Arctic Chill

25

Sigurdur Oli rang the doorbell at the entrance to a four-storey block of flats close to the school. He stood and waited, then rang the bell again. A cold wind blew about his legs in the meagre shelter by the front door and he stamped his feet. It seemed no one was home. The block, which was not unlike the one where Sunee lived with her sons, was in a poor state of repair. It had not been painted for a long time and the wall by the entrance was still stained with soot from a fire in the rubbish store. Dusk was falling. The morning’s snow flurries had deteriorated into a blizzard, cars were getting stuck on the roads and the Met Office had issued a severe weather warning for that evening. Sigurdur Oli’s thoughts went to Bergthora. He had not heard from her all day. She had already left for work when he woke up at the crack of dawn and lay alone with his thoughts.

The entryphone emitted a crackle.

“Hello?” he heard a voice say.

Sigurdur Oli introduced himself, explaining that he was from the police.

There was silence on the entryphone.

“What do you want?” the voice asked eventually.

“I want you to open the door,” Sigurdur Oli said, stamping his feet.

A long moment passed before the lock clicked and Sigurdur Oli entered the hall. He climbed up to the landing where the owner of the voice lived and knocked on the door. It opened and a boy of about fifteen peered shiftily into the corridor.

“Are you Anton?” Sigurdur Oli asked.

“Yes,” the boy said.

He appeared in pretty good health considering; he was fully dressed and even had a little colour in his cheeks. Sigurdur Oli noticed a smell of pizza from inside the flat and when he peered inside he saw an anorak slung over a chair and an open pizza box with one slice missing. He had been informed that Anton was ill and had been absent from school for the last few days.

“Feeling better?” Sigurdur Oli asked, walking into the flat uninvited.

The boy retreated before him and Sigurdur Oli shut the door. He noticed that the boy had made himself comfortable in front of the television with a pizza and a fizzy drink and two or three videos. An action film was playing on the screen.

“What’s going on?” the boy asked in astonishment.

“It’s one thing to scratch cars, Anton, another to kill people,” Sigurdur Oli said, helping himself to a slice of pizza. “Your mum and dad not home?”

The boy shook his head.

“Several days ago you were spotted scratching a car near here,” Sigurdur Oli said and bit into the pizza. He watched the boy while he chewed.

“I haven’t scratched any cars,” Anton said.

“Where did you get the knife?” Sigurdur Oli asked. “And don’t lie to me.”

“I…” Anton hesitated.

“Yes?”

“Why do you say kill people?”

“The little Asian boy who was stabbed, I reckon you did that too.”

“I didn’t do that”

“Sure you did.”

“I haven’t done anything,” Anton said.

“Where can I get hold of your mother?” Sigurdur Oli asked. “She’ll need to come down to the station with us.”

Anton stared in bewilderment at Sigurdur Oli who calmly finished his pizza slice and surveyed the flat, as if Anton were an irrelevance. The medical student had identified the boy from a recent class photograph. She believed that he was one of the two boys she had seen outside the block of flats when her car was scratched. She was not quite so sure when shown a picture of Anton’s classmate Thorvaldur, though she said that he could well have been the other boy. It was all very vague so Sigurdur Oli did not have much to go on when he rang Anton’s doorbell. He decided to behave as if it was an open-and-shut case, and all that remained was to take the two friends down to the station. A mere formality. This tactic seemed to work on the boy.

Sigurdur Oli did not as yet have much information on Anton and Thorvaldur. They were in the same class, spent a lot of time together and sometimes got into trouble with the teachers and school authorities; disrupting school activities, it was called. Once they had attacked a caretaker and received a two-day suspension. They were typical wasters and troublemakers who only turned up to school to ruin things for everyone else.

“I didn’t stab anyone,” Anton said at Sigurdur Oli’s mention of his mother and the police station.

“Call your mother,” Sigurdur Oli said. “Tell her to meet us down at the station.”

Anton saw that Sigurdur Oli was in deadly earnest. This cop actually believed that he had stabbed the Asian boy. He tried to grasp the situation in which he suddenly found himself but could not quite take it in. They had vandalised a few cars, Doddi had done most of them, he himself maybe one, and now they had been caught. But the cop was also under the impression that he had attacked and killed that boy. Anton stood dithering in front of Sigurdur Oli, examining his options. His mother would go mental — again. She had often threatened to chuck him out. He looked at the video he had rented and the congealing pizza and the strange thing was that what he regretted most was being deprived of a quiet day in front of the television.

“I didn’t do anything,” he repeated.

“You can tell that to your mother,” Sigurdur Oli said. “Your mate Thorvaldur lost no time in squealing on you. Whined and blubbered throughout. He says you scratched the cars. He says he only went along with you.”

“Doddi? He said that?”

“The biggest wimp I’ve ever come across,” Sigurdur Oli said, though he had not, in fact, tracked Thorvaldur down yet.

