‘The weather should be good there,’ she said and smiled. ‘What do you two think? A week on a sunny beach?’

Kiddi stood up and dropped his plate in the sink.

‘You two can go with Klemmi,’ he said from the kitchen doorway. ‘I’m not going anywhere on holiday with him.’ He pointed at his father. 204

90

Pétur sat on the mattress, his mind on steadying his breathing. His body was so used to the cold that by now he was literally overheating, even though he had stripped down to underwear. He knew from experience that if he were to get up, pace the cell, yelling and hammering at the door as he shouted that he was suffocating, then he’d only get even hotter. It was better to sit still and breathe deep. That way his body would gradually cool down and adapt to the temperature in the police station.

Inside, he was still boiling with frustration after yesterday’s altercation, and that was why he overheated when he thought about the incident. He had only meant to take Úrsúla to one side to talk to her; somewhere out of sight, maybe behind the shop where the Devil couldn’t watch them through some security camera, somewhere he could hand her the newspaper clipping of her and the Devil so he could ask her straight out if she had chosen to follow the path of evil.

Pétur lay down on the mattress. It was plastic and his hot skin stuck to it, so he rolled onto the floor and lay there with his back against the cool stone. He had often spent time here – sometimes alone, sometimes with others. There had been times when he felt good here and had been grateful for the shelter and the shower and breakfast; at other times he had been sick, injured and humiliated. And there had been that one time he had seen a man die in just such a cell. That had been his friend Ari.

Now he had failed yet again to speak to Ari’s daughter, Úrsúla, to tell her about how it had all happened. It was impossible to get close to her now that the Devil was at her heels every step of the way. When she had been small he had often picked her up and spun around with her in his arms. He had picked her up as if she had been as light as a feather, showing off his own strength. She had laughed and made fun of him, and he had replied that lifting such a little child high in the air was nothing. It wouldn’t have 205been hard to lift her now, either, if only she hadn’t struggled. Of course it had been damned stupid of him to try and abduct a grown woman, but he was desperate. Úrsúla needed to know the truth.

He ran a hand over the roughness of his face. That black-clad agent of the Devil hadn’t been gentle as he jumped him from behind to get him away from Úrsúla. He had rubbed Pétur’s nose in the dirt, and as he lay manacled and face-down he had tasted the blood mingled with the salt on the ground and been grateful that his handling hadn’t been rougher.