“As if from the grave,” Erlendur said.
They sat in silence and thought about the woman who had gone missing and about Sunee and little Elias in the garden behind the block of flats.
“Do you seriously believe it?” Elinborg asked. About Niran? That he’s to blame for his brother’s death?”
“No,” Erlendur said. “Not at all.”
“But she does seem to be trying to get the boy out of the way, otherwise she’d have stayed at home,” Sigurdur Oli said.
“Perhaps he’s afraid,” Erlendur said. “Perhaps they’re both afraid.”
“Niran could have had an altercation with someone who threatened him,” Elinborg said.
“Possibly,” Sigurdur Oli said.
At least he must have said something to arouse such a strong reaction from Sunee,” Elinborg said.
“How’s Marion doing, by the way?” Sigurdur Oli asked.
“It’ll soon be over,” Erlendur said.
He stood by the window of his office at the police station on Hverfisgata, smoking and watching the drifting snow swirl along the street. The light was fading and the cold continued to tighten its grip on the city as it slowed down towards evening before descending into sleep.
The intercom on his desk crackled and he was informed that a young man was asking for him at the front desk. He gave his name as Sindri Snaer. Erlendur had him shown in immediately and his son soon appeared at the door.
“I thought I’d drop in on you on my way to the meeting,” he said.
“Come in,” Erlendur said. “What meeting?”
“AA,” Sindri said. “It’s down the road here on Hverfisgata.”
“Aren’t you cold, dressed like that?” Erlendur pointed at Sindri’s thin summer jacket.
“Not really,” Sindri said.
“Have a seat. Would you like a coffee?”
“No, thanks. I heard about the murder. Are you handling it?”
“With others.”
“Do you know anything?”
“No.”
Some time earlier, Sindri had moved to Reykjavik from the East Fjords where he had been working in a fish factory. He knew the story of how Erlendur and his brother had been caught in a snowstorm on the moors above Eskifjordur, and how Erlendur went there every couple of years to visit the moors where he almost froze to death as a child. Sindri was not as angry with his father as Eva Lind was; until very recently, he had not wanted anything to do with him. Now, however, he was in the habit of dropping in on him unexpectedly, at home or at work. His visits were generally brief, just long enough for one cigarette.
“Heard anything from Eva?” he asked.
“She phoned. Asked about Valgerdur.”
“Your woman?”
“She’s not my woman,” Erlendur said.
“That’s not what Eva says. She says she’s virtually moved in with you.”
“Is she upset about Valgerdur?”
Sindri nodded and produced a pack of cigarettes.
“I don’t know. Maybe she thinks you’ll put her first.”
“Put her first? Over whom?”
Sindri inhaled the smoke and blew it out through his nose.
“Over her?” Erlendur asked.
Sindri shrugged.
“Has she said anything to you?”
“No,” Sindri said.
“Eva hasn’t been in touch with me for weeks. Apart from that call yesterday. Do you think that’s the reason?”
“Could be. I think she’s getting back on her feet. She’s left that dealer and told me she’s going to get a job again.”
“Isn’t that the same old story?”
“Sure.”
“What about you? How are you doing?”
“Fine,” Sindri said, standing up. He stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray on the desk. “Are you thinking of going out east this summer?”
“I haven’t thought about it. Why?”
“Just wondered. I went to take a look at the house once when I was working out there. I don’t know if I told you.”
“It’s derelict now.”
A pretty depressing place. Probably because I know why you moved away”
Sindri opened the door to the corridor.
“Maybe you could let me know,” he said. “If you do go out east.”
He closed the door quietly behind him without waiting for an answer. Erlendur sat in his chair, staring at the door. For an instant he was back home on the farm where he was born and brought up. The farmhouse still stood up on the moor, abandoned. He had slept in it when he visited his childhood haunts for a purpose that was not entirely clear. Perhaps to hear again the voices of his family and recall what he had once had and loved.
It was in this house, which now stood naked and lifeless and exposed to the elements, that he had first heard that unfamiliar, repulsive word which had become etched in his mind.
Murder.
14
The girl reminded him slightly of Eva Lind, apart from being younger and considerably fatter; Eva had always been painfully thin. The girl was wearing a short leather jacket over a thin green T-shirt, and dirty camouflage trousers, and had a metal piercing through one eyebrow. She had on black lipstick and one of her eyes was circled with black. Sitting down opposite Erlendur, she looked like a real tough cookie. The expression on her face betrayed an obstinate revulsion towards everything that the police could possibly represent. Beside him, Elinborg gave the girl a look that suggested she wanted to stuff her in a washing machine and switch it to rinse.
They had already questioned her elder sister, who seemed to be more or less the role model for the younger one. She was all mouth, a hardened character with a string of convictions for handling and selling drugs. Because she had never been caught with large amounts on her at any one time, she had only received short suspended sentences. As was customary, she refused to reveal the names of the dealers she sold for, and when asked whether she realised what she was doing to her sister by dragging her into the world of drugs, she laughed in their faces and said: “Get a life.”
Erlendur tried to make the younger sister understand that he did not care what she was up to at the school. Drug-dealing was not his department and she would not be in any trouble with him, but if she did not give satisfactory answers to his questions he would have her sent to a smallholding in the middle of nowhere for the next two years.
“Smallholding?” the girl snorted. “What the hell’s that?”
“It’s where milk comes from,” Elinborg said.
“I don’t drink milk,” the girl said, wide-eyed, as if that could be to her advantage.
Looking at her, Erlendur could not help smiling in spite of everything. In front of him sat an example of the most wretched depths that a human life could descend to, a young girl who knew nothing but neglect and squalor. The girl could do little about the state she was in. She was from a typical problem home and had largely been left to bring herself up. Her elder sister, her role model and possibly one of the people who were supposed to look after her, had talked her into selling drugs and naturally into taking them as well. But that was probably not the worst of it. He knew from his own daughter how the debts were paid, what it cost to buy a gram, what they sometimes had to do to buy their bliss, the kind of life this young girl lived.
She was nicknamed Heddy and appeared to fit the profile that the police had of playground dealers. She was finishing compulsory schooling, lived in the neighbourhood and hung around with twenty-year-old men, her big sister’s friends. She was the go-between and they had heard various unsavoury details about her at the school.
“Did you know Elias? The boy who died?” Erlendur asked.
They were sitting in the interview room. With the girl was a child welfare officer. Her parents could not be reached. She knew why she had been called in. The welfare officer spoke to her and told her they were only gathering information.
“No,” Heddy said, “I didn’t know him at all. I don’t know who killed him. It wasn’t me.”