Anton vacillated in front of him.

“He’s lying, he can’t have said that.”

“Yeah, right,” Sigurdur Oli said. “You two can discuss it down at the station.”

He made to grab Anton’s arm and lead him out but the boy tore himself away.

“I only scratched one car,” he said. “Doddi did the rest. He’s lying!”

Sigurdur Oli drew a deep breath.

“We didn’t do anything to that boy,” Anton added, as if to make it quite clear.

“You mean you and your mate?” Sigurdur Oli said.

“Doddi, yes. He’s lying! It was him who scratched the cars.”

It was time to ease up the pressure a little, so Sigurdur Oli took a step back from the boy.

“How many cars was it?”

“I don’t know. A few.”

“Do you know the Icelandic teacher Kjartan’s car?”

“Yes.”

“Did you scratch his car? Outside the school?”

Anton hesitated before answering.

“That was Doddi. I didn’t even know. He just told me about it. He can’t stand Kjartan. Does Mum have to find out about this?”

“What did you make the scratches with?” Sigurdur Oli asked, ignoring his question.

A knife,” Anton said.

“What kind of knife?”

“It was Doddi’s.”

“He said it was yours,” Sigurdur Oli lied.

“It was his knife.”

“What kind of knife was it?”

“Like the one on TV,” Anton said.

“On TV?”

“The one they were showing pictures of. It was like our knife.”

Sigurdur Oli was speechless. He stared at the boy who gradually cottoned on to the fact that he had said something important. He wondered what it could have been and when it suddenly struck him, it was like a blow to the face. It had not occurred to him. Of course it was the same knife! He had seen pictures of it on television but had not made the connection with the damage that he and his mate Doddi had done to a few cars on the way to school. He began to see his situation as part of something much larger and more serious.

Sigurdur Oli took out his phone.

“I didn’t do it,” Anton said. “I swear it.”

“Do you know where the knife is now?”

“Doddi has it. Doddi had it all along.”

Sigurdur Oli watched the boy as he waited for Erlendur to answer, then glanced round the little flat, noting how Anton had made himself comfortable before the intrusion.

“Call your mother,” he said. “You’re coming with me. Tell her to meet you down at the station.”

“Yes.” Erlendur answered his phone.

“I think I’m on to something,” Sigurdur Oli said. Are you at the station?”

“What have you got?” Erlendur asked.

“Is the knife there?”

“Yes, what are you going to do?”

“I’m on my way,” Sigurdur Oli said.

When the police arrived to fetch Doddi an hour or so later he was not at home. A man in his early forties answered the door to the two officers and looked them up and down. Doddi’s mother appeared in the doorway as well. They did not know where the boy was and demanded to be told what he had done wrong. The police officers said they did not know, they had simply been sent to bring him in to the police station on Hverfisgata along with a guardian.

“Since he’s under age,” one of them elaborated.

The officers were both in uniform and driving a patrol car. The intention was to put the fear of God into Doddi. They were standing on the doorstep of the small town house where Doddi lived, explaining their business, when the man, who turned out to be the boy’s stepfather, called out that there he was, there was Doddi!

“Come here!” he called. “Doddi, get over here!” The boy was walking round the corner of a nearby house, taking a footpath that cut through the area. He stopped dead when he heard his stepfather’s call, then spotted the police car, the two officers looking in his direction and his mother’s head craning from the doorway. It took him a moment to grasp the situation. He contemplated making a run for it, then decided it would be futile.

After an interrogation lasting nearly three hours, Doddi finally confessed to Sigurdur Oli that he had stolen a carving knife from the school and used it to vandalise cars that he and his friend Anton passed on their way to school. Both boys flatly denied having touched Elias, however, claiming that they did not even know him and had no idea who killed him. It was more than a week since they had scratched the car belonging to the young woman whom they had seen dashing back inside her block of flats, leaving the engine running. They did not realise that she had spotted them. At first they meant to steal the car as it had been handed to them on a plate with the engine left running and all, but when it came to the point they couldn’t be bothered. Doddi walked along beside it, scraping the point of the knife along the paintwork, then they ran and hid. This was the first time they had seen the owner of one of the cars they had vandalised and it heightened the adrenalin. They waited for the woman to come out again in order to watch her reaction when she saw the scratch. She soon came dashing back out of the house and opened the car door but stopped dead when she saw the scratch along the bodywork. She bent down to take a closer look, then peered round, walked out into the car park and scanned in all directions, before taking a frantic glance at her watch, returning to her car and driving away.

The knife found at the recycling depot was in a box in the interview room and Doddi recognised it immediately. The police pathologist confirmed that it could well be the murder weapon.

Elinborg was in another interview room with Anton. The boys” statements matched in all the main details. Doddi had stolen the knife, and the initiative when it came to satisfying their destructive urge had largely been his.

