Raggi was initially alarmed to see a police officer in his home but quickly recovered. He was tall for his age with a shock of jet-black hair and acne, especially round his mouth. He seemed on edge. Sigurdur Oli began by asking him general questions about the school, the atmosphere there, the teachers and older kids, before gradually bringing the conversation round to immigrants and Niran. Raggi answered mainly in monosyllables. He was polite. His mother stayed out of the conversation and just sat there lighting one cigarette from another and drinking coffee. She had only just come home from work when Sigurdur Oli rang the doorbell. The coffee she made was good and strong, and he waited for her to offer him another cup. He used to be a tea drinker but Bergthora had taught him to appreciate coffee through her connoisseurship of different types of beans and roasts.
“How do you get on with Kjartan who teaches Icelandic?” he asked.
“He’s all right,” Raggi said.
“He’s not keen on coloured people, is he?”
“Maybe not,” Raggi said.
“How does it show? In something he says or something he does?”
“No, just, you know.”
“Just what?”
“Nothing.”
“Did you know Elias?”
“No.”
“What about his brother, Niran?”
Raggi hesitated.
“Yes.”
Sigurdur Oli was on the point of mentioning Kari but refrained. He did not want to give Raggi any reason to suspect that he had just come from visiting the other boy.
“How?”
“You know,” Raggi said.
“You know what?”
“He thinks he’s special.”
“In what way?”
“He calls us Eskimos.”
“What do you call him?”
“A dickhead.”
“Do you know what happened to his brother?”
“No.”
“Can you tell me where you were when he was attacked?”
Raggi stopped and thought. He had clearly not considered the question before and it occurred to Sigurdur Oli that he must be a bloody hardened case if he could act that well. Finally the answer came.
“We were at the Kringlan shopping mall, me, Ingvar and Danni.”
It was consistent with the accounts given by his friends Ingvar and Danni whom Sigurdur Oli had already questioned. Both flatly denied any involvement in the attack on Elias, claimed ignorance about drug-dealing at the school and talked of minor scraps with pupils from ethnic minorities. The three friends were known troublemakers at the school and no one could wait for them to finish their compulsory education that spring and leave for good. They went in for bullying, and had caused a major stir at New Year when two of them had been suspended for a week for setting off explosions in and around the school, using fireworks left over from New Year’s Eve, big firecrackers and powerful rockets that they had tampered with to make them even more potent. One of them had let off the largest make of rocket in a corridor and the explosion had shattered two large panes of glass. The whole school rocked and it was only by a miracle that no one was around because teaching was in full swing.
“When did you last see Elias?” Sigurdur Oli asked.
“Elias? I don’t know. I don’t know him at all. I never see him.”
“Have there been serious clashes at school between your gang and Niran’s lot?”
“No, just, you know, that lot are always showing off.”
Raggi paused.
“The immigrants?” Sigurdur Oli prompted.
“Iceland should be for us. For the Icelanders. Not for a load of foreigners.”
“We know there have been clashes between gangs,” Sigurdur Oli said. “We know these can be serious at times. Not just in this part of town. But we’re also aware that few of them run very deep. Would you agree?”
“I… I don’t know.”
“Then this incident with Elias happens.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you think it’s connected to the fights between your gangs?”
“I don’t know. Probably not. I mean, we wouldn’t do anything like that. We’d never kill anyone. That’s ridiculous. We don’t do that kind of thing. It’s not like that.”
“Are you sure?”
The mother had sat silently smoking throughout their conversation. Now she intervened.
“You think my Raggi attacked that boy?” she said, as if it had finally dawned on her why a policeman had entered her home and started asking a series of questions about racial tension at the school.
“I don’t think anything,” Sigurdur Oli said. “Do you know anything about drug-dealing at the school?” he asked Raggi.
“My Raggi’s not involved in drugs,” the mother said instantly.
“That’s not what I asked,” Sigurdur Oli said.
“I don’t know anything about any drugs at the school,” Raggi said.
“No, that’s right, you just let off fireworks in the corridors,” Sigurdur Oli said.
“I-‘ Raggi began, but his mother interrupted.
“He’s been punished for that,” she said. “And it wasn’t even him that did the worst damage.”
“Is it possible that someone is dealing drugs and someone else owes him money and the debt could have resulted in the sort of thing that happened to Elias?” Sigurdur Oli asked, suddenly realising how the mother justified her son’s behaviour to herself.
Raggi stopped to think for the second time in their conversation.
“No one from the school’s dealing drugs,” he said after a pause. “Sometimes people hang around the school gates, selling something. Or at the school discos. That’s all. I don’t know about any other cases. No one’s tried to sell me anything.”
“Do you know what happened to Elias?”
“No.”
“Do you know who attacked him?”
“No.”
“Do you know where Niran was the day his brother was attacked?”
“No. I just saw when Kjartan knocked him down in the road.”
“Kjartan the Icelandic teacher?”
“Niran scratched his car. Right down the side. Kjartan went mental.”
Sigurdur Oli stared at Raggi. He remembered what Kari had said about Kjartan and Niran.
“Will you say that again?”
Raggi sensed that he had said something important and immediately began to backtrack.
“I didn’t see it, I only heard about it,” he said. “Someone said he had attacked Niran because Niran scratched the side of his car.”
“When? When was this?”
“The morning of the day the boy died.”
“More coffee?” his mother asked, exhaling smoke.
“Thanks, maybe I’ll have a drop,” Sigurdur Oli said, taking out his phone. He selected Erlendur’s number.
“What else?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Raggi said. “That’s all I heard.”
19
The search for Niran had still yielded no results by the evening of Elias’s memorial service. A large crowd joined the torchlit procession that filed in silence to the block of flats, led by the local vicar. Sunee, present with Odinn, Virote and Sigridur, was deeply touched by this show of warmth and solidarity.