'Is it about the boy?' Kjartan said, making no move to invite Sigurdur Óli in out of the cold.
'About Elías, yes.'
'It was only a matter of time,' Kjartan said with an intolerant ring to his voice. 'They shouldn't let those people into the country,' he went on. 'It only causes conflict. This had to happen sooner or later. Whether it was this boy in this school in this district at this time or someone else at some other time ... it makes no difference. It would have happened and will happen again. You can bet'
Sigurdur Óli began to recall more of Kjartan's story as the man stood in front of him, feet apart, with one hand on the doorframe and the other on the door, his gut hanging out under his vest. Sigurdur Óli was a keen follower of sports, although he was more interested in American football and baseball than Icelandic sports. But he remembered this man as the great hope of Icelandic handball, recalled how he had already been in the national team when he was injured during a game in his early twenties and had to quit. The media made a big deal of him for a while, then Kjartan disappeared from the scene as quickly as he had been swept into it.
'So you think the attack was racially motivated?' Sigurdur Óli said, thinking how difficult it must have been for the man to say goodbye to professional handball. He might have been coming to the end of a star-studded career now had he not been injured, instead he was teaching at a secondary school.
'Is there any other possibility?' Kjartan asked.
'You've taught Elías.'
'Yes, as a substitute teacher.'
'What kind of a boy was he?'
'I don't know him in the slightest. I heard he'd been stabbed. I don't know any more than that. There's no point asking me. It's not my job to take care of those kids. I'm not working at a kids' playground!'
Sigurdur Óli gave him a searching look.
'There are three like him in his class,' Kjartan continued. 'More than thirty in the school as a whole. I've stopped noticing when new ones enrol. They're everywhere. Have you been to the flea market? It's like Hong Kong! No one pays any attention to it. No one pays any attention to what's becoming of our country'
'I—'
'Do you think it's okay?'
'That's none of your business,' Sigurdur Óli said.
'I can't help you,' Kjartan said, preparing to shut the door.
'Do you think it's too much to ask you to answer a few questions?' Sigurdur Óli said. 'We could deal with it down at the station otherwise. You're welcome to come with me. It's more comfortable there too.'
'Don't you go threatening me,' Kjartan said, undaunted. 'I'm telling you I know nothing about this matter.'
'He might have been afraid of you,' Sigurdur Óli said. 'You don't exactly seem to have been friendly towards him. Or to any of the other children you teach.'
'Hey,' Kjartan protested. 'I didn't do anything to the boy. I don't keep an eye out for the kids after school. They're not my responsibility.'
'If I find out you threatened him in some way because you regarded him as a foreigner, we'll be having another chat.'
'Wow... I'm scared shitless,' Kjartan said. 'Leave me alone! I don't know what happened to the boy; it's nothing to do with me.'
'What about this clash you had with a teacher called Finnur?' Sigurdur Óli asked.
'Clash?'
'In the staff room,' Sigurdur Óli said. 'What happened?'
'There was no clash,' Kjartan said. 'We had a bit of an argument. He seems to think it's all right: the more foreigners that pour into this country the better. He never produces anything but that old left-wing bollocks. I told him so. He got a bit angry.'
'You think that's acceptable, do you?' Sigurdur Óli asked.
'What?'
'Talking that way about people? Are you sure you're in the right line of work?'
'What bloody business is it of yours? Are you in the right line of work, sniffing around people who are none of your business?'
'Maybe not,' Sigurdur Óli said. 'Weren't you in handball in the old days?' he asked. 'A bit of a star?'
Kjartan hesitated for a second. He seemed poised to say something, an insult to show that he did not care what Sigurdur Óli said or thought of him. But nothing occurred to him and he shut the door without saying a word.
'Great role model you would have made,' Sigurdur Óli said to the door.
Later that evening Erlendur drove back to the block of flats. The search for Niran had proved fruitless. Sunee and her brother had returned home. The police were still looking for the boy and the public had been asked to help by telephoning in information and even taking a walk around their neighbourhoods to look for a South East Asian teenager, a fairly small fifteen-year-old boy in a blue anorak and black woolly hat.
Ódinn, Elías's father, took an active part in the search. He met Sunee and they had a long talk in private. That evening he had told Erlendur more about their marriage, how he had wanted to keep Elías after the divorce but the boy had wanted to be with his mother, so he had let the matter rest. He could not give Erlendur any details about the new man in Sunee's life. Nor had she mentioned any boyfriend to the police. Perhaps the relationship had broken down. Ódinn knew nothing about it.
