‘It’s unlikely,’ the secretary said. ‘Nobody is allowed in without a booked appointment or for a prearranged reason. And I always call upstairs and let the person concerned know that their visitor is here, and they say yes or no to them coming in. If they say no, or don’t recognise the visitor’s name, then they’re simply not allowed in. But, of course, all kinds of things could happen.’

‘This woman had booked an appointment. She was supposed to meet Rúnar, my predecessor. There has to be a record of that.’

The reception secretary went through the pages for Friday and shrugged her shoulders.

‘This was a middle-aged woman who came to see me on Friday,’ Úrsúla said in the hope that this would trigger a recollection. ‘As 50far as I recall it was just before midday and she spent a quarter of an hour with me. Freyja took her back downstairs. Don’t you remember?’

The reception secretary had begun to shake her head before Úrsúla had finished her sentence.

‘That day was a very difficult one,’ she said. ‘It’s always particularly fraught when a new minister takes over, with a lot of people coming and going. I’m terribly sorry.’

She looked down at the desk in front of her instead of meeting Úrsúla’s eyes. Úrsúla felt the irritation building up inside her. It was practically the same speech she had heard from Freyja: tough day, new minister, blah, blah, terribly sorry. There was no way to argue with people who were so sorry.

Úrsúla sighed. Eva had certainly been right when she said that the staff were nervous about the new minister. Óðinn had undoubtedly laid down the law, telling them not to bother her with anything trivial, so most probably it was him who’d had the woman’s name erased from the registration, to prevent Úrsúla from getting involved. He’d certainly have done it with the best of motives, but she would have to make it clear to him that she didn’t appreciate this kind of manipulation.

She left the reception lobby and walked through the building to the staff entrance at the back. The snow had continued to pile up, but it melted as fast as it collected in the empty car park, so her car looked like a monument standing in the middle. She pulled the sleeve of the brand-new coat Eva had chosen over her hand and shoved snow off the edge of the car’s roof so she could open the door without it falling inside. This time she had locked the car and left it in a free spot so there was no chance of finding an unpleasant message, but she still looked around the car to be sure. The stink inside was becoming unbearable; she’d ask Eva to take it to be valeted tomorrow. She couldn’t expect Nonni to be outside cleaning the car in this weather. She dug through the junk in the footwell for a scraper and cleared the worst of the snow 51from the bonnet and windows, then sat in the car and started the engine.