Erlendur opened the door and entered the interview room.
“Why didn’t you tell us about this?” Sigurdur Oli asked. “Why did we have to find out from someone else?”
“I didn’t think it was relevant,” Kjartan said, looking at Erlendur who leaned against the wall with arms folded. “It’s absurd to try and link it to the attack on the boy. I don’t understand how you can connect the two incidents. I asked Niran if he had damaged my car and he just laughed in my face. I got nothing out of him.”
“So you lost your temper,” Sigurdur Oli said.
“Of course I did,” Kjartan said, his voice rising. “You’d have lost your temper too. How would you like to get reaction like that?”
“From what we hear, you were unusually touchy at school that morning.”
“You mean the business with Finnur?”
Sigurdur Oli nodded.
“That was nothing. We’re always arguing.”
“Was Niran carrying a sharp object or did he say something that implied he had vandalised your car?”
“I wanted to know if he had a knife or screwdriver on him,” Kjartan said. “So I grabbed at him and he struggled. I didn’t throw him in the street. He tore himself away from me and fell. I left him alone after that. I never did find out if he had a knife or anything. Are you going to arrest me for that?”
Sigurdur Oli glanced at Erlendur whose expression was unreadable.
“I didn’t do anything to that boy,” Kjartan said. “If you arrest me it’s tantamount to branding me a murderer. Maybe only for one day but that’s all it takes. What if you never find the person who did it? I’ll be branded for life! And I haven’t done anything!”
“You express antipathy to immigrants,” Erlendur said. “Not just resentment, but out-and-out hatred. You don’t deny it. You admit it. You’re proud of it. You show it in a variety of ways. Surely you don’t think it’s our job to clean up your image?”
“You have no right to insult me just because you don’t share my views!”
“No one’s insulting you,” Sigurdur Oli said.
Erlendur asked Sigurdur Oli to step outside for a moment. Kjartan watched them go. “I haven’t done anything!” he yelled as the door of the interview room closed.
“He’s got a point,” Sigurdur Oli remarked when they were outside in the corridor.
“Of course,” Erlendur said. “It’s the most pathetic motive I’ve ever heard for a murder. Kjartan’s all bark and no bite. He has no record of violence, has never been in trouble with the police. We’ll let him go. But hold him as long as possible.”
“Erlendur, we can’t—”
“Oh, all right,” Erlendur said huffily and stalked off down the corridor. “Let him go now, then.”
Bergthora was still up when Sigurdur Oli came home late that evening. She was waiting for him. He had not been home much recently, not only because of Elias’s murder but for other reasons. She thought he was avoiding her. The way she saw it, and had put it to him, their relationship was at a crossroads. Since there was no question of their having a child together, they had to decide where to go from there.
Sigurdur Oli went into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of fruit juice. He had visited the gym on the way home and been the last to leave. He had pounded the treadmill and pumped iron until the sweat poured off him.
“Any news of the case?” Bergthora asked, coming into the kitchen in her dressing gown.
“No,” Sigurdur Oli said. “Nothing. We don’t have a clue what happened.”
“Wasn’t it racially motivated?”
“No idea. We’ll just have to see.”
“Poor child. And the mother. She must be going through sheer hell.”
“Yes. How are you?”
Sigurdur Oli wanted to tell her that Elias had attended his old school, and how odd it had felt to revisit his old haunts and see a photo of himself from the disco era. But he refrained. He didn’t know why. Perhaps he was tired.
“Not too tired to skip your workout,” Bergthora would have retorted.
Once he would have been happy to share the details of his day with her.
“I’m fine,” Bergthora said now.
“I think I’ll go straight to bed,” Sigurdur Oli said, putting his glass in the sink.
“We need to talk,” Bergthora said.
“Can’t we do it tomorrow?”
“It’s tomorrow now,” she said. “I keep wanting to talk to you but you’re never home. I’ve started to think you’re avoiding me.”
“Work’s frantic at the moment. Your job’s frantic too sometimes. We both work a lot. I’m not avoiding anything.”
“What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know, Begga,” Sigurdur Oli said. “It just seems rather a drastic step to me.”
“People adopt children every day of the year,” Bergthora said. “Why shouldn’t we do it?”
“I’m not saying . . . I just want to be careful.”
“What are you scared of?”
“I’ve just never imagined that I would adopt a child. I’ve never needed to give the matter any thought. It’s a completely new and alien concept for me. I understand that it isn’t for you, but it is for me.”
“I know it’s a big step.”
“Maybe too big,” Sigurdur Oli said.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Maybe it’s not for everyone. Adoption.”
“You mean maybe it’s not for you?”
“I don’t know. Can’t we sleep on it?”
“That’s what you always say.”
“I know.”
“Go to bed then!”
“Look, we’ve been quarrelling about this for far too long. Babies, adoption . . . “
“I know.”
“I go around with a knot in my stomach all day long.”
“I know.”
“Can’t we just forget it?”
“No,” Bergthora said, “we can’t.”
20
The block of flats was still under police guard. Erlendur spoke briefly to the officer on duty on the staircase. He had nothing to report. The residents had trickled home from work towards evening and a variety of cooking smells began to permeate the landing. Sunee had been at home all day. Her brother was with her.
It was late. Erlendur was on his way home but still had a few calls to make. The first was to the morgue on Baronsstigur. He saw at once that something terrible had happened. Two bodies covered in white sheets were carried into the building on stretchers. People were gathering, Erlendur did not know why, until he was informed that a serious accident had occurred on the main road out of town, near Mosfellsbaer. He had not heard the news. Three people had lost their lives in a five-car pile-up, an elderly woman and two teenage boys, one of whom had only recently passed his driving test. An ambulance pulled up, bringing the last body. The families of the deceased were standing around in a state of shock. There was blood on the floor. Someone threw up.
Erlendur was about to make his escape when he ran into the pathologist. He was acquainted with him through work. The man sometimes indulged in gallows humour, which Erlendur guessed was his method of coping in a pretty grim profession. He was in no mood for jokes now, however, as he stared at Erlendur in momentary confusion. Erlendur said he would call back another time.
“Your boy’s in there,” the pathologist said, nodding towards a closed door.
“I’ll come back later,” Erlendur repeated.
“I haven’t found anything,” the pathologist said.
“It’s all right, I—”
“There was dirt under his fingernails but I don’t think that’s anything out of the ordinary. Two of his nails were broken. We found traces of fibres. There must have been a struggle. That’s obvious from the bad rip in his anorak too. Didn’t the mother say it had been in good condition? I assume you’ll be able to make some kind of connection if you can trace the article of clothing. Your forensics team is analysing the fibres to find out what type of material they come from, though of course they could be from his own clothes.”