“It’s just. . . when you work with that stuff, day in, day out, you long to hear about something different,” he said now. “You want to know that there’s more to life than endless bloody filth.”
Are you getting anywhere with the case of the boy?”
“We’re not making any progress.”
“We saw the procession on television. You haven’t found his brother yet?”
“His mother’s afraid,” Erlendur said. “She’ll talk to us once she’s got over her fear.”
Neither of them spoke. Erlendur liked talking to Valgerdur. The mere sound of her voice on the phone was enough for him. She had a beautiful voice, low and mellow, which automatically made him feel better. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but sometimes he just longed to hear her speak. Like now.
An old colleague of mine has just died,” he said at last. “I’ve mentioned Marion Briem to you.”
“Yes, I recognise the name. Unusual.”
“Marion died yesterday after a long illness. It probably came as a relief but it was rather a lonely death. Marion had no family. Was my boss for donkey’s years, but retired a while back. I didn’t visit often enough. It didn’t occur to me until too late. Marion didn’t have many visitors. I was one of the few. Perhaps the only one, I don’t know. Sometimes I had the feeling I was the only one.”
Erlendur fell silent and Valgerdur waited for him to continue. She didn’t want to disturb his train of thought, sensing that he needed to talk to her, but the pause became so prolonged that she began to wonder if Erlendur was still there.
“Erlendur?” she said when she could no longer bear the silence.
“Yes, sorry, I was just thinking about it all. Marion asked me to handle the funeral arrangements. It’s all been set in motion. That’s how it ends. Life. All that long life, only to end up alone and abandoned in a hospital bed.”
“What are you talking about, Erlendur?”
“I don’t know. Death …” He trailed off again.
“Eva Lind came round,” he said eventually.
“Wasn’t that nice?”
“I suppose so, I’m not sure. She looks better. I haven’t seen her for weeks and then she turns up out of the blue. Typical. It’s … She’s become a woman. It suddenly struck me. There was something about her, something different. More mature, I think, calmer. Maybe the whole thing’s blowing over. Maybe she’s had enough.”
“We all grow older.”
“True.”
“What did she want?”
“I think she wanted to tell me about a dream she had.”
“You think?”
“She left before she could tell me. I suppose I told her to go. I think I know what she wants. She was asking what happened when Bergur died. She thought her dream was somehow connected. I didn’t want to hear it.”
“It was only a dream,” Valgerdur said.
“The thing is, I haven’t told her everything. I haven’t told her why he was never found. There were various theories. She seemed to know about them.”
“Theories?”
“He should have been found,” Erlendur said.
“But… ?”
“He never was.”
“What sort of theories?”
“The moor. Or the river.”
“But you don’t want to talk about it?”
“It has nothing to do with anyone else,” Erlendur said. “It’s an old story that has nothing to do with anyone else.”
“And you want to keep it to yourself.”
Erlendur did not reply.
“Eva’s your daughter,” Valgerdur said. “You spoke to her about this once.”
“That’s the headache,” Erlendur said.
“Find out what she has to say. Listen to her.”
“I suppose I’ll have to,” Erlendur said.
Again he paused.
“I keep thinking about that boy lying alone and abandoned in the snow behind the block of flats. I don’t understand what could have happened. I can’t fathom it, not for the life of me.”
“Of course, it’s too horrific for words.”
“I… it made me think about my brother. He was the same age as Elias, a little younger. All alone. I started thinking about all those lonely deaths. About Marion Briem.”
“Erlendur, it’s not as if you could ever have put it right. You could never have done anything. It was never your responsibility. You have to understand that.”
Erlendur did not speak.
“I’ll be stuck here all night,” Valgerdur repeated in an apologetic tone. She had already spent too long on the phone.
“That’s what you get for being a biotechnician,” Erlendur said.
“We’re not biotechnicians any more,” Valgerdur said.
“Really? What are you then?”
“We’re biomedical scientists.”
“What?”
“Times change.”
“What’ll become of the biotechnicians then?”
“We’re not going anywhere, we’ve just changed our name.”
“Biotechnician’s a perfectly good name.”
“You’ve heard the last of it”
“Shame.”
A silence developed.
“Sorry to offload on you like this,” Erlendur said. “We’ll talk properly later.”
“You’re not offloading on me,” Valgerdur said. “Don’t talk like that. I’m free tomorrow evening.”
“Maybe I’ll see you then,” Erlendur said.
“Listen to Eva,” Valgerdur repeated.
Erlendur went out into the corridor and down to the interview room where Sigurdur Oli and Elinborg were questioning Kjartan about the scratch on his car and reports that he had blamed Niran for it and assaulted him. Kjartan was not under arrest. When Sigurdur Oli phoned Erlendur with the information and Erlendur confronted Kjartan with it, he had lost his temper and started hurling abuse at them. But after ranting about lies and conspiracies for a while, he finally admitted that he had held Niran responsible for the scratch. He had not so much as harmed a hair on his head, however; stories of his attacking Niran were completely unfounded.
He accompanied them down to the station without protest. Sigurdur Oli was given the job of interviewing him. The car was a newish Volvo that Kjartan said he had owned for less than a year. It was already undergoing repairs at his cousin’s garage. On further questioning it transpired that the scratch had already been repaired and the car was waiting to be resprayed. Photos of the damage taken for Kjartan’s insurance company showed a narrow scratch running from the rear lights, over the wing and doors to the front lights. The cost of repairing such a scratch was high and Kjartan was involved in a row with his insurance company who were trying to exploit a loophole. The photos could not provide conclusive evidence of the type of instrument used to make the scratch but a knife seemed likely, though it could have been a screwdriver, or even a key.
It was uncertain as yet whether Kjartan would be detained in custody. He was vehement that it was utterly absurd to link the vandalism to the attack on Elias later that day. He had not noticed the scratch when he left for work that morning. It had been pitch dark outside and when pressed he was unable to say with any certainty whether the car had been vandalised in the school car park. He lived in a different neighbourhood, but it was only half an hour’s walk from the school. He had noticed the scratch when he went out to run a quick errand into town at lunchtime. Spotting Niran and a friend loitering near the car park, he had asked if they knew anything about the scratch but Niran had jeered at him. He never hit the boy. They had an exchange of words which were not exactly polite, as Kjartan admitted, but he did not knock the boy down in the street. The police need only talk to the other boy, who witnessed the incident.