Arctic Chill (27 page)

Hallur and Ágúst were taken straight in for questioning and later that night committed to the care of the Reykjavík Child Welfare Agency. The police interviewed both sets of parents as well and ordered that they be detained in custody. They blamed each other for the idea of covering up the boys' crime and both they and their sons gave conflicting accounts as to who had actually wielded the knife. After three days of interrogation Hallur finally confessed and the detectives were gradually able to piece together a picture of how Elías died.

The boys had all lied to the police. Hallur saw Anton with the knife that Doddi had stolen and offered to swap a recent computer game for it. All four met at Anton's house, where he tried out the computer game Hallur had brought along. They discussed doing a swap but nothing came of it. Thorvaldur and Anton admitted that they had scratched Kjartan's car on the morning of the day Elías was attacked and afterwards decided to get rid of the knife. Meeting Hallur in the school playground, they decided to hand it over to him.

Hallur had arranged to meet Ágúst straight after school. They were in the mood for trouble and went into a supermarket where they shoplifted some CDs and sweets. It was something they did from time to time, although they received plenty of pocket money from their parents. This was different. 'For the kicks,' Ágúst said, and could not give any better explanation. They were a bit high on adrenalin when they came out of the supermarket and saw Elías ahead of them with the large schoolbag on his back and the anorak askew on his little shoulders.

Perhaps he caught their attention because he was dark-skinned. Perhaps that was irrelevant. Ágúst said during questioning that of course they would have done the same if he had been a white boy. Hallur shrugged and could not answer the same question. He could not really explain what sort of state they were in. They were buzzing, he said. Excited after the shoplifting. Up for anything. They didn't know the boy who caught their eye. Didn't know his name was Elías. Hallur couldn't remember seeing him before, even though he attended the same school. They had no score to settle with him. Elías had never crossed their path before. He had never done anything to them.

They were buzzing.

They caught up with Elías where the path was at its narrowest and the concealing bushes rose highest. Dusk was falling and it was cold but they were feverish with excitement. They asked his name and if he had any money and what he was doing in Iceland anyway.

Elías said that he did not have any money. He tried to tear himself free but Ágúst held on to him. Hallur took out the knife to frighten him. They didn't mean to hurt him, they were just messing about. Hallur threatened him with the knife. Brandished it in his face.

Elías struggled even more frantically when he saw the knife. He began to call for help and Ágúst put a hand over his mouth. Elías fought for all he was worth. Ágúst shouted to warn Hallur that he was going to let him go when Elías bit his hand, hurting him so badly that he yelled out.

Hallur had hold of Elías's anorak and before he knew what he was doing he had stabbed him with the knife. Elías stopped struggling. He fell silent, clutched his stomach and crumpled onto the path.

Hallur and Ágúst looked at one another, then set off at a run down the path, back the way they had come.

They took the bus to Ágúst's house. They were in shock. Ágúst's father was home and without a moment's hesitation they poured out the whole story. Hallur's hand was covered in blood. He had thrown away the knife on the way home. They said that they had stabbed a boy on the path by the school. They didn't mean to. It was an accident. They never meant to hurt the boy. It just happened. Ágúst's father stared at them, stunned.

Ágúst's mother came home at that point and immediately saw that something serious had happened. When she heard what the boys had done she wanted to call the police straight away. Her husband prevaricated.

'Did anyone see you?' he asked the boys.

They shook their heads.

'No, no one,' Hallur said.

'Are you sure?'

'Yes.'

'Where's the knife?'

Hallur described the place.

'Wait here,' Ágúst's father said. 'Don't do anything till I get back.'

'What are you doing?' his wife moaned.

He took her aside, out of earshot of the boys.

'Think about it,' he said. 'Think about the boys' future while I'm away. Call my sister. Tell her to come round and bring Dóri with her.'

He went out and returned three-quarters of an hour later with the knife. He announced that the boy was not on the path and they breathed easier. Maybe he was all right.

At that moment Hallur's parents arrived and were told what had happened. They couldn't believe their ears at first until they saw the boys' expressions and sensed Ágúst's parents' helplessness in the face of the unthinkable. They looked at their son, and all of a sudden they knew that it was true. Something horrific and incomprehensible had happened and nothing would ever be the same again.

