"So do you know what this photography was all about?"
"Well, he enjoyed it, I expect," Klara said.
"I mean the subjects: did you see any of his photos?"
"No, he never showed me anything. As I said, we didn't have much contact. I don't know where his photos are. Grétar was a damn layabout," she said, uncertain whether she was repeating herself, then shrugged as if deciding you can't say a good thing too often.
"I'd like to take this box away with me," Elínborg said. "I hope that's okay. It'll be returned shortly."
"What's going on?" Klara asked, for the first time showing an interest in the police inquiry and the questions about her brother. "Do you know where Grétar is?"
"No," Elínborg stressed, trying to dispel all doubt. "Nothing new has emerged. Nothing."
The two women who were with Kolbrún the night Holberg attacked her were named in the police investigation documents. Erlendur had launched a search for them and it turned out that both were from Keflavík, but neither lived there any more.
One of them had married an American from the NATO base shortly after the incident and now lived in the USA, while the other had moved from Keflavík to Stykkishólmur five years later. She was still registered as living there. Erlendur wondered whether he should spend the whole day on a trip out west to Stykkishólmur or phone her and hope that would be enough.
Erlendur's English was poor so he asked Sigurdur Óli to locate the woman in America. He spoke to her husband. She had died 15 years earlier. From cancer. The woman was buried in America.
Erlendur phoned Stykkishólmur and had no difficulty making contact with the second woman. First he phoned her home and was told that she was at work. She was a nurse at the hospital there.
The woman listened to Erlendur's questions but said unfortunately she couldn't help him. She hadn't been able to help the police at the time and nothing had changed.
"Holberg has been murdered", Erlendur said, "and we think it might even be connected with this incident."
"I saw that on the news," the voice on the phone said. The woman's name was Agnes and Erlendur tried to visualise her from the sound of her voice. At first he imagined an efficient, firm woman in her sixties, overweight because she was short of breath. Then he noticed her smoker's cough and Agnes assumed a different image in his mind, turned thin as a rake, her skin yellow and wrinkled. She coughed with a nasty, gravelly sound at regular intervals.
"Do you remember that night in Keflavík?" Erlendur asked.
"I went home before them," Agnes said.
"There were three men with you."
"I went home with a man called Grétar. I told the police at the time. I find it rather uncomfortable to talk about."
"It's news to me that you went home with Grétar," Erlendur said, riffling through the reports in front of him.
"I told them when they asked me the same question all those years ago." She coughed again but tried to spare Erlendur the throaty noises. "Sorry. I've never been able to give up those damn cigarettes. He was a bit of a loser. That Grétar. I never saw him after that."
"How did you and Kolbrún know each other?"
"We used to work together. That was before I studied nursing. We were working in a shop in Keflavík which closed down long ago. That was the first and only time we went out anywhere together. Understandably."
"Did you believe Kolbrún when she talked about a rape?"
"I didn't hear about it until the police suddenly turned up at my house and started asking me about that night. I can't imagine she'd have lied about something like that. Kolbrún was very respectable. Thoroughly honest about everything she did, although a bit feeble perhaps. Delicate and sickly. Not a strong character. Maybe it's an awful thing to say, but she wasn't the fun type, if you know what I mean. Not a lot of action going on around her."
Agnes stopped talking and Erlendur waited for her to start again.
"She wasn't fond of going out and I really had to cajole her to come out with me and my friend Helga that evening. She moved to America but passed away many years ago, maybe you know that. Kolbrún was so reserved and sort of lonely and I wanted to do something for her. She agreed to go