Chapter 1 November 13th, 1989 Monday

It stopped snowing in Reykjavík. At least over on the West side.
There was something in the air, almost as if the sky was holding
its breath.
After about 30 minutes, the heavy snowfall started again.

Lucky for those whom need to get their tracks covered.
Unlucky for the mutilated boys that'll soon be covered by snow.
And nothing to do about that.

Chapter 2

The moon perched comfortably on top of the Esja, the modest-
looking mountain that still had managed to claim a few lives over
the years. Now the mountain just enjoyed the calm evening, wearing
its patchy white nightcap and looking wearily at the city in the
ice-cold afternoon darkness.

     The annoyed working class of Iceland slogged homewards in
their cars in single file along the ice-laden Hringbraut street.
The whine from the studded tires buzzed in the ears of people
walking by, but at the same time it was like the adjacent Melar
district was exempt from the troubles of traffic. The noise
couldn't penetrate past the apartment blocks that lined the
Hringbraut street. They sheltered the districts behind them, where
throngs of tree branches caught whatever sounds reached them, but
even they could not silence the noises from the Fokker plane that
was coming in for a landing. The branches were also useless
against the scream. From somewhere in the peaceful district came
this penetrating scream. It wasn't very loud, but it slipped past
everything that would get in its way.

     The boy heard this yell as he lay motionless in the backyard.
He had thrown himself down on the ground because he just couldn't
go any further. His heart was about to break free of his body, and
it was as if some beast was occupying his throat, squeezing the
dry larynx with untold might. The boy made a feeble attempt to
spit out the taste of blood that he felt was filling his mouth.

     What had become of them? Had they given up? The four of them
had been chasing him, and he knew what would happen if they caught
him. They would finish him, no question about it. Kill him.

     And now he heard that yell again, from the darkness. He
realized that it wasn't a yell, but a scream. And he heard
thumping noises, as if someone was beating a sandbag.

     The boy rose up and listened. Stood up and cautiously walked
towards the direction of the sounds, coming from a nearby garden.
He clambered over the fence and slid down as silently as he could
through the leafless bushes.

     The boy peered into the darkness.

He thought back on recent events. They were so close, he felt. To catching him just then. He had heard the sounds of the frozen grass breaking under their rapid footsteps. He had fallen. He lay on his stomach as new sounds joined in. The swishing sound of snow jackets brushing against branches, their breaths – panting. If not for the darkness, they would only have needed to follow his tracks in the snow. They would be standing over him and he could have read their expressions: Now you die, shorty. But instead the swishing sounds faded away. So did the panting.

When he was convinced that they were gone he rolled over on his back and looked up at the sky. He wondered what it was like to be beaten to death. He knew that had been their plan, if they had caught him. He had seen it in their eyes as they cornered him in the schoolyard. He had been cornered before, lots of times. They had good reason to. He knew that much – how hideously ugly and boring he was, and he deserved everything that had been done to him. Isn’t that right, he thought. Yes. He was always in the way. Not just in everyone’s way, but in the way of life itself. And there they had cornered him in the schoolyard. But he had never seen their eyes like this before. Faces don’t need to twist and contort because of rage and anger, the eyes tell everything: Now you’ll die, shorty.

     That was when he had ran away.

     And now he heard that the screams came from more than one
person, and it was ominous how they cut through the frost, and the
short silences after every thump. He snuck closer. A faint
brightness from a light above a basement door that faced out into
the yard allowed him to see better. He saw as someone stood atop a
snow mound that had formed in the middle of the garden, holding
both hands around a blunt instrument and let it fall again and
again on screaming and wailing bodies of boys that were yelling in
pain. From the mound he saw outstrecthed hands trying their best
to deflect the blows. The blunt instrument thumped into the boys
again and again until the screams stopped. No one was screaming
anymore. No hands in the air. He saw the silhouette of the person
who now looked down upon the bodies. It examined them briefly
before raising the blunt instrument again. Thump after thump after
thump. Sandbag thumps.

     It was over and a deathly calm settled on the garden. Like
someone had turned down the volume.

     The boy couldn't hear his frantic breath. He could only see
the white gusts of air that shot up into the dark as he exhaled.
He stood unmoving and felt how the insides of his thighs became
warmer as he pissed his pants. He took one sidestep and the snow
marred underneath his foot. He looked up and saw the silhouette
with the blunt instrument stand motionless, staring in his
direction. He couldn't see the face as a shadow fell upon it. He
could see the bloody instrument however, and how the person threw
it on the ground and disappeared into the darkness.

     The boy crept closer and suddenly now it was like someone had
turned up the volume around him all the way up. His fear amplified
every sound. No matter how light he tried to imagine himself

being, the snow made almost deafening noises with every step.
     He stood over four bloody and badly mutilated bodies. They

lay motionless with their eyes closed. Except for one who stared
wide-eyed at him, like an injured animal waiting for the hunter to
pull out his knife and slit its throat.

     The boy knew him. He knew all of them, better than he had
ever wanted to. How often had he dreamt of killing these boys?
They had beaten him time and time again. Cut up his clothes.
Pissed on him. Shat in his lunchbox. Humiliated him over and over
again, day in, day out. As he watched them laying in their blood
he didn't feel anything. No pity. Nothing resembling sympathy. He
felt more of a euphoric feeling, the kind that washes over someone
whose greatest wish has finally come true. Ge had trouble making
sense of these feelings, but at least something brand new was
happening within him. Maybe he felt some kind of freedom. That was
it, yes. He felt free and relieved as he stood over the motionless
boys.

     Despite being wet from his own piss.

     The basement door opened and an old woman staggered up the
steps holding a flashlight, shining it in all directions.

     “Is someone there?” she called out in a weak voice. “What's
all that ruckus?”

     The boy started running, and felt how the cone of light tried
to hunt him down. As he reached the fence he turned around. He
peered into the darkness and saw as someone reached for the bloody
murder weapon that had landed under a large tree, and was looking
towards him. Standing there motionlessly like a shadowy, bodyless
figure. If he wasn't mistaken, this shadowy figure was smaller
than the one he had seen before.

     The cone of light from the old woman's flashlight moved about
the yard like air raid searchlights in a war, and for one moment
the light passed over the mound with the boys. It also caught
something else: The face of the shadowy figure by the tree.

     The old woman didn't notice anything, muttered something to
herself before going back in and closing the door behind her
Shortly afterwards the light went off above her door.

     Darkness. Sounds.

     The boy couldn't see anything but he heard footsteps in the
snow. He would have pissed himself again if he could. The feeling
was the same, except the bladder was empty.

     Then it started again. The thumping sandbag noise. Thump
after thump after thump.

     The boy made his way back the way he came – squeezing through
the leafless bushes, over the fence and ran across the street,
just as a taxi came driving down the icy street. The studded tires
hissed like angry cats as they cut through the ice beneath them.

     If the driver hadn't been working the whole weekend his
reflexes would probably have been better and he wouldn't have hit
the lamppost as he swerved past the boy, whom had already
disappeared into the garden across the street.

     Later that night, as the boy lay in his bed, he could see it
so vividly. He saw the face for that fleeting moment as the light

shone upon it. And that was enough. The boy could not know the
consequences that would have. He couldn't know either what would
happen twenty-two years later.

     The sky could no longer hold it in, and the snow started
falling again.

Chapter 3 November 13th, 2011 Sunday

     The old men sat side-by-side in the common room of the
hospital. One sitting in a chair with crutches that he had propped
between his legs. The other in a wheelchair. The news theme
started playing on an old TV that sat on a small shelf high up on
the wall.

     The image on the TV disappeared. Snow. The old man with the
crutches slowly got up and hobbled over to The Big Screen, as
someone had named the old TV once. He let the rubbery end of the
cruth slam against the side of the TV and the image became clear
again.

     “You're getting good at this, Eiki,” said the old man in the
wheelchair and laughed. “I'd never get a swing like that. I don't
know how I'd survive. Promise you won't get discharged before I
do.”

     Eiríkur slowly returned to his seat. Tried to block out the
other man. What rotten luck to end up in a room with this loud
comedian? If only the car crash had given him just a little more
of a bump to the head that he kept talking about, from the moment
he woke up in the morning until far too late at night when his
eyes finally closed. Maybe then all those jokes would have wiped
from his mind, he thought. And who had given him permission to
call him Eiki? Not a single soul.

     “Wouldn't you like your blankets?” asked a nurse in a caring
voice and handed each of them a wool blanket, that they accepted
and used to cover their legs.

     “Where would I be without you, Svava? What luck, this
accident of mine, I have to say.”

After the news anchor had recounted the top stories of the news,
came the in-depth coverage.

“We just heard that Vladas Pavlovic has escaped from police custody. He has been kept in isolation at prison, but just one hour ago as he was being moved to Reykjavík, he made a daring escape. Hallgrímur is on-site, over to you.”

     “Thank you Logi, it was here that Pavlovic escaped from the
clutches of the police...”

An image on-screen shows two cars that had been involved in a

serious crash, both of them ending off-road on their sides. The
flashing lights from police cars cast a blue light over the
cordoned-off scene.

     “...but it seems that when a prisoner transport vehicle was
moving Pavolvic to a court hearing, a second vehicle had crashed
into the side of the transport at great speed. Unverified sources
claim that masked men had then recovered Pavlovic from the
transport vehicle and then driven off with him in a third car. I
spoke to witnesses just earlier and received confirmation that the
assailants had been armed, but they had not used their weapons.
One of the witnesses claimed that considering how fast and
organized the men acted, that these had not been amateurs. It is
unknown how people are faring after this daring ambush, but as you
can see behind me, we have three ambulances on the scene. At this
time we have no information on the location of the assailants or
Pavlovic, but a full-scale manhunt is now in effect, with police
setting up roadblocks at various locations in the city.”

     Hallgrímur paused as the ambulances drove away with their
deafening sirens blaring. As soon as the sirens died out in the
distance, he turns back to the camera.

     “The Pavlovic case has been very high profile in the past few
weeks, but as previously mentioned a detective is still in the
hospital after she was abducted from her home three weeks ago and
brutally assaulted. The police SWAT team managed to rescue her in
a daring raid, but at the expense of the life of another
detective, who died from his injuries earlier this week. Pavlovic
and several of his associates were arrested during the raid, but
this is without a doubt the most severe blow that the police has
ever suffered.

     Pavlovic seems to have been leading two lives. He was a
respected businessman and have lived in Iceland for 8 years. But
now we've learned that his goal was to establish an organized
crime syndicate that dealt in drugs, money laundering, slavery and
burglaries. Numerous arrests have been made in relations to this
case, including a few Icelanders...I see the police commissioner
there, Logi. I'll see if I can get a statement from him.”

     Hallgrímur ran towards Commissioner Guðmann and called out to
him as he slipped under the yellow police band and quickly left
the crime scene. He gets into a car and drives off.

     Logi the news anchor appears on-screen.

     “Yes...thank for that, Hallgrímur. Well, as previously
stated, Vladas Pavlovic has been living here for several years.”

     Video footage is played showing Pavlovic in various places
shaking hands with known businessmen and politicians.

     “In 2006 he was a high-profile businessman, the first
immigrant to receive a special commendation for promiting business

relations with the Baltic countries. In light of recent events he
is considered extremely dangerous, and anyone who can give any
information about his whereabouts are...”

     “Isn't that the guy who kidnapped...what's her name again?
The poor girl at No. 5?” asked the comedian.

No response.

     “Hilma! That's her name, isn't it? My Lord, that explains all
the commotion around here. Don't you think so, Eiki?” he said as
he looked to his side.

     Eiríkur was gone.

