Arctic Chill de-7 Page 10

  Teaching was under way in Niran’s class when Erlendur knocked on the door. He apologised for the disturbance. The teacher gave him a weak smile and, catching on immediately, asked him to wait just a moment. Shortly afterwards she followed him out into the corridor. She introduced herself as Edda Bra and her petite hand vanished in Erlendur’s palm when they exchanged greetings. She had cropped hair, wore a thick pullover and jeans, and had a serious expression on her face.

  “I hardly know what to say about Niran,” she said without preamble, as if she had been expecting the police sooner or later. Or perhaps she was simply in a hurry. Her form was waiting for her.

  “Niran can be difficult and I sometimes need to pay him special attention,” she continued. “He can hardly write Icelandic and doesn’t speak the language that well, so he’s difficult to communicate with. He does little or no homework and seems to have absolutely no interest in studying. I never taught his brother but I understand he was very sweet. Niran’s different. He can get the other boys” backs up. Gets into fights. The last one was the day before yesterday. I know it’s difficult for children to change schools and he’s had a rough time right from the beginning.”

  “He came to this country at the age of nine and never managed to fit in properly,” Erlendur said.

  “He’s not alone in that,” the teacher said. “It can be difficult for the older kids who come here and can’t relate to anything.”

  “What happened?” Erlendur asked. “The day before yesterday?”

  “Maybe you should talk to the other boy.”

  “Is it a boy in his class?”

  “The children were talking about it this morning,” Edda said. “This particular boy comes from a difficult home and he’s been getting into trouble in the playground. He and some of the others had it in for Niran and his friends. Talk to him, find out what he says, he never tells me anything. His name’s Gudmundur, Gummi for short.”

  Edda went back into the classroom and came out soon afterwards with a boy whom she made to stand in front of Erlendur. Erlendur was impressed by her firmness. She wasted no time on idle chatter, was on the ball and knew how best to assist.

  “You told me I’d get my mobile back,” the boy moaned, looking at Erlendur.

  “It’s the only thing these kids understand,” Edda Bra told Erlendur. “I didn’t want to blare out in front of the whole class that he had to talk to the police. All hell would have broken loose in the present situation. Let me know if you need anything else,” she added, then went back into the classroom.

  “Gummi?” Erlendur said.

  The boy looked up at him. His upper lip was slightly swollen and his nose was scratched. He was big for his age, fair-haired, and his eyes radiated deep suspicion.

  “Are you a cop?” he asked.

  Erlendur nodded and showed the boy behind a screen that served to partition off several computers on a long desk. Erlendur propped himself on the edge of the desk and the boy sat down on a chair in front of him.

  “Have you got a cop’s badge?” Gummi asked. “Can I see it?”

  “I don’t have a badge,” Erlendur said. “I expect you’re talking about what the cops carry in films. Of course they’re not real cops. They’re just Hollywood wimps.”

  Gummi stared at Erlendur as if his hearing had failed for a moment.

  “What happened between you and Niran the day before yesterday?” Erlendur asked.

  “What business of yours-‘ Gummi began, his voice full of the same suspicion that shone from his eyes.

  “I’m just curious,” Erlendur interrupted him. “It’s nothing serious. Don’t worry about it.”

  Gummi continued to prevaricate.

  “He just attacked me,” he said eventually.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did he attack anyone else?”

  “I don’t know. He just suddenly went for me.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” Gummi repeated.

  Erlendur pondered. He stood up and peered over the partition. Then he sat back down. He did not want to be detained by Gummi for too long.

  “Do you know what happens to kids who lie to the cops?” he said.

  “I’m not lying,” Gummi said, his eyes growing to twice the size.

  “We call their parents in straight away and explain to them that their child has been lying to the police, then we ask the parents to take the child down to the police station to give a statement, and we decide where to go from there. So if you’re free after school we can fetch you and your mum and dad and—”

  “He just went berserk when I called him that.”

  “Called him what?”

  Gummi still prevaricated. Then he seemed to steel himself.

  “I called him shit face. He’s called me far worse names,” he added quickly.

  Erlendur grimaced.

  “And are you surprised he went for you?”

  “He’s a twat!”

  “And you’re not?”

  “They never leave you alone.”

  “They who?”

  “His Thai and Filipino friends. They hang around behind the chemist’s.”

  Erlendur recalled Elinborg mentioning a group of boys by the chemist’s shop when she was going over the details of the case in his car the previous evening.

  “Is it a gang?”

  Gummi hesitated. Erlendur waited. He knew that Gummi was pondering whether to tell things the way they were and get Erlendur on his side, or to pretend to know nothing, just say no and hope the police officer would leave it at that.

  “It wasn’t like that,” Gummi said in the end. “They started it”

  “Started what?”

  “Dissing us.”

  “Dissing you?”

  “They think they’re better than us. More important. More important than us Icelanders. Because they come from Thailand and the Philippines and Vietnam. They say everything’s much better there, it’s superior.”

  And did you fight?”

  Instead of replying, Gummi stared down at the floor.