'We didn't mean to do it,' Hallur said.

'It just happened,' Ágúst added.

They had nothing else to say.

'So it wasn't Ágúst who stabbed him?' his mother asked.

'They were both involved,' Hallur's father said firmly. 'Your son was holding him.'

'Your son stabbed him.'

A row broke out and the boys looked on. The brother and sister, Hallur's mother and Ágúst's father, eventually managed to calm down their spouses. Ágúst's father proposed that they should not go to the police yet.

They quarrelled again. In the end, the fathers went out looking for Elías. If he had disappeared from the path it might mean that he was all right. As they drove through the neighbourhood they noticed police cars parked by a block of flats. Cruising slowly past they saw uniformed officers in the garden of the block and a number of squad cars, their blue lights reflecting off the surrounding buildings in the winter dusk.

They drove away.

They waited at Ágúst's house for the news, caught between hope and fear. The radio reported that Elías had been found dead. The police were refusing to release any details but the attack seemed to have been entirely unprovoked and might conceivably have had a racist motive. It was not known who was behind the deed and no witness to the incident had yet come forward.

In the end they agreed to wait. Hallur's father would dispose of the knife. The cousins were not to meet for a while. They would behave as if nothing had happened. The damage had been done, their boys had killed another boy, but surely it was an accident rather than premeditated murder. It had started out as a harmless prank. They hadn't meant to hurt the boy. Of course they would never be able to forget what had happened but they had to think about their sons' future, at least for the time being. Wait and see.

Erlendur took part in cross-examining Ágúst's mother. She had been seeing a psychiatrist since the arrest and was on tranquillisers.

'Of course we should never have done it,' she said. 'But we weren't thinking of ourselves, we were thinking of the boys.'

'Of course you were thinking of yourselves,' Erlendur said.

'No,' she said. 'It wasn't like that.'

'Did you really think you'd be able to live with that on your conscience?' Erlendur asked.

'No,' she said. 'Not me. I...'

'You called me,' Erlendur said. 'You were the weakest link.'

'I can't describe it,' she said, rocking in her seat. 'I was suicidal. It was a mistake. Not a minute has passed since it happened when I haven't thought about that poor little boy and his family. Of course it was an error of judgement on our parts, a moral lapse but—' She broke off.

'I know we shouldn't have done it. I know it was wrong and I tried to tell you. But you . . . you reacted so strangely.'

'I know,' Erlendur said. 'I thought you were somebody else.'

'We believed them when they said it was an accident. Things like that can happen. We wouldn't have done it otherwise. We would never have tried to cover up a murder. My husband said that every parent would understand what we did. Understand our reaction.'

'I don't believe that,' Erlendur said. 'You wanted it to go
away, to disappear as if it had nothing to do with you. You added outrage
to an already terrible crime.'

When it was all over, the police had obtained their confessions and the case was officially deemed to be closed, Erlendur sat down with Hallur in an interview room at the place where he was being held by the Child Welfare Agency. They talked over the incident at length and Erlendur asked why they had decided to attack Elías. What had given them the idea.

'Just, you know,' Hallur said.

'You know what?'

'He was there.'

'That was the only reason?'

'We were bored.'

Erlendur held the urn in his hand, a plain, green ceramic pot with a decorated lid, containing the ashes of Marion Briem. It had been delivered to him in a brown paper bag. He looked down into the small grave, then stooped and lowered the urn into it. The minister looked on, making the sign of the cross. They were the only two people in the cemetery on that raw January afternoon.

The snow that had fallen in the blizzard the night Niran attacked Kjartan had mostly thawed during the two days of rain that followed. After that the mercury had plummeted again, the ground was frozen hard and a bitter north wind chilled them to the bone.

Erlendur stood over the grave in the freezing cold, searching for a purpose to the whole business of life and death. As usual he could find no answers. There were no final answers to explain the life-long solitude of the person in the urn, or the death of his brother all those years ago, or why Erlendur was the way he was, and why Elías was stabbed to death. Life was a random mass of unforeseeable coincidences that governed men's fates like a storm that strikes without warning, causing injury and death.