     30 minutes ago four fully armed police officers had appeared
in the hospital ward. Two of them stood guard by the ward
entrance. Two by the door to No. 5.

***

     Someone was trying to put out fires in her face. She felt how
the skin on her forehead was sizzling. The cheeks. She knew that
her hair was scorching because she heard the sound. The fine
crackling sound as the hair burned down to the root. Like
thousands of needles being thrust into the scalp. She felt the
pungent stench. She squeezed her eyes shut. Not because of the
pain, but because of the feeling that she'd otherwise let the fire
inside. Burn her eyes. She didn't want to lose her eyes.

What had started this fire? All she knew was that if left unchecked, it would destroy everything in its path. A hissing, screaming omnivore.

It was raining. Wasn’t it? she thought. Then my fire will go out faster. Am I sure that it’s raining? Yes, it had to be. She heard the rain play on the puddles. It played on everything in its path. Roofs, cars, asphalt, grass. It was best when it played on the tent. That feeling hasn’t left her even though it was twenty years ago. When she was thirteen and woke up and listened with her eyes closed as the rain played on tent she was lying in. Like bongo drums being played with just the fingertips. She even recalled that she smiled. Smiling in her sleeping bag. Maybe she remembered it so well because it was the last camping trip she had with her parents.

     She opened them. Her eyes. She turned her head and saw the
water drip from a washcloth that some was squeezing over a water-
filled bowl. She saw the drops land and play on the surface. The
cold washcloth was comfortably stroked across her forehead and
hair.

     “Is that you, Guðmann?” The faint illumination from a wall
light only lit up part of his face in the otherwise gloomy room.
“What are you doing here?”

     “They called. The nurses. Said that you were awake.” he said
softly.

“Awake? I’ve been awake the whole time,” she said and closed her eyes. Wasn’t she? She pulled out her right arm from underneath the covers, and her gauze-wrapped shoulder ached. She ran the hand

through her greasy hair and felt bandages on the back of her head.
On the top some hair was missing. A bald spot.

     “I was dreaming,” she said and looked at Guðmann with groggy
eyes. “I was on fire. This dream seems to be on repeat these
days.”

     “Just stay calm, Hilma. It's all over now,” said Guðmann.
“Now you just need to recover. I know you'll be back on your feet
in no time.”

     He wrung the washcloth over the bowl. Hilma looked at him and
wondered if he meant it. She had no idea about her condition,
physical or mental. No sense of time. Memory was spotty. That is,
she remembered everything except that the last few days...or
months...simply weren't there. She wasn't sure. Maybe just days.
They'd been torn out like pages from a book. She had recovered
slivers here and there, but they were meaningless. They didn't fit
anywhere and contradicted each other.

     “How long do you think I need to be here?” she asked and
pointed to a glass of water that stood on the nightstand. Guðmann
put the washcloth on the edge of the bowl, took the glass and put
the straw to her lips. She sipped and her throat ached as she
swallowed. “Or first...how long have I been here?”

     “Six days,” he said after he checked his wristwatch. Her face
hurt as she smiled. He always checked his watch if the question
was time-related. If she'd asked him how long until christmas, he
would have checked his watch.

     “Six days,” she said to herself and inhaled deeply.
     “But Númi. How's Númi doing?”
     Guðmann hesitated. He bent over her and adjusted a loose

bandage that had come free at the edge of her hair.
     “Try to get some rest, Hilma. We'll talk better tomrrow.”
     “Hand me a mirror,” she asked.
     “You don't need a mirror, Hilma...” She grabbed his hand that

had been resting by her shoulder and squeezed it weakly.
     “Please get me a mirror, Guðmann,” she said gently but with

an undeniable hint of authority.
     He stood up and walked over to the corner, where a mirror was

placed on the wall above the sink.
     “This is the only mirror here. And it's screwed into the

wall. I'll bring a mirror to you tomorrow. There's no rush,” he
said, still turning his back to Hilma.

     “Unscrew it, Guðmann. Take it off the wall.”

     He examined the fastenings. Four chromed buttons in each
corner of the mirror. He managed to remove one of them, but behind
it was a screw.

     “It's stuck pretty tight, Hilma.” He turned on a small light
above the mirror. “I can't...”

     Hilma's face appeared behind him in the mirror. He turned
around, stepped aside and grabbed her arms so she wouldn't fall.

     Hilma gestured to Guðmann to let go of her, and she supported
herself with both hands on the sink. She looked in the mirror,
gasped loudly, then laughed softly. So softly it was barely a
laughter. Johnny Depp, she thought. Edward Scissorhands. He had
more hair on his head, though.

     She shuddered and almost fell over. Guðmann grabbed her, but
Hilma shook his hands off of her. She wanted to be alone. Guðmann
sensed this and walked over to the bed.

     The colorless reflection showed her something unfamiliar. Not
the girl with the thick, shoulder-length auburn hair and nine
freckles on her nose. Not the determined, vibrant and bright blue
– no, light blue eyes that her grandmother had said sometime that
resembled those of the poet Einar Ben.

     She didn't see any of that now. The eyes were dark, the face
grey and it was like her eyes and cheekbones had been covered with
a yellowish-brown paint. One eyelid was swollen and purple. Small,
shallow crimson cuts could be seen on her face that were starting
to heal. Except for the two deep ones. They had to be pretty deep
as they were held together with surgical tape in four different
places. Two on the forehead and two on her cheek. Something had
cut her face. Probably a knife. Yes, must have been a knife. She
could see it now. Vaguely. A hunting knife. How its razor-sharp
blade quickly cut diagonally across her face starting at the top
of her right forehead, spared her eyes but and resumed cutting
flesh as the blade landed on the left cheek. She traced the cut
with her index finger. The memory of tasting blood rushed to her
tongue. Her mouth. She remembered something else. The moment and
feeling when the skin on her face relaxed as it was being cut in
two.

     She picked at the gauze on her shoulder, and then peeled it
downwards.

     “Hilma...” said Guðmann, but couldn't find more to say.

     When the gauze came off she saw a cut that formed an X over a
small tattoo of a crucified angel on her upper arm. She continued
pulling at the gauze which covered both of her breasts. After
having torn it all the way down she saw that they were covered
with little cuts. She stared in the mirror. Looked away and down
to the floor. The unlocked window sang as the cold wind from
outside tried to force its way in.

     “Promise me one thing, Guðmann?”
     “Yes, what?”
     “Tell me about Númi tomorrow. I don't need to know now, but I

need so tomorrow.”
     Guðmann looked at her silently, then nodded.
     “I need to take a shower,” she said softly. Guðmann jumped at

those words.
     “I don't know if you can...”
     “Now, Guðmann!” she said with a firm tone as she looked at

him.
     “I have to wash myself.” She turned back to the mirror. Wash

this monster away, she thought.

Chapter 4

     It had to happen. After 11 years working at the law firm, he
could still recall his first day. When they sat in the conference

room and signed his employment contract. He still remembered how
carefully he had made his signature. Worried that the loops would
fail or become ugly. He was so careful: Þ-o-r-f-i-n-n-u-r.

     That was really the first time he felt his own importance. 28
years old and in demand. They had come to him. That hadn't
happened before. And he'd been told that with them he'd get a
chance to climb the ladder. Five years later he still hadn't seen
the ladder. And now the question had come up whether the ladder
had ever been there to begin with. He had been given more
responsibility, yes, but not the required power to go with it. The
ladder he'd been allowed to try felt more like a step in a crowded
movie theater. Endless baby steps.

     But now something was happening. Now he'd take the big leap.
It was all a question of patience, as one of his colleagues had
once confided in him when they were drunk at the office party.

     He dearly missed the feeling that he'd felt when he walked
out of that meeting 11 years ago. It was indescribable. Self-
esteem and recognition. In demand. And so damn handsome.

     “Þorfinnur, you're running much too late,” a voice called
from the ground floor. He adjusted his tie knot and looked in the
mirror for the third time. Impeccable. It's a nice feeling, self-
esteem. He winked to himself and turned off the light.

     “Dad, you're the coolest,” said the short one when he came
running down the stairs and she ran into his arms.

     Ásta was still in her pyjamas as she stood by the kitchen
table and poured coffee into two cups.

     “He's also the cutest,” said Ásta as she walked up to him,
kissed him and handed him the cup after he put down the short one.
“Excited?”

     “Yes, I have to admit that. But it'll all go well, I have a
good feeling about it.” He sipped his coffee and checked the time.
“I have to get going.”

     The morning radio show could be heard on a small radio
located under the kitchen window. The radio hosts had a Minister
in for a live interview where they discussed police safety and
whether the police should be allowed to carry firearms after the
recent daring prison break.

     “Will we be seeing the guys from Lethal Weapon running down
the street, shouting with their guns in the air?”

“Will you be home today?” asked Þorfinnur.

     “Yes, she still has a fever,” Ásta replied. “The babysitter
stops by later today and intends to watch over her. The wake is
this afternoon, remember? 3 o'clock.”

     “Yes, of course,” he said and tried to sound like he'd
remembered. Ásta's aunt had died from cancer. This would be the
second time this month that he would be looking at a white,
motionless face. These faces that so many proclaimed to be
peaceful. He didn't think so. He became sick when he stood over
these faces. And not just that. He became afraid. When he watched
them it was as if they were holding him in place. Whispering,
they'd start choking him and their ice-cold thoughts would creep
into his ears. “Don't you remember me?”

And he remembered. Yes he did. He'd tried countless times to

drive these memories from his head. It was impossible. Like their
image had been painted into his mind's eye. The fear in their
milk-white faces. That day in 1989 had become glued to his life.

     The only difference between the cold, expressionless faces in
the coffins and the ones he remembered from so many years ago in
that cold shed, was that they were alive. And he knew that they
hadn't forgotten anything either.

     He wanted most of all to skip going today. To skip the wake.
He'd just been to one. One of three owners and founder of his
legal firm had died from a heart attack. He tried to push away the
thought that one man's death would jump-start his career. That
step of ambition had been lying in a coffin, after all.

     And now, once the mourning had all passed due to all the work
at the firm, the call had come.

The meeting.

     One of the owners – the youngest – had called Þorfinn late
last night and told him what they were planning. He'd be a co-
owner of the firm and be in charge of services to energy- and
heavy industry corporations.

     The youngest owner wasn't allowed to say too much, but could
tell Þorfinnur that he'd be asked to put forth a share. This would
be quite an amount, and he wanted to know how his finances were
doing.

     That amount would not be a problem for Þorfinnur. He'd saved
quite a sum. His life-style was simple and he didn't lose anything
during the Collapse. Quite the contrary. The legal firm flourished
during that time, and he'd earned lots of overtime pay and
bonuses. Of course there had been sacrifices. The standard 9-5
wouldn't have cut it.

The marriage had suffered at times. Not because of cold dinners or intermittent sex. No, it had more to do with luxury. How about a house over at Seltjarnarnes? By the sea, had Ásta asked. What’s wrong with living here in Breiðholt, he’d asked. What about a summer home? Or a trailer? What about a jeep? The black one like on that CSI show that I like so much. What about all those trips to Spain and skiing trips to Italy? Let’s hold on that, he always said. I’ve been waiting for 10 years, Þorfinnur! Sigh. The patience had paid off and now he saw that it was happening. They’d get everything. Or, to make it clear, she’d get everything and be pleased. Happy. He really didn’t care.

     He didn't need any of it. He just wanted to prove himself. Be
recognized. Wanted.

He sure was a good man!… after all.

     He absent-mindedly kissed Ásta, who spit an imaginary lucky
spit after him. He never liked when she did that. Those spits had
never returned anything. Not even when he went playing badminton
with his friends. But he wasn't going to let that bother him now.
Now, when everything was moving on up. He grabbed the short one
and she shrieked as he lifted her up and above himself.

“Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream…” he started as he bobbed her in the air. Then his cellphone rang and he put his daughter back down. He fished his phone out of his coat pocket and checked the screen. And paled. That number had appeared

on his screen yesterday and he’d answered it. Why did I answer that call?

     He pressed the red button and put the phone back in the
pocket.

     “Who was that?” asked Ásta.
     “Eh, no one. I'll call them back later. Well, I'm off.”
     On his way to the front door he checked himself in the

entryway mirror. He examined himself one more time. What had
become of his self-esteem? He felt like his shoulders had been
broader in the upstairs mirror. His eyes brighter and beaming with
some energy that he hadn't felt in a long time. It was as if the
reflection had torn that spark from his eyes. Worse than that, the
reflecting tore him back more than twenty years. He was faced with
his past. The face of the mirror were mixed with other faces,
laughing ones. Not of joy. Not of happiness. On the contrary. They
were laughing at something horrible.

     “Is everything alright?” Ásta asked from the kitchen.

     “Yes yes, everything's fine. Bye bye, sweetheart. See you
tonight.” He grabbed his briefcase and walked out.

     “You'll call when the meeting is over,” called Ásta just
before the door slammed shut.

     He heard her request, but it didn't reach his brain.
                       ------OMISSION------

     Þorfinnur walked to the garage door, looked across the street
and saw where his neighbor was frantically scraping the snow and
ice off the front door of his window. Probably using something
other than a windowscraper, since he seemed to be faring quite
poorly.

     Þorfinnur pushed the button on the remote control and the
heavy garage door jerked into motion. He'd given in to Ásta's
demands on one cold winter morning and bought an automatic door
opener. It was if the machinery could barely get the door open. It
wasn't made for such a thick, heavy door, even though the salesman
had said it could be used to operate a dam. Þorfinnur felt sorry
for the mechanism every time he pressed the remote.

     The harsh cold outside reminded him how good a purchase it
had been after all. The car was warm and didn't need to scrape the
windows, unlike his neighbor whom was now driving off with only a
slit the size of a mailbox on his front window.

     Þorfinnur opened the passenger door of his car and tossed his
briefcase into the seat. He felt as if a shadow had passed, but he
paid it no heed. Probably one of the dozens of cats in the
neighborhood. They were always early risers, just like him. Still
a rather large shadow, he thought to himself.

     He was about to open the driver's door when a muffled ringing
could be heard from his coat pocket. He picked up his phone and
the light from the large screen lit up his face. He looked at the
number. Felt heat move into his cheeks. He answered it.

     “Would you please leave me alone?” he said with a determined
voice and pressed the red button on the phone and put it back into
his pocket. He opened the driver's door and was about to get into

the car.
     “Why won't you talk to me?” said a voice behind him.
     Þorfinnur yelped in fright as he turned around and fell, with

his back up against the side of the car. His knees became weak.
     “What are you doing here?”
     “Visiting you,” said the calm, somber voice. “A visit that

you've been expecting for twenty years, and I'm surprised to see
that you recognize me again. After all these years. How have you
been, Þorfinnur? Always moving on up? A wife and child. A
beautiful house. An automatic door opener. Not an interesting car,
though,” said the person and examined the car in the pale light of
the garage.

     A cat appeared in the doorway of the garage. Stood motionless
in the gloom and stared inside with golden eyes. One could think
that it was stuffed. The person took the remote from Þorfinnur's
hand, pressed the button and the motor started groaning.

     The cat reacted, lowered itself an inch or so, every muscle
tensed and ready to spring into action. But unlike Þorfinnur the
cat made a decision. It ran away.

     The garage door slid into place, closing the garage.

     “What do you want?” he asked the face he'd seen in the mirror
just minutes ago.

     “You thought you could just forget me, didn't you? Thought it
would be enough to create a life as you wanted it and I would just
be erased. But it's not so easy, is it? I always pop up. Here and
there in some small part of your head,” said the guest and tapped
with a latex-covered index finger against Þorfinnur's temple. “You
can't erase me. And now I'm standing in front of you. The memory,
in the flesh,” the person said, reaching out with both arms and
smiled.

     “Why are you wearing those gloves?” croaked Þorfinnur.

     “I'll tell you. It's so I don't leave any traces.” The
response was surprisingly cheerful.

     “Traces?” He repeated the word as if he didn't understand
what it meant. “Traces of what?” he added and felt like he was
swallowing sand.

     “Traces of me killing you, of course.”

     “You're joking, right?” Something inside of him told him that
he was probably wrong. This was no joke. Maybe he was sensing the
cold presence of death.

     “Joking? No, I'm not joking,” said the person and the
cheerful tone was gone. “Even though you're looking at me here,
alive and well, I really died 22 years ago. And you were one of
those that killed me. And now I'm here to kill you. That's just
fair, isn't it?” the person said as it pressed a taser up against
Þorfinnur's shoulder.

     He grunted softly and fell to the floor.

     The person gripped under Þorfinnur's shoulders and placed his
limp body behind the wheel. It opened the zipper of a black
backpack and pulled out a rolled-up hose and a roll of tape. He
put one  end of the hose around the exhaust pipe of the car and
sealed it up with the tape.

The person started the car, rolled down the passenger window

to make a small gap in it, then placed the other end of the hose
in the gap before rolling up the window again to fasten it in
place. It made sure that the end of the hose would lie close to
Þorfinnur.

     The warm air silently spilled out of the end of the hose.

     The person gently closed the passenger door. For a moment it
looked in through the window at Þorfinnur, where his head was
slumped against his chest. As if he was sleeping.

Chapter 13

                                                    [15 days later.
    Hilma has effectively discharged herself from the hospital, and
   wants something to do. Her superior agrees to give her a suicide
                             case that leads to unexpected places.]

     A shocked construction worker had called Emergency Services
and reported that a man had committed suicide in a building he was
working on up in Grafarholt – a new neighborhood being built north
of Reynisvatn lake.

     Hilma and Oddgeir arrived thirty minutes later along with the
Forensics squad and an ambulance.

     Two police officers had been first at the scene and had
sealed off the front of the house by the doors. A black Range
Rover jeep belonging to the deceased and a small decrepit van
belonging to the construction worker were parked in front of the
house.

     One of the police officers briefed Hilma on the situation.
When he and his partner arrived the construction worker sat by the
front door, rocking back and forth and staring into space. They'd
tried to talk to him with little results, except he said his name
was Kristján. He was covered in blood which turned out to be not
his own. His answers were incoherent and he seemed to be in shock.
The officers then had no choice but to arrest him after he tried
to leave the crime scene, he was now sitting in the police car.

     Hilma looked at the house. By her best knowledge it was now
windproof. She entered a large entrance hall and from there into a
gaping open space – walls far apart with a high ceiling. About
four meters high, she guessed. Even in its unfinished state it was
obvious that this was to be a luxurious estate. Where Hilma
estimated there would be a living room with an open kitchen were
four wide wooden beams in the ceiling, evenly spaced about three
meters up.

     From one of the beams hung a portly man. His head slumped
into his chest and Hilma could see the white stripe on his head
where he parted his hair. He was wearing a black suit with a black
tie and a light blue chequered shirt. Well-polished black and
pointy shoes.

     To Hilma it seemed as if the man had hanged himself by
stepping on a small wooden three-legged stool, attached a thin
steel wire to the beam, wrapped one end around his neck and then

stepped off the stool. Hilma slowly approached him, as if she
didn't want to wake him. She examined him as she walked around
him. He was impeccable in appearance save for a trickle of blood
that had leaked under the collar and made the shirt translucent.
Naked, furry flesh could be seen underneath the shirt where the
blood had leaked down to the pants and down along his thigh. The
stream of blood ended at the tip of the man's shiny pointy shoe,
and a few drops had finally reached the empty concrete floor and
left dusty crimson stars.

     After the Forensics team had photographed the deceased he was
pulled down and put on a stretcher. A coroner examined the body
and confirmed him to be dead. Everything done by the book.

     “He's still warm,” said Halldór, one of the most senior
Forensics members. “I'd say with good conscience that it wasn't
long ago that he died. Rigor mortis has barely set in.”

     “Then why all the blood on his collar?”

     “We've yet to do a thorough examination, but it looks like
the thin steel wire, which is only 3-4 millimeters wide, cut into
his neck,” he said and showed Hilma the wire which was made up of
tiny, intertwined steel threads. “This man is clearly between 120-
130 kilos in weight, I'm surprised that the wire kept the man
hanging at all. If the wire had been thinner this would have a
much more ghastly sight. This was in his pockets,” he said as he
handed Hilma a sealed plastic bag.

     Hilma took the bag and examined the contents. A key chain,
car keys, breath mints, some coins and a wallet.

     “Was that all?” asked Hilma, to which Halldór nodded yes.

Hilma put on a pair of latex gloves and pulled out the wallet. It contained some credit cards, 23.000 krónur in cash, business cards, various receipts and other things. An amateurish photo of the deceased was on a laminated employee ID card with a magnetic stripe. Probably a security or access card to his workplace, which according to the card was a wholesale retailer in Reykjavík that Hilma was familiar with. His name was Tryggvi Magnússon, born May 22nd 1974, making him 37 years old. A much better photo of Tryggvi was on his business card, which billed him as a managing director. She quickly leafed through the various papers in his wallet.

     “When will you take a look at him?” asked Hilma.

     “Tomorrow I reckon. Is this important?” asked Halldór without
looking away from the body.

     “Maybe not. But let me know the minute you find anything
interesting. What about a cellphone? Didn't he have a phone?”

     “Not on his person, no. Maybe it's in his car.”

     Hilma walked outside and asked the police officers to enlarge
the sealed-off area to cover the entire front of the house, as
there were several tire tracks and other markings visible. Next
she instructed that people used a set path when walking around to
avoid contaminating the crime scene with shoe prints and such. No
cellphone was found in Tryggvi's car, which Hilma found to be
strange. Possibly he'd left it at home or at work. Maybe he'd lost
it.

Hilma decided to hold off inspecting the interior crime scene

while Forensics were still working there, so she got in the front
seat of the police car. In the back was the construction worker
that had found the body. Hilma measured him up. He was close to
thirty, with a slight muscular build and a slight beard stubble on
his face which suited him pretty well. His face reminded her of a
teddy bear. A sad teddy bear who stared into the ground while its
left knee rhythmically bounced up and down as if with a mind of
its own. She examined his face for a while, then turned to face
forward and saw two paramedics that had given up on trying to push
the heavy stretchers towards the ambulance, and had asked for help
in get it through the snow, slush and gravel. Eventually they
carried the stretcher between themselves like a coffin.

Oddgeir stood in the doorway, holding a small item between his hands. He looks up and waves it towards Hilma as if he was saying: Look what I found. Hilma gestures back to him to wait there, she was going to have a talk with Winnie the Pooh in the back. There were two rear-view mirrors in the car, and she adjusted the closer one so that she could see his face.

     “Your name is Kristján, right?” she said and his shoulders
twitched slightly.

     “Yes,” he answered. It surprised Hilma how such a fit man
could have such a soft voice. She had expected a deeper, tougher
tone.

     “Can you tell me what happened?”

     There was a long silence. Hilma didn't want to pressure
Kristján. His uneasiness seemed genuine to her.

     “I don't know what happened,” he finally said. “I was just
coming into work and...” he fell silent and his shoulders
trembled. He started crying. Hilma had learned a long time ago
that body physique had nothing to do with bravery. It was clear
that this man had a very small heart. She calmly waited.

     “...and I came in and I saw the man,” he continued after a
few heavy breaths.

     “What happened?” Hilma asked as she turned to face him
directly. “What happened between you two?”

