‘Facial recognition is rubbish. We stopped using it ages ago. It’s just as well – the system used to take hours to find a single face, and then it would normally be the wrong one.’

‘Hold on, so we can’t be completely sure whether or not she left the country?’

‘Well, in theory. You can try and sweet-talk customs – get them 139to go through their recordings from the terminal. But God help you there. The period during which she could have left the country is long. You need a big team working on it, because going through all those recordings would keep them busy for a lot of shifts.’

Daníel thanked him for his help, sat on the edge of the decking and stretched his feet out into the grass. There was no team, and so far there was no formal investigation.

He suddenly felt restless. The growl of traffic on Reykjanesbraut irritated him, practically hurting his ears, and that patch of grass by the rocks that hadn’t been mown was just infuriating. Daníel got to his feet, strode over to the patch and, getting on his knees, began pulling up the grass. Since no tools would work there, he’d just have to use his bare hands. He tugged and yanked, but what came up was mostly weeds – dandelions and daisies, and sharp blades of greenery that cut his palms as he snatched at them. He gathered his strength and wrenched hard, then let go, groaning with the pain and cradling his right arm as a jolt of cramp shot through it.

‘Hell and damnation,’ he swore.

‘Ah, the people in the rocks,’ Lady said, coming up behind him. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Yeah. Just a bit of cramp,’ Daníel said, massaging his arm with his left hand.

‘That should teach you to leave well alone, if everything you’ve seen before isn’t enough. That’s a special place, an elf patch.’

‘I don’t believe in supernatural stuff,’ Daníel said sulkily.

‘Supernatural depends on how you define nature. There are some who would say that I’m a supernatural being, a supernaturally beautiful being. Joking aside, I imagine police college taught you some superficial stuff about time and space. Well I can tell you here and now that reality isn’t what it seems to be. We all live inside the fallacy.’

‘Deep stuff for first thing in the morning,’ Daníel said, getting to his feet. His arm was still sore, and he gingerly stretched it out. 140

‘It’s not about depth, but smallness,’ Lady said. ‘Inside the smallest particles of existence, inside the atom, there are no rules. It’s possible to be in two places at once, and time can run backwards. But I don’t suppose that tallies with police logic.’