Arctic Chill

by Arnaldur Indridason

  'I don't know anything about any drugs at the school,' Raggi said.

  'No, that's right, you just let off fireworks in the corridors,' Sigurdur Óli said.

  'I—' Raggi began, but his mother interrupted.

  'He's been punished for that,' she said. 'And it wasn't even him that did the worst damage.'

  'Is it possible that someone is dealing drugs and someone else owes him money and the debt could have resulted in the sort of thing that happened to Elías?' Sigurdur Óli asked, suddenly realising how the mother justified her son's behaviour to herself.

  Raggi stopped to think for the second time in their conversation.

  'No one from the school's dealing drugs,' he said after a pause. 'Sometimes people hang around the school gates, selling something. Or at the school discos. That's all. I don't know about any other cases. No one's tried to sell me anything.'

  'Do you know what happened to Elías?'

  'No.'

  'Do you know who attacked him?'

  'No.'

  'Do you know where Niran was the day his brother was attacked?'

  'No. I just saw when Kjartan knocked him down in the road.'

  'Kjartan the Icelandic teacher?'

  'Niran scratched his car. Right down the side. Kjartan went mental.'

  Sigurdur Óli stared at Raggi. He remembered what Kári had said about Kjartan and Niran.

  'Will you say that again?'

  Raggi sensed that he had said something important and immediately began to backtrack.

  'I didn't see it, I only heard about it,' he said. 'Someone said he had attacked Niran because Niran scratched the side of his car.'

  'When? When was this?'

  'The morning of the day the boy died.'

  'More coffee?' his mother asked, exhaling smoke.

  'Thanks, maybe I'll have a drop,' Sigurdur Óli said, taking out his phone. He selected Erlendur's number.

  'What else?' he asked.

  'I don't know,' Raggi said. 'That's all I heard.'

  19

  The search for Niran had still yielded no results by the evening of Elías's memorial service. A large crowd joined the torchlit procession that filed in silence to the block of flats, led by the local vicar. Sunee, present with Ódinn, Virote and Sigrídur, was deeply touched by this show of warmth and solidarity.

  It was not enough, however, to persuade her to entrust her son to the police. She stubbornly refused to reveal where she was hiding him, and neither her brother nor anyone connected to them would provide any information on that score.

  Erlendur and Elínborg attended the memorial service and watched the procession moving slowly towards the flats. Elínborg held a small handkerchief concealed in her hand and raised it unobtrusively to her eyes from time to time.

  Erlendur phoned Valgerdur when he got back to the office. He knew it was her shift at the hospital. While waiting for her to come to the phone, he had begun, quite oblivious to the fact, to whistle Elínborg's tune about Cadet Jón Kristófer of the Sally Army, and Lieutenant Valgerdur, who showed him the way to heaven. When he realised what he was doing, he cursed Elínborg.

  'Hello,' Valgerdur answered.

  'Just thought I'd give you a call,' Erlendur said. 'I'm about to call it a day.'

  'I'm going to have to work all night,' Valgerdur said. 'A little boy came in for a blood test and it's a clear case of domestic violence. He's only seven. We've notified the police and the Child Welfare—'

  'Please don't tell me any more,' Erlendur said.

  'Sorry... I...' Valgerdur faltered. It wasn't the first time this had happened. She wanted to share something that she'd experienced at work but he forestalled her. He rarely spoke to her about the sordid side of life that he encountered in his job as a detective. In his opinion it had nothing to do with the two of them. As if he wanted to protect their relationship from all the squalor. It was not so much an escape from all the ugliness and injustice of the world, more a brief respite.

  'It's just. . . when you work with that stuff, day in, day out, you long to hear about something different,' he said now. 'You want to know that there's more to life than endless bloody filth.'

  Are you getting anywhere with the case of the boy?'

  'We're not making any progress.'

  'We saw the procession on television. You haven't found his brother yet?'

  'His mother's afraid,' Erlendur said. 'She'll talk to us once she's got over her fear.'

  Neither of them spoke. Erlendur liked talking to Valgerdur. The mere sound of her voice on the phone was enough for him. She had a beautiful voice, low and mellow, which automatically made him feel better. He couldn't quite put his finger on it, but sometimes he just longed to hear her speak. Like now.

  An old colleague of mine has just died,' he said at last. 'I've mentioned Marion Briem to you.'

