‘Hey, take it easy. You don’t think I wanted to dig into this purely for the investigative journalism? If all the soft drinks company had wanted was information, they would have simply employed a private eye, or an excellent journalist such as yourself. When a company like this brings in someone like me as a consultant, it means they want to see involvement.’

‘And what then? Are you going to take over where that bastard Ingimar left off and sit there with all the world’s aluminium stocks under your bed?’

‘No, not at all, María. This is just a move in the game. I’m not contemplating involvement in any business, neither aluminium nor anything else.’

‘Aha.’ Now María understood. ‘I imagine the soft drinks people will be prepared to buy Meteorite off you for a decent price?’

‘Now you’re learning!’ Agla said. ‘Send me an invoice for everything you’ve done, and don’t be shy when it comes to the figure.’

‘Fucking disgusting! Everything you touch is revolting!’

María’s voice shook with rage. Suddenly the feeling she had long had about Agla, ever since she had cost her her job at the prosecutor’s office, came bursting to the surface. The woman was simply poison. Everything she touched turned out badly for everyone except herself. María had been burned by her dealings with her, and now Agla was about to make some astronomical amount of money from an affair that had cost María untold pain and, possibly, Marteinn his life. But Agla would land on her feet like some infernal cat that nobody could ever stop.

María yelled with all the power she had in her. It was good to scream and be angry, it blanketed the powerlessness and the disappointment. Anger was as good as a painkiller for sorrow.

92

Ewa the warder was at reception and seemed genuinely pleased to see Agla again.

‘How are you?’ she asked, after looking her up and down.

‘I’m just fine,’ Agla said, placing her bag and coat in the storage locker. It was quite true: she was feeling good, and after the relief of knowing that Elísa was back in prison and not dead somewhere, she could finally allow herself to enjoy her triumph with the successful Meteorite deal. Less than an hour after she had heard that Elísa was back at Hólmsheiði, having broken her probation conditions, George had called to let her know that his company had agreed to co-operate with another large aluminium user and accept her original offer for Meteorite Metals. That meant an extra few hundred million krónur she hadn’t been expecting.

‘You know this has to be a window visit,’ Ewa said apologetically, opening the door to the inner reception area. She asked Agla to wait a moment while she fetched a handheld scanner to check her. As the door closed behind Ewa, the door to the visiting area swung open and out came another prison officer, Sigurgeir, with a woman behind him.