“I read about Holberg in the papers,” Klara said as if she wanted to stop herself rambling on. “Mum said the man asked about Gretar. We were half-brother and -sister. Mum forgot to tell him that. We had the same mother. Our fathers are both long since dead.”

“We didn’t know that,” Elinborg said.

“Do you want to see the stuff I cleared out of Gretar’s flat?”

“If you don’t mind,” Elinborg said.

“A filthy hole he lived in. Have you found him?”

Klara looked at Elinborg and hungrily sucked the smoke down into her lungs.

“We haven’t found him,” Elinborg said, “and I don’t think we’re looking for him especially.” She gave another polite cough. “It’s more than a quarter of a century since he disappeared, so…”

“I have no idea what happened,” Klara interrupted, exhaling a thick cloud of smoke. “We weren’t often in touch. He was quite a bit older than me, selfish, a real pain actually. You could never get a word out of him, he swore at Mum and stole from both of us if he got the chance. Then he left home.”

“So you didn’t know Holberg?” Elinborg asked.

“No.”

“Or Ellidi?” she added.

“Who’s Ellidi?”

“Never mind.”

“I didn’t know who Gretar went around with. When he went missing someone called Marion contacted me and took me to where he’d been living. It was a filthy hole. A disgusting smell in the room and the floor covered with rubbish, and the half-eaten sheep heads and mouldy mashed turnips that he used to live on.”

“Marion?” Elinborg asked. She hadn’t been working for the CID long enough to recognise the name.

“Yes, that was the name.”

“Do you remember a camera among your brother’s belongings?”

“That was the only thing in the room in one piece. I took it but I’ve never used it. The police thought it was stolen and I don’t approve of that sort of thing. I keep it down in the storeroom in the basement. Do you want to see it? Did you come about the camera?”

“Could I have a look at it?” Elinborg asked.

Klara stood up. She asked Elinborg to wait a moment and went into the kitchen to fetch a key ring. They walked out into the corridor and down to the basement. Klara opened the door that led to the storerooms, switched on the light, went up to one of the doors and opened it. Inside, old rubbish was piled everywhere, deckchairs and sleeping bags, skiing equipment and camping gear. Elinborg noticed a blue foot-massage device and a Soda-stream drinks maker.

“I had it in a box here,” Klara said after squeezing her way, past the rubbish, halfway into the storeroom. She bent down and picked up a little brown cardboard box. “I put all Gretar’s stuff in this. He didn’t own anything except that camera.” She opened the box and was about to empty it when Elinborg stopped her.

“Don’t take anything out of the box,” she said and put out her hands to take it. “You never know what significance the contents might have for us,” she added by way of explanation.

Klara handed her the box with a half-insulted expression and Elinborg opened it. It contained three tattered paperback thrillers, a penknife, a few coins and a camera — a pocket-size Kodak Instamatic that Elinborg recalled had been a popular Christmas and confirmation present years before. Not a remarkable possession for someone with a burning interest in photography, but it undoubtedly served its purpose. She couldn’t see any films in the box. Erlendur had asked her to check specifically whether Gretar had left behind any films. She took out a handkerchief and turned the camera round and saw there was no film in it. There were no photos in the box either.

“Then there are all kinds of trays and liquids here,” Klara said and pointed inside the storeroom. “I think he developed the photos himself. There’s some photographic paper too. It must be useless by now, mustn’t it?”

“I should take that too,” Elinborg said and Klara dived back into the rubbish.

“Do you know if he kept his rolls of film, or did you see any at his place?” Elinborg asked.

“No, none,” Klara said as she bent over for the trays.

“Do you know where he might have kept them?”

“No.”

“So do you know what this photography was all about?”

“Well, he enjoyed it, I expect,” Klara said.

“I mean the subjects: did you see any of his photos?”

“No, he never showed me anything. As I said, we didn’t have much contact. I don’t know where his photos are. Gretar was a damn layabout,” she said, uncertain whether she was repeating herself, then shrugged as if deciding you can’t say a good thing too often.

“I’d like to take this box away with me,” Elinborg said. “I hope that’s okay. It’ll be returned shortly.”

“What’s going on?” Klara asked, for the first time showing an interest in the police inquiry and the questions about her brother. “Do you know where Gretar is?”

“No,” Elinborg stressed, trying to dispel all doubt. “Nothing new has emerged. Nothing.”

The two women who were with Kolbrun the night Holberg attacked her were named in the police investigation documents. Erlendur had launched a search for them and it turned out that both were from Keflavik, but neither lived there any more.

One of them had married an American from the NATO base shortly after the incident and now lived in the USA, while the other had moved from Keflavik to Stykkisholmur five years later. She was still registered as living there. Erlendur wondered whether he should spend the whole day on a trip out west to Stykkisholmur or phone her and hope that would be enough.

Erlendur’s English was poor so he asked Sigurdur Oli to locate the woman in America. He spoke to her husband. She had died 15 years earlier. From cancer. The woman was buried in America.

Erlendur phoned Stykkisholmur and had no difficulty making contact with the second woman. First he phoned her home and was told that she was at work. She was a nurse at the hospital there.

The woman listened to Erlendur’s questions but said unfortunately she couldn’t help him. She hadn’t been able to help the police at the time and nothing had changed.

“Holberg has been murdered", Erlendur said, “and we think it might even be connected with this incident.”

“I saw that on the news,” the voice on the phone said. The woman’s name was Agnes and Erlendur tried to visualise her from the sound of her voice. At first he imagined an efficient, firm woman in her sixties, overweight because she was short of breath. Then he noticed her smoker’s cough and Agnes assumed a different image in his mind, turned thin as a rake, her skin yellow and wrinkled. She coughed with a nasty, gravelly sound at regular intervals.

“Do you remember that night in Keflavik?” Erlendur asked.

“I went home before them,” Agnes said.

“There were three men with you.”

“I went home with a man called Gretar. I told the police at the time. I find it rather uncomfortable to talk about.”

“It’s news to me that you went home with Gretar,” Erlendur said, riffling through the reports in front of him.

“I told them when they asked me the same question all those years ago.” She coughed again but tried to spare Erlendur the throaty noises. “Sorry. I’ve never been able to give up those damn cigarettes. He was a bit of a loser. That Gretar. I never saw him after that.”

“How did you and Kolbrun know each other?”

“We used to work together. That was before I studied nursing. We were working in a shop in Keflavik which closed down long ago. That was the first and only time we went out anywhere together. Understandably.”

“Did you believe Kolbrun when she talked about a rape?”

“I didn’t hear about it until the police suddenly turned up at my house and started asking me about that night. I can’t imagine she’d have lied about something like that. Kolbrun was very respectable. Thoroughly honest about everything she did, although a bit feeble perhaps. Delicate and sickly. Not a strong character. Maybe it’s an awful thing to say, but she wasn’t the fun type, if you know what I mean. Not a lot of action going on around her.”