‘Are you sure you can trust this … journalist?’ he asked cautiously as he brought the car to a halt outside a building that he had always thought was all student apartments.

‘Yes.’ Úrsúla didn’t catch his eye as she got out of the car. ‘I won’t be long,’ she added.

She clearly didn’t want to be accompanied to the door on this occasion, so he watched until she had ascended the steps to the door, which opened as she approached, and vanished inside. He moved the car to a position at the far end of the gloomy car park, but made sure he could still watch the entrance for her to reappear. There was no need for the ministerial car to be obvious to everyone passing by.

At one time he had dreamed of living in this district, on the western side of the university, in a community of students and academics. That had been back when he had been aiming for academe. He had once imagined that he would find happiness in deep discussions with professors who were the diametric opposite of his father: men who would respect him, listening to him as they guided him. Instead he had seen during his teens that what would set him free would be his physique. Exceptional strength and agility would give him the self-confidence to meet any challenge. He had managed to find a way to make a living out of this obsession with muscles, as his father had called it, a sour expression on the old man’s face as Gunnar had twisted his arm yet again in an attempt to prevent one of his drunken furies.

What are you doing tonight? The message on his phone was from Íris.

Nothing, he replied.

Shall I come to yours? Her reply came right back and Gunnar felt he could sense the optimism in the phone’s ping. 130

No. I’m tired, he wrote back. Let’s make it tomorrow.

Are you meeting someone else?

This time the phone seemed to have a harsher, louder tone to it, and the message came with an icon of a man with horns and a trident in his hand.

No, sweetie, he wrote back. I’m just tired.

It was a joke on his part to call her sweetie, honey, darling or doll, but she seemed to fail to realise that these weren’t words that could be applied to her. She was as far as could be imagined from being a sweetie or a darling.

He glanced at the clock. Only ten minutes had passed since Úrsúla had gone inside. Reckoning that she was going to be as long as the last time, he thought he had another half-hour, so he checked his email. There was one message from Fossi, sent to Úrsúla’s email address, but Eva had intercepted it and forwarded it to him:

Resign, you cunt, and I’ll think twice about coming round to your house and raping you, feminazi wrecker bitch.

Gunnar read the message again and again. What could have triggered such strong feelings in this lunatic? Maybe it couldn’t exactly be called progress, but for the first time Fossi had stated what he wanted from Úrsúla. He had finally spelled out the point he wanted to make with these disgusting messages. He wanted her to resign from her post as minister.