     “What do you mean? Nothing happened between us. I've never
seen this man before,” he said and looked right back at Hilma. His
left foot, which had taken a short break, resumed its fast
rhythmic bounce. Up and down, up and down.

     “Something must have happened, your clothes are all bloody.
It couldn't have happened by itself,” she calmly explained.

     “He was just hanging there, and the sound he was making...”
Kristján briefly paused. “The sound that he made was
indescribable. And horrendous. Kinda like a pig...a mad pig.”

     “Are you saying that he was alive when you found him?”

     “Yes, he was alive. He must have just done it because he was
swinging in the noose.”

     “And?” asked Hilma, wanting to keep him talking.

     “I don't really remember what happened next. It's all kind of
blurry. I think I just ran up to him. I propped up a stool that
lay underneath him, stepped on it and tried to lift the man.” It
was like the pieces were slowly coming together in Kristján's mind
as he stared straight ahead, seemingly lost in thought. Then he

looked Hilma right in the eye. “I swear I tried to lift him, but
he was so heavy. Once I managed to lift him high enough that I was
sure that he could pull the wire from his neck, but he was so fat
that he couldn't get the fingers through the noose.” He fell
silent.

“Go on.”

     “Yes, I managed to lift him and I saw that he tried to clutch
the wire that was around his neck, but it must have cut into him
because it started bleeding so much.”

     Considering his short, hurried breaths and bodily expression,
Hilma realized that Kristján was close to having a nervous
breakdown. She was about to stop and take a break, but he
continued:

     “He managed to say: “Help me. Help me,” about two or three
times but then he started convulsing and made this gurgling sound.
I tried as I could to keep myself up on the stool, but I must have
slipped because it fell to the side and I fell on the floor. And I
must have instinctively grabbed on to him because I heard a snap
or something and then...” He looked away and put his forehead
against the cold window. “And then all fell silent.” Hilma knew
that this was all she'd get from him. Kristján was struggling with
himself now. Couldn't control his emotions and his bodily
functions were pulling at him from all directions. Hilma was about
to get out of the car when Kristján spoke again.

     “Who hangs himself but then calls for help? That's not
normal, is it?” he said while he stared at Hilma with confused,
red eyes.

     “It's hard to say,” said Hilma.

     But she knew better. Many that attempt suicide are actually
calling for help. The plan is not to succeed at it. Whether that
was the case here, she couldn't tell. Hilma got out of the car and
asked a paramedic to attend to Kristján. Further questioning would
have to wait. Just then a white station wagon pulls up to the
house and a middle-aged man steps out who seems deeply upset.

     “What the hell is going on here?!?” He was wearing dirty and
faded blue overalls, from which a hammer, various screwdrivers and
other tools could be seen. His hair was ragged and cement gray,
and his face the same color.

The years have not been kind to Bob the Builder, Hilma thought as she intercepted the man as he was about to barge past the police banner and showed no signs of letting a female obstruction stop him. It wasn’t until Hilma tightly gripped his upper arm and pulled on it, that the man realized his mistake. For a moment he looked as if he was going to yelp in pain, but he kept quiet. As puffed-up as he was at the start, he now looked as if someone had popped him with a needle. His attitude deflated silently. Probably hadn’t expected such a powerful grip from a woman.

     “Where's Kristján?” he finally asked with as much attitude as
he could muster.

     “He's in good hands,” answered Hilma calmly as she led the
man back to his car and kindly asked him to sit in the back. Hilma
sat in the front and quickly established that this was the owner

of the house. He'd gotten a call from his handyman, Kristján,
where he sounded very upset.

     “I just couldn't make out what he was saying, poor boy. He
was crying and blabbering about someone hanging. Kept saying that,
people were hanging and God knows what. I thought he meant that
someone was refusing to work,” he said and started laughing, but
quickly stopped when he saw that Hilma didn't even crack a smile.
“But when he started talking about a dead guy then I obviously
realized that this was serious and got over here as fast as
possible,” he said with a fake tone and expression of sympathy
which lasted for all of three seconds.

     “Is there really someone dead around here?” he said and
pulled himself up by grabbing the back of the seat. He glanced
around, looking very excited.

     Hilma asked him more about Kristján and the house. Kristján
had worked for him for a few years, he himself was a building
engineer that had bought the house at an auction. He got it for a
good price due to massive flaws in its structure. He said that the
reason for those flaws were the untrained foreign workers that
built the house.

     “Not that I'm racist or anything,” he added, “but those
Icelandic crooks imported all these migrant workers here, kept
bringing in useless garbage and calling them learned tradesmen in
various fields. Waving hard-to-read papers and incomprehensible
degrees that might as well have been written by the Mafia. The
truth was that these poor souls didn't know which end of the
hammer to strike with.”

     Hilma was dying to ask him about his fingernails, of which
many were bruised and black, but restrained herself.

     “It's clear that whomever built this house had never heard of
a tilt meter, let alone a measuring tape. It's all crooked and
twisted in there. The angles are off, the roof leaks, not enough
iron bindings used and so on. Every conceivable standard was
ignored,” he said as his temper started rising. “It's worse than
the leaning tower of Pisa!”

     He deserved praise for his exaggerations, Hilma thought.
“Have you noticed any people around here lately? Remember anything
unusual?” she asked.

     “Unusual...no, this is the second time I come here since I
bought the house a month ago. I've been busy with other projects.
Today was when me and Kristján were finally gonna get our hands
dirty. I was here right before the auction, to get an estimate on
it. Taking measurements and such. And just as I'm about to finish
a job in another house I get this phone call from Kristján in my
lunch break and I haul ass over here. And this is what's waiting
for me!” he says as he throws out his arms. “This wasn't part of
the deal,” and clearly was expecting Hilma to laugh at his joke.

     “Do you plan to live alone in this empty part of town?” said
Hilma without looking at him and paged through a notebook that
she'd been writing in.

     “I wasn't planning on living here myself. I buy, renovate and
re-sell houses. That was the plan with this one here,” he said and
nodded towards the house. “I'll sell it...eventually. Things will

eventually get better, won't they?”
     Hilma didn't reply. She took down his personal information

and said that he would probably be contacted later.
     “What about the house? When can I get back to work?”
     “Not today. We'll be busy here most of the day and probably

tomorrow as well. We'll let you know.”
     “That won't do. Can't I just work elsewhere in the house

while you run around with your magnifying glasses? Unlike other
people I ain't got time to hang around all day.”

     She closed her notebook and rolled back her eyes.

     The man's ever-increasing selfishness was really starting to
annoy her. She decided that the man should be taken downtown for
further questioning. That would take most of the day.

     “What kind of bullshit is this? What for? Am I a suspect
now?” he blurted out, his face turning so red that the small
purple veins in his swollen cheeks were clearly visible.

     “Everyone's a suspect,” she calmly said. “Even the deceased.”
     She got out of the car and slammed the door. Hard.

Chapter 14

     “Nice of you to put some gloves on,” she said with just the
right amount of coyness. She hadn't expected that Oddgeir would
lift a finger at the crime scene. “And what have you got there?”

     “I found it in the corner right here by the entrance,” said
Oddgeir and opened up his palm. Hilma looked at the items that
Oddgeir had put into a little plastic bag that was lying in his
hand. Two small, broken pieces of plastic. One black, one clear.

     “So, what is it?”

     “I think they're part of a cellphone. The black one is
probably from the back cover, look here,” he says and pointed to
the black fragment. “This curve probably ran around the lens of
the camera phone, but the clear one is probably part of the
phone's monitor.”

Hilma almost said: Nice job, Oddgeir. She was pleased with him, despite him having forced himself into her investigation.

     “Maybe he threw it out into the yard somewhere,” he said and
nodded his head towards the snow bank on the left side of the
house.

     “That's possible, yes. Or maybe over there,” said Hilma and
nodded towards the snow bank on the right side of the house. “It
could be anywhere in the snow here. Why don't you look around and
who knows? Maybe you'll get lucky. Good luck,” she said with a
smile and went inside. She saw that the Forensics team was still
at work and walked back outside. She couldn't help but smile when
she saw Oddgeir walking in the snow in his dress shoes that sank
into the snow. After every slow step he made – as if he was
standing in a minefield, he'd look around and pull up his pant
sleeves to save them from the snow.

     After having watched his bizarre search technique, Hilma
decided to circle around the house. A wooden ladder had been

propped up in the back. Hilma climbed up and stepped onto the flat
roof. She looked at the neighborhood around her. Lampposts had
been put down and lit up streets that had barely been laid down
and paved. Even road signs stood to attention at empty crossroads,
just in case a car should accidentally drive through. Among the
few houses that were actually built, or in the process of being
built, were many vacant lots but here and there one could see
where someone had dug for the foundation. She counted eight houses
in total and all of them looked to be small luxury houses of the
future. Or memorabilia of the past, she thought. And somehow she
felt as if the same architect had been involved. Cold boxes with
large windows on the front. Some of them had tiny windows on the
sides. Possibly the architect's trademark, because Hilma couldn't
fathom the use of such small windows. The bangings of a lone
hammer could be heard in the distance. A circular saw eating
through timber elsewhere. She saw that only a few houses had
people working in them. Workers had set up spotlights in some
houses, but most of the houses were not lit up at all and looked
quite miserable. When they had been driving into this
neighborhood, Hilma had seen a worn and faded sign at the turn-
off. It was an promotional poster and map of a wondrous vision of
how this neighborhood would look in the future. Hilma pictured the
designer that must have had a dreamy look in his eyes when he drew
up the warm-looking neighborhood, with a large group of kids
playing at the playground. Other children were playing in a man-
made pond, while neighbors were chatting with one another over the
fences of their gardens, telling stories about happiness. There
was some text at the bottom of the poster but it was mostly
unreadable because someone had blasted the sign with a shotgun.

     From up here she could see over into the next neighborhood, a
future ghetto where tons of apartment blocks were rising. They
looked like skyscrapers – no, not skyscrapers. There was no
building in Iceland worthy of that word, she thought. Not even
that mirror-clad erection down in Borgartún. But anyway – these
were long boxes, all alike. And the same silence seemed to reign
there as it did over here. She saw a few building cranes drooping
sadly against the sky. They looked depressed. They had given up on
the people. And the people given up on them.

A chill crept down Hilma’s back. She pulled up her shoulders, buttoned up her leather jacket and slipped her cold hands into her pockets. She felt Tryggvi’s wallet in there, pulled it out and opened it. She pulled out a few business cards and examined them closer. They were all just standard business cards with titles ranging from salesmen to directors and everything in-between. Some of them had photos, others not. Some were Icelandic, others not. One card caught Hilma’s attention. The card belonged to a man named Ingvar Sverrisson and according to his card he worked at a software company in Reykjavík as a specialist in client-side solutions. Hilma raised an eyebrow, she understood what that meant. The card didn’t have a photo but Tryggvi had drawn a head on it. Hilma was unsure about whether Tryggvi lacked any artistic skills or whether it was deformed on purpose. Though the face was too wide and the proportions were off, it somehow managed to

portray a recognizable image. A doodle that someone would draw on a nearby piece of paper while talking on the phone. The eyes were tiny, the mouth almost lip-less and the ears seemed three sizes too big. Some kind of head-wear was drawn on top of the head, probably a cap. Then he’d added two fangs that jutted from the upper lip and horns on the man’s forehead. Beneath Ingvar’s name and title was written: Dumbo the devil. Hilma snapped a photo of the card with her phone camera and put it back in the wallet.

