Today is my stop on the blog tour for Cage by Lilja Sigurdardóttir, thank you to Anne at Random Things Tours for organising it and inviting me to take part.
Synopsis: Drugs, smuggling, big money and political intrigue in Iceland rally with love, passion, murder and betrayal until the winner takes all … in the masterful, explosive conclusion to the award-winning Reykjavík Noir Trilogy…
The prison doors slam shut behind Agla, when her sentence ends, but her lover Sonja is not there to meet her. ”
As a group of foreign businessmen tries to draw Agla into an ingenious fraud that stretches from Iceland around the world, Agla and her former nemesis, María find the stakes being raised at a terrifying speed.
Ruthless drug baron Ingimar will stop at nothing to protect his empire, but he has no idea about the powder keg he is sitting on in his own home.
At the same time, a deadly threat to Sonya and her family brings her from London back to Iceland, where she needs to settle scores with longstanding adversaries if she wants to stay alive.
Extract:
‘I’m on the visitor list,’ María said, her resentment growing deeper and stronger the longer she spent talking to the prison officer responsible for dealing with visitors.
She had booked this visit a good few days before, and refused to believe that Agla had now taken her off the list. As far as María was aware, she was the only visitor Agla ever had. Yes, the visits did seem to trouble Agla, but each one always lasted the full allotted time, even though it invariably descended into arguments and quibbling. And yes, María always had a long list of questions, which Agla usually avoided answering, but her visits had to be about the only variation in the routine of being locked up. At least, María assumed that this was why Agla had put her name on the visitor list in the first place. It seemed to her highly unlikely that Agla had now changed her mind.
‘You can call tomorrow to book another visit,’ the prison officer said, tugging his shirt down over his paunch and stuffing it into his waistband. ‘Agla can’t have visitors today.’
‘Why not?’ María asked, leaning forwards, elbows on the table, driving home the point that she wasn’t about to leave.
‘She’s indisposed,’ the prison officer said, peering at the visitor list and scribbling a note on it.
‘I want to know why,’ María said. ‘Or let me call her myself, so she can tell me in person that she doesn’t want a visit.’
The prison officer sighed deeply.
‘Agla can’t see any visitors today. Try calling tomorrow.’
‘I’m an investigative journalist and I demand to know why prisoner Agla Margeirsdóttir isn’t available for a previously agreed visit. If I don’t get an explanation then I’ll have no choice but to take this to the Prison and Probation Administration.’
The prison officer sighed again, deeper this time, and his eyes rolled towards the ceiling.
‘Sweetheart, this isn’t Guantanamo Bay. We have a duty of confidentiality regarding the health of inmates, so all I can tell you is that Agla is unwell today, and that you can call tomorrow and book another visit.’
Now it was María’s turn to sigh. This was as far as she was going to get for the moment. There was no point in taking out her frustration on the prison officer. In reality, she didn’t suspect there was anything untoward about Agla’s absence; she was simply impatient. This time the questions on her list were all unusually urgent – she wanted to know about Agla’s links to Ingimar Magnússon and William Tedd, the Paris-based markets guru. She had come across both names during her investigation into Agla back when she had worked on economic crime for the special prosecutor. That had been in a previous life, before Agla had, indirectly, caused her to be sacked.
María let her thoughts wander as she made her way back to her car. Although the days had begun to lengthen, the April sun was still low in the sky, and she squinted into the brightness. It would be more pleasant when these knife-edged, blue-white rays gave way to mild spring sunshine. In this light everything seemed to be grey and forlorn after the harshness of winter. There was no sign yet of any growth and the sunshine beat down mercilessly on the dry moorland that replaced the bare earth as she left the prison behind her. Not that the time of year made any difference. She wouldn’t be taking a summer holiday to enjoy the weather. She couldn’t afford one. Her online news service, The Squirrel, just about made ends meet, but only because of the income from the handful of advertisements she had been able to secure. So far she hadn’t been able to sell her material to any of the larger media outlets. Now, though, she suspected she was on the trail of something juicy. Just the names Ingimar Magnússon and William Tedd were enough to tell her she was on the right track.
María sat behind the wheel. Her heart skipped a beat when she noticed, hanging from the mirror, the little crystal angel that Maggi had given her. That had been a year before he had left her, saying that she wasn’t the person he thought he had married. If she were to trace everything back to its origins, then the divorce could also be laid at Agla’s door. Her whole life had been wrecked when she had been sacked by the special prosecutor, and for many months she had been in a kind of angry, disbelieving limbo. Finally Maggi had given up, saying that he no longer recognised her. If she were completely honest, she no longer recognised herself either.
It didn’t do to think too much about Maggi – it would wreck her day completely. If she didn’t take care and let herself drift too far, she would end up in tears on the steps outside his place. The worst of it was that, although she couldn’t help hoping that he would ask her in and then would hold her tight, she knew full well that he would actually just look at her with a mixture of disgust and pity, before shutting the door in her face.
She started the engine and wondered whether she ought to rip the angel from the mirror and throw it out onto the moor. But she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Maybe she would do it tomorrow. In the morning she would call the prison and book another visit. And since she wasn’t able to ask Agla her questions right away, she would have to start on Ingimar.
prdgreads 