104

‘It’s all wrecked. All the information I had gathered, everything I had written, all the links and the screenshots and everything I had ready for you has been blown up. Not that any of it fucking matters.’

María knew that she was still sedated because she felt like she was floating on a white cloud, although she could see clearly enough that it was a hospital bed she was lying in. But her feeling was correct: she didn’t care about all that stuff, all the missed opportunities and ideas of some kind of justice. She was just relieved to be alive – relieved that she was going to be fine.

‘We have the timeline of events that you let us have, and to be honest, the explosion doesn’t do the story any harm.’ The guy from the Spotlight team, whose name María couldn’t remember, seemed keener than ever. ‘Even though important documents have been lost, some of that can be retrieved and as this is linked to the explosion, we’d be guaranteed record viewing figures. Everyone wants to know about it.’

‘But it’s not connected to the explosion,’ María said, realising she was unable to speak clearly. ‘The police said Radio Edda was the target, and The Squirrel had been, you know, collateral damage.’

‘That’s not what my sources in the police are saying. They suspect that The Squirrel was what they wanted to blow up, precisely because of your coverage of this scandal. The same source said they’ve managed to trace the vehicle used to place the bomb, and it won’t be long before there’s news of an arrest that will take people very much by surprise. It seems it’s also linked to a massive drugs operation. That’s what I’ve been hearing.’

María shrugged and closed her eyes for a moment. She was too tired to keep track of what the Spotlight guy was saying. He was mixing things up, just as Marteinn used to when he saw conspiracy everywhere. When she opened her eyes, he was still talking; now it was about how media across the Nordic countries wanted to buy her work, so she shut her eyes again. She just didn’t care. She heard him continue to murmur steadily, and then she heard the nurse come in and tell him that she was tired and needed to rest, and he ought to come tomorrow or the next day.

‘Bye, bye,’ she said, or at least that was what she thought she said. She was so desperately worn out, she couldn’t be bothered to open her eyes, let alone raise a hand to wave him goodbye. She allowed herself to sink back into the stupor she had been in, between spells of wakefulness, ever since she had walked along the corridor, past the sack truck with the box on it, and had been about to open The Squirrel’s door. She’d realised then that she needed the toilet, so she turned and went back along the corridor to the horrible, stiff iron door that turned out to have been an ancient fire door that Radio Edda’s manager had at some point decided to have fitted there as a cost-saving exercise. Never again would she complain that she had such a small bladder. Her modest bladder had quite literally saved her life.