And Niran was like that?” Sigurdur Oli said.
“Well, I shouldn’t really talk about individual pupils but of course this is a special case. He doesn’t seem interested in learning the language. Can hardly read Icelandic. Doesn’t understand it too well. It’s difficult for those poor kids when the languages are so different. They speak a tonal language and the meaning of words changes with the pitch. Icelandic’s completely different, of course.”
“You say Elias was a good pupil,” Sigurdur Oli said.
“He was,” Agnes said. “His mother clearly knows what she wants. She wants her sons to get an education and they are sharp, despite being different in many ways.”
“Different how?”
“I know Elias much better,” Agnes said, “but I’ve taught his brother a bit as well. Elias is charming and tries to please everyone, he’s always smiling and friendly, although I don’t feel he has many friends, poor boy”
“They’ve just moved into this neighbourhood,” Sigurdur Oli said.
“His brother’s quite different,” Agnes said.
“How?”
“I don’t know him that well, like I said, but I get the impression that he’s much tougher. He’s not afraid to stand up for himself and he’s proud of his origins, proud of being Thai. You don’t find that among the children very often, not among any of them really; they seem to know precious little about their origins. I noticed that about him once when he was talking about his great-grandfather. Niran had great respect for him. And for his other relatives in Thailand.”
Sunee’s next-door neighbour was a man of about seventy who lived alone. He had not heard the news and said he was shocked to see the police cars and people milling around the block of flats when he came home. He wrangled with the police officers at the entrance when they wanted to know who he was and where he lived, because he did not like that kind of interrogation. The police would not tell him what had happened. So he was rather distraught when Erlendur greeted him on the landing below the top floor and introduced himself as a detective with the Reykjavik CID.
“What’s going on here?” the man asked, short of breath from climbing the stairs. He held a plastic bag in one hand, was of average height and wore a shabby suit and a tie that did not match, underneath a green anorak. Erlendur thought he looked haggard, like many of the solitary individuals he encountered. The man was thin, with a receding hairline, fairly large protruding eyes and delicate eyebrows below a high, intelligent forehead.
Erlendur explained the situation to him and saw that he took the news badly.
“Elias!” he groaned, looking over at the door to Sunee’s flat. “What are you saying? The poor child! Who did it? Have you found the person who did it?”
Erlendur shook his head. “Do you know the family?” he asked.
“I don’t believe it. All those police cars … because of Elias … What does his mother say, the poor woman? She must be devastated.”
“They’ve been your next-door neighbours for . . . ?” Erlendur began.
“Who could do a thing like that?”
“You must have got to know them,” Erlendur said.
“Eh? Oh yes, I’ve got to know them. Elias sometimes pops out to the shop for me, such a dear boy. He’s up and down these stairs in a flash. I just can’t believe this.”
“I need to ask you a couple of questions, if you don’t mind,” Erlendur said. “As their neighbour.”
“Me?”
“It won’t take a moment”
“Come in then,” the man said, taking out a bunch of keys. He switched on the light inside his flat. Erlendur noticed a large bookcase, an old three-piece suite and a worn carpet. Two walls of the sitting room were decorated with white ribbed wallpaper, which was swollen in places and beginning to turn very yellow. The man, whose name was Gestur according to the small copper plate on the door, closed the door behind them and offered Erlendur a seat on the sofa. He sat down in the chair facing him. He had taken off his thick green anorak, put the plastic bag in the kitchen and turned on the coffee maker.
“What can you tell me about Sunee and her boys?” Erlendur asked.
“I have nothing but good to say of them. She works hard, their mother, she has to, being on her own like that. The boys have been nothing but polite to me. Elias has run errands and Niran . . . Where’s Niran? How’s he taking this?” Gestur asked with apparent concern.
Erlendur hesitated.
“Surely he hasn’t been attacked too?” Gestur groaned.
“No,” Erlendur said, “but we don’t know where he is. Do you have any ideas?”
“About where he could be? No, I don’t have a clue.”
Erlendur was deeply concerned about the victim’s brother but could only hope that he would come home or be found as soon as possible. He felt it was premature to put his photograph on television.
“Hopefully he’s just hanging around somewhere,” he said. “What kind of relationship did the two brothers have?”
“He really looked up to Niran — Elias, I mean. I think he worshipped his brother. He was always talking about him. What Niran said and did. How Niran won computer games and how good he was at football and how he took him to the cinema with his friends even though they were all older. Niran knew everything and could do anything in Elias’s eyes. They’re like chalk and cheese, the way brothers can be. Elias is quick to make friends but Niran is slower to get to know and more wary of people. Sharp as a knife. On the ball and quick to learn. He doesn’t trust everything he sees and hears, plays it cautiously.”
“You seem to know them very well.”
“Elias is a bit lonely, the poor lad. He preferred living where they were before. Their mother often gets home late from work and Elias has been hanging around by himself in the corridor or down in the storage rooms and passages in the basement”
“What about Sunee?”
“There ought to be more people who work as hard as she does. Sunee provides for herself and her sons through sheer hard graft. I admire her.”
“Is she completely on her own?”
“As far as I know. I understand her ex-husband has little to do with her.”
“Did Elias have any contact with anyone else on this staircase?”
“I don’t think so. There isn’t much contact between the tenants. These are all rented flats and you know the kind of people who are in the rental market. Always coming and going, individuals and couples and single mothers like Sunee, even single fathers, students. Some get evicted. Others pay their rent on time.”
“So does someone own the entire block?”
“All the flats on this floor at least, some speculator I imagine. I’ve never seen him. When I moved in a woman from the rental agency handled the paperwork and gave me an account number. If anything crops up I get in touch with the agency.”
“And the rent, is it high?”
“I could well imagine it is for Sunee. Unless she’s got a different deal from mine.”
Erlendur stood up. The coffee was untouched in the coffee maker in the kitchen. The aroma filled the whole flat. Gestur stood up as well. He had not offered Erlendur any coffee. Erlendur peered into the dim hallway entrance. There was a peephole in the door, just above the nameplate. Looking through it, he could see the entrance to Sunee and the boys” flat. Erlendur looked Gestur in the eye and thanked him.
5
Erlendur’s mobile rang yet again. He did not recognise the number but he knew at once who was calling when he heard the voice.
“Is it a bad moment?” Eva Lind asked.
“No,” said Erlendur, who had not heard from his daughter for some time.
“I saw about that kid on TV,” Eva said. “Are you on that case?”