“Why do you think it’s a him?” the district medical officer asked.

“Him?” Erlendur said.

“I mean,” the doctor said, “it could just as easily be a her. Why do you feel sure it’s a man?”

“Or a woman then,” Erlendur said. “I don’t care.” He shrugged. “Can you tell us anything about these bones?”

“I can’t really see anything of them,” the doctor said. “Best to say as little as possible until they pick them out of the ground.”

“Male or female? Age?”

“Impossible to tell.”

A man wearing jeans and a traditional Icelandic woollen sweater, tall, with a scruffy, greying beard and two yellow dogteeth fangs that protruded out of it through his big mouth, came over to them and introduced himself as the archaeologist. He watched the forensic team at work and asked them for pity’s sake to stop that nonsense. The two men with trowels hesitated. They wore white overalls, rubber gloves and protective glasses. To Erlendur they could have been straight out of a nuclear power station. They looked at him, awaiting instructions.

“We need to dig down to him, for God’s sake,” said Fang, waving his arms. “Are you going to pick him out with those trowels? Who’s in charge here anyway?”

Erlendur owned up.

“This isn’t an archaeological find,” Fang said, shaking his hand. “The name’s Skarphedinn, hello, but it’s best to treat it as such. You understand?”

“I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about,” said Erlendur.

“The bones haven’t been in the ground for any great length of time. No more than 60 or 70 years, I’d say. Maybe even less. The clothes are still on them.”

“Clothes?”

“Yes, here,” Skarphedinn said, pointing with a fat finger. “And in more places, I’m certain.”

“I though that was flesh,” Erlendur said sheepishly.

“The most sensible thing to do in this situation, to keep the evidence intact, would be to let my team excavate it using our methods. The forensic squad can help us. We need to rope off the area up here and dig down to the skeleton, and stop chipping away at the soil here. We don’t make a habit of losing evidence. Just the way the bones lie could tell us a hell of a lot. What we find around them could provide clues.”