The lunchtime rush was long over but he persuaded the cook to serve him some salted meat. He carved himself a large lump, piled potato and turnip on top of it and plastered creamy sauce over the whole trophy with his knife before it all vanished into his gaping mouth.

Erlendur arranged another such banquet on his fork and had just opened his mouth when his mobile phone started to ring where he had left it on the table beside his plate. He stopped the fork in mid-air, glanced at the phone for an instant, looked at the crammed fork and back at the phone, then finally put the fork down with an air of regret.

“Why don’t I ever get any peace?” he said before Sigurdur Oli could say a word.

“Some bones found in the Millennium Quarter,” Sigurdur Oli said. “I’m heading out there and so is Elinborg.”

“What kind of bones?”

“I don’t know. Elinborg phoned and I’m on my way over there. I’ve alerted forensics.”

“I’m eating,” Erlendur said slowly.

Sigurdur Oli almost blurted out what he had been doing, but managed to stop himself in time.

“See you up there,” he said. “It’s on the way to Lake Reynisvatn, on the north side beneath the hot water tanks. Not far from the road out of town.”

“What’s a Millennium Quarter?” Erlendur asked.

“Eh?” Sigurdur Oli said, still irritated about being interrupted with Bergthora.

“Is it a quarter of a millennium? Two hundred and fifty years? What does it mean?”

“Christ,” Sigurdur Oli groaned and rang off.

Shortly afterwards Erlendur pulled up in his battered old car and stopped in the street in Grafarholt beside the foundation of the house. The police had arrived on the scene and sealed off the area with yellow tape, which Erlendur slipped underneath. Elinborg and Sigurdur Oli were down in the foundation, standing by a wall of earth. The medical student who had reported the bones was with them. The mother who was hosting the birthday party had rounded up the boys and sent them back indoors. The Reykjavik district medical officer, a chubby man aged about 50, clambered down one of the three ladders that had been propped up in the foundation. Erlendur followed him.