Olga hadn’t even dressed when she decided to knock at the doors of the two neighbours she knew were aware Omar was staying with her. Maybe they had noticed something. Perhaps they had seen the police arrive and take Omar away to be deported. Or they could have seen him leave and might have asked where he was going, had a chat with him on the stairs. She knew she was clutching at straws, but she could no longer wait for a sign of life from Omar himself.

She quickly ran a brush through her hair. It wasn’t much of an improvement; she had spent much of the night awake and restless, and now her hair was plastered down at the sides. She rubbed in some face cream, applied deodorant to her armpits and dabbed a drop of the aromatic oil Omar had given her behind each ear. This gave her a scent of incense, not dissimilar to the smell that had always been in Jonni’s room when he tried to disguise the grass he smoked. She had thought the smell was harmless and so hadn’t worried about it. She shook off these thoughts, went into the bedroom, pulled on a pair of tracksuit bottoms and an outsized T-shirt, and it was hardly over her head before she was out on the stairs, heading down a floor to talk to Grímur, the weird bald guy.

Grímur answered the door after she had knocked twice. She knew he would be in, because he always was. At some time or other he had mentioned to her that he was on disability benefits, and that hadn’t come as a surprise. His manner was so odd, it was clear there was something not quite right about him. But she was grateful to him for not reporting that Omar had been staying with her, even though it was obvious that he knew everything about his situation. She had even heard him once on the stairs, warning Omar that he shouldn’t spend so much time outside and that someone might report him, so Grímur had to be a decent person.234

‘Good morning,’ she said, and he mumbled something in reply. ‘I was wondering if you had seen Omar at all? I haven’t seen him since the day before yesterday and I’m getting worried.’

Grímur had already begun to shake his head before she had finished her sentence.

‘No, I haven’t seen anything of him,’ he said, and made to shut the door, but Olga put her hand on the door frame.

‘You haven’t seen the police, have you?’ she whispered. ‘I’m terrified they’ve arrested him and are going to send him back.’

‘No, I haven’t seen the cops,’ Grímur said.