The head of forensics appeared at the corner of the house and called to Elínborg. He reminded her to be careful, and not to touch anything.
‘It’s nasty,’ he said.
‘Oh?’
‘Like an abattoir.’
The entrance to the ground-floor flat was at the rear, facing the garden, and was not visible from the road; a paved path led round to the back of the house. As she entered the flat Elínborg saw the body of a young man lying on the living-room floor. His trousers were around his ankles and he was wearing nothing but a blood-soaked T-shirt with the words San Francisco stencilled on it. A little flower was growing up out of the letter F.
2
On her way home Elínborg stopped to buy food. She usually took her time shopping and avoided the no-frills supermarkets, finding that they offered a limited range and quality consistent with the bargain prices. But this time she was in a hurry. Both boys had rung to check that she would be cooking dinner as she had promised and she’d confirmed that she would, only she’d be a bit on the late side. She did her best to have a proper family dinner every day — if only for fifteen minutes while the kids wolfed down their food.
And she knew that if she didn’t cook then the boys would go and buy expensive fast food, wasting what little money they had earned during the summer holidays — or would get their dad to do so. Her husband Teddi, a motor mechanic, was a hopeless cook; he could prepare a sort of porridge, or fry an egg, but that was about it. But he was good at clearing and washing up, and did his bit around the house.
Elínborg looked around for something quick. At the cold counter she saw some minced fish which looked as if it would do, then she grabbed a bag of rice, some onions, a few other things she needed, and within ten minutes was back in the car.
About an hour later they sat down at the kitchen table. The older boy grumbled about the fish-balls, complaining that they’d had fish the day before. He would not eat onion and carefully left it at the side of his plate. The younger boy, like his father, ate whatever was put in front of him. The youngest of the children, Theodóra, had rung to ask if she could have dinner at her friend’s house. They were doing their homework together.
‘Isn’t there anything but soy sauce?’ asked the older boy, Valthór. He was sixteen and had just started high school. He knew exactly what his ambitions were and had opted to complete his secondary education at the Commercial College. Elínborg thought he had a girlfriend, although he gave no hint. He never said anything about himself, but no detective work by his mother had been necessary: when she’d been putting his jeans into the washing machine a packet of condoms had fallen out of the pocket. She did not mention it to him: it was the way of the world, but she was glad he was taking precautions. She had not managed to gain his trust and their relationship could be tense; the boy was fiercely independent and sometimes truculent. It was a character trait that Elínborg disliked, and she did not know where he got it from. Teddi handled him better — father and son shared an interest in cars.
‘No,’ said Elínborg, pouring the dregs of a bottle of white wine into her glass. ‘I couldn’t be bothered to make a sauce.’
She looked at her son and considered yet again whether she ought to confront him about her discovery. But she felt too tired to cope with an argument. She was sure he would say that she was interfering.
‘You said you’d cook steak this evening,’ Valthór reminded her.
‘Who was the dead body you found?’ asked the younger boy, Aron. He had been watching the TV news and had caught sight of his mother outside the house in Thingholt.
‘A man of about thirty,’ Elínborg replied.
‘Was he killed?’ asked Valthór.
‘Yes,’ answered Elínborg.
‘It said on the news that they didn’t know yet whether it was murder,’ commented Aron. ‘They said suspected murder.’
‘The man was murdered,’ said Elínborg.
‘Who was he?’ asked Teddi.
‘No one we know.’
‘How was he killed?’ asked Valthór.
Elínborg looked at him. ‘You know you can’t ask me that.’
Valthór shrugged.
‘Was it drugs?’ asked Teddi. ‘Was that why-?’
‘Will you all please stop talking about it?’ pleaded Elínborg. ‘We don’t know anything yet.’
They knew that they must not press her. Elínborg felt it was inappropriate to discuss her job. The men of the family had always been fascinated by police work, and when she was involved in a major case they could not resist asking her for the details. They even came up with suggestions of their own, but if the investigation dragged on they generally lost interest and left her alone. They watched a lot of American crime drama on TV, and when the boys were smaller they had been excited and impressed that their mum was a detective like the heroes and heroines of the TV shows. But they had soon realised that the stories on screen were a world away from what she told them about her job — and what they saw for themselves. The TV detectives were glamorous, wise-cracking, insightful sharpshooters who traded repartee with plausible villains, engaged in white-knuckle car chases and, with never a hair out of place, talked psychopaths into surrender. In every episode horrifying murders were committed — two, three or four — and in the end the perpetrator was always caught and received his or her just deserts.
The boys were well aware that Elínborg did a lot of overtime. As she said, her basic salary was low so she needed to increase her earnings. She had never been in a car chase, she told them, and she carried no pistol, let alone an automatic rifle like an American cop: the Icelandic police were unarmed. The villains were mostly unfortunates and losers, as Sigurdur Óli called them: the usual suspects. Burglary and car theft made up the majority of cases. Assault. Drugs were the province of the Drug Squad, while serious crimes such as rape landed regularly on Elínborg’s desk. Murder was rare, but the numbers varied each year: some years went by without a single case, while in others there might be up to four. Recently the police had observed a dangerous trend: crime was becoming more organised, more people were carrying weapons, and violence was becoming more extreme.
Elínborg generally came home from work exhausted, made dinner, then spent a little time developing new recipes — cookery was her hobby. Or she simply lay down on the sofa and fell asleep watching TV.
Now and then the boys would look up from their cool crime dramas to glance at their mother. The Icelandic police did not impress them.
Elínborg’s daughter was quite unlike her brothers; from early childhood Theodóra had shown herself to be unusually gifted, and this had led to problems at school. Elínborg was reluctant to move her up a year as she wanted her to develop socially in step with her contemporaries, but the schoolwork was far too easy for her. She needed constant stimulation: she played handball, took piano lessons, and was a Girl Guide. She did not watch much television and had no particular interest in films or video games; she was a bookworm who read from morning to night. When Theodóra had been younger Elínborg and Teddi were kept busy borrowing books for her from the library, and as soon as she was old enough she got her own library card. She was now eleven years old. A few days earlier she had tried to summarise for her mother the main points of A Brief History of Time.
When Elínborg thought the children were out of earshot she would sometimes talk to Teddi about her work colleagues. They knew that one was a man named Erlendur, who was something of an enigma to them: sometimes Elínborg spoke as if she did not like working with him, while at other times it sounded as if she could not do without him. The youngsters had more than once heard their mother wonder aloud how such a failure of a father, such an irascible loner, could be such an insightful detective. She admired his work but she did not necessarily like him. Another person she sometimes discussed in whispers with Teddi was Sigurdur Óli: a bit of a weirdo, so far as the kids could tell. Their mother sometimes groaned when his name came up.