Arctic Chill

8

The boys were playing indoor football with great zeal. They fought over every single ball and did not flinch from playing dirty. Sigurdur óli saw one of them go in for a sliding tackle that could have broken his opponent's leg. When the victim crashed to the floor he yelled at the top of his voice and clutched his ankle.

'Watch out, lads!' the coach shouted into the pitch. 'None of that, Geiri! Come on, Raggi,' he called to the boy who was climbing to his feet after the tackle.

He sent on a substitute for Raggi and the game continued just as violently as before. There were far more boys at football practice than could play at once, so the coach made frequent substitutions. Sigurdur óli watched from the sidelines. The coach was Vilhjálmur, Elías's sports teacher. He had an extra part-time job as a boys' football trainer, as his wife had told Sigurdur óli when he stood on their doorstep. She had directed him to the sports hall.

The practice was coming to an end. Vilhjálmur blew the whistle that hung around his neck and a boy who seemed unhappy with the result gave the ball an almighty kick, hitting one of his teammates on the back of the head. After some commotion, Vilhjálmur blew his whistle again and called out to the boys to stop that nonsense and get along to the showers. The two boys stopped their brawling.

'Isn't that a bit rough?' Sigurdur óli asked as he walked over to Vilhjálmur. The boys stared at the policeman. They had never seen such a well-dressed man in the hall before.

'They get quite boisterous sometimes,' Vilhjálmur said, shaking Sigurdur óli's hand. A short, chubby man aged about thirty, he gathered up the goalpost cones and balls and threw them into a storeroom that he then locked. 'These kids need toughening up. They come here fat and lazy from pizza and computer games and I get them to take some exercise. Are you here about Elías?' he said.

'You were his last teacher today, I understand,' Sigurdur óli said.

Vilhjálmur had heard about the murder and said he could hardly believe the news.

'You feel completely thrown by something like this,' he said. 'Elías was a great kid – dedicated to sport. I think he really enjoyed playing football. I don't know what to say.'

'Did you notice anything special or unusual about him today?'

'It was just a normal day. I made them run a bit and vault over the box, then we split them up into teams. They enjoy football most. Handball too.'

'Did Elías go straight home from school, do you think?'

'I have no idea where he went,' Vilhjálmur said.

'Was he the last to leave?'

'Elías was always the last to leave,' Vilhjálmur said.

'Was he a "flight attendant"?'

Are you from the Westman Islands too?'

'No. Not exactly. You're ... ?'

'We moved here when I was twelve.'

'Was Elías hanging around then, or ... ?'

'That's just the way he was,' Vilhjálmur said. 'He took a long time to leave. He was slow at changing his clothes. He sort of dithered about and you had to chivvy him along.'

'What was he doing then?'

'Just preoccupied, in a world of his own.'

'Today too?'

'Probably, though I didn't particularly notice. I had to rush off to a meeting.'

'Did you see anyone waiting for him outside? Notice if he met anyone? Did he seem afraid to go home? Could you sense anything like that about him?'

'No, nothing. I didn't see anything unusual outside. The kids were heading off home. I don't think anyone was waiting for him. But then, I wasn't thinking along those lines. You don't think about that sort of thing.'

'Not until afterwards,' Sigurdur óli said.

'Yes, of course. But as I say, I didn't notice anything unusual. He displayed no signs of fear during the lesson. Didn't say anything to me. He was just the same as always. After all, nothing of that kind has ever happened here before. Never. I can't understand anyone wanting to attack Elías, simply can't understand it. It's horrific'

'Do you know the Icelandic teacher at the school, a man by the name of Kjartan?'

'Yes.'

'Apparently he has certain views about immigrants.'

'That's putting it mildly'

'Do you agree with him?'

'Me? No, he strikes me as a nutjob. He ...'

'He what?'

'He's rather bitter,' Vilhjálmur said. 'Have you met him?'

'No.'

'He's an old sporting hero,' Vilhjálmur said. 'I remember him well from handball. Damn good player. Then something happened, he was badly injured and had to quit. Just as he was turning professional. He'd been signed up by a Spanish club. I think that festers. He's not a likeable sort of character.'

Shouts and cries came from the boys' changing rooms along the corridor. Vilhjálmur set off in that direction to calm the boys down.

'Do you know what happened?' he said over his shoulder.

'Not yet,' Sigurdur óli said.

'Hope you catch the bastard. Was it racially motivated?'

