She considered simply getting back in the car, driving home and asking Nonni to check, but another clank stopped her in her tracks. She didn’t dare drive off with something alive in the boot. She thought about calling the police, but then imagined standing in front of a bunch of uniformed men, all laughing at her for being hysterical, and dismissed the idea.

She summoned up her courage, stepped closer to the car and stretched out a hand to open the boot.

20

Gunnar had dressed in three minutes. He looked at his reflection in the minister’s hallway mirror and saw that in spite of his haste, he looked fine. His tie was knotted at his throat and he had managed to smooth down his hair on the way here.

The call from the cabinet office had taken him by surprise, especially as he was just coming to terms with his disappointment. 53He had abandoned his half-eaten dinner – a steamed chicken breast – and rushed out.

‘Hello,’ said the guy from the national commissioner of police who was in charge of ministers’ security. Gunnar had met him a few times before but couldn’t remember his name; it sounded Russian as he recalled. He followed him into the living room, where the new minister sat with one arm around a girl who had buried her head in her shoulder. Two uniformed officers sat opposite her. In the kitchen a tall, dark-haired man was fussing over making coffee. He had to be the husband.

‘What’s going on?’ Gunnar murmured to the national commissioner’s guy.

‘There was a rough sleeper in the back of her car. He attacked her when she opened the boot.’

‘Christ.’

‘Yeah. Not pleasant. He had clearly made himself at home there for a few days. She had refused the national commissioner’s recommendation that she have a driver. But now she’s changed her mind. Welcome to the job.’

The minister was still busy giving a statement to the uniformed officers, so the national commissioner’s guy beckoned Gunnar to go with him.

‘From now on you collect her from the front door every morning and go with her to the door when you bring her home. If there’s nobody home, then you come inside with her and carry out these security checks.’

The guy handed him a list, reading out from a copy of it as Gunnar followed him through the house.

‘Back door: locked and glass undamaged. Ground floor windows: undamaged. Ground floor lights: working. First floor: windows undamaged, lights working, balcony door locked and windows undamaged.’

‘Got it,’ Gunnar said, and that was enough to stop the guy from reading out the whole list. 54

‘These are the new working guidelines. We feel there’s a greater risk of ministers being harassed, so it’s as well as to keep to these,’ he said. ‘Being a minister’s driver isn’t what it was a few years ago.’

‘I’m a trained bodyguard,’ Gunnar said. ‘I know this stuff.’

As they returned to the living room, the uniformed officers were leaving and the husband had just brought in a tray.