‘Being ill isn’t an option, unless you are in hospital with a burst appendix,’ he said.
She nodded. He was making such a point of this, she wondered if he had bad experiences with ministers who were susceptible to infections. Rúnar, her predecessor, had stood down from the post for health reasons, but she assumed that was a heart problem or something equally serious.
‘Do you have high stomach-acid levels?’ Óðinn asked, his expression so serious that she couldn’t stop herself laughing.
‘No. Why do you ask?’
‘That’s good. In that case I advise you to eat plenty of chilli with every meal to keep stomach infections at bay. A minister with bad guts is nothing but trouble.’
‘Got you,’ she agreed. ‘I’ll do everything I can to stay healthy. But isn’t it time we took a look at the list?’
She pointed to a page of closely typed text on the table between them, listing all the matters they needed to attend to. Óðinn nodded, sat up straight in his chair and started at the top of the list: protocols for a non-governmental minister’s relations with parliament.
She nodded her head and listened absently, examining his face. He had to be close to sixty, with grey in his hair and a network of fine lines around his eyes that suggested that he frequently smiled. His current formal manner had to be because bringing a new minister up to speed with the job was a serious matter.
‘Then there are your assistants and their areas of work. Sometimes there’s a political adviser and a personal assistant, but if they’re the same person then it makes financial planning easier. Do you have any names in mind?’
‘I haven’t had time to think it over properly, but there are people from both parties who have made suggestions. I think one person will be enough,’ she said.
It was quite true. There had hardly been time to draw breath since the prime minister’s call on Monday giving her a two-hour deadline to decide whether or not to take the job.
‘Then there’s the car and the driver…’
‘No, thanks,’ she said, and Óðinn looked up in astonishment.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I can drive myself,’ she said. She had strong opinions about ministerial cars. Of course there was a certain convenience about such an arrangement, and it saved time. But there was something a little too grand about being driven in a smart limousine among normal Icelanders who were paying for it. It was simply not her style.
Óðinn put the list aside and leaned back in his chair with a thoughtful look on his face.
‘You realise that the only thing people miss once they’re no longer a minister is the driver? You can deal with emails on the way to and from work, you can send him to run errands for you, and he’s also responsible for your security. He’ll shovel snow off the steps, change lightbulbs, all that stuff.’
‘I’m married, you know,’ she said, and at last Óðinn cracked a smile.
‘We can discuss this later,’ he said, and although she had not meant to leave it open to further discussion, she nodded her agreement so they could continue with the list. She was desperate for a cigarette and wanted to get the meeting over with.
All the same, a full hour had passed and Úrsúla was edgy from nicotine withdrawal by the time Óðinn crossed off the final item on the list and got to his feet. She felt him loom over her as he offered his hand.
‘Welcome to the job,’ he said. ‘I’m here for you all the time, for anything, and I speak for the whole ministry when I say that we will do everything we can to ensure your tenure here is successful.’
She stood up and gripped his warm hand.
‘Thank you very much,’ she said. She had a feeling inside that they would work well together. He smiled and she saw the lines around his eyes deepen. For a second he reminded her of her father; not as he had been towards the end, but as she remembered him when she had been small and they had played together.
‘One more thing,’ she called after him as he was about to leave the conference room. ‘There was a woman who called here this morning with a request for the ministry to look into a case. It’s a rape accusation that seems to have been held up in the system. My secretary booked it as a formal request. Would you look into it and give me some advice on how to proceed?’
‘Of course,’ he said from the doorway. ‘I’ll check on it.’
Úrsúla accompanied him along the corridor towards her office, and as she was fumbling for her access card to open the minister’s corridor, she noticed a very young dark-skinned woman pushing a cleaning trolley.
‘Hæ,’ Úrsúla said, putting out a hand. ‘I’m the new minister. I don’t suppose you can tell me where someone could sneak out for a quiet smoke?’
4
There had been a strange crackle of tension in the air the whole of the previous day, and Stella was still feeling its effects. Everyone went about their work more quietly than usual, and there had been more couriers and journalists about the place than usual.
The receptionist downstairs had asked Stella to mop the lobby especially thoroughly because of the snow that was brought in on coats and the soles of shoes, and melted into muddy pools on the floor. She did her best, making the occasional quick sortie downstairs with a mop to wipe up the worst of the water. She didn’t want to be caught out not doing as she had been asked, as that would undoubtedly end up with the permanent secretary being called, as he seemed to be the top dog here. Stella found him frightening. She had encountered him once, when he had said hello, welcoming her to the ministry when she had started a few months ago. He had smiled amiably, but Stella had wanted to turn on her heel and run as fast as she could, as the touch of his hot hand gave her a feeling of pure, clear misery. This had taken her by surprise, as he seemed to be a man to whom life had been generous – tall, handsome with a senior job – so the dark sadness she sensed from him didn’t fit. Or maybe this sensitivity of hers was playing tricks on her. Her mother had always said that the gift she had inherited from her grandmother had come with a generous portion of imagination.