Erlendur thought about Marion Briem and their shared story, which was now at an end. He felt a sense of loss and regret. He had not realised until he was standing there alone with the urn in his hands that it was over. He thought about their relationship, the experiences they had shared, the story that was part of him, that he could not and would not have done without. It was him.

Before coming to the cemetery, Erlendur had gone to see Andrés and had tried yet again to persuade him to disclose more details about his stepfather. Andrés was obdurate.

'What are you going to do?' Erlendur asked.

'I don't know if I'll do anything,' Andrés said.

He stood at the door of his flat, staring bleakly at Erlendur.

'What are you lot going to do?' he asked.

'We have no reason to do anything unless you want us to,' Erlendur said. 'We have nothing on him. We know nothing about this man. If you know where he lives, why won't you tell me?'

'What for?' Andrés said.

Erlendur regarded him in silence.

'Were you referring to yourself?' he asked. 'When you said he was a murderer?'

Andrés did not answer.

'Was it you he killed?'

Andrés finally nodded.

'Are you going to do anything about it?' Erlendur asked.

Andrés stared at Erlendur for a long moment without answering,
then shut the door on him.

Kjartan survived the attack, although he lost a lot of blood and his life hung in the balance for a while. The knife had missed his cardiac muscle by millimetres but thanks to quick action by the police he had reached a doctor before it was too late. Niran was in the care of the Child Welfare Agency. He had been convinced that Kjartan had killed his brother and as time passed his head became filled with nothing but thoughts of revenge. He had talked of revenge to Jóhann who had tried to persuade him that it was pointless. Niran had told his mother that he had been threatened but would not reveal by whom. Kjartan had been beside himself with rage and, convinced that Niran had been involved in vandalising his car, threatened to kill him. Sunee was afraid for Niran and to be on the safe side had asked Jóhann to look after him for a few days.

Several days after Elías's funeral Erlendur went to visit Sunee. They sat in the boys' room while Virote, who was staying with his sister, made tea. Elínborg took a seat in the kitchen and talked to him about the service. Ódinn and his family had stood with Sunee's family who had come over from Thailand to follow Elías to the grave. His body had been cremated and the ashes given to Sunee in an urn.

'You didn't cry,' Erlendur said. Gudný, who was sitting with them, interpreted.

'I've cried enough,' she said.

Gudný translated Sunee's words, her eyes on Erlendur.

'I don't want to worry him too much,' Sunee said. 'It will make it harder for him to get to heaven. It will be harder if he has to swim through my tears.'

They talked of the future. Niran had expressed a wish to return home to Thailand after he had served his sentence but Sunee was not sure he meant it. She herself intended to remain in Iceland, as did her brother. And of course there was Jóhann. Sunee said that he was a good man. He had been hesitant to go public about his relationship with her at first because she was from Thailand; he was new to this sort of thing and wasn't sure how his family would react, so he wanted to take it slowly. All that was past now.

Erlendur told Sunee about the two boys who had been messing about after school, carrying a knife; how Elías had crossed their path by chance and they had attacked him for no real reason. They had intended to play with him, frighten him. 'You never know what brainless idiots like that are capable of,' he said. 'Elías was unlucky to bump into them.'

Sunee's face was unreadable. She listened to Erlendur's explanation of why she had lost her son and her face displayed blank incomprehension.

'Why Elías?' she said.

'Because he was there,' Erlendur said. 'No other reason.'

They sat in silence for a long time until eventually Erlendur mentioned the sentence that he had found in Elías's exercise book about the trees and the forest. Did she know what had been on his mind when he asked how many trees it took to make a forest?

Sunee did not know what he was talking about. The exercise book was on the desk and he showed her what Elías had written. How many trees does it take to make a forest?

Sunee smiled for the first time in ages.

'His Thai name Aran,' she said.

'Yes, Gudný told me. What does Aran mean?'

'Forest,' Sunee said. Aran mean forest'

Erlendur made the sign of the cross over Marion Briem's grave. Then he turned into the wind that bit his face, tore at his hair and pierced his clothes. His thoughts flew home to his books about torment and death in merciless winter storms. Those were stories that he could understand; they kept alight the embers of old feelings in his breast, of regret and grief and loss. He bