Arctic Chill

13

Erlendur did not blame the officer for Sunee and Niran’s disappearance although the man had showed incredible and incomprehensible neglect in the course of duty. He was convinced that the interpreter, who was the last to leave the mother and her son, had helped them to go into hiding. She had persuaded the officer to leave for a moment and then drove them off to a place that she would not name. After grilling the officer Erlendur sent for the interpreter. In the meantime the police looked for clues as to where Sunee could have taken her son. Her telephone did not have a caller ID, but Elinborg applied to the District Court to be given a list of Sunee’s incoming and outgoing calls during the previous month.

Elinborg called Erlendur and told him about her conversation with the teacher from Elias’s old school.

“Don’t you think she’s trying to protect him by running away?” she asked Erlendur when he told her that the mother and son had gone missing.

“The explanation is obviously something like that,” Erlendur said. “The question is who she thinks she’s protecting him from.”

“Maybe he’s told her something.”

Erlendur had just finished talking to Elinborg when his mobile rang again. The head of narcotics told him that they had located a girl at the school who had been trying to sell drugs in the playground. She had not been involved with the narcotics squad before but her older sister was well known to the police, a hardened addict with a string of arrests for drug offences. The two sisters had an elder brother who was in prison for manslaughter; he had attacked a passer-by in the centre of Reykjavik, inflicting wounds that led to his death.

“A classy family, then,” Erlendur said.

“The creme de la creme,” the head of narcotics said. “Do you want to talk to the girls?”

“Yes, bring them in,” Erlendur said.

At that moment Gudny appeared in the flat. Erlendur cut off his call and put his mobile in the pocket of his overcoat.

“Where are they?” he said in a determined voice, walking over to Gudny. “Why did they run away and where did you take them?”

Are you seriously blaming me for this?” she said.

“You deceived a police officer,” Erlendur said, “then came back to collect them. We want to know what you’ve done with them. I could lock you up for obstructing the police in the execution of their duty. I wouldn’t hesitate to do it.”

“I had nothing to do with this,” Gudny said. “I didn’t come back to collect them. And don’t you go threatening me. If you want to “lock me up”, then go right ahead.”

“We need answers from you,” Sigurdur Oli said, walking in from the corridor to the bedrooms after hearing the conversation. “You were the last person to talk to them. Why have they disappeared?”

“I have no idea,” Gudny said with a sigh. “I was as shocked as you when the police contacted me. When I left them about, what -‘ she said with a look at her watch “- three-quarters of an hour ago, there was nothing to suggest that Sunee was planning to do a disappearing act. She said she needed some shopping. I was late for a meeting. The officer was so kind as to help them. I didn’t suspect that she was plotting something. She told me nothing about that. I don’t care whether you believe me or not. I knew nothing about it.”

“Do you know where they could have gone?” Sigurdur Oli asked.

“No, I don’t have the faintest idea. I don’t even know if they are hiding. She might come straight back. Maybe she just popped out somewhere. Maybe she’s not hiding at all. Have you considered that?”

“Did she contact anyone this morning?” Sigurdur Oli asked.

Gudny told them that she had visited Sunee early that morning. There had been a police officer at the door and a patrol car with another two policemen in it in the car park in front of the block. Then the patrol car was called away. Sunee had told her straight away that she wanted to be left alone with Niran. He was in a very difficult state. She had not managed to make him talk to her, and if she could not do so, then neither could a police officer or an expert of any kind. What she needed was time alone with Niran to draw him back out of himself. His brother’s death had clearly been a great shock to him and she was trying to help him as best she could. That was her number-one priority under the circumstances. Gudny had sat down with them and offered her assistance, but when Sunee found out that she had to go to a meeting, she started talking about some things she needed from the shop.

“Did she know then that the police car had gone?” Erlendur asked.

“Yes, she saw it leave.”

“What happened to that bloody car?” Erlendur asked Sigurdur Oli, who had a ready answer. The car had been called out to a serious accident on a busy junction a few streets away. It was the nearest patrol car. They had not foreseen any problem in sending it on a quick call-out.

Erlendur shook his head in resignation.

“Who is Sunee’s boyfriend?” he asked Gudny.

“I’ve told you I know nothing about any boyfriend,” Gudny said warily.

“Could she have gone to him?” Erlendur said.

“She doesn’t seem to have many places to go,” Sigurdur Oli said.

“Who is this man?” Erlendur said with an angry look at Sigurdur Oli. He had a habit of interrupting, which got on Erlendur’s nerves.

“I don’t know about any boyfriend,” Gudny repeated. “She might be with her mother-in-law. Have you checked that? Or her brother?”

“That’s the first place we’ll look,” Erlendur said.

At that point Elinborg arrived.

“How can they be missing?” she asked. “Weren’t they under supervision?”

“She’s scared,” Gudny said. “Who wouldn’t be scared in her position? If she’s run off, it’s to protect her only surviving son. That’s all she can think of at the moment. She doesn’t trust you. That’s obvious. She trusts herself. She always has.”

“Why shouldn’t she trust us?” Elinborg said. “Has she any reason not to?”

Gudny looked at her.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t have answers to all your questions.”

“Who is her boyfriend?” Erlendur asked. “What kind of relationship do he and Sunee have? When did they meet? Was he the reason Sunee and her husband divorced? Did he know the boys well? How did he get along with them?”

Gudny looked at each of them in turn.

“She met a man recently,” she said at last.

“Yes, and… ?” Erlendur said impatiently.

“I don’t think she’s with him. I don’t know anything about Sunee’s divorce from Odinn. I don’t know exactly when this man entered the picture.”

“And who is he?”

“Sunee’s friend.”

“What kind of friend?” Erlendur asked.

Gudny looked over at Elinborg, then at Sigurdur Oli and finally back at Erlendur, and shrugged.

“Does he work? Do you know where he lives?”

“Sunee has never talked about him. I don’t even know his name.”

“Why don’t you think she’s gone to him? You said she wouldn’t go to him, why do you think that?”

“That’s just my feeling,” Gudny said.

Erlendur recalled the words of Sunee’s ex-husband, who had said that she had a boyfriend but he knew little about him. Virote knew about him. Gudny had finally acknowledged his existence. Emilia, Elias’s former teacher, thought he was Icelandic.

“Is he an Icelander?” Erlendur asked.

“Yes,” Gudny said.

“And has this relationship been going on for long?”

“I don’t know exactly.”

“There’s another thing, since you mentioned trust,” Erlendur said. “I know you don’t have answers to all our questions. But there’s one question we can’t ignore, however much we would like to, and that’s the question of Niran. Now that Sunee’s fled with him, that question has become all the more pressing.”

“What are you talking about?” the interpreter asked.

Sigurdur Oli and Elinborg exchanged glances as if they had no idea what Erlendur was driving at.

“Why did she run off with Niran?” Erlendur asked, lowering his voice.

“I don’t know,” Gudny said.

“Could she be trying to get him out of the country?”

“Out of the country?”

“Why not?”

“I think she’s trying to protect him, not that I know anything about it. No, I don’t think she’s trying to get him out of the country. In the first place, I don’t think she’d have a clue how to go about it”

“She might know someone.”

“That’s absurd!”

“I agree that she’s trying to protect Niran,” Erlendur said. “I think she’s gone into hiding because he’s told her something at last. He knows what happened.”

“I can’t believe you’re claiming he was involved in murdering his own brother!” Gudny said, outraged.

“We have to examine all the possibilities and Sunee disappearing with the boy doesn’t help. She may well want to protect him by doing so but she may also know something that we don’t. I expect he told her something important.”

“If Niran has done something wrong, Sunee would tell us. I know her. She wouldn’t cover up for the boy.”

“We have to keep all our options open.”

“But it’s out of the question!” the interpreter shouted.

“Don’t tell me what’s out of the question and what isn’t,” Erlendur said.

“You can’t keep them imprisoned here at least,” Gudny said. “You can’t lock them up in this flat! They must be free to go where they please.”

“I don’t want anything else to happen to them,” Erlendur said. “They need to let us know where they’re going.”

“That’s crap,’Gudny said.

“There she is!”

Sigurdur Oli stared out through the door into the corridor where Sunee was standing. Her brother was with her, but there was no sign of Niran.

Gudny went over to them and said something in Thai. Virote answered her. Sunee looked apprehensively at Erlendur.

“Niran not do nothing,” she said.

“Where is he?” Erlendur asked.

Sunee spoke to Gudny for a long while.

