“Of course, you always work weekends,” she said, adding that she worked in the kitchen at the City Hospital in Fossvogur.

“Yes, things are often busy,” he said, taking care not to answer her in too much detail. He could have taken this weekend off. But the Falcon case had piqued his curiosity and he felt a strange, pressing need to get to the bottom of it. He did not know why. Perhaps for the sake of the woman sitting opposite him who had done menial work all her life, who still lived alone and whose weary expression reflected how life had passed her by. It was just as if she thought that the man she had once loved would come back to her, as he had before, kiss her, tell her about his day at work and ask how she had been doing.

“The last time we came you said you didn’t believe that another woman was involved,” he said cautiously.

On the way to see her, he had had second thoughts. He did not want to ruin her memories. He did not want to destroy anything she clung to. He had seen that happen so often before. When they arrived at the home of a criminal whose wife just stared at them, unable to believe her own eyes and ears. The children behind her. Her fortress crumbling all around her. My husband! Selling drugs? You must be mad!

“Why are you asking about that?” the woman said, sitting in her chair. “Do you know more than I do? Have you found out something? Have you uncovered something new?”

“No, nothing,” Erlendur said, flinching inwardly when he sensed the eagerness in her voice. He described his visit to Haraldur and how he had located the Falcon, still in good shape and stored away in a garage in Kopavogur. He also told her that he had visited an abandoned farm near Mosfellsbaer. Her partner’s disappearance, however, remained as much a mystery as ever.

“You said you had no photographs of him, or of you together,” he said.

“No, that’s right,” Asta said. “We’d known each other for such a short time.”

“So no photograph ever appeared in the papers or on television when he was declared missing?”

“No, but they gave a detailed description. They were going to use the photo from his driving licence. They said they always kept copies of licences, but then they couldn’t find it. Like he hadn’t handed it in, or they’d mislaid it.”

“Did you ever see his driving licence?”

“Driving licence? No, not that I remember. Why were you asking about another woman?”

The question was delivered in a harder tone, more insistent. Erlendur hesitated before he opened the door on what, to her mind, would surely be hell itself. Maybe he had proceeded too quickly. Certain points needed closer scrutiny. Maybe he should wait.

“There are instances of men who leave their women without saying goodbye and start a new life,” he said.

“A new life?” she said, as if the concept was beyond her comprehension.

“Yes,” he said. “Even here in Iceland. People think that everyone knows everyone else, but that’s a long way from the truth. There are plenty of towns and villages that few people ever visit, except perhaps at the height of summer, maybe not even then. In the old days they were even more isolated than today — some were even half cut-off. Transportation was much worse then.”

“I don’t follow,” she said. “What are you getting at?”

“I just wanted to know if you’d ever contemplated that possibility.”

“What possibility?”

“That he got on a coach and went home,” Erlendur said.

He watched her trying to fathom the unfathomable.

“What are you talking about?” she groaned. “Home? Home where? What do you mean?”

He could see that he had overstepped the mark. That despite all the years that had gone by since the man disappeared from her life, an unhealed wound still remained, fresh and open. He wished he had not gone so far. He should not have approached her at such an early stage. Without having anything more tangible than his own fantasies and an empty car outside the coach station.

“It’s just one of the hypotheses,” he said in an effort to cushion the impact of his words. “Of course, Iceland’s too small for anything like that,” he hurried to say. “It’s just an idea, with no real foundation.”

Erlendur had spent a long time wondering what could possibly have happened if the man had not committed suicide. When the notion of another woman began to take root in his mind he started losing sleep. At first the hypothesis could not have been simpler: on his travels around Iceland the salesman had met all sorts of people from different walks of life: farmers, hotel staff, residents of towns and fishing villages, women. Conceivably he had found a girlfriend on one of his trips and in time came to prefer her to the one in Reykjavik, but lacked the courage to tell her so.

The more Erlendur thought about the matter, the more he tended to believe that, if another woman was involved, the man must have had a stronger motive to make himself disappear; he had started to think about a word that entered his mind outside the abandoned farm in Mosfellsbaer that had reminded him of his own house in east Iceland.

Home.

They had discussed this at the office. What if they reversed the paradigm? What if the woman facing him now had been Leopold’s girlfriend in Reykjavik, but he had a family somewhere else? What if he had decided to put an end to the dilemma he had got himself into, and settled for going home?

He sketched for the woman the broad outlines of these ideas and noticed how a dark cloud gradually descended over her.

“He wasn’t in any trouble,” she said. “That’s just nonsense you’re coming out with. How could you think of such a thing? Talking about the man like that.”

“His name isn’t very common,” Erlendur said. “There are only a handful of men with that name in the whole country. Leopold. You didn’t know his ID number. You have very few of his personal belongings.”

Erlendur fell silent. He remembered that Niels had kept from her the indications that Leopold had not used his real name. That he had tricked her and claimed to be someone he was not. Niels had not told Asta about these suspicions because he felt sorry for her. Now, Erlendur understood what he meant.

“Perhaps he didn’t use his real name,” he said. “Did that ever occur to you? He was not officially registered under that name. He can’t be found in the records.”

“Someone from the police called me,” the woman said angrily. “Later. Much later. By the name of Briem or something like that. Told me about your theory that Leopold might not have been who he claimed to be. Said I should have been told immediately, but that there had been a delay. I’ve heard your ideas and they’re ridiculous. Leopold would never have sailed under a false flag. Never.”

Erlendur said nothing.

“You’re trying to tell me he might have had a family that he went back to. That I was only his fiancee in the city? What kind of rubbish is that?”

“What do you know about this man?” Erlendur persisted. “What do you really know about him? Is it very much?”

“Don’t talk like that,” she said. “Please don’t put such stupid notions to me. You can keep your opinions to yourself. I’m not interested in hearing them.”

Asta stopped talking and stared at him.

“I’m not—” Erlendur began, but she interrupted him.

“Do you mean he’s still alive? Is that what you’re saying? That he’s still alive? Living in some village?”

“No,” Erlendur said. “I’m not saying that. I just want to explore that possibility with you. None of what I’ve been saying is any more than guesswork. There needn’t be any grounds for it, and at the moment there are no grounds for it. I only wanted to know if you could recall anything that might give us reason for supposing so. That’s all. I’m not saying anything is the case because I don’t know anything is the case.”

“You’re just talking rubbish,” she said. “As if he’d just been fooling around with me. Why do I have to listen to this?!”