‘I could well have hit her on the head,’ Flosi muttered, his eyes on the table in front of him.

  ‘With what, Flosi?’ Helena asked. ‘What did you hit her with?’

  ‘I don’t remember. Something I picked up. The thing you found in the heather. A hammer?’

  ‘Or a jemmy?’

  ‘Yes, could be.’

  ‘Which was it,’ Helena asked. ‘Jemmy or hammer?’

  ‘It was a jemmy,’ Flosi said. ‘The jemmy from the toolbox. I remember now.’

  Daníel looked disbelievingly at Flosi, and stood up.

  ‘It’s sad that you’re such a lousy liar, Flosi,’ he said, and left the room.

  ‘We’ll break for lunch,’ Helena said. She switched off the recording and followed Daníel out of the room.

  84

  Flosi sat at the table in the deserted interview room and tried to collect his thoughts. They seemed to flutter around him, and try as he might to chase them, the result was always the same anguish. The lawyer had gone to fetch them some lunch and had asked Flosi what he wanted, but he hadn’t been able to reply.

  He didn’t care what he had to eat, or if there was anything at all. Right now all he wanted was relief from the pain. He who had always been so fortunate, sailing through life with a breeze of good luck behind him – now he had crashed into a disaster that was easily as bad as life had been good before.

  He closed his eyes and lay forward across the table. He rested his cheek on the cold surface and allowed his thoughts to drift back to Friday, the last day he had lived without pain. As things looked right now, it might turn out to be the last pain-free day of his life. Guðrún had been no trouble. She had just opened the door and asked him to come inside the summer house, where she had clearly been for a while, more than likely since her disappearance.

  ‘You figured me out,’ she said, wearing the expression that he had always found so disarming. It was the look that told him she knew she had overstepped a limit.

  He hadn’t been able to be angry. He hadn’t exploded with fury and yelled at her as he had been preparing to do the whole time he had been driving into the countryside east of Reykjavík, and for a while before that – ever since Daníel and Áróra had told him the likelihood was that Guðrún had staged her own abduction. The night before had been a sleepless one; he had shivered with fury, waiting for the morning so he could pretend to go to work, when in fact he had driven eastwards along the south coast road to check his hunch that Guðrún had hidden away in the summer house.

  She had stood there with that naughty-girl expression on her face, and he had melted on the spot. The anxiety of the last few days had been building up into a knot deep in his belly, and he had broken down and told her how much he loved her, that he regretted not having appreciated her and the life they had built together. She had shed tears too and said that she had no longer been able to trust him once she knew another woman was expecting his child, that she had stumbled across the scan image in his email. That was her reason for a measure as desperate as staging her own kidnapping. She knew that deep inside he loved her and would do anything to protect her from harm. On the other hand, divorces tended to be bitter, hate-filled affairs, and she was concerned that she would come out of it badly.

  There and then he forgave her and she forgave him, and they made love right there on the carpet with a passion that they both thought had been forgotten long ago, and afterwards she heated soup for them both. It was one of those wonderfully thick vegetable soups that she made with such skill. After lunch she had filled the hot tub and they had sat in it, surrounded by autumn colours, and she had told him that she would remain at his side whatever happened with the child. He could be a weekend dad and she would be a good step-mother, and together they could make a success of its upbringing.

  They had decided that Guðrún would call Sigurlaug and tell her not to collect the ransom, while Guðrún would take a taxi to town and appear at home on Monday, where she would give the police some vague answers. The idea was that she would be adamant that she had been abducted, but without giving any clear descriptions of the kidnappers. She would say that she had been drugged the whole time. Her story would be that they had approached and bundled her into a car as she had walked to Fjarðarkaup. After that they must have gone to the house to leave the ransom demand and make something of a mess. Maybe it wasn’t entirely convincing, but if she stuck to her guns there would be no way for the police to prosecute her for staging her own abduction. As long as she kept to her story, there was no evidence that she had kidnapped herself.

