“I know plenty of eighteen year olds who couldn’t even spell Weimar Republic”

“Look, we were a bunch of college boys,” Kjartan said. “It was a joke. It was fifteen years ago. I can’t believe you’re going to try and smear me as some kind of racist because of what happened to that boy.”

Kjartan said this sneeringly, as if any connection to the case was so far-fetched that it was a joke, and Elinborg and Erlendur were jokes as well; dumb cops barking up the wrong tree. There was something inexpressibly arrogant about the way he lounged in his chair, legs splayed, grinning at their stupidity. As if he pitied them for not having the same watertight view of life as him. Elias’s fate did not seem to have touched him in the slightest.

“What did you mean when you said that an attack like the one on Elias was only a matter of time?” Elinborg asked.

“I think it’s self-explanatory. What do people expect when they let those people in? Everything’s supposed to be just fine, is it? We aren’t prepared for it. People pour into this country from all over the world to do menial jobs and we turn a blind eye. We’re all supposed to be one big, happy family. Well, it doesn’t work like that and it never will. The Asian lot create their own little ghetto, cling to their customs and traditions and make sure they don’t marry outside their own community. They don’t bother to learn the language, so of course they underachieve at school — how many of them make it to university? Most drop out of education once they’ve finished compulsory schooling, grateful not to have to waste any more time on crappy Icelandic history, the crappy Icelandic language!”

“I see you haven’t entirely given up on Fathers of Iceland,” Erlendur remarked drily.

“Yeah, right, the moment anyone says anything they’re branded a bloody racist. No one’s allowed to open their mouth. Everyone has to be so diplomatic. A positive addition to Icelandic culture and all that crap. Fucking bollocks!”

“Do you think Elias’s attacker was of Asian origin?”

“Of course you lot have ruled that out entirely, haven’t you?” Kjartan said contemptuously.

“Do you talk like that to your pupils?” Elinborg asked. “Do you talk about immigrants like that to your pupils?”

“I don’t see what that’s got to do with you,” Kjartan retorted.

“Do you stir up trouble between the kids at school?” Elinborg continued.

Kjartan looked from one of them to the other.

“Who have you been talking to? Where did you get hold of that stuff about Fathers of Iceland? What have you been digging up?”

“Answer the question,” Erlendur said.

“I haven’t done anything of the sort,” Kjartan said. “If anyone says I have, they’re lying.”

“It’s what we’ve been told,” Elinborg said.

“Well, it’s a lie. I haven’t been inciting anyone to do anything. Who says I have?”

The detectives did not answer.

“Don’t I have a right to know?” Kjartan asked.

Erlendur stared at him without saying a word. He had looked Kjartan up in the police records and found nothing but a speeding fine. He had never been in any trouble with the law. Kjartan was a respectable citizen, an upstanding family man and a good father, from what Erlendur could tell.

“How did you arrive at the conclusion that you’re somehow better than other people?”

“I’m not saying I am.”

“It seems blindingly obvious from everything you say and do.”

“Is that any of your business?”

Erlendur looked at him.

“No, none at all”

Ragnar, nicknamed Raggi at school, sat face to face with Sigurdur Oli at home in his living room. His mother sat beside him, looking anxious. She was divorced; Ragnar was the eldest of her three children and she struggled to make ends meet as the sole breadwinner. She’d had a chat with Sigurdur Oli before Raggi came home. “It’s not easy to provide for three children,” she’d said, as if excusing herself in advance. Yet Sigurdur Oli had done nothing but trot out the usual cliche about routine inquiries due to the incident at the school; the police were speaking to a number of pupils from different forms. The woman listened with apparent understanding, but since the police had come round to the little basement flat she rented for an extortionate amount from the rich old lady upstairs, who owned the whole house and at least three fur coats, it seemed a good opportunity to pour out her troubles. The mother was very overweight and short of breath; she smoked almost incessantly. The air in the flat was stifling. Sigurdur Oli never saw the other two children during his visit. The flat was littered with dirty laundry, junk mail and newspapers. The mother stubbed out her cigarette and he gave a despairing thought to his clothes. They would reek of smoke for days.

Raggi was initially alarmed to see a police officer in his home but quickly recovered. He was tall for his age with a shock of jet-black hair and acne, especially round his mouth. He seemed on edge. Sigurdur Oli began by asking him general questions about the school, the atmosphere there, the teachers and older kids, before gradually bringing the conversation round to immigrants and Niran. Raggi answered mainly in monosyllables. He was polite. His mother stayed out of the conversation and just sat there lighting one cigarette from another and drinking coffee. She had only just come home from work when Sigurdur Oli rang the doorbell. The coffee she made was good and strong, and he waited for her to offer him another cup. He used to be a tea drinker but Bergthora had taught him to appreciate coffee through her connoisseurship of different types of beans and roasts.

“How do you get on with Kjartan who teaches Icelandic?” he asked.

“He’s all right,” Raggi said.

“He’s not keen on coloured people, is he?”

“Maybe not,” Raggi said.

“How does it show? In something he says or something he does?”

“No, just, you know.”

“Just what?”

“Nothing.”

“Did you know Elias?”

“No.”

“What about his brother, Niran?”

Raggi hesitated.

“Yes.”

Sigurdur Oli was on the point of mentioning Kari but refrained. He did not want to give Raggi any reason to suspect that he had just come from visiting the other boy.

“How?”

“You know,” Raggi said.

“You know what?”

“He thinks he’s special.”

“In what way?”

“He calls us Eskimos.”

“What do you call him?”

“A dickhead.”

“Do you know what happened to his brother?”

“No.”

“Can you tell me where you were when he was attacked?”

Raggi stopped and thought. He had clearly not considered the question before and it occurred to Sigurdur Oli that he must be a bloody hardened case if he could act that well. Finally the answer came.

“We were at the Kringlan shopping mall, me, Ingvar and Danni.”

It was consistent with the accounts given by his friends Ingvar and Danni whom Sigurdur Oli had already questioned. Both flatly denied any involvement in the attack on Elias, claimed ignorance about drug-dealing at the school and talked of minor scraps with pupils from ethnic minorities. The three friends were known troublemakers at the school and no one could wait for them to finish their compulsory education that spring and leave for good. They went in for bullying, and had caused a major stir at New Year when two of them had been suspended for a week for setting off explosions in and around the school, using fireworks left over from New Year’s Eve, big firecrackers and powerful rockets that they had tampered with to make them even more potent. One of them had let off the largest make of rocket in a corridor and the explosion had shattered two large panes of glass. The whole school rocked and it was only by a miracle that no one was around because teaching was in full swing.

“When did you last see Elias?” Sigurdur Oli asked.