She sat and stared ahead with empty eyes, and it occurred to Gunnar that as far as this matter was concerned, she was no longer a minister, or even a grown woman, but a little girl; a frightened little girl who missed her dad.

97

The police officers who searched the house wouldn’t answer Marita’s questions, other than with questions of their own. The one who was in charge had handed her a sheet of paper that he told her was a search warrant, but she was so upset, for all she knew it could have been a recipe from a cookbook.

‘Where’s your husband?’ he asked as he handed another of the uniformed officers the family computer.

‘He went back east last night to finish his shifts there. He comes home, back to his old job, next week,’ she said. ‘What’s all this about? And why are you taking the computers?’ 219

The man finally stopped.

‘There’s a suspicion that your husband has been sending threats to the minister of the interior, Úrsúla Aradóttir,’ he said and looked at her with searching eyes, as if she might know something about the matter.

‘What kind of threats? What do you mean?’

‘Threats of violence and more, if she doesn’t resign. He came to our attention as there was a charge already against him that was being reviewed.’

Marita shook her head in disbelief. She couldn’t understand any of this. Now a second uniformed officer appeared with Kiddi’s laptop in his hands. Kiddi followed with a sour expression on his face. Marita was surprised that he wasn’t erupting with rage. Maybe he was holding back until the police had gone. Normally he yelled at her when only the two of them were at home.

‘Did your husband take a computer with him when he went to the east?’ the policeman in charge asked.

‘No. Or yes,’ Marita said. ‘He has one of those little tablets that he reads the news on. This has to be some misunderstanding,’ she added. ‘Jónatan would never make threats against anyone, let alone a minister…’

She fell silent as the image came to mind of Jónatan in the bedroom with the phone to his ear the previous Monday. You owe me, he had said to the phone. You owe me.

Could he have been speaking to the minister then? Could she owe him something? Marita couldn’t understand all this.

‘This has to be some kind of misunderstanding,’ she repeated, maybe more to convince herself than the police.

98

As Úrsúla waited in the car while Gunnar was inside the police station, the question Boris had asked at the meeting last week 220came back to mind. Who was this Devil Pétur seemed desperate to warn her against? Could there be anything in the accusation scrawled on the scrap of paper? Could Óðinn, the permanent secretary himself, be her father’s murderer? It was too crazy to be real. Her thoughts whirled around in circles; Pétur and all the notes he had left, and then the two occasions he had physically attacked her, which now seemed strange in this new context. Why had he attacked her if all he had wanted to do was warn her against Óðinn? She had to find an explanation. There was nothing for it but to speak to Pétur quietly.