“Is she upset about Valgerdur?”

Sindri nodded and produced a pack of cigarettes.

“I don’t know. Maybe she thinks you’ll put her first.”

“Put her first? Over whom?”

Sindri inhaled the smoke and blew it out through his nose.

“Over her?” Erlendur asked.

Sindri shrugged.

“Has she said anything to you?”

“No,” Sindri said.

“Eva hasn’t been in touch with me for weeks. Apart from that call yesterday. Do you think that’s the reason?”

“Could be. I think she’s getting back on her feet. She’s left that dealer and told me she’s going to get a job again.”

“Isn’t that the same old story?”

“Sure.”

“What about you? How are you doing?”

“Fine,” Sindri said, standing up. He stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray on the desk. “Are you thinking of going out east this summer?”

“I haven’t thought about it. Why?”

“Just wondered. I went to take a look at the house once when I was working out there. I don’t know if I told you.”

“It’s derelict now.”

A pretty depressing place. Probably because I know why you moved away”

Sindri opened the door to the corridor.

“Maybe you could let me know,” he said. “If you do go out east.”

He closed the door quietly behind him without waiting for an answer. Erlendur sat in his chair, staring at the door. For an instant he was back home on the farm where he was born and brought up. The farmhouse still stood up on the moor, abandoned. He had slept in it when he visited his childhood haunts for a purpose that was not entirely clear. Perhaps to hear again the voices of his family and recall what he had once had and loved.

It was in this house, which now stood naked and lifeless and exposed to the elements, that he had first heard that unfamiliar, repulsive word which had become etched in his mind.

Murder.

14

The girl reminded him slightly of Eva Lind, apart from being younger and considerably fatter; Eva had always been painfully thin. The girl was wearing a short leather jacket over a thin green T-shirt, and dirty camouflage trousers, and had a metal piercing through one eyebrow. She had on black lipstick and one of her eyes was circled with black. Sitting down opposite Erlendur, she looked like a real tough cookie. The expression on her face betrayed an obstinate revulsion towards everything that the police could possibly represent. Beside him, Elinborg gave the girl a look that suggested she wanted to stuff her in a washing machine and switch it to rinse.

They had already questioned her elder sister, who seemed to be more or less the role model for the younger one. She was all mouth, a hardened character with a string of convictions for handling and selling drugs. Because she had never been caught with large amounts on her at any one time, she had only received short suspended sentences. As was customary, she refused to reveal the names of the dealers she sold for, and when asked whether she realised what she was doing to her sister by dragging her into the world of drugs, she laughed in their faces and said: “Get a life.”

Erlendur tried to make the younger sister understand that he did not care what she was up to at the school. Drug-dealing was not his department and she would not be in any trouble with him, but if she did not give satisfactory answers to his questions he would have her sent to a smallholding in the middle of nowhere for the next two years.

“Smallholding?” the girl snorted. “What the hell’s that?”

“It’s where milk comes from,” Elinborg said.

“I don’t drink milk,” the girl said, wide-eyed, as if that could be to her advantage.

Looking at her, Erlendur could not help smiling in spite of everything. In front of him sat an example of the most wretched depths that a human life could descend to, a young girl who knew nothing but neglect and squalor. The girl could do little about the state she was in. She was from a typical problem home and had largely been left to bring herself up. Her elder sister, her role model and possibly one of the people who were supposed to look after her, had talked her into selling drugs and naturally into taking them as well. But that was probably not the worst of it. He knew from his own daughter how the debts were paid, what it cost to buy a gram, what they sometimes had to do to buy their bliss, the kind of life this young girl lived.

She was nicknamed Heddy and appeared to fit the profile that the police had of playground dealers. She was finishing compulsory schooling, lived in the neighbourhood and hung around with twenty-year-old men, her big sister’s friends. She was the go-between and they had heard various unsavoury details about her at the school.

“Did you know Elias? The boy who died?” Erlendur asked.

They were sitting in the interview room. With the girl was a child welfare officer. Her parents could not be reached. She knew why she had been called in. The welfare officer spoke to her and told her they were only gathering information.

“No,” Heddy said, “I didn’t know him at all. I don’t know who killed him. It wasn’t me.”

“No one’s saying it was you,” Erlendur said.

“It wasn’t me.”

“Do you know of any … ?” Erlendur paused. He was going to ask if there had been any altercations between Elias and anyone in particular at the school, but was uncertain whether she would understand the word “altercation’. So he began again: “Do you know if Elias had any particular enemies at the school?”

“No,” the girl said. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything about this Elias kid. I’m not dealing there. That’s just bullshit!”

“Did you try to sell him dope?” Elinborg asked.

“What sort of cunt are you?” the girl snarled. “I don’t talk to cunts like you.”

Elinborg smiled.

“Did you sell him dope?” she asked again. “We’ve heard that you force the younger kids to give you money. You even force them to buy dope from you. Maybe your sister’s taught you how to go about it, because she’s experienced and knows how to make the kids scared of her. Maybe you’re scared of big sister too. We don’t give a damn about that. We couldn’t care less about a girl like you—”

“Hey, listen …” the child welfare officer objected.

“You heard what she called me,” Elinborg said, slowly turning her head to the welfare officer, a woman of about thirty. “You kept your mouth shut then and you should keep it shut now as well. We want to know if Elias was scared of you,” she continued, looking back at Heddy. “If you chased him to frighten him and stabbed him with a knife. We know that you like preying on smaller kids, because that’s the only thing you’re any good at in this miserable existence of yours. Did you attack Elias too?”

Heddy stared at Elinborg.

“No,” she said after a long silence. “I never went near him.”

“Do you know his brother?” Erlendur asked.

“I know Niran,” she said.

“How do you know Niran? Are you friends?”

“No way,” she said, “we’re not friends. I hate gooks. Never go near them. Not that Elias either. I never went near him and I don’t know who attacked him.”

“Why did you say that you know Niran?”

The girl smiled, revealing adult teeth that were completely out of proportion with her small mouth and childlike face.

“They’re the ones who sell,” she said. “They sell the fucking dope. The fucking gooks!”

Marion Briem was asleep when Erlendur visited the hospital towards evening. Peace reigned in the terminal ward. A radio was switched on somewhere, broadcasting the weather report. The temperature had dropped to ten degrees below, exacerbated by the dry northerly wind. Few people went out in such cold. They stayed at home, switched on all the lights and turned up the central heating. The television showed sunny films from Spain and Italy featuring blue skies, Mediterranean warmth and vibrant colours.