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alone in that. Your children go away, and they gradually become strangers to you, except …’ Kristjana had shredded her tissue into tiny pieces. ‘You just have to grit your teeth,’ she said. ‘I soon learned that when I was young. Not to be sorry for myself. So now I’ll just grit my teeth, as usual.’
    Elinborg’s mind went to the Rohypnol. If it was found in the pocket of a young man who had gone out for the evening and brought a woman home, the inference was fairly obvious.
    ‘When Runolfur lived here,’ Elinborg asked cautiously, ‘was he involved with any women?’
    ‘I’ve no idea,’ Kristjana answered. ‘Why are you asking about that? Women? I don’t know about any women!’
    ‘Well, could you tell me if there’s anyone in the village who knew him, who I could speak to?’ Elinborg asked calmly.
    ‘Answer me! Why are you asking about women?’
    ‘We know nothing about him. But …’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘It’s possible that his conduct was unusual,’ said Elinborg. ‘With women.’
    ‘His conduct? Unusual?’
    ‘Maybe even involving drugs.’
    ‘What do you mean? What drugs?’
    ‘They’re sometimes called date-rape drugs,’ Elinborg replied.
    Kristjana was staring at her.
    ‘It’s also possible that he was only selling the drugs, but we aren’t excluding the other possibility. We could be wrong. At this point we haven’t got much to go on. We don’t know why he had the drugs in his pocket when he was found dead.’
    ‘A date-rape drug?’
    ‘It’s called Rohypnol. It’s a sedative, which puts you to sleep and causes memory loss. We felt you should know. It’s the kind of detail that the media may get hold of.’
    Suddenly the storm battered against the wall of the house. A blizzard masked the view from the windows, and the room grew darker still.
    For a long time Kristjana sat without uttering a word. ‘I can’t imagine why he would carry such a thing,’ she said at last.
    ‘No, of course not.’
    ‘As if I hadn’t heard enough.’
    ‘I understand that this must be hard for you.’
    ‘Now I hardly know which is worse.’
    ‘I’m sorry?’
    Kristjana gazed out of the window into the snowstorm. ‘That he was murdered, or that he was a rapist.’
    ‘We don’t know that for sure,’ said Elinborg.
    Kristjana met her gaze. ‘No, you lot never know anything.’

6
    Elinborg had to stay the night. She settled into her spacious room in a small guest house on a hill just outside the village, and rang Sigurdur Oli to tell him about her interview with Kristjana - not that it had yielded much. She rang home and spoke to Teddi, who had picked up a takeaway, and to Theodora who was eager to tell her mother about a planned trip with the Girl Guides to Ulfljotsvatn lake in a fortnight’s time. They had a long talk. The boys were out at the cinema. Elinborg reflected that she would probably be able to read all about it on the Internet before long.
    Not far from the guest house was a restaurant that also served as a pub, sports bar, video-rental shop and, apparently, a laundrette. As she entered, she saw a man handing his dirty washing over the bar, commenting that it would be good to have it back on Thursday. The menu included the usuals: sandwiches, burger and chips with pink cocktail-sauce, roast lamb, deep-fried fish. Elinborg opted for the fish. Two of the tables were occupied. At one of them three men were drinking beer and watching football on a flatscreen TV; at the other an elderly couple, outsiders like her, were eating the fried fish.
    She was missing Theodora, not having seen her for two days. Elinborg smiled to herself as she thought of her daughter. She would sometimes make surprising pronouncements about life. Her speech was rather formal and a little bit old-fashioned, and Elinborg worried that Theodora might be teased at school. But apparently there was no cause for concern. ‘Why’s he so lugubrious?’ she had asked about a miserable newsreader on TV. ‘That’s