The stalks of dandelions poked up from the unkempt grass; seedheads that had already distributed their loads over his lawn waved sarcastically at him in the breeze. He would have to put down weedkiller for the dandelions next spring if he were to prevent the garden from becoming a mess.

  The vapour had stopped rising from his shoulders and he shivered. Now he was cool enough to dress. In the bathroom he applied deodorant and aftershave and looked at himself in the mirror. He looked tired, but rest wasn’t an option. A long list of jobs awaited him. He would need to discuss an examination of the summer house with Helena and expanding the team with the commissioner, and he would have to speak to Palli about co-operating with the cybercrime and electronics department so they could get information on mobile phone activity around the summer house and along the south coast, as well as checking traffic cameras in the areas, assuming there were some. He would have to liaise with Kristján – ask him to handle communication with the pathologist and to keep a close eye on Flosi; and he needed to talk to forensics about the investigation of the site where the body had been found.

  On top of that, he was going to call in at Flosi’s company, Garðvís ehf, to talk to people there about the summer house and Flosi himself. His reactions to this morning’s news had earned him a place on the list of suspects.

  63

  Helena had fallen fast asleep on the back seat of her car, parked outside the summer house, while she waited for the forensics team to arrive. She had curled up beneath a down anorak and a dreamless hour had passed in a flash. She sat up at the sound of a car in the distance and wiped the mist from the inside of the windscreen. It was the forensics van driving along the track to the summer house.

  It halted next to the police car.

  Jean-Christophe emerged, along with a young woman Helena didn’t recall having met before, and she went over to meet them. Jean-Christophe looked dubiously at the few metres of yellow crime-scene tape that Helena had strung across the track between fence posts.

  ‘I didn’t have enough tape to go right around the place,’ she apologised. ‘But there’s nobody around but us.’

  The young woman slid open the door of the van and took out white overalls, which she and Jean-Christophe quickly put on.

  ‘Why hadn’t this place been checked?’ he asked, and Helena was relieved that he’d come straight to the point – asking what everyone had to be thinking.

  ‘Because although this is the family’s summer house, it’s registered as the property of Flosi’s company. We haven’t had reason to look into the company’s property,’ Helena said. ‘Plus, they didn’t have the sense to tell us about the summer house until now.’

  Jean-Christophe grunted, pulled up his hood and tucked his foot protectors under one arm as he hung a camera from one shoulder.

  ‘Have you taken a look inside?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Helena replied. ‘Nothing to see. Everything’s in order, all spick and span. I don’t think this should take long.’

  He grunted again, pushed his glasses higher up his nose and stooped under the yellow tape. Helena watched him walk along the track towards the summer house, and then turned to his colleague.

  ‘I don’t suppose I could be in luck and you’ve brought a flask of coffee with you?’ she asked hopefully.

  The young woman shook her head.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘We were supposed to be off duty, so when the call came, we just threw everything in the van and headed over here.’

  Helena sighed. Her thoughts wavered between her initial impression: that there was nothing to be found here, so she would soon be on her way and could find breakfast somewhere on the road back to town; and the other option: that the place could provide some information relevant to the investigation – which was what she actually hoped. But that would mean the forensic team would be there for longer and she wouldn’t be able to get away. If that were the case, she would call the police in Selfoss and ask them to send them breakfast – and coffee.

  64

  Flosi’s colleague Unnur was in her sixties, but spry and deft in her movements. The thick heels of her shoes clicked as she marched rapidly across the car park outside Garðvís, and as Daníel extended a hand, he had to admire how immaculately she was turned out this early on a Sunday morning. Her hair looked as if she had come straight from a salon, and once back inside, she took off her coat and he saw that her dark-blue suit was freshly pressed.

  ‘What exactly are you looking for?’ she asked, suspicion in her eyes as they followed the officers who had accompanied Daníel up the spiral staircase leading to the office space.

  ‘We need to take all the computers Flosi works on – plus notebooks, diaries and anything else he uses on a daily basis. If there are any communication devices belonging to the company, such as work phones, then we need those as well. We would appreciate your assistance in locating all this.’

  ‘Does Flosi know about this?’ Unnur asked, her suspicious gaze now turned on Daníel.

  He smiled encouragingly.

  ‘Yes,’ Daníel said. ‘Flosi is aware of this.’

  He had informed Flosi earlier that morning that the investigation was being ratcheted up to a new level, and now there would be searches carried out at Garðvís, the summer house and his home, and in a different manner to before. Daníel wasn’t sure that Flosi appreciated what this entailed, but that didn’t matter. He had no say over where they searched or what they took away for further examination. Daníel had both warrants and manpower to carry out these searches, an additional seven officers added to his team, plus the forensics division had called in more staff.

  ‘Is this something to do with Leonid?’ Unnur asked.

  ‘Leonid?’ Daníel said. ‘Who’s Leonid?’

  The name rang a bell at the back of his mind. He was sure that Flosi had mentioned him as one of the staff.

  ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter,’ Unnur said and the suspicion in her expression was replaced by an awkward look. Her eyes dropped to the floor and then glanced around, as if looking for something that she could point to that would draw attention away from the question.

