The manager glared at Erlendur.

“Don’t talk to her,” he said.

“Why not? What are you hiding? You’ve become too mysterious to get rid of me.”

The man stared into space, then heaved a sigh.

“Leave me alone. It’s nothing to do with Gudlaugur. These are personal problems I got myself into, which I’m trying to fix.”

“What are they?”

“I don’t have to tell you anything about them.”

“Let me be the judge of that.”

“You can’t force me.”

“As I said, I can make a request for custody, or I can simply talk to your wife.”

The man groaned. He looked at Erlendur.

“This won’t go any further?”

“Not if it has nothing to do with Gudlaugur.”

“It’s nothing to do with him.”

All right then.”

“My wife received a phone call the day before yesterday,” the head of reception said. “The same day you found Gudlaugur.”

On the phone, a woman whose voice the manager’s wife did not recognise asked for him. This was in the middle of a weekday, but it was not uncommon for him to receive calls at home at such times. His acquaintances knew that he worked irregular hours. His wife, a doctor, worked shifts and the call woke her up: she was on duty that evening. The woman on the phone acted as though she knew the head of reception, but immediately took umbrage when his wife wanted to know who she was.

“Who are you?” she had asked. “What are you calling here for?”

“He owes me money? the voice on the phone said.

“Shed threatened that she would phone my house,” the reception manager told Erlendur.

“Who was it?”

He had gone out for a drink ten days before. His wife was at a medical conference in Sweden and he went out for a meal with three old friends. They had a lot of fun, went on a pub crawl after the restaurant and ended up at a popular nightspot in town. He lost his friends there, went to the bar and met some acquaintances from the hotel trade, stood by a small dance floor and watched the dancing. Although quite tipsy, he wasn’t too drunk to make sensible decisions. That was why he couldn’t understand it. He had never done anything like it before.

She approached him and, just like in a movie scene, held a cigarette between her fingers and asked him for a light Although he didn’t smoke, because of his job he made a point of always carrying a lighter. It was a habit from the days when people could smoke wherever they wanted. She started talking to him about something he had now forgotten, and asked if he was going to buy her a drink. He looked at her. But of course. They stood at the bar while he bought the drinks, then sat down at a little table when it became vacant. She was exceptionally attractive and flirted subtly with him. Unsure what was going on, he played along. Women didn’t treat him like this as a rule. She sat up close to him and was forward and self-assured. When he stood up to fetch a second drink she stroked his thigh. He looked at her and she smiled. An enchanting, beautiful woman who knew what she wanted. She could have been ten years his junior.

Later that night she asked him to walk her home. She lived nearby. He was still unsure and hesitant, but excited as well. It was so strange for him that he might just as easily have been walking on the moon. In twenty-three years he had been faithful to his wife. Two or three times in all those years he’d perhaps had the chance to kiss another woman, but nothing like this had ever happened to him before.

“I lost the plot completely,” he told Erlendur. “Part of me wanted to run home and forget the whole thing. Part of me wanted to go with the woman.”

“I bet I know which part that was,” Erlendur said.

They stood by the door to her flat, in the stairwell of a modern apartment block, and she put the key in the lock. Somehow even that act became voluptuous in her hands. The door opened and she moved close to him.’Come inside with me,” she said, stroking his crotch.

He went inside with her. First she mixed drinks for them. He sat down on the sofa. She put on some music, came over to him with a glass in her hand and smiled, her beautiful white teeth shining behind the red lipstick. Then she sat beside him, put down her glass, grabbed the belt of his trousers and slowly unzipped his flies.

“I’ve never … It was … She could do the most incredible things,” the reception manager said.

Erlendur watched him without saying a word.

“I was going to sneak out in the morning, but she was one step ahead. My conscience was killing me, I felt like shit for betraying my wife and children. We’ve got three children. I was going to get out and forget about it. Never wanted to see that woman again. She was wide awake when I started creeping around the room in the dark.”

She sat up and switched on the beside lamp. “Are you going?” she asked. He said he was. Claimed to be late. For an important meeting. Something of that sort.

“Did you enjoy it last night?” she asked.

Holding his trousers in his hands, he looked at her.

“It was amazing,” he said. “But I just can’t go on with this. I can’t. Sorry.”

“I want eighty thousand kronur,” she said calmly, as if that was almost too obvious to mention.

He looked at her as if he had not heard what she said.

“Eighty thousand,” she repeated.

“What do you mean?”

“For the night,” she said.

“The night?” he said. “What, are you selling yourself?”

“What do you think?” she said.

He didn’t understand what she was talking about.

“Do you think you can get a woman like me for free?” she said.

Gradually it dawned on him what she meant.

“But you didn’t say anything about that!”

“Did I need to say anything? Pay me eighty thousand and I might just let you come back home with me some other time.”

“I refused to pay” the reception manager told Erlendur. “Walked out. She went berserk. Called work and threatened to phone my wife if I didn’t pay.”

“What are they called?” Erlendur said. “A… hustler? Was she one of them? Is that what you’re saying?”

“I don’t know what she was but she knew what she was doing and in the end she phoned home and told my wife what happened.”

“Why didn’t you just pay her? Then you’d have been rid of her.”

“I’m not sure I would have been rid of her even if I had coughed up,” the manager said. “My wife and I went through all this yesterday. I described what happened just as I described it to you. We’ve been together for twenty-three years and although I have no excuse it was a trap, the way I see it. If that woman hadn’t been after money it would never have happened.”

“So it was all her fault?”

“No, of course not, but… it was still a trap.”

They paused.

“Does that sort of thing go on at this hotel?” Erlendur asked. “Prostitution?”

“No,” the reception manager said.

“It’s not something you’d miss?”

“I was told you were asking about that. Nothing of that kind goes on here.”

“Quite,” Erlendur said.

“Are you going to keep schtum about this?”

“I need the woman’s name if you have it. And her address. It won’t go any further.”

The manager hesitated.

“Fucking bitch,” he said, slipping for an instant out of the role of the polite hotelier.

“Are you going to pay her?”

“That was one thing we agreed on, my wife and I. She’s not getting a penny.”

“Do you think it could have been a prank?”

“A prank?” the manager said. “I don’t follow. What do you mean?”

“I mean, could someone want to harm you so badly that they would set you up? Someone you’ve quarrelled with?”

“The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind. Are you suggesting that I’ve got enemies who would do something like that to me?”

“They needn’t be enemies. Practical jokers, your friends”

“No, my friends aren’t like that. Besides, as a practical joke that would have been going a bit far — way beyond funny”