‘He’s at work,’ answered the girl. ‘I’ll wake Mum,’ she added, vanishing into the house.
They waited on the steps for some time, the other officers shuffling their feet in the drizzle. The younger girl was still standing in the doorway, her eyes full of doubt. They had a warrant to enter and search the house but, ignoring Sigurdur Óli’s advice, Finnur had announced that he did not want to cause unnecessary alarm if there were children involved. They knew that there were three, the youngest of whom was only four years old. They also knew that Thórarinn was not at work. On enquiry they had discovered that he had not done any jobs since Monday. The police had already issued an alert for his van.
At last the elder girl returned to stare at them in silence from the doorway, and shortly afterwards their mother appeared. She had clearly been having a nap and was not yet fully awake. Her plump face was creased from the pillow, her hair a tousled mess.
‘We have a warrant to search these premises,’ Sigurdur Óli announced, ‘though we would rather you let us in voluntarily. And we need to speak to your husband, Thórarinn. Do you know where he might be?’
The woman did not answer.
‘We would rather do this with the minimum of unpleasantness,’ Finnur said.
The woman seemed to be taking a long time to wake up.
‘What … what do you want with him?’ she asked, her voice drugged with sleep.
Sigurdur Óli was not prepared to enter into any further discussion at this point. Ordering his men to follow, he ushered the girls carefully aside and entered the house, the woman retreating before him. The search was soon in full swing, with the officers on the lookout for bloodstained or torn clothing, drugs, cash, a list of clients, anything that could be linked to the attack on Lína or give a clue as to its motive. The youngest girl was discovered asleep in her parents’ bed. Her mother woke her and took her into another room. The woman did not seem unduly surprised by this invasion nor did she raise any objections; merely stood in silence with her daughters, watching a group of policemen turning her home upside down. The house was exceptionally neat and tidy, with clean laundry folded in all the drawers, everything in the kitchen put away, all the surfaces dusted. There were no signs of affluence: the ornaments on the tables in the sitting room were cheap, the three-piece suite shabby. If Thórarinn made any money from his drug-dealing it was certainly not evident in his home, and the only vehicle registered in his name was the delivery van.
‘Do you remember what your husband was wearing last Monday?’ asked Sigurdur Óli.
‘Wearing?’ echoed the woman. ‘He always wears the same things.’
‘Can you tell us what?’
The woman gave a detailed description that tallied with what Sigurdur Óli had seen. She wanted to know what Thórarinn had done.
‘Where was he on Monday evening?’ asked Sigurdur Óli, ignoring her question.
‘He was here at home all evening,’ the woman said without hesitation. ‘He didn’t go out on Monday evening,’ she added, in case Sigurdur Óli had missed the fact.
‘We have information that suggests otherwise,’ he said. ‘In fact he was spotted, so he can’t have been here all evening. I saw him myself. If you want to carry on lying to us, you’re welcome to, but you’ll have to do so at the station. The girls can go to a babysitter in the meantime. If you can’t find anyone yourself, we’ll provide a childminder.’
The woman gaped at him.
‘Or you can tell us what we need to know and then you can go back to bed,’ he added.
When she looked at her three daughters the woman knew she had no alternative. The eldest had been having problems at school, not only with her lessons but in the playground, and was refusing to go swimming or do games.
‘He never tells me anything,’ she said. ‘I don’t know anything.’
‘So he wasn’t at home on Monday evening?’
She shook her head.
‘Did he tell you to say that?’
After a second’s hesitation, she nodded.
‘Where is he now?’
‘I don’t know. What’s he done? I haven’t seen him since he came home on Monday evening and I could hardly understand a word he was saying. He said he needed to get out of town for a while but would be back soon.’
‘What did he mean, get out of town? Where was he going?’
‘I don’t know — we don’t have a holiday cottage or anything like that.’
‘Does he have any family outside Reykjavík?’
‘No, I don’t think so. Please, what’s he done?’
The three girls had been listening open-mouthed to the conversation, their eyes darting from their mother to the detective. Sigurdur Óli indicated to the woman that it would be inappropriate for them to overhear the rest and she reacted quickly, herding her daughters into the kitchen and telling the eldest to make them a chocolate-milk drink.
‘We believe he attacked a woman here in the east of town,’ Sigurdur Óli said when the woman returned from the kitchen. ‘He was identified at the scene.’
‘You mean he was seeing another woman?’
‘No, I don’t think so,’ said Sigurdur Óli. ‘We don’t believe the attack was of that nature. Can you tell me who he was in contact with in the days before he disappeared?’
They had asked the telephone company for a log of all calls made to and from Thórarinn’s home phone, and this might conceivably shed light on the events leading up to the attack on Lína, though Sigurdur Óli doubted it. From Kristján’s description, he judged that Thórarinn would be too careful for that. It was telling that there was no mobile phone registered in his name, although Kristján confirmed that he used one.
‘I know very little about what Toggi gets up to,’ said his wife. ‘He never says a word to me. All I know is that he drives a van and works very long hours, sometimes evenings and nights as well. And now he’s vanished.’
‘Has he been in touch since he disappeared?’
‘No,’ his wife answered firmly. ‘Why did he attack the woman?’
‘We don’t know.’
‘Was it the one in the news, the one who died?’ she asked.
Sigurdur Óli nodded.
‘And you think Thórarinn did it?’
‘Were you aware that your husband is a debt collector?’ asked Sigurdur Óli.
‘A debt collector?’ repeated his wife. ‘No. What makes you think that? Why … I don’t believe this!’
Although Thórarinn had a criminal record, it dated from before his eldest daughter was born, possibly from before he met his wife. He had twice been charged with assault and battery. For the first offence he had received a four-month suspended sentence for attacking a man outside a Reykjavík nightclub and inflicting a severe beating on him; for the second he had received a six-month sentence, of which he served only three, for assaulting someone at a restaurant in the neighbouring town of Hafnarfjördur. When the police had issued a wanted notice for Thórarinn that afternoon, they had stressed that he could be violent and dangerous.
If Kristján’s account was anything to go by, Thórarinn could also be physically abusive towards his wife, though Sigurdur Óli could see no sign of it. He wondered if he should pursue it but decided not to.
‘We’re investigating his connection to the crime,’ he said. ‘You had better believe it. Is it you who keeps the house clean?’
‘He likes to have everything just so,’ the woman said automatically.
Finnur emerged from the kitchen and asked Sigurdur Óli to come with him. They went outside.
‘We can’t find a thing to link him to Lína,’ Finnur said. ‘Have you got anything out of her?’
‘She’s just learned that her husband may be a murderer. Perhaps she’ll be able to tell us more once it’s sunk in.’
‘And your friends, what do they say?’ asked Finnur.
‘My friends? You’re not going to start on that again?’