     “We're wrapping up here,” Halldór called up to her in a half-
muffled voice. He wore a surgical mask on his face and was covered
in a white over-all with a hood, and was pulling the latex gloves
off his fingers. Hilma nodded to him and walked towards the
ladder. She saw where Oddgeir was still searching in the snow.
He'd given up on saving his pant sleeves, but still took the slow
and easy steps through the snow. He even used his hands now and
again.

     Forensics were packing up, so Hilma was safe to step inside
and have a look around. The house was filled with that cold cement
smell.

     She went through the house and examined the rooms: A large
and spacious kitchen that was open into three adjacent living room
spaces on three platforms. six large rooms, three bathrooms, a
large washing room with an entrance into a double-sized garage. In
one corner of the garage was a circular opening where a wooden
ladder led into the basement.

     A police officer's face popped up from the opening. He
informed Hilma that there was nothing notable down there except
construction gear, dust and a whole lot of darkness.

     Hilma slowly climbed down the ladder. The police officer
hadn't been lying. The basement was dark except right by the
stairs when some light fell down from above.

     Hilma pulled out a small flashlight that cast out a thin cone
of light as if from a projector, and large specks of dust danced
wildly in the light. She swung the light around her and saw two
small boarded-up windows and a backdoor that was sealed off by a
wooden raft that had clearly been assembled from surplus timber,
it didn't quite fit the door frame. Hilma pushed the raft which
should have opened outwards, but it only budged slightly. Some
kind of obstruction down at ground level outside blocked the raft
from opening. Probably frozen dirt and ice, she thought.

     She turned back towards the dark space and saw a pile of junk
in one corner that almost filled a dug-down pit in the ground.
Probably intended for a hot tub, and the basement planned as a
recreational room, she thought. Hilma approached the pit and
slowly let the narrow beam of light shine over the pile of surplus
construction material: Timber used for molding cement, various
plastics, tubes and other similar stuff.

     Something caught her eye way back in the corner of the pile.
After having cleared away some rubble she could step down into the
waist-deep hole. With difficulty she reached in and pulled out a
thin steel wire and pulled it towards her from underneath the junk
on top of it. She shone her light at the wire, and at first glance
it seemed to be the exact same wire found around Tryggvi's neck.

She cast her light again over the junk pile, and inside of it. She
lifted up a heavy plank of wood and shone under it.

     “Hilma!” was called from the opening. It was Halldór. She let
the plank fall into place and stepped back, because now she could
barely see anything for the thick cement dust that now swirled
around her and filled up her senses. She coughed heavily as she
made her way out of the pit. She turned back towards the pit,
crouched down and snapped a photo of it on her phone. The light
from the camera flash lit up the pit for a fraction of a second,
as if it had been struck by lightning, before casting everything
back into darkness.

“Hilma?”

     “Yeah, what?” she called back, annoyed. Couldn't see
anything.

     “You should come up here. We found something.”

     Hilma handed Halldór the piece of wire from the basement and
asked him to check if it was the same type that Tryggvi had used.
She wasn't sure if it meant anything, but experience had taught
her that the smallest, most insignificant details could prove to
be the most important ones at the end of the day. Halldór handed
her a clear plastic bag, containing a broken and dirty cellphone.

     “Against all odds, your partner...he...” Halldór turned to
Oddgeir who stood nearby with his feet wet.

“Oddgeir,” Oddgeir said, a little sad that Halldór didn’t remember his name, but pleased with the compliment. Against all odds. That was a compliment, right?

“Yes, Oddgeir found it out back, deep in the snow. Are you turning gray with age, Hilma?”

     “Huh?” she asked, not getting the context.
     “No, it's just...your hair...”
     Hilma ran her fingers through her unkempt hair and fine

cement dust fell out of it. They all smiled.
     “Anyway,” Halldór continued. “I'm not certain, but it looks

like Tryggvi stomped on it and threw it where we found it. The
plastic fragments that Oddgeir found earlier are a match.”

     “Or someone else. Maybe someone else crushed the phone,” she
said, mostly to herself. “If this is Tryggvi's phone to begin
with.”

     “Huh?” was Halldór's reply regarding the former theory. “Yes,
of course. It shouldn't take long to find out. The SIM-card is
still in it, but it all seems rather banged-up to me.”

     There was something else that had bothered Hilma down there
in the basement. She couldn't put her finger on what it was,
though.

     “Let me know as soon as you've examined Tryggvi,” she said to
Halldór as she walked out. Oddgeir followed her.

     “You got lucky there, Oddgeir,” she said and lit a cigarette.

     “I don't know. At least it wasn't luck. It hadn't snowed for
the past 24 hours and I found a hole. Something had landed in the
snow there and that's where the phone was. As simple as that.”

     It was fortunate. That it hadn't snowed recently.
     They approached the car and Oddgeir got in behind the

driver's seat. Hilma was about to get in, but stopped.
     She called to Halldór who was standing outside. Hadn't she

seen something familiar when she looked through the wallet? Like
something had crept into her sub-conscious and floated there.

     She asked Halldór to hand her Tryggvi's wallet which she'd
turned over to him a little earlier.

     She opened it up and took out a bunch of papers, various
receipts and such. She went through it like a deck of cards.

     And there it was, right in the middle. That little black
cross that she'd seen for a fraction of a second as she'd leafed
through the pile earlier. She pulled out three small and neatly-
folded papers that had been torn from a newspaper. Unfolding them
was as if the optic nerve was connected straight to the heart,
because it beat heavily as she read out the names on the
obituaries. Those little obits that appeared every day in most of
the newspapers.

     One of them announced the death of Þorfinnur, the next the
death of Ásmundur and the last one the death of Guðmundur.

     Hilma thought back to Eyþór and his very far-fetched theory
about the three men. Guess it wasn't that far-fetched after all.

     After having snapped photos of the obits she called Eyþór.

     “Hi, do you have anything on those guys...the lawyer and the
others?”

     “Yes, I've found some more interesting connections. I think
it's all too connected to be some kind of coincidence. I've made a
diagram and...”

     “We need to meet,” interrupted Hilma. “I've got one more here
that I'd like you to check up on. Maybe he fits into that diagram
of yours.”

     She took two puffs from the cigarette, then tossed it in the
slush and exhaled the gray-blue smoke.

     “But I hope he doesn't,” she said and hung up.

Chapter 15

     The person lay motionless in the dark. Its entire body ached.
The thirst was unbearable. The saliva long dried out. The throat
like a rusted pipe.

     It had no idea how long it had lain there, but an in-built
sense of time said it was about 5-6 hours. No, more. Hard to tell.

     The person hadn't tried to reach for its cellphone to check
the time. Too risky. The silence was deafening but it decided to
stay there longer. Just in case. Since it had hastily hidden there
that morning, there had been constant traffic in the house. It
heard vague conversations between people and someone came down the
ladder, walked around and shone a flashlight over its hiding spot,
from which it could peek out through a tiny gap in the junk pile.
The dilated pupils had grown accustomed to the dark and the person
could see that the flashlight's owner was a police officer. As
soon as he'd gone back up someone else had come down. The person
could see the body's shape. Breasts. It was scared that its

frantic heartbeat would give up its hiding place when the short-
haired one came into the pit and pushed the junk towards it as it
lay cowering under the junk.

     The person closed its eyes. It had done that countless time
in its youth. Closed its eyes and became invisible.

     It didn't believe it would work now, but it did back then. If
it closed its eyes and locked the mind in that state long enough,
it thought it could feel how the body dissolved into nothingness.
No one could see, no one could hear. It become an odorless void,
out of everyone's reach.

     Maybe that was why there was no pain when it felt a sharp
object tear through its pants and skin as the short-haired one
pushed the junk pile around. That one opening that it could see
through was now closed, but others had opened instead. The person
thought it was all over when the short-haired one raised a wooden
plank that exposed it. A few centimeters lower and the beam of
light would have shone on its face, deep in the junk pile. Their
eyes would have met.

     Luckily someone had called from above. The plank fell back in
place and dust was kicked up, like a hand that lay across its face
and stopped all flow of oxygen. The person barely managed to
squeeze its palm tightly against its face. Knowing that the
slightest sound or motion would spell the end. It felt like its
eyes were gonna pop out of their sockets as it held in the cough.
Refusing to breathe.

     It saw the short-haired one crawl out of the pit, but before
she left she turned around and crouched down. The person wasn't
ready when a strong light came from front of the short-haired one,
and it couldn't close its eyes in time before the painful flash of
light slammed against its retinas. For one moment the person felt
it was blind. The short-haired one had taken a photo. When the
person finally opened its eyes everything was much darker than
before. It would take some time to get accustomed to the dark
again, but it heard when the short-haired one climbed up the
ladder. She had left the basement. The person opened its mouth and
let in the long-awaited air. Even though it had desired nothing
more than to scream away the cough, it managed to let it out only
as a low-rasping noise. The person couldn't stop thinking about
how the short-haired one would have reacted, had it found a person
in the pit. Imagined for a moment how it would have pulled out the
taser, pushed it tightly against her neck and watch her pass out
in a heartbeat. A fraction of a second would have been enough.
Afterwards everything would boil down to luck, which so far had
been on the person's side.

     Or until this morning. First it was that moron. That boy had
to come at the worst possible moment. And then the backdoor in the
basement didn't open. The person had planned everything, even for
surprises. It seemed perfect.

     The person had watched the house for a long time, checked its
surroundings and when it believed it was safe to do so, entered
the house and looked around. If something unexpected came up, the
backdoor would make a perfect escape route. But the door had to
jam at the worst possible time. Something outside was blocking it,

probably ice. It had tried to force it open, but without causing
too much noise.

     That's when it remembered the junk pile in the pit, and
slowly inched through the darkness and crawled inside. Squeezed
itself underneath the junk pile. Rotten luck, it thought. Maybe it
was just the numbers, the odds. Luck, luck, luck, bad luck. And
then it would start over. Luck, luck, luck, bad luck.

     This morning had started out lucky, though. Tryggvi hadn't
been pleased with the person calling him that morning. There was
always the chance that he wouldn't have come. Then again, the
threats against him were very clear. Threatened to go public with
everything if he didn't come. Of course he'd come.

And that was when time decided to slow down to a crawl. It had literally paced the floors, biting its nails. And swallowed them. No DNA would be left all around that could be traced back to it. They can do that now, can’t they? The police? Find the nail bitings and narrow down the owner’s location? The dirt underneath the nails came from the West side. The person smiled at the absurdity of it. But did a patterned shoeprint form in the dust on the floor from the thin sponge that was carefully glues to the shoes? No.

     And the person paced the floors. Stopped biting its
fingernails. It took off the cap and fixed the nylon hood it has
made to cover up its hair.

     Fuck, he's not coming. Wait. Yes, he's coming.

     And then he came. Through a slit in the plastic-covered
window, the person saw as a black Range Rover came speeding
towards the house and screeched its brakes outside. Tryggvi
stormed inside, red with anger and planning some kind of rant. He
walked up to the person with a raised and pointed index finger
towards its face. Tryggvi hadn't say much when the charge from the
person's taser coursed through his nervous system. The person
stared into his wide-open eyes, which probably weren't seeing
anything right now and he probably couldn't think about what had
happened either. Even the straight and accusing index finger
became like a hook. Then his muscle system relaxed, practically
shut down and Tryggvi silently fell down at the feet of the
person, which was too slow to react. It had intended to grab him
to cushion the fall, but it happened all so fast. He was also so
heavy. He just fell down like a log. The back of his head hit the
rough floor. A wound down by root of his hair.

     The person had read about the perfect murder. Firstly it was
deemed perfect due to a mistake being made either during the
investigation or the trial. Secondly it was perfect because the
killer didn't leave any evidence behind that could point to his
guilt. Lastly was that there was nothing to even suggest a murder
had taken place, that the cause of death was thought to be
accidental - or something else.

