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‘Hey, idiot!’ says Jón Karl, giving Heckle a blow to the head with the handle of his pistol. Heckle jumps, opens his eyes and crawls, snivelling, to a wall.

‘What?’ Heckle says tearfully, and then Jón Karl grabs the chance to shove the barrel into his mouth.

‘Listen,’ whispers Jón Karl and then puts his finger carefully on the trigger.

Jón Karl gets the bitter taste of blood in his mouth and the inside of his head heats up, his pupils expand and a buzzing high starts spreading through his veins – an ice-cold high that deadens the pain, fills his mind with a blue glow and cools all emotions.

But Heckle goes stiff as a corpse, makes a flat-sounding cry, drools down his chin and pisses his pants.

Click!

The hammer slams against an empty shell and nothing happens.

Jón Karl blinks and pulls the wet gun out of the mouth of Heckle, who is crying like a little child.

‘That was enough for me,’ says Jón Karl, closing his eyes and drawing a deep breath. He stands up, puts the duffel bag over his left shoulder, turns off the light by breaking the bulb and kicks open the door of the shed.

The padlock shoots out into the night as the door breaks in two.

Jón Karl stretches out his right arm, aims the gun at nothing, grits his teeth and walks swiftly out into the dark.

The shed is up beyond the Vatnsendi neighbourhood, in a dark marsh west of the horse stables. Jón Karl starts running towards the Seljahverfi suburb, all lit up beyond a low hill and gentle slope. He runs across moor, mire and gravel, climbs over a fence, sneaks down between two-storey houses, then walks quickly along a short cul-de-sac down to Jaðarsel Street. There he hides in a bus shelter, where he can catch his breath while keeping an eye on the empty street.

After a few minutes a car appears to the south. It is going fast and, judging by the loud engine and heavy bass beat, this is a well-equipped sportscar.

Jón Karl steps into the street, right arm extended. The driver slams on the brakes and stares open mouthed through the windscreen, first at the bloody, swollen face of the black-clad man who is in his way, then at the revolver that same man holds in his right hand, aimed at him.

‘Out!’ orders Jón Karl, stepping to the right without taking his eyes off the driver. He opens the driver’s door with his left hand and waits for the deathly pale yuppie to step out of his souped-up Impreza.

‘I, I…’ stammers the man, trying to loosen his seatbelt with a trembling hand.

Out – NOW!’ yells Jón Karl, shoving the barrel of the gun into the left ear of the driver, who starts and manages to loosen his seatbelt.

Jón Karl grabs the driver’s shoulder with his left hand and pulls him out of the car and onto the other side of the road.

‘Don’t steal… don’t,’ whines the Impreza’s owner, getting up on his hands and knees.

Shut up,’ says Jón Karl, tossing his duffel bag into the car before sitting in the driver’s seat and slamming the door. He puts the gun in the passenger seat, turns off the music, steps on the clutch and puts the car in first. Just as he’s about to drive off he hears a deep engine that he recognises immediately and which makes the hairs on the back of his painful neck stand on end.

He looks in the rear-view mirror and sees a black van appear, like death itself, and approaching at the speed of a tornado.

‘Damn!’ Jón Karl shouts and floors the Impreza, spinning the low-profile tyres. He’s hardly started off when the van slams into the back of the car. The Impreza skids, lights break, shards of paint and plastic fly in all directions, blue burnt-rubber smoke swirls and engines scream at each other.

Jón Karl gains control of the sportscar and races towards Breiðholt Road with the black van – a one-eyed mass of dents from the collision – almost glued to his back bumper. He takes a right into Breiðholt Road and reaches 200 kmh before he gets to the South Highway roundabout. The van falls slightly behind, but Jón Karl would prefer to see the ghostly single headlight disappear entirely from his rear-view mirror. It’s uncanny how fast and confidently Óðin is driving that 400-horsepower black box.

The Impreza speeds counterclockwise through the roundabout and then north along the South Highway, again reaching 200 kmh down the hill towards the Westland Highway. The hard tyres scream at every turn and the brake shoes are glowing behind the open aluminium wheel rims.

There’s hardly any traffic and nothing to delay Jón Karl. He gains the Westland Highway and floors the sportscar on the wet road, reaching 135 kmh by the Keldur Research Station and keeping that speed right to the first roundabout in Mosfellsbær town.

Under the bonnet the engine screams at 6000 revolutions; the wipers beat in rhythm with blinking eyes as they battle the icy rain that hammers the windscreen; bloody hands clutch the wheel; the headlights slam into the solid wall of rain as if the car were plummeting at terrifying speed into a bottomless pit; his pupils dilate like black holes in his wide-open eyes, and the rear-view mirror shows only darkness.

On the north side of Kolla Fjord, Jón Karl gets stuck behind a semitrailer that is creeping forwards at legal speed, dousing the sportscar with dirty rainwater. There are a few cars coming the other way, and when Jón Karl can finally overtake the semi his mirror shows him a single headlight driving at speed over the bridge at the bottom of the fjord.

‘The motherfucker,’ mutters Jón Karl, forcing the engine to 7000 revolutions before shifting back up to fifth gear. A moment later he glances at the petrol gauge and sees that the tank is as good as empty.

‘I don’t believe this,’ he says, slamming his fist into the instrument panel as he soars at almost 200 kmh down into the mouth of the Whale Fjord tunnel. There the traffic, narrowness and speed cameras force him to slow down.

When Jón Karl drives up out of the tunnel at the north end the rain has almost stopped. He stops behind a pick-up truck, waits while the driver pays the toll and takes the receipt handed to him from the lit-up toll booth. Then he drives through without paying, overtakes the pick-up, runs quickly through the Impreza’s gears and races east along the Whale Fjord coast. The toll collector will have phoned the police, who will immediately send a car towards him from the next town. If the petrol lasts Jón Karl should, with any luck, still be able to reach the turn-off to Skorra Valley before the police reach him.

But after driving only three minutes along the dark Whale Fjord coast, the engine starts to sputter, the car loses speed and, about a hundred metres further on, stalls.

‘This is incredible,’ says Jón Karl, letting the Impreza roll a few metres onto the verge. He turns off the lights, sticks his gun in the ankle holster, puts the car in neutral, grabs his duffel bag and gets out of the car, which then keeps rolling gently off the verge and sticks its nose in the ditch.

Jón Karl tosses the bag onto his left shoulder and heads east. He keeps looking over his shoulder, ready to run and hide if the one-eyed car shows up. The excitement of the car chase slowly leaves him, which brings the pain back from its temporary absence. Jón Karl is badly bruised; maybe even has broken bones. His body is on fire with pain, tendons twitching, muscles cramping, bones broadcasting nerve messages and joints grating like rusty iron.

And the icy wind pushes against him, burning his hands and face like a chill blue flame.