“What do you think happened?” Erlendur asked.

“I don’t know,” Skarphedinn said. “Far too early to speculate. We need to excavate it, hopefully something useful will emerge then.”

“Is it someone who’s frozen to death and been covered by the earth?”

“No one sinks this deep into the ground.”

“So it’s a grave.”

“It would appear so,” Skarphedinn said pompously. “Everything points to that. Shall we say that we’ll dig down to it?”

Erlendur nodded.

Skarphedinn strode over to the ladder and climbed up out of the foundation. Erlendur followed close behind. As they stood above the skeleton the archaeologist explained the best way to organise the excavation. Erlendur was impressed by him and everything he said, and soon Skarphedinn was on his mobile phone, calling out his team. He had taken part in several of the main archaeological discoveries in recent decades and knew what he was talking about. Erlendur put his faith in him.

The head of the forensic squad disagreed. He ranted about transferring the excavation to an archaeologist who didn’t have the faintest idea about criminal investigations. The quickest way was to chip the skeleton free from the wall to give them scope to examine both its position and the clues — if there were any — about whether an act of violence had been committed. Erlendur listened to this speech for a while and then declared that Skarphedinn and his team would be allowed to dig their way down to the skeleton even if it took much longer than anticipated.

“The bones have been lying here for half a century, a couple of days either way won’t make any difference,” he said, and the matter was settled.