“Fixed?”

“Yes, mended. I didn’t know him at all.”

“Do you know who knew him best here?”

“No,” the cook said. “I don’t know anything about the man. Who could have murdered him? Here? At the hotel? My God!”

Erlendur could tell that he was more worried about the hotel than about the murdered man. He considered telling him that the murder might boost the occupancy rate. That’s the way people think these days. They could even advertise the hotel as a murder scene. Develop crime-based tourism. But he could not be bothered. He wanted to sit down with his plate and eat the food. Have a moment’s peace.

Sigurdur Oli turned up out of nowhere.

“Did you find anything?” Erlendur asked.

“No,” Sigurdur Oli said, looking at the cook, who hurried off to the kitchen with the news. “Are you eating now?” he added with indignation.

“Oh, don’t give me any crap. There was a compromising situation.”

“That man owned nothing, or if he did, he didn’t keep it in his room,” Sigurdur Oli said. “Elinborg found a couple of old records in his wardrobe. That was the lot. Shouldn’t we shut down the hotel?”

“Shut down the hotel, what kind of nonsense is that?” Erlendur said. “How are you going to go about shutting down this hotel? And how long do you plan to do that for? Are you going to send a search team into every room?”

“No, but the murderer could be one of the guests. We can’t ignore that.”

“That’s absolutely uncertain. There are two possibilities. Either he’s at the hotel, a guest or an employee, or he’s nothing to do with the hotel. What we need to do is to talk to all the staff and everyone who checks out over the next couple of days, especially those who check out earlier than they had planned, although I doubt that the person who did it would try to draw attention to himself like that.”

“No, right. I was thinking about the condom,” Sigurdur Oli said.