Grímur could sense the bristles sprouting after their night’s growth. He couldn’t bear to run a hand over his face to find out just how bad it was. The hair would be growing on his head and his feet, not to mention his chest. And his balls. And then there were those lousy eyebrows.

He hurried to the bathroom and let the water run in the shower. He took a new pack of disposable razors from the cupboard under the sink and extracted four. Normally four was enough. He stripped and stepped into the shower. The water and the heat gradually softened the stubble, making shaving smoother and closer, keeping the growth back until the evening. He squirted a palmful of thick, white foam and rubbed it into his head. He always started with his scalp, then his face – eyebrows first, then beard. Then he would take a new razor and work his way down 21his body, finishing at his feet. After that he would soap himself all over and go over his body a second time with a fresh razor, to be completely certain that not one single disgusting, bacteria-carrying hair remained.

Sitting at the kitchen table, Grímur tried to calm his nerves, which had left his body as tight as a bowstring. The shower and the shave hadn’t been enough to calm him down. In his thoughts, the woman, Ísafold’s sister, continued to knock with her knuckles so loudly it was as if she were really at the door. It was only to be expected. It went without saying that sooner or later someone would come looking for Ísafold.

22

9

There were two people ahead of her in the queue for the information desk on the ground floor of the National Hospital in Fossvogur. Áróra took her place behind the second woman and waited her turn. She had been here twice before, on both occasions with Ísafold. The building’s lobby was a busy place, with people coming and going: doctors and nurses, patients in white, sidling out for a smoke, pushing ahead of them stands on wheels with plastic drip bags, as well as people in normal clothes, visiting or collecting elderly relatives, who sat primly in wheelchairs, or stood and shivered behind their walking frames.

The woman in front of her finished asking her questions, and Áróra prepared to step forward, when a young man in a green raincoat stepped in front of her, leaned against the reception desk and said something to the man behind the glass. Anywhere else in the world she would have had a few harsh words for him, but it wasn’t worth wasting her energy when faced with this typical Icelandic approach. Men pushed their way to the front of queues and women never gave way in traffic. It was as if joining a queue or giving someone else a chance was an alien concept.