     And that was precisely what the person was planning now. But
it also knew that in ninety-nine point lots-of-nines percent of
the time the murderer left behind a track – clues. Those
accidental, minor deviations from the plan. And when that
happened, it was a fifty/fifty shot whether they'd be spotted.

And a fifty/fifty shot of getting caught, the person thought.

     Fifteen minutes later Tryggvi was standing on a wooden stool,
crying. Firstly because his muscled ached, but slowly because he
realized the circumstances he was in. He vaguely remembered having
entered a house still under construction and seen the person. Then
something happened...he couldn't quite remember what. He came to
and the person helped him up. Supported him as he walked up onto a
stool, and then felt as something was wrapped around his neck.

     And now he was standing on a little stool. Felt how something
cold tightened against his neck as he swayed a little. He sense
that whatever happens he mustn't fall off the stool. It was like a
few pulses of shock were left in his head, whizzing about like
eels in a glass jar. His nostrils burned and the bitter iron taste
in his mouth made him sick. He felt like his tongue was too big
for his mouth. Dry like sandpaper.

     And now he was begging for mercy. Family, kids, he whined.
“I've got money. Please, please,” he shrieked.

Is this like how I experienced it back then, the person thought. When life was bidding farewell? When the soul left the body and was about to float away. Is that what Tryggvi is feeling now? How the brain is close to bursting from too many thoughts, but mostly because the answer was always the same: You only had a few minutes left to live. Maybe just seconds. Ten – nine – eight. There was no hope of rescue, no way out. Seven – six. The only difference was that I survived. That was not on Tryggvi’s agenda. Five – four – three. Funny, Tryggvi isn’t about to feel what it’s like to survive.

     And that was also the last thing Tryggvi saw. When the person
walked out of his field of view.

     He felt the touch on his back. Just like when a child on a
snow sled is pushed down a slope.

Two – one.

     That's how the person pushed Tryggvi. A soft but firm push
that sent him off the stool.

Zero.

     And that was when the damn moron pulled up out front. And the
person was planning on watching. Savor the moment. A car door was
slammed. The person quickly looked around. Grabbed two things off
the floor: The pliers and the rest of the wire that it had brought
along, and just managed to duck behind a corner when it heard the
sounds of someone enter the building.

     The person had a narrow view from where it stood, but enough
to see both Tryggvi and whomever just entered. It was a
construction worker. A young boy, by the look of things.

     The person did get to enjoy the panic that struck the boy and
the heroic, but futile effort to save Tryggvi's life.

     It turned out well after all. Looking back, that sight was
one of the most powerful visions it had ever seen in its life.

     At first it was uncertain whether the boy would fail. He
showed tremendous strength when he stood up on the uneven stool
and lifted the big and hefty Tryggvi so that the taut wire could
be loosened. But soon his strength faded. He lost his balance and
fell to the floor.

     The panicked screams and the gurgling wails soon fell silent.
It was over. The person watched as the boy crawled on all fours
towards the front door. It heard him talking on the phone with
someone. It was impossible to make out his words.

     Quietly the person climbed down the wooden ladder into the
dark basement.

     Now the person thought that it was safe to crawl from out of
its lair. Slowly and surely it pushed the junk pile off of itself
and climbed out of the pit and stood up with great effort. The
skin wasn't letting go of the bones just yet. It wasn't until the
person had shaken itself up a bit and walked around the floor that
the joints slowly started acting normally.

     It slowly climbed up the wooden stairs and peeked over the
edge of the hole, walked down the darkened hallway and now stood
where Tryggvi had been hanging from the beam. Now there was
nothing to see there. Fascinating, it thought. Just like it had
never happened. It carefully opened the front door. It was pitch
dark and calm outside. The stars in the sky were like a million
watchful eyes, observing everything. All the half-built houses
were pitch black. Deathly silence.

     The person looked around, then walked out.

Chapter 24

                                                     [2 days later.
   Hilma and her assistant Oddgeir go out in the country to visit a
     farm where they want to interview a young man; Ingvar (the man
  drawn on the business card). They suspect that he may be involved
                                  with the deaths of a few people.]

     A short while later they were back there.

     Hilma stepped out of the car. She hesitated. She was unsure
whether to head for the stables where she had seen Sverrir head to
when they left, or go straight inside and get her phone. She
glanced around. It was getting dark. She chose the latter option.

     The dog lazily looked up to her, beat its tail once into the
dirt and then lay its head back on the rubber boots. What an
accomplishment, thought Hilma.

     She slowly opened the front door and quietly walked towards
the open kitchen door. What if Sverrir was back inside? She
thought she heard something. She reached the kitchen. There was no
one there. Her phone was where she had left it, she grabbed it
along with the charger and put it in her pocket. For a moment she
stood in the middle of the room and weighed her options. She
slowly walked over to the living room. The door was half-open,
just as she'd remembered it. She carefully pushed it open and
peered into the dark room. A thick and sour smell greeted her...or
more like dead and sour. Hilma reached along the interior wall of
the living, found a lightswitch and turned it on. Clothes lay
strewn about. Sweaters, t-shirts, pants spread across an unmade

bed and the back of a chair. Countless socks and underwear on the
floor. A commode by the wall close to the door had been occupied
by lighters, empty cigarette packs and crumpled credit card
receipts.

Hilma briefly checked back into the kitchen before she entered the living room and approached the commode. She took a receipt and straightened it out. It was from a grocery store in Reykjavík, dated two days ago. She took another receipt, straightened it out. It was from a gas station from Kirkjubæjarklaustur, dated yesterday. Hilma laid the receipts side-by-side, pulled out her phone and took photos of the receipts, then re-crumpled them, placed them back where they were and hurried out. He’s good at lying, she said softly to herself as she thought of Sverrir.

As she walked through the kitchen and towards the entrance hall, she heard a noise coming from the hallway. She stood still and peered down the lightless hallway. Listening. Another noise. Her heart jumped and she tensed up, preparing for the unknown. She slowly walked down the hallway, carefully putting her feet down. The door opposite the bathroom door wasn’t fully closed, a pale yellow light seeped out into the hallway. She looked. Listened. She recalled the bull and its curiosity. What had Sverrir said? He comes to the windows when he sees movement.

     She stared at the crack in the door and saw a shadow dart
past. She felt how the hairs at the back of her hair rose. She
carefully approached the door and stood in front of it. She
listened and put out her hand. She felt like her heartbeat could
be heard through the crack in the door. Her hand was right up
against the door, but she felt like she was frozen, unable to push
it. There was someone in there and she wondered if she should say
something. Her palm touched the door. She had barely started to
push open the door when the door was torn open and a black
silhouette charged her. The silhouette slapped its open palms into
Hilma, so she fell backwards into the bathroom door and into the
bathroom. She fell down on the hard tiled floor and her head hit
the bathtub. She gripped her head in pain, but when she looked out
into the hallway there was no one there. Only the opened door to
the room that the silhouette had come from. In that room she saw a
half-opened crossbeamed window. He had tried to get out through
there, she thought as she got to her feet. Probably been
interrupted by the bull. She felt the back of her head and found
warm blood.

     She heard someone running outside. Heavy but rapid footsteps
that flattened snow in every step. Hilma climbed up on the toilet
and peeked out through the small window above it.

     The son of a bitch is running away.

     Hilma ran out and called to Oddgeir who was still in the car.
He would have heard her and rushed to her aid if it wasn't for two
things that had seized all his attention: The text message from
his ex, full of threats aimed at him if he would keep on ignoring
her, and the music of KK that filled his ears with songs of broken
hearts and a man who'd drown if it wouldn't stop raining. Hilma
ran round the back where, to her amazement, she sees the dog

standing by a fence. Hilma climbed over the fence and ran after
the person who was heading for a building about 200 meters away.

     The dog barked once as she passed him. She made use of the
calf-deep footprints left by her attacker. The person and whatever
building that was, kept shaking up and down in front of Hilma's
eyes and the only thing she heard was her own panting. She reached
for her phone and tried to dial Oddgeir's number.

     She drops it. Steps on it.

     She pulls it out of the snow, but the back cover and battery
had fallen off. She rummages through the snow and finds the wet
battery. As she was now standing still, she realized that she
wasn't the only one panting.

She turned around and looked back towards the farm, and saw the bull as it wasn’t only panting, but snorting as it came running towards her. Terrific!

She started running and sees as the person disappears into the building. When she reached the building she stopped to catch her breath. Her thighs were burning. What endurance this man must have, she thought and spit into the snow. Her mouth tasted of blood and her lungs burned as she breathed in the ice-old air. Maybe I’ll quit smoking.

     That's when she remembered the bull and quickly glanced back.
To her delight, the bull stands still in the distance. Maybe he
needed to catch his breath as well. Maybe he'd just given up. Or
maybe he remembered that it's much more exciting when someone is
pursuing him.

     She stood by the side of the building and slowly walked
towards the corner, where she spotted the entrance. The person's
footprints lay into the darkness that awaited inside.

     “Ingvar,” she called, “is that you?” She moved closer and
stood right next to the entrance. She put her head out and peeked
inside. Saw nothing. She leaned up against the wall and looked up
at the orange sky as the sun was heading off to sleep.

     “Ingvar!” she called again. “You must answer me. It's no use
hiding here. There's nothing to fear. I only want to talk to you.”
     In a deft motion she jumped across the entrance and leaned up

against the wall on the other side. She peeked inside again, but
it was impossible to see anything. She heard faint thuds from her
heart as it was trying to slow down. No. That wasn't her heart.
What was that? She looked round the other corner of the building
and out onto the white field. That's when she saw it and realized
that this is the second time today that her hearing had deceived
her. The faint thuds were the steps of the person running far out
on the field. Hilma saw another building, about 100 meters away.

     “Bloody idiot,” she screamed and took off.

     Now she had to make the effort of crushing the snow beneath
her feet and before she reached the building she had rested once
and fallen down twice. Almost three times.

     The faint sunlight touched on the sharp and pointy peaks of
the distant mountains, drawing a red line in the sky. Much like
the line on a heart monitor, connected to Hilma's heart. She knew
that it would be pitch dark soon.

The person's footprints led into the building.

     “Ingvar. I know it's you. Come out. Now!” she called with a
strict tone. Like a tired mother, annoyed by her ill-behaved
child.

     She entered and stood still. Waited a moment for her eyes to
adjust to the dark. Slowly it relented. A dirt floor ran along the
entire building with feeding pens were on both sides.

     She walked as quietly as possible along the dirt floor and
stopped. She held in her breath. She heard a noise and frantic
breathing nearby. She turned to her side and could make out three
sheep. Saw their yellow glittering eyes at knee height in one of
the pens.

     She let her eyes wander into the darkness, now that they had
adjusted to it. At the end of the hallway, in a corner, something
was hanging. As she got closer she could see that they were three
flayed sheep torsos hanging by their hind legs. Beneath them were
dirty patches of wool. On a nearby table were knifes and other
things she couldn't make out in the dark. Wait, now she could.
Bones. Big and small. She tried to look for a light source. She
saw an old light hanging from the ceiling, but she couldn't find a
switch.

     “Ingvar. Come out where I can see you. I only want to talk to
you. You've got nothing to be afraid of,” she said and tried to
sound as fearless as possible. Her strained vocal cords couldn't
quite hide her fears, however.

     In the right corner she saw a door. She walked to it and
opened it. She felt the cold gust lick her face. Snow and dead
silence. Had he run out again? She peered down into the snow, but
there were no tracks there. In the distance she heard a motor.
Probably from the highway, she thought and thought it sounded like
a motorbike, which felt wrong, considering the time of year.

