He had to confess that his dwindling interest in Guðrún over the past few months had meant that he had practically stopped keeping an eye on her, an example of which was that he hadn’t checked her account for a long time. He’d had no idea that she had been paying these large amounts to her friend Sigurlaug. The police had their suspicions about this, but it could hardly be related to the abduction. There had to be some other explanation. Sigurlaug had to be investing the money for Guðrún, or something like that.

  All this gave Flosi a chill of discomfort. Guðrún told him everything. She even chattered about flowers and handicrafts, stuff he didn’t want to hear, so he was astonished that she had managed to keep her mouth shut about handing her friend around three million krónur. Could it be that Guðrún had kept part of her life a secret from him, just as he had from her, with Bergrós?

  The thought had just formed in his mind when the phone rang and without answering it, he knew it would be Bergrós. He knew the cops would be listening, but to hell with them. They knew by now that he had a mistress, and they could hardly suspect that Bergrós could have anything to do with it. That would be ridiculous.

  ‘Flosi,’ she said the instant he replied, and he could hear she was in tears.

  ‘There, there, Bergrós,’ he said. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she almost screamed down the phone, and her voice took on the piercing tone that was the only unattractive thing about her. ‘The matter is that you’ve shut me out, you’re ignoring me. I’m going crazy wondering what you’re doing, why you don’t come and see me, why you don’t call.’

  ‘I sent Áróra to explain everything to you—’

  He didn’t manage to finish the sentence before she cut in and he instinctively moved the receiver a little away from his ear.

  ‘Who the hell is this Áróra, and why can’t you tell me properly what’s going on?’

  ‘That’s just it, my dear Bergrós,’ he said. ‘I can’t explain precisely what’s going on, but this is a very serious matter and I have to say that I need some space to re-evaluate my life. Hopefully this will all be over in a few days and then we can meet and talk things over.’

  The silence on the phone took him by surprise, considering how upset she had been a moment ago. Then he heard her sniff and realised she was still crying.

  He could hear it more clearly as she spoke again. The piercing quality in her voice had disappeared, replaced by a tone that was somewhere between resignation and despair, which stung him deeply.

  ‘If you’re busy re-evaluating your life then no doubt you’re re-evaluating our relationship. And what happens to our baby then? The child that’s growing inside me?’

  THURSDAY

  32

  Áróra’s eyes were sore from lack of sleep as the aircraft took off, giving her a view over Reykjanes. It was getting light, and as the aircraft rose higher in the sky she noticed more and more tracks cutting through the lava fields below like a complex network of arteries that had formed completely organically. She wondered how many of these roads she had driven along, checked carefully, the drone flying behind her as it filmed a wide strip of lava to each side, in a search that was probably entirely hopeless. Deep inside, she didn’t believe that she would one day actually stumble across her sister’s remains, which Ísafold’s boyfriend Björn had hidden before absconding to Canada. But the police hadn’t come up with any better theories, plus she didn’t have any brighter ideas of her own, so she had spent the summer going up and down these tracks around the city, and had expanded her search to the Reykjanes area. There were still many of these rutted tracks to explore, and she felt again the feeling of urgency that had powered her this far. There was so much left to check, and she was wasting time on this journey when she could be searching for her sister. Michael could have found another courier to fetch Flosi’s euros, but nobody else would search for her sister. But was that really true? She felt a warm glow as she thought back to the material she had seen on Daníel’s desk. Like her, he was still pondering what had become of Ísafold.

  Once the aircraft was over the sea, she pulled down the window shade and closed her eyes. Leaving Iceland was more of a wrench than she had expected. Conflicted emotions drifted through her thoughts, and she attempted to pin them down. It wasn’t exactly confusion that she felt, rather a kind of shock that came with leaving Iceland. This was a country of which she had never been all that fond, but which attracted her like a magnet. Áróra took a long breath and let this feeling settle in her belly, where it grew and became clearer. It wasn’t anxiety, nor a need to reach a conclusion. The feeling that took root inside her and which swelled as Iceland became more distant was a guilt-drenched sorrow. She had failed her sister. She had given up on persuading her to leave Björn, to leave the violence. She had failed to respond to her call for help. It was a mistake that was difficult to live with. All she could do now was find her sister and ensure that she was buried respectably. That was what she was determined to do, regardless of how long it might take or what it might cost.

  33

  Daníel had admonished Flosi for keeping important information to himself. He stressed how vital it was to be open, however annoying it might be.

  This was the reason he wanted to be present in the house, close to Flosi; to be on the scene as the heavy protective layer on the surface gradually melted away and the secrets below floated free. This was part of every police investigation. People hid things, and lied, and took decisions themselves, deciding that certain parts of their lives had no bearing on the crime, instead of telling the whole story and leaving the police to decide what might or might not matter.

  This was just the kind of thing that mattered. Flosi expecting a child with another woman opened a whole new dimension to the case.

  ‘Think hard, Flosi,’ Daníel said. ‘Is there any possibility that Guðrún knows that another woman is expecting your child?’