“She’s not certain that she can look after him,” Gudny said. “He’s safe where he is. Sunee knows you want to question him, but says it’s unnecessary. He hasn’t done anything and doesn’t know anything. He came home by himself yesterday and saw the police and his brother and went into a state of shock. He hid and couldn’t speak to his mother until this morning. He assured Sunee that he has no idea what happened to his brother. He had no part in it himself and didn’t see or meet Elias that day. He was scared.”

“Scared of what?”

“That the same thing would happen to him,” Gudny said.

“Will you tell Sunee that it’s not right to conceal the boy. It’s suspicious behaviour and even dangerous as long as we don’t know any more about the case. We don’t know what happened to Elias and if she thinks Niran’s in danger she’ll have to trust us to look after him. She’s just making things worse.”

Gudny translated Erlendur’s words as he spoke but Sunee started shaking her head before she managed to finish.

“Niran not do nothing,” she said again, glaring at Erlendur.

“Please ask her to tell us where her son is,” Erlendur asked.

“She says you needn’t worry about him,” Gudny said. “She asks you to find Elias’s murderer instead. Are there any new developments on that front?”

“No,” Erlendur said, trying to imagine what he himself would do in Sunee’s shoes. Perhaps she was doing the right thing. He could not tell.

“We hear you’ve met a man — an Icelander,” Erlendur said. “I haven’t had the opportunity to ask you about him yet.”

Gudny interpreted between them.

“He’s nothing to do with this,” Sunee said.

“Who is this man?” Sigurdur Oli asked. “What can you tell us about him?”

“Nothing,” Sunee said.

“Do you know where we can reach him?”

“No,” Sunee replied.

“Is he at work? Do you know where he works?”

“He’s none of your business,” Sunee said.

“What kind of relationship do you have?” Erlendur asked.

“He’s my friend.”

“What kind of friend?”

“I don’t understand the question.”

“Is he more than just a friend?”

“No, nothing more.”

“Do you think this man was involved in the murder of your son?” Sigurdur Oli asked.

“No,” Sunee said.

“Isn’t that enough for now?” Gudny asked.

Erlendur nodded.

“We’ll talk to her again later today. And try to make her understand that she’s not helping at all by hiding Niran.”

“Except helping to save his life perhaps,” Gudny said. “Try to put yourself in her position. Try to understand what she’s going through.”

They walked downstairs and got into Erlendur’s car.

“Who is this woman who’s such a good interpreter?” Erlendur asked, taking out a pack of cigarettes.

“Are you going to smoke?” said Sigurdur Oli, who was sitting in the back seat.

“Gudny?” Elinborg said. “She lived in Thailand for years. Goes there regularly, worships the place and the people, and works as a tourist guide during the summer. I think she’s done a great job under difficult circumstances. I like her.”

“She can’t stand you,” Sigurdur Oli said to Erlendur.

Erlendur lit his cigarette and tried to blow the smoke into the back seat.

“Did you get anything else out of Andres?” he asked.

Sigurdur Oli had stayed behind in the interview room when Erlendur had leaped to his feet and run out. He told him how he had tried to get Andres to name the man who had recently moved to the neighbourhood, but to no avail. Sigurdur described the interview to Elinborg; he thought Andres was spinning a cock-and-bull story to shift the attention away from himself. It was a tired old ruse.

“He refused to describe the man to me,” Sigurdur Oli said, “or to provide any details about him.”

“If he harmed Andres when he was a child, then at least he must be quite a bit older,” Erlendur said. “I don’t know, he might be in his sixties by now. Actually, I don’t think it was a paedophile. They’re not murderers. Not in the literal sense anyway”

The investigation was into its second day and they still lacked sufficient information to be able to draw any conclusions. No one had come forward who had seen Elias’s movements that day. At the place where he was stabbed — the substation — there was an open path that narrowed to accommodate garages on one side. The scene was overlooked by the top flats of the nearby blocks but none of the residents had seen anything unusual or suspicious. Very few people were home at the time of day when Elias was attacked.

Erlendur’s interest focused on the school. Elinborg told them how, at the boys” previous school, Niran had been a member of a gang of immigrant children who were involved in fights. She wondered if he had imported the influences that he came under there to the new school. Erlendur pointed out that he was a member of a gang which, one pupil had told him, hung around the local chemist’s shop and sometimes clashed with other pupils from the school.

And then we have a paedophile and a repeat offender and an Icelandic boyfriend,” Sigurdur Oli said. “Not forgetting a teacher who patently hates all immigrants and foments bad feeling at the school. Nice bunch.”

