hospital. And she had to endure a tense supper where everyone seemed unhappy with everyone else. Even Anna Rós, who could usually be relied upon for some bubbly chatter.

Grandpa tossed some comments about politics on to the empty table. There had recently been an election and although Grandpa’s party, the Independence Party, had the most seats, it looked as if the leader of the Left/Greens would become Prime Minister. A couple of days before, the conversation would have turned into a good-humoured skirmish of the generations, with Dísa taking on her grandfather, but that evening she didn’t have the heart for it. She was bursting to tell them all about the bitcoin, but she knew she had to start with Mum.

‘Can I show you something upstairs on the computer?’ she said to her mother after they had put the dinner things in the dishwasher.

Helga sighed. ‘What is it?’

‘You’ll see.’

She sat her mother down on the bed next to her, opened her laptop and showed her the graph of the bitcoin price.

‘What on earth is this?’

‘It’s bitcoin. It’s a cryptocurrency. Have you heard of it?’

‘I think so. It sounds dodgy to me.’

‘Dad gave me some. In January.’

‘What! When?’ Anger flared in Mum’s eyes.

Dísa had expected this. ‘I saw him in Akureyri. He made a trip up just to see me. To give me the bitcoin.’

‘And you didn’t tell me?’

‘No.’

‘Dísa! Why on earth not?’

Dísa tried to fight the impatience rising within her. ‘Because you’d have gone apeshit.’

‘Damn right I would have gone apeshit. In fact, I can feel myself going apeshit now.’

‘OK. OK,’ said Dísa, realizing she had gone about this wrong. ‘Just hear me out first. And then you can get as angry as you want.’

Dísa watched her mother struggle to control her temper. She didn’t usually lose it, but Dísa could feel the pressure of the money worries, see it in the tightness around her mother’s eyes and lips.

‘All right,’ Helga said. ‘So how many bitcoin did he give you?’

‘Five.’

‘Five! What’s that worth? Five dollars? Fifty? That’s not going to make much difference.’ Then a thought struck her. ‘Don’t tell me, they’re worth nothing. Your father really is useless.’

‘They were worth five thousand when he gave them to me.’

‘Really?’ Helga raised her eyebrows. ‘And now?’

‘And now, thanks to a bit of trading I did in another cryptocurrency, the five bitcoin have become thirty-two.’

‘That sounds good.’ Mum was nodding her head.

‘Take another look at this graph.’ Dísa pushed her laptop in front of her mother.

Mum took another look. ‘Is that nine thousand dollars?’

‘It is.’

Helga was an anaesthetist; she could do arithmetic perfectly well. Her mouth dropped open.

‘But that’s about three hundred thousand dollars?’

Dísa grinned. ‘Three hundred and thirteen.’

Anger was replaced by a flash of hope in her mother’s eyes. Almost greed.

‘But that’s ridiculous, Dísa. That can’t be right. And it’s all yours?’

‘It is,’ said Dísa. ‘Thanks to Dad.’ The point had to be made.

‘He was just lucky,’ said Helga. ‘Where did he hear about this bitcoin?’

‘He’s got a friend called Sharp from his banking days who lives in London. Sharp told him about it and fixed it up for him.’

‘I remember Sharp,’ said Mum. ‘He was always smarter than Ómar. Managed to keep himself out of jail, for a start. Why didn’t you tell me about this?’

‘I wanted to, but Dad made me promise not to.’

‘He made you promise?’ The anger was back. ‘You know you don’t have to keep your promises to your father! He never kept any of his promises.’

‘Mum! I’ve got three hundred thousand dollars! Thirty million krónur. Enough to keep the farm. If I can only get it out of bitcoin and into real money. I’m not sure how you do that.’

‘Dísa, that’s your money. You don’t have to give it to us.’

Dísa smiled. ‘“Us”. You said “us”. Who do you mean by “us”?’

Helga looked confused. ‘Well... Me. Grandpa.’

‘You mean our family. Me, you, Anna Rós, Grandpa, Grandma?’

‘Yes, I suppose I do.’

‘Well, as far as I am concerned, it is ours. Dad gave it to me because he felt guilty about how he had let us all down, and he thought I could look after a good investment. But this is a way for him to help us when we really need it.’

‘But it’s your money.’

‘It’s our money.’

‘Does Ómar know you are planning to give it to us?’

Dísa shook her head. ‘He doesn’t know about the problems with the farm. Or at least I haven’t told him.’

Helga was about to lay into her ex-husband again when she stopped herself. Dísa could see the confusion in her mother’s eyes. She knew her well enough to understand what she was feeling: anger with her ex-husband, excitement at the unbelievable amount of money that Dísa had somehow accumulated, relief that her money worries might be over, and doubt. Doubt that it was all too good to be true — too unreal.

