Arctic Chill

7

Elinborg was standing in the home of one of Elias’s classmates. She had not been offered a seat. They were in the kitchen and the boy’s father was sitting beside him. His sister and younger brother were also sitting at the table. It was a small town house not far from the block of flats where Elias and Niran lived. Elinborg had disturbed them at dinnertime. Other police officers were simultaneously in the same position, visiting the homes of children who might conceivably be linked to Elias.

She apologised repeatedly. The boy’s mother said she had seen the television news and was shocked to hear about it. The father showed no particular reaction. Neither did the children.

Elinborg looked at their food: spaghetti with mince. The smell of frying filled the house, mingled with basil and boiled tomato. Her thoughts flew home. She had not managed to shop for days and there was nothing in the refrigerator.

“He came here for Biggi’s birthday party,” the mother said, also standing beside the table. “We wanted to invite the whole class. I thought he was a particularly delightful boy. I just can’t understand what could have happened. They said he’d been stabbed. As if anyone could have wanted to harm him. They implied he’d been attacked, like it was premeditated. Is that true?”

“We have no idea,” Elinborg said. “The investigation is just beginning. I haven’t seen the news but I doubt the reporters got that information from the police. We know very little at the moment. That’s why I’d like to have a little chat with you, Biggi,” she said, addressing her words to the boy.

Biggi looked at her, wide-eyed.

“You were his friend, weren’t you?” Elinborg said.

“Not really,” Biggi said. “He was in my class but—”

“Biggi doesn’t know him very well,” his mother interrupted with an embarrassed smile.

“No, I see,” Elinborg said.

The father sat in silence at the kitchen table. The food was on his plate but he had no intention of eating it in front of a police officer. All three children were tucking into their spaghetti. When Elinborg had rung the doorbell, the mother had answered and hesitantly let her in. Elinborg had a strong sense that she was disturbing the peace of their home.

“Do you sometimes play with him?” Elinborg asked.

“I don’t think Biggi plays with him much,” the father said.

The man was slim and drawn-looking, with bags under his eyes and several days” worth of stubble. He was wearing blue overalls, which he had unbuttoned to the waist when he sat down at the table. His hands were worn from manual labour. His face and hair were covered in a grey substance that Elinborg thought might be cement dust. Instinctively she assumed that he was a plasterer.

“I wanted to-‘ Elinborg said.

“I’d like some peace to eat with my family,” the man said. “If you don’t mind.”

“I know,” Elinborg said, “and my apologies once again for disturbing you. I just wanted to ask Biggi a few questions because we need to gather information as quickly as possible. It won’t take a moment.”

“You can do that later,” the man said.

He stared at Elinborg. His wife stood beside the table and said nothing. The children wolfed down their food. Biggi looked at Elinborg as he sucked up a piece of spaghetti. He had tomato sauce all round his mouth.

“Do you know whether Elias was on his own when he went home from school today?” Elinborg asked.

Biggi shook his head, his mouth full of spaghetti.

The man looked at his wife.

“I don’t think that has anything to do with Biggi,” he said.

“He was really sweet, that boy, polite and well brought-up,” the woman said. “He was the only one who thanked us for inviting him to the birthday party and he wasn’t noisy like the other kids.”

As she said this she looked at her husband, as if justifying having invited Elias to their son’s birthday party. Elinborg looked at the parents in turn and then at the children, who had stopped eating and were watching the adults apprehensively. They sensed that an argument was brewing.

“When was this birthday party?” Elinborg asked, looking at the mother.

“Three weeks ago.”

“Around Christmas? And everything went well?”

“Yes, very well. Don’t you think so, Biggi?” she asked with a glance at her son. She avoided looking at her husband.

Biggi nodded. He looked at his father, uncertain whether he ought to say what he wanted to say.

“Will you please leave us in peace now?” the man said, standing up. “We’d like to eat.”

“Did you see Elias when he came to the birthday party?”

“I work eighteen hours a day,” the man said.

“He’s never home,” the woman said. “There’s no need to be so rude to her,” she added, darting a look at her husband.

“Do immigrants get on your nerves?” Elinborg asked.

“I’ve got nothing against those people,” the man said. “Biggi doesn’t know that kid in the slightest. They weren’t friends. We can’t help you with anything. Now will you please leave us alone!”

“Of course,” Elinborg said, looking down at the plates of spaghetti. She pondered for a moment, then gave up and left.

“It was a very ordinary day at school,” Agnes, Elias’s form teacher, told Sigurdur Oli. “I think I can say that. Except that I moved the boy to a different seat in the classroom. I’d been meaning to for some time and I finally did it this morning.”

They were sitting in the study at Agnes’s house. She had produced a cigarette from a drawer. Sigurdur Oli watched her cast a surreptitious glance at the door, then sit down by the window, light the cigarette and blow the smoke outside. He could not understand people who wanted to kill themselves by smoking. He was convinced that smoking caused more harm than any other single factor in the world, and sometimes lectured on the subject at work. Erlendur, a smoker, paid no heed and once answered that he was convinced that what caused more harm than any other single factor in the world was dyed-in-the-wool killjoys like Sigurdur Oli.