Niran obviously had to be a key witness in the case, and the fact that he had disappeared or fled or gone into hiding with his mother underlined his importance. They had let him slip out of their grasp in the clumsiest way imaginable. Erlendur had plenty of strong words to say about that. He blamed himself for the way it had all turned out. No one else.

“How could we have foreseen this?” Elinborg protested at his overreaction. “Sunee was very cooperative. There was nothing to suggest that she would go and do something stupid.”

“We need to talk to the boy’s father and Sunee’s mother-in-law and brother straight away,” Sigurdur Oli said. “They’re the people closest to her. They’re the people who would want to help her.”

Erlendur looked at them.

“I think that woman called me today,” he said after a pause.

“The missing woman?” Elinborg said.

“I think so,” Erlendur said, then told them about the call he had received while he was visiting Marion in hospital.

“She said: “It can’t go on like this”, then rang off.

“ ‘It can’t go on like this’?” Elinborg repeated after him. “ ‘It can’t go on like this.’ ” What does she mean?”

“If it is the woman,” Erlendur said. “Not that I know who else it could be. Now I need to go and see her husband and tell him that she’s conceivably still alive. He hasn’t heard from her all this time and then she goes and phones me. Unless he already knows everything that’s going on. What does it mean, “It can’t go on like this”? It’s as if they’re plotting something together. Could they be involved in a scam?”

“Had she taken out a big life assurance policy?” Sigurdur Oli asked.

“No,” Erlendur said. “There’s nothing like that in the picture. This isn’t a Hollywood movie.”

“Were you beginning to suspect that he’d killed her?” Elinborg asked.

“That woman shouldn’t still be alive,” Erlendur said. “All the indications are that she’s committed suicide. The phone call was completely at odds with the whole scenario up to now, with every aspect of it”

“What are you going to tell her husband?” Elinborg asked.

Erlendur had been grappling with that question ever since he received the call. He had a pretty low opinion of the man, which deteriorated the clearer his past became. This was a man who seemed driven by an insatiable urge to cheat. That was the only way to describe it. Adultery appeared to be an obsession with him. The man’s colleagues and friends whom Erlendur had spoken to described him in quite favourable terms. Several said that he had always been a ladies” man, even a philanderer, a married man who had no scruples about trying to ensnare other women. One of his colleagues described how a group from work had gone out for a drink and the man had flirted with a woman who had shown an interest in him. He had surreptitiously taken off his wedding ring and thrust it deep inside a handy flower pot. The following day he had had to go back to the club to dig up the ring.

This was before he met the woman who had now gone missing. Erlendur did not think she was the type to have an affair. The man had laid a trap for her, naturally concealing the fact that he was married, then the affair had gone further and further, much further than she could ever have imagined at first, until there was no turning back. They were stuck with each other and she was beset by profound guilt, depression and loneliness. The man refused to acknowledge any of this when Erlendur had asked about her state of mind before she disappeared. She was in good spirits, he said. “She never said anything to me about feeling bad.” When Erlendur pressed him by asking about the woman’s suspicions that he was having another affair only two years after they had married, he shrugged as if it were none of Erlendur’s business and quite irrelevant. When Erlendur pressed him further the man had said that it was his private business and no one else’s.

There were no witnesses to the woman’s disappearance. She had phoned in sick to work and was at home alone during the day. Her husband’s children were with their mother. When he returned at around six, she was not there. He had not had any contact with her during the day. As the evening passed with no word from her he became uneasy and was unable to sleep that night. He went to work the following morning and telephoned home regularly but there was no answer. He called their friends, her colleagues and various places where he thought she might be, but could not find her anywhere. The day went by and he baulked at contacting the police. When she had still not turned up the following morning he finally called to report her missing. He did not even know what she had been wearing when she left home. The neighbours had not noticed her and it transpired that none of their friends or her old friends knew her whereabouts. They owned two cars and hers was still parked in front of the house. She had not ordered a taxi.

Erlendur visualised her leaving her home and heading out alone and abandoned into the dark winter’s day. When he first called at their house the neighbourhood was lit up with Christmas decorations and he had thought to himself that she had probably never noticed them.

“There can never be any bloody trust between people who start a relationship against that sort of background,” Elinborg said, the disapproving tone entering her voice as always when she discussed this case.

“And then there’s the question of the fourth woman,” Sigurdur Oli said. “Does she exist?”

