He got out of the car and looked around. There was open ground all around him and no traffic as far as the eye could see. The lava field looked to be perfectly flat, but it deceived the eye, which failed to see the fissure slashed into the hard surface. Some of these jagged ravines stretched so deep and so far that they reached the sea. There was more to this place than what was on 216the surface. You needed to look closely to make out what lay beneath.

He set off over the uneven lava, and found the place where it opened into the fissure where the red suitcase lay, caught fast between two outcrops, far below. He wasn’t going down there now. That would take too much time, and he didn’t have any energy to waste. He was exhausted, and the last hurdle was still ahead of him.

‘So, this is it,’ he whispered into the fissure, then walked back to the car, where he opened the back door. It was easier than he thought to haul the case out, but he noticed with horror that there was a patch of blood on the seat. He froze for a moment, and the terror deep inside him gave a low moan. He brushed his concerns aside. This was a detail he could pay attention to later in the day. Now there were more urgent things to attend to.

He set off, dragging the suitcase behind him, cursing every step, as each rewarded him with only a few centimetres of progress. The gravel underfoot was coarse and the canvas caught on every jagged edge. But in the lava field itself the going was easier, as the case slid along more smoothly over the hard surface of the rock. He had hauled it a metre or more when he noticed that the case left a trail of blood that was clearly visible, so he had to use precious energy to turn the case over. Then he sat for a while on the cold rock at its side and rested, the sadness echoing a steady tone inside his head, and the dark bloodstain on the suitcase a clear symbol that his life would never be the same again.