“And for God’s sake, try to find his boot,” Erlendur said as he walked off.
“The boy who found him …” Sigurdur Oli began.
“Yes,” Erlendur said, turning round.
“He’s also col…” Sigurdur Oli hesitated.
“What?”
“An immigrant kid,” Sigurdur Oli said.
The boy sat on a step in one of the stairwells of the block of flats, a policewoman sat with him. He had his sports kit wrapped up in a yellow plastic bag and eyed Erlendur with suspicion. They had not wanted to make him sit in a police car. That could have led people to conclude that he was implicated in the boy’s death, so someone had suggested that he wait in the stairwell instead.
The corridor was dirty. An unhygienic odour pervaded the air, mingling with cigarette smoke and cooking smells from the flats. The floor was covered in worn linoleum and the graffiti on the wall seemed illegible to Erlendur. The boy’s parents were still at work. They had been notified. He was dark-skinned with straight jet-black hair that was still damp after his shower, and big white teeth. He was dressed in an anorak and jeans, and holding a woollen hat in his hands.
“It’s awfully cold,” Erlendur said, rubbing his hands.
The boy was silent.
Erlendur sat down beside him. The boy said that his name was Stefan and he was thirteen. He lived in the next block of flats up from this one and had done so for as long as he could remember. His mother was from the Philippines, he said.
“You must have been shocked when you found him,” Erlendur said after a lengthy silence.
“Yes.”
And you recognised him? You knew him?”
Stefan had told the police the boy’s name and where he lived. It was in this block but on another staircase and the police were trying to locate his parents. All Stefan knew about the boy was that his mother made chocolate and he had one brother. He said he had not known him particularly well, nor his brother. They had only quite recently moved to the area.
“He was called Elli,” the boy said. “His name was Elias.”
“Was he dead when you found him?”
“Yes, I think so. I shook him but nothing happened.”
“And you phoned us?” Erlendur said, feeling he ought to try to cheer the lad up. “That was a good thing to do. Absolutely the right thing. What did you mean when you said his mother makes chocolate?”
“She works in a chocolate factory”
“Do you know what could have happened to Elli?”
“No.”
“Do you know any of his friends?”
“Not really.”
“What did you do after you shook him?”
“Nothing,” the boy said. “I just called the cops.”
“You know the cops” number?”
“Yes. I come home from school on my own and Mum likes to keep an eye on me. She …”
“She what?”
“She always tells me to phone the police immediately if…”
“If what?”
“If anything happens.”
“What do you think happened to Elli?”
“I don’t know.”
“Were you born in Iceland?”
“Yes.”
“Elli too, do you know?”
The boy had been staring down at the linoleum on the stairwell floor all the time, but now he looked Erlendur in the face.
“Yes,” he answered.
The front door swung open and Elinborg was blown indoors. A thin sheet of glass separated the stairwell from the entrance and Erlendur saw that she was carrying his overcoat. With a smile he told the boy he might talk to him again later, then stood up and walked over to Elinborg.
“You know you must only interrogate children in the presence of a parent or guardian or child welfare officer and all that,” she snapped as she handed him his coat.
“I wasn’t interrogating him,” Erlendur said. “Just asking about things in general.” He looked at his overcoat. “Has the body been removed?”
“It’s on its way to the morgue. He didn’t fall. They found a trail.”
Erlendur grimaced.
“The boy entered the garden from the west side,” Elinborg said. “There’s a path there. It’s supposed to be lit but one of the residents told us there’s only one lamp-post and the bulbs are always getting smashed. He got into the garden by climbing over the fence. We found blood on it. He lost his boot there, probably when he was clambering over.”
Elinborg took a deep breath.
“Someone stabbed him,” she said. “He probably died from a knife wound to the stomach. There was a pool of blood underneath him that froze more or less directly it formed.”
Elinborg fell silent.
“He was probably going home,” she said eventually.
“Can we trace where he was stabbed?”
“We’re working on it.”
“Have his parents been contacted?”
“His mother’s on the way. Her name’s Sunee. She’s Thai. We haven’t told her what’s happened yet. That’ll be terrible.”
“You go and be with her,” Erlendur said. “What about the father?”
“I don’t know. There are three names on the entryphone. One looked something like Niran.”
“I understand he has a brother,” Erlendur said.
He opened the door for her and they went out into the howling north wind. Elinborg waited for the mother. She would go to the morgue with her. A policeman accompanied Stefan home; they would take a statement from him there. Erlendur went back into the garden. He put on his overcoat. The grass was dark where the boy had been lying.
I am felled to the ground.
A snatch of old verse entered Erlendur’s mind as he stood, silent and deep in thought, looking down at the patch where the boy had been lying. He took a last glance up the length of the gloomy block of flats, then carefully picked his way over the icy ground towards the playground, where he grasped the cold steel of the slide with one hand. He felt the piercing cold crawl up his arm.
I am felled to the ground,
frozen and cannot be freed . . .
2
Elinborg accompanied the boy’s mother to the morgue on Baronsstigur. She was a short, petite woman, in her mid-thirties and tired after a long day at work. Her thick, dark hair was tied in a ponytail, her face round and friendly. The police had found out where she worked and two men were sent to collect her. It took them some time to explain to her what had happened and that she had to go with them. They drove up to the flats where Elinborg joined them in the car and realised that they needed an interpreter. One of the policemen contacted the Multicultural Centre, which sent a woman to meet them at the morgue.
The interpreter had not yet turned up when Elinborg arrived with the mother. She accompanied the woman straight into the morgue where the pathologist was waiting for them. When the mother saw her son she let out a piercing howl and slumped into Elinborg’s arms. She screamed something in her own language. At that moment the interpreter walked in, an Icelandic woman about the same age as the mother, and together she and Elinborg tried to comfort her. Elinborg got the impression that the two women were acquainted. The interpreter tried to talk to the mother in a soothing tone but, out of her wits with grief and helplessness, she tore herself loose, threw herself onto the boy and cried at the top of her voice.
Eventually they managed to get her out of the morgue and into a police car, which drove her straight home. Elinborg told the interpreter that the mother ought to ask a member of her family or a friend to be with her during this painful ordeal, someone close to her, someone she trusted. The interpreter passed on the message but the mother showed no response.
Elinborg explained to the interpreter how Elias had been found lying in the garden behind the block of flats. She described the police investigation and asked her to inform the mother.
“She has a brother in Iceland,” the interpreter said. “I’ll contact him.”