“What about you? Do you change?”

Eva Lind shrugged instead of answering him. Perhaps she did not want to talk about herself. As a rule that ended in arguments and bad feeling. He did not want to provoke her by asking where she had been all this time and what kind of state she was in. She had told him so often that it was none of his business what she got up to. It had never been any of his business, and he was to blame for that.

“Sindri dropped in on me,” he said, looking his daughter in the face. Sometimes her features reminded Erlendur of his mother, she had her eyes and high cheekbones.

“I talked to him a week or so ago. He’s selling timber. Works in Kopavogur. What did you talk about?”

“Nothing special,” Erlendur said. “He was on his way to an AA meeting.”

“We were talking about you.”

“Me?”

“We always do when we meet. He told me he’s in touch with you.”

“He phones sometimes,” Erlendur said. “Sometimes he comes to see me. What do you say about me? Why do you talk about me?”

“This and that,” Eva said. “What a weirdo you are. You’re our dad. There’s nothing odd about us talking about you. Sindri speaks well of you. Better than I thought.”

“Sindri’s all right,” Erlendur said. “At least he’s got a job.”

This remark was not meant in approbation. He had not meant to pass any judgements but the words slipped out and he saw that they affected Eva. He did not even know whether she had a job or not.

“I didn’t come here to argue with you,” she said.

“No, I know,” he said. “Anyway, arguing with you is pointless. That’s been proven time and again. It’s like shouting into the wind. I don’t know what you’re doing or have been doing for a long time and that’s fine with me. It’s nothing to do with me. You were right. It’s none of my business. Do you want some coffee?”

“Okay,” Eva said.

She stubbed out her cigarette and immediately took out another, but did not light it. Erlendur went to the kitchen and put the coffee and water in the coffee maker. Soon it began belching and the brown liquid dripped down into the jug. He found some biscuits. They were a month past their sell-by date, so he threw them away. He dug out two mugs and took them into the living room.

“How’s the investigation going?”

“So so,” Erlendur said.

“Do you have any idea what happened?”

“No,” Erlendur said. “Dealers might be operating close to the school, even in the playground,” he added, and named the two sisters but Eva had never heard of them. Nonetheless, she was familiar with playground dealing. She had briefly done it herself some years before.

Erlendur fetched the coffee and filled the mugs. Then he sat back down in his armchair. Over the coffee, he watched his daughter. He had the impression that she looked older since the last time they had met, older and possibly more mature. He did not realise immediately what had changed. It was as if Eva was no longer the loud-mouthed girl who was in constant rebellion against him and would give him a piece of her mind if she felt so inclined. In that coat she looked more like a young woman. The teenage behaviour that had so long been part of her character was there no longer.

“Me and Sindri also talked a lot about your brother who died,” Eva Lind said, lighting her cigarette.

She came right out with it, as if it had no more personal bearing on her than a story in a newspaper. For an instant Erlendur was angry with his daughter. What damn business of hers is that! More than a generation had passed since his brother had died, but Erlendur was still highly sensitive about it. He had not discussed his brother’s death with anyone until Eva wheedled the story out of him one day, and sometimes he regretted having bared his soul to her.

“What were you saying about him?”

“Sindri told me how he heard all about it when he was in a fish factory out east. They remembered you and your brother and our grandparents, people neither of us had ever heard of.”

Sindri had told Erlendur this too. His son had turned up one day, newly arrived in the city, and told him what he had heard about Erlendur and his brother and their father, and their fateful journey up onto the moors when the blizzard struck without warning.

“We talked about the stories he heard,” Eva Lind said.

“The stories he heard?” Erlendur parroted. “What are you and Sindri-?”

“Maybe that was the reason for my dream,” Eva Lind interrupted him. “Because we were talking about him. Your brother.”

“What did you dream?”

“Did you know some people keep diaries about what they dream? I don’t, but my friend writes down everything she dreams. I never dream anything. Or at least I never remember my dreams. I’ve heard that everyone has dreams but only some people can remember them.”

“So tell me what you and Sindri were saying.”

“What was your brother’s name?” Eva asked, ignoring his question.

“Bergur,” Erlendur said. “My brother was called Bergur. What did Sindri hear about us in the east?”

“Shouldn’t he have been found?”

“They did everything they could to find him,” Erlendur said. “Rescue teams and the local farmers, everyone who was able searched for us. I was found. We became separated in the blizzard. He was never found.”

“Yes, but what I mean is, shouldn’t he have been found later on?” Eva said, with the obstinate tone in her voice that Erlendur knew from his own mother. “Body parts, bones?”

Erlendur was perfectly aware what Eva was talking about although he pretended not to be. Sindri had probably heard this story in the east, where people were still talking about the boys who were lost in a blizzard with their father so many years ago. Erlendur had heard many theories before he moved to Reykjavik with his parents. Now his daughter, who knew nothing of the matter apart from the little that Erlendur had told her, was sitting in front of him eager to discuss the theories about his brother’s disappearance. All of a sudden she had turned up at his flat and wanted to discuss his brother, the memories that had tormented him since the age often.

“Not necessarily,” Erlendur said. “Do you mind if we talk about something else?”

“Why don’t you want to discuss it? Why is it so difficult?”

“Was that why you came?” Erlendur asked. “To tell me what you dreamed?”

“Why was he never found?” Eva said.

He could not understand his daughter’s obstinacy. As time passed it had caused interest that his brother’s remains were never found, not even a hat or glove or scarf. Nothing. People had various theories as to why. He avoided brooding on them too much.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said. “Another time maybe. Tell me about yourself. We haven’t seen each other for ages. What have you been up to?”

“You were there,” Eva said, refusing to leave him alone. “You were in my dream. I’ve never dreamed anything as clear as that. I haven’t dreamed about you since I was little and I didn’t even know what you looked like then.”

Erlendur said nothing. His mother had tried to teach him to interpret dreams, but he had always been reluctant and uninterested. It was only in recent years that his attitude had softened and his interest became roused, in spite of everything. Eva told him that she never had dreams or remembered them, and his mother had said the same. It was not until the age of thirty that his mother started dreaming to any extent, when she suddenly developed the gift of foretelling deaths, births, visitors and many other events with uncanny accuracy. But she did not foresee her son’s death in a dream and he visited her in her sleep only once afterwards. She had described the dream to Erlendur. It was summer and her boy was standing at the door of the farmhouse, leaning up against the doorpost. His back was turned to her and she could only discern his outline. The image persisted for a long while but it was impossible for her to approach him. She felt she was stretching her arms towards him without his noticing her. Then he stood up straight, bowed his head and thrust his hands into his pockets the way he sometimes did, walked out into the summer’s day… and disappeared.