‘What have you got yourself tangled up in this time?’ Michael asked when he called, shortly before midnight. Áróra was sitting in bed watching TV, having declined Hákon’s offer of a takeaway and a trip to the cinema. She had claimed to be too tired and hung over, but the truth was that the guilt was nagging at her. It was becoming a struggle to look him in the eye. On top of that was her gnawing guilt after last night’s encounter with her mother, which was preventing her from even calling her. Then there was Daníel, and the look on his face when he had seen her with Hákon. After a couple of hours in bed, numbed by mindless television, she now felt that this whole trip to Iceland had turned into a clusterfuck from which she simply longed to walk away. She could catch a flight back home to Scotland, spend a few days lounging in bed, and put behind her Hákon and everything to do with him, along with Ísafold and all her problems, and never let them cross her mind again. But when Michael called with that tone in his voice, the excitement returned.

‘I’m not tangled up in anything,’ Áróra said, before correcting herself. ‘Or … Let’s just say I’m not sure what I’m tangled up in.’

She sat on the edge of the bed and stretched to reach the light switch. She had done her best to darken the room for a better picture on the TV, but now she needed some brightness to wake her up, so that she would be able to take in everything Michael had to say.

‘This guy, the one you sent me the information about, Hákon: he triggers alerts on every system.’

‘And what does that mean?’ Áróra asked.

‘That means nobody will do business with him. He can’t get a loan or any kind of finance package from the usual financial companies. It’s probably because he’s had a hefty debt somewhere and 195defaulted on it. I can see he’s on a list of major debtors with one German bank, another one in Iceland, and a US bank.’

‘So how has he managed to own all these hotels?’

‘That’s where the Swiss accounts come in,’ Michael said. ‘He clearly has plenty of money, but he doesn’t have straightforward access to it, because in formal terms, he’s bankrupt. What you said about the tourists paying over-the-top bills? That’s a classic way of laundering cash. It could hardly be more obvious.’

‘You mean he uses tourists as couriers, bringing the money to Iceland?’