On the way to her place, this time I don’t have a bad feeling, no trepidation over how she’s been treated, no anger towards Björn.

I sit in the taxi and take in the sight of Keilir with its slopes blanketed in white, my fingers absently twisting a lock of hair that’s stiff with the mineral mud of the lagoon.

The neighbour whispers to me that she thinks Björn’s the type who likes to knock women around. She can’t hear anything across the hallway but has noticed that sometimes Ísafold wears sunglasses indoors. I look at my sister’s split lips and wonder what the difference is between thinking something and knowing.

The neighbour has a visitor who clearly comes from some other background and suggests we work together to hide Ísafold in some distant mountain village until Björn has forgotten about her, and she can find a good man to marry, because living in sin like that isn’t good enough.

I have to agree with him that it’s a crying shame that anyone would lay a hand on my sister’s beautiful face. It’s a sin to maltreat that petite, defenceless body of hers.

This time I’ve no ideas. I drop onto the neighbour’s green sofa and cast my eyes over the doilies she’s crocheted to cover the worn armrests, and feel nothing but a debilitating despair.

138

THURSDAY

57

The call from his colleague in border control came ridiculously early in the morning. Daníel had already been up for hours, though. He had even made a couple of barefoot circuits of the garden to enjoy the feel of thick, cool grass under the soles of his feet, as he usually did to get himself in the right frame of mind for the day ahead. He had slept badly two nights in a row and was still unsettled. What the hell had he been thinking, trying to kiss Áróra? He was certain that she thought he was a typical old perv, determined to stave off a middle-age crisis by preying on young women. It wasn’t like him at all. Normally he never did anything on the spur of the moment. But she had such a strange effect on him that he had given way to his emotions rather than taking a conscious decision. His thoughts continued to trouble him as he walked around the garden, and it was only the phone ringing that brought them to an end – and that was simply because his mind was then concentrated on someone else – Ísafold.

‘We don’t register people leaving the country. The automatic gates take a picture of each passenger and register the boarding passes. Ísafold Jónsdóttir does not appear to have taken a flight out of the country during the period you asked to be checked,’ his colleague said.

‘And facial recognition?’ Daníel asked.