  'Yes, I recognise the name. Unusual.'

  'Marion died yesterday after a long illness. It probably came as a relief but it was rather a lonely death. Marion had no family. Was my boss for donkey's years, but retired a while back. I didn't visit often enough. It didn't occur to me until too late. Marion didn't have many visitors. I was one of the few. Perhaps the only one, I don't know. Sometimes I had the feeling I was the only one.'

  Erlendur fell silent and Valgerdur waited for him to continue. She didn't want to disturb his train of thought, sensing that he needed to talk to her, but the pause became so prolonged that she began to wonder if Erlendur was still there.

  'Erlendur?' she said when she could no longer bear the silence.

  'Yes, sorry, I was just thinking about it all. Marion asked me to handle the funeral arrangements. It's all been set in motion. That's how it ends. Life. All that long life, only to end up alone and abandoned in a hospital bed.'

  'What are you talking about, Erlendur?'

  'I don't know. Death ...' He trailed off again.

  'Eva Lind came round,' he said eventually.

  'Wasn't that nice?'

  'I suppose so, I'm not sure. She looks better. I haven't seen her for weeks and then she turns up out of the blue. Typical. It's ... She's become a woman. It suddenly struck me. There was something about her, something different. More mature, I think, calmer. Maybe the whole thing's blowing over. Maybe she's had enough.'

  'We all grow older.'

  'True.'

  'What did she want?'

  'I think she wanted to tell me about a dream she had.'

  'You think?'

  'She left before she could tell me. I suppose I told her to go. I think I know what she wants. She was asking what happened when Bergur died. She thought her dream was somehow connected. I didn't want to hear it.'

  'It was only a dream,' Valgerdur said.

  'The thing is, I haven't told her everything. I haven't told her why he was never found. There were various theories. She seemed to know about them.'

  'Theories?'

  'He should have been found,' Erlendur said.

  'But... ?'

  'He never was.'

  'What sort of theories?'

  'The moor. Or the river.'

  'But you don't want to talk about it?'

  'It has nothing to do with anyone else,' Erlendur said. 'It's an old story that has nothing to do with anyone else.'

  'And you want to keep it to yourself

  Erlendur did not reply.

  'Eva's your daughter,' Valgerdur said. 'You spoke to her about this once.'

  'That's the headache,' Erlendur said.

  'Find out what she has to say. Listen to her.'

  'I suppose I'll have to,' Erlendur said.

  Again he paused.

  'I keep thinking about that boy lying alone and abandoned in the snow behind the block of flats. I don't understand what could have happened. I can't fathom it, not for the life of me.'

  'Of course, it's too horrific for words.'

  'I... it made me think about my brother. He was the same age as Elías, a little younger. All alone. I st
arted thinking about all those lonely deaths. About Marion Briem.'

  'Erlendur, it's not as if you could ever have put it right. You could never have done anything. It was never your responsibility. You have to understand that.'

  Erlendur did not speak.

  'I'll be stuck here all night,' Valgerdur repeated in an apologetic tone. She had already spent too long on the phone.

  'That's what you get for being a biotechnician,' Erlendur said.

  'We're not biotechnicians any more,' Valgerdur said.

  'Really? What are you then?'

  'We're biomedical scientists.'

  'What?'

  'Times change.'

  'What'll become of the biotechnicians then?'

  'We're not going anywhere, we've just changed our name.'

  'Biotechnician's a perfectly good name.'

  'You've heard the last of it'

  'Shame.'

  A silence developed.

  'Sorry to offload on you like this,' Erlendur said. 'We'll talk properly later.'

  'You're not offloading on me,' Valgerdur said. 'Don't talk like that. I'm free tomorrow evening.'

  'Maybe I'll see you then,' Erlendur said.

  'Listen to Eva,' Valgerdur repeated.

  Erlendur went out into the corridor and down to the interview room where Sigurdur Óli and Elínborg were questioning Kjartan about the scratch on his car and reports that he had blamed Niran for it and assaulted him. Kjartan was not under arrest. When Sigurdur Óli phoned Erlendur with the information and Erlendur confronted Kjartan with it, he had lost his temper and started hurling abuse at them. But after ranting about lies and conspiracies for a while, he finally admitted that he had held Niran responsible for the scratch. He had not so much as harmed a hair on his head, however; stories of his attacking Niran were completely unfounded.

