Instead, he sat down on the floor beside her. The phone rang but he didn’t answer it. There was no sign of the other girl from the bedroom. The phone stopped ringing and the flat fell silent again. The only sound was Eva Lind sobbing. Erlendur knew he was no model father and the speech he’d delivered could just as easily have been directed at himself. Probably he was talking just as much to himself and was as angry with himself as with Eva Lind. A psychologist would say he’d been venting his anger on the girl. But maybe what he said did have some effect. He hadn’t seen Eva Lind cry before. Not since she was a small child. He left her when she was two.

At last Eva Lind took her hands away from her face, sniffed and wiped her face.

“It was her dad,” she said.

“Her dad?” Erlendur said.

“Who was a monster,” Eva Lind said. ” ’He’s a monster. What have I done?’ It was her dad. He started touching her up when she started growing breasts and he kept going further and further. Couldn’t even keep his hands off her at her own wedding. Took her off to some empty part of the house. Told her she looked so sexy in her wedding dress he couldn’t control himself. Couldn’t stand the thought of her leaving him. Started goosing her. She freaked out.”

“What a crowd!” Erlendur groaned.

“I knew she did dope sometimes. She’s asked me to score for her before. She totally flipped and went to see Eddi. She’s been lying in that dump ever since.”

Eva Lind stopped. “I think her mother knew about it,” she said afterwards. “All the time. She didn’t do anything. The house was too flash. Too many cars.”

“Doesn’t the girl want to go to the police?”

“Wow!”

“What?”

“Go through all that crap for a three-month suspended sentence if anyone believes her? Come on!”

“What’s she going to do?”

“She’ll go back to the bloke. Her husband. I think she likes him.”

“She blamed herself then, did she?”

“She doesn’t know what to think.”

“Because she wrote ’What have I done?’ She took the blame on herself.”

“It’s not surprising she’s a bit screwed up.”

“It always seems to be the bloody perverts who seem happiest of all. Smile at the world as if there’s never anything gnawing away at their bloody consciences.”

“Don’t talk to me like that again,” Eva Lind said. “Never talk to me like that again.”

“Do you owe more people than Eddi?” Erlendur asked.

“A few. But Eddi’s the main problem.”

The phone rang yet again. The girl in the bedroom stirred and sat up, looked all around and got out of bed. Erlendur wondered whether to bother answering. Whether to bother going to work. Whether he ought to spend the day with Eva Lind. Keep her company, maybe get her to go to the doctor with him and have the embryo looked at, if you could call it an embryo. Find out if everything was all right. Stand by her.

But the phone refused to stop ringing. The girl had come out into the corridor and looked all around in confusion. She called out to ask if anyone was in the flat. Eva Lind called back that they were in the kitchen. Erlendur stood up, met the girl in the kitchen doorway and said hello. He received no reply. They’d both slept in their clothes just like Erlendur. The girl looked around the kitchen that Erlendur had smashed up and cast a sideways glance at him.

Erlendur answered the phone at last.

“What was the smell in Holberg’s flat like?” Erlendur took a while to realise it was Marion Briem’s voice.

“The smell?” Erlendur repeated.

“What was the smell in his flat like?” Marion Briem repeated.

“It was a sort of nasty basement smell,” Erlendur said. “A smell of damp. A stench. I don’t know. Like horses?”

“No, it’s not horses,” Marion Briem said. “I was reading about Nordurmyri. I talked to a plumber friend of mine and he referred me to another plumber. I’ve talked to a lot of plumbers.”

“Why plumbers?”

“Very interesting, the whole business. You didn’t tell me about the fingerprints on the photo.” There was a hint of accusation in Marion’s voice.

“No,” Erlendur said. “I didn’t get round to it.”

“I heard about Gretar and Holberg. Gretar knew the girl was Holberg’s daughter. Maybe he knew something else.”

Erlendur remained silent.

“What do you mean?” he said eventually.

“Do you know the most important thing about Nordurmyri?” Marion Briem asked.

“No,” Erlendur said, finding it difficult to follow Marion’s train of thought.

“It’s so obvious that I missed it at the time.”

“What is it?”

Marion paused for a moment as if to give extra weight to the words.

“Nordurmyri. North Mire.”

“And?”

“The houses were built on marsh land.”

Sigurdur Oli was surprised that the woman who answered the door knew what his business was before he explained it. He was standing on yet another staircase, this time in a three-storey block of flats in Grafarvogur. He had barely introduced himself and was halfway through explaining his presence there when the woman invited him to come inside, adding that she’d been expecting him.

It was early morning. Outside it was overcast with fine drizzle and the autumn gloom spread over the city as if in confirmation that it would very soon be winter, get darker and colder. On the radio, people had described it as the worst rainy spell for decades.

The woman offered to take his coat. Sigurdur Oli handed it to her and she hung it in a wardrobe. A man of a similar age to the woman came out of their kitchenette and greeted him with a handshake. They were both around 70, wearing some kind of track-suit and white socks as if they were on their way for a jog. He had interrupted them in the middle of morning coffee.

The flat was very small but efficiently furnished, with a small bathroom, kitchenette and sitting room and a spacious bedroom. It was boiling hot inside the flat. Sigurdur Oli accepted the offer of coffee and asked for a glass of water as well. His throat had immediately become parched. They exchanged a few words about the weather until Sigurdur Oli couldn’t wait any longer.

“It looks as if you were expecting me,” he said, sipping at the coffee. It was watery and tasted foul.

“Well, no-one’s talking about anything except that poor woman you’re looking for,” she said.

Sigurdur Oli gave her a blank look.

“Everyone from Husavik,” the woman said, as if she shouldn’t need to explain something so obvious. “We haven’t talked about anything else since you started looking for her. We’ve got a very big club for people from Husavik here in the city. I’m sure everyone knows you’re looking for that woman.”

“So it’s the talk of the town?” Sigurdur Oli asked.

“Three of my friends from the north who now live here have phoned me since last night and this morning I had a call from Husavik. They’re gossiping about it all the time.”

“And have you come to any conclusions?”

“Not really,” she said and looked at her husband. “What was this man supposed to have done to her?”

She didn’t try to conceal her curiosity. Didn’t try to hide her nosiness. Sigurdur Oli was disgusted by how eager she was to find out the details and instinctively tried to guard his words.

“It’s a question of an act of violence,” he said. “We’re looking for the victim, but you probably know that already.”

“Oh yes. But why? What did he do to her? And why now? I think, or we think,” she said, looking at her husband, who was sitting silently following the conversation, “it’s so strange how it matters after all these years. I heard she was raped. Was that it?”

“Unfortunately I can’t divulge any details about the inquiry,” Sigurdur Oli said. “And maybe it doesn’t matter. I don’t think you should make too much fuss about it. When you’re talking to other people, I mean. Is there anything you could tell me that might be useful?”