“The remarkable thing about it was that it wasn’t big,” Hermann said. “It wasn’t a monster like most American cars. Like my Chrysler. The Falcon was small and compact and good to drive. Not a luxury car at all. Far from it.”

The current owner turned out to be a widow a few years older than Erlendur. She lived in Kopavogur. Her husband, a furniture maker with a fad for cars, had died of a heart attack a few years before.

“It was in good condition,” she said, opening the garage for Erlendur, who was unsure whether she was talking about the car or her husband’s heart. The car was covered with a thick canvas sheet which Erlendur asked if he could remove. The woman nodded.

“My husband took a great deal of care over that car,” she said in a weak voice. “He spent all his time out here. Bought really expensive parts for it. Travelled all over the place to find them.”

“Did he ever drive it?” Erlendur asked as he struggled to untie a knot.

“Only around the block,” the woman said. “It looks nice but my boys aren’t interested in it and they haven’t managed to sell it. There aren’t many veteran-car enthusiasts these days. My husband was going to put plates on it when he died. He died in his workshop. He used to work alone and when he didn’t come home for dinner and wouldn’t answer the phone I sent my son round; he found him lying on the floor.”

“That must have been difficult,” Erlendur said.

“There’s heart trouble in his family,” the woman said. “His mother went that way and so did his cousin.”

She watched Erlendur fiddling with the canvas. She did not give the impression of missing her husband much. Perhaps she had overcome her grief and was trying to make a new start.

“What is it with this car, anyway?” she asked.

She had asked the same question when Erlendur telephoned and he could still not find a way to tell her why he was interested in the car without saying what the case involved. He wanted to avoid going into details. Not say too much for the time being. He hardly knew why he was chasing after the car, or whether it would prove useful.

“It was once connected with a police matter,” Erlendur said reluctantly. “I just wanted to know if it was still around, in one piece.”

“Was it a famous case?” she asked.

“No, not at all. Not famous in the least,” Erlendur said.

“Do you want to buy it or…?” the woman asked.

“No,” Erlendur said. “I don’t want to buy it. Old cars don’t interest me as such.”

“As I say, it’s in good condition. Valdi, my husband, said the main trouble was the underseal. It had gone rusty and he had to fix it. Otherwise it was all right. Valdi stripped the engine down, scrubbed every bit of it and bought new parts if he needed them.”

She paused.

“He didn’t mind spending money on the car,” she said eventually. “Never bought me anything. But men are like that.”

Erlendur tugged at the sheet, which slipped off the car and onto the floor. For a moment he stood looking along the beautiful sleek lines of the Ford Falcon that had been owned by the man who had disappeared outside the coach station. He knelt down beside one of the front wheels. Assuming that the hubcap was missing when the car was discovered, he wondered where it could possibly have ended up.

His mobile rang in his pocket. It was forensics with information about the Russian equipment in Kleifarvatn. Skipping all the formalities, the head of forensics told him that the device did not appear to have been functional when it was put in the lake.

“Oh?” Erlendur said.

“Yes,” the head of forensics said. “It was certainly useless before it went into the water. The lake bed is porous sand and the contents of the container are too damaged to be explained by it having lain in water. It wasn’t working when it got there.”

“What does that tell us?” Erlendur asked.

“Don’t have the foggiest,” the head of forensics said.

The couple walked along the pavement, the man slightly ahead of the woman. It was a glorious spring evening. Rays of sunshine fell on the surface of the sea and in the distance showers of rain tumbled down. It was as if the couple were impervious to the evening’s beauty. They strode forward, the man seemingly agitated. He talked incessantly. His wife followed silently, trying not to be left behind.

He watched them pass his window, looked at the evening sun and thought back to when he was young and the world was beginning to become so infinitely complex and unmanageable.

When the tragedy began.

He completed his first year at the university with flying colours and went back to Iceland in the summer. During the vacation he worked for the party newspaper, writing articles about the reconstruction of Leipzig. At meetings he described being a student there and discussed Iceland’s historical and cultural links with the city. He met leading party members. They had big plans for him. He looked forward to going back. He felt he had a role to play, perhaps a greater one than others. It was said that he was highly promising.

That autumn he returned to East Germany; his second Christmas at the residence was approaching. The Icelanders looked forward to it because some would be sent food parcels from home: traditional Icelandic Christmas delicacies such as smoked lamb, salted fish, dried fish, confectionery, even books too. Karl had already received his parcel and when he began boiling a huge leg of lamb from Hunavatnssysla where his uncle was a farmer the aroma filled the old villa. In the box there was also a bottle of Icelandic schnapps, which Emil requisitioned.

Only Rut could afford to go home to Iceland for Christmas. She was also the only one who felt seriously homesick after she returned from summer vacation, and when she left for the Christmas break some said she might not be back. The old villa was emptier than usual because most of the German students had gone home, as had some of the Eastern Europeans who were permitted to travel and were entitled to cheap rail transport.

So it was only a small group that gathered in the kitchen around the leg of smoked lamb and the bottle of schnapps that Emil had placed in the middle of the table. Two Swedish students had supplied potatoes, others brought red cabbage and Karl had somehow managed to produce a decent white sauce for the meat. Lothar Weiser, the liaison who had especially befriended the Icelanders, dropped by and was invited to join the feast. They all liked Lothar. He was talkative and entertaining. He seemed profoundly interested in politics and sometimes probed them for their views on the university, Leipzig, the German Democratic Republic, First Secretary Walter Ulbricht and his planned economy. He wondered whether they thought Ulbricht was too closely aligned to the Soviet government, and asked repeatedly about the events in Hungary and the American capitalists” attempts to drive a wedge into its friendship with the Soviet Union through their radio broadcasts and endless anticommunist propaganda. In particular he felt that young people were too gullible towards the propaganda and blind to the real intentions of the Western capitalist governments.

“Can’t we just have a bit of fun?” Karl said when Lothar began talking about Ulbricht, and downed a shot of spirit. Grimacing terribly, he said that he had never liked Icelandic schnapps.

“Ja, ja, naturlich,” Lothar laughed. “Enough of politics.”

He spoke Icelandic, which he said he had learned in Germany, and they thought he must be a linguistic genius because he spoke the language almost as well as they did, without ever having visited the country. When they asked how he had gained such a command of it he said he had listened to recordings and radio broadcasts. Nothing amused them more than when he sang old lullabies.