He painstakingly noted down the phone numbers of all the relatives and friends Violet imagined Ísafold could possibly have been in touch with, and ended the call by encouraging her to stay calm and telling her that at the moment there was no reason to be anything other than optimistic. Violet seemed to snatch at this straw of positivity, relieved to hear this from a police officer with many years of experience behind him, as if that tipped the scales of hope in the right direction.

There were two schools of thought among the police when it came to this kind of case; the one he preferred was that it was best 100to encourage people to be hopeful and stay calm, because relatives who were in shock tended to be practically useless as a source of information. They became overcome with nerves, homing in on all kinds of irrelevant details and placing huge significance on things there was no need to be concerned about. On the other hand, there were some among his colleagues who felt it was best to prepare people for the worst. According to that theory, he should now be telling Violet there was a possibility that something terrible might have happened to Ísafold.

As soon as the conversation with Violet was over, he sat down and systematically went through Ísafold’s Facebook posts, going back two years and noting down the names of people in the pictures. Most of them were of her and Björn – having a meal somewhere, or at some nightspot, each holding a glass and surrounded by smiling faces. There were a few pictures of them outside together, sitting on some green grass, and a couple looked to have been taken out in the countryside among spooky lava formations and birch scrub. He guessed these had been taken around the lake at Mývatn.

Áróra could be seen in some of the picture collections from two years before. She looked either to be visiting Iceland – with Christmas lights in the background and a glass of seasonal grog in front of her – or else Ísafold and Björn could be seen visiting her in Edinburgh.

He switched to Áróra’s profile, and for a moment he lost himself admiring images of her. She seemed unable to look anything but attractive in any picture. She looked beautiful in every one, in a stately way, as generally she was at least half a head taller than most of the women pictured with her, and often taller than the men as well.

Those dark, enticing eyes seemed to draw the camera’s attention, and her heavy lips invited kisses. He imagined holding her in his arms. It had to feel very different from the impression of fragility he had when embracing the delicate bodies of some101women. Áróra’s frame was robust, strong enough for the most powerful arms, or his weight on top of her.