Erlendur stopped in front of the block of flats. He drove a Ford Falcon, more than thirty years old, which he had acquired that autumn, black with white interior fittings. He left the engine running and lit a cigarette. It was the last one in the pack. He crumpled the packet and was about to throw it onto the back seat as he used to do in his old car, but refrained and put the empty packet in his overcoat pocket. He treated the Ford with a certain amount of respect.
Erlendur inhaled the blue smoke. Trust, he thought to himself. He had to trust people. His thoughts turned to the woman he had been searching for over the past weeks. Cases piled up on his desk and one of the most serious was connected with marital infidelity, or at least so he thought. It involved a missing person and Erlendur's theory was that it stemmed from unfaithfulness. Not everyone agreed with him.
The woman, Ellen, had walked out of her home shortly before Christmas and had not been seen since. Before the boy was discovered behind the block of flats, Erlendur had been so absorbed in the case that Sigurdur Óli and Elínborg talked among themselves about the return of his old obsession. Everyone knew that Erlendur could not stand unsolved cases on his desk, especially if they involved missing persons. Where others shook their heads and convinced themselves they had done their best, Erlendur went on delving deeper, refusing to give up.
The woman's husband was understandably very worried about her. They were both aged around forty and had got married two years before, but both had been married to other people when they met. His former wife was a departmental manager in the civil service and they had three children aged between three and fourteen. Ellen had been married to a banker and had two teenage children with him. Both apparently lived happy lives and lacked for nothing. He had a good job with an ambitious computer company. She worked in tourism, arranging safaris through the Icelandic wilderness. They had first met when he took a small group of Swedish clients on a mystery tour to the Vatnajökull glacier. She arranged the trip and saw him at meetings, and then they both went with the group to the glacier. It resulted in an affair that they kept secret for a year and a half.
At first it was merely an exciting digression from the routine, according to the husband. It was easy for them to meet. She was in the habit of travelling and he could always make up excuses, such as playing golf, which his wife was not interested in. Occasionally he even bought a cup and had it engraved with an inscription such as 'Borgarholt Tournament, 3rd prize', to show to his wife. He found it amusingly ironic. He played golf a lot but rarely won anything.
Erlendur stubbed out his cigarette. He remembered the trophies at the man's house. He had not thrown them away, and Erlendur wondered why not. They had only been the props for a lie and as such were now superfluous. Unless he kept on lying and told willing listeners that he had won the
m. Perhaps he kept them as mementos of a successful affair. If he was capable of lying to his wife and having an imaginary triumph engraved on a prize cup, could there be any limit to his lies?
This was the question Erlendur had been wrestling with ever since the man telephoned to report his wife missing. What had begun as a kind of yearning for adventure or change, or even blind love, had ended in tragedy.
Erlendur was startled from his speculations by a knock on the car window. He could not see who was there for the condensation that had built up on the glass, so he opened the door. It was Elínborg.
'I must be getting home,' she said.
'Just get in for a minute,' Erlendur said.
'Mad bugger,' she groaned as she walked round the front of the car and got into the passenger seat.
'What are you doing alone out here in your car?' she asked after a silence.
'I was thinking about the woman who went missing,' Erlendur said.
'You know she committed suicide,' Elínborg said. 'We only have to find the body. It'll be discovered on the beach in Reykjanes next spring. She's been missing for more than three weeks. No one knows where she is. No one's hiding her. She hasn't been in touch with anyone. She had no money on her and we can't see any card transactions anywhere. She definitely didn't leave the country. The only trail leads down to the sea.'
Elínborg paused.
'Unless you think her new husband killed her.'
'He had fake trophies made,' Erlendur said. 'He knew his ex-wife wasn't interested in golf, never read about any kind of sports and never talked about golf to anyone. She told me so. And he didn't show the cups to anyone but her, because he needed to make up an alibi. Not until afterwards. Once he was divorced he started showing them off. If that isn't being amoral...'
'Are you concentrating on him now?'
'We always come back to the same thing,' Erlendur said.
