Kári Bjarnason’s face was in the third row, between his aunt and a man who had been dead for nine years.
Sigríður had laid the photograph of the village festival flat on the desk in the small municipal room. The glossy paper had yellowed at the edges. Someone had written *June 17, 2008* on the back in ballpoint, followed by names in an order that did not quite match the bodies. In Hrafnsvík, photographs were rarely corrected. Captions were.
Ásta Guðmundsdóttir, eighty, had leaned so close that her glasses chain almost touched the image.
“That’s him.”
Her forefinger stopped on Kári. Twenty in the photograph, thirty-six today. A fuller jaw, hair that no longer existed above his temples. Sigríður knew the changes. She had grown up three houses from the Bjarnasons and never learned to look at their faces as strangers’.
“You’re certain you saw him last night?”
Ásta raised her head.
“I’m not certain of the time. I’m certain of him.”
Outside, rain struck the window in gusts. The council chamber chairs were still lined up after a meeting about the school’s heating. A radiator knocked at irregular intervals. Sigríður heard it more whenever Ásta hesitated.
The previous evening, someone had broken into the cooperative’s net shed and set a pile of ropes on fire. Nothing spectacular: the detector sounded, firefighters arrived in six minutes, and most damage came from smoke. But the cooperative employed half the people who did not work for the municipality. Here, a forced door always had cousins.
“What was he wearing?” Sigríður asked.
“A dark jacket.”
“A hat?”
Ásta narrowed her eyes.
“I don’t want to invent a hat to please you.”
Sigríður smiled despite herself.
“That’s exactly what I’m trying to avoid.”
Ásta tapped the photograph.
“His walk, then. Left foot turned out a little. Like his father.”
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