Season of the Witch by Árni Thórarinsson Page A

next-door garden,children are kicking a ball around. Even computers and high technology haven’t managed to stop kids going out to play. Not yet, at least. After half an hour of luxurious indolence, I’m climbing the walls. I check that my avian roommate has plenty of food and drink to keep her going, then bid her farewell, reassuring her that I’ll be back by dinnertime.
    POLICE
reads the sign over the entrance to a long, white two-story building on Thórunnarstræti, with a blue square beneath each window. The police station bears a strong resemblance to the stronghold of law and order in Reykjavík—though in miniature. I go to reception, and before long I am shown into the office of Chief of Police Ólafur Gísli Kristjánsson. He’s a tall man with sharp features, going on forty, in a light-blue uniform shirt. He wears glasses in heavy black frames of the kind sported by Buddy Holly and other rock and rollers of the fifties and sixties. Below his shaven scalp, he has a strong Roman nose, a cleft chin, and a big gap between his upper front teeth. Gravely he waves me to a seat.
    Not very welcoming. Behind the lenses, his eyes express distrust.
    “I wanted to ask how the search for Skarphédinn Valgardsson is progressing,” I say.
    He crosses his arms across a barrel chest.
No entry
, says that posture.
You won’t get anything out of me
. “Unfortunately it hasn’t yielded any result as yet.” He speaks in a deep voice with a lilting northern accent.
    “Are many people taking part in the search?”
    “We’ve called out all available manpower—both police and the volunteer rescue team. About twenty people in all.” He leansforward on his desk, where papers are neatly stacked alongside a hefty desktop computer.
    “Have you any clues as to what may have happened to him?”
    “I can only tell you what I’ve told your colleagues from radio and TV and the
Free Times
and
Morning News
. We have no information that we can share with the media at this point in time.”
    After a moment’s thought, I decide to push a little harder. I politely inquire: “Is that because you have no information? Or don’t you want to share it with the media?”
    Chief Ólafur Gísli Kristjánsson gives me a ferocious glare, jumps to his feet, and looms over me like a volcano about to spew fire and brimstone over the plains beneath.
    “Who do you think you are?” he asks in a silky tone, disconcertingly at odds with his threatening posture.
    “A jour-jour-journalist,” I babble, struggling to my feet.
    “I know who you are,” he goes on. “You’re a sensationalizing tabloid hack from the south, putting on your cosmopolitan airs and thinking you’re going to dig up dirt here in Akureyri. But you’ve got another think coming.”
    “I didn’t mean…”
    “I know who you are,” he reiterates. “You’re notorious down south, the police know all about you. You don’t respect the rules of the game. You ignore the usual channels of communication to go sniffing out information…”
    “I just won’t be told what’s news and what isn’t,” I say.
    “…and you think you’re God’s own seeker of truth…”
    “It’s for me to decide. We still have freedom of expression…”
    “We don’t need people like you here in Akureyri.”
    “…and freedom of the press in this country.”
    “However. Since you’ve seen fit to come here, there’s just one thing that’s stopping me from kicking you out.”
    I’m brought up short. “Really? What’s that?”
    He returns to his seat behind the desk. “No, probably two things. Firstly, my tolerant attitude to troublemakers of all kinds.”
    His smile is now so broad that through the gap between his front teeth I catch a glimpse of his uvula. “No, wait. There are three things,” he smirks. “Secondly, my duty as a police officer to maintain good relations with the public and the media…”
    He waves me to a seat.
    “And thirdly?” I inquire, wiping cold sweat from my