“So you think the attack was racially motivated?” Sigurdur Oli 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 Elias.”

“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 Oli 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 Oli 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 Oli 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 Oli 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 Oli asked.

“Clash?”

“In the staff room,” Sigurdur Oli 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 Oli 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 Oli 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 Oli 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 Oli 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.

Odinn, Elias’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 Elias 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. Odinn 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 Oli and Elinborg 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 Vatnajokull 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, 3^rd 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 them. 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 Elinborg.

“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.