Where the Shadows Lie (Fire and Ice)

to go. I’m having a party on Saturday, do you want to come?’
    ‘Will it be as wild as your parties used to be?’ Ingileif said.
    ‘Wilder. Here, let me give you the address. I moved a few months ago.’ And he took out a business card emblazoned with the logo of RUV, the state broadcaster, and wrote down his home address, somewhere on Thingholtsstraeti.
    As he left the café, drawing one or two surreptitious stares after him from the customers, Ingileif couldn’t help asking herself a simple question.
    What the hell was all that about?
    Vigdís accepted the cup of coffee and began to sip it. It was her fifth of the day. Interviewing people in Iceland always involved lots of drinking coffee.
    The woman opposite her was in her late thirties, wearing jeans and a blue sweater. She had an intelligent face and a friendly smile. They were sitting in a handsome house in Vesturbaer, a smart area of Reykjavík just to the west of the city centre. The family Range Rover blocked the view to the quiet street outside.
    ‘I’m sorry to take more of your time, Helena,’ Vigdís began. ‘I know you have answered plenty of questions from my colleagues. But I would like to go through everything that you can remember from the day of the murder, and the couple of days before. Any tiny little detail.’
    It was Helena and her family who had been staying in one of the other summer houses on the shore of Lake Thingvellir and whose children had found Agnar’s body. After speaking to Helena, Vigdís planned to visit her husband in the office of his insurance company on Borgartún.
    ‘By all means. I’m not sure there is much else I can tell you.’
    But Helena frowned as she finished the sentence. Vigdís noticed it.
    ‘What is it?’
    ‘Um … It’s nothing. It’s not important.’
    Vigdís smiled, coaxing. ‘Don’t worry about that,’ she said. She showed Helena the pages of her notebook, covered with neat handwriting. ‘This book is filled with unimportant stuff. But just a little of it will turn out to be very important.’
    ‘My husband didn’t think we should mention it.’
    ‘Why not?’ asked Vigdís.
    Helena smiled. ‘Oh, well, you decide. Our five-year-old daughter, Sara Rós, told us this story at breakfast yesterday. My husband is convinced it’s a dream.’
    ‘What was the story?’ asked Vigdís.
    ‘She says that she saw two men playing in the lake at night.’
    ‘Lake Thingvellir?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘That sounds interesting.’
    ‘The thing is Sara Rós makes up stories. Sometimes it’s to get attention. Sometimes it’s just for fun.’
    ‘I see. Well, I think I should speak to her. With your permission, of course.’
    ‘All right. As long as you bear in mind that she might have made the whole thing up. You’ll have to wait until she gets back from kindergarten.’
    ‘No,’ said Vigdís. ‘I think we had better talk to her now.’
    The kindergarten that Helena’s daughter attended was only a few hundred metres away. The principal grudgingly gave up her office to Vigdís and Helena and went to fetch the girl.
    She was a typical Icelandic five-year-old. Bright blue eyes, pink cheeks and curly hair that was so blonde it was almost white.
    Her face lit up when she saw her mother and she curled up next to her on the sofa in the principal’s office.
    ‘Hello,’ said Vigdís. ‘My name is Vigdís and I am a police officer.’
    ‘You don’t look like a policeman,’ said Sara Rós.
    ‘That’s because I am a detective. I don’t wear a uniform.’
    ‘Do you come from Africa?’
    ‘Sara Rós!’ her mother interjected.
    Vigdís smiled. ‘No. I come from Keflavík.’
    The little girl laughed. ‘That’s not in Africa. That’s where the airport is when we go on holiday.’
    ‘That’s right,’ said Vigdís. ‘Now, your mummy said you saw something last week at your summer house by the lake. Can you tell me about it?’
    ‘My daddy says that I am making it up. He doesn’t believe me.’
    ‘I believe you,’ said Vigdís.
    ‘How can you believe me when you haven’t heard what I am going to say?’
    Vigdís smiled. ‘Good point. I tell you what. You tell me the story, and I’ll tell you whether I believe you or not at the end.’
    The girl glanced at her mother, who nodded. ‘I woke up and it was the middle of the night. I wanted to go to the toilet. When I came back I looked out of my window and I saw two men playing in the lake just outside the professor’s house. They were