Odinn, Elias’s father, took an active part in the search. He met Sunee and they had a long talk in private. That evening he had told Erlendur more about their marriage, how he had wanted to keep Elias after the divorce but the boy had wanted to be with his mother, so he had let the matter rest. He could not give Erlendur any details about the new man in Sunee’s life. Nor had she mentioned any boyfriend to the police. Perhaps the relationship had broken down. Odinn knew nothing about it.
Erlendur stopped in front of the block of flats. He drove a Ford Falcon, more than thirty years old, which he had acquired that autumn, black with white interior fittings. He left the engine running and lit a cigarette. It was the last one in the pack. He crumpled the packet and was about to throw it onto the back seat as he used to do in his old car, but refrained and put the empty packet in his overcoat pocket. He treated the Ford with a certain amount of respect.
Erlendur inhaled the blue smoke. Trust, he thought to himself. He had to trust people. His thoughts turned to the woman he had been searching for over the past weeks. Cases piled up on his desk and one of the most serious was connected with marital infidelity, or at least so he thought. It involved a missing person and Erlendur’s theory was that it stemmed from unfaithfulness. Not everyone agreed with him.
The woman, Ellen, had walked out of her home shortly before Christmas and had not been seen since. Before the boy was discovered behind the block of flats, Erlendur had been so absorbed in the case that Sigurdur Oli and Elinborg talked among themselves about the return of his old obsession. Everyone knew that Erlendur could not stand unsolved cases on his desk, especially if they involved missing persons. Where others shook their heads and convinced themselves they had done their best, Erlendur went on delving deeper, refusing to give up.
The woman’s husband was understandably very worried about her. They were both aged around forty and had got married two years before, but both had been married to other people when they met. His former wife was a departmental manager in the civil service and they had three children aged between three and fourteen. Ellen had been married to a banker and had two teenage children with him. Both apparently lived happy lives and lacked for nothing. He had a good job with an ambitious computer company. She worked in tourism, arranging safaris through the Icelandic wilderness. They had first met when he took a small group of Swedish clients on a mystery tour to the Vatnajokull glacier. She arranged the trip and saw him at meetings, and then they both went with the group to the glacier. It resulted in an affair that they kept secret for a year and a half.
At first it was merely an exciting digression from the routine, according to the husband. It was easy for them to meet. She was in the habit of travelling and he could always make up excuses, such as playing golf, which his wife was not interested in. Occasionally he even bought a cup and had it engraved with an inscription such as “Borgarholt Tournament, 3rd prize’, to show to his wife. He found it amusingly ironic. He played golf a lot but rarely won anything.
Erlendur stubbed out his cigarette. He remembered the trophies at the man’s house. He had not thrown them away, and Erlendur wondered why not. They had only been the props for a lie and as such were now superfluous. Unless he kept on lying and told willing listeners that he had won them. Perhaps he kept them as mementos of a successful affair. If he was capable of lying to his wife and having an imaginary triumph engraved on a prize cup, could there be any limit to his lies?
This was the question Erlendur had been wrestling with ever since the man telephoned to report his wife missing. What had begun as a kind of yearning for adventure or change, or even blind love, had ended in tragedy.
Erlendur was startled from his speculations by a knock on the car window. He could not see who was there for the condensation that had built up on the glass, so he opened the door. It was Elinborg.
“I must be getting home,” she said.
“Just get in for a minute,” Erlendur said.
“Mad bugger,” she groaned as she walked round the front of the car and got into the passenger seat.
“What are you doing alone out here in your car?” she asked after a silence.
“I was thinking about the woman who went missing,” Erlendur said.
“You know she committed suicide,” Elinborg said. “We only have to find the body. It’ll be discovered on the beach in Reykjanes next spring. She’s been missing for more than three weeks. No one knows where she is. No one’s hiding her. She hasn’t been in touch with anyone. She had no money on her and we can’t see any card transactions anywhere. She definitely didn’t leave the country. The only trail leads down to the sea.”
Elinborg paused.
“Unless you think her new husband killed her.”
“He had fake trophies made,” Erlendur said. “He knew his ex-wife wasn’t interested in golf, never read about any kind of sports and never talked about golf to anyone. She told me so. And he didn’t show the cups to anyone but her, because he needed to make up an alibi. Not until afterwards. Once he was divorced he started showing them off. If that isn’t being amoral…”
“Are you concentrating on him now?”
“We always come back to the same thing,” Erlendur said.
“Missing persons and crimes,” said Elinborg, who had often heard Erlendur describe disappearances as a “distinctively Icelandic crime’. His theory was that Icelanders were indifferent about people who went missing. In the great majority of cases they believed there were “natural” explanations, in a country with a fairly high suicide rate. Erlendur went further and linked the nonchalance about disappearances to a certain popular understanding, extending back for centuries, about conditions in Iceland, the harsh climate in which people died of exposure and vanished as if the earth had swallowed them up. Nobody was better acquainted than Erlendur with stories of people who had frozen to death in bad weather. His theory was that crimes were easy to commit under the cover of this indifference. At his meetings with Elinborg and Sigurdur Oli and other detectives he had tried to fit the woman’s disappearance to his theory, but his words fell on deaf ears.
“Get yourself home,” Erlendur said. “Take care of your little girl. Has Sunee come back?”
“Yes, they’ve just got here,” Elinborg said. “Odinn was with them but I think he’s left again. Niran is still missing. Oh God, I hope nothing has happened to him.”
“I think he’ll turn up,” Erlendur said.
“You and your missing persons,” Elinborg said, opening the door. “Are you in contact with your daughter these days?”
“Get yourself home,” Erlendur said.
“I was talking to Gudny, the interpreter. She says Sunee emphasised that her boys should be brought up, as she was, to show respect for older people. That’s one of the fundamentals in the Thai upbringing and remains part of them all their lives. Responsibility is another point. The old people, the grandparents and great-grandparents, are the heads of the extended family. Older people pass on their experience to the younger ones, who are supposed to ensure their security in old age. It’s not an obligation but something they take for granted. And the children are …” Elinborg sighed heavily as she thought of Elias.
“She says that in Thailand, grown-ups stand up for children on buses and give them their seats.”
They were silent.
“This is all so new to us. Immigrants, racial issues… we know so little about it,” Erlendur said eventually.
“That’s true. But I do think we’re trying our best”
“Doubtless. Now get yourself home.”
“See you tomorrow,” Elinborg said, then stepped out of the car and slammed the door behind her.