Most of all today, she was not looking forward to reading the interview with Rósa, Katrín Eva’s mother. She dreaded what she would have to say. They had been such good friends before. That was why Katrín Eva had come to babysit for them: her mother had offered the girl’s services were they ever to need a babysitter.

Marita got to her feet and reached for the clothes she had taken 102off and thrown on a chair the night before. This would be another day of tracksuit trousers. She couldn’t be bothered to get properly dressed, and she wasn’t going to draw the curtains. Whether people really were gawping at them as they drove along the street, or she was just imagining it, it was as well to shut the world out, behind thick curtains. At any rate, it was the dark dead of winter both outside and inside the house.

42

Úrsúla almost began to regret having put Gunnar in the picture when they arrived at the ministry to find Boris, the national commissioner’s representative, and Óðinn waiting for them with serious looks on their faces.

‘We’ll start the day with a meeting focusing on the minister’s security,’ Óðinn said, leading the way into the meeting room. She and Gunnar sat side by side, with Óðinn and Boris facing them.

‘Coffee? Tea?’ Óðinn asked, and when they had all shaken their heads he sent the secretary out of the room with a vague gesture that she clearly understood.

Gunnar handed Boris the scrap of paper that was now dry and wrinkled, and he read it.

‘Yes, that could certainly be interpreted as a death threat,’ he said. ‘Particularly considering what we know about his background.’

‘Agreed,’ Óðinn said, leaning towards Boris to read the wording on the note. ‘Somehow or other the man needs to be taken out of circulation. This isn’t something that can be tolerated.’

Úrsúla’s feeling of discomfort, which had begun as she entered the ministry building, had disappeared now that she saw them taking this seriously. Somehow she had feared they would think she was making a mountain out of a molehill. In comparison to Ebola, bombs and bullets, a note from a mentally ill down-and-out 103seemed trivial. But this fear seemed in some way unreal. What had happened to the woman who had pulled on a plastic overall and ski goggles every morning to bustle into the quarantine zone in Monrovia to organise the camp’s expansion? Where was the woman who had been able to stand up and explain co-operation between NGOs on transferring whole refugee camps across the border into Jordan, maintaining her concentration as bombs could be heard going off in the background?

‘Taking someone out of circulation isn’t that easy,’ Boris said. ‘But I’ll see what can be done about having him sectioned and kept on a closed ward.’

‘And we need to get an injunction to keep him away from the minister, so the legal side of this is clear and there’s a reason to call in the police if he tries to come close,’ Gunnar said.