“Are you Anton?” Sigurdur Oli asked.

“Yes,” the boy said.

He appeared in pretty good health considering; he was fully dressed and even had a little colour in his cheeks. Sigurdur Oli noticed a smell of pizza from inside the flat and when he peered inside he saw an anorak slung over a chair and an open pizza box with one slice missing. He had been informed that Anton was ill and had been absent from school for the last few days.

“Feeling better?” Sigurdur Oli asked, walking into the flat uninvited.

The boy retreated before him and Sigurdur Oli shut the door. He noticed that the boy had made himself comfortable in front of the television with a pizza and a fizzy drink and two or three videos. An action film was playing on the screen.

“What’s going on?” the boy asked in astonishment.

“It’s one thing to scratch cars, Anton, another to kill people,” Sigurdur Oli said, helping himself to a slice of pizza. “Your mum and dad not home?”

The boy shook his head.

“Several days ago you were spotted scratching a car near here,” Sigurdur Oli said and bit into the pizza. He watched the boy while he chewed.

“I haven’t scratched any cars,” Anton said.

“Where did you get the knife?” Sigurdur Oli asked. “And don’t lie to me.”

“I…” Anton hesitated.

“Yes?”

“Why do you say kill people?”

“The little Asian boy who was stabbed, I reckon you did that too.”

“I didn’t do that”

“Sure you did.”

“I haven’t done anything,” Anton said.

“Where can I get hold of your mother?” Sigurdur Oli asked. “She’ll need to come down to the station with us.”

Anton stared in bewilderment at Sigurdur Oli who calmly finished his pizza slice and surveyed the flat, as if Anton were an irrelevance. The medical student had identified the boy from a recent class photograph. She believed that he was one of the two boys she had seen outside the block of flats when her car was scratched. She was not quite so sure when shown a picture of Anton’s classmate Thorvaldur, though she said that he could well have been the other boy. It was all very vague so Sigurdur Oli did not have much to go on when he rang Anton’s doorbell. He decided to behave as if it was an open-and-shut case, and all that remained was to take the two friends down to the station. A mere formality. This tactic seemed to work on the boy.

Sigurdur Oli did not as yet have much information on Anton and Thorvaldur. They were in the same class, spent a lot of time together and sometimes got into trouble with the teachers and school authorities; disrupting school activities, it was called. Once they had attacked a caretaker and received a two-day suspension. They were typical wasters and troublemakers who only turned up to school to ruin things for everyone else.

“I didn’t stab anyone,” Anton said at Sigurdur Oli’s mention of his mother and the police station.

“Call your mother,” Sigurdur Oli said. “Tell her to meet us down at the station.”

Anton saw that Sigurdur Oli was in deadly earnest. This cop actually believed that he had stabbed the Asian boy. He tried to grasp the situation in which he suddenly found himself but could not quite take it in. They had vandalised a few cars, Doddi had done most of them, he himself maybe one, and now they had been caught. But the cop was also under the impression that he had attacked and killed that boy. Anton stood dithering in front of Sigurdur Oli, examining his options. His mother would go mental — again. She had often threatened to chuck him out. He looked at the video he had rented and the congealing pizza and the strange thing was that what he regretted most was being deprived of a quiet day in front of the television.

“I didn’t do anything,” he repeated.

“You can tell that to your mother,” Sigurdur Oli said. “Your mate Thorvaldur lost no time in squealing on you. Whined and blubbered throughout. He says you scratched the cars. He says he only went along with you.”

“Doddi? He said that?”

“The biggest wimp I’ve ever come across,” Sigurdur Oli said, though he had not, in fact, tracked Thorvaldur down yet.

Anton vacillated in front of him.

“He’s lying, he can’t have said that.”

“Yeah, right,” Sigurdur Oli said. “You two can discuss it down at the station.”

He made to grab Anton’s arm and lead him out but the boy tore himself away.

“I only scratched one car,” he said. “Doddi did the rest. He’s lying!”

Sigurdur Oli drew a deep breath.

“We didn’t do anything to that boy,” Anton added, as if to make it quite clear.

“You mean you and your mate?” Sigurdur Oli said.

“Doddi, yes. He’s lying! It was him who scratched the cars.”

It was time to ease up the pressure a little, so Sigurdur Oli took a step back from the boy.

“How many cars was it?”

“I don’t know. A few.”

“Do you know the Icelandic teacher Kjartan’s car?”

“Yes.”

“Did you scratch his car? Outside the school?”

Anton hesitated before answering.

“That was Doddi. I didn’t even know. He just told me about it. He can’t stand Kjartan. Does Mum have to find out about this?”

“What did you make the scratches with?” Sigurdur Oli asked, ignoring his question.

A knife,” Anton said.

“What kind of knife?”

“It was Doddi’s.”

“He said it was yours,” Sigurdur Oli lied.

“It was his knife.”

“What kind of knife was it?”

“Like the one on TV,” Anton said.

“On TV?”

“The one they were showing pictures of. It was like our knife.”

Sigurdur Oli was speechless. He stared at the boy who gradually cottoned on to the fact that he had said something important. He wondered what it could have been and when it suddenly struck him, it was like a blow to the face. It had not occurred to him. Of course it was the same knife! He had seen pictures of it on television but had not made the connection with the damage that he and his mate Doddi had done to a few cars on the way to school. He began to see his situation as part of something much larger and more serious.

Sigurdur Oli took out his phone.

“I didn’t do it,” Anton said. “I swear it.”

“Do you know where the knife is now?”

“Doddi has it. Doddi had it all along.”

Sigurdur Oli watched the boy as he waited for Erlendur to answer, then glanced round the little flat, noting how Anton had made himself comfortable before the intrusion.

“Call your mother,” he said. “You’re coming with me. Tell her to meet you down at the station.”

“Yes.” Erlendur answered his phone.

“I think I’m on to something,” Sigurdur Oli said. Are you at the station?”

“What have you got?” Erlendur asked.

“Is the knife there?”

“Yes, what are you going to do?”

“I’m on my way,” Sigurdur Oli said.

When the police arrived to fetch Doddi an hour or so later he was not at home. A man in his early forties answered the door to the two officers and looked them up and down. Doddi’s mother appeared in the doorway as well. They did not know where the boy was and demanded to be told what he had done wrong. The police officers said they did not know, they had simply been sent to bring him in to the police station on Hverfisgata along with a guardian.

“Since he’s under age,” one of them elaborated.

The officers were both in uniform and driving a patrol car. The intention was to put the fear of God into Doddi. They were standing on the doorstep of the small town house where Doddi lived, explaining their business, when the man, who turned out to be the boy’s stepfather, called out that there he was, there was Doddi!

“Come here!” he called. “Doddi, get over here!” The boy was walking round the corner of a nearby house, taking a footpath that cut through the area. He stopped dead when he heard his stepfather’s call, then spotted the police car, the two officers looking in his direction and his mother’s head craning from the doorway. It took him a moment to grasp the situation. He contemplated making a run for it, then decided it would be futile.