Sigurdur Oli went into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of fruit juice. He had visited the gym on the way home and been the last to leave. He had pounded the treadmill and pumped iron until the sweat poured off him.

“Any news of the case?” Bergthora asked, coming into the kitchen in her dressing gown.

“No,” Sigurdur Oli said. “Nothing. We don’t have a clue what happened.”

“Wasn’t it racially motivated?”

“No idea. We’ll just have to see.”

“Poor child. And the mother. She must be going through sheer hell.”

“Yes. How are you?”

Sigurdur Oli wanted to tell her that Elias had attended his old school, and how odd it had felt to revisit his old haunts and see a photo of himself from the disco era. But he refrained. He didn’t know why. Perhaps he was tired.

“Not too tired to skip your workout,” Bergthora would have retorted.

Once he would have been happy to share the details of his day with her.

“I’m fine,” Bergthora said now.

“I think I’ll go straight to bed,” Sigurdur Oli said, putting his glass in the sink.

“We need to talk,” Bergthora said.

“Can’t we do it tomorrow?”

“It’s tomorrow now,” she said. “I keep wanting to talk to you but you’re never home. I’ve started to think you’re avoiding me.”

“Work’s frantic at the moment. Your job’s frantic too sometimes. We both work a lot. I’m not avoiding anything.”

“What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know, Begga,” Sigurdur Oli said. “It just seems rather a drastic step to me.”

“People adopt children every day of the year,” Bergthora said. “Why shouldn’t we do it?”

“I’m not saying . . . I just want to be careful.”

“What are you scared of?”

“I’ve just never imagined that I would adopt a child. I’ve never needed to give the matter any thought. It’s a completely new and alien concept for me. I understand that it isn’t for you, but it is for me.”

“I know it’s a big step.”

“Maybe too big,” Sigurdur Oli said.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Maybe it’s not for everyone. Adoption.”

“You mean maybe it’s not for you?”

“I don’t know. Can’t we sleep on it?”

“That’s what you always say.”

“I know.”

“Go to bed then!”

“Look, we’ve been quarrelling about this for far too long. Babies, adoption . . . “

“I know.”

“I go around with a knot in my stomach all day long.”

“I know.”

“Can’t we just forget it?”

“No,” Bergthora said, “we can’t.”

20

The block of flats was still under police guard. Erlendur spoke briefly to the officer on duty on the staircase. He had nothing to report. The residents had trickled home from work towards evening and a variety of cooking smells began to permeate the landing. Sunee had been at home all day. Her brother was with her.

It was late. Erlendur was on his way home but still had a few calls to make. The first was to the morgue on Baronsstigur. He saw at once that something terrible had happened. Two bodies covered in white sheets were carried into the building on stretchers. People were gathering, Erlendur did not know why, until he was informed that a serious accident had occurred on the main road out of town, near Mosfellsbaer. He had not heard the news. Three people had lost their lives in a five-car pile-up, an elderly woman and two teenage boys, one of whom had only recently passed his driving test. An ambulance pulled up, bringing the last body. The families of the deceased were standing around in a state of shock. There was blood on the floor. Someone threw up.

Erlendur was about to make his escape when he ran into the pathologist. He was acquainted with him through work. The man sometimes indulged in gallows humour, which Erlendur guessed was his method of coping in a pretty grim profession. He was in no mood for jokes now, however, as he stared at Erlendur in momentary confusion. Erlendur said he would call back another time.

“Your boy’s in there,” the pathologist said, nodding towards a closed door.

“I’ll come back later,” Erlendur repeated.

“I haven’t found anything,” the pathologist said.

“It’s all right, I—”

“There was dirt under his fingernails but I don’t think that’s anything out of the ordinary. Two of his nails were broken. We found traces of fibres. There must have been a struggle. That’s obvious from the bad rip in his anorak too. Didn’t the mother say it had been in good condition? I assume you’ll be able to make some kind of connection if you can trace the article of clothing. Your forensics team is analysing the fibres to find out what type of material they come from, though of course they could be from his own clothes.”

“And the stab wound?”

“Nothing new there,” the pathologist said, opening the door. “The wound penetrated the liver and the boy would have bled to death relatively quickly. The incision is not particularly large, the instrument that inflicted it would have been fairly broad but needn’t have been especially long. I simply can’t work out what kind of instrument it was.”

“A screwdriver?”

The pathologist frowned. He paused in the doorway. He was needed elsewhere.

“I hardly think so. Something sharper. It’s really a very neat incision.”

“He wasn’t stabbed through his anorak?”

“No, his anorak was unzipped. He was stabbed through a cheap sweater and vest. They were the only obstacles, his only protection.”

“Would there have been splashes of blood?”

“Not necessarily. It’s a single straightforward stab wound which caused massive internal haemorrhaging. The blood wouldn’t necessarily have splashed his assailant, but he might have had to clean himself up.”

The pathologist closed the door. Erlendur walked over to the body and lifted the sheet that covered it. Looking at the neat little stab wound, he pondered the possibility which had occurred to him earlier that day: that the same instrument had been used to stab the boy as the one used to scratch Kjartan’s car. The incision in his side was so small as to be barely visible but it was in precisely the right place to inflict irreversible damage. A few centimetres either way and Elias might have survived the attack. Erlendur had already discussed this detail with the pathologist who would not commit himself but admitted that it was conceivable the attacker knew what he was doing.

As he draped the sheet over Elias’s body again, he wondered how Sunee must feel, knowing that her son was in this grim place. Surely she must start cooperating with the police soon; the alternative was unthinkable. Maybe she believed her son was in danger. Maybe she was protecting Niran from the furore that had raged in society since his brother’s death. Maybe she did not want pictures of him in the press and on television. Maybe she did not want all that attention. And maybe, just maybe, Niran knew something that had forced Sunee to send him into hiding.

The cold had intensified by the time Erlendur drove away, his eyes reflecting the frozen grief at the morgue.

Sunee met him at the door. She assumed that he was bringing news of the investigation but Erlendur said straight away that nothing new had emerged. She was still up; her brother Virote was asleep in her room and he sensed that she was glad of the company. He had not spoken to her before without the presence of either her brother or the interpreter. She invited him into the living room, then went into the kitchen to make tea. When she returned she sat down on the sofa and poured out two cups.

“All people come outside,” she said.

“We don’t want that kind of violence,” Erlendur said. “Nobody does.”

“I thank everything,” Sunee said. “It was so beautiful.”

“Will you trust me with your son?” Erlendur asked.

Sunee shook her head.

“You can’t hide him for ever.”