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from her desk until midday when she went out with a couple of colleagues to a cosy little café near the ministry where she chatted and glanced through the afternoon paper over coffee and an omelette. When she returned to the office at one, there were a number of voicemail messages, including one from her brother saying he would ring back later. Otherwise the day was entirely uneventful.
    She left work early. It had stopped snowing and turned into a beautiful, mild January evening. As it was Friday, she stopped off at a shop on the way home and bought some food for the weekend. She lived in the ground floor flat of a neat little two-storey maisonette built of whitewashed concrete, with a flat roof that had a tendency to leak. On entering the shared hall she heard the phone ringing inside her flat before she could even insert the key in the lock. She hastily opened the door, rushed over to the phone and snatched up the receiver.
    ‘Hello,’ said a voice that she immediately recognised as her brother’s.
    ‘Elías!’
    ‘Hello,’ her brother repeated. ‘Can you hear me?’
    ‘Loud and clear . . .’
    But the connection was lost and she hung up. She waited beside the phone for a while in case Elías rang straight back but nothing happened, so she went and shut the front door, took off her coat and hung it in the cupboard. She had just sat down at the kitchen table when the phone rang again.
    ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Is that you, Elías?’
    No answer.
    ‘Are you on the glacier?’
    No answer.
    ‘Elías?’
    Down the line she heard the faint sound of breathing and the suspicion flashed into her mind that it might be Runólfur. She stopped talking and listened intently.
    ‘Who is this?’ she asked eventually but there was no answer. ‘Is that Runólfur?’ she asked, adding after a moment’s thought: ‘Pervert!’ and hung up.
    She thought back over her meeting with the chairman and foreign minister’s aide as she tucked into a sandwich and drank some orange juice. Later, she took a pile of documents out of her briefcase and tried to concentrate on work. Feeling sleepy, however, she lay down on the sofa in the sitting room and thought about making coffee, until she realised that she had forgotten to buy any milk. She ought to drag herself out to the shop before it closed, but could not be bothered and tiredness overtook her.
    Kristín did not know how long she had been asleep. She got up and put on her jacket and gloves. The local shop was only round the corner, she really ought to force herself out. Coffee was no good unless it was made with hot milk. She had just reached the door when the phone started ringing again, making her jump.
    ‘What the hell is going on?’ she asked, picking up the receiver.
    ‘Hi, it’s Elías. Can you hear me?’
    ‘Elías!’ Kristín exclaimed. ‘Where are you?’
    ‘I’ve . . . trying to get hold of you . . . day. I’m on the glacier . . .’
    The connection was poor; her brother’s voice kept breaking up.
    ‘Is everything all right?’ she asked, still groggy from her nap. She had got up far too early that morning.
    ‘Everything’s grea . . . Two of us . . . taken off on snowmobiles. Per . . . weather. It’s . . . dark.’
    ‘What do you mean, two of you? Where are the others?’
    ‘We’re . . . bit of a test drive . . . fine.’
    ‘This is hopeless. I can only hear the odd word. Will you please go back and join the rest of the team.’
    ‘We’re turning round . . . lax. The phone cost seven . . . thousand. Can’t you hear me?’
    ‘Your phone’s useless!’
    ‘Don’t be like that. When . . . you coming . . . glacier trip with me?’
    ‘You’ll never get me to set foot on any bloody glacier.’
    She heard her brother say something unintelligible then call out to his companion.
    ‘Jóhann!’ she heard him shout. ‘Jóhann, what’s that?’ Kristín knew that Jóhann was a good friend of her brother’s; it was