“Take him out, Simon,” his mother repeated.

Puzzled by her reaction, Simon looked at them in turn, and saw Dave backing out of the kitchen and into the yard.

“Why did you do that to me?” she said and turned to Simon. “Bringing a man in here. Why would you do that?”

“Sorry,” Simon said. “I thought it was all right. His name is Dave.”

“What did he want?”

“He wanted to give us his fish,” Simon said. “That he caught in the lake. I thought that was all right. He only wanted to give us some fish.”

“God, what a shock! Good Lord, what a shock! You must never do that again. Never! Where are Mikkelina and Tomas?”

“Out the back.”

“Are they all right?”

“All right? Yes, Mikkelina wanted to be in the sunshine.”

“You must never do that again,” she repeated as she walked out to check on Mikkelina. “Do you hear! Never.”

She walked round the corner of the house and saw the soldier standing over Tomas and Mikkelina, staring down at the girl in bewilderment. Mikkelina pulled faces and craned her neck to see who was standing over them. She could not see the soldier’s face because the sun was behind his head. The soldier looked at her mother, then back at Mikkelina writhing in the grass.

“I…” Dave said falteringly. “I didn’t know,” he said. “I’m sorry. Really I am. This is none of my business. I’m sorry.”

Then he turned round and hurried away, and they watched him disappear slowly over the hill.

“Are you all right?” their mother asked, kneeling down beside Mikkelina and Tomas. She was calmer now that the soldier had left without apparently wanting to cause them any harm. She picked up Mikkelina, carried her into the house and put her down on the divan in the kitchen. Simon and Tomas ran in behind her.

“Dave isn’t bad,” Simon said. “He’s different.”

“Is his name Dave?” their mother said vacantly. “Dave,” she repeated. “Isn’t that the same as David in Icelandic?” she asked, directing the question more at herself than anyone else. And then it happened, something that struck Simon as very strange.

His mother smiled.

Tomas had always been mysterious, reticent, a loner, a little nervous and shy, the silent type. The previous winter Grimur seemed to notice something in him that aroused his interest more than in Simon. He would pay attention to Tomas and take him into another room. When Simon asked his brother what they had talked about Tomas said nothing, but Simon insisted and wheedled out of him that they had been talking about Mikkelina.

“What was he saying to you about Mikkelina?” Simon asked.

“Nothing,” Tomas said.

“Yes he was, what?” Simon said.

“Nothing,” Tomas said with an embarrassed look, as if he was trying to conceal something from his brother.

“Tell me.”

“I don’t want to. I don’t want him to talk to me. I don’t want him to.”

“You don’t want him to talk to you? So you mean you don’t want him to say the things he says? Is that what you mean?”

“I don’t want anything, that’s all,” Tomas said. “And you stop talking to me too.”

The weeks and months passed by and Grimur displayed his favour for his younger son in various ways. Although Simon was never party to their conversations, he found out what they were doing one evening towards the end of the summer. Grimur was getting ready to take some goods from the depot into Reykjavik. He was waiting for a soldier named Mike who was going to help him. Mike had a jeep at his disposal and they planned to fill it with goods to sell in town. The children’s mother was cooking the food, which was from the depot as well. Mikkelina was lying in her bed.

Simon noticed Grimur pushing Tomas towards Mikkelina, whispering in his ear and smiling the way he did when he made snide remarks at the boys. Their mother noticed nothing and Simon had no real idea what was going on until Tomas went up to Mikkelina, urged on by Grimur, and said:

“Bitch.”

Then he went back to Grimur, who laughed and patted him on the head.

Simon looked over to the sink where his mother was standing. Although she could not have helped overhearing, she did not move and showed no reaction at first, as if trying to ignore it. Except that he saw she was holding a knife in one hand, peeling potatoes, and her knuckles whitened as she gripped the handle. Then she turned slowly with the knife in her hand and stared at Grimur.

“That’s one thing you shall never do,” she said in a quavering voice.

Grimur looked at her and the grin froze on his face.

“Me?” Grimur said. “What do you mean, never do? I didn’t do anything. It was the lad. It was my boy Tomas.”

Their mother moved a step closer to Grimur, still wielding the knife.

“Leave Tomas alone.”

Grimur stood up.

“Are you going to do anything with that knife?”

“Don’t do that to him,” she said, and Simon sensed she was beginning to back down. He heard a jeep outside the house.

“He’s here,” Simon shouted. “Mike’s here.”

Grimur looked out of the kitchen window then back at their mother, and the tension eased for a moment. She put down the knife. Mike appeared in the doorway. Grimur smiled.

When he got back that night he beat their mother senseless. The next morning she had a black eye and a limp. They heard the grunts when Grimur was pummelling her. Tomas crawled into Simon’s bed and looked at his brother through the darkness of night, in shock, continually muttering to himself as if that could erase what had happened.

“…sorry, I didn’t mean to, sorry, sorry, sorry…”

Elsa opened the door for Sigurdur Oli and asked him to join her for a cup of tea. As he watched Elsa in the kitchen, he thought about Bergthora. They had argued that morning before leaving for work. After rejecting her amorous advances he had begun clumsily to describe his concerns, until Bergthora became seriously agitated.

“Oh, just a minute,” she said. “So we’re never supposed to get married? Is that your plan? Is the idea that we just live in limbo with nothing on paper and our children bastards? For ever.”

“Bastards?”

“Yes.”

“Are you thinking about the big wedding again?”

“Sorry if it bothers you.”

“You really want to walk down the aisle? In your wedding dress with a posy in your hand and…”

“You have such contempt for the idea, don’t you?”

“And what’s this about children anyway?” Sigurdur Oli said, and immediately regretted it when he saw Bergthora’s face turn ever darker.

“Do you never want to have children?”

“Yes, no, yes, I mean, we haven’t discussed it,” Sigurdur Oli said. “I think we need to discuss that. You can’t decide on your own whether we have children or not. That’s not fair and it’s not what I want. Not now. Not straight away.”

“The time will come,” Bergthora said. “Hopefully. We’re both 35. It won’t be long until it’s too late. Whenever I try to talk about it you change the subject. You don’t want to discuss it. Don’t want children or a marriage or anything. Don’t want anything. You’re getting as bad as that old fart Erlendur.”

“Eh?” Sigurdur Oli was thunderstruck. “What was that?”

But Bergthora had already set off for work, leaving him with an horrific vision of the future.

Elsa noticed Sigurdur Oli’s thoughts were elsewhere as he sat in her kitchen staring down at his cup.

“Would you like some more tea?” she asked quietly.

“No, thank you,” Sigurdur Oli said. “Elinborg, who’s working on this case with me, wanted me to ask if you know whether your uncle Benjamin kept a lock of his fiancee’s hair, maybe in a locket or a jar or the like.”

Elsa thought about it.

“No,” she said, “I don’t remember a lock of hair, but I’m not a hundred per cent sure what’s down there.”

“Elinborg says there should be one. According to the fiancee’s sister, who told her yesterday that she gave Benjamin a lock of hair when she went on a trip somewhere, I believe.”