‘Just you wait and see,’ Eva said. ‘Politics is a bug. Once you’re bitten, you can’t get rid of it.’

Úrsúla laughed.

‘I managed to not get Ebola when I was in Liberia, so I’m sure I can steer clear of the political bug at the Interior Ministry,’ she said. 59

22

Last night they had made him take a shower with soap, and gave him clean trousers and a T-shirt to put on before locking him in a cell. Then there was breakfast, and he was read the riot act about keeping away from the minister. Lovely lads, these policeman today. In the old days he’d have been more likely to get roughed up for no reason at all.

The copper who took his statement had a serious look on his face, asking if he knew whose car it was that he’d made himself at home in, but he had shaken his head and acted as if it had been a complete coincidence that it had been Úrsúla’s car and not some other one.

He wanted to trust this sincere young policeman and tell him that Úrsúla was in danger if the Devil himself had hooked his claws into her, but he didn’t dare. There was every chance that he had his spies here as well. His lies and intrigue stretched out in every direction.

He walked past the bus station at Hlemmur, which was now too smart a place for him to be allowed inside. The smell of him made people lose their appetites, as one of the doormen had informed him, so he went straight to the kiosk.

‘Good morning, and may it be a fine day,’ he said as he went inside and heard the man behind the counter sigh. The old guy was working there today. He went straight to the coffee urn and filled a paper cup.

‘Had a night in the cells?’ the old guy asked as he handed him the coffee.

‘Five-star accommodation,’ he said, sipping coffee as he stood at the counter and watched two men feeding coins into the fruit machines. ‘Do they ever win anything on those machines?’

‘Pah. A handful of change now and again. I reckon it’s more about the game than the money, whatever they think.’

He thanked the man for the coffee, dropped the paper cup in 60the bin and set off into the falling snow that was coming from the west and seemed to be building itself up for a blizzard. He set off along Laugavegur, heading for the shelter. Although it would be locked until later in the day, sometimes the guys would gather outside, taking slugs from their bottles; surely someone would give him a dram now that he had started to shiver.

23

As soon as the photographers had left the conference room, Úrsúla realised that this was the moment she had been dreading: sitting at this table that had so often been in the news, as one of the participants, among the chosen ones who posed and smiled in their seats, hands in their laps, but who then shut the doors on the rest of the world while they took decisions. It was a relief to find that when the doors closed behind the photographers the atmosphere became informal.