‘It’s always like this when there’s a new minister,’ the receptionist said. ‘Everyone’s stressed and worried, and then it turns out that the new minister is always lovely. I saw her yesterday when she came to collect the key and she seemed relaxed and cheerful.’
Stella shrugged. She had hardly had anything to do with the former minister; she’d only ever seen him hurrying along the corridors with a phone clamped to his ear. He had never spoken to her, and neither would the new minister. The receptionist was different, as everyone said hello when they came in, but cleaners were as good as invisible.
‘Well, she’s here,’ she heard people say as she passed by, emptying the bins. ‘Have you seen her yet?’
The new minister was in the building and had started work, but nobody seemed to have caught sight of her. She would probably not address the ministry staff until tomorrow, but people were sure they would recognise her, as last night’s news covered the change of minister and there had been a short clip in which she was holding the key.
Some people seemed to know her from her background in student politics, and someone mentioned that she had worked with refugees in foreign countries, organising aid in disaster areas, or something like that. But Stella neither watched the news nor read newspapers, so she knew nothing about this woman; she’d never even heard her name before.
It wasn’t a bad place to work, but Stella realised that she wouldn’t be here for long. Her job was part of a temporary initiative for young people who had ‘come off the rails’, and social security paid half of their wages. Mopping the corridors of the city’s smartest buildings was supposed to be a way of getting people’s lives back on track. The ministry’s staff had accepted her; they were clearly accustomed to having people in the building doing things nobody quite understood. After the first week she seemed to blend into the daily routine and nobody paid her any attention anymore. She liked that. She also liked the fact that as long
as she kept the lobby floor dry and emptied the bins on the third and fourth floors, nobody was aware that she was there, as long as she punched herself in and out morning and afternoon. At the end of the day a bunch of people appeared from some big cleaning contractor and cleaned the whole ministry, so what Stella did or didn’t do made little difference. It was the easiest job she had ever had, and she had plenty to compare it against: in her nineteen years she had been through any number of jobs.
Her phone buzzed and she put the mop aside.
Party at our place tonight! read the message from Anna.
She didn’t check to see which Anna it was from. It didn’t matter. They were a couple, both called Anna. They were known as the Annas and threw regular lavish parties to which they invited only ‘cute, exciting’ girls. Stella knew that the colour of her skin alone put her in the right category; it was as if her golden-brown colouring worked like a magnet for lots of women. Normally she was quite happy to benefit from one of the few advantages of being one of the tiny minority of brown Icelanders. But after the last party the two Annas had thrown it had taken her a week to recover, and she had promised herself never to go back. But now it was Friday, and she was skint, with nothing to do but stay in her room and watch Netflix on the computer, so it didn’t seem such a bad idea. What else were weekends for if not having a little fun?
I’m busy and will be late, if I can get there at all, she wrote back. It didn’t do any harm to pretend that she actually had a social life; it added to her mystery. And anyway, she preferred to turn up late, when things were already in full swing and everyone had knocked back a few drinks. That way she wouldn’t have to hold any conversations. She always felt that she was more in control that way, although she knew deep down that once she had put away some of what was on offer she was as good as out of control. That was even without the Annas passing around the smarties.
She ran her fingers over the new Helm of Awe tattooed on her forearm, hoping it would protect her from drinking herself into a stupor and going home with someone she really didn’t want; such as the news reporter the Annas always invited and who was clearly in the ‘exciting’ class – courtesy of her TV fame, as she certainly wasn’t cute. Stella harboured a suspicion that the Annas were trying to pair her up with this woman, but her enthusiasm for this was precisely zero. Pondering this, she pushed the cleaning trolley ahead of her along the corridor and practically ran into a woman. The woman took hold of the trolley and stopped it with a laugh.
She extended a hand.
‘I’m the new minister,’ the woman said, and dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘I don’t suppose you can tell me where someone could sneak out for a quiet smoke?’
The speech that Permanent Secretary Óðinn had made earlier that day, emphasising that staff, whatever their political persuasion, were here to assist the minister in shouldering a great responsibility, came to Stella’s mind. So she took the minister to the fourth floor balcony, where she herself went to smoke. The minister could hardly be expected to shoulder all that responsibility without an occasional puff.
5
Gunnar put everything he had into that last lift. His shoulders screamed in pain and he was sure he could feel the tendons in his forearms tear under the strain. He was up to 150 kilos on the bench and while the fourth lift had been tough, the fifth was a bastard. He wasn’t concerned about the weights dropping onto him, though, and he couldn’t be bothered to ask a member of staff to watch over him, just in case things went badly. He was the competent, reliable type who fixed things alone when push came to shove. All his adult life had gone into preparing for this role, and he knew deep inside that a day of reckoning would come when the difference between life and death would be down to him alone.
‘That’s some proper punishment!’ said a man who walked past, and Gunnar realised that a loud gasp must have accompanied the last lift. He had to take a couple of deep breaths before he dared sit up. The sweat had glued his back to the bench and there were black dots dancing before his eyes. He was satisfied with what he had achieved, and now he needed to eat well to feed his freshly trained muscles. He wished they were even bigger, but for his work, not through vanity. His job called for bulging muscles, although bulk alone wasn’t the key; strength and courage had to go hand in hand.