  Flosi appeared not to consider the question for even a single moment before making a reply – he had begun to shake his head even before Daníel had finished speaking.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘We’ve kept the relationship totally secret. I even have Bergrós’ number stored in my phone under a false name, look.’ He handed his phone to Daníel, ‘Leonid’ there on the screen. ‘Leonid works for me in the export department, and I’ve told him never to call me. It’s such a trial to understand what he’s saying through that Russian accent, y’see, so he’ll never call. I have his number stored simply as L, just in case I need to get hold of him, and I use his full name as an alias for Bergrós.’

  Flosi seemed almost proud of this subterfuge, as if this alias could be enough to prevent Guðrún from ever finding out about his infidelity. Daníel spun the phone round in his hand, tapped the messaging app, and opened a string of messages from ‘Leonid’. He scrolled through them and opened one that had been sent a month before.

  Longing to see you, my darling, the message read. Daníel handed the phone back with the text showing on the screen.

  ‘It only takes two clicks to find that,’ he said, but Flosi still shook his head.

  ‘Guðrún never looked carefully at my phone,’ he said. But then he seemed to begin to doubt himself; Daníel could see beads of sweat forming on his forehead. ‘You don’t think that…’ he muttered, as if to himself. ‘You don’t think Guðrún could have known about Bergrós? You don’t think this could be linked to the abduction?’

  Daníel wanted to say something encouraging to Flosi, something that would quell the churning desperation behind his controlled appearance, which threatened to burst out at any moment. Instead he turned the conversation elsewhere, to practical matters.

  ‘Would you be so kind as to call Sigurlaug, Guðrún’s friend, and ask her to drop by this afernoon as you need to speak to her privately.’ Flosi sat up straight on the sofa, appearing relieved to have a task to carry out, something to concentrate on. ‘And not a word to her on the phone about Guðrún’s disappearance,’ Daníel added. ‘And it goes without saying that you make no mention of the police. When she arrives I’ll introduce myself as a friend of yours.’

  34

  Palli was still engrossed in traffic camera footage and didn’t look up as Helena appeared in the incident room. She wanted to ask where Kristján was, but was reluctant to break his concentration. He appeared to have developed a routine, as at intervals he paused the replay and marked a cross against one of the numbers on the long list on his pad. He was clearly viewing this footage a second time. Helena thanked her lucky stars that this job hadn’t been given to her. This kind of monotonous precision work wasn’t her favourite. It was just as well that the IT division usually looked after checking traffic camera recordings, but in this instance it was essential to keep as much as possible within the team.

  She sat at her desk, opened her laptop and continued to set up the timeline around Guðrún’s activities on Monday, up to her disappearance. Flosi had gone to work around eight, leaving Guðrún in bed with a cup of coffee in her hand and that morning’s Fréttablaðið open on her knees. Once she was up, she had called the van driver and dispatched him with a van full of stuff to Sara Sól’s home. After that there was no indication of what she had been doing, before turning up at the laundry further along the street at around one-thirty. The owner knew Guðrún well and had told Kristján that she brought shirts and blouses to be cleaned every week. At three minutes to two the CCTV at the Vellir gym showed her go into the changing room, re-appearing moments later for an energetic workout. At twenty past three she was visible at the reception area, where she bought a shake and sat on a sofa while she flipped through a glossy magazine as she sipped her drink, apparently relaxed. At twenty-five to four she stood up and left the gym, and presumably headed for the fish shop, as the fishmonger Helena had spoken to yesterday recalled that she had been there ‘mid-afternoon-ish’, but couldn’t provide a more exact time.

  After four on Monday there were no indications of where Guðrún had gone; she had probably gone home with the carton of fresh langoustines, and they knew she had been busy preparing dinner when she had been abducted. Flosi had arrived home at seven-twenty, by which time the bread had burned in the oven, so they could assume it had been there well past its usual forty-minute baking time. So it seemed likeliest that between six and seven that evening, someone had appeared in the kitchen, snatching Guðrún away from preparing dinner. Her car was in the drive and there were no signs of a break-in, and both Flosi and Sara Sól had confirmed that the back door was generally unlocked.

  Helena shared the timeline document on the system with the CCTV clips from the gym, the statements made by the laundry owner and the fishmonger. Then she picked up her phone and called Daníel.

  ‘Just seen your docs,’ he said. ‘Can you chase Palli for me? But gently. No need to upset him.’

  ‘Will do,’ Helena said.

  ‘Then I’d like you to be here this afternoon when Sigurlaug comes to see Flosi,’ he said. ‘You’re one of the staff from his wholesale business, and I’m an old friend of his. He’ll tell her himself that Guðrún has disappeared and a ransom has been demanded. It’ll be interesting to see her reaction, and to see if she has anything to add to all this.’

  Helena agreed and listed for him all the institutions she had checked. Guðrún hadn’t appeared on any passenger lists leaving the country, she hadn’t been admitted to A&E, nor to the women’s refuge, and Kristján had made plenty of progress on checking guest lists for all the hotels in the south-west part of the country, which CID had helped them collect.

  ‘Forensics sent me a message earlier to let me know that there’s information listed on LÖKE about the analysis they did on the ransom demand, but nothing that’s any use. In short, it was printed on a standard printer, on standard paper and the only prints are Áróra’s and Flosi’s.’

