Intelligence is the wife, imagination is the mistress, memory is the servant.

Simon Cox has a stunning and visually magnificent story on the BBC this week about the investigation and aftermath of two disappearances in 1970s Iceland.

Over decades and decades in Iceland people have gone missing without anyone finding anything out. They just sort of disappear.

Two of these mysterious disappearances in the winter of early and late 1974 led police investigators down a dark and treacherous rabbit hole of deception, frustration, and eventually torture.  Suspects were kept in solitary confinement for months without end; they were interrogated dozens of times without the presence of their lawyers; and they were forced to participate in re-enactments of theories of the crime that did nothing more than taint their own memories of what happened.  

Frustrated with the conflicting questions and the lack of physical evidence, investigators began to cross the already-grey lines with the suspected ringleader.

His head was put into a washing bucket of water and he was told if he didn’t confess he would be drowned. Of course he wasn't drowned but this is, and was, torture of course.  Then there was the mental torture - being deprived of everything, kept awake all night, not allowed to sleep.

Four decades later, the remains of the victims have never been found, and the suspected criminals cannot clear their minds or their memories: "Is it possible they killed someone in the apartment and I saw the whole thing and I can’t remember?"

The story is as beautiful as it is terrifying.