  Driving back to town, Flosi had been happier than he remembered ever having been. The heavy grey clouds overhead did nothing to dampen the beauty of the autumn colours of the heaths that were so unbelievably bright, in spite of the gloom.

  The door of the interview room opened, and Helena put her head inside.

  ‘Would you like coffee or a soft drink while you wait for lunch, Flosi?’ she asked, and he was about to reply when he caught sight of his daughter standing behind her.

  ‘Sara,’ he called out, and Sara Sól turned and saw him, her jaw dropping in surprise, and her lips said a silent Dad.

  But then Helena quickly stepped inside and shut the door.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘You’re in custody and aren’t to see anyone.’

  ‘What’s my daughter doing here?’ Flosi asked, feeling the desperation swell inside him.

  ‘There’s a lawyer with her,’ Helena said. ‘Nothing to worry about.’

  ‘Lawyer?’ Flosi felt a heavy cloud of darkness settle over him. ‘Why would she need a lawyer?’

  Helena sighed and perched on the chair opposite him, looking at him as if he were an obtuse child.

  ‘Daníel doesn’t believe your confession,’ she said. ‘He thinks you could be shielding your daughter so he’s going to question her. He thinks that you could be shouldering the guilt for her.’

  A blackness closed in on Flosi and he felt himself struggling for breath. He had reached his limit and had sunk as deep as was possible in misfortune. He couldn’t continue.

  ‘Let Sara Sól go,’ he gasped, aware of the choking sob in his own voice. ‘It was Bergrós. It was Bergrós who murdered Guðrún.’

  85

  Daníel hadn’t felt comfortable playing on Flosi’s paternal instincts, but all the same, it had worked. His suspicion had been that Flosi was shielding Leonid or some other shady figures, but it had turned out he was playing the knight in shining armour to protect his mistress. He had needed some prompting to abandon such a ridiculous idea. Nobody should take the blame for someone else in such a case.

  The guilty party, Bergrós, sat hunched at the interview room table. She had confessed as soon as she had been arrested, and had continued to confess her crime to everyone she encountered at the station, including the officer who brought her a soft drink, Helena, who sat with her and waited, and the lawyer Flosi arranged to represent her. There was no doubt that there was a brooding guilt that she needed to relieve herself of, maybe in some kind of resignation at what she had done. Now that Daníel entered the room, she trembled and wept tears that fell to the table and nodded her head constantly, muttering to herself.

  ‘It was me. I did it. I’m a murderer.’

  Daníel had seldom seen guilt make such a clear appearance. Every cell in Bergrós’ body seemed to be anguished.

  Helena read out the time and date, confirmed the names and ID numbers of those present, went over the reason for her statement being taken, and stressed that Bergrós should ensure that her account was truthful and accurate.

  ‘Well, Bergrós,’ Daníel said, once the formalities had been concluded, ‘Flosi did everything he could to shoulder your guilt. He confessed to murder to protect you.’

  Bergrós sniffed.

  ‘I didn’t ask him to,’ she said. ‘He did that of his own accord because he loves me.’

  Daníel nodded and tried to catch her eye, but she looked down, avoiding his gaze.

  ‘Flosi is quite a gentleman and does his best to protect the women in his life,’ he agreed, glancing at Helena to let her know it was time she spoke. She could be the bad cop.

  ‘Flosi was prepared to shoulder the guilt for murdering the wife he loved, to protect you, and you—’

  Helena got no further as Bergrós broke in.

  ‘He’d long ago fallen out of love with Guðrún,’ she hissed, and her green eyes flashed. She glared at Helena, shifting to sit upright in her chair, so Daníel could finally take a proper look at her face. Her upper lip trembled slightly, tiny quivers that seemed to be involuntary.

  ‘How did you know that Guðrún was at the summer house?’ Daníel asked in his gentle tone so that Bergrós turned to him in surprise, the wind taken out of her sails – exactly his intention.

  ‘I … I just knew,’ she said, and Daníel could have sworn he saw her cheeks flush a little red behind the dark freckles.

