“Have you seen him?”

“No, but I started suspecting it in the summer and again this winter. There was just the sound of people moving about. Quite late at night.”

“And nothing else?”

“No, that was all there was to it. I’ve never asked her.”

“So you’re not talking about her ex?”

“No,” Fanney said. “He comes round at different times.”

Elinborg thanked her for her help and took her leave. She called a number on her mobile and was out in the corridor by the time she got through to Sigurdur Oli. She told him about the group of lads by the chemist’s.

“They could be his schoolmates,” Elinborg said as she hurried down the stairs. “He could have gone home with one of them. They seemed to be about his age.”

“I think Erlendur’s been making a list of the two boys” friends,” Sigurdur Oli said. “I’m going to meet Elias’s teacher, Agnes. I’ll ask her about the chemist’s. The question is whether we ought to phone the chemist’s too and find out if the boys were hanging around there.”

“It might still be open,” Elinborg said. “I’ll check that out.”

Sigurdur Oli rang off and ran up the steps to a house divided into three flats, in the vicinity of the school. Elias’s teacher lived on the first floor and came downstairs to open the door. He recognised her from one of the photographs he had seen at the school. She took one look at Sigurdur Oli, with his short, precise haircut, tidily knotted tie, white shirt and black raincoat over a dark suit, and interrupted before he could even introduce himself.

“No thanks.” She smiled. “I don’t even believe in God.”

Then she closed the door in his face.

Sigurdur Oli stood thoughtfully for a while then rang the bell again.

“You haven’t heard the news, have you?” he said in a serious tone when the woman opened the door again.

“What news?”

“I’m from the police. One of your pupils has been found dead near his home. It looks as if he’s been stabbed with a knife.”

The woman’s expression became one big question mark.

“What?” she groaned. “Dead? Who?”

“Elias,” Sigurdur Oli said.

“Bias?”

Sigurdur Oli nodded.

“I don’t believe you! How? Why? What… what on earth are you saying?”

“Perhaps you’d let me come inside,” Sigurdur Oli said. “We need information about his class, his friends, who he went around with, whether he’d been in trouble at school, whether he had enemies. It would be great if you could assist us. We’re short of time. The sooner we can gather information, the better. It’s terrible to have to call on people like this but…”

“I… I thought you were from one of those religious sects,” Agnes sighed. “You’re so …”

“May I come in and sit down with you for a moment?”

“Sorry,” Agnes said. “Please do.”

As he entered the flat through a small hallway with a mirror, Sigurdur Oli could see the teacher’s family eating dinner in the kitchen. Three children — two boys and a girl — eyed him curiously and their father stood up to shake his hand. Agnes took her husband to one side and in a low voice explained the unexpected visit to him, then showed Sigurdur Oli into their study.

“What happened?” she asked once they had closed the door. “Was the boy attacked?”

“It looks that way.”

“My God, that’s … the poor kid. Who could have done a thing like that?”

“Can you imagine that anyone at school or in his class would have wanted to do him harm?”

“Not at all,” Agnes said. “Elias was a very sweet boy, always trying to please everyone. And he was a good pupil. Why do you want to link this to the school? Do you have any concrete lead?”

“No, nothing,” Sigurdur Oli said firmly. “We have to begin somewhere. You haven’t noticed him being hassled in particular? No incident that could be linked to the attack? Nothing you’ve been worried about?”

“Nothing,” Agnes said. “As far as I know, nothing’s happened at the school that could end like this. Nothing.”

She gave a deep groan.

“Do you know about a group of children who hang around by the local chemist’s? Friends of the brothers, immigrants perhaps?”

“No, I don’t know of any such group. How is his mother taking it, the poor woman? I must call on her. Though I don’t know what to say to her.”

“I think she’s bearing up, considering the circumstances,” Sigurdur Oli said. “Do you know her at all?”

“I can’t really say I do,” Agnes replied. “She’s had trouble with speaking Icelandic so a supervisor was appointed for the brothers, a kind of liaison between the family and the school, a lovely woman called Gudny. That’s not uncommon when we want greater contact with the pupils and their parents. Some come from Croatia, others from Vietnam, the Philippines or Poland. There are Catholics, Buddhists, Muslims. I’ve met Elias’s mother a few times and she seems very nice. Things must be difficult for her, being single like that.”

“How are the immigrants regarded?” Sigurdur Oli said. “How well do they fit in?”

“Actually, these days we try to talk about ethnic minorities,” Agnes said. “Some take longer than others to adjust. The most successful ones are those who speak and understand Icelandic, who were born here and are, of course, just Icelanders as well. Like Elias. Niran was a different matter. You know that they’re half-brothers?”

“Yes,” Sigurdur Oli said. Erlendur had told him about his conversation with the interpreter. “What about Niran?”

“You should really talk to his form teacher about this,” Agnes said. “They sometimes find it difficult, the children who come here when they’re already quite old and know nothing of the language.”

And Niran was like that?” Sigurdur Oli said.

“Well, I shouldn’t really talk about individual pupils but of course this is a special case. He doesn’t seem interested in learning the language. Can hardly read Icelandic. Doesn’t understand it too well. It’s difficult for those poor kids when the languages are so different. They speak a tonal language and the meaning of words changes with the pitch. Icelandic’s completely different, of course.”

“You say Elias was a good pupil,” Sigurdur Oli said.

“He was,” Agnes said. “His mother clearly knows what she wants. She wants her sons to get an education and they are sharp, despite being different in many ways.”

“Different how?”

“I know Elias much better,” Agnes said, “but I’ve taught his brother a bit as well. Elias is charming and tries to please everyone, he’s always smiling and friendly, although I don’t feel he has many friends, poor boy”

“They’ve just moved into this neighbourhood,” Sigurdur Oli said.

“His brother’s quite different,” Agnes said.

“How?”

“I don’t know him that well, like I said, but I get the impression that he’s much tougher. He’s not afraid to stand up for himself and he’s proud of his origins, proud of being Thai. You don’t find that among the children very often, not among any of them really; they seem to know precious little about their origins. I noticed that about him once when he was talking about his great-grandfather. Niran had great respect for him. And for his other relatives in Thailand.”

Sunee’s next-door neighbour was a man of about seventy who lived alone. He had not heard the news and said he was shocked to see the police cars and people milling around the block of flats when he came home. He wrangled with the police officers at the entrance when they wanted to know who he was and where he lived, because he did not like that kind of interrogation. The police would not tell him what had happened. So he was rather distraught when Erlendur greeted him on the landing below the top floor and introduced himself as a detective with the Reykjavik CID.

“What’s going on here?” the man asked, short of breath from climbing the stairs. He held a plastic bag in one hand, was of average height and wore a shabby suit and a tie that did not match, underneath a green anorak. Erlendur thought he looked haggard, like many of the solitary individuals he encountered. The man was thin, with a receding hairline, fairly large protruding eyes and delicate eyebrows below a high, intelligent forehead.