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at Ólafur. He nodded.
    ‘Gudrún?’ she said gently. ‘Did you shoot your father?’
    The girl stopped sobbing and she looked at Vigdís with incredulity. ‘What?’
    ‘Did you shoot your father?’
    ‘He was shot with a .22 rifle,’ said Ólafur. ‘Your father owned a .22 rifle. You know how to shoot it.’
    ‘I thought those two activists who came shot him? I thought you had arrested them?’
    ‘We can send your father’s gun for analysis. We can see if the bullet we found in your father’s skull was fired from the gun. If you shot him, we will find out.’
    ‘But I didn’t shoot him!’ said Gudrún. She looked at both detectives, her face a mixture of misery, confusion and fear. ‘I didn’t shoot him,’ she said much more quietly. ‘Oh, my God! You really think I shot my father, don’t you?’
    ‘We know you had an argument with him,’ said Ólafur. ‘We know that you were angry about the polar bear and the little girl. We can check the rifle.’
    ‘Check it then!’ said Gudrún, and then she started to sob. ‘This doesn’t make any sense. I remember what Dad told me about all this. I won’t say anything more to you without a lawyer.’
    And she didn’t.
    They needed to get Halldór’s rifle to Reykjavík for ballistics analysis as fast as possible. Ólafur persuaded the coastguard to lend them one of the helicopters they had been using to look for the polar bear, and one of Edda’s forensic technicians took the bagged-up rifle and hitched a lift to Reykjavík.
    They kept Gudrún in the cell overnight – her father’s police cell. With luck they would hear back within twenty-four hours and then charge her.
    ‘We’ve done just about all we can for today,’ said Ólafur later. ‘I’m going for a run.’
    ‘I’ve still got some paperwork to finish up,’ said Vigdís. ‘If you’ll let me.’
    Ólafur glanced at the other two policemen working at their desks. ‘Come outside with me, Vigdís.’
    She followed him out to his car.
    ‘Well done,’ Ólafur said. ‘That was good work. I’m glad I listened to you.’
    ‘So am I,’ said Vigdís dryly.
    ‘Look, I’m sorry, but when this is over, I will have to submit an official report to Chief Superintendent Thorkell. I will tell him you played an important part in the investigation. But what you did was totally unacceptable. If Martin Fiedler had in fact killed Halldór, you would have ruined any chance of securing a conviction.’
    ‘I know,’ said Vigdís. She had been sure that Martin was innocent. She was also sure that Ólafur was right: she had acted unprofessionally. She couldn’t expect anything else from Ólafur; she had only herself to blame.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    ‘ H i, Vigdís!’
    Vigdís looked up from her paperwork to see the large familiar figure of Magnus grinning at her. She grinned back.
    ‘You made it!’
    ‘This is not an easy place to get to. I ended up flying to Akureyri and borrowing one of their cars to drive the rest of the way.’
    ‘At least the weather’s not too bad this time of year,’ she said. ‘The town can be completely cut off in winter.’
    Magnus scanned the tiny police station. Two uniformed policemen were also working in there. They nodded a greeting to him.
    ‘Is Ólafur here?’
    ‘He’s gone for a run. He could be ages. That man is super fit.’
    ‘What’s he like?’ Magnus asked.
    Vigdís glanced quickly at the officers around them. ‘Old school.’
    ‘Well, since he isn’t here, why don’t you tell me what’s been going on?’
    ‘All right,’ said Vigdís. ‘Do you want to take a walk? See the sights of Raufarhöfn?’
    ‘Sure, why not?’ said Magnus. ‘I’ve been cooped up in the car for three hours.’
    So they left the police station and strolled through the town towards the harbour. The wind had died down, the evening sun was on their faces, and it was almost warm. They found a wall by the harbour. In front of them a fisherman was loading a very large net on to a