‘Nothing,’ Agla hissed.

‘Sure,’ the girl giggled. ‘Just like everyone else in here.’

She’d taken her impertinence a step too far.

‘I worked in finance, like plenty of other people,’ Agla snapped, louder than her sore vocal cords could manage, so that she had to gulp, then dissolved into a bout of coughing.

‘And I smuggled dope, just like loads of other people,’ the girl said with a broad smile.

Agla quickly got to her feet and left the kitchen. She had no intention of allowing herself to be compared to a drug smuggler. Coffee could wait until later.

She had only just entered her cell when the girl appeared in the doorway.

‘Sorry! I didn’t mean to piss you off. I just wanted to talk. I’m still so happy to have people to talk to in Icelandic. Dutch just sounds so weird.’

The smile had disappeared from the girl’s face, and now she stared at Agla with her eyes wide open, her expression apparently sincere.

‘Hmm,’ Agla grunted, not knowing what to say. Her anger had now left her, and she stood awkwardly and stared at the girl.

She wasn’t as young as she had first appeared; she had to be somewhere close to thirty. Her hair was no less of a mess than it had been when she got up that morning.

‘Have you never seen a comb?’ Agla said in a lame attempt at an insult.

The girl simply laughed.

‘It’s supposed to look like that,’ she said. ‘It’s a style. By the way, my name’s Elísa.’

‘Agla,’ she muttered in return.

She was struggling to come up with something else to say to this odd person when one of the prison officers appeared, reminding her that she had a visit booked.

13

‘Yes, I know him,’ Agla had said two weeks ago, and she had signed the visit request, even though she had never heard of this man before. Her curiosity had been sparked by the email in which he requested a visit. He had stated that there was an important business matter they should meet to discuss. She had forgotten about it until now.

Although she was in no mood for a visit, she grabbed the opportunity to escape from the girl, who still stood and stared at her with such irritating curiosity.

When the man she had never heard of appeared behind the glass screen in the visiting room, she hoped he wasn’t yet another journalist who had sneaked in under a false flag. So far only journalists had shown any interest in visiting her.

‘George Beck,’ he said in introduction. He was a middle-aged man – an American, going by his accent – in a black suit and with a bundle of papers under one arm. ‘I apologise for being late,’ he added. ‘But they found it necessary to search me twice, even though I don’t have anything but paperwork with me and I’m behind this glass screen.’