'Missing persons and crimes,' said Elínborg, who had often heard Erlendur describe disappearances as a 'distinctively Icelandic crime'. His theory was that Icelanders were indifferent about people who went missing. In the great majority of cases they believed there were 'natural' explanations, in a country with a fairly high suicide rate. Erlendur went further and linked the nonchalance about disappearances to a certain popular understanding, extending back for centuries, about conditions in Iceland, the harsh climate in which people died of exposure and vanished as if the earth had swallowed them up. Nobody was better acquainted than Erlendur with stories of people who had frozen to death in bad weather. His theory was that crimes were easy to commit under the cover of this indifference. At his meetings with Elínborg and Sigurdur Óli and other detectives he had tried to fit the woman's disappearance to his theory, but his words fell on deaf ears.
'Get yourself home,' Erlendur said. 'Take care of your little girl. Has Sunee come back?'
'Yes, they've just got here,' Elínborg said. 'Ódinn was with them but I think he's left again. Niran is still missing. Oh God, I hope nothing has happened to him.'
'I think he'll turn up,' Erlendur said.
'You and your missing persons,' Elínborg said, opening the door. 'Are you in contact with your daughter these days?'
'Get yourself home,' Erlendur said.
'I was talking to Gudný, the interpreter. She says Sunee emphasised that her boys should be brought up, as she was, to show respect for older people. That's one of the fundamentals in the Thai upbringing and remains part of them all their lives. Responsibility is another point. The old people, the grandparents and great-grandparents, are the heads of the extended family. Older people pass on their experience to the younger ones, who are supposed to ensure their security in old age. It's not an obligation but something they take for granted. And the children are ...' Elínborg sighed heavily as she thought of Elías.
'She says that in Thailand, grown-ups stand up for children on buses and give them their seats.'
They were silent.
'This is all so new to us. Immigrants, racial issues... we know so little about it,' Erlendur said eventually.
'That's true. But I do think we're trying our best'
'Doubtless. Now get yourself home.'
'See you tomorrow,' Elínborg said, then stepped out of the car and slammed the door behind her.
Erlendur wished he had another cigarette. He dreaded having to go back to see Sunee. He thought about his daughter, Eva Lind. She had dropped in at Christmas but he had not seen her since. The man she was with had been sent to prison just before the Christmas holidays and she thought Erlendur could do something about it. Her partner supplied her with dope. He was given three years for smuggling cocaine and ecstasy into the country and Eva foresaw hard times while he was in confinement.
Eva and Erlendur's relationship had gone from bad to worse recently. Erlendur could not really see why. For a long time, Eva had shown no willingness to cut back on her drug habit and had distanced herself from him. She had been in rehab, but not of her own accord, and when that was over she immediately slipped back into her old ways. Sindri, her brother, tried to help her, but to no avail. The siblings' relationship had always been close. But it was up and down between Erlendur and Eva, generally depending on Eva's mood. Sometimes she was fine, talked to her father and let him know how she was coping. At other times she had no contact and did not want anything to do with him.
Erlendur locked the Ford and looked up to the top of the six-storey block of flats that towered menacingly into the darkness. He made a mental note to talk to the landlord in case he could shed any light on Sunee and the boys' circumstances. Yet again he delayed going up to her, and instead walked round to the back of the block and into the garden. The search of the crime scene had been completed. Forensics had packed up their equipment and everything was as before, as if nothing had ever happened at the site.
He walked out to the swings. The frost bit his face and he thrust his hands deep into his pockets and stood motionless for a long time. Earlier that day he had heard that his old boss from the Reykjavík CID, Marion Briem, had been admitted to the terminal ward of the National Hospital. It was many years since Marion had retired, and now the life was slowly ebbing from his old colleague. Their relationship could hardly be described as friendship. Erlendur had always been rather irritated by Marion, probably because Marion was almost the only person in his life who did not tire of asking questions and forcing Erlendur to justify himself. Marion was also one of the most inquisitive creatures ever to walk the earth, a living database of Icelandic crime, and had often proved useful to Erlendur, even in retirement. Marion had no relatives. Erlendur came closest to being at once friend, colleague and family.
A freezing wind pierced Erlendur's clothes as he stood by the swings where Elías had died, and his mind roamed over the mountains and moors to another child who had once slipped from his grasp and now followed him through life like a sad shadow.
Erlendur looked up. He knew that he could not postpone sitting down with Sunee any longer. Turning round, he strode out of the garden. When he reached the entrance to the flats he noticed that the door to the rubbish store was open. Not wide open, just ajar. He had not noticed the rubbish store before. The door was set into the wall by the entrance and painted the same colour as the block of flats itself. Although the door had come open, that need not mean anything. Anyone could have gone there to empty their rubbish into the bins. The policeman who was guarding the door was standing inside the hallway, warming himself.
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