He spent a long time under the shower, enjoying the feeling of his pores opening as the sweat washed away. Weightlifting was accompanied by a kind of spiritual wellbeing: the triumph of his will over his body never failed to make him proud of himself. It was more difficult with running though. He always had to force himself to run and generally didn’t feel great afterwards. But it was also important for work that he could sprint, not that he would often have to do it. He pulled on his trousers and decided to do without a singlet under his shirt. He was so hot that he felt as if he was on fire.
He quickly pushed his stuff into his training bag, put on his shirt and buttoned it up, but dropped his tie into a pocket. He could put it on in the car. He picked up his shoes, and walked barefoot to the gym’s lobby and out into the snow. To begin with the cold was pure pain, but this was followed by a chilled mist of satisfaction. The snow was soft, forcing itself up between his toes, and creaked with each step. By the time he reached the car his feet were numb, but the fire in his body had subsided and he felt good. Now his shirt wouldn’t be soaked with sweat. He turned up the car’s heater, directing it into the footwell to dry his feet while he knotted his tie. He’d put on his socks and shoes but hadn’t tied the laces when his phone rang. As soon as he saw the number he checked his watch in a moment’s panic, but there was nothing to worry about. He had a clear hour before he needed to be at the ministry.
Disappointment welled up in his chest as he put the phone aside, and the feeling that Iceland wasn’t the right place for him returned yet again. All his bodyguard training – most recently a course in evasive driving – would probably never be of any real use to him in this little country. He had imagined that the government offices would be just the place for him, and indeed they had liked the look of him, especially after the national commissioner of police had said there should be a higher level of security around ministers. But there were very few jobs going and plenty of people after them. All he could look forward to now was the same as usual: security at the ministries. He swallowed his disappointment and swore to himself. What sort of minister didn’t want a driver?
6
His feet carved a path through the snow as he ambled up and down Ingólfsstræti, keeping an eye on people going in and out of the ministry. He had tried to go in, but the security guard sitting in front of a computer at the reception desk told him to stay outside. He went round the corner of the building and climbed the steps under the balcony on the Sölvhólsgata side, but that door was locked, so he continued to wander around the building, peering through windows in the hope of seeing her inside.
Every now and again he stopped to look at the picture he had torn from the paper. There was no doubt whatever that this was the man: the devil incarnate. And he was holding on to little Úrsúla’s hand. She was no longer a little girl with cropped hair but a grown woman in a smart jacket and her hair in a bun. What on earth had she been thinking, giving him her hand like that? Examining the scrap of newspaper, he tried to imagine what the look in her eye might mean, but the picture was too grainy for him to judge whether her expression was one of a little girl who had got lost somewhere along the line and joined hands with evil.
He stopped by the statue on the mound of Arnarhóll and gazed back along the street. It was late in the day and he had yet to see her emerge. Thinking it over, he had seen remarkably few people passing through the doors of the building. The same people who had gone inside earlier had now come out, on their way home he guessed, many of the lights had been turned off, and few staff were now to be seen. There had to be a rear entrance to the building. He hurried back along the street towards the ministry, past the entrance on Sölvhólsgata and into the car
park at the back. That was it. Beyond the gate, between the hotel and the ministry building, he could see another entrance from the lower car park that couldn’t be easily seen from the street. This lower car park was closed, with one of those electric gates that opened when a driver pointed a finger at it, but it was open to pedestrians, so he limped down the steps and into the car park. The spaces by the fence were unmarked, but right next to the building was a disabled space marked with a blue sign, and next to them the spaces he was looking for: those reserved for the minister and the permanent secretary.
There were cars in both spaces. One was big and black – a sleek 4x4 with darkened windows; it was in the permanent secretary’s spot. The other was a pretty ordinary family car – a Toyota – and he knew immediately that this had to be Úrsúla’s. He didn’t even need to look at the sign in front of the car. The Toyota hadn’t been properly cleaned for a long time and the roof was caked with hardened snow, as were the boot and bonnet. That was typical of little Úrsúla, whose mind was always on something other than where she was right now.
He pulled the sleeve of his coat over his hand and wiped snow from the windscreen. Soon Úrsúla would drive home and would be relieved not to have to wipe the snow off first. He cleared all of the windows with care, and then took out his notebook, tore out a page and wrote a message to Úrsúla. Unfortunately it had begun to snow again, so if he were to put the note under one of the wipers, it would quickly become soaked and illegible. He tried the door handle and found that luck was on his side. The door opened, so he could place the message to Úrsúla on the seat, where she would find it as soon as she went to get in the car. He smiled. It was typical of the little scatterbrain to forget to lock her car.
7
Úrsúla was surprised at her own surprise: she was taken aback by just how much of a shock the note was. She was already kicking herself for having forgotten to lock the car. It hadn’t occurred to her that by parking in the spot marked Minister, she was telling everyone which vehicle was hers. Clearly every fruitcake in the country had an opinion on everything imaginable, and that seemed to include her appointment as minister of the interior.
Betrayal Page 2