A car drove up to the gate and stopped.
He would probably have to hand in the knife, let the cops know. Or would he? What did it have to do with him? It was a bloody good knife.
The driver spotted him loitering in the hut and hooted.
He did not hear the car horn. He was thinking that the cops might jump to the conclusion that he had killed the boy if he had the knife on him. Would they believe him that he had found the knife in the scrap-metal bin? Had crawled inside because he glimpsed the little wooden handle and was well trained in spotting handy objects? They emptied the container every few days and it had been only about half full. Someone had come to the depot and thrown the knife in the container.
The murderer?
The newsreader had said that the murder weapon might possibly be a knife of this type, and if so the attacker might be connected in some way to the school.
The driver, who was growing extremely impatient, hooted again, this time for longer.
The employee jumped and looked outside.
Maybe they wouldn’t believe him. He had been called a racist once when he described how the Asians brought in bags of cans and lied about the number.
But then again, he might become famous.
He might become famous.
He looked at the driver who glared angrily back at him and beckoned him to come out and attend to him.
He smiled.
The driver emitted a shout of rage when the employee gave him an idiotic grin, then picked up the phone right in front of his eyes and started making a call.
He dialled the emergency number, 112.
He could be famous.
Sigurdur Oli was waiting for Erlendur in the corridor outside Andres’s flat.
“How did it go?” he asked as they walked down the stairs.
“I don’t know,” Erlendur said, preoccupied. “I reckon Andres has really lost the plot.”
“Did you get anything useful out of him? Did he say anything?”
“Nothing about Elias.”
“What then? What did he say?”
“Firstly, he knew the man in the photo,” Erlendur said. “It is his stepfather. He implied that the man had committed a murder a long time ago.”
“What?”
“I don’t know,” Erlendur said. “I don’t know what to believe.”
“What murder?”
“I don’t know.”
“Isn’t it just a wind-up?”
“Probably,” Erlendur said. “But the little he’s said so far has proved accurate.”
“Yes, but that’s not saying much.”
“Then he said he was going to sort it out himself, whatever that means. We should have Andres watched over the next few days.”
“Yes. Anyway, they think they’ve found the knife,” Sigurdur Oli said.
“Really?”
“They just called. Someone disposed of it in a rubbish container. We still have to check whether it’s the same knife but it seems likely. I gather it’s identical. They showed it on the news and some boy turned out to have retrieved it from the tip. We may find some trace elements, though the boy who found it had been using the knife at work and would have given it a good clean first. But forensics always manage to find something with that fancy equipment of theirs.”
They drove to the recycling depot. The forensics team had closed the place to traffic and a yellow police cordon flapped in the wind. The technicians were searching for clues as to who had thrown the knife away, but only for form’s sake. Two days had elapsed since the employee found the knife. Countless people and cars had passed through the depot since the murder was committed and none of the employees had spotted anything out of the ordinary. No one had been seen sneaking around the container. There was no CCTV on the gate. The police had nothing to go on.
They had contacted the woodwork teacher Egill about the discovery. He was shown the knife and judged that it could well have come from the carpentry knife store. He pointed out, however, that similar knives could probably be found in every school workshop in the country.
Erlendur went to question the young employee who had found the knife and soon established that he was telling the truth. He asked Erlendur if he could sell his story to the papers; did Erlendur know whether the tabloids would pay for it and, if so, how much. He had been carrying the knife and using it, you see, ever since he found it.
Prat, Erlendur thought.
He came home some time later. It was late and he had stopped off at a twenty-four-hour convenience store to buy a ready-meal of Icelandic stew. He stuck it in the microwave and set the timer to three minutes. Valgerdur phoned and they talked; he told her the latest on the investigation without divulging too much. She asked if he had been in touch with Eva Lind. Valgerdur told him she had to take an extra shift and would not be able to see him tonight after all, so they decided to meet the following evening when she was free.
“Come over to mine,” she insisted.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll come. I maybe late though.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said.
They rang off.
He took the stew out of the microwave, fetched a spoon and sat peacefully slurping it out of the plastic tray at the kitchen table. He tried not to brood on the cases he was handling, but his thoughts kept slipping back to Elias in the garden behind the block of flats. He wondered about the men who brought as many as three or four women like Sunee into the country, married them, then dumped them when the fun was over or when the women walked out on them because they were only really interested in acquiring residency and a work permit. How did such things happen? He thought about Niran whom Sunee had summoned after many years” separation, but who could not find his feet in the new country, so ended up an outsider, seeking out the company of kids with the same kind of background and experience, kids who could not come to terms with their fate, could not understand the country or its language and history, and anyway had little interest in understanding any of it. He sympathised with them.
He thought about Sunee and her grief.
When his mobile started ringing he assumed it must be Sigurdur Oli calling so late but the voice was a woman’s, whispering as if she was using the phone in secret. Erlendur could not hear what she was saying.
“What?” he said. “Sorry… ?”
“… and take… But he won’t. He absolutely refuses. I’ve tried to talk to him. It’s hopeless.”
“I’ve had enough of this,” Erlendur said when he realised who it was. He decided to try a new approach with this woman who he had been searching for since before Christmas. “Either come and see me or forget it. I can’t be doing with this sort of nonsense!”
“I’m telling you, he won’t—”
“I think…,” Erlendur said.
“I just need more time.”
“I think you should stop messing me about like this.”
“I’m sorry,” the voice said. “It’s just so hard. I don’t want it to be like this.”
“What’s the point of all this?” Erlendur asked. “What are you both up to? What nonsense is this?”
The woman did not answer.
“Come and talk to me.”
“I keep trying to make him. But he won’t”
“Stop being so silly,” Erlendur said. “You should go home to him and stop bothering me. It’s getting ridiculous!”
There was silence on the other end.
“I went and saw your husband,” Erlendur said.
Still the woman said nothing.
“Yes, I went and saw him. I don’t know what you’re both plotting and it’s nothing to do with me. Just stop making these calls. Stop bothering me with this stupid nonsense.”
There was a long silence.
Then the woman hung up.
Erlendur stared at the phone in his hand. He had no idea what he had done. He half expected the woman to call straight back but when nothing happened he put the phone down on the kitchen table and stood up. Taking the book he had read aloud to Marion Briem at the hospital, he settled down in his armchair. It contained stories of travellers” ordeals and fatal accidents in the East Fjords. He weighed the book in his hands as he had done so often before and opened it at the account he knew so well, but which contained only a fragment of the true story.