“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.