He thought about Sunee and her grief.

When his mobile started ringing he assumed it must be Sigurdur Oli calling so late but the voice was a woman’s, whispering as if she was using the phone in secret. Erlendur could not hear what she was saying.

“What?” he said. “Sorry… ?”

“… and take… But he won’t. He absolutely refuses. I’ve tried to talk to him. It’s hopeless.”

“I’ve had enough of this,” Erlendur said when he realised who it was. He decided to try a new approach with this woman who he had been searching for since before Christmas. “Either come and see me or forget it. I can’t be doing with this sort of nonsense!”

“I’m telling you, he won’t—”

“I think…,” Erlendur said.

“I just need more time.”

“I think you should stop messing me about like this.”

“I’m sorry,” the voice said. “It’s just so hard. I don’t want it to be like this.”

“What’s the point of all this?” Erlendur asked. “What are you both up to? What nonsense is this?”

The woman did not answer.

“Come and talk to me.”

“I keep trying to make him. But he won’t”

“Stop being so silly,” Erlendur said. “You should go home to him and stop bothering me. It’s getting ridiculous!”

There was silence on the other end.

“I went and saw your husband,” Erlendur said.

Still the woman said nothing.

“Yes, I went and saw him. I don’t know what you’re both plotting and it’s nothing to do with me. Just stop making these calls. Stop bothering me with this stupid nonsense.”

There was a long silence.

Then the woman hung up.

Erlendur stared at the phone in his hand. He had no idea what he had done. He half expected the woman to call straight back but when nothing happened he put the phone down on the kitchen table and stood up. Taking the book he had read aloud to Marion Briem at the hospital, he settled down in his armchair. It contained stories of travellers” ordeals and fatal accidents in the East Fjords. He weighed the book in his hands as he had done so often before and opened it at the account he knew so well, but which contained only a fragment of the true story.

He began to read it for the umpteenth time but was soon interrupted by a quiet tap on the door. Putting down the book, he got up and went to answer it. Eva Lind stood out on the landing. Sindri Snaer was with her.

“Do you two never sleep?” he asked as he let them in.

“No more than you,” Eva said, slipping past him. “Were you eating stew?” she asked, sniffing the air.

“From the microwave,” Erlendur said. “Can’t really call it food.”

“I’m sure you could cook yourself a proper meal if you could be arsed,” Eva said and sat down on the sofa in the living room. “What are you reading?” she asked when she saw the open book on the desk by his chair. Sindri sat down beside her. It was a year and a day since they had last visited him together.

“Travel stories,” Erlendur said. “What are you two up to?”

“Oh, you know, we just felt like seeing how it’s hanging with you.”

“How it’s hanging?”

“Are they about people lost in the wilderness?” Sindri asked.

“Yes.”

“You told me once that there was a story like that about your brother,” Eva said.

“That’s right, there is.”

“But you won’t show it to me?”

He didn’t know why he didn’t hand Eva Lind the book. It lay open on the desk between them and although it didn’t contain the whole truth, it would be enough to give her and Sindri a reasonably good idea of what happened. Erlendur had only told them the bare facts about the brothers” ordeal. The account did not really add much more. He no longer knew what it was that he was clinging on to so stubbornly. If he ever had known. Sindri had heard about the events when he was living out east; it wasn’t as if they were a secret.

“I dreamed about him,” Eva said. “I told you. I’m sure it was your brother.”

“You’re not going to start on about that again? I don’t know what tales you’ve been filling her head with, Sindri.”

“I didn’t tell her anything,” Sindri said, taking out a packet of cigarettes.

“It’s only a dream. Why are you so afraid of dreams? I can’t imagine you taking them seriously.”

“I don’t, I just find it hard to rake up the memory of what happened.”

“Yeah, right,” Eva Lind said, nodding towards the book on the table. “You’re forever reading about it or stuff like it. It’s not like you’ve just forgotten about it!”

“I don’t want to rake up the memories with other people,” Erlendur corrected.

“Ah,” Eva said. “So you want to keep it all to yourself. Is that it?”

“I don’t know what it is.”

“You don’t want anyone to take it away from you?”

“I don’t think even you know what you’re talking about,” Erlendur said.

“I just want to tell you my dream. I never had a dream like it before. I don’t know why you refuse to hear it. Anyway, it was hardly even a dream. More like waking up with a picture in my head.”

“How do you know it was my brother?”

“I couldn’t think of anyone else,” Eva said.

“Dreams don’t mean anything, you know that,” Sindri said.

“That’s exactly what I’m trying to tell him,” Eva said.

There was a silence.

“How did he die?” Eva asked.

“I’ve told you. Bergur died of exposure. He was eight years old. We got separated. I was found. His body was never found. Maybe you did dream about him. It doesn’t matter, don’t get all excited about it. Tell me about yourselves instead. What are you both up to these days?”

“Could he have drowned?” Eva Lind asked.

Erlendur stared at his daughter. She knew he didn’t want to discuss the matter any further but she did not let that deter her. She stared back defiantly. Sindri looked down at the table between them.

“Sindri told me it was one of the theories,” she added, “that he heard when he was out east.”

Sindri raised his eyes. “Loads of people know the story out there,” he said. “People who remember the whole thing.”

Erlendur did not respond.

“What do you think happened?” Eva Lind asked.

Erlendur still did not reply.

“It was dark,” Eva said. “I was in water. At first I thought I was swimming but this was different. I never go swimming. Not since I was at school. But all of a sudden I was in water and it was incredibly cold…”

“Eva …” Erlendur looked pleadingly at his daughter.

“You told me I could tell you my dream another time. Have you forgotten?”

Slowly Erlendur shook his head.

“And a boy came towards me and looked at me and smiled and he immediately reminded me of you. I thought at first it was you. Were you alike?”

“So people said.”

Anyway, we weren’t swimming or in a swimming pool,” Eva said. “We were just in some kind of water that changed into mud and slime. Then the boy stopped smiling and everything went black. I couldn’t breathe. Like I was drowning or suffocating. I woke up gasping. No dream’s ever affected me like that before. I’ll never forget it. His face.”

“His face?”

“When everything went black. It was …”

“What?”

“It was you,” Eva Lind said.

“Me?”

“Yes. All of a sudden it was you.”

No one spoke.

“Was that after Sindri had told you about the bogs?” Erlendur asked with a glance at Sindri.

“Yes,” Eva said. “How did your brother die? What about the bogs?”

“Did he drown?” Sindri asked.

“He may have drowned,” Erlendur said in a low voice.

“There are rivers running into the fjord,” Sindri said.

“Yes.”

“Some people say he must have fallen in one of them.”

“That’s probably one hypothesis. That he fell in the Eskifjordur River.”

“But there’s another, worse one, isn’t there?” Eva Lind said.

Erlendur grimaced. An old memory resurfaced in his mind of men trying to save a horse that had wandered too far into the bog. A great big beast that belonged to a man from the village. The horse floundered around, sending up a spray of mud, but the more it thrashed, the deeper it sank until only its head remained above the surface, its flaring nostrils and frenzied eyes that slowly, inexorably vanished into the mire. It was a horrific sight, a horrific death. Every time he thought of Bergur the image entered his mind of the horse sinking deeper and deeper into the bog until it disappeared.