What a life.

“And what’s this here?” he said, pointing to some offcuts from a tree that stood in a large vase at one end of the table. Heart-shaped red cards hung from the branches by ribbons.

“It’s a message tree.”

“A what?” Erlendur said. He’d only been to one wedding in his life and that was a long time ago. No message trees there.

“The guests write greetings to the bride and groom on cards and then hang them on the tree. A lot of cards had been hung up before Disa Ros went missing,” the mother said, still holding her handkerchief to her nose.

Erlendur’s mobile phone rang in his overcoat pocket. As he fumbled to get it, the phone got stuck in the opening and, instead of patiently working it loose, which would have been so easy, Erlendur tugged at it vigorously until the pocket gave way. The hand holding the phone flew back and sent the message tree flying to the floor. Erlendur looked at the couple apologetically and answered his phone.

“Are you coming with us to Nordurmyri?” Sigurdur Oli said without any preamble. “To take a better look at the flat.”

“Are you down there already?” Erlendur asked. He had withdrawn to one side.

“No. I’ll wait for you,” Sigurdur Oli said. “Where the hell are you?”

Erlendur hung up.

“I’ll see what I can do,” he said to the couple. “I don’t think there’s any danger involved. Your daughter probably just lost her nerve and she’s staying with some friends. You shouldn’t worry too much. I’m sure she’ll ring before long.”

The couple bent down over the little cards that had fallen to the floor. He noticed that they had overlooked several cards that had slid under a chair and he bent down to pick them up. Erlendur read the greetings and looked at the couple.

“Had you seen this?” he asked and handed them the card.

The father read the message and a look of astonishment crossed his face. He handed the card to his wife. She read it over and again but didn’t seem to understand. Erlendur held out his hand for the card and read it again. The message was unsigned.

“Is this your daughter’s handwriting?” he asked.

“I think so,” the mother replied.

Erlendur turned the card over in his hands and reread the message:

“Where have you been?” Sigurdur Oli asked Erlendur when he came back to work, but he received no answer.

“Has Eva Lind tried to contact me?” he asked.

Sigurdur Oli said he didn’t think so. He knew about Erlendur’s daughter and her problems, but neither of them ever mentioned it. Personal matters seldom entered into their conversations.

“Anything new on Holberg?” Erlendur asked and walked straight into his office. Sigurdur Oli followed him and closed the door. Murders were rare in Reykjavik and generated enormous publicity on the few occasions they were committed. The CID made it a rule not to inform the media of details of their investigations unless absolutely necessary. That did not apply in this case.

“We know a little more about him,” Sigurdur Oli said, opening a file he was holding. “He was born in Saudarkrokur, 69 years old. Spent his last years working as a lorry driver for Iceland Transport. Still worked there on and off.”

Sigurdur Oli paused.

“Shouldn’t we talk to his workmates?” he said, straightening his tie. Sigurdur Oli was wearing a new suit, tall and handsome, a graduate in criminology from an American university. He was everything that Erlendur was not: modern and organised.

“What do people in the office think?” Erlendur asked, twiddling with a loose button on his cardigan which eventually dropped into his palm. He was stout and well-built with bushy ginger hair, one of the most experienced detectives on the team. He generally got his way. His superiors and colleagues had long since given up doing battle with him. Things had turned out that way over the years. Erlendur didn’t dislike it.

“Probably some nutcase,” Sigurdur Oli said. “At the minute we’re looking for that green army jacket. Some kid who wanted money but panicked when Holberg refused.”

“What about Holberg’s family? Did he have any?”

“No family, but we haven’t got all the information yet. We’re still gathering it together; family, friends, workmates.”

“From the look of his flat I’d say he was single and had been for a long time.”

“You would know, of course,” Sigurdur Oli blurted out, but Erlendur pretended not to hear.

“Anything from the pathologist? Forensics?”

“The provisional report’s in. Nothing in it we didn’t know. Holberg died from a blow to the head. It was a heavy blow, but basically it was the shape of the ashtray, the sharp edges, that were decisive. His skull caved in and he died instantly… or almost. He seems to have struck the corner of the coffee table as he fell. He had a nasty wound on his forehead that fitted the corner of the table. The fingerprints on the ashtray were Holberg’s but then there are at least two other sets, one of which is also on the pencil.”

“Are they the murderer’s then?”

“There’s every probability that they are the murderer’s, yes.”

“Right, a typical clumsy Icelandic murder.”

“Typical. And that’s the assumption we’re working on.”

It was still raining. The low-pressure fronts that moved in from deep in the Atlantic at that time of year headed east across Iceland in succession, bringing wind, wet and dark winter gloom. The CID was still at work in the building in Nordurmyri. The yellow police tape that had been set up around the building reminded Erlendur of the electricity board; a hole in the road, a filthy tent over it, a flicker of light inside the tent, all neatly gift-wrapped with yellow tape. In the same way, the police had wrapped the murder scene up with neat yellow plastic tape with the name of the authority printed on it. Erlendur and Sigurdur Oli met Elinborg and the other detectives who had been combing the building through the autumn night and into the morning and were just finishing their job.

People from neighbouring buildings were questioned but none of them had noticed any suspicious movements at the murder scene between the Monday morning and the time the body was found.

Soon there was no-one left in the building but Erlendur and Sigurdur Oli. The blood on the carpet had turned black. The ashtray had been removed as evidence. The pencil and pad too. In other respects it was as though nothing had happened. Sigurdur Oli went to look in the den and the passage to the bedroom, while Erlendur walked around the sitting room. They put on white rubber gloves. Prints were mounted and framed on the walls and looked as if they’d been bought at the front door from travelling salesmen. In the bookcase were thrillers in translation, paperbacks from a book club, some of them read, others apparently untouched. No interesting hard-bound volumes. Erlendur bent down almost to the floor to read the titles on the bottom shelf and recognised only one: Lolita by Nabokov; paperback. He took it from the bookshelf. It was an English edition and had clearly been read.

He replaced the book and inched his way towards the desk. It was L-shaped and took up one corner of the sitting room. A new, comfortable office chair was by the desk, with a plastic mat underneath it to protect the carpet. The desk looked much older than the chair. There were drawers on both sides underneath the broader desktop and a long one in the middle, nine in all. On the shorter desktop stood a 17-inch computer monitor with a sliding tray for a keyboard fitted beneath it. The tower was kept on the floor. All the drawers were locked.

Sigurdur Oli went through the wardrobe in the bedroom. It was reasonably organised, with socks in one drawer, underwear in another, trousers, sweaters. Some shirts and three suits were hanging on a rail, the oldest suit from the disco era, Sigurdur Oli thought, brown striped. Several pairs of shoes on the wardrobe floor. Bedclothes in the top drawer. The man had made his bed before his visitor arrived. A white blanket covered the duvet and pillow. It was a single bed.