Free Season of the Witch by Árni Thórarinsson Page A

I consider contacting Kjartan Arnarson following the publication of Trausti Löve’s prominent apology on today’s front page. I decide against it. I kept my word.
    Instead I return to the piece I’m hammering together about a press conference held at Hotel KEA this lunchtime, presenting the report of a project group on the future development of the local Eyjafjördur region. The minister for regional affairs was there, along with the mayor and the project board. They all shook hands and patted each other on the back and congratulated each other on finally reaching the conclusion that more diversity was required in the regional economy, with particular emphasis on
clusters in the fields of education and research, health care, tourism, and food production, in a family-friendly community that will be sought after for its good services, potential for education, and leisure activities, all grounded in a diverse, developed, specialized, and competitive economy with strong international ties…
Which is how the population and job opportunities are supposed to increase by an average of 2.3 percent per annum, so that by 2020 the population of the Eyjafjördur region will be twice what it is today, or around thirty thousand. Headline:
    A WORLD-CLASS FUTURE
    “I think this is the fifth or sixth report on regional development since I’ve been here,” remarked my colleague on the
Morning News
with a cynical smile. He’s been in Akureyri for years on end.
    “They always launch them with a huge fanfare, then quietly file them away in a drawer. In the end, they don’t want to spend the money.”
    Who knows?
I think to myself. It’s only a few weeks until the general election: that kind of pressure can work miracles.
    In addition to the regional development piece, I send in a dramatic account of a crime wave in Akureyri. People with nothing better to do have been vandalizing park benches around the town, where tired townspeople have hitherto been able to rest their weary bones. There are about fifty benches in total, and as fast as municipal workers replace them, the vandals come back to kick them to pieces all over again. I type in the headline:
    VANDALS ON THE BENCH
    and switch off my computer.
    “Is there no real crime here, Adalheidur?”
    “Call me Heida.”
    Adalheidur “Heida” Heimisdóttir, editor and publisher of the
Akureyri Post
, raises a manicured hand with long nails, varnished blue to complement her pantsuit. She lifts a forkful of halibut and pasta to her reddened lips and takes a sensual bite with her white teeth.
    Lucky fork.
    She is about my age, not tall but curvaceous, with thick, shoulder-length red hair, and small horn-rimmed glasses perched on an upturned nose. I find her enchanting.
    The white dining room at the Frederick V, which is named after its owner and chef and not after the Danish king of the same name, is full tonight. About half the guests seem to be speaking Icelandic; the other half is a discordant babble of otherlanguages—and of course we know that
it is vital for the future development of the region to have strong international ties.
    “This is an excellent restaurant,” I remark as she swallows. “Original and imaginative.”
    “Couldn’t agree more,” says Jóa, who is digging into a plate of lobster tails. “Just as good as down south.”
    Heida looks from one of us to the other, as if we were two-year-olds. “How can you possibly imagine that originality and imagination in cuisine are the sole province of the Greater Reykjavík Area? They have edible food in places like Paris and Barcelona, don’t they?”
    Jóa and I exchange an embarrassed glance. We have nothing to say. We’ve both dressed in our best—which, oddly enough, means we’re wearing almost identical outfits. Black suits, white shirts. She is wearing a tie, I am not. Jóa’s dirty-blond hair is still in a short ponytail, framing her bright, honest face, free of makeup.
    “We have all the same crimes as down