“The main hearing starts today. You knew that, didn’t you?” Sigurdur Oli asked.

“Yes.”

“Elinborg’s down there. How do you think it will turn out?”

“I suppose it will be a couple of months, suspended. Always the same with those bloody judges.”

“Surely he won’t be allowed to keep the boy.”

“I don’t know,” Erlendur said.

“The bastard,” Sigurdur Oli said. “They ought to put him in the stocks in the town square.”

Elinborg had been in charge of the investigation. An eight-year-old boy had been committed to hospital after being seriously assaulted. No one had been able to get a word out of him about the attack. The initial theory was that older children had set on him outside the school and beaten him up so badly that he suffered a broken arm, fractured cheekbone and two loose upper teeth. He crawled home in a terrible state. His father notified the police when he got back from work shortly afterwards. An ambulance took the boy to hospital.

The boy was an only child. His mother was in the Kleppur mental hospital when the incident took place. He lived with his father, who owned and ran an internet company, in a big and beautiful two-storey house with a commanding view of the city in Breidholt suburb. Naturally, the father was distressed after the assault and talked about taking vengeance on the boys who had hurt his son so horrifically. He insisted that Elinborg bring them to justice.

Elinborg might never have found out the truth had they not lived in a two-storey house with the boy’s room upstairs.

“She identifies with it in a bad way,” Sigurdur Oli said. “Elinborg has a boy the same age.”

“You shouldn’t let that influence you too much,” Erlendur said vacantly.

“Says who?”

The peaceful atmosphere of the breakfast buffet was disturbed by a noise from the kitchen. All the guests looked up, then at each other. A loud-voiced man was ranting about something or other. Erlendur and Sigurdur Oli stood up and went into the kitchen. The voice belonged to the head chef who had caught Erlendur when he nibbled at the ox tongue. He was raging at a biotechnician who wanted to take a saliva sample from him.

“… and bugger off out of here with your bloody swabs!” the chef shouted at a woman of fifty who had a little sampling box open on the table. She went on insisting politely in spite of his fury, which did not soothe his temper. When he saw Erlendur and Sigurdur Oli his rage was redoubled.

“Are you mad?” he shouted. “Do you think I was down there with Gulli putting a condom on his dick? Are you lot mental? Fucking idiots! No way. No bloody way. I don’t give a monkey’s what you say! You can stick me in jail and throw away the key but I’m not taking part in this bloody fiasco! Just get that straight! Fucking idiots!”

The chef strode out of the kitchen, swollen with righteous male indignation which was rather undermined, however, by his chimney-like white hat, and Erlendur began to smile. He looked at the biotechnician who smiled back and started to laugh. The tension in the kitchen eased. The cooks and waiters who had gathered round roared with laughter.

“You having trouble?” Erlendur asked the biotechnician.

“No, not at all,” she said. “Everyone’s very understanding really. He’s the first one to make a scene about it”

She smiled, and Erlendur thought her smile was pretty. She was roughly the same height as him, with thick, blond hair, cut short, and was wearing a colourful knitted cardigan buttoned down the front. Under the cardigan was a white blouse. She was wearing jeans and elegant black leather shoes.

“My name’s Erlendur,” he said, almost instinctively, and held out his hand.

She became a little flustered.

“Yes,” she said, shaking his hand. “I’m Valgerdur.”

“Valgerdur?” he repeated. He did not see a wedding ring.

Erlendur’s mobile phone rang in his pocket.

“Excuse me,” he said, answering the phone. He heard an old, familiar voice asking for him.

“Is that you?” the voice asked.

“Yes, it’s me,” Erlendur said.

“I’ll never get the hang of these mobile phones,” the voice said. “Where are you? Are you at the hotel? Maybe you’re rushing off somewhere. Or in a lift.”

“I’m at the hotel.” Erlendur put his hand over the mouthpiece and asked Valgerdur to wait a moment, then went back into the dining room and out to the lobby. It was Marion Briem on the phone.

“Are you sleeping at the hotel?” Marion asked. “Is something wrong? Why don’t you go home?”

Marion Briem had worked for the old Police Investigation Department when that institution was still around, and had been Erlendur’s mentor. Was already there when Erlendur joined and had taught him the detective’s craft. Marion sometimes phoned Erlendur and complained that he never visited. Erlendur had never really liked his former boss and felt no particular urge to reappraise his feelings in Marion’s old age. Perhaps because they were too similar. Perhaps because in Marion he saw his own future and wanted to avoid it. Marion lived a lonely life and hated being old.

“Why are you phoning?” Erlendur asked.

“Some people still keep me in the picture, even if you don’t,” Marion said.

Erlendur was about to put a swift end to the conversation, but stopped himself. Marion had assisted him before, without being asked. He mustn’t be rude.

“Can I help you with anything?” Erlendur asked.

“Give me the man’s name. I might find something you’ve overlooked.”

“You never give up.”

I’m bored,” Marion said. “You can’t imagine how bored I am. I retired almost ten years ago and I can tell you, every day in this hell is like an eternity. Like a thousand years, every single day.”

“There are plenty of things for senior citizens to do,” Erlendur said. “Have you tried bingo?”

“Bingo!” Marion roared.

Erlendur passed on Gudlaugur’s name. He briefed Marion on the case and then said goodbye. His phone rang almost immediately afterwards.

“Yes,” Erlendur said.

“We found a note in the man’s room,” a voice said over the phone. It was the head of forensics.

“A note?”

“It says: Henry 18.30.”

“Henry? Wait a minute, when did the girl find Santa?”

“It was about seven.”

“So this Henry could have been in his room when he was killed?”

“I don’t know. And there’s another thing.”

“Go on.”

“Santa could have owned the condom himself. There was a packet of them in the pocket of his doorman’s uniform. It’s a packet of ten and three are missing.”

“Anything else?”

“No, just a wallet with a five-hundred-krona note, an old ID card and a supermarket receipt dated the day before yesterday. Oh yes, and a key ring with two keys on it.”

“What sort of keys?”

“One looks like a house key, but the other could be to a locker or something like that. It looks much smaller.”

They said goodbye and Erlendur looked around for the biotechnician, but she was gone.

Two guests at the hotel were named Henry. Henry Bartlet, American, and Henry Wapshott, British. The latter did not answer when his room was dialled, but Bartlet was in and showed surprise when it emerged that the Icelandic police wanted to talk to him. The hotel manager’s story about the old man’s heart attack had clearly got around.

Erlendur took Sigurdur Oli with him to meet Henry Bartlet; Sigurdur Oli had studied criminology in the US and was rather proud of the fact. He spoke the language like a native and although Erlendur had a particular dislike for the American drawl, he put up with it.

On the way up to Bartlet’s floor, Sigurdur Oli told Erlendur that they had talked to most of the hotel employees who were on duty when Gudlaugur was attacked. All had alibis and named people to corroborate their stories.

Bartlet was about thirty, a stockbroker from Colorado. He and his wife had seen a programme about Iceland on American breakfast television some years before and were enchanted by the dramatic scenery and the Blue Lagoon — they had since been there three times. They had decided to make a dream come true and spend Christmas and the New Year in the distant land of winter. The beautiful landscape enthralled them, but they found the prices exorbitant at the restaurants and bars in the city.