  ‘You were going to let him take the blame,’ Helena said. ‘That tells us that maybe you don’t love him as much as he loves you.’

  Bergrós stared at Helena as if wishing that looks could cut through skin and bone.

  ‘I had no idea that he was going to confess to the whole thing. He must have been thinking of our child!’ she snapped. ‘He doesn’t want his baby to be born in prison.’

  ‘How did you know that Guðrún was at the summer house?’ Daníel repeated. Flosi had already denied that he had ever told Bergrós about it.

  Bergrós looked sideways at Daníel, as if he were interrupting a serious conversation between herself and Helena.

  ‘I just guessed,’ she said, almost absently, eyes still fixed on Helena.

  ‘Flosi was prepared to take the blame because you told him it had been an accident,’ Helena said, unblinking as she held Bergrós’ eye. ‘You told him that you had pushed her and that she had fallen and knocked her head against something.’

  Helena opened a picture on her tablet and turned it towards Bergrós. The image was of Guðrún’s body lying on a steel table, her head turned to one side to show the gaping wound above her ear. Bergrós turned away, looking down at the table, and Helena slid the tablet across to her, forcing her to face up to what she had done.

  ‘She didn’t fall, did she?’ Helena continued. ‘You beat her around the head, again and again and again, until she was dead.’

  Bergrós shut her eyes, as if trying to avoid the picture on the tablet screen.

  ‘What made you go to the summer house?’ Daníel asked yet again in his measured tone.

  Bergrós’ lawyer sighed.

  ‘Can’t we move on from this line of questioning?’ he said. ‘My client has confessed and is prepared to co-operate.’

  Daníel ignored him.

  ‘Why go to the summer house, Bergrós? What prompted you to do that? How did you know about the summer house?’

  Bergrós opened her eyes and glanced from Helena and back to Daníel in confused anger.

  ‘I followed Flosi, OK? What was I supposed to do? He didn’t answer messages or emails and sent someone who works for him to tell me to keep away, that he couldn’t talk to me because of something to do with Guðrún. What was I meant to think? Was I supposed to let him just ghost me and our baby?’

  ‘So you followed him. Where from? His house in Hafnarfjörður?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Bergrós’ anger seemed to have ebbed away and Daníel leaned forward to establish eye contact again.

  ‘Talk to us, Bergrós. Tell us how all this worked out. You followed Flosi on Friday? He went out early that day and was going to go to work.’

  ‘He didn’t go to work,’ Bergrós said. ‘I was outside early and I was going to be ready to speak to him face to face, because he wasn’t answering the phone or my messages, and I couldn’t go to his house because of his wife. Guðrún.’

  ‘So at that point you believed that Guðrún was at home at their house in Hafnarfjörður?’

  ‘Yes. I was going to tail Flosi and talk to him if he stopped somewhere to buy pastries for the staff – he does that sometimes. Or I was going to catch him outside his work. I wanted a proper explanation for why he was ghosting me, and to find out if we were still OK together.’

  ‘So it was a surprise when he didn’t drive to work?’

  ‘Yes,’ Bergrós said. ‘When I saw he was heading eastwards out of the city I considered turning around, thought this might be some business trip to a builder’s merchant somewhere. But I decided to keep going and followed him, expecting that he’d stop at a kiosk sooner or later and I’d be able to talk to him. Maybe we could sit down and talk over a coffee.’

  Bergrós fell silent and looked down at her hands, and Daníel was relieved that he and Helena had worked together for long enough that she knew as well as he did that once a suspect had begun a narrative, silence could serve better than a question.

  ‘When we drove down from the Threnglsin Pass, quite a way outside Thorlákshöfn he turned off onto some track, up to a summer house, got out of the car and went inside.’

  ‘He wasn’t aware of being followed?’ Daníel asked cautiously.

  Bergrós shook her head.

  ‘No. I stopped by the road a good way away and waited. I thought he might be meeting someone for work, so after a couple of hours, the usual time for a meeting, I turned around and parked by the main road, where there are road works, and walked up to the summer house. I went behind it and saw Flosi around the back, in the hot tub. With his wife.’