  ‘Who is Leonid?’ Daníel repeated.

  ‘Ach. Don’t mind me. Please don’t think I disapprove of foreigners, or anything like that. I’m not asking because he’s Russian. That just came to mind because nobody here really knows what he does. Even Thorbergur, who works with him in the overseas department, isn’t certain what his job is. He doesn’t really deal with anyone here except Flosi. It must be because he doesn’t speak any Icelandic and his English is pretty poor.’

  ‘I see,’ Daníel said. ‘No, this isn’t about Leonid, as far as we know. We just need to take items that concern Flosi personally.’

  She nodded and made her way behind the officers who had already gone up another narrow, steel spiral staircase that shivered and rang under their feet. Flosi’s office was clearly marked and they had already found it and were stacking up documents on his desk. The computer was in a box along with notebooks and other items.

  ‘What happens now?’ Unnur asked. ‘When will you bring all this stuff back?’

  Daníel smiled and asked a question of his own instead of answering hers:

  ‘I understand you were at work here yesterday?’

  ‘I was,’ Unnur replied. ‘I work to two o’clock on Saturdays.’

  ‘Did you notice if anyone came here to meet Flosi? Friends? Family? Customers?’

  ‘Yesterday? Nobody came to meet him yesterday,’ she replied with conviction.

  ‘You’re absolutely sure?’

  ‘Totally,’ Unnur said. ‘He came in here and asked after Sara Sól, as if he had expected her to be here. He had hardly sat down to start work when his office phone rang and soon after that he went out.’

  ‘Really?’ Daníel felt the pricking of goose bumps down his back. ‘We are talking about yesterday, Saturday?’

  ‘We are,’ Unnur said. ‘I thought it was odd, considering he has been away from work for so long, that he should rush off like that.’

  The goose bumps were accompanied by his heartbeat picking up pace and the trepidation that had been lurking inside him forced its way to the surface.

  ‘He came to work on Friday, didn’t he?’

  ‘No,’ Unnur said. ‘Yesterday was the first time I’ve seen him since Monday.’

  Daníel swallowed twice to clear the pressure he felt at his throat. The invisible hand of fear seemed to have grabbed him by the neck. Could he have been wrong? Could he have miscalculated so catastrophically?

  65

  Daníel stood in the car park outside Garðvís, waiting for a forensics team to collect the van. This was the new company van that Garðvís had bought a few weeks ago, and which didn’t yet bear the logo; and this was the van Flosi had taken the day before, after his short spell at the office. Daníel felt like standing against the wall and banging his head against the yellow-painted concrete. He should have had Flosi tailed. There should have been a plain-clothes officer in an unmarked car right behind him the whole time. He called Helena’s number and she answered on the first ring:

  ‘Helena.’

  ‘Hæ, it’s me.’ He hesitated for a moment before continuing. ‘Flosi didn’t go to work on Friday, as he said he was going to. Yesterday morning he turned up briefly, took a work van, left his own car there, brought the van back late in the day and went home in his own car.’

  ‘Fuck,’ Helena said.

  ‘Exactly,’ Daníel agreed. ‘Any news from the summer house?’

  ‘Jean-Christophe is in there with the video camera,’ she said. ‘He can’t be much longer. There was nothing to be seen when I did a walk-through. This should just be a pro forma check.’

  Daníel sighed.

  ‘Let’s hope so,’ he muttered. ‘We should certainly hope so.’

  He ended the call, swallowed a few times and cleared his throat energetically to free himself of the tightness there and to allow himself to breathe properly. Then he made a call to the station and requested that the patrol car outside Flosi’s house be replaced with an unmarked car, and for Flosi to be followed if he were to leave the house.

  He watched the forensics team haul the van onto a trailer and asked them to put covers over the wheels. He wanted samples taken from them and compared to the terrain both at the summer house and along Laxabraut leading off the south coast road where they had seen some tyre tracks running towards the sea. One of these sets of tracks had to be from the vehicle used to carry Guðrún’s body and drop her into the water below the cliff.

  When the forensics technicians were gone and the officers who had accompanied him had returned to the station with everything that had been removed from Flosi’s office, Daníel wondered if he ought to go to the station as well and wait for Helena’s conclusions from the summer house. It was Sunday, and staff had been called in to examine the van, but that would take time. From what Helena had said, they were just starting to work on the summer house. He could think anywhere – and the best place to think was at home, where the coffee was a hundred times better than what could be had at the station.

  He drove home as if in a daze, trying to dismiss the feeling that he had made a mistake, and making an effort to think logically. Emotions, guilty feelings and self-reproach served only to cast a shadow on his thoughts. He would have to reach a decision on how to approach Flosi, and there could be no ill-thought-out measures. They would need enough solid evidence to obtain an arrest warrant, which they could slap on the table if he were to react badly when asked to account for his whereabouts on Friday and Saturday.

  As soon as he stepped out of the car at home, he could hear the yells – piercing high-pitched howls of pain:

  ‘Stop! Stop, please!’

