The whole time he had driven along Reykjanesbraut, following at a careful distance, and then, at an even more cautious distance and without lights, along the unmade road, he had known that Ísafold was in the case and that she was dead. His heart bled with the pain of this certainty.

He had loved Ísafold dearly. He had loved her enough to lie down and shed tears into the moss that grew on the rocks, after he had parked out of sight behind a heap of gravel and run through the jagged lava, following Björn as his car crept along in first gear. At intervals Björn got out to search for a suitable place to get rid of the case.

Once he had departed and the sound of his car had died away in the stillness, Grímur clambered down into the fissure in the rocks, where he pulled the zipper back a little and a pale hand fell out. This was a hand he recognised even though it appeared translucent in the blue midnight sunlight, and he kissed it, whispering ‘I love you’ into the quiet spring night in the hope that her soul hadn’t yet slipped away from her body and might be hovering somewhere above the lava, hearing him speak the words he would never have dared say to her in life.

That moment in the lava field had been a turning point. The sorrow gnawed at him, and he felt a resolve, as hard as sharpened steel. Either he had discovered something inside him, there among the sharp rocks, or else the hour he sat there had changed him – because by the time he got to his feet, he knew that he could kill. 257He could kill Björn, the man who had tormented Ísafold, the man who had no understanding of her love and patience, the man who could not appreciate how precious the love of a woman like her could be.

At that moment Grímur decided that sixteen years would not be sufficient. Sixteen years and out in ten was not a high enough price to pay for all those black eyes, for the wails and the tears and the desperation that seeped down to him through the floor. It wasn’t enough for beating her to death, crushing the battered body into a suitcase and dumping it like garbage out in the lava field.

That was why Grímur hadn’t called the police that night to tell them what Björn had done, but instead had decided that he would seek vengeance for Ísafold himself.

258

NOW

107

I’m floating a foot or so above the ground, and it’s unpleasant. I’m struggling to stay upright and I feel faint.

Ísafold is in all likelihood dead, Daníel says. All the indications point that way.