     She turned her attention back inside and spotted a ladder.
She looked up and froze. Someone was sitting at the top of the
ladder. She could see the outlines of a person who was huddling,
as if they were trying to be invisible.

     She didn't know how long she'd been staring when she saw slow
movement. No, it only seemed slow. Something came towards her at
great speed and she got a heavy blow to the front of her head. She
fell down to the floor, but her only thought was not to lose sight
of the ladder and the figure that was now climbing down it. A
large shadow approached her with a blunt instrument in one hand.
The shadow raised its hand and struck. Hilma managed to roll aside
just before the blow struck the ground with a hollow thud.

     Hilma swept her leg aside and she connected with the shadow's
ankle, whom fell over and landed beside her. She drove her elbow
into the shadow's chest with all her might, and heard the rushed
breath as the wind was knocked out. Like a plug pulled out of an
inflatable ball.

     Hilma was about to stand up, but was struck by the blunt
instrument on both of her breasts, so she yelled in pain.

     The person stood up behind Hilma as she lay curled up, put
the instrument over her head, around her neck and pulled.

     “Leave me alone,” said the person with a coarse and panting
voice, and then raised her up so that her legs were left dangling.

     Hilma grabbed the person's hands and pulled with all her
might to try to be able to breathe. She felt the pressure in her
head and behind her eyes. She quickly realized that she was no
match for the person's strength. She tore and pulled at its hair,
tried to jab with her elbows, kick its shins, but nothing seemed
to have any effect, and she felt as her strength was fading away.

     The thought of surrender first reached her brain, then her
nervous system, but it had yet to reach her muscles. If she could
just make her brain work for a moment, and her nerves for a
fraction of a second, she might be able to get the two to join
forces in her last struggles, where she'd need her muscles at
their strongest.

     She reached her left arm towards the table that was beside
her, randomly reaching for something to use. She felt bones,
gripped something slimy and then she found what she was looking
for as it cut into her palm. She released her grip of the knife's
blade and gripped its shaft.

     Everything was starting to stretch out in front of her.
Fading and twisting. She gripped the shaft tighter – she knew she
needed to stab the person immediately. Otherwise she wouldn't get
life to coarse back through her veins again. This life that was
slowly fading away.
     She raised the knife and just as her arms were about to
unleash their energy, she heard a voice behind her.

     The pressure in her head had made it hard for her to make out
the voice. Like it was coming from a can. She did realize that
this was not the same coarse voice as before, which was grunting
right behind her ear. This voice came from farther away.

     “That's enough Ingvar. Let the girl go.”

     Hilma felt the grip around her neck loosen, but not fully.
She managed to turn her head and see something in the corner of
her eye. The person holding her turned towards the doorway and
that was when she saw the silhouette of the man standing in the
doorway, as well as the outline of a gun in his hand. What a
strange gun, she thought.

     “I'm in deep shit, ain't I?” said Ingvar and loosened his
grip of her neck. Hilma felt it would be wisest to remain still.
No sudden movements.

     “You're always in deep shit, and always have been,” said
Sverrir and raised his gun as he slowly approached them. He
pointed the gun forwards and the little pin that jutted outwards
from the barrel now touched Ingvar's forehead. “Drop the girl or
I'll fire.”

     “Don't do anything stupid, Sverrir,” said Hilma with a weak
voice and slowly slipped out from Ingvar's grasp, who remained
motionless, as if he was holding a ghost by its neck. Hilma
carefully removed the blunt instrument from his hand, his fingers
surrendered like thick rubber.

     A beam of light was now cast into the building from outside.

     “Hilma!” said the panicked and panting voice of Oddgeir, who
was holding a flashlight and illuminating the three people
standing there. “Are you alright?”

The beam of light stopped at Ingvar's face. And Eyþór had

been right. Tryggvi's drawing on the name card hadn't been that
far from the truth.

Chapter 40

                                                             (Oslo)
                                                     [3 days later.
   Hilma has flown to Oslo in pursuit of two Icelanders – Auður and
        Sverrir – that Hilma has been pursuing. Hilma suspects that
 they're going to find Elli, the leader of bullies in the first two
    chapters – in 1989. Elli now lives in Oslo (Olav-Kyrres Street)
 where he runs his own business. Hilma catches the second flight to
       Gardemoen, and is therefore only a few hours behind when she
                                              reaches Elli's place.

     At this point the reader thinks that Auður and Sverrir are the
               killers, but they're not. The book has 47 chapters.]

     Morgan glanced over to Hilma. He sighed and shook his head as
they stood in the entryway of the building. She smiled, as if to
calm him. It hadn't gone past her that he had objected to this.
Her stubbornness and the certainty, that he quietly called
obsession, that they were still in the building. Hilma decided to
send the on-site police officers away. One driving the squad car,
the other driving Morgan's car. They were to stand by at the top
of the street, out of sight from the building. Silently Morgan
admitted that it had been a damn good idea.

     “If they're here, which they are,” she had whispered as she
grabbed Morgan's sleeve, “they must hear that cars are driving
away from here. They must think that we...the police is gone.”

     “This is madness, Hilma. They could be anywhere else.
Probably calmly cutting down this Elli guy as we speak.”

     “Easy there,” said Hilma and let slip a smile. “You're much
more experienced than that. Don't mix the movies into this. Trust
me, Morgan. Let's send the cars away and sneak back up and wait. I
know they're hiding here somewhere and this is the only way to
draw them out from their hideyhole.”

     And now she sat on the floor outside the top-floor bathroom
and waited. She examined the woodwork. Still holding on to the
poker she had used to strike the kindling in Elli's workshop.
Black iron with a carved wooden handle, a rather pointy end and a
harpoon-like hook just a little further back. That's when Moby
Dick popped up in her head. But she tossed that thought away
because now was not the time for daydreaming.

     Morgan leaned up against a wall further inside the entryway.
He crouched there and was handling a crumpled, folded piece of
paper that he had found in his pants pocket. A note with illegible
information that had accidentally gone in the washing machine.

     Hilma still felt his impatience and negativity, where he was
crouched and reading that piece of paper that crumbled as he tried

to straighten it out.
She pulled out her cellphone that she had set to silent.

Eyþór had still not gotten back to her. Why wasn't he calling? The
phone clock said 19:22, they'd been sitting there for almost
twenty minutes.

     What was it that she was gonna tell him? Yes, she was gonna
ask him for Elli's phone number but she'd got it via other
channels. She also wanted to hear his voice. Yes, she was dying to
hear his voice.

     She froze and looked over to Morgan. slowly put the phone
back in her pocket. Hadn't she'd heard something? A creaking
noise, like hinges? She slowly stood up and waved over to Morgan
who was still looking at his paper. He saw the motion from the
corner of his eye, reacted and slowly rose up, visibly excited.

     Hilma peeked into the bathroom through the slit between the
door and the door frame. She saw where a hatch slowly opened on
the paneled far wall. A hatch that would have been impossible to
find and see when closed.

She quickly looked over to Morgan who stood still, as if he’d been frozen on the middle of the floor. She gestured to him to come over to her. Easily – she ordered with a different gesture.

     She peeked back through the slit. She stared at the hatch
that been opened half-way. A tuft of hair and a nose appeared.
Fingers gripped the hatch that opened a little more.

     Hilma moved away from the slit. She didn't want to be seen at
all. Nothing must go wrong here. Not now. She heard Morgan
sneaking behind her and knew that the slightest creak in the
floorboards would give them away. She put out her hand and he
froze – again.

     The hatch creaked again and other sounds were heard. Someone
was walking on the floor. First one, then another. They were
coming out.

     Hilma knew that the element of surprise was vital.
     A fast sequence of events would be important.
     She counted in her mind. One – two – three. Aborted. She

peeked again through the slit. In the mirror she saw three people.
The one in the back held something glistening up against the
middle person's neck. Looked over at Morgan, counted again in her
head, one – two – three and then nodded to Morgan.

     Hilma took one step from the bathroom door and then kicked it
hard so that it swung inwards and hit the first person on the
head, knocking it down. She barged in and stood over it and was
now facing Auður and Elli and didn't need to look back. She knew
the sounds behind her. Morgan had pulled out the handcuffs.

     “If you come any closer he dies,” said Auður and pushed the
scissors to Elli's neck.

     Hilma tried to assess the situation. The threat. Whether it
was real or not. She tried to read the sincerity of her words. She
probably had to take them seriously. It was obvious that Elli's
neck was bleeding. But they seemed to be shallow cuts and the
blood that had leaked down the side of the neck had already
stopped flowing.

But the speed of events was so high that Hilma knew she had

to slow it down. For everyone's sake. She put out her hand as if
she was going to pet time on the head to calm it down.

     “Let's just stay calm, Auður,” she said with a calm and soft
voice.

     “You can be calm for all I care but you don't come any
closer. One step and I kill him,” she said and peeked out from
behind Elli's ear, whom was stuck in his former decision: Don't
make any sudden moves, and don't say a word.

     “Auður, let's end this now,” Hilma heard someone say behind
her.

     Hilma turned her head to look.

     “Sverrir,” she said in surprise. “I didn't recognize you
without the beard,” and instantly realized. Of course he'd shave
his beard. Less chance of him being spotted going through airport
security. And she had been wrong when she had examined him at the
farm in Vík. He was damn handsome without his beard. Hilma turned
back to Auður.

     “Now you put the scissors down and come with us before you do
something that you'll regret,” she said with a fair amount of
firmness.

     Auður pushed the scissors closer to Elli's neck so that the
tips were right up against his skin. He let out a like his teeth
had bit into ice.

     “Out. Get out,” she screamed and pushed Elli towards Hilma.

     “No problem Auður. We'll go out,” said Hilma and gestured to
Morgan that they should step outside.

     They backed away from Auður into the hallway and stopped by
the stairs leading down. The one exit out of the building. Auður
stood close to the top step and contemplated her next move. It
would be hard to back down all those steps with Elli above her.
She could push him forward and on top of Hilma and Morgan, but
that would probably not give her a big enough head start and
they'd catch her on the floor below. She thought that the best
course of action would be to stab Elli and run downstairs. She'd
pull Elli after her so that he'd fall down the stairs, making it
harder for them to follow her. And they must attend to him, and
those valuable seconds gained would give her a head start.

     “Stop now,” Sverrir said with a gentle voice. “This is far
enough.”

     Auður stared at Sverrir and her face suggested that she
wasn't believing his words. He had abandoned her. Given up. She
had a hard time taking her eyes off of him. Unconsciously she'd
relaxed the hand that was tightened around Elli's neck, so the
scissors were not pressed so hard against him. Elli probably felt
that, because he jerked his hand at the same moment that she was
going to push the scissors back against his neck, so that the
scissors jumped out of her hand and dropped to the floor. For one
special second everyone's eyes were on the scissors that were
lying in front of them, because that second felt so longer than it
was. Much longer.

     And they all looked up at the same time and in that moment
they realized that everything had changed. The threat was gone.
Elli was going to turn around and grab hold of Auður with his

hands, but she was already heading downstairs. And she carried out
one part of her plan. She pulled him down with her. As she jumped
down the steps she heard how he fell down with heavy thuds and
noises. Yells. Then she heard nothing as she kept running. She
heard nothing when she opened the front door and ran out into the
cold that had been waiting outside. It wasn't until she was
standing in the street that her ears opened up again and she
looked at a small dog across the street that barked at her – just
once – because the owner yanked on its leash. And just then Auður
heard commotion behind her in the house. She was gonna run up the
street but stopped when she realized that at the top, about eighty
meters away, stood two police officers leaning casually against a
police car. They hadn't seen her. From the gestures she could tell
that one of them had a story to tell, and that the other one found
the story funny.