Mum’s eyes welled up with tears, and she gave Dísa a confused smile of desperation and happiness.

‘I can’t believe this! You are such a clever girl.’

She opened her arms and pulled Dísa to her, as they both sobbed with relief and joy.

Five

Blábrekka cheered up. Grandpa and Grandma were told that Dísa had conjured up a fortune from the internet, and Grandpa had insisted on a long explanation of what exactly bitcoin was. Anna Rós was just very happy that Clyde wasn’t going anywhere. Mum, too, suddenly became fascinated by how bitcoin worked, and how Dísa had managed to make so much money from the Ethereum coin.

Dísa was happy to see those lines around her mouth and eyes soften, and the warm smile that she loved so much return.

There still remained the problem of how to turn Dísa’s bitcoin into krónur and get it into Helga’s bank account in Iceland. But Helga said she had been able to borrow enough money to keep the farm going until they figured that one out.

They agreed that the best idea was for Dísa to ask Ómar, and to do it face to face, but to warn him in advance so he had time to find out how to sell the bitcoin and get the proceeds back to Iceland. To her intense frustration, Mum insisted that Dísa not tell her father about her plans to bail out the farm. Mum was worried that Dad wouldn’t help Dísa sell her bitcoin if he knew what she was planning to use it for. Dísa thought the opposite, that he would be pleased, but she reluctantly accepted her perennial role as her parents’ lying go-between.

It was a seven-hour bus trip from Akureyri to Reykjavík, which would take Dísa most of Saturday getting there and most of Sunday getting back. Plenty of time to do the homework that was backing up. But it seemed worth it, especially since Dad said he had an idea that required Dísa seeing him in person.

Dad met Dísa at the bus terminal in Mjódd and drove her back to his dilapidated flat in Nordurmýri in the centre of Reykjavík. He was bubbling — Dísa had never seen her father so excited — and it was all about bitcoin.

‘Did you see what happened yesterday?’ he said. ‘The price smashed through ten thousand. Can you believe it? I told you it would go up.’

Dísa smiled. ‘You said it would double this year, Dad. Actually, it went up ten times.’

‘OK, OK. I was wrong.’ He turned and grinned at his daughter. ‘But I was so right.’

‘Thanks, Dad. I can’t thank you enough.’

‘It’s no problem,’ Dad said. But she could tell from his smile he was pleased with her thanks. ‘The best decision I ever made to give you that bitcoin. And your Ethereum trade was genius. I knew you would get this stuff.’

Dísa nodded happily. She was pretty pleased with herself, truth be told.

‘But now you want to sell?’

Dísa nodded. ‘The price can’t keep going up forever. I think it’s time to take my profits.’

‘What will you do with the money?’

‘Just put it in the bank,’ Dísa lied. ‘At least for now. Maybe I’ll invest it in something else later.’

Dísa hated lying. So why did she always end up doing it anyway? It was her parents, of course. She never lied to anyone else. One day she would give up lying for them. One day soon.

‘But I need to figure out how to sell the bitcoin and change it into krónur.’

‘OK. Well, I’ve got an idea about that. Sharp’s over from London.’

‘The guy who put you into bitcoin in the first place?’

‘That’s him. And he’s got a new idea. It’s called Thomocoin. There’s a presentation this evening and we should go.’

‘But I don’t want to buy some other cryptocurrency. I want to sell.’

‘It’ll be worth seeing, I promise you.’

Dísa frowned.

‘Trust me. Aren’t you glad you trusted me before?’

‘I am,’ Dísa acknowledged.

‘Well then?’

The Thomocoin presentation took place in the underground auditorium of one of Reykjavík’s large hotels. It wasn’t exactly what Dísa had imagined a sober investment presentation would be like. There was loud music, expensive lighting and a real buzz among the hundred or so people who were there.

Dísa was intrigued.

The presentation was begun by a dark-haired Icelandic woman of about thirty named Fjóla who seemed almost comically overexcited. She demanded audience participation, and got it, encouraging cheers at the mention of Thomocoin, and rapturous applause as she introduced ‘Iceland’s foremost financial brain and Thomocoin’s CEO’, Sharp.

Sharp bounded on to the stage. He was a tall man, pretty cute, Dísa had to admit, with short fair hair, a square jaw, and bright blue eyes that danced enticingly before settling on his audience in a thrilling stare.

He admitted that his real name was Skarphédinn Gíslason and got the audience laughing when he explained how difficult that name was for foreigners outside Iceland. He explained that he had had a younger brother named Thomas who had died of leukaemia at the age of ten, and Thomocoin was named after him.

He then told the audience all about Thomocoin.

