Erlendur sighed.
Who doesn’t want to come home sometimes?
He was flat out on his bed when suddenly he heard a noise in the room. At first he couldn’t tell where it was coming from. He thought the turntable had started up and the needle had missed the record.
Sitting up, he looked at the record player and saw that it was switched off. He heard the same noise again and looked all around. It was dark and he couldn’t see very clearly. A vague light emanated from the lamp post on the other side of the road. He was about to switch on the bedside lamp when he heard the noise again, louder than before. He didn’t dare move. Then he remembered where he had heard the noise before.
He sat up in bed and looked towards the door. In the weak glow he saw a small figure, blue with cold, huddled up in the alcove by the door, staring at him, shaking and shivering so that its head bobbed, sniffling.
The sniffling was the noise that Erlendur recognised.
He stared at the figure and it stared back at him, trying to smile but unable to do so for the cold.
“Is that you?” Erlendur gasped.
In that instant the figure disappeared from the alcove and Erlendur started from his sleep, half out of bed, and stared at the door.
“Was that you?” he groaned, seeing snatches of the dream, the woollen mittens, the cap, the winter jacket and scarf. The clothing they were wearing when they left their house.
The clothing of his brother.
Who sat shivering in the cold room.
26
For a long time he stood in silence at the window, watching the snow fall.
Eventually he sat down to continue watching the tapes. Gudlaugur’s sister didn’t reappear, nor anyone he knew apart from some employees he recognised from the hotel, hurrying to or from work.
The hotel telephone rang and Erlendur answered.
“I reckon Wapshott’s telling the truth,” Elinborg said. “They know him well at the collectors” shops and the flea market.”
“Was he down there at the time he claimed?”
“I showed them photos of him and asked about the times, and they were pretty close. Close enough to stop us putting him at the hotel when Gudlaugur was attacked.”
“He doesn’t give the impression of being a murderer either.”
“He’s a paedophile, but maybe not a murderer. What are you going to do with him?”
“I suppose we’ll send him to the UK.”
The conversation ended and Erlendur sat pondering Gudlaugur’s murder, without reaching any conclusion. He thought about Elinborg and his mind soon returned to the case of the boy whose father abused him and whom Elinborg hated for it.
“You’re not the only one,” Elinborg had said to the father. She wasn’t trying to console him. Her tone was accusatory, as if she wanted him to know he was only one of many sadists who maltreated their children. She wanted to let him hear what he was a part of. The statistics that applied to him.
She had studied the statistics. Well over three hundred children had been examined at the Children’s Hospital in connection with suspected maltreatment over the period 1980-99. Of these, 232 cases involved suspected sexual abuse and 43 suspected physical abuse or violence. Including toxic poisoning. Elinborg repeated the words for emphasis. Including toxic poisoning and wilful neglect. She read from a sheet of paper, calm and collected: head injuries, broken bones, burns, cuts, bites. She reread the list and stared into the father’s eyes.
“It is suspected that two children died from physical violence over that twenty-year period,” she said. “Neither case went to court.”
The experts, she told him, considered that this was an underlying problem, which in plain language meant there were probably many more cases.
“In the UK,” she said, “four children die every week from maltreatment. Four children,” she reiterated. “Every week.
“Do you want to know what reasons are given?” she continued. Erlendur sat in the interrogation room but kept a low profile. He was only there to help Elinborg if necessary, but she did not appear to need any assistance.
The father stared into his lap. He looked at the tape recorder. It wasn’t switched on. It wasn’t a proper interrogation. His lawyer had not been notified but the father had not objected nor complained, yet.
“I shall name some,” Elinborg said, and began listing the reasons that parents are violent to their children: “Stress,” she said. “Financial problems, sickness, unemployment, isolation, poor partner support and momentary insanity.”
Elinborg looked at the father.
“Do you think any of this applies to you? Momentary insanity?”
He didn’t answer.
“Some people lose control of themselves, and there are documented cases of parents who are so disturbed by a guilty conscience that they want to be caught. Does that sound familiar?”
He said nothing.
“They take the child to the doctor, maybe their GP, because it has, let’s say, a persistent cold. But it’s not the cold that motivates them; they want the doctor to notice the wounds on the child, the bruises. They want to get caught. You know why?”
He still sat in silence.
“Because they want to put an end to it. Want someone to intervene. Intervene in a process they have no control over. They are incapable of doing so themselves and hope the doctor will see that something’s wrong.”
She looked at the father. Erlendur watched in silence. He was worried that Elinborg was going too far. She seemed to draw on every ounce of strength to act professionally, to show that she was not upset by the case. It seemed to be a hopeless struggle and he thought she realised. She was too emotional.
“I spoke to your GP ,Elinborg said. “He said he had twice reported the boy’s injuries to the child welfare agency. The agency investigated both times but found no conclusive evidence. It didn’t help that the boy said nothing and you admitted nothing. It’s two different things, wanting to be found out for the violence and confessing to it. I read the reports. In the second one, your son is asked about his relationship with you, but he does not seem to understand the question. They repeat the question: “Who do you trust most of all?” And he replies: “My Dad. I trust my Dad most of all.””
Elinborg paused.
“Don’t you think that’s appalling?” she said.
She looked over towards Erlendur and back to the father.
“Don’t you think that’s just appalling?”
Erlendur thought to himself that there was a time when he would have given the same answer. He would have named his father.
When spring came and the snow thawed his father went up to the mountains to look for his lost son, trying to calculate his route in the storm from where Erlendur had been found. He seemed to have made a partial recovery, but was nevertheless tormented by guilt.
He roamed the moors and the mountains, beyond where there was any chance of his son reaching, but never found anything. He stayed in a tent up there, Erlendur went with him and his mother took part in the search, and sometimes local folk came to help them, but the boy was never discovered. It was crucial to find the body. Until then, he was not dead in the proper sense, only lost to them. The wound remained open and immeasurable sorrow seeped from it.
Erlendur fought that sorrow alone. He felt bad, and not only about losing his brother. His own rescue he attributed to luck, but a strange sense of guilt preyed on him because it was him and not his younger brother who was saved. Not only had he lost his grip on his brother in the storm, he was also haunted by the thought that he should rather have died himself. He was older and was responsible for his sibling. It had always been that way. He had taken care of him. In all their games. When they were home alone. When they were sent off on errands. He had lived up to those expectations. On this occasion he had failed, and perhaps he did not deserve to be saved since his brother had died. He didn’t know why he survived. But he sometimes thought it would have been better if he were the one lying lost on the moor.