22nd March
“In the old sagas the rain represents a new beginning. It represents life. The water that falls from the sky nourishes the earth, brings flowers to bloom and trees alive.”
The words that Vera E. Ragnarsdóttir had chosen as the beginning of her last novel came to mind, as she stood perfectly still inside the narrow, dark closet. Probably it was due to the rain outside, due to the drops that fell rhythmically on the metal roof. Rain was the only thing she heard at the moment.
The burglar in the office took another step. Vera tensed up. She didn’t make a sound. Only a thin cabinet door separated them. The man had somehow found the group’s office.
It sounded as he was nosing about. Vera heard him leafing through documents, throwing objects off the table, breaking an ashtray on the floor. But the man didn’t seem to be in any rush, instead taking his time.
Vera held her laptop tightly. She had been writing a report when she noticed the man outside the house. At first she thought it was Kári. She was expecting him. But when the door handle was turned, when the man tried to open the door without a key, Vera knew it had to be someone else. An outsider.
Then she closed her laptop carefully, with her eyes on the windows. The curtains were closed, but given the size of the person, Vera assumed it was a man, a bald man.
She thought about her next steps carefully. She had no idea what the man was doing there, but there were only two possibilities. This was either a man in the wrong place, for example a lost postman, or a man in exactly the right place. Which could only mean one thing. He was there with something evil in mind.
Of course Vera and the other group members knew that this would happen one day, since their work wasn’t exactly appreciated by certain people, often in high places. Many, who knew of the group’s existence, wanted nothing more than to silence it. Therefore they had kept their location a secret.
However, Reykjavík was a small city, and only a matter of time before it would be out that they hid here – in a plane, small house in Bragagata. This was where the group had worked for the past 10 months.
But probably not any longer, because their cover was blown, and here Vera was, hiding inside a small broom closet. She had fled to the closet when the stranger made another attempt to open the door, since there wasn’t any other exit. In other words, she was trapped.
Vera had just closed the closet when she heard the door to the house kicked open. Only then did she realize that she was in grave danger, and that hiding here had been the correct decision. But still she wasn’t safe. Now she had to remain absolutely quite...