'We don't know anything.'



Kjartan's wife was in her early thirties, slightly younger than the Icelandic teacher himself, and rather scruffily dressed in jogging pants that detracted unnecessarily from her looks. Two children stood behind her. Sigurdur óli cast a glance inside the dim flat. The couple did not appear particularly house-proud. Instinctively, he thought about his own flat where everything was spick and span. The thought sent a warm feeling through him as he stood outside in the cold, pierced by the bitter wind. This flat was one of four in the building, on the ground floor.

The woman called her husband and he came to the door, also wearing jogging pants and a vest that looked two sizes too small and emphasised its owner's expanding paunch. He seemed to make do with shaving once a week and there was a bad-tempered look on his face that Sigurdur óli could not quite fathom, something about his eyes that expressed antipathy and anger. He remembered having seen that expression before, that face, and recalled Vilhjálmur's words about the fallen sports star.

A face from the past, Erlendur would have said. He sometimes made remarks that Sigurdur óli disliked because he did not understand them, snatches from those old tales that were Erlendur's only apparent interest in life. The two men were poles apart in their thinking. While Erlendur sat at home reading old Icelandic folklore or fiction, Sigurdur óli would sit in front of the television watching American cop shows with a bowl of popcorn in his lap and a bottle of Coke on the table. When he joined the police force he modelled himself on such programmes. He was not alone in thinking that a job with the police could sharpen one's image. Recruits still occasionally turned up for work dressed like American TV cops, in jeans and back-to-front baseball cap.

'Is it about the boy?' Kjartan said, making no move to invite Sigurdur óli in out of the cold.

'About Elías, yes.'

'It was only a matter of time,' Kjartan said with an intolerant ring to his voice. 'They shouldn't let those people into the country,' he went on. 'It only causes conflict. This had to happen sooner or later. Whether it was this boy in this school in this district at this time or someone else at some other time ... it makes no difference. It would have happened and will happen again. You can bet'

Sigurdur óli began to recall more of Kjartan's story as the man stood in front of him, feet apart, with one hand on the doorframe and the other on the door, his gut hanging out under his vest. Sigurdur óli was a keen follower of sports, although he was more interested in American football and baseball than Icelandic sports. But he remembered this man as the great hope of Icelandic handball, recalled how he had already been in the national team when he was injured during a game in his early twenties and had to quit. The media made a big deal of him for a while, then Kjartan disappeared from the scene as quickly as he had been swept into it.

'So you think the attack was racially motivated?' Sigurdur óli said, thinking how difficult it must have been for the man to say goodbye to professional handball. He might have been coming to the end of a star-studded career now had he not been injured, instead he was teaching at a secondary school.

'Is there any other possibility?' Kjartan asked.

'You've taught Elías.'

'Yes, as a substitute teacher.'

'What kind of a boy was he?'

'I don't know him in the slightest. I heard he'd been stabbed. I don't know any more than that. There's no point asking me. It's not my job to take care of those kids. I'm not working at a kids' playground!'

Sigurdur óli gave him a searching look.

'There are three like him in his class,' Kjartan continued. 'More than thirty in the school as a whole. I've stopped noticing when new ones enrol. They're everywhere. Have you been to the flea market? It's like Hong Kong! No one pays any attention to it. No one pays any attention to what's becoming of our country'

'I—'

'Do you think it's okay?'

'That's none of your business,' Sigurdur óli said.

'I can't help you,' Kjartan said, preparing to shut the door.

'Do you think it's too much to ask you to answer a few questions?' Sigurdur óli said. 'We could deal with it down at the station otherwise. You're welcome to come with me. It's more comfortable there too.'

'Don't you go threatening me,' Kjartan said, undaunted. 'I'm telling you I know nothing about this matter.'

'He might have been afraid of you,' Sigurdur óli said. 'You don't exactly seem to have been friendly towards him. Or to any of the other children you teach.'

'Hey,' Kjartan protested. 'I didn't do anything to the boy. I don't keep an eye out for the kids after school. They're not my responsibility.'

'If I find out you threatened him in some way because you regarded him as a foreigner, we'll be having another chat.'

'Wow... I'm scared shitless,' Kjartan said. 'Leave me alone! I don't know what happened to the boy; it's nothing to do with me.'

'What about this clash you had with a teacher called Finnur?' Sigurdur óli asked.

'Clash?'

'In the staff room,' Sigurdur óli said. 'What happened?'

