“Elias? I don’t know. I don’t know him at all. I never see him.”

“Have there been serious clashes at school between your gang and Niran’s lot?”

“No, just, you know, that lot are always showing off.”

Raggi paused.

“The immigrants?” Sigurdur Oli prompted.

“Iceland should be for us. For the Icelanders. Not for a load of foreigners.”

“We know there have been clashes between gangs,” Sigurdur Oli said. “We know these can be serious at times. Not just in this part of town. But we’re also aware that few of them run very deep. Would you agree?”

“I… I don’t know.”

“Then this incident with Elias happens.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you think it’s connected to the fights between your gangs?”

“I don’t know. Probably not. I mean, we wouldn’t do anything like that. We’d never kill anyone. That’s ridiculous. We don’t do that kind of thing. It’s not like that.”

“Are you sure?”

The mother had sat silently smoking throughout their conversation. Now she intervened.

“You think my Raggi attacked that boy?” she said, as if it had finally dawned on her why a policeman had entered her home and started asking a series of questions about racial tension at the school.

“I don’t think anything,” Sigurdur Oli said. “Do you know anything about drug-dealing at the school?” he asked Raggi.

“My Raggi’s not involved in drugs,” the mother said instantly.

“That’s not what I asked,” Sigurdur Oli said.

“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 Oli 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 Elias?” Sigurdur Oli 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 Elias?”

“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 Oli stared at Raggi. He remembered what Kari 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 Oli 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 Elias’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 Odinn, Virote and Sigridur, 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 Elinborg attended the memorial service and watched the procession moving slowly towards the flats. Elinborg 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 Elinborg’s tune about Cadet Jon Kristofer of the Sally Army, and Lieutenant Valgerdur, who showed him the way to heaven. When he realised what he was doing, he cursed Elinborg.

“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?”