Daníel and the female officer who worked with him patiently answered all their questions, explaining the process ahead. Björn would be listed on Interpol as a person of interest, they said. There would be an application for a warrant to search his flat. A court would be asked to grant permission for Ísafold’s and Björn’s banking details to be examined and card use to be checked. They would seek information on the use of their phones to try to find out where Björn had been around the time of Ísafold’s disappearance, and so on and so on. They didn’t say it directly, but the more they explained, the clearer it became to Áróra that Ísafold’s disappearance was being investigated as a murder.

At the end, Daníel had taken her hand and held it tight, then put an arm around her shoulder and squeezed. Now she wished that he had hugged her properly, as he had her mother: firmly and with affection, so that she could breathe in the aroma of his after-shave and forget herself for a moment.

Now that she had taken her mother back to Daníel’s place, given her something to calm her nerves and put her to bed in the guest room so she could cry herself to sleep, she longed for the same treatment herself. She was going to roll herself up in a duvet and lose herself in her own tears.

When she held the hotel room key up to the lock and the door 243opened with a click, however, she realised that she wouldn’t be getting much rest. Hákon was waiting for her in the room.

‘Something terrible has happened,’ he said. ‘I’ve lost everything.’

His face wasn’t just pale; it had turned a shade of grey, and Áróra wondered if he was about to faint.

‘What happened?’ she asked, pretending to know nothing, even though she was fully aware that his accounts had been frozen the day before.

‘As if you don’t know,’ he said. ‘I found a camera in my room. And you’re the only one who could have put it there.’

Áróra wanted to correct him, point out that the cleaning staff also had access to his room, but that wasn’t her style. She didn’t make a habit of blaming others for things that were her own responsibility. So she said nothing.

‘My world has crashed around me,’ Hákon said. ‘Now, for the first time, I have literally lost everything I had.’

His voice rose in pitch as he spoke, as if he had lost control of it, like a teenager whose voice was in the process of breaking. Áróra wanted to point out to him that in reality the money had never been his, that he had borrowed it and then hidden it away. But she said nothing about that either.