THE FIRST SIGNS nick and erla had that something was wrong were the helicopters: one police, one fire service, buzzing low overhead and heading in the same direction as them. Erla rang the number Wada had given her but got no answer. ‘The number doesn’t even ring,’ she reported. ‘There’s nothing.’ She tried Wada’s own phone. ‘The same. Nothing. A dead line.’

‘Let’s not jump to conclusions,’ said Nick. ‘Those helicopters could be going anywhere.’

‘But they’re not, are they? They’re going to Stóri-Asgarbær.’

‘We don’t know that.’

‘Don’t we?’

Nick could find nothing to say in reply. He just kept driving.

The smoke on the horizon, first seen several kilometres back, had already prepared them for the sight that greeted them when they arrived. That and the fire engine and the police car that had overtaken them on the road.

They’d never seen Stóri-Asgarbær intact. Now it was a smouldering ruin, fragments of gable and the stumps of chimneystacks standing like the ribs of some animal reduced to a carcass. There was a burnt-out car standing in front of the house and another in a gutted outbuilding.

They pulled up on the far side of the yard. Two firemen were hosing down the remains of the walls while a couple of boiler-suited forensics officers picked their way through the accessible areas. A policewoman noticed their presence and started walking towards them.

‘Don’t tell her why we’re here, Erla,’ cautioned Nick. ‘We can’t afford to get caught up in their investigation. Remember, I have to be back in Reykjavík by six.’

‘OK. But it doesn’t look good, does it?’

‘No.’ There was nothing else to say.

Erla got out of the car and greeted the policewoman in Icelandic. Nick watched from the driver’s seat as they talked, glancing towards the house at intervals.

Then Erla came back and the policewoman headed off to rejoin her colleagues. ‘Well?’ Nick asked apprehensively as Erla got into the car.

‘I explained we seemed to have taken the wrong road. She told me we should leave. I asked what started the fire. She didn’t say, but it was obvious from the way she spoke about it that it wasn’t an accident. And when I asked if anyone had been injured, she said …’

‘What?’

Erla drew a deep breath. ‘Four fatalities.’

‘Four?’

‘It’s what she said, Nick. No details. And I couldn’t ask for any, could I?’

‘No.’ He sighed. ‘Christ. What happened here?’

‘Not a clue. Not sure the police have yet. But four people are dead. How they died? Who they were? Whether one of them was a middle-aged Japanese woman? There’s no way we’re going to find out today.’

‘I thought we were going to find Wada – and all the answers.’

‘So did I.’

‘Instead …’

‘Everything’s fucked.’