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shoe.”
    Next she examined the hands. “No rings on his fingers.”
    She loosened the parka around his throat and unzipped it.
    “Quality parka with a rust-free zipper. Seems to be a foreign label; color: dark green.” She peered into one pocket and then fetched some tongs and a small envelope in her briefcase. “In the outer pocket there are several small shells, mussels, small starfish, remains of…sandworm, I think.” She placed it all in the envelope as soon as she extracted it from the pocket.
    “The deceased may have eaten some of this to stave off hunger. Need to examine this in the autopsy. Test for shellfish poisoning, if possible.”
    She examined the inside of the parka. “No internal pockets on the parka. Wearing a brown woolen cardigan under it. No visible labels on the cardigan. Side pockets. A leather wallet in the right pocket.” She removed the wallet with her tongs, placed it in a small envelope, and took it over to Kjartan. “Here, take a look.”
    He opened the wallet and counted several banknotes and coins. He counted: “Seven thousand two hundred and fifty-two crowns and fifteen cents.” There was nothing else in the wallet, and he left the money in it.
    “That’s a lot of money to be carrying around,” he said.
    Jóhanna looked into the other pocket of the cardigan. She took out a small folded piece of paper with her tongs and handed it to Kjartan. He unfolded the note and examined some words that had been written with a pencil, and then he read them out loud: “This book belongs to me, Jón Finnsson, and was a gift from my departed father’s father, Jón Björnsson, as can be verified, and was personally given to me by my departed father and is cherished in their memory.” The handwriting was clear and legible.
    Kjartan pondered the note. Below it another hand had written “folio 1005.” On the back of it thirty-nine letters were written out in three rows of meaningless text.
     
     
    O S L E O Y I A R N R Y L
    E M H O N E A E N W T L B
    A U R M L E Q W T R O N E
     
     
    The note had been ripped out of a perforated copybook, a small sheet with blue lines and narrow spacing. He placed the note in the envelope with the wallet, which he in turn slipped into his pocket.
    “So we’ve got a name to go on, Jón Finnsson,” Kjartan said. “This is some kind of a book inscription, but a rather old-fashioned use of words.”
    “Some of the islanders are a bit old-fashioned,” said Jóhanna.
    She finished searching through the pockets but could find nothing else.
    “Under the cardigan a light brown cotton shirt and green foulard. Quality clothes, it seems.”
    “Could he be a local from these islands?” Kjartan asked.
    “Very unlikely,” she answered. “He would have been missed. No one’s isolated enough here to be able to disappear without questions being asked after two or three days. Then there’s the clothing that doesn’t quite fit the islanders’ style.”
    “A foreigner maybe?”
    “I haven’t the faintest idea about that,” she said. “But this’ll have to do for now. We’ll send him to Reykjavik like this. They’ll be able to investigate it better down there.”
    She placed the lid on the casket and locked it firmly. Then they walked outside.
    “Is Jón Finnsson a name that rings any bells?” Kjartan asked the three men waiting outside.
    “In what context?” Grímur asked.
    Kjartan took out the note and read them the text.
    Grímur and Högni stared blankly at each other, but Thormódur Krákur tilted on his toes and puffed up his chest. “I know who this Jón Finnsson is.”
    “Who is he?” Kjartan asked.
    “That’s Jón Finnsson, the farmer in Flatey, the one who delivered the Flatey Book to the bishop of Skálholt, Brynjólfur Sveinsson. It was the bishop who sent the book to the king, wasn’t it?”
    The deacon looked around with a triumphant air.
    “But that was in the autumn of 1647,” Grímur added.
    Thormódur Krákur continued: “Those