Grímur’s inner terror screamed at him that it was all over, that he was on the way to a dark cell with a bolt on the door. He handed the policeman the key, cursing last night’s rum and coke, and his desperation gradually smothered all other sounds, including that of the policewoman’s voice as she indicated and pulled out onto Reykjanesbraut, cruising past Grímur’s car just as the policeman opened the door and sat behind the wheel.

He’ll see the case on the seat, full to bursting, and it’s game over, the terror howled. Game over. You’re going to prison, murderer. Handcuffs, a straitjacket and locked up in a dark cell where you’ll choke on your own hair.

214

90

Now I regret everything.

I regret making Ísafold’s favourite Barbie doll do the splits and breaking it.

I regret sneaking into her make-up and ruining her new eye-liner by experimenting with it.

I regret the times I called her short-arse once I had grown taller than her.

I regret losing the scarf that was a gift from her first boyfriend.

I regret the time we had a row, and I called her a whore.

I regret not calling her.

I regret not getting the first flight to Iceland the last time she needed help.

215

MONDAY

91

It was around seven in the morning when Grímur stopped the car in the lay-by not far from the fissure in the lava. The low sun, which had been in his eyes, forcing him to drive at a snail’s pace to keep the car on the narrow dirt road, had now vanished behind a heavy mist, rendering the green moss cloaking the lava almost colourless. He could barely understand how he had made it through the night’s adventures. He was still numb with terror, but also proud of himself, that he had been able to hold it together well enough to chat about this and that with the police officers and the nurse who had come to take the blood sample, managing to come across as more or less normal. At least, he had been normal enough for them to release him once they’d parked his car in the long-term car park at the airport, handing him the key with a few wise words about not driving after even a single drink. The policeman who had driven his car to the airport appeared not to have paid enough attention to the suitcase to notice that it bulged oddly.

The terror that had screeched inside him ever since he had set off in the middle of the night and the loud howls of desperation that had taken over when the police had pulled him over had now both fallen silent, replaced by a deep, dark sadness that chimed with his soul. The sadness spoke to him with his own voice.