Erlendur introduced himself but the man was not yet properly awake, so he was forced to repeat that he was from the police and wanted to know if the man could help him with a minor matter. The man stood at the door and stared at him. Evidently he was not accustomed to receiving a stream of visitors. The bell probably squeaked like that from lack of use.

“Huuhh… eh… ?” the man said hoarsely, peering at him. His jaw was covered in white stubble.

Erlendur repeated his spiel and the man finally grasped the fact that he had a visitor. Opening the door wider, he invited Erlendur in. He was rather dishevelled, his white hair sticking up in all directions, and his flat was a tip, the air a stale fug. They went into the sitting room where the man sat down on the sofa and leaned forwards. Erlendur took a seat facing him. He noticed that the man had enormous eyebrows; when he moved them they looked like two small furry animals squirming above his eyes.

“I haven’t quite grasped what’s going on,” the man said. His name, it transpired, was Helgi. “What do the police want with me?”

The flat was one of several in an old building near a busy road in the eastern part of town. The rumble of traffic was clearly audible. The house was showing its age both outside and inside. It had not been particularly well maintained and large patches of concrete had flaked off the facade; not that any of the residents seemed to care. The stairs were narrow and squalid, the carpet full of holes, and it was dark in the flat, despite the daylight outside, the windows grimy from exhaust fumes.

“You’ve lived in this house a long time,” Erlendur commented, watching the small furry animals above the man’s eyes. “I wanted to ask you if you remember some neighbours of yours from many years ago. A woman with one child, a boy. She may have lived with a man, who would have been the boy’s step-father. It was a long time ago. We’re talking — what? — thirty-five years.”

The man looked at Erlendur without speaking. A long moment passed and Erlendur thought perhaps he had nodded off with his eyes open.

“They lived on the ground floor,” he added.

“What about them?” the man said. So he had not been asleep after all, merely trying to recall the family.

“Nothing,” Erlendur said. “There’s some information we need to pass on to the stepfather, that’s all. The woman died some time ago.”

And the child?”

“It was the child who asked us to trace the man,” Erlendur lied. “Do you remember these people, by any chance? They lived on the ground floor.”

The man continued to stare at Erlendur without saying a word.

A woman with one son?” he asked at last.

And a stepfather.”

“It’s a hell of a long time ago,” the man said, beginning to wake up properly from his nap.

“I know,” Erlendur said.

And what, wasn’t he registered as living there with her?”

“No, there’s no one registered at the flat during the time she lived there apart from her and her son. But we know this man was living with her.”

Erlendur waited.

“We need the name of the stepfather,” he added, when it became apparent that Helgi was not going to volunteer anything else, merely sit there motionless, staring vacantly at the coffee table.

“Doesn’t the child know?” Helgi asked after a pause.

Ah, so he is awake after all, Erlendur thought.

“The child was young,” he said, hoping that this answer would satisfy the man.

“There’s a bunch of riff-raff living downstairs now,” Helgi said, continuing to stare absent-mindedly at the table in front of him. “A pack of yobbos, up all hours making a racket. Doesn’t matter how many times I phone you lot, it’s not the blindest bit of use. One of those hooligans owns the flat, so it’s impossible to turf him out”

“One’s not always lucky with one’s neighbours,” Erlendur said, for the sake of saying something. “Can you help us out at all with this man?”

“What was the woman called?”

“Sigurveig. The child’s name was Andres. I’m trying to cut corners; it would be tricky and time-consuming to trace the man through the system.”

“I remember her,” the man said, looking up. “Sigurveig, that’s right. But hang on a minute, that boy wasn’t too young to remember the man who lived with them.”

Helgi gave Erlendur a long speculative look.

“Maybe you’re not telling me the whole truth?” he said.

“No,” Erlendur said. “I’m not.”

A faint smile touched Helgi’s lips.

“He’s a ruddy menace, that chap downstairs,” he said.

“You never know, it might just be possible to do something about that,” Erlendur said.

“That man you’re asking about lived with the woman for several years,” Helgi said. “I hardly got to know him at all, he seemed to be away a lot. Was he at sea?”

“I haven’t the foggiest,” Erlendur said. “He could well have been. Can you remember his name?”

“Not for the life of me, I’m afraid,” Helgi said. “I’d forgotten Sigurveig’s name too, and it only came to me just now that the boy was called Andres. It all goes in one ear and out the other, and seldom stops for long in between.”

“And of course a lot of people have come and gone since then,” Erlendur added.

“You can’t imagine,” Helgi said, now more or less recovered from the shrill interruption of his afternoon rest and pleased that someone had come round to talk to him and, what’s more, seemed to take a greater interest in what he had to say than anyone else had for years. “But I’m afraid I can’t remember much about those people,” he added. “Hardly a thing, to be honest”

“It’s a general rule in my profession that everything helps, however trivial,” Erlendur said. He had once heard a cop say this on TV and thought it might come in handy.

“Is he supposed to have done something wrong? This man?”

“No,” Erlendur said. Andres approached us. We shouldn’t really be wasting our time on this but…”

Erlendur shrugged. He saw that Helgi was smiling. By now they were almost bosom buddies.

“If I remember correctly, that fellow came from somewhere in the countryside,” Helgi said. “He came along with her to a house meeting once, in the days when they still had house meetings. Now you just get a bill, if anyone can be bothered to do anything, which is once in a blue moon. It was one of the few occasions that I met him.”

“Can you describe him to me?”

“Not really. Quite tall. Strongly built. Made a good impression. Quite pleasant, if I remember correctly. He moved out, as far as I can recall. They split up, didn’t they? I don’t know why. You should talk to Emma. She used to live opposite them.”

“Emma?”

“Wonderful person, Emma. Moved out about twenty years ago but still keeps in touch, sends Christmas cards and so on. She lives in Kopavogur now. She’s sure to remember more than me. Talk to her. I just can’t remember those people well enough.”

“Do you remember anything in particular about the boy?”

“The boy? No … except…” Helgi paused.

“Yes?” Erlendur said.

“I seem to recall that he was always rather hangdog, poor little wretch. A sad little chap, a bit scruffy, as if no one took proper care of him. The few times I tried to talk to him I got the feeling he wanted to avoid me.”

Andres was standing out in the cold, a short distance from a corrugated-iron-clad house on Grettisgata, his eyes fixed on a basement window. He could not see inside and did not dare to risk going any closer. About six months ago he had trailed the man he had mentioned to the police to this house and seen him disappear into the basement flat. He had followed him, keeping a little way behind, from the block of flats and onto a bus. The man did not notice him. They had got out at the Hlemmur bus station and Andres had followed him to this house.

Now he was standing at a safe distance, trying to protect himself from the bitter north wind. He had walked the short way from Hlemmur several times since then and ascertained that the man had a second home on Grettisgata.