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and if you screw up they can send you back to us with a boot up your arse?”
    “Probably, and it means that Keflavík is still paying my huge salary. Thought maybe they’d bump you up to sergeant. I did recommend it, you know,” she added.
    This time Haddi looked surprised. “That’s good of you, but I’m too old and past it, you know. Maybe young Snorri’ll get it instead.” He grinned slyly.
    “I’m afraid not, Haddi. We’re just going to live with the recruitment freeze for a good while to come and there won’t be a lot of promotion if it means going up a grade in salary. It seems my inspector’s grade has yet to be approved, so I’m still on a sergeant’s salary.”

Saturday 13th
    G UNNA STOOD OUTSIDE the Co-op. Eventually the elderly woman she was waiting for appeared, the shop’s first customer of the day, buttoned up in a thick herringbone coat of a kind that had become unfashionable forty years before but which was hard-wearing enough to have lasted. Fanney’s hair was covered with a scarf that whipped up around her shoulders in the stiff breeze as she stepped outside.
    “Need a lift?” Gunna asked, nodding at the bags the woman held in each hand.
    “I don’t need a lift, but if you’re offering I’ll accept one,” Fanney answered, looking about to see who was watching.
    She sat silent and stiffly upright, as if a ride in a car was a rare treat to be savoured.
    “I suppose you want to come inside now?” she asked with resignation as Gunna pulled up outside the modest house one row up from the harbour.
    Gunna sat patiently at the kitchen table while Fanney made coffee and set about emptying her shopping bags. The kitchen of the little house reminded her of a museum, so little had changed in the last thirty years, from the antiquated fridge to the old metal kettle on the stove.
    “What was Skari like when he was a lad?” Gunna asked softly.
    Fanney pulled the scarf from her head and clattered cups on to the table.
    “Nothing but trouble, that boy, from the moment he was born,” she snapped. “I don’t know what he’s been up to now but he’ll be off work for a good few months, I reckon. I don’t know how his Erla puts up with him.”
    She poured for both of them and leaned back to reach for a milk carton.
    “He’s not a bad boy, you understand,” she went on. “Not bad at all. But he’s easily led, follows the others all the time, always has done. Wants to fit in with the crowd. If it wasn’t for Gulla’s boy, you know, the one in prison, he’d have been fine. But no, my Oskar just had to do everything Omar told him to do. I thought when he took up with Erla he was letting himself in for too much, what with her having a couple of children already and being older than him, but I was wrong there and they seem happy enough.” She sighed again and paused for breath.
    “Have you been over to Keflavík to see him?”
    “No,” Fanney said bitterly. “Erla’s been to see him, but she hasn’t thought to ask me along to see my own son yet.”
    “Well. I have to go over there tomorrow, so I’ll drop you off at the hospital if you like.”
    Gunna watched Fanney stifle an internal battle between pride and anger.
    “I wouldn’t want to put you out,” the older woman said icily. “As I said, I have to go over there anyway, so it’s no trouble at all.”
    “Thank you.”
    “I’ll pick you up at ten.”
    Fanney reached for the coffee jug and filled the cups.
    “Now, what can you tell me about Omar Magnússon?” Gunna asked. This time Fanney’s face stiffened.
    “That evil boy. Trouble follows him like a ghost with no house to haunt,” she said with a shiver. “He and my Skari were the best of friends as kids and that arsehole of a boy did nothing but thieve, lie and fight. Led my lad a merry dance, he did, what with all the trouble he caused. He set fire to the old fishmeal plant for a bet, and that cost a dozen men their jobs. Then he stole cars and all sorts as soon as