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came back to work, but he received no answer.
    "Has Eva Lind tried to contact me?" he asked.
    Sigurdur Óli said he didn't think so. He knew about Erlendur's daughter and her problems, but neither of them ever mentioned it. Personal matters seldom entered into their conversations.
    "Anything new on Holberg?" Erlendur asked and walked straight into his office. Sigurdur Óli followed him and closed the door. Murders were rare in Reykjavik and generated enormous publicity on the few occasions they were committed. The CID made it a rule not to inform the media of details of their investigations unless absolutely necessary. That did not apply in this case.
    "We know a little more about him," Sigurdur Óli said, opening a file he was holding. "He was born in Saudárkrókur, 69 years old. Spent his last years working as a lorry driver for Iceland Transport. Still worked there on and off."
    Sigurdur Óli paused.
    "Shouldn't we talk to his workmates?" he said, straightening his tie. Sigurdur Óli was wearing a new suit, tall and handsome, a graduate in criminology from an American university. He was everything that Erlendur was not: modern and organised.
    "What do people in the office think?" Erlendur asked, twiddling with a loose button on his cardigan which eventually dropped into his palm. He was stout and well-built with bushy ginger hair, one of the most experienced detectives on the team. He generally got his way. His superiors and colleagues had long since given up doing battle with him. Things had turned out that way over the years. Erlendur didn't dislike it.
    "Probably some nutcase," Sigurdur Óli said. "At the minute we're looking for that green army jacket. Some kid who wanted money but panicked when Holberg refused."
    "What about Holberg's family? Did he have any?"
    "No family, but we haven't got all the information yet. We're still gathering it together; family, friends, workmates."
    "From the look of his flat I'd say he was single and had been for a long time."
    "You would know, of course," Sigurdur Óli blurted out, but Erlendur pretended not to hear.
    "Anything from the pathologist? Forensics?"
    "The provisional report's in. Nothing in it we didn't know. Holberg died from a blow to the head. It was a heavy blow, but basically it was the shape of the ashtray, the sharp edges, that were decisive. His skull caved in and he died instantly . . . or almost. He seems to have struck the corner of the coffee table as he fell. He had a nasty wound on his forehead that fitted the corner of the table. The fingerprints on the ashtray were Holberg's but then there are at least two other sets, one of which is also on the pencil."
    "Are they the murderer's then?"
    "There's every probability that they are the murderer's, yes."
    "Right, a typical clumsy Icelandic murder."
    "Typical. And that's the assumption we're working on."
    It was still raining. The low-pressure fronts that moved in from deep in the Atlantic at that time of year headed east across Iceland in succession, bringing wind, wet and dark winter gloom. The CID was still at work in the building in Nordurmýri. The yellow police tape that had been set up around the building reminded Erlendur of the electricity board; a hole in the road, a filthy tent over it, a flicker of light inside the tent, all neatly gift-wrapped with yellow tape. In the same way, the police had wrapped the murder scene up with neat yellow plastic tape with the name of the authority printed on it. Erlendur and Sigurdur Óli met Elínborg and the other detectives who had been combing the building through the autumn night and into the morning and were just finishing their job.
    People from neighbouring buildings were questioned but none of them had noticed any suspicious movements at the murder scene between the Monday morning and the time the body was found.
    Soon there was no-one left in the building but Erlendur and Sigurdur Óli. The blood on the carpet had turned black. The ashtray had been removed as