The thought of his dead body lying up there was unbearable to Erlendur, who began seeing him in nightmares from which he awoke screaming and crying, fighting the blizzard, submerged in the snow, his little back turned against the howling wind and death by his side.

Erlendur did not understand how his father could sit motionless at home while all the others were hard at work. The incident seemed to break him completely, turn him into a zombie, and Erlendur thought about the power of grief, because his father was a strong, vigorous man. The loss of his son gradually drained him of the will to live and he never recovered.

Later, when it was all over, his parents argued for the first and only time about what happened, and Erlendur found out that their mother had not wanted their father to go up onto the moors that day, but he did not listen to her. “Well,” she said, “since you’re going anyway, leave the boys at home.” He paid no heed.

And Christmas was never the same again. His parents reached some kind of accord as time went by. She never mentioned that he had ignored her wishes. He never mentioned that he had been seized by stubbornness at hearing her tell him not to go and not to take the boys. There was nothing wrong with the weather and he felt she was meddling. They chose never to talk about what happened between them, as if breaking the silence would leave nothing to keep them together. It was in this silence that Erlendur tackled the guilt that swamped him at being the one who survived.

“Why’s it so cold in here?” Eva Lind asked, wrapping her coat tighter.

“It’s the radiator,” Erlendur said. “It doesn’t get warm. Any news about you?”

“Nothing. Mum got off with some bloke. She met him at the old-time dancing at Olver. You can’t imagine how gross that freak is. I think he still uses Brylcreem, he combs his hair into a quiff and wears shirts with sort of huge collars and he clicks his fingers when he hears some old crap on the radio. ‘My bonnie lies over the ocean…’”

Erlendur smiled. Eva was never as bitchy about anything as when she described her mother’s “blokes”, who seemed to become more pathetic with every year that went by.

Then they fell silent again.

“I’m trying to remember what I was like when I was eight,” Eva suddenly said. “I don’t really remember anything except my birthday. I can’t remember the party, just the day it was my birthday. I was standing in the car park outside the block and I knew it was my birthday that day and I was eight, and somehow this memory that is totally irrelevant has stuck with me ever since. Just that, I knew it was my birthday and I was eight.”

She looked at Erlendur.

“You said he was eight. When he died.”

“It was his birthday that summer.”

“Why was he never found?”

“I don’t know.”

“But he’s up there on the moor?”

“Yes.”

“His skeleton.”

“Yes.”

“Eight years old.”

“Yes.”

“Was it your fault? That he died?”

“I was ten.”

“Yes, but…”

“It was no one’s fault.”

“But you must have thought…”

“What are you driving at, Eva? What do you want to know?”

“Why you never contacted me and Sindri after you left us,” Eva Lind said. “Why didn’t you try to be with us?”

“Eva,…”

“We weren’t worth it, were we?”

Erlendur looked out of the window in silence. It had started snowing again.

“Are you drawing a parallel?” he said eventually.

“I’ve never been given an explanation. It crossed my mind…”

“That it was something to do with my brother. The way he died. You want to associate the two?”

“I don’t know,” Eva said. “I don’t know you in the slightest. It’s a couple of years since I first met you and I was the one who located you. That business with your brother is all I know about you apart from the fact you’re a cop. I’ve never been able to understand how you could leave Sindri and me. Your children.”

“I left it to your mother to decide. Maybe I should have been firmer about gaining access but…”

“You weren’t interested,” Eva finished the sentence for him.

“That’s not true.”

“Sure it is. Why didn’t you take care of your children like you were supposed to?”

Erlendur said nothing and stared down at the floor. Eva stubbed out her third cigarette. Then she stood up, went to the door and opened it.

“Stina’s going to meet you here at the hotel tomorrow,” she said. “At lunchtime. You can’t miss her with those new tits of hers.”

“Thanks for talking to her.”

“It was nothing,” Eva said.

She hesitated in the doorway.

“What do you want?” Erlendur asked.

“I don’t know.”

“No, I mean for Christmas”

Eva looked at her father.

“I wish I could have my baby back,” she said, and quietly closed the door behind her.

Erlendur heaved a deep sigh and sat on the edge of his bed for a long while before he resumed watching the tapes. People going about their Christmas errands rushed across the screen, many of them carrying bags and parcels of Christmas shopping.

He had reached the fifth day before Gudlaugur was murdered when he saw her. Initially he overlooked it but a flash went off somewhere in his mind and he stopped the recorder, rewound the tape and went back over the scene. It was not her face that caught Erlendur’s attention, but her bearing; her walk and haughtiness. He pressed “Play” again and saw her clearly, walking into the hotel. He fast-forwarded again. About half an hour later she reappeared on the screen when she left the hotel and strode past the bank and souvenir shops looking neither left nor right.

He stood up from the bed and stared at the screen.

It was Gudlaugur’s sister.

Who had not set eyes on her brother for decades.

FIFTH DAY

22

It was late when the noise woke Erlendur up the following morning. It took him a long time to stir after a dreamless night, and at first he did not realise what the awful din was that resounded in his little room. He had stayed up all night watching a succession of tapes, but only saw Gudlaugur’s sister that one day. Erlendur couldn’t believe it was purely coincidence that she went to the hotel — that she had business there other than to meet her brother, with whom she claimed to have had no contact for decades.

Erlendur had unearthed a lie and he knew there was nothing more valuable for a criminal investigation.

The noise refused to stop, and gradually Erlendur realised that it was his telephone. He answered and heard the hotel manager’s voice.

“You must come down to the kitchen,” the manager said. “There’s someone here you should talk to.”

“Who is it?” Erlendur asked.

“A lad who went home sick the day we found Gudlaugur,” the manager said. “You ought to come.”

Erlendur got out of bed. He was still in his clothes. He went into the bathroom, looked in the mirror and perused the several days” stubble, which made a noise like sandpaper being rubbed over rough timber when he stroked it. His beard was dense and coarse like his father’s.

Before going downstairs he telephoned Sigurdur Oli and told him to go to with Elinborg to Hafnarfjordur to take Gudlaugur’s sister in for questioning. He would meet them later that day. He did not explain why he wanted to talk to her. He did not want them to blurt it out. Wanted to see her expression when she realised that he knew she had been lying.

When Erlendur went into the kitchen he saw the hotel manager standing with an exceptionally skinny man in his twenties. Erlendur wondered whether the contrast with the manager was playing tricks on his vision; beside him, everyone looked skinny.

“There you are,” the manager said. “Anyone would think I’m taking over this investigation of yours, locating witnesses and whatever.”