Blackout by Ragnar Jónasson

waiting for time to do its work for him.
    ‘I’ll fetch her,’ Jökull said at last, with a sigh, and vanished into the house.
    Ari Thór took a few steps back, and looked the yellow-painted house up and down while he waited. A small spider clambered up the wall. He guessed the house dated back to the sixties or seventies, and it looked like it had been recently painted.
    ‘Hello?’ The voice was tired. Ari Thór looked around and saw a heavily pregnant woman in the doorway. ‘I’m Móna. You wanted to talk to me about something?’ She leaned against the doorframe. ‘You’re Ari Thór, aren’t you? Tómas is my cousin. He told me about you.’
    ‘Hello. Just one quick question. Do you know where your brother-in-law, Logi, was last night?’
    ‘Yes. He was here at home,’ she said, clearly exhausted. ‘We kept him awake.’
    She patted her swelling belly and tried to squeeze out a smile.
    ‘Thanks,’ Ari Thór said. ‘That tells me what I needed to know.’
    Walking back to the squad car, his eyes were drawn to the mountains where there was still a bit of snow to be seen.
    The shadow of winter and the heavy snow that would engulf the town as the long days turned into long nights was never far away in Siglufjörður.

17
    When Ísrún heard on the radio news that Ríkhardur Lindgren was the owner of the house in which the murder had taken place, she drove straight to the office. She could still taste the polluted air in her mouth. The ash cloud over the city had grown thicker and heavier as the day passed. The sun was blotted out by the heavy haze, its presence behind the grey miasma hidden but still felt as the temperature continued to climb.
    That damned volcano … Normally she delighted in hot summer days, but now she would have welcomed a cold northerly gale.
    She remembered the Ríkhardur Lindgren case clearly. He had been in the news before she left to study for her master’s degree, while she was still working on the news desk. Three people had lost their lives due to the doctor’s drinking habit. But in the those days they’d had an unusually cautious news editor, who’d decided not to identify the doctor by name and played down the tragedy as it unfolded.
    According to the national registry, Ríkhardur Lindgren’s legal residence was now in Sweden. Ísrún had a friend, Elín, who had worked at a newspaper when the story was at its hottest and had written some pieces about it. She had since left journalism and moved to a job as a press secretary for a bank. Maybe she would remember something about Ríkhardur – some interesting angle on the story? This might be a chance to score a few points off Ívar, and still be able to leave town to travel to the north in good time.
    ‘Hi,’ she said when the phone was answered, ‘it’s Ísrún.’
    ‘Ísrún! It’s ages since I heard from you,’ Elín replied pleasantly.
    ‘Yes, I’ve been a bit busy.’ That was an understatement. Life had been a roller coaster for the last two years, and with more downs than ups. ‘How are things in the world of PR? I presume you’re managing to spoon-feed your former colleagues with regular good-news stories?’
    ‘It happens from time to time,’ Elín laughed.
    Ísrún decided to plunge straight in while she had Elín in a good mood: ‘Do you mind if I pick your brains for a moment?’
    ‘About what?’
    ‘You remember Ríkhardur Lindgren?’
    ‘Do I ever?’ Elín replied, her tone sharp. ‘That drunken arsehole.’
    ‘Did you keep tabs on him?’
    ‘Yes I did. After all, I wrote about him a few times, especially when the private prosecutions for damages were going on.’
    ‘Does he live here or did he move to Sweden?’
    ‘The last I heard he was living in a very high-end apartment his sister owns – in the harbour district, if I recall correctly,’ Elín said with satisfaction in her voice; it was clear that she enjoyed helping out a colleague from her days in journalism.
    Half an hour later