Free Outrage by Arnaldur Indridason

could speak to? Either here at the company, or anyone at all?’
    ‘I don’t, but I’ll ask around.’
    On the weekend when he was murdered Runolfur had not been picked up by any CCTV camera in the downtown area where his landlord assumed he had gone on the last evening of his life. There were eight cameras monitoring the busiest locations in the city centre. Perhaps it meant nothing: there were many other routes to and from his home. Perhaps Runolfur knew where the cameras were and had deliberately avoided them. Taxi drivers were questioned: had they seen him, or even picked him up? But this yielded no result. The same applied to the drivers of night buses in the area. Runolfur’s credit- and debit-card transactions were checked, but he seemed to use the cards only for grocery shopping and instalment payments on his computer and iPod, and regular outgoings like phone, heating, electricity and TV bills.
    The police had been provided with data that tracked Runolfur’s mobile-phone signal so they could tell whether he had moved from one transmission zone to another on the night in question. Even if he had not used his phone his movements could still be tracked, but as a telecoms engineer he must have known that his position still could not be pinpointed since the whole of the downtown area was covered by a single transmitter with a radius of three kilometres. Had Runolfur wanted to go farther afield without his movements being traceable he might have left his mobile at home: it turned out that the phone had not left the downtown area that night.
    A hair sample from the young woman who had been found in distress in Kopavogur was sent abroad for DNA analysis, so that it could be compared with samples from Runolfur’s home and car. It would take some time to establish whether she had been his victim a few weeks before he was killed. But she was not a suspect and had a reliable alibi. The T-shirt that Runolfur had been wearing when he’d died and the shawl found in his flat were also sent for analysis, to reveal whether both had belonged to the same woman. Nothing had been found on his computer that would help the police to determine who had been with him on the night of the murder. In fact the computer contained very little history of Internet usage at all. It appeared that he had been intending to buy a second-hand car since websites selling used cars were listed prominently on the day of his death, along with Icelandic and foreign sports sites, and subjects relevant to his job. All his e-mails related to his work.
    ‘He didn’t use e-mail as most of us tend to,’ said the forensics officer. ‘And it looks to me as if that’s deliberate.’
    ‘What do you mean, deliberate?’
    ‘He leaves no trail,’ he explained.
    Elinborg was standing in the doorway of an office at police headquarters. The space was so tiny and constricted that she could not actually enter the room. The officer, who was both tall and proportionately broad, seemed almost to be trapped in his miniature office, unable to move.
    ‘But is there anything unusual about that? Some people write whatever comes into their heads, while others are more cautious. After all, how do we know who will read our e-mails?’
    ‘You can get access to anything, and steal it,’ he observed. ‘As we’ve seen in practice - suddenly people’s private affairs appear on the front pages of the papers. Speaking for myself, I would never put anything important in an e-mail. But I have a feeling that this man is rather more than just cautious - he seems to be almost obsessive. It’s as if he did his utmost not to leave anything personal whatsoever on the hard drive. There are no links, other than those relating to his work. No chat rooms. No documents. No personal thoughts. No calendar. Nothing. We know he was interested in films and football. That’s all we got.’
    ‘Nothing about girlfriends?’
    ‘Nope.’
    ‘Because he wanted it that