“Stabbed through the heart,” Erlendur said. “Probably with a knife from the kitchen,” he added. “There is blood on the bed.”

“How sparse,” she said, looking around the room. “That he should have lived here all those years. What was the man thinking of?”

“I was hoping you could help me with that one.”

She looked at him and said nothing.

“I don’t know” Erlendur went on. He regarded it as ample. Some people can only live in a villa five hundred metres square. I understand that he benefited from living and working at the hotel. There were plenty of perks.”

“Have you found the murder weapon?” she asked.

“No, but perhaps something resembling it,” Erlendur said. Then he stopped and waited for her to speak, but she did not utter a word and a good while elapsed until she broke the silence.

“Why do you claim I’m lying to you?”

“I don’t know how much of it is a lie but I do know that you’re not telling me everything. You’re not telling me the truth. But of course above all you’re not telling me anything and I’m astonished at your and your father’s reaction to Gudlaugur’s death. It’s as if he was nothing to do with you.”

She took a good long look at Erlendur, then seemed to make a decision.

“There were three years between us,” she said suddenly, “and, young as I was, I still remember the first time they brought him home. One of my first memories in life, I expect. He was the apple of his father’s eye from day one. Dad was always devoted to him and I think he had great things in mind for him from the very start. It didn’t come of its own accord, as it should have done perhaps — our father always had something big planned for when Gudlaugur grew up.”

“What about you?” Erlendur asked. “Didn’t he see you as a genius?”

“He was always kind to me,” she said, “but he worshipped Gudlaugur.”

“And drove him on until he broke down.”

“You want to have things simple,” she said “Things rarely are. I would have thought that a man like you, a policeman, realised that.”

“I don’t think this revolves around me,” Erlendur said.

“No,” she said. “Of course not.”

“How did Gudlaugur end up alone and abandoned in this little room? Why did you hate him so much? I could conceivably understand your father’s attitude if Gudlaugur cost him his health but I don’t understand why you take such a harsh stand against him.”

“Cost him his health?” she said, looking at Erlendur in surprise.

“When he pushed him down the stairs,” Erlendur said. “I’ve heard that story.”

“From whom?”

“That’s not important. Is it true? Did he cripple your father?”

“I don’t think that’s any of your business.”

“Definitely not,” Erlendur said. “Unless it concerns the investigation. Then I’m afraid it’s more people’s business than just you two.”

Saying nothing, Stefania looked at the blood on the bed, while Erlendur pondered why she wanted to talk to him in the room where her brother had been murdered. He thought of asking her, but could not bring himself to.

“It can’t always have been that way,” he said instead. “The choirmaster told me you came to your brother’s rescue when he lost his voice on stage. At some point you were friends. At some point he was your brother.”

“How do you know what happened? How did you dig that up? Who have you been talking to?”

“We’re gathering information. People from Hafnarfjordur remember it well. You weren’t totally indifferent to him then. When you were children.”

Stefania remained silent.

“The whole thing was a nightmare,” she said at last. “A terrible nightmare.”

In their house in Hafnarfjordur they spent the whole day excitedly looking forward to when he would sing at the cinema. She woke up early, made breakfast and thought about her mother, feeling that she had assumed that role in the household and was proud of it. Her father mentioned how helpful she was at looking after the two of them after her mother died. How grown-up and responsible she was in everything she did. Normally he never said anything about her. Ignored her. Always had.

She missed her mother. One of the last things her mother said to her in hospital was that now she would need to look after her father and brother. She must not let them down. “Promise me that,” her mother said. “It won’t always be easy. It hasn’t always been easy. Your father can be so stubborn and strict and I don’t know whether Gudlaugur can take it. But if it ever comes to that you must stand with him, Gudlaugur, promise me that too,” her mother said, and she nodded and promised that too. And they held hands until her mother fell asleep, and then she stroked her hair and kissed her on the forehead.

Two days later she was dead.

“We’ll let Gudlaugur sleep a little bit longer,” her father said when he came down into the kitchen. “It’s an important day for him.”

An important day for him.

She did not recall any day being important for her. Everything revolved around him. His singing. The recording sessions. The two records that had been released. The invitation to tour Scandinavia. The concerts in Hafnarfjordur. The concert tonight. His voice. His singing practice when she had to sneak around the house so as not to disturb them as he stood by the piano and his father played the accompaniment, instructing and encouraging him and showing him love and understanding if he felt he did well, but being strict and firm if he did not think he concentrated enough. Sometimes he lost his temper and scolded him. Sometimes he hugged him and said he was wonderful.

If only she had received a fraction of the attention lavished on him and the encouragement that he was given every day for having that beautiful voice. She felt unimportant, devoid of any talent that could attract her father’s attention. He sometimes said it was a shame that she did not have a voice. He regarded teaching her to sing as a hopeless task, but she knew that wasn’t the case. She knew that he could not be bothered to expend his energy on her, because she did not have a special voice. She lacked her brother’s gift. She could sing in a choir and hammer out a tune on the piano, but both her father, and the piano teacher he sent her to because he did not have the time to attend to her himself, talked about her lack of musical talent

Her brother, on the other hand, had a wonderful voice and a profound feeling for music, but was still just a normal boy like she was a normal girl. She did not know what it was that distinguished them from each other. He was no different from her. To some extent she was in charge of his upbringing, especially after their mother fell ill. He obeyed her, did what she told him and respected her. Similarly, she loved him, but also felt jealous of the praise he earned. She was afraid of that feeling and mentioned it to no one.

She heard Gudlaugur coming down the stairs, and then he appeared in the kitchen and sat down beside their father.

“Just like Mum,” he said as he watched his sister pour coffee into their father’s cup.

He often talked about their mother and she knew he missed her terribly. He had turned to her when something went wrong, when the boys bullied him or their father lost his temper, or simply when he needed someone to hold him without it being a special reward for a good performance.

Expectation and excitement reigned in the house all day and had reached an almost unbearable pitch when towards evening they put on their best clothes and set off for the cinema. The two of them accompanied Gudlaugur backstage, their father greeted the choirmaster, and then they crept out into the auditorium as it began to fill up. The lights in the auditorium dimmed. The curtain rose. Quite big for his age, handsome and peculiarly determined as he stood on stage, Gudlaugur finally began to sing in his melancholy boy soprano.