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.