These few hours after midnight were also the darkest, and although it wasn’t dark enough to hide his movements, the shadows cast by the low midnight sun were so impenetrable that anyone who saw him struggling to lift the suitcase into the boot of the car wouldn’t easily be able to discern what was mirage and what was reality.

The case was much, much heavier than he had thought it would be, and the effort fatigued him more than he expected. But it wasn’t only the exertion, it was also the emotional overload that was drawing all the energy from him. He had been terrified when he realised he wouldn’t be able to lift the suitcase into the boot, but had quickly regained control and decided to try and get it onto the back seat instead. That worked better, as he could get inside the car, brace his legs and haul it in.

He was dripping with sweat by the time he got behind the wheel. It was getting on for five o’clock. He talked to himself without a break for half of the drive along Reykjanesbraut, giving free rein to his feelings. The terror inside him had found its voice, as it had the last time he had been ill, reminding him that someone must have seen him and now he’d be arrested and locked up in a dark, narrow cell where he wouldn’t be able to shave whenever he needed to. He retorted – in his own voice, which was on the verge of cracking – that people bustling about with suitcases was such 211a common sight in Iceland these days that nobody would have taken any notice. The terror snapped back at him: the suitcase had clearly been far too heavy for him; anyone seeing him try, and fail, to get it into the boot of the car would be left in no doubt that it contained a body. His own voice was more controlled as he argued back that a heavy suitcase didn’t automatically suggest the contents were a corpse. He gradually calmed down, and the sharp nagging of the terror deflated like a punctured balloon, so that the steady mutter of his retorts and arguments soon managed to drown it out.

He wasn’t far short of the Grindavík turnoff when he noticed blue lights in the mirror. He slowed down and edged the car almost onto the hard shoulder to let them pass, but the lights continued to flash behind him, and he realised that this wasn’t an ambulance in a hurry; it was the police stopping him.