“Aren’t most of them in America?” his colleague said, looking up into the sky. “At a crime conference?”

The other officer nodded. Then they stood quietly over the bones for a while until one of them turned to her.

“Where’s all the water gone?” he asked.

“There are various theories,” she said. “What are you going to do? Can I go home now?”

After exchanging glances they took down her name and thanked her, without apologising for having kept her waiting. She didn’t care. She wasn’t in a hurry. It was a beautiful day by the lake and she would have enjoyed it even more in the company of her hangover if she had not chanced upon the skeleton. She wondered whether the man in the black socks had left her flat and certainly hoped so. Looked forward to renting a video that evening and snuggling up under a blanket in front of the television.

She looked down at the bones and at the hole in the skull.

Maybe she would rent a good detective film.

The police officers notified their duty sergeant in Hafnarfjordur about the skeleton in the lake; it took them some time to explain how it could be out in the middle of the lake yet still on dry land. The sergeant phoned the chief inspector at the Police Commissioner’s office and informed him of the find, wanting to know whether or not they would take over the case.

“That’s something for the identification committee,” the chief inspector said. “I think I have the right man for the job.”

“Who’s that?”

“We sent him off on holiday — he’s got about five years” leave owing to him, I think — but I know he’ll be pleased to have something to do. He’s interested in missing persons. Likes digging things up.”

The chief inspector said goodbye, picked up the phone again and asked for Erlendur Sveinsson to be contacted and sent off to Lake Kleifarvatn with a small team of detectives.

Erlendur was absorbed in a book when the telephone rang. He had tried to shut out the relentless May sun as best he could. Thick curtains covered the living-room windows and he had closed the door to the kitchen, where there were no proper curtains. He had made it dark enough around him to have to switch on the lamp by his chair.

Erlendur knew the story well. He had read it many times before. It was an account of a journey in the autumn of 1868 from Skaftartunga along the mountain trail north of the Myrdalsjokull glacier. Several people had been travelling together to a fishing camp in Gardar, in the south-west of Iceland. One was a young man aged seventeen whose name was David. Although the men were seasoned travellers and familiar with the route, a perilous storm got up soon after they set off and they never returned. An extensive search was mounted but no trace of them was found. It was not until ten years later that their skeletons were discovered by chance beside a large sand dune, south of Kaldaklof. The men had spread blankets over themselves and were lying huddled against each other.

Erlendur looked up in the gloom and imagined the teenager in the group, fearful and worried. He had seemed to know what was in the offing before he set out; local farmers remarked how he had shared out his childhood toys among his brothers and sisters, saying that he would not be back to reclaim them.

Putting down his book, Erlendur stood up stiffly and answered the telephone. It was Elinborg.

“Will you be coming?” was the first thing she said.

“Do I have any choice?” Erlendur said. Elinborg had for many years been compiling a book of recipes which was now finally being published.

“Oh my God, I’m so nervous. What do you think people will make of it?”

“I can still barely switch on a microwave,” Erlendur said. “So maybe I’m not…”

“The publishers loved it,” Elinborg said. “And the photos of the dishes are brilliant. They commissioned a special photographer to take them. And there’s a separate chapter on Christmas food…”

“Elinborg.”

“Yes.”

“Were you calling about anything in particular?”

“A skeleton in Lake Kleifarvatn,” Elinborg said, lowering her voice when the conversation moved away from her cookery book. “I’m supposed to fetch you. The lake’s shrunk or something and they found some bones there this morning. They want you to take a look.”

“The lake’s shrunk?”

“Yes, I didn’t quite get that bit.”

Sigurdur Oli was standing by the skeleton when Erlendur and Elinborg arrived at the lake. A forensics team was on the way. The officers from Hafnarfjordur were fiddling around with yellow plastic tape to cordon off the area, but had discovered they had nothing to attach it to. Sigurdur Oli watched their efforts and thought he could understand why village-idiot jokes were always set in Hafnarfjordur.

“Aren’t you on holiday?” he asked Erlendur as he walked over across the black sand.

“Yes,” Erlendur said. “What have you been up to?”

“Same old,” Sigurdur Oli said in English. He looked up at the road where a large jeep from one of the TV stations was parking at the roadside. “They sent her home,” he said with a nod at the policemen from Hafnarfjordur. “The woman who found the bones. She was taking some measurements here. We can ask her afterwards why the lake’s dried up. Under normal circumstances we ought to be up to our necks on this spot.”

“Is your shoulder all right?”

“Yes. How’s Eva Lind doing?”

“She hasn’t done a runner yet,” Erlendur said. “I think she regrets the whole business, but I’m not really sure.”

He knelt down and examined the exposed part of the skeleton. He put his finger in the hole in the skull and rubbed one of the ribs.

“He’s been hit over the head,” he said and stood up again.

“That’s rather obvious,” Elinborg said sarcastically. “If it is a he,” she added.

“Rather like a fight, isn’t it?” Sigurdur Oli said. “The hole’s just above the right temple. Maybe it only took one good punch.”

“We can’t rule out that he was alone on a boat here and fell against the side,” Erlendur said, looking at Elinborg. “That tone of yours, Elinborg, is that the style you use in your cookery book?”

“Of course, the smashed piece of bone would have been washed away a long time ago,” she said, ignoring his question.

“We need to dig out the bones,” Sigurdur Oli said. “When do forensics get here?”

Erlendur saw more cars pulling up by the roadside and presumed that word about the discovery of the skeleton had reached the newsdesks.

“Won’t they have to put up a tent?” he said, still eyeing the road.

“Yes,” Sigurdur Oli said. “They’re bound to bring one.”

“You mean he was fishing on the lake alone?” Elinborg asked.

“No, that’s just one possibility,” Erlendur said.

“But what if someone hit him?”

“Then it wasn’t an accident,” Sigurdur Oli said.

“We don’t know what happened,” Erlendur said. “Maybe someone hit him. Maybe he was out fishing with someone who suddenly produced a hammer. Maybe there were only the two of them. Maybe they were three, five.”

“Or,” Sigurdur Oli chipped in, “he was hit over the head in the city and brought out to the lake to dispose of his body.”

“How could they have made him sink?” Elinborg said. “You need something to weight a body down in the water.”

“Is it an adult?” Sigurdur Oli said.

“Tell them to keep their distance,” Erlendur said as he watched the reporters clambering down to the lake bed from the road. A light aircraft approached from the direction of Reykjavik and flew low over the lake; they could see someone holding a camera.

Sigurdur Oli went over to the reporters. Erlendur walked down to the lake. The ripples lapped lazily against the sand as he watched the afternoon sun glittering on the water’s surface and wondered what was happening. Was the lake draining through the actions of man or was it nature at work? It was as if the lake itself wanted to uncover a crime. Did it conceal more misdeeds where it was deeper and still dark and calm?