  He ran, following the sound around the corner of the house and towards Lady Gúgúlú’s garage, which had been converted into a flat.

  The doors were unlocked, so he burst in. The guy who straddled Lady Gúgúlú, delivering one punch after another, didn’t even manage to turn his head before Daníel had taken hold of him, put his arm in a lock and slammed him to the floor.

  66

  At least half an hour must have passed since Jean-Christophe had finished filming the exterior of the summer house and the plot around it before going inside, and then finally appearing in the doorway, asking for the Luminol. The young woman – who had introduced herself, but Helena had already forgotten her name – had been ready with the can and the sprayer in her hands, and made her way smartly up to the house.

  It was odd that Jean-Christophe’s flawless Icelandic pronunciation only gave way to a French accent when he used slang or a foreign word. Helena walked back and forth on the road alongside the yellow tape and giggled at his pronunciation of Luminol with a long oo-sound. She was cold and she was still sleepy, but didn’t want to close her eyes again in the car, as it wouldn’t be long before Jean-Christophe would appear and give her a decision on whether the summer house could be crossed off the list of jobs, or if it needed to be painstakingly searched.

  She didn’t have to wait long. He emerged and came towards her with a determined stride. She waited, taking in the serious look on his face. He stooped under the tape, stood up straight and looked her in the eye.

  ‘There are clear indications of blood having been cleaned away,’ he said. ‘A lot of blood.’

  He opened the forensics department’s van and took out a black bag and a pair of shoe covers, and asked her to follow him. Just short of the door he handed her the shoe covers and told her to step precisely in his footsteps. She did as he instructed and followed him to the door, where they carefully wiped their feet on a mat placed there for that purpose. Then Jean-Christophe led her inside the summer house. From the entrance hall they went into the main area, which was a combined living room and kitchen with a dining area in a conservatory to one side, although this had been closed off and the blinds pulled down.

  ‘Wait here,’ Jean-Christophe said to Helena as she stood by the kitchen units. He followed an invisible trail to the window in the north wall, pulled the curtains across and returned the same way, then reached for the switch and turned off the lights. For a moment the living room appeared completely dark, but after a while chinks of light could be made out sneaking past the edges of the curtains.

  ‘Spray,’ Jean-Christophe said to the young forensics technician.

  Helena heard the sound of the spray and immediately a large blue patch on the living-room floor glittered, its edges irregular as if liquid had flowed there, and in places there were lines across the patch as if it had been wiped. Jean-Christophe pointed to the traces that stretched beyond the illuminated patch.

  ‘These are cleaning marks,’ he said. ‘This is where blood has been wiped away.’ Then he pointed to an area where a triangular section seemed to have been cut into the patch. ‘This is where the corner of the rug was.’

  The glimmering brightness was reminiscent of the burning heart of a fire, and then it faded and died away, leaving just an impression behind, like Northern Lights that appear without warning and vanish just as quickly. Except that the emotion this light show left did not tug at the heartstrings; instead it triggered a sorrowful horror. Guðrún had died in this place.

  67

  The police officers who came to fetch the thug had been keen to take a statement and wanted to call an ambulance when they saw Lady Gúgúlú’s face. But Daníel managed to talk them down from all this as Lady Gúgúlú wouldn’t hear of a trip to A&E or having the guy charged. She threatened first that this would end their friendship and then that the hidden people would be unleashed to persecute him if he didn’t stop going on about doctors and statements.

  ‘It was just a misunderstanding,’ she said again and again. And Daníel gave way, asking the boys from the station on Flatarhraun to have the thug, now howling as he sat in handcuffs in the back of the patrol car, cool off in a cell for as long as they could get away with, and to give him as severe a talking-to as possible before releasing him. This wasn’t a satisfactory conclusion, as far as he was concerned, but he told himself that right now Lady Gúgúlú needed a friend more than she needed a policeman.

  He went back into Lady Gúgúlú’s garage, where she sat in a chair, trembling as if she had suddenly become very old. He took a stool, moved it across to her and sat down.

  ‘Look into my eyes,’ he said, watching to see if the eye that wasn’t closed by the swelling reacted. ‘Do you see me clearly, or is it misty?’

  ‘Darling, don’t worry about me,’ she said. ‘I always see you exactly the way you are.’

  ‘Headache? Faintness? Ringing in the ears?’

  ‘No, darling. I’m just fine. Apart from being skide-fuld.’

  Danish slang seemed to come as naturally as English to her.

  ‘Were you knocked unconscious at all? Spark out? Did everything go black, or did you see stars?’

  ‘I always see stars when you’re near me, darling.’

  ‘Be serious,’ Daníel said. ‘Do you think you were hit hard enough to give you concussion?’

  ‘No.’

  Daníel sighed. She probably wouldn’t tell him even if she had. He examined her throat but could see no marks there, but in any case bruising wouldn’t appear right away.

  ‘Did he have you by the throat?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m asking because there’s a danger of a stroke after being in a chokehold,’ Daníel said, but Lady Gúgúlú seemed oblivious.