     She turned around and looked down the dead end street. There
she saw the small bridge across the ravine.

     Morgan appeared in the front door and Auður started running.
She hadn't run twenty steps before she realized that he'd catch
her in the next ten. But she had to reach the bridge. And she did.
When she reached the middle of the bridge, she climbed over the
man-high chicken fence that lay along both sides of the bridge.

     “If you come any closer I'll jump!” Auður called to him. She
now stood on a tiny wooden ledge, and the fence rattled like
clinking change when she leaned back, away from the bridge.

     Morgan stopped about three meters from Auður, on the bridge.
Trying to read the situation. Wanted to guess if she'd hurt
herself if she fell down. He stood on his toes to get a better
look of what was below. Yes, he thought. A double row of railroad
tracks ran down the ravine that lay through the middle of this
residential area. The unkempt surroundings of the ravine, the
garbage and gray-brown tracks suggested to him that it must have
been a long time since a train last passed through there. Somehow
he felt like the top layer of the tracks should be glistening with
oil, but they were opaque. Maybe these tracks were decommissioned.
He looked up further along the ravine and saw the tracks disappear
round a bend about 300 meters away. It was obvious that Auður
would come to harm if she fell those 8-10 meters down. And of
course a chance that she'd simply die.

     Even though Morgan doesn't speak Icelandic, he understood
Auður's words. Well, mostly.

     “I won't come closer, Auður. Please don't do anything stupid.
It's over,” he says in English.

     “Tell them to stop!” yelled Auður.

     Morgan looked behind him and saw the two policeman from up
the street were now running towards them.

     Morgan yelled to them, ordering them to stop. He gestured in
some directions and they immediately understood him. They walked
back and started keeping curious neighbors away, of which some had
come out of their homes and were gathering out in the street.

     Morgan saw where one of the police officers suddenly ran
towards Elli's front door and inside. Shortly later she came out
and limped quickly towards Morgan. She was blinded for a moment as

a photographer standing near the bridge took a photo of her. Hilma
wondered how the hell a journalist had gotten here so quickly.
Standing there fat and greedy with a massive camera that he
pointed in all directions – like a starving hyena.

     “Where's Sverrir?” Auður yelled. “No closer!” she suddenly
added when she felt that Hilma had gotten much too close.

     “Sverrir is fine, Auður,” she said as gently as she could.
     “Bullshit. Where is he? I wanna talk to him.”
     “That won't work, Auður. Come on over and you can go see

him.” Hilma knew that the only thing that mattered now was to get
her on the right side of the fence. That would never happen if she
told her what had happened.

     Everything had literally gone backwards once Elli fell down
the steps. Hilma had tried to grab him but been dragged down with
him and fallen herself. Morgan jumped after them but hadn't
realized that he was pushing Sverrir ahead of himself – which had
been alright if he hadn't had his hands cuffed behind his back. To
expect anyone in such a position to maintain his balance is
optimistic, at best. Sverrir fell like a tree cut down at the
roots. It didn't look professional at all and that's why both of
them – Hilma and Morgan – had silently decided that this detail
would never appear in the police report. As they all lay there in
the stairwell Morgan had seen that Hilma had hurt her knee and
Elli lay there whining – but the worst part was that Sverrir lay
completely still. Hilma ordered Morgan to go after Auður and he
took off. She managed to clamber down the stairs and when she
reached the front door she called for a police officer whom ran
down the street and asked him to tend to Elli and Sverrir.

     As she gestured to the police officer where they were located
in the building, Hilma realized that she was no longer holding the
poker. And that's when that ice-cold feeling sank in – that
something terrible had happened when Sverrir fell down the steps.

     The situation was too complicated for them to handle it by
themselves. It didn't help that more and more curious residents
were appearing, especially on the other side of the bridge, which
seemed to be a completely different kind of neighborhood. The ill-
maintained look of the blocks and the graffiti suggested that this
little ravine separated the rich from the poor. Morgan crossed
over to the other side of the bridge, towards a group of people
that had gathered there. And like shepherds do, he got the group –
many of whom had their camera phones up – to back away from the
bridge. Many of whom were probably itching to get back home to
upload someone else's personal tragedy on their social media
websites. One of them even got so bold as to run out onto the
bridge itself to snap photos. Hilma turned to look when she heard
the commotion as a police officer jumped in and literally dragged
the phone hyena off the bridge.

     “I'll jump if I don't get to see him,” said Auður in a shrill
voice. “I won't hesitate.”

     “You're not about to jump, Auður. Sverrir fell on the steps
and hit his head. They're tending to him inside. He's in good
hands. I can't bring him out right now.” She decided to tell
almost the whole truth, hoping to gain Auður's trust. That was how

strong her hunch was – that Sverrir was everything but fine. “If
you come back here, you'll get to see him. That's a promise.” And
she planned to keep that promise. Would let her see him. But only
for a brief moment before she had her taken away.

     “It's over, isn't it?” said Auður and looked up at the sky
that was quickly getting dark, and the brightest stars had already
come out.

     “Nothing's over Auður. You can always start again. Come on.”

     “I was going to tell him that I'd forgiven him,” said Auður
and looked at Hilma.

     “Forgiven whom?”

     “Elli. I was about to forgive him for what he'd done. That
was the only thing I was gonna do. That's why we came here.”

     “You'll have to explain that a little better. I don't follow
you.” Stepped half a step closer.

     “Hilma. Half a step more and you'll watch me fly down.”

     She stopped and nodded. “What happened, Auður?” she said and
looked at Auður as she gripped the fence even tighter with both
hands, and pressed her forehead up against it. She looked
downwards and was silent for a while.

     “He's made a fool out of you through this whole case, Hilma.
And you didn't see a thing.”

     They stared into each other's eyes. Hilma tried to realize
what Auður had said.

     “But you can comfort yourself with the fact that he fooled us
all. He made a fool out of all of us,” she said and Hilma thought
for a moment that Auður had laughed, but she hadn't. She was
crying.

     Hilma started thinking about how bad she feels about seeing
other people cry. And the older they were, the worse it was. It
was more painful. The older the person was, the further down they
had to reach for those tears. She'd experienced that from her
parents many times.

     Hilma opened her mouth. She was about to ask Auður what she
was saying when she felt the earth shudder beneath her. She looked
around but saw nothing that could cause this soft tremor. It felt
more like a vibrating pillow than an earthquake. It wasn't until
she turned back to Auður that she saw, past her shoulder and up
the ravine, what the source was. She saw a bright light. Heard a
screeching noise.

     “Climb over, Auður. Let's talk. I don't want you to...”

     “I'm so tired,” said Auður after having looked back and seen
the slow-moving passenger train that was approaching the bridge.
     “Come over to me, I'll help you,” she said and came closer.

She examined the chicken fence. It was too tightly woven for there
to be any chance to grab hold of Auður through it – if she decided
to let go. And time wasn't on her side now that the train had
shown up.

     “Hilma!” called Morgan as he still stood on the opposite side
of the bridge with the many on-lookers from the other neighborhood
behind him. He pointed towards the train. Out of the corner of her
eye she saw his gesture. She slowly nodded and turned back towards
Auður.

     Sent him a mental message: “Do you think I'm blind, Morgan?”

     “I don't think you can help me Hilma. Not after this. I'm so
tired – so very tired.”

     “That's not right Auður. Let me help you,” Hilma said and she
meant it. That gave her a pain in her chest. She felt Auður's pain
and wanted her over here. Not just to get the whole truth. She
wanted to help her. There was no reason for this girl to end her
life here.

     “You're a good woman, Hilma,” Auður said as she looked her in
the eye and smiled. “I know you are, it's clear to see, but I
think that deep down you know that there's nothing that you can do
to save me.”

     Hilma was silent. Of course she was right. She couldn't help
this girl. The only thing she could do was convince her to climb
over this fence that right now marked the difference between life
and death. And maybe she knew that it was hopeless. She wouldn't
get Auður across. That was why she calmly walked right up to the
fence and softly touched her fingers. Almost gently. Auður
twitched and they stared each other in the eye. Deep down they
knew that time was running out.

     “Did you two kill those people, Auður? Did you kill
Guðmundur, Ásmundur, Þorfinnur and Tryggvi?”

     The vibration kept getting stronger. Hilma looked up along
the ravine.

     Forty meters.
     “I loved him with all my heart. I always did.”
     “You can see him now,” said Hilma.
     “No. You must deliver this to him. Next time you see him.

Will you promise me that, Hilma?”
     Hilma looked and called over to Morgan, whom came running.

She asked him to have Sverrir brought here. Now she ordered after Morgan had put up the face that indicated that that might be pretty hard to do. Morgan gave a policeman an order who ran towards Elli’s house. Morgan returned to where he had stood on the other side of the bridge.

     “They're going to get Sverrir. You'll see him now.”
     “I don't have to see him. I want you to take this to Ingvar.”
     Thirty meters.
     “Ingvar? But...”
     “My Lord in Heaven...
     “Stop it,” said Hilma sharply. “Tell me Auður. Did you kill

those men?” she called, because the noises from the train were
drowning out almost every other sound.

     “...hallowed be thy kingdom...”

     “Goddammit!” said Hilma out loud and started to climb the
chicken fence, which was so tight that she couldn't get a
foothold.

     Twenty meters.
     “...forgive us our debts...”
     Hilma put all of her strength into pulling herself up, and

managed to bend herself over the chicken fence, so that the top
spokes were pressing into her stomach. She knew that if she would
slip or lose her balance the skin would break and she'd be

impaled.
     The bridge was now shaking more than ever, but Hilma managed

to swing one foot over and get a better foothold – and balance.
The pain in her stomach became more bearable when she managed to
get her leather jacket to cover her exposed stomach. Instead the
spokes now stuck into her thigh.

     “Auður,” she yelled over the noise and reached down her hand.
“Give me your hand!”

     Morgan and two police officers came running onto the bridge
from both directions, towards Hilma.

Ten meters.

     Hilma reached down with her hand and tried to grab hold of
Auður's shoulder, but the nylon material in her jacket was so damn
slippery. She only managed to claw at it like a dog scavenging for
a bone. If she moved her center of balance over to Auður's half,
she'd get a good grip. But she'd also be declaring war against
gravity and fall down.

     “In Jesus's name, Amen,” said Auður and looked up to Hilma.
She looked into her eyes the moment she straightened her fingers
and let herself fall down.

     Hilma watches as Auður's face moved further away.
Surprisingly expressionless. Almost peaceful. With her hands out
to her sides, she fell so softly and gently. Like a snowflake that
had gone from steam to water and then finally crystallized in the
atmosphere before falling back down. Auður hit the front of the
train just as it lazily passed under the bridge.

     Suddenly Hilma felt like she was going the same way as Auður.
And that was no lie, she was falling down. Just as Auður had let
herself go, Hilma had reached past those few centimeters that
caused her balance to change and gravity to triumph over her. She
fell over the fence and had not heard her own scream at all.
Thought it was someone else's scream. Maybe even the train's
scream as it made this deafening noise as the emergency brakes
slammed on the wheels.

     But then it was as if time stood still. Like someone had hit
the Pause button and everything stopped moving around her. She
looked down and everything below her stood motionless, except for
the train carts that lazily moved underneath her until the last
one disappeared. And then everything became quiet all of a sudden.

     Then she was torn down from the fence and before she knew it
she was sitting on the bridge.

     Morgan and the two police officers had grabbed hold of her
before she fell off the bridge. Now they were crouched around her,
cramping her space, as if she was enclosed in a wooden box. She
batted her arms out. Angrily.

     She sat there with her knees pulled up against her forehead.
Buried her face in her palms. It was now that she really wanted to
cry and scream all this darkness out of her.