Arctic Chill

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.

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.

After hearing this testimony and others from friends of the missing woman, Erlendur began to detest the man. He knew that the more time that elapsed, the more likely it was that she had committed suicide, and the accounts of her depression supported that theory. But the unexpected telephone call had kindled a hope within him that this was not the case. It kindled the hope that she had moved out from her marital home and did not want her husband to discover her whereabouts; that she was hiding from him and did not know where to turn.

Only two years had passed since the fairytale wedding when the woman started whispering to a close friend of hers that her husband had begun to take part in weekend golf tournaments that she had never heard of.

Erlendur broke away from his thoughts and nodded to Sigurdur Oli, who sat down beside him in the interview room. Now the interrogation could begin. The man sitting in front of them was in his mid-forties. Since the age of twenty he had repeatedly been involved with the police for offences of varying degrees of seriousness: burglary, robbery and assault, in some cases very brutal. He lived two blocks away from Sunee and the boys. The police had compiled a list of repeat offenders who could possibly have crossed Elias’s path on his way home from school. This man was top of that list.

The police had obtained a search warrant for his flat when they brought him in for questioning earlier that morning and had discovered large quantities of pornography, including child pornography. It was enough to bring charges against him yet again.

His name was Andres and he looked at Erlendur and Sigurdur Oli in turn, prepared for the worst. A lifelong alcoholic who showed all the signs: his expression drowsy and bleary, his little eyes shifty and questioning. He was a fairly short man, stocky and strongly built.

Erlendur knew him. He had arrested Andres more than once.

“What are you hassling me for?” Andres asked, rough and ragged from persistent drinking, his eyes darting from one officer to the other. “What’s going on?” He tried to make this sound manly, but it ended in a little squeak.

“Do you know a boy by the name of Elias who lives in your neighbourhood?” Erlendur asked. “Dark-skinned, of Thai descent. Ten years old.”

A tape recorder lay on the table between them, whirring softly. Given Andres’s state of intoxication when he was taken into custody, he could well claim not to have heard about Elias’s murder. However, there was no believing a word he said.

“I don’t know anything about any Elias,” Andres said. Are you going to charge me? What are you going to charge me with? I haven’t done a thing. Why are you picking on me?”

“Don’t worry,” Sigurdur Oli said.

“What Elias are you talking about?” Andres said, looking at Erlendur.

“Do you remember where you were yesterday afternoon?”

At home,” Andres said. “I was at home. I was home all day, all yesterday I mean. What boy are you talking about?”

A ten-year-old boy was stabbed to death two blocks away from you,” Erlendur said. “Was anyone with you yesterday? Can anyone confirm your alibi?”

A boy killed?” Andres said, shocked. “Who … ? Stabbed?”

“Do you even know what day it is today?” Erlendur asked.

Andres shook his head.

“Please speak into the tape recorder,” Sigurdur Oli said.

“I don’t know. I didn’t attack any boy. I don’t know about any attack. I don’t know anything. I haven’t done anything wrong. Why can’t you leave me alone?”

“Do you know the boy?” Erlendur asked.

Andres shook his head. Sigurdur Oli pointed a finger at the tape recorder.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about”

“He has a brother, five years older,” Erlendur said. “They moved into the neighbourhood last spring. You’ve lived there for more than five years. You must notice the locals. You must keep up with what’s going on. Don’t turn this into a pantomime.”

“A pantomime? I haven’t done anything.”

“Do you know this boy?” Erlendur asked, taking a photograph of Elias from his coat pocket and handing it to Andres.

He pored over the child’s face.

“I don’t know him,” he said.

“You’ve never bumped into him?” Erlendur asked.

Before Erlendur entered the interview room he had been told that a detailed search of the man’s flat had not provided any indication of whether Elias or Niran had ever been there. However, Andres had behaved very strangely when the police finally managed to break into his flat. He had not answered when they knocked on the door. When the police broke it down they were greeted by wretched squalor and an appalling stench. The door was double-locked and Andres was found hiding under his bed. He screamed for help as he was dragged out. He thrashed around, apparently unaware that he was in the hands of the police but under the impression he was wrestling with an imaginary adversary to whom he repeatedly pleaded for mercy.

“I might have seen him in the neighbourhood some time but I don’t know him,” Andres said. “I haven’t done anything to him.”

His eyes darted back and forth, as if he had to make a decision but was hesitant. Perhaps he thought that he needed to bargain to get off. Sigurdur Oli was poised to speak, but Erlendur tugged at him and gestured to him to keep quiet. Andres seemed to approve of that.

“Would you leave me alone then?” he eventually said.

“If what?” Erlendur said.

“Would you let me go home then?”

“Your flat was crammed with child pornography,” Sigurdur Oli said, not concealing the disgust in his voice. Erlendur had urged him to try not to show disrespect to criminals, as Sigurdur Oli had a tendency of doing. Nothing annoyed him more than middle-aged repeat offenders who were always in the same mess.

“If what?” Erlendur repeated.

“If I tell you.”

“I told you not to turn this into a bloody pantomime,” Erlendur said. “Say what you want to tell us. Stop beating about the bush.”

“I guess it’s a year since he moved into the area,” Andres said.

“Elias moved in the spring, like I said.”

“I’m not talking about that boy,” Andres said and looked at each of them in turn.

“Who then?”

“He’s showing his age, the old git. That was the first thing I noticed.”

“What are you talking about?” Sigurdur Oli snapped.

A man I reckon has more porn in his possession than I do,” Andres said.

Sigurdur Oli and Erlendur exchanged glances.

“I’ve never killed anyone,” Andres said. “You know that. You have to believe me, Erlendur. I’ve never killed anyone.”

“Don’t try and turn me into your confidant,” Erlendur said.

“I’ve never killed anyone,” Andres repeated.

Erlendur watched him in silence.

“I’ve never killed anyone,” Andres said yet again.

“You kill everything you touch,” Erlendur said.

“What man are you talking about?” Sigurdur Oli asked. “What man moved to the area?”

Instead of answering him, Andres focused his glare on Erlendur.

“What man is this, Andres?” Erlendur asked.

Andres leaned forward over the table and inclined his head slightly, like an elderly aunt giving a kindly greeting to a little child.

“He’s the nightmare I can never shake off.”