'There was no clash,' Kjartan said. 'We had a bit of an argument. He seems to think it's all right: the more foreigners that pour into this country the better. He never produces anything but that old left-wing bollocks. I told him so. He got a bit angry.'

'You think that's acceptable, do you?' Sigurdur óli asked.

'What?'

'Talking that way about people? Are you sure you're in the right line of work?'

'What bloody business is it of yours? Are you in the right line of work, sniffing around people who are none of your business?'

'Maybe not,' Sigurdur óli said. 'Weren't you in handball in the old days?' he asked. 'A bit of a star?'

Kjartan hesitated for a second. He seemed poised to say something, an insult to show that he did not care what Sigurdur óli said or thought of him. But nothing occurred to him and he shut the door without saying a word.

'Great role model you would have made,' Sigurdur óli said to the door.



Later that evening Erlendur drove back to the block of flats. The search for Niran had proved fruitless. Sunee and her brother had returned home. The police were still looking for the boy and the public had been asked to help by telephoning in information and even taking a walk around their neighbourhoods to look for a South East Asian teenager, a fairly small fifteen-year-old boy in a blue anorak and black woolly hat.

ódinn, Elías'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 Elías 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. ódinn 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 óli and Elínborg 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 Vatnaj?kull 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 Elínborg.

'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,' Elínborg 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.'

Elínborg 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 Elínborg, 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 Elínborg and Sigurdur óli 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,' Elínborg said. 'ódinn 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,' Elínborg 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 ...' Elínborg sighed heavily as she thought of Elías.

'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,' Elínborg said, then stepped out of the car and slammed the door behind her.

Erlendur wished he had another cigarette. He dreaded having to go back to see Sunee. He thought about his daughter, Eva Lind. She had dropped in at Christmas but he had not seen her since. The man she was with had been sent to prison just before the Christmas holidays and she thought Erlendur could do something about it. Her partner supplied her with dope. He was given three years for smuggling cocaine and ecstasy into the country and Eva foresaw hard times while he was in confinement.

Eva and Erlendur's relationship had gone from bad to worse recently. Erlendur could not really see why. For a long time, Eva had shown no willingness to cut back on her drug habit and had distanced herself from him. She had been in rehab, but not of her own accord, and when that was over she immediately slipped back into her old ways. Sindri, her brother, tried to help her, but to no avail. The siblings' relationship had always been close. But it was up and down between Erlendur and Eva, generally depending on Eva's mood. Sometimes she was fine, talked to her father and let him know how she was coping. At other times she had no contact and did not want anything to do with him.

Erlendur locked the Ford and looked up to the top of the six-storey block of flats that towered menacingly into the darkness. He made a mental note to talk to the landlord in case he could shed any light on Sunee and the boys' circumstances. Yet again he delayed going up to her, and instead walked round to the back of the block and into the garden. The search of the crime scene had been completed. Forensics had packed up their equipment and everything was as before, as if nothing had ever happened at the site.

He walked out to the swings. The frost bit his face and he thrust his hands deep into his pockets and stood motionless for a long time. Earlier that day he had heard that his old boss from the Reykjavík CID, Marion Briem, had been admitted to the terminal ward of the National Hospital. It was many years since Marion had retired, and now the life was slowly ebbing from his old colleague. Their relationship could hardly be described as friendship. Erlendur had always been rather irritated by Marion, probably because Marion was almost the only person in his life who did not tire of asking questions and forcing Erlendur to justify himself. Marion was also one of the most inquisitive creatures ever to walk the earth, a living database of Icelandic crime, and had often proved useful to Erlendur, even in retirement. Marion had no relatives. Erlendur came closest to being at once friend, colleague and family.

A freezing wind pierced Erlendur's clothes as he stood by the swings where Elías had died, and his mind roamed over the mountains and moors to another child who had once slipped from his grasp and now followed him through life like a sad shadow.

Erlendur looked up. He knew that he could not postpone sitting down with Sunee any longer. Turning round, he strode out of the garden. When he reached the entrance to the flats he noticed that the door to the rubbish store was open. Not wide open, just ajar. He had not noticed the rubbish store before. The door was set into the wall by the entrance and painted the same colour as the block of flats itself. Although the door had come open, that need not mean anything. Anyone could have gone there to empty their rubbish into the bins. The policeman who was guarding the door was standing inside the hallway, warming himself.