  He accompanied them down to the station without protest. Sigurdur Óli was given the job of interviewing him. The car was a newish Volvo that Kjartan said he had owned for less than a year. It was already undergoing repairs at his cousin's garage. On further questioning it transpired that the scratch had already been repaired and the car was waiting to be resprayed. Photos of the damage taken for Kjartan's insurance company showed a narrow scratch running from the rear lights, over the wing and doors to the front lights. The cost of repairing such a scratch was high and Kjartan was involved in a row with his insurance company who were trying to exploit a loophole. The photos could not provide conclusive evidence of the type of instrument used to make the scratch but a knife seemed likely, though it could have been a screwdriver, or even a key.

  It was uncertain as yet whether Kjartan would be detained in custody. He was vehement that it was utterly absurd to link the vandalism to the attack on Elías later that day. He had not noticed the scratch when he left for work that morning. It had been pitch dark outside and when pressed he was unable to say with any certainty whether the car had been vandalised in the school car park. He lived in a different neighbourhood, but it was only half an hour's walk from the school. He had noticed the scratch when he went out to run a quick errand into town at lunchtime. Spotting Niran and a friend loitering near the car park, he had asked if they knew anything about the scratch but Niran had jeered at him. He never hit the boy. They had an exchange of words which were not exactly polite, as Kjartan admitted, but he did not knock the boy down in the street. The police need only talk to the other boy, who witnessed the incident.

  Erlendur opened the door and entered the interview room.

  'Why didn't you tell us about this?' Sigurdur Óli asked. 'Why did we have to find out from someone else?'

  'I didn't think it was relevant,' Kjartan said, looking at Erlendur who leaned against the wall with arms folded. 'It's absurd to try and link it to the attack on the boy. I don't understand how you can connect the two incidents. I asked Niran if he had damaged my car and he just laughed in my face. I got nothing out of him.'

  'So you lost your temper,' Sigurdur Óli said.

  'Of course I did,' Kjartan said, his voice rising. 'You'd have lost your temper too. How would you like to get reaction like that?'

  'From what we hear, you were unusually touchy at school that morning.'

  'You mean the business with Finnur?'

  Sigurdur Óli nodded.

  'That was nothing. We're always arguing.'

  'Was Niran carrying a sharp object or did he say something that implied he had vandalised your car?'

  'I wanted to know if he had a knife or screwdriver on him,' Kjartan said. 'So I grabbed at him and he struggled. I didn't throw him in the street. He tore himself away from me and fell. I left him alone after that. I never did find out if he had a knife or anything. Are you going to arrest me for that?'

  Sigurdur Óli glanced at Erlendur whose expression was unreadable.

  'I didn't do anything to that boy,' Kjartan said. 'If you arrest me it's tantamount to branding me a murderer. Maybe only for one day but that's all it takes. What if you never find the person who did it? I'll be branded for life! And I haven't done anything!'

  'You express antipathy to immigrants,' Erlendur said. 'Not just resentment, but out-and-out hatred. You don't deny it. You admit it. You're proud of it. You show it in a variety of ways. Surely you don't think it's our job to clean up your image?'

  'You have no right to insult me just because you don't share my views!'

  'No one's insulting you,' Sigurdur Óli said.

  Erlendur asked Sigurdur Óli to step outside for a moment. Kjartan watched them go. 'I haven't done anything!' he yelled as the door of the interview room closed.

  'He's got a point,' Sigurdur Óli remarked when they were outside in the corridor.

  'Of course,' Erlendur said. 'It's the most pathetic motive I've ever heard for a murder. Kjartan's all bark and no bite. He has no record of violence, has never been in trouble with the police. We'll let him go. But hold him as long as possible.'

  'Erlendur, we can't—'

  'Oh, all right,' Erlendur said huffily and stalked off down the corridor. 'Let him go now, then.'

  Bergthóra was still up when Sigurdur Óli came home late that evening. She was waiting for him. He had not been home much recently, not only because of Elías's murder but for other reasons. She thought he was avoiding her. The way she saw it, and had put it to him, their relationship was at a crossroads. Since there was no question of their having a child together, they had to decide where to go from there.

  Sigurdur Óli went into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of fruit juice. He had visited the gym on the way home and been the last to leave. He had pounded the treadmill and pumped iron until the sweat poured off him.