  ‘Disappointing,’ Helena agreed. She had hoped that the letter would have given them something to work on.

  ‘One more thing,’ Daníel said. ‘Can you invent a reason to pay Bergrós a visit, as one of Flosi’s staff? What came out of their conversation last night is that she’s pregnant, and he’s the father.’

  Helena’s heart skipped a beat. This was big, something that could make all the difference to the investigation.

  ‘That’s piling on the pressure,’ she said.

  ‘Exactly,’ Daníel said.

  35

  Getting to meet Bergrós was no easy matter, as she demanded to know who Helena was, and became agitated at the prospect of another of Flosi’s staff coming to speak to her, instead of the man himself. That supported Helena’s hunch that she genuinely had no inkling of Flosi’s true situation. Helena had made an appointment to meet her at eleven, and Bergrós had said that she would be at home, but nobody answered the bell. Helena had called her phone three times and was about to try the neighbour’s bell and be asked to be let into the building so she could go up and hammer on the door, when Bergrós appeared, hurrying along the street.

  ‘So sorry. I thought I’d just nip out to the bakery, and then I couldn’t find a parking space when I came back,’ Bergrós panted as she rooted through the deep pockets of her woollen coat for her keys.

  She wasn’t carrying a bag from a bakery, and Helena also found it strange that she had gone by car, considering there were several bakeries within walking distance, and the weather was fine. It was cool, but with no wind, and birds could be heard singing in the gardens along the street. But pregnant women could suffer cravings for the oddest things at any moment. The pregnancy was precisely the reason for Helena’s presence.

  Bergrós opened the door and Helena followed her up the staircase and into the little attic apartment. Helena declined coffee and made her way to the kitchen, planting herself on a stool and waiting for Bergrós to sit down as well. But Bergrós appeared to be flustered, her movements sharp and quick, and her voice had a brittle quality, as if it was about to crack. She was beautiful, with a chiselled face and high cheekbones, but everything about her seemed chaotic: her hair, her multi-coloured clothes, her movements as she flitted around the kitchen, and her voice.

  ‘So you’re pregnant by Flosi?’ Helena said without any preamble, and finally Bergrós’ agitated fluttering stopped, and she stood still and stared. Helena felt that her green eyes were striking sparks.

  ‘How do you know?’ Bergrós asked and now her eyes were cold and sharp.

  ‘Flosi told me,’ Helena replied. Technically this wasn’t true, but there was no way to explain that Flosi’s phone was being tapped without giving the whole game away and admitting that she was a police officer. Bergrós slumped onto a stool and buried her face in her hands. Helena could see that her whole frame was wracked with gasps.

  ‘Hey, hey. There, there,’ she said, getting up and gently patting Bergrós’ back. ‘It can’t be that bad.’

  Bergrós snapped upright and looked up, the tears suddenly gone, the fiery green spark returned to her eyes.

  ‘How am I supposed to know how bad things are when nobody tells me anything?’ Her bafflement turned to anger. ‘All Flosi will tell me is that he needs to re-evaluate his life. This Áróra – and I don’t have a clue where she fits into all this – won’t tell me anything, and then there’s you, who seems to know all about Flosi’s private life.’

  Helena sat down again and used Daníel’s strategy of waiting a moment before saying anything. With angry people it was best not to reply right away, but to let their rage settle. Sometimes the time it took to draw a few breaths was enough for people to cool down and regain control of their emotions.

  ‘I’m just a colleague he trusts. Sometimes I do some deliveries for Garðvís.’ Helena was astonished at how easily the lie came to her. ‘Flosi asked me to stop by and ask if there was anything you needed, and to let you know that you can call on me and Áróra if you need help with anything,’ she went on in a low, gentle tone. A few moments passed before she saw that Bergrós had regained something of her delicate equilibrium, but she was still unsteady.

  ‘There’s nothing I need,’ Bergrós said. ‘Except Flosi. Will you ask him to come and talk to me?’

  ‘I’ll do that,’ Helena said. ‘And I’m sure he will the moment he’s able to. But in the meantime, you can always come to me.’

  She picked up a pen from the kitchen sideboard and wrote her phone number on a corner of a copy of Fréttablaðið.

  ‘We are in love,’ Bergrós said, apologetically. ‘This isn’t just an affair. We’re expecting the baby after Christmas. I’m five months pregnant and I know he loves me and our baby, but he’s been dragging this out for five months or more now, saying he’s almost ready to divorce Guðrún and come and live with me.’

  ‘I see,’ Helena said straightening her back. In reality, she didn’t understand at all. This didn’t chime with Flosi’s account of his relationship with Guðrún. According to him, Bergrós was just an adventure, a diversion from a passionless but otherwise excellent marriage. A child certainly changed everything, not least because Sara Sól had said that her father had dreamed of having more children.

  Helena had heard enough, and got to her feet. She would have to call Daníel and let him know that he could add a tick in the MOTIVE column, against Flosi’s own name. Bergrós went with her to the door, and Helena took her hand as she said goodbye.