‘Eva and I will collect all the hate mail and threats, and we can pass them over to the commissioner’s department. They’ll produce a monthly digest for you and they’ll be in touch with me if there’s anything in particular that I need to watch out for. That makes the risk analysis more realistic, and you don’t have to read the filth.’

She hummed to herself and looked out over the city’s lake. It’s surface had frozen and thawed several times in the last few days, so it had taken on a sheen that made it almost luminous in the midday brightness.

‘I suppose it’s part of the job and I ought to just get used to it,’ she said. ‘I should have known digging into a rape case would turn up something like this. It’s as if some people can’t hear the word rape without their hatred for women boiling over.’

‘True,’ Gunnar agreed. ‘In the profiling course I was on we were 80taught that there are two social issues that can send people completely insane with anger: sex crimes and immigration.’

‘Shit,’ Úrsúla said. ‘So I’m going to have all the racists coming after me as well when I start getting involved in immigration? That’s where my expertise lies – it’s the main reason I agreed to take on the job, to try and get those issues into some sort of order.’

At the Skothús bridge he decided to take a right turn, go over it and along Suðurgata to avoid the worst of the traffic, which was all keeping to the main roads, as the side roads hadn’t been sufficiently cleared of snow. The ministerial 4x4 was on nail tyres, so it would cope where less well-equipped family cars wouldn’t.

‘This kind of hate mail simply goes with the job,’ Úrsúla said, again sounding as if she were talking to herself.

Gunnar took the turning off the roundabout and the car sped up the slope to where the National Library sat, immovable.

‘It’s not just the job,’ he said, recalling what he’d learned about high-risk groups. ‘Women in this kind of role get double the hatred. That’s something else I picked up on the course. Powerful women arouse some extremely odd emotions in people.’

32

Stella had shredded everything, tied the bag closed and was on the way out with the rubbish when her phone rang. She stopped by the door and fished her phone from the waistband of her knickers, where she had stowed it because there were no pockets in her grey tracksuit trousers.

‘Gréta, again.’

‘Hæ Gréta,’ Stella said and barely managed to stifle a yawn. The woman had cooked a three-course meal the day before yesterday, and given her leftovers to take home, so she couldn’t make it obvious how dull she found her.

‘We’ve chatted every now and again since the other evening, 81like you suggested, and I was wondering if it’s time to meet up, or wait a while?’

Stella let out a low groan. The woman seemed to need to be guided every single step of the way to getting a date.