  “Do you know what happened to Elias, Niran’s brother?” Erlendur asked.

  “No,” Gummi said, his head still bowed. “He wasn’t with them.”

  “How did you explain to your parents about the injuries to your face?”

  Gummi looked up.

  “They don’t give a shit.”

  Sigurdur Oli and Elinborg appeared in the corridor and Erlendur signalled to Gummi that he could go. They watched him close the classroom door behind him.

  “Getting anywhere?” Erlendur asked.

  “Nowhere,” Elinborg said. “Though one of the boys did say that Kjartan, that Icelandic teacher, was “a bastard headcase”. I had the impression he was always causing trouble but I didn’t find out exactly how.”

  “Everything’s just hunky dory with me,” Sigurdur Oli said.

  “Hunky dory?” Erlendur growled. “Do you always have to talk like an idiot?”

  “What… ?”

  “There’s nothing hunky dory about any of this!”

  The medical equipment bleeped at regular intervals in one of the wards but it was quiet in the room where Marion Briem lay on the brink of death. Erlendur stood at the foot of the bed, looking at the patient. Marion seemed to be asleep. Face nothing but bones, eyes sunken, skin pale and withered. On top of the duvet lay hands with long, slender fingers and long nails, untrimmed. The fingers were yellow from smoking and the nails black. No one had come to visit Marion, who had been lying in the terminal ward for several days. Erlendur had particularly asked about that. Probably no one will come to the funeral either, he thought. Marion lived alone, always had, and never wanted it otherwise. Sometimes when Erlendur saw Marion his thoughts turned to his own future of loneliness and solitude.

  For a long time Marion seemed to adopt the role of Erlendur’s conscience, never tiring of asking about his private life, especially the divorce and his
relationship with the two children he had left behind and took no care of. Erlendur, who bore a certain respect for Marion, was annoyed by this prying and their dealings had often ended with big words and raised voices. Marion laid claim to a part of Erlendur, claimed to have shaped him after he joined the Reykjavik CID. Marion was Erlendur’s boss and had given him a tough schooling during his first years.

  “Aren’t you going to do anything about your children?” Marion had asked once in a moralising tone.

  They were standing in a dark basement flat. Three fishermen on a week-long bender had got into a fight. One had pulled out a knife and stabbed his companion three times after the latter had made disparaging remarks about his girlfriend. The man was rushed to hospital but died of his wounds. His two companions were taken into custody. The scene of the crime was awash with blood. The man had virtually bled to death while the other two carried on drinking. A woman delivering newspapers had seen a man lying in his own blood through the basement window and called the police. The two other men had both passed out drunk by then and had no idea what had happened when they were woken up.

  “I’m working on it,” Erlendur had said, looking at the pool of blood on the floor. “Don’t you worry yourself about it.”

  “Someone has to,” Marion said. “You can’t feel too good, the way things are at the moment.”

  “It’s none of your business how I feel,” Erlendur said.

  “It is my business if it’s affecting your work.”

  “It’s not affecting my work. I’ll solve it. Don’t fret about it.”

  “Do you think they’ll ever amount to anything?”

  “Who?”

  “Your children.”

  “Please just let it go,” Erlendur said, staring at the blood on the floor.

  “You ought to stop and think about that: what it’s like to grow up without a father.”

  The bloodstained knife lay on the table.

  “This isn’t much of a murder mystery,” Marion said.

  “It rarely is in this city,” Erlendur said.

  Now Erlendur stood and looked at the shrunken body in the bed and knew what he had not known then: that Marion was trying to help him. Erlendur himself lacked a satisfactory explanation for why he had walked out on his two children when he was divorced and had done almost nothing to demand access to them afterwards. His ex-wife developed a hatred for him and swore that he would never have the children, not for a single day, and he did not put up much of a fight for that right. There was nothing in his life that he regretted as much, when later he discovered the state his two children were in once they reached adulthood.

  Marion’s eyes slowly opened and saw Erlendur standing at the foot of the bed.

  Erlendur suddenly recalled his mother’s words about an old relative of theirs from the East Fjords on his deathbed. She had been to visit him and sat by his bedside, and when she returned she said he had looked so shrivelled up and odd’.

  “Would you … read to me … Erlendur?”

  “Of course.”

  “Your story,” Marion said. “And … your brother’s.”

  Erlendur said nothing.

  “You told me … once that it was in … one of those books of ordeals you’re always reading.”

  “It is,” Erlendur said.

  “Will you… read it… to me?”

  At that moment Erlendur’s mobile rang. Marion watched him. The ringtone had been set by Elinborg one rainy day when they were sitting in a police car behind the District Court, escorting prisoners in custody. She had changed the ringtone to Beethoven’s Ninth.

  “The Ode to Joy” filled the little room at the hospital.

  “What’s that music?” Marion asked, in a stupor from the strong painkillers.

  Erlendur finally managed to fish his mobile out of his jacket pocket and answer. “The Ode” fell silent.

  “Hello,” Erlendur said.

  He could hear that there was someone at the other end, but no one answered.

