“We have to find his brother,” Elinborg said. “Let’s hope nothing’s happened to him.”

“Let’s hope it wasn’t him who did this,” Erlendur said.

Elinborg looked at him in astonishment.

“The things you think of!”

She looked around her. Sunee lived in a small two-bedroom flat. The front door opened straight onto the sitting room, while to one side was a small corridor leading to a bathroom and two bedrooms. The kitchen was beside the sitting room. A strong aroma of oriental spices and exotic cuisine filled the flat, which was spotlessly tidy and decorated with ornaments from Thailand. All over the walls and tables were photographs that Elinborg imagined showed the mother’s relatives on the other side of the globe.

Erlendur was standing beneath a red paper parasol with a picture of a yellow dragon on it, which served as a lampshade. When the interpreter said she was going to make tea, Elinborg followed her into the kitchen. Sunee remained on the sofa and the vicar sat down beside her. Erlendur said nothing and waited for the interpreter to come back.

Gudny knew a little about Sunee’s background and recounted it to Elinborg in the kitchen in half-whispers. She was from a village about two hundred kilometres from Bangkok and had been brought up in a household where three generations lived together in straitened circumstances. There were many children and Sunee had moved to the capital with two of her brothers when she was fifteen. She did manual labour, mainly in laundries, and lived in poor, cramped conditions with her brothers until she was twenty. After that she had described herself as being alone, working in a large textile factory manufacturing cheap clothing for western markets. Only women worked there and the wages were low. Around that time she met a man from a far-away country, an Icelander, at a popular nightclub in Bangkok. He was several years older than her. She had never heard of Iceland.