“How did the knife end up in the recycling bin?” Elinborg asked Anton, who had been extremely cooperative ever since arriving at the police station.

“I don’t know,” Anton replied.

“Did you use it to attack Elias?”

“No,” Anton said. “I didn’t touch him.”

“Why did you throw the knife away?”

“I didn’t.”

“What about your mate, Doddi?”

“I don’t know. He had the knife last.”

“He says you had it.”

“He’s lying.”

“Did you know the knife was used to kill Elias?”

“No.”

“Do you know Niran, Elias’s brother?”

“No, not at all, except that he’s at my school. I don’t know him at all.”

In the other interview room similar questions were being flung at Doddi who claimed that Anton had had the knife last.

“How long is it since you took the knife from the carpentry workshop?” Sigurdur Oli asked.

“About ten days or …” Doddi thought. “Yeah, something like that. It was straight after the Christmas holidays.”

“Where did you last see it?”

Anton took it home with him.”

“He says you had it”

“He’s lying.”

“Do you know who Elias was?”

“Yes.”

“Did you know him?”

“No. Not at all.”

“Did you stab him to death?”

“No.”

“Did you stab him to death with the knife that you stole from the carpentry workshop?”

“No. I didn’t do anything.”

“Why did you scratch those cars?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“We were bored.”

In the other room, Elinborg stared at Anton for a long time without saying a word, then rose to her feet. She had been sitting still for too long and her whole body ached. She leaned against the wall and folded her arms.

“Where were you when Elias was attacked?” she asked.

Anton could not give a clear account of his whereabouts. At first he said he had been at home, that he had gone straight home from school. Then he suddenly remembered that he had gone to a computer-games shop with Doddi.

“You will both be charged with Elias’s murder,” Elinborg said. “You had the knife, you killed him.”

“I didn’t,” Anton said.

“What about your friend?”

“There’s no way he did either.”

“What’s your attitude to immigrants, foreigners, coloured people?”

“I don’t know.”

Doddi hesitated when asked a similar question. Sigurdur Oli repeated the question but Doddi just stared at him without answering. Sigurdur Oli asked a third time.

“I don’t have any attitude to them,” Doddi said at last. “I don’t give them any thought”

“Have you attacked any immigrant kids?”

“No, never,” Doddi said.

Neither he nor Anton had ever been in trouble with the law. Anton’s mother was a single parent with two children, who struggled to make ends meet on her meagre wages. Anton had a three-year-old half-brother. He saw his father briefly once a month or so. Doddi had two full siblings and a half-sister. He told them that his father, who had little to do with him, was a foreman on the Karahnjukar dam project.

“Why did you attack Elias?” Sigurdur Oli asked.

“I didn’t.”

“We’re going to charge you with Elias’s murder,” Sigurdur Oli said. “We have no other option.”

Doddi stared at him and it was clear from his expression that he fully grasped the implications of what Sigurdur Oli was saying. He was quite a tough nut. Sigurdur Oli had often questioned teenage boys who did not give a shit about anything or anyone and answered back with jeers and even threats against the police. He sensed that there was more to Doddi. He was not yet a hardened case. The vandalism of the cars was a brainless stunt but no more than that. At least for the time-being.

“He gave away the knife,” Doddi said.

“Gave it away?”

“I stole it but Anton had it last and he gave it away. I didn’t know it had been used in the murder. And I’m sure he didn’t either.”

Elinborg was still leaning against the wall with arms folded when Sigurdur Oli entered the interview room. He sat down in front of Anton and stared at him for a long time without saying a word. Elinborg refrained from asking any questions. Anton became restless, squirmed in his chair and fixed his gaze on Sigurdur Oli and Elinborg in turn. He was extremely uneasy.

“Do you know a boy called Hallur?” Sigurdur Oli asked.

Elinborg was leaving the interview room shortly afterwards when her mobile rang. It took her some time to work out who was on the other end but at last she came up with an image of the flamboyant tie belonging to the PR guy from the insurance firm where someone had been making calls to Sunee.

“I’ve been involved in a major investigation on your behalf,” the PR man said gravely.

“Really?” Elinborg said.

“Yes, really. I’ve spoken to a number of people here at the firm, all in confidence of course, and none of them is in a relationship with that woman, as far as I can tell.”

“No?”

“No. At least, nothing that can be confirmed.”

“What about unconfirmed?”

“Well, there are rumours about one man.”

“Yes?”

“I don’t know him. He’s in his late forties and has worked in the claims department for years. The girls say he’s dating an Asian woman.”

“Which girls?”

“The customer service reps. Someone spotted him at a nightclub about a month ago. He was with one of those women.”

“One of what women?”

“Thai, maybe.”

“Did you talk to him?”

“No.”

“Good. What’s his name?”

“The girls want to know if he’s connected in any way to the mother of the boy who died.”

“Tell them to mind their own business!”