  “Hello,” he said again in a louder voice.

  No answer.

  “Who is that?”

  He was about to ring off when the caller hung up.

  “I’ll do that,” Erlendur said, putting his mobile back in his jacket pocket. “I’ll read that story to you.”

  “I hope . … that this . … will be over soon,” Marion said. The patient’s voice was hoarse and trembled slightly, as if it took a particular effort to produce it. “It’s … no fun … going through this.”

  Erlendur smiled. His mobile began ringing again. “The Ode to Joy’.

  “Yes,” he said.

  No one answered.

  “Bloody messing about,” Erlendur snarled. “Who is that?” he said roughly.

  Still the line was silent.

  “Who is that?” Erlendur repeated.

  “I…”

  “Yes? Hello!”

  “Oh, God, I can’t do it,” a weak female voice whispered in his ear.

  Erlendur was startled by the despair in the voice. At first he thought it was his daughter calling. She had called him before in terrible straits, crying out for help. But this was not Eva.

  “Who is that?” Erlendur said, his tone much gentler when he heard the woman on the other end weeping.

  “Oh, God …” she said, as if incapable of stringing a sentence together.

  A moment passed in silence.

  “It can’t go on like this,” she said, and rang off.

  “What? Hello?”

  Erlendur shouted down the mobile but heard only the dialling tone in his ear. He checked the caller ID but it was blank. He noticed that Marion had fallen asleep again. He looked back at his mobile and suddenly in his mind’s eye he saw a woman’s bluish-white face rippling in the waves and looking up at him with dead eyes.

  11

  Erlendur sat in the interview room, his thoughts focused on the telephone call he had received at the hospital. Oh God, I can’t do it, the weak voice groaned over and over in his mind, and he could not avoid the thought that the woman who had disappeared before Christmas might have just got in touch for the first time. She could have obtained his mobile number from the police switchboard without difficulty. It was his work number. His name had sometimes appeared in the papers in connection with police investigations. It had appeared in connection with the missing woman and now because of Elias’s death. Not knowing the woman’s voice, Erlendur could not tell whether it actually was her, but he intended to talk to her husband as soon as the opportunity arose.

  He recalled having once read that only five per cent of marriages or relationships that began with infidelity lasted for life. That did not strike him as a high proportion and he wondered whether it was, in fact, difficult to build up a trusting relationship after betraying others. Or maybe it was too harsh to talk of betrayal. Perhaps the prior relationships had been changing and evolving and new love was kindled at a sensitive moment. That happened and was always happening. The woman who vanished felt that she had found true love, judging by her friends” remarks. She loved her new husband with all her heart.

  The friends with whom she stayed in contact after the divorce stressed that point when Erlendur was seeking explanations for her disappearance. She had left her first husband and married for the second time with due ceremony. She was said to be very down-to-earth and realistic, then suddenly it was as if she had been transformed. Her friends did not doubt that her love for her new husband was genuine, and she always implied that her former marriage had run its course and she herself was “completely different’, as one of her friends put it. When Erlendur asked her to elaborate, it transpired that the woman had been elated after her divorce, talking about a new life and that she had never felt better. A grand wedding was held. They were married by a popular vicar. A huge crowd of guests celebrated with the couple on a lovely summer’s day. They took a three-week honeymoon in Tuscany. When they returned they were relaxed, tanned and radiant.

&n
bsp; All that was missing from the beautiful wedding was her children. Her ex refused to let them take part in “that circus’.

  It was not long before the expectation and excitement faded and turned into their opposite. Her friends described how, over time, the woman had been overwhelmed by sadness and regret, and ultimately by guilt at how she had treated her family. It did not help that her new husband’s ex accused her constantly of destroying their family. His children moved in with them while she was fighting for custody of her own kids, a constant reminder of her culpability. All this was accompanied by crippling depression.

  It was not the first time her new husband had been divorced following an affair. Erlendur found out that he had been married three times. He traced his first wife, who lived in Hafnarfjordur and had long since remarried and had a child. Exactly the same process had taken place in that case. The husband excused his absences from home on the grounds of long meetings, travelling around the country for work, golf trips. Then one day, quite unexpectedly, he announced that it was all over, they had grown apart and he was planning to move out. All this struck his wife like a bolt from the blue. She had not been aware of any fatigue in their relationship, only of his absence.

  Erlendur also spoke to wife number two. She had not remarried and he sensed that she had not yet recovered from the divorce. She described the process in detail, accusing herself of not being wary enough. Trying to take her side, Erlendur said she was probably lucky to be rid of him. She gave a thin smile. “I’m mainly thinking about the children,” she said. She had been unaware that he was married when he first began courting her. It was not until their relationship was several months old that he had said rather sheepishly that he had something to tell her. They were at a small hotel in the countryside where he had invited her to spend the night, and as they were sitting in the dining room that evening he announced that he had a wife. She stared at him in disbelief, but he was quick to add that his marriage was in ruins, it was only a question of time as to when he would leave her and he had told her so. She gave him an earful for not telling her he was married, but he managed to calm her down and win her over.