The problem, he said, with bitcoin and Ethereum and all the other cryptocurrencies was that they had been set up as digital currencies to rival the old-world offline paper currencies. What was needed was a new cryptocurrency that was designed to slot into the regulations and payment systems of the real world, yet keep the anonymity and trustworthiness and freedom from government interference. And it would be a way for people without bank accounts all over the world to receive their wages and pay their bills easily, something billions of people needed desperately.

Thomocoin was that currency.

He cut to a video of an old Swiss guy with a pointy grey beard who talked about regulation, then a smooth Ugandan with a pointy black beard who talked about how Thomocoin would revolutionize village life all over Africa, and then a Chinese woman with no beard whatsoever who talked about how a billion Chinese were itching to buy Thomocoin.

Finally Sharp asked the question that had been bothering Dísa. Why, with all those billions of people demanding to buy Thomocoin all over the world, had Sharp bothered with Iceland?

The answer he gave was that Iceland was the most advanced country in the world in digital payments, and, he said, Icelanders were the smartest people.

The crowd loved that. They knew he was being ironic, yet they believed he secretly meant it at the same time.

Thomocoin was going to be launched in two weeks, in time for Christmas. They had decided to launch it to the smartest early investors before they had an exchange set up ready to convert it into hard currency, and before they had the regulatory approvals, because that would give a chance for the guys who got in early to make a fortune. All they would need was a bit of patience and a bit of belief.

It all sounded pretty good to Dísa.

Afterwards, Dísa and Dad went up to the hotel bar to meet Sharp, who was there with Fjóla, a couple of young guys in T-shirts, and a few Icelandic admirers. Sharp seemed genuinely pleased to see Dad, and gave him a warm embrace.

‘This is my daughter, Dísa,’ Ómar said. Dísa glowed from the pride in his voice.

Sharp turned his piercing eyes on her. ‘Hi, Dísa. You’re the young woman who bought the Ethereum last winter, right? Your dad told me about you.’

‘That’s right,’ Dísa said. ‘It’s all back in bitcoin now.’

‘And now you want to take your profits? You know bitcoin is shooting up even faster now?’

‘I know,’ said Dísa. ‘But from what I’ve read that means the price is getting near the top. I don’t know where the top is, but I’ve made enough for now.’

Sharp grinned. ‘Smart girl. Take a look at Thomocoin. Do your research. Check out the white paper on our website — it will tell you all you need to know. If you like what you see, use your bitcoin to buy Thomocoin when it comes out in a couple of weeks. Then wait until we set up the exchanges and get the regulatory approvals, and sell it. If you want. My guess is Thomocoin will prove to be just as good an investment as your Ethereum.’

‘When will the exchange be ready?’

‘Hard to say. It takes time and we want to do it properly. Six months? A year, max. In the meantime, talk to Fjóla. She’s in charge of launching Thomocoin in Iceland.’

Fjóla smiled and handed Dísa a card emblazoned with the Thomocoin logo.

‘Thanks, Sharp,’ Dísa said. And then: ‘I’m sorry about your little brother Thomas. Or Tómas,’ she corrected herself, using the Icelandic version of the name.

Sharp paused. Frowned. And then nodded in acknowledgement.

‘What shall I tell Krakatoa?’ Fjóla asked her boss, pulling out her phone. ‘He wanted to know how it went.’

‘Tell him it went well,’ said Sharp. ‘Don’t you think, Dísa?’

‘Who’s Krakatoa?’ she asked.

‘My partner,’ said Sharp. ‘He’s the brains behind the operation.’

‘Is he an Icelander too?’

‘I think he’s from Canada,’ said Fjóla. ‘Isn’t he?’

‘Vancouver,’ said Sharp. ‘But after this, we may make him an honorary Icelander.’

Dísa thought Thomocoin sounded good. It sounded very good. She’d check it out online, but it looked like it might be a good option for her bitcoin.

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Tell him it went well.’

But one thing she had heard didn’t quite ring true. Dísa wasn’t totally convinced that Thomas, or Tómas, was real. Not that that mattered.

Or did it?

Six

Magnus looked down at the spiky blonde head on his lap, or what he could see of it behind the covers of a book. Something about trolls in the medieval north.

The set-up was both uncomfortable and very comfortable. It turned out Eygló liked to read and so did he, and they liked to read together.

Work was busy. To Magnus and Vigdís’s frustration, the rape victim had withdrawn from her case, unwilling to give up her mobile phone’s secrets. But the data-server heist had exploded. There had been two more break-ins; the value of the equipment stolen was now counted in the hundreds of millions of krónur. Magnus had been investigating the sales channel the thieves had used to offload the servers, and trying to track down any bitcoin transactions with which they could have been paid. More promising was a CCTV image of a suspicious blue van taken near one of the break-ins.