  Her final few words were just a whisper, but in a voice so high and thin that it could have been a child’s. Daníel waited, and so did Helena, and the tension in the air was almost palpable. They really were about to conclude this one.

  ‘Something happened inside me,’ Bergrós said. ‘Seeing him there with her in the tub. They were naked, kissing, stroking each other,’ she said, her voice cracking and tears running down her cheeks. The lawyer reached for a tissue, took one from the box and handed it to Bergrós. ‘So when Flosi left…’ she sniffed, and got no further, burying her face in her hands.

  ‘You decided to go inside and kill Guðrún?’ Helena said bluntly.

  ‘No. It wasn’t like that!’ Bergrós looked up and put a hand on her belly. ‘When Flosi left, I was going to follow him and speak to him, but somehow I couldn’t. I went home. I was just in complete shock. I couldn’t sleep that night and didn’t know what to do. So in the morning I went back that way to the summer house to talk to Guðrún. I wanted to show her the bump, show her that Flosi would be happier with me. He’s always longed for another child.’

  ‘And what?’ Daníel asked quietly.

  ‘She knew about the pregnancy. She knew about me. She said that she and Flosi had made a plan. They would be weekend parents. She even offered for them to have custody of the baby and I could be a weekend mummy. The fucking spoilt bitch thinking she could take my baby away! So I hit her. With some metal thing that was next to the fireplace.’

  ‘The poker,’ Helena murmured.

  ‘Yes. Whatever it’s called,’ Bergrós said.

  86

  ‘Your lawyer’s obviously on the ball,’ Helena said as Sirra got into her car outside the police station.’ If they consider there’s no reason to keep you in custody.’

  ‘He said that my part in all this was actually resolved,’ Sirra said. ‘It’s just as well. Another night in that cell would have killed me. I can hardly believe you think it’s acceptable for people to be locked away in there for days on end.’

  ‘People are rarely there for more than one night. Any longer than that and you would have been transferred to the lovely Hótel Hólmsheiði.’

  Helena smiled, and Sirra extended a hand, placed it on Helena’s forearm and squeezed.

  ‘Thank you for everything,’ she said.

  ‘You mean for having you arrested?’

  ‘No. For talking to me. For listening. And for giving me a lift home.’

  Helena turned out onto Sæbraut, put her foot down, and heard Sirra sigh in the seat next to her.

  ‘It’s so good to see the sea,’ she said. ‘It’s as if your thoughts become smaller when you’re locked in such a tiny cell.’

  She gazed out of the window and said no more until they were at Laugarnes.

  ‘Was it Flosi?’ she asked hesitatingly, as if she didn’t want to hear the reply.

  ‘No,’ Helena said. ‘It was Bergrós, the mother of Flosi’s unborn child.’

  ‘His piece on the side?’

  ‘Yes. She killed Guðrún at the summer house, then called Flosi, and he came and helped her clean up and dispose of the body.’ Helena bit her tongue as she heard Sirra wince. It was as if she had done her physical harm. ‘I’m so sorry, Sirra,’ she said. ‘You have all my sympathy.’

  Sirra nodded and stared numbly straight ahead until they were outside her place in Laugardalur.

  ‘But why?’ she asked as the car rolled to a halt. ‘It seems so pointless to … kill Guðrún. Flosi was going to leave her anyway and get together with the mistress. Why murder Guðrún, who hadn’t done her any harm?’

  ‘It seems to have been envy,’ Helena said. ‘Flosi and Guðrún were reconciled. Bergrós saw them together and freaked out.’

  ‘Reconciled? But…’ Sirra had been taken by surprise. ‘Had Flosi figured out the plot and the staged kidnapping?’

  ‘That’s it,’ Helena said. ‘They were going to have Guðrún make an appearance, and hoped that it would all fizzle out. Guðrún was going to phone you and let you know not to fetch the cash. But she died before she could make the call.’

  Sirra wiped tears from her eyes with the back of her hand.