Blackout by Ragnar Jónasson

of words. ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, don’t quote me on the news, will you?’ She paused for a moment, and leant towards Ísrún. ‘All the same, you’d be wise not to make too much of a saint of him.’
    ‘There’s no chance of that,’ Ísrún said, half to herself. ‘But you must have got something out of the divorce?’
    Idunn laughed, a bitter, tired laugh.
    ‘If only. The bastard never had two pennies to rub together, not that I knew of anyway. I was the one who was the wage earner. He did very nicely out of the divorce and he even got my apartment in Akureyri. It’s nothing special, just a cubbyhole of a place, but it’ll be worth something. I managed to keep hold of the café. He’s … was … such a tightwad that I don’t think he even got round to registering the Akureyri apartment under his own name. On paper my company still owns it. I suppose because he didn’t want to pay the insuranceand council tax on it,’ she said and smiled, brightening as this positive aspect of his death dawned on her. ‘Hey, maybe I get to keep my apartment after all! It might be worth selling.’
    ‘Sometimes there’s good luck to be found in the unlikeliest of places,’ Ísrún said, unconvincingly.
    She thanked Idunn for her time, and gathered her courage to set off into the tainted air outside.
    The sky was unusually dark, the sun hidden behind the thick mineral haze, even though there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Ísrún felt the ash settle on her tongue, as she breathed, as if she had had a mouthful of sand. She shuddered at the thought, hurrying to her car and setting off immediately; she felt like she was in a polluted foreign city in the middle of a heatwave, rather than a summer’s day in Reykjavík.
    She could hardly have chosen a better day to be leaving town. This would be the first time she had been back to Akureyri after leaving the place so suddenly a year and a half ago to return to Reykjavík. She gritted her teeth at the thought of the old wounds a return to Akureyri might open up, but told herself that she needed to do it.
    Things were beginning to crystallise, and Ísrún felt she was on to something. She could reveal the real Elías Freysson.

    ‘Kormákur! A word!’
    Ívar sat in the desk editor’s chair and yelled across the newsroom, as he usually did, a king overseeing his subjects.
    Kormákur hurried over.
    ‘How’s it going with the murder story?’
    ‘Nothing new,’ Kormákur said.
    ‘Nothing new? A man’s been murdered. Don’t tell me you’re just going to sit here and wait for the police to get round to holding a press conference?’
    Ívar’s voice was stern, cut with sharp sarcasm.
    ‘What? No, of course not … but it’s all just kicking off,’ Kormákur stammered.
    ‘It’s going to be our lead tonight. For crying out loud, try and work a bit of tension into it, will you?’ Ívar muttered something under his breath, and then leant in to whisper into Kormákur’s ear. ‘Listen, someone called Ísrún with a lead; some friend of hers, whose name she wouldn’t give, said Elías had been involved in drugs.’
    ‘Dope? A user?’ Kormákur asked in surprise.
    ‘No, smuggling.’
    ‘Hell! That would be a proper scoop.’
    ‘Wouldn’t it just? She put her foot down and wanted to have a go at it, so if she sends anything in, I’ll let you have it. But I still want you to look into this. I don’t really trust her with something so big. Can you do that?’
    ‘Of course I can.’
    Kormákur hurried back to his workstation and called the police in Akureyri to see if there had been any connection between the murder victim and a drug-smuggling ring.
    But the police were tight-lipped: they weren’t providing any information until the press conference, and Kormákur put down the phone without having learned anything new. He wondered what exactly it was that Ísrún knew. He couldn’t help hoping that she came back south with nothing and this would open the way to