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Magnus that Sveinn was in danger of losing his job because he was so unreliable. But she remembered that Sveinn was working the afternoon shift the day his father had been shot. It had been on the news the following morning, and Sveinn had called her up saying he would not be coming in for the next few days, which she had understood completely.
    The owner said that although Sveinn was unreliable, he was a good guy. She clearly liked him.
    Vigdís thanked Magnus and wrote up her report. Then Ólafur sent her off to a couple of farms south of town to ask about registered firearms. Both farmers showed her their rifles and said they hadn’t fired them on the day in question.
    Back at the police station, Ólafur dismissed everyone and went for a run.
    Vigdís returned to the hotel. It was a mellow evening, the sun shining low over the hills to the west, gilding the grassy slopes of the cliff by the harbour entrance a soft yellow. She decided to walk out there. Just as she was leaving her hotel room, she paused. She turned and grabbed the vodka bottle. She wanted peace and quiet and a view of the sea. And a drink.
    The soft evening light was ruffled by a stiff breeze from the west. Vigdís didn’t mind; she wanted fresh air and lots of it. She struck out past the church up a path to the cliff at the mouth of the harbour. A small orange lighthouse squatted on its summit – she decided to head for that.
    She was frustrated at Ólafur and his mishandling of theinvestigation. Of course the two animal-rights activists should be suspects, but not at the expense of anyone else. She sometimes thought that the older-school Icelandic policemen viewed a criminal investigation as an exercise in gathering information to confirm a known theory. It was true that most Icelandic crime was of a straightforward nature: a drunken man holding a knife next to a body, threatening to stab anyone who came near him – not hard to solve that. But she and Magnus had been involved in a number of difficult cases where the obvious solution had proven to be the wrong one.
    Vigdís was pretty sure this was one of those.
    Magnus would sort Ólafur out. It was ironic: having gone all the way to Raufarhöfn to escape her boss, now she almost wished he was here.
    ‘Hey!’
    She turned to see a figure coming down the hillside from the graveyard. Martin Fiedler.
    ‘Vigdís! Your name is Vigdís, isn’t it?’
    The man was speaking in English.
    ‘Hi,’ she said. And then: ‘I do not speak English.’
    ‘Of course you do,’ said Martin Fiedler. ‘Every Icelander speaks English.’
    ‘Not me,’ said Vigdís.
    He approached her. ‘OK. Sprechen Sie Deutsch? ’
    ‘Nein.’
    ‘Oh, that’s a shame,’ the German said in English. ‘Can I walk with you?’
    Despite professing not to speak English, Vigdís in fact understood quite a lot of the language. As Martin had said, it was impossible not to pick up some English living in Iceland. As a girl she had become so sick of people assuming that she was not Icelandic and speaking English to her that she resolved not to learn the language. She knew it was stubborn. But then everyone was always telling her she was stubborn.
    She shook her head. ‘No, Mr Fiedler. No walk together. I policeman. You…’
    ‘Criminal?’ said the German. ‘I’m not a criminal. And please call me Martin.’
    ‘Criminal Martin,’ said Vigdís.
    Martin laughed. He had a friendly smile and very warm brown eyes.
    ‘Look, Vigdís, if I don’t speak Icelandic and you don’t speak English, then how can there be a problem? Tell me.’
    Vigdís hesitated.
    ‘If you don’t mind me walking with you, just say: “I don’t understand.”’
    Despite herself, Vigdís smiled. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said, and turned away from Martin along the track.
    Within a moment, he was at her side.
    ‘Well, I need to talk to someone,’ said Martin. ‘That Alex guy is an idiot. I think he genuinely believes it was good the policeman was