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Once the boy is asleep, Sæli joins Lára on the couch. She pulls a blanket over the two of them and snuggles up to him.

Candles glow in the living room; incense smokes on top of the darkened television set and the soundtrack of Fire Walk with Me sounds softly from the CD player.

Sæli stares at the flames and absentmindedly fiddles with Lára’s hair, which flows down her back like silk.

‘You remember I’ve got to meet Rúnar and the others,’ says Sæli softly and he feels how Lára stiffens under the blanket.

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know,’ says Sæli with a sigh. ‘Something to do with work.’

‘Can’t it wait?’ she asks, irritated.

‘Apparently not,’ mutters Sæli with another sigh.

‘Don’t you let them get you into any trouble,’ Lára says, sitting up to look him in the eye.

‘No, of course not.’ Sæli is anxious now and somewhat uncomfortable. ‘There just seems to be something they need to talk about.’

‘Will you be back?’

‘No,’ answers Sæli, his stomach clenching. ‘We’ll take a cab out to the ship after.’

‘I’m going to miss you,’ says Lára with an empty look. ‘I mean, like, more than usual… you know.’

‘I understand.’ Sæli says, placing his left palm on her stomach, which has a tiny life swimming in its warm sea. ‘You might have a bulge by the time I get back?’

‘Maybe.’ Lára smiles faintly.‘When should we tell Egill?’

‘When I get back,’ says Sæli firmly. ‘Then we’ll tell him together.’

‘All right,’ Lára murmurs, dreamy-eyed. She leans forward and kisses her man, who pulls her down on top of him and rolls her carefully onto the floor. ‘Am I the one and only?’ she whispers between kisses.

‘Absolutely the one and only.’

Outside the wind is coming up from the west, the curtains twitch, the candle flames flicker and fat raindrops burst against the dark windowpanes in tune to wet kisses, wild hearts and the sombre music. The flames hiss, sputter and go out, the glow dies and the blue smoke swims like a fish into the dark, disappearing into the deep.

Evil lasts forever and nothing good is eternal.

II

The dark in the double garage is absolute, then ceiling lights flicker and come on one after another. Footsteps echo from wall to wall as a young woman wearing high-heeled leather boots strides quickly across the concrete floor. She is dressed in a short skirt, thin blouse and high-heeled leather boots, and carries her two-year-old daughter under one arm.

‘Mummy’s car,’ says the little girl as her mother walks past a two-door Mercedes-Benz convertible.

‘Daddy’s car,’ she says when her mother unlocks a silver Range Rover Vogue with a smart key.

‘Yeah, yeah, keep still,’ says the mother impatiently as she secures her daughter in the car seat in the back of the four-wheel drive, which smells of leather polish, rubber and cleaning fluids, like the new car that it is.

The eight-cylinder petrol engine purrs as the garage doors open and the woman backs out the car, past two concrete lions and onto the street. The garage is under a two-storey villa which is all lit up in the cold and dark of the autumn night, its windows like the red eyes of a wary sphinx. The garage doors close, the engine note rises and the Range Rover disappears into the dark of the suburb of Staðahverfi, one of the most thinly populated areas of Reykjavík.

‘Where are we going?’ asks the child in the back seat. She is dressed in pyjamas and woollen socks, and she’d been sound asleep just a few minutes earlier.

‘To Granny’s,’ her mother answers briskly as she puts even more pressure on the accelerator.

Three minutes later she pulls up in front of a block of flats in the suburb of Rimahverfi.

‘Can I come in?’ asks the little girl, rubbing her eyes.

‘No, just wait. I won’t be a minute,’ says her mother without turning around. She hops out of the car, leaving it running in the dark car park.

‘Mummy,’ says the little girl softly as she watches her mother run towards the building and disappear through an open ground-floor window.

An old lady wakes up when someone turns on the light in her bedroom. On a dark shelf by her bed stands a seven-branched gold candlestick and on the edge of the shelf a highly polished copper plaque proclaims:

Hear, O Israeclass="underline" the Lord our God is one Lord!

‘Where’s the case?’ demands the woman’s daughter-in-law, standing at the end of the bed.

‘Lilja?’ says the old lady, sitting up in bed. She is slim and healthy looking, brown-eyed and olive-skinned. ‘What are you doing?’ she continues in her strong German accent. ‘Is something wrong? How did you get in? Where is Jon Karl?’

‘Where is the case?’ says Lilja again, grinding her teeth. ‘He sent me to fetch the case. Where is it?’

‘The case? What case, dear?’ The woman slips out of bed and puts on a bathrobe over her nightgown. She moves like a ballerina.

‘The red case. The suitcase,’ Lilja hisses. ‘The case he asked you to keep for him.’

‘Oh, that case,’ mutters the old lady, studying her daughter-in-law with a look of doubt and suspicion. ‘I almost decided to just take it to the recycling. Don’t care to keep something I don’t know what it is. And then you come to fetch it in the middle of the night! I haven’t seen you for over a week and then you just wake me up like…’

‘The case. Now!’ Lilja spits out and clenches her fists. ‘I haven’t got all night!’

‘What in the world?’ says the woman in her accented Icelandic, pulling her bathrobe tighter. ‘I’m woken suddenly from a deep sleep and then you just insult me and—’

‘Listen! None of that!’ says Lilja, grabbing the old lady’s shoulder. ‘Little Sara is waiting in the car. Do you want her to be kidnapped or something?’

‘Is the baby out in the car?’ the woman says, gasping. ‘Is something the matter with you, woman? Why are you gadding about with the child in the middle of the night? Why did you not bring her inside? Is something wrong? Where is Jon Karl?’

Where is the fucking case?’ screams Lilja and yanks her mother-in-law’s shoulder so hard that the sleeve rips off her bathrobe.

‘In the laundry room. Don’t…’ says the old lady weakly, but she stops speaking when her daughter-in-law lets go of her.

‘Where?’ asks Lilja, turning on the laundry-room light.

‘Under the table. Behind the laundry basket.’ The old lady has followed her into the hall.

‘Here it is,’ mutters Lilja. She pulls out a red suitcase which she attempts to open, but it’s locked and she doesn’t know the combination.

‘Where is Jon Karl?’ the woman says again, following her daughter-in-law to the front door. ‘Where is my son? Is he in trouble?’

‘Mind your own business,’ is Lilja’s answer. Then Lilja strides out into the night, both hands locked round the suitcase handle.

Lilja opens the back of the Range Rover, lifts the case in, secures it and closes the door.

‘Granny!’ shouts the girl in the car.

‘My sweetheart!’ says her grandmother, on the verge of tears. With trembling fingers she taps the window in front of the child’s face.

‘Bugger off!’ says Lilja, shoving her mother-in-law into a flowerbed before getting into the car. She backs out of the parking lot at speed, brakes sharply and burns rubber along the tarmac.

‘Where’s Granny?’ asks her child from the back seat.

‘She just went back to sleep,’ says her mother dryly as she lights a cigarette.