Erlendur was roughly 50, divorced many years earlier, a father of two. He never let anyone sense that he couldn’t stand his children’s names. His ex-wife, with whom he had hardly spoken for more than two decades, thought they sounded sweet at the time. The divorce was a messy one and Erlendur had more or less lost touch with his children when they were young. They sought him out when they were older and he welcomed them, but regretted how they had turned out. He was particularly grieved by Eva Lind’s fate. Sindri Snaer had fared better. But only just.

He took his meal out of the microwave and sat at the kitchen table. It was a one-bedroom flat filled with books wherever there was any room to arrange them. Old family photographs hung on the walls showing his relatives in the East Fjords, where he was born. He had no photographs of himself or of his children. A battered old Nordmende television stood against one wall with an even more battered armchair in front of it. Erlendur kept the flat reasonably tidy with a minimum of cleaning.

He didn’t know exactly what it was that he ate. The ornate packaging promised something about oriental delights but the meal itself, concealed within some kind of pastry roll, tasted like hair oil. Erlendur pushed it away. He wondered whether he still had the rye bread he’d bought several days before. And the lamb pate. Then the doorbell rang. Eva Lind had decided to drop in.

“How’s it hanging?” she asked as she darted in through the door and flopped onto the sofa in the sitting room. The way she talked irritated him.

“Aiyee,” Erlendur said, and closed the door. “Don’t talk that nonsense to me.”