She stood up, set the little coffee machine to make her an espresso, then sat at the desk and did as the lad in the computer shop had instructed. By spooling the recording back and stopping the replay at each keystroke, she was able to write down Hákon’s password. He clearly took security seriously, as his eight-character password included lower- and upper-case letters, as well as a number. Now that she had what she had been looking for, there was one more thing she needed to check before making her move.

She had sat in the lobby with her phone and checked literally every post on Facebook and read both Icelandic and English online news by the time the American couple finally appeared. They had their luggage with them and were dressed for outdoors, the man in a grey overcoat and the woman in a pink anorak.

‘Checkout, please,’ the woman called out as she rang the bell, and a young man shot out of the office behind the desk. Áróra pretended to be absorbed in her phone, but carefully followed everything happening at reception. The young man printed out the bill, and in the hope of being able to see the amount, Áróra stood up just as he slid it across the desk towards the couple. She reached for one of the leaflets displayed in a holder by the desk, but there was no way she could make out the figures on the bill at this distance. It was enough to be able to confirm that the bill was a big one, very big. It was ridiculously high, if the wad of two-hundred-euro 184notes – Arora noted they weren’t paying in krónur – the woman slapped on the counter was anything to go by.

Áróra sat back down in the chair by the window and smiled to the American couple as they steered their cases out through the hotel door. She scrolled through to Michael’s number. This was the accountant she always went to for help when she needed to get to the bottom of a complex money trail.

‘What are you after?’ Michael grunted in mock irritation as he answered the phone. Áróra knew that this was his own peculiar sense of humour at work, but she still felt a stab of guilt, because Michael was more than a colleague. He was a friend.

‘Michael, I need help,’ she said.

‘I know that,’ he replied. ‘You never call unless you need something, so I can’t help wondering if you’re using me.’

‘Of course I’m using you,’ she said, and laughed.

This was the banter that had been their usual way of communicating for as long as they had known each other, ever since she had first sought Michael’s assistance to figure out a complex business network. Regardless of what she habitually told people, she was no accountant.