Some progress, but not enough. The pressure was on: the news websites were all over the story.

They were in Eygló’s small flat in Kópavogur. Bjarki, Eygló’s eleven-year-old son, was playing Football Manager in his bedroom as usual. He had explained at great length to Magnus how he was managing Macclesfield Town, some tiny place in England, and powering it up to the English Premier League. Magnus didn’t know much about English soccer, although he was trying to keep up with Bjarki’s passion for Liverpool.

Frankly, Magnus couldn’t give a damn about Macclesfield Town.

He was trying to get Bjarki interested in the Red Sox. He reckoned he’d snare him in the end with the statistics, but so far Bjarki was only showing polite interest in baseball.

Eygló looked on with wry amusement.

Soccer wasn’t a bad game. Magnus had been pretty good at it when he was a little kid, playing at the Snaefell club in Stykkishólmur in the west of Iceland. Although they played it a bit at his middle school in Cambridge in Massachusetts, he had taken up real football. American football.

Ási had shown some early talent on the beach. Would he play for his own club team eventually? Icelanders were pretty good at soccer.

It was three weeks since Magnus had kicked a ball around on the beach with his son, and he couldn’t help thinking about it. He didn’t really understand why. Until a couple of months before he hadn’t really thought about children. But now?

He couldn’t wait to see Ási again. Christmas was coming. Could he get him a gift? Something small, or it would be weird. After all, Ási thought of Magnus as no more than a friend of his mother.

Ingileif had promised she would text, but she hadn’t. Magnus was beginning to fear she wouldn’t.

Patience! All he needed was patience.

‘What’s up, Magnus?’ said the head on his lap, putting down her book. ‘You’re fidgeting.’

‘Sorry.’

Eygló sat up. ‘Are you thinking about Ási?’

Magnus nodded. ‘I’m worried Ingileif isn’t going to contact me.’

Eygló sighed. ‘Then call her.’

‘Should I send her a text?’

‘No. Call her. Talk to her. Then you’ll know what’s what.’

‘All right.’ Magnus took out his phone as Eygló tactfully withdrew to the kitchen.

Magnus found Ingileif’s number and called it. It rang and then went to voicemail.

He put the phone down, disappointed. He was just wondering whether to assume she was avoiding him when his phone buzzed.

It was her. ‘Hi, Ingileif,’ he said.

‘Hi.’

‘I was just calling to see how you were. And Ási.’

There was silence on the other end of the phone.

Uh-oh.

‘Magnús. I know I said I would bring Ási to see you again, but now I don’t think it’s such a good idea.’

Magnus’s blood went cold. ‘Why not?’

‘Hannes came back.’

‘So what? You said Ási knows he isn’t his father.’

‘Yes. But Hannes says that if the three of us are to operate as a family, then you shouldn’t be part of it. It will confuse Ási.’ Ingileif hesitated. ‘It will confuse me.’

‘What do you mean?’

Ingileif sighed. ‘On the beach at Álftanes I told you that Hannes had gone. I gave you a chance to come back. But you didn’t want to. I respect that, I really do. But I need to make a clean break. I need to.’

‘But...’ Magnus was at a loss for words. ‘But — but how could you take him back? He went off with another woman!’

‘You took me back,’ said Ingileif.

‘Yes. But that was different.’

‘Was it?’ Ingileif said.

Magnus pulled back from the retort that was forming on his lips. ‘I told you I have a girlfriend and I’m very happy with her,’ he said. ‘Can’t you tell Hannes there is no chance of anything between us? I want to see Ási. I need to see Ási.’

Magnus was surprised by the strength of feeling as he uttered these last words. But he meant them.

‘I’m very sorry, Magnús. The answer is no. I owe it to you to be crystal clear on that. No.’

‘But I have a right to see him. And your sleazy husband doesn’t have any right to stop me!’

Now anger flared in Ingileif’s voice. ‘You have no right, Magnús. You didn’t know Ási even existed until three months ago. Even then, I didn’t want to tell you. He’s my son, and I want to bring him up in a stable family. With the man I love. Who, by the way, isn’t you.’

‘But — Ingileif! You have to let me see him. You have to.’

‘No, I don’t, Magnus. And don’t even think of trying to force it.’

The line went dead. Magnus stared at his phone.

He fought to control tears welling up in his eyes. Where the hell did they come from?

Two hands rested on his shoulders, and he felt lips kiss the back of his head.

‘I’m sorry, Magnús. I couldn’t help hearing that.’

‘She said no.’

‘I heard.’

‘I don’t know why it bothers me so much,’ said Magnus, turning to Eygló. ‘But it does.’

‘You need a family,’ said Eygló. ‘We all do.’

Magnus reached up to kiss her. ‘I’m very glad I’ve got you.’