She had left before breakfast and it was now mid-afternoon. Raufarhöfn was in the far north-east of the country, and the last stretch of road there hugged the north coast to a point a kilometre south of the Arctic Circle. To her left the sea was a ruffled greyish blue; to her right the land was a ruffled brownish green. Farms were few and far between. It was a fine day; the sun shone down a weak yellow on the eerie remoteness of the Melrakkaslétta. She couldn’t see any foxes, but the seashore and the lakes were teeming with bird life of all shapes and sizes. The area was an important hub in the transatlantic aerial migration network. She felt alone. She felt good. When Inspector Baldur, the head of the Violent Crimes Unit, had asked for volunteers to travel to Raufarhöfn to help out with a murder investigation, she had jumped at the chance to get out of Reykjavík. For once she could afford to leave her alcoholic mother for a couple of weeks. Vigdís knew she should be visiting her, but she wanted to get away from the constant reminder that she had failed in keeping her mother off the booze, and the growing realization that she would always fail: that whatever rehab programmes she went on, however much money Vigdís spent, her mother Audur would always come back to the drink.
