“What witness? What witness are you talking about?”

“Do you deny having caused your brothers death?”

The hotel telephone began ringing and before Erlendur could answer his mobile began ringing in his jacket pocket as well. He cast an apologetic look at Stefania, who glared back at him.

“I must take this call,” Erlendur said.

Stefania backed off and he saw her take one of Gudlaugur’s records, which was on the desk, out of its cover. When Erlendur answered the hotel telephone she was scrutinising the record. It was Sigurdur Oli. Erlendur answered his mobile and asked the caller there to hold.

“A man got in touch with me just now about the murder at the hotel and I gave him your mobile number,” Sigurdur Oli said. “Has he called you?”

“There’s someone on the other line right now,” Erlendur said.

“It looks as though we’ve solved this case. Talk to him and call me. I sent three cars over. Elinborg’s with them.”

Erlendur put the receiver down and picked up his mobile again. He didn’t recognise the voice, but the man introduced himself and started his account. He had barely begun before Erlendur’s suspicions were confirmed and he figured it all out. They had a long talk and at the end of the conversation Erlendur asked the caller to go down to the police station and give a statement to Sigurdur Oli. He called Elinborg and gave her instructions. Then he put his mobile away and turned to Stefania, who had put Gudlaugur’s record on the turntable and switched it on.

“Sometimes, in the old days,” she said, “when records like this were being made, there was all kinds of background noise that got onto the recordings, maybe because people didn’t take much care about making them, the technology was primitive and the recording facilities were poor too. You can even hear passing traffic on them. Did you know that?”

“No,” Erlendur said, not grasping the point.

“You can hear it on this song, for example, if you listen carefully. I don’t think anyone would notice unless they knew it was there.”

She turned up the volume. Erlendur pricked up his ears and noticed a background sound in the middle of the song.

“What is that?” he asked.

“It’s Dad,” Stefania said.

She played the part of the song again and Erlendur could hear it clearly, although he couldn’t make out what was being said.

“That’s your father?” Erlendur said.

“He’s telling him he’s wonderful,” Stefania said remotely. “He was standing near the microphone and couldn’t contain himself:

She looked at Erlendur.

“My father died yesterday,” she said. “He lay down on the sofa after dinner and fell asleep as he sometimes did, and never woke up again. As soon as I entered the room I could tell he was gone. I sensed it before I touched him. The doctor said he had had a heart attack. That’s why I came to the hotel to see you, to make a clean sweep. It doesn’t matter any more. Not for him and not for me either. None of this matters any more.”

She played the snatch of song a third time and on this occasion Erlendur thought he could make out what was said. A single word attached to the song like a footnote.

Wonderful.

“I went down to Gudlaugur’s room the day he was murdered to tell him that Dad wanted a reconciliation. By then I’d told Dad that Gudlaugur kept a key to the house and had sneaked inside, sat in the living room and crept back out without our noticing. I didn’t know how Gudlaugur would react, whether he wanted to see Dad again or whether it was hopeless to try to reconcile them, but I wanted to try. The door to his room was open…”

Her voice quavered.

“… and there he lay in his own blood…”

She paused.

“ … in that costume … with his trousers down … covered in blood …”

Erlendur went over to her.

“My God,” she groaned. “I’d never in my life … it was too appalling for words. I don’t know what I thought. I was terrified. I think my only thought was to get out and try to forget it. Like all the rest. I convinced myself it was none of my business. That it didn’t matter whether I was there or not, it was over and done with and was none of my business. I pushed it away, acted like a child. I didn’t want to know about it and I didn’t tell my father what I saw. Didn’t tell a soul.”

She looked at Erlendur.

“I should have called for help. Of course I should have called the police … but … it … it was so disgusting, so unnatural … that I ran away. That was the only thing I thought of. Getting away. To escape from that terrible place and not let a single person see me.”

She paused.

“I think I’ve always been fleeing him. Somehow I’ve always been running away from him. All the time. And there…”

She sobbed gently.

“We should have tried to patch things up much earlier. I should have arranged that long before. That’s my crime. Dad wanted that too, in the end. Before he died.”

They fell silent and Erlendur looked out of the window, and noticed that it was snowing less.

“The most terrifying thing was …”

She stopped, as if the thought was unbearable.

“He wasn’t dead, was he?”

She shook her head.

“He said one word, then he died. He saw me in the doorway and groaned my name. That he used to call me. When we were little. He always called me Steffi.”

And they heard him say your name before he died. Steffi.”

She looked at him in surprise.

“They who?”

Suddenly Eva Lind was standing in the open doorway. She stared at Stefania and at Erlendur, then at Stefania again and shook her head.

“How many women have you got on the go anyway?” she said, with an accusatory look at her father.

He couldn’t discern any change in Osp. Erlendur stood watching her working, wondering if she would ever show remorse or guilt for what she had done.

“Have you found her, that Steffi?” she asked when she saw him in the corridor. She dumped a pile of towels into the laundry bin, took some fresh ones and put them in the room. Erlendur walked closer and stopped in the doorway, his thoughts elsewhere.

He was thinking about his daughter. He had managed to convince her who Stefania actually was, and when Stefania left he asked Eva Lind to wait for him. Eva sat down on the bed and he could tell at once that she was altered, she was back to her old ways. She launched into a tirade against him for everything that had gone wrong in her life and he stood and listened without saying a word, without objecting or enraging her even further. He knew why she was angry. She was not angry with him but with herself, because she had crashed. She could control herself no longer.

He didn’t know what drug she was using. He looked at his watch.

“Are you in a hurry to go somewhere?” she said. “Rushing off to save the world?”

“Can you wait for me here?” he said.

“Piss off she said, her voice hoarse and ugly.

“Why do you do this to yourself?”

“Shut up.”

“Will you wait for me? I wont be long and then we’ll go home. Would you like that?”

She didn’t answer. Sat with bowed head, looking out of the window at nothing.

“I won’t be a minute,” he said.

“Don’t go,” she pleaded, her voice less harsh now. “Where are you going?”

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“What’s wrong!” she barked. “Everything’s wrong. Everything! This fucking bloody life. That’s what’s wrong, life. Everything’s wrong in this life! I don’t know what it’s for. I don’t know why we live it. Why! Why??”

“Eva, it’ll be—”

“God, how I regret not having her,” she groaned.

He put his arm around her.

“Every day. When I wake up in the morning and when I fall asleep at night. I think about her every single day and what I did to her.”

“That’s good,” Erlendur said. “You ought to think about her every day”

“But it’s so hard and you never break out of it. Never. What am I supposed to do? What can I do?”