“The husband flatly denies having an affair and I haven’t found any evidence that he did,” Erlendur said. “We have only his wife’s word about how she thought he was meeting another woman and her distress at the whole business. She appears to have deeply regretted her actions.”

“And then she calls up one day when she sees your name in the papers because of the murder,” Elinborg said.

“As if from the grave,” Erlendur said.

They sat in silence and thought about the woman who had gone missing and about Sunee and little Elias in the garden behind the block of flats.

“Do you seriously believe it?” Elinborg asked. About Niran? That he’s to blame for his brother’s death?”

“No,” Erlendur said. “Not at all.”

“But she does seem to be trying to get the boy out of the way, otherwise she’d have stayed at home,” Sigurdur Oli said.

“Perhaps he’s afraid,” Erlendur said. “Perhaps they’re both afraid.”

“Niran could have had an altercation with someone who threatened him,” Elinborg said.

“Possibly,” Sigurdur Oli said.

At least he must have said something to arouse such a strong reaction from Sunee,” Elinborg said.

“How’s Marion doing, by the way?” Sigurdur Oli asked.

“It’ll soon be over,” Erlendur said.

He stood by the window of his office at the police station on Hverfisgata, smoking and watching the drifting snow swirl along the street. The light was fading and the cold continued to tighten its grip on the city as it slowed down towards evening before descending into sleep.

The intercom on his desk crackled and he was informed that a young man was asking for him at the front desk. He gave his name as Sindri Snaer. Erlendur had him shown in immediately and his son soon appeared at the door.

“I thought I’d drop in on you on my way to the meeting,” he said.

“Come in,” Erlendur said. “What meeting?”

“AA,” Sindri said. “It’s down the road here on Hverfisgata.”

“Aren’t you cold, dressed like that?” Erlendur pointed at Sindri’s thin summer jacket.

“Not really,” Sindri said.

“Have a seat. Would you like a coffee?”

“No, thanks. I heard about the murder. Are you handling it?”

“With others.”

“Do you know anything?”

“No.”

Some time earlier, Sindri had moved to Reykjavik from the East Fjords where he had been working in a fish factory. He knew the story of how Erlendur and his brother had been caught in a snowstorm on the moors above Eskifjordur, and how Erlendur went there every couple of years to visit the moors where he almost froze to death as a child. Sindri was not as angry with his father as Eva Lind was; until very recently, he had not wanted anything to do with him. Now, however, he was in the habit of dropping in on him unexpectedly, at home or at work. His visits were generally brief, just long enough for one cigarette.

“Heard anything from Eva?” he asked.

“She phoned. Asked about Valgerdur.”

“Your woman?”

“She’s not my woman,” Erlendur said.

“That’s not what Eva says. She says she’s virtually moved in with you.”

“Is she upset about Valgerdur?”

Sindri nodded and produced a pack of cigarettes.

“I don’t know. Maybe she thinks you’ll put her first.”

“Put her first? Over whom?”

Sindri inhaled the smoke and blew it out through his nose.

“Over her?” Erlendur asked.

Sindri shrugged.

“Has she said anything to you?”

“No,” Sindri said.

“Eva hasn’t been in touch with me for weeks. Apart from that call yesterday. Do you think that’s the reason?”

“Could be. I think she’s getting back on her feet. She’s left that dealer and told me she’s going to get a job again.”

“Isn’t that the same old story?”

“Sure.”

“What about you? How are you doing?”

“Fine,” Sindri said, standing up. He stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray on the desk. “Are you thinking of going out east this summer?”

“I haven’t thought about it. Why?”

“Just wondered. I went to take a look at the house once when I was working out there. I don’t know if I told you.”

“It’s derelict now.”

A pretty depressing place. Probably because I know why you moved away”

Sindri opened the door to the corridor.

“Maybe you could let me know,” he said. “If you do go out east.”

He closed the door quietly behind him without waiting for an answer. Erlendur sat in his chair, staring at the door. For an instant he was back home on the farm where he was born and brought up. The farmhouse still stood up on the moor, abandoned. He had slept in it when he visited his childhood haunts for a purpose that was not entirely clear. Perhaps to hear again the voices of his family and recall what he had once had and loved.

It was in this house, which now stood naked and lifeless and exposed to the elements, that he had first heard that unfamiliar, repulsive word which had become etched in his mind.

Murder.