After a moment's pause Erlendur went over to the rubbish store and threw the door wide open. It was pitch dark inside and he searched for the switch to turn on the lights. A naked bulb hung from the ceiling. Dustbins stood in rows along the walls, and beneath the chute was a bin chock-a-block with rubbish. It was cold and there was a sour stench of old food and other refuse. Erlendur hesitated. Then he turned off the light and pulled the door to.

It was then that he heard the whimpering.

It took him a while to work out what the sound was. Perhaps he was mistaken. Perhaps he had not interpreted it correctly. He tore open the door and switched the light back on.

'Is there anyone in there?' he called.

Receiving no answer, he went inside the storage room, shifting dustbins about and searching between them. He pushed the bin away from beneath the chute and behind it discovered a black-haired boy sitting huddled up with his head buried between his knees, as if trying to make himself invisible.

'Niran?' Erlendur said.

The boy did not move.

'Is that you, Niran?'

The boy did not answer him. Erlendur knelt down and tried to make him look up, but the boy buried his head even deeper between his knees. He was clasping his legs together in a locked position that could not be budged.

'Come along out of here,' Erlendur said, but the boy behaved as if he was not there.

'Your mother's looking for you.'

Erlendur took hold of the boy's hand. It was as cold as an icicle. The boy bowed his head down to his chest. It was as if he thought Erlendur would just go away and leave him be.

After a while Erlendur felt he had tried everything, so he stood up slowly and walked backwards out of the rubbish store. He rang Sunee's entryphone. The interpreter answered. Erlendur said he thought he had found Niran. He was safe but his mother would have to come down and talk to him. Sunee, her brother and mother-in-law and the interpreter soon came running down the stairs. Erlendur met them at the door and showed Sunee alone the way into the storage room.

The moment she saw the boy hunched up beneath the chute she gave a little shriek, ran over to him and hugged him. Then for the first time the boy released his grip on himself, and burrowed into his mother's arms.



Some time later that evening Erlendur returned home to his lair, as Eva Lind had once called his flat when he thought that their relationship was improving. She said that he crawled into it to celebrate his misery. Those were not the words she used; Eva had a very limited and monotonous vocabulary, but that was the gist of it. He did not switch on the light The illumination from the street cast a pale glow into the living room where his books were and he sat down in his armchair. He had often sat alone in the dark, looking out of the large living-room window. When he sat like that, looking out, there was nothing in the window but the endless sky. Occasional stars glittered in the winter stillness. Sometimes he watched the moon riding past his window in all its cold and distant glory. Sometimes the sky was dark and overcast, like now, and Erlendur stared into the blackness as if wanting to be able to disperse his weary thoughts out into the void.

He pictured Elías lying in the back garden of the flats, and once again an old image entered his mind, of another boy who all those years ago, that unfathomable eternity, had died in a raging blizzard. It was his brother, eight years old. He did not realise until he was sitting at home in his own living room, alone in the calm of night, how profound an effect the discovery of the boy's body by the block of flats had had on him. Erlendur could not help thinking about his own brother. The wound that his death left behind had never healed. Guilt had gnawed at Erlendur ever since, because he felt that he was to blame for his younger brother's fate. He was supposed to take care of him, and he had failed. No one but Erlendur himself made this unfair judgement. No one had ever mentioned that he could have done better. If he had not lost his grip on his brother in the blizzard, they would have been found together when the search party was sent out and Erlendur was dug out of the snowdrift in remarkably good shape.

He thought back to Niran when Sunee led him in tears out of the rubbish store. Did he feel that he should have been his brother's keeper?

Erlendur heaved a sigh and closed his eyes. All those endless thoughts that cut into his mind like shards of glass on his descent into a dreamless sleep.



He thinks about Elínborg snuggling up exhausted against her little daughter, as if to protect her from all harm.

He sees a worried-looking Sigurdur óli creeping into his house, taking care not to wake Bergthóra.

Elías lies in the back garden of the flats in a ripped anorak, his broken eyes watching the snow drifting past.

ódinn paces the floor on Snorrabraut.

Niran lies in his room, his lips trembling in silent anguish.

Sunee sits alone on the sofa, weeping quietly beneath the yellow dragon.

The woman he is searching for bobs gently in the lapping waves.

His eight-year-old brother lies frozen in a blizzard that will last for ever.

In a sun-drenched dream, a little bird flicks its tail in its new bird-house and sings for its friend.