“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 Elias, a little younger. All alone. I started 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 Oli and Elinborg 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 Oli 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 Oli 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 Elias 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 Oli 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 Oli 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 Oli 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 Oli 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 Oli said.

Erlendur asked Sigurdur Oli 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 Oli 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.”

Bergthora was still up when Sigurdur Oli came home late that evening. She was waiting for him. He had not been home much recently, not only because of Elias’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.