“Elias was a bit late,” Agnes continued. “He wasn’t usually, although he used to dawdle a bit. He was often the last to leave the class, the last to get his books out and that sort of thing. He would be thinking about something completely different. He was a sort of “flight attendant”.” Agnes made a sign for quotation marks with her fingers.

“Flight attendant?”

“Vilhjalmur calls them that, the sports teacher. He’s from the Westman Islands.”

Sigurdur Oli gave her a blank look.

“The children who are last to leave after gym.”

“You moved him to a different seat?” Sigurdur Oli said, at a complete loss about flight attendants and the Westman Islands.

“It’s not uncommon,” Agnes said. “We do it for various reasons. I only did it indirectly because of him. Elias was good at maths. He was way ahead of his classmates, even of the rest of his year, but the boy who sat beside him, poor old Birgir — or Biggi, as he’s known — has trouble puzzling out how two and two could possibly make four.”

Agnes looked Sigurdur Oli in the eye.

“I know I shouldn’t say things like that,” she said sheepishly. Anyway, Biggi’s mother came to see me and told me how he was always complaining about being stupid, and when she wheedled out of him what it was all about he said that Elias was much better than him at everything. His mother was really quite embarrassed about it. It’s not uncommon and there’s often a simple solution. I made Elias sit somewhere else. I put him next to a lovely girl who’s another excellent pupil”

Agnes inhaled the smoke, then blew it out of the window.

“What about Elias? Didn’t he have any problems?”

“Yes,” Agnes said. “He found Icelandic quite difficult. He and his brother used to speak Thai to each other. It’s what they spoke at home. Kids can get confused by that.”

She stubbed out her cigarette.

“So Elias was a bit late this morning?” Sigurdur Oli said.

Holding the cigarette butt between her fingers, Agnes nodded.

“I’d started taking the register when Elias finally showed up. The whole class watched him sit down. His hair was ruffled and he was sleepy, as if he hadn’t fully woken up yet. I asked him if he was all right and he just nodded. But he was very dreamy. He sat there with his bag on the desk, looking out of the window at the playground, and seemed to be in a world of his own. He didn’t hear me when I started teaching. Just sat staring out of the window. I went over and asked what he was thinking about.

“ “About the bird,” he said. “What bird?” “The one I dreamed about,” he said. “The bird that died.””

Agnes put the cigarette butt in her pocket and shut the window. It was cold indoors by now and she shivered when she stood up. A storm was forecast for that evening and night.

“I didn’t ask him any more about it,” she said. “Children often say things like that. I didn’t see him again until lunchtime. In the break and at mealtime. I didn’t notice him in particular. They had an art lesson that morning, maybe you should talk to Brynhildur too. Then they had a double period with me after lunch. The last lesson was gym with Vilhjalmur. He was Elias’s last teacher today.”

“He’s next on the list,” Sigurdur Oli said. “Can you tell me anything about…” He browsed through his notebook looking for the name that the principal had given him. “Kjartan, the Icelandic teacher?”

“Kjartan’s not exactly a barrel of laughs,” Agnes said, “as you’ll soon discover for yourself. He doesn’t keep his views to himself. Quite a pain in the neck really. A former sports star. He used to play handball, then something happened to him. I don’t know exactly what. He’s not stupid though. He mainly teaches the older children.”

With a nod, Sigurdur Oli put his notebook in his jacket and then said goodbye to Agnes. On his way out to the car, his mobile rang. It was his wife Bergthora. She had seen the news on television and knew he would be late home.

“It’s awful,” she said. “Was he really stabbed?”

“Yes,” Sigurdur Oli said. “I have a lot to do and we don’t know where to begin. Don’t wait up for me.”

“Do you have any idea who did it?”

“No. His brother’s gone missing. His elder brother. He might know something. Erlendur thinks so anyway.”

“That he did it?”

“No, but—”

“Isn’t it more likely that he’s been attacked too? Has Erlendur considered that?”

“I’ll pass that on to him,” Sigurdur Oli said drily. Sometimes Bergthora inadvertently revealed that she had more faith in Erlendur than in her husband when it came to criminal investigations. Sigurdur Oli knew that she meant well, but it got on his nerves.

He grimaced. A response like that risked provoking Bergthora’s wrath but he was tired and peevish and knew that she wanted him to come home as soon as possible. They had to talk things over. Bergthora’s suggestion. A few days before she had proposed that they should look into the possibility of adopting a child from abroad. They could not have children together. Sigurdur Oli had been unenthusiastic about the idea. Hesitantly, he suggested that they put up with the status quo for the time being. Their attempts to have a baby had put a strain on their relationship. Sigurdur Oli wanted them to have a year free of worries about children or adoption. Bergthora was more impatient. She yearned to have a baby.

“Oh, of course I shouldn’t go sticking my nose in,” she said over the phone.

“It’s perfectly feasible that his brother was attacked too,” Sigurdur Oli said. “We’re examining all the possibilities.”

There was silence on the line.

“Has Erlendur found that woman?” Bergthora eventually asked.

“No. She’s still missing.”

“Do you know any more about that case?”

“Not really.”

“If I’m asleep, will you wake me up when you get home?”

“I’ll do that,” Sigurdur Oli said, and they rang off.