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name or a logo.’
    ‘Did you get a look at the driver?’
    ‘No. Sorry. Wasn’t paying a lot of attention. I couldn’t tell you if it went to Borgar’s unit or somewhere else. I just saw it go past a few times.’
    ‘Definitely more than once, though? So this wasn’t someone who was just lost?’
    ‘This street is a dead end. Nobody comes down here more than once without a good reason,’ Stefán said. ‘That’s one reason I like being here. But I reckon I saw the Nissan two, three times, for definite.’
    ‘Thanks. It all helps,’ Gunna replied, and Stefán smiled diffidently at her before turning and walking back to his open door.

Tuesday
    A biting wind swept in from the sea, whipping up whitecaps that spat spray while gulls hovered and swooped gracefully above the black rocks of the shore a hundred yards away across scrub grass. Gunna was sure it would be a delightful spot in summer, but the November cold did little for its charms, even with Esja and the row of distant mountains across Faxa Bay picked out in startlingly bright sunshine.
    Kjartan Aronson looked impassively through the glass of his front door and ushered Gunna inside, his expression giving nothing away. The terraced house was a mess. Dust was everywhere and Gunna felt her nose protest.
    ‘There’s been some work going on here while I’ve been away. I thought they’d be finished by the time I got back, but they haven’t. Sorry,’ he said, not sounding at all apologetic, as he gestured at the sawhorse in the middle of the living room and the new parquet floor that only reached halfway across it. ‘My brother’s been working on it in between other jobs, but I guess he must be busy with paid work these last few weeks. So big brother gets the short end of the stick.’
    ‘That’s Ingi, is it?’
    Kjartan’s eyes narrowed. ‘Could be. What does Ingi have to do with the police?’
    ‘You came home last night?’ Gunna asked, ignoring the question.
    ‘Docked at midday yesterday in Dalvík. I flew back from Akureyri.’ Kjartan waved Gunna to an armchair, the only one in the half-finished room, while he sat down on an upturned crate, flexing his shoulders as he did so. Gunna could not fail to notice the muscles that bulged beneath the man’s snug shirt and the biceps that left no doubt that Kjartan was not a stranger to hard work or the gym, or both. ‘Anyway, what do the police want with me? Not that I need to make too many guesses.’
    ‘You’re aware that Borgar Jónsson is dead, I take it?’
    ‘I am, and I gather he was helped on his way.’
    ‘How do you know that?’
    Kjartan gave the first hint of a smile. ‘It was on the news last night that a man had been killed in suspicious circumstances. Someone told me that it might have been Borgar. I put two and two together when I saw the pictures of the hostel on the news and wasn’t surprised.’
    ‘Why’s that?’
    ‘You’re the detective. I’m sure you have a pretty good idea,’ Kjartan said, and his eyes crossed the room to the only picture on display anywhere, a black and white portrait of a boy of ten or eleven, Gunna guessed, grinning at the camera from the pillion of a motorbike while the driver was undoubtedly a younger and happier Kjartan than the impassive, bristle-headed man sitting on a box in front of her, the low winter sunlight slanting through the room’s picture window and glancing off the flat surfaces that he seemed to be made of.
    ‘You can confirm you weren’t in Reykjavík yesterday, I take it?’
    ‘I didn’t get back to Reykjavík until five. Four o’clock flight from Akureyri and a taxi home. That’s a perfect alibi, I reckon.’
    ‘How do you know? Are you aware of when Borgar’s killing took place?’
    ‘Well, no. Of course not. But it was on the news while we were still steaming home. It was only later I found out it was that bastard getting what he deserved.’
    ‘You have to understand that anyone who might have had any kind of a