Erlendur looked at them.

“I think that woman called me today,” he said after a pause.

“The missing woman?” Elinborg said.

“I think so,” Erlendur said, then told them about the call he had received while he was visiting Marion in hospital.

“She said: “It can’t go on like this”, then rang off.

“ ‘It can’t go on like this’?” Elinborg repeated after him. “ ‘It can’t go on like this.’ ” What does she mean?”

“If it is the woman,” Erlendur said. “Not that I know who else it could be. Now I need to go and see her husband and tell him that she’s conceivably still alive. He hasn’t heard from her all this time and then she goes and phones me. Unless he already knows everything that’s going on. What does it mean, “It can’t go on like this”? It’s as if they’re plotting something together. Could they be involved in a scam?”

“Had she taken out a big life assurance policy?” Sigurdur Oli asked.

“No,” Erlendur said. “There’s nothing like that in the picture. This isn’t a Hollywood movie.”

“Were you beginning to suspect that he’d killed her?” Elinborg asked.

“That woman shouldn’t still be alive,” Erlendur said. “All the indications are that she’s committed suicide. The phone call was completely at odds with the whole scenario up to now, with every aspect of it”

“What are you going to tell her husband?” Elinborg asked.

Erlendur had been grappling with that question ever since he received the call. He had a pretty low opinion of the man, which deteriorated the clearer his past became. This was a man who seemed driven by an insatiable urge to cheat. That was the only way to describe it. Adultery appeared to be an obsession with him. The man’s colleagues and friends whom Erlendur had spoken to described him in quite favourable terms. Several said that he had always been a ladies” man, even a philanderer, a married man who had no scruples about trying to ensnare other women. One of his colleagues described how a group from work had gone out for a drink and the man had flirted with a woman who had shown an interest in him. He had surreptitiously taken off his wedding ring and thrust it deep inside a handy flower pot. The following day he had had to go back to the club to dig up the ring.

This was before he met the woman who had now gone missing. Erlendur did not think she was the type to have an affair. The man had laid a trap for her, naturally concealing the fact that he was married, then the affair had gone further and further, much further than she could ever have imagined at first, until there was no turning back. They were stuck with each other and she was beset by profound guilt, depression and loneliness. The man refused to acknowledge any of this when Erlendur had asked about her state of mind before she disappeared. She was in good spirits, he said. “She never said anything to me about feeling bad.” When Erlendur pressed him by asking about the woman’s suspicions that he was having another affair only two years after they had married, he shrugged as if it were none of Erlendur’s business and quite irrelevant. When Erlendur pressed him further the man had said that it was his private business and no one else’s.

There were no witnesses to the woman’s disappearance. She had phoned in sick to work and was at home alone during the day. Her husband’s children were with their mother. When he returned at around six, she was not there. He had not had any contact with her during the day. As the evening passed with no word from her he became uneasy and was unable to sleep that night. He went to work the following morning and telephoned home regularly but there was no answer. He called their friends, her colleagues and various places where he thought she might be, but could not find her anywhere. The day went by and he baulked at contacting the police. When she had still not turned up the following morning he finally called to report her missing. He did not even know what she had been wearing when she left home. The neighbours had not noticed her and it transpired that none of their friends or her old friends knew her whereabouts. They owned two cars and hers was still parked in front of the house. She had not ordered a taxi.

Erlendur visualised her leaving her home and heading out alone and abandoned into the dark winter’s day. When he first called at their house the neighbourhood was lit up with Christmas decorations and he had thought to himself that she had probably never noticed them.

“There can never be any bloody trust between people who start a relationship against that sort of background,” Elinborg said, the disapproving tone entering her voice as always when she discussed this case.

“And then there’s the question of the fourth woman,” Sigurdur Oli said. “Does she exist?”

“The husband flatly denies having an affair and I haven’t found any evidence that he did,” Erlendur said. “We have only his wife’s word about how she thought he was meeting another woman and her distress at the whole business. She appears to have deeply regretted her actions.”

“And then she calls up one day when she sees your name in the papers because of the murder,” Elinborg said.

“As if from the grave,” Erlendur said.

They sat in silence and thought about the woman who had gone missing and about Sunee and little Elias in the garden behind the block of flats.

“Do you seriously believe it?” Elinborg asked. About Niran? That he’s to blame for his brother’s death?”

“No,” Erlendur said. “Not at all.”

“But she does seem to be trying to get the boy out of the way, otherwise she’d have stayed at home,” Sigurdur Oli said.

“Perhaps he’s afraid,” Erlendur said. “Perhaps they’re both afraid.”

“Niran could have had an altercation with someone who threatened him,” Elinborg said.

“Possibly,” Sigurdur Oli said.

At least he must have said something to arouse such a strong reaction from Sunee,” Elinborg said.

“How’s Marion doing, by the way?” Sigurdur Oli asked.

“It’ll soon be over,” Erlendur said.

He stood by the window of his office at the police station on Hverfisgata, smoking and watching the drifting snow swirl along the street. The light was fading and the cold continued to tighten its grip on the city as it slowed down towards evening before descending into sleep.

The intercom on his desk crackled and he was informed that a young man was asking for him at the front desk. He gave his name as Sindri Snaer. Erlendur had him shown in immediately and his son soon appeared at the door.

“I thought I’d drop in on you on my way to the meeting,” he said.

“Come in,” Erlendur said. “What meeting?”

“AA,” Sindri said. “It’s down the road here on Hverfisgata.”

“Aren’t you cold, dressed like that?” Erlendur pointed at Sindri’s thin summer jacket.

“Not really,” Sindri said.

“Have a seat. Would you like a coffee?”

“No, thanks. I heard about the murder. Are you handling it?”

“With others.”

“Do you know anything?”

“No.”

Some time earlier, Sindri had moved to Reykjavik from the East Fjords where he had been working in a fish factory. He knew the story of how Erlendur and his brother had been caught in a snowstorm on the moors above Eskifjordur, and how Erlendur went there every couple of years to visit the moors where he almost froze to death as a child. Sindri was not as angry with his father as Eva Lind was; until very recently, he had not wanted anything to do with him. Now, however, he was in the habit of dropping in on him unexpectedly, at home or at work. His visits were generally brief, just long enough for one cigarette.

“Heard anything from Eva?” he asked.

“She phoned. Asked about Valgerdur.”

“Your woman?”

“She’s not my woman,” Erlendur said.

“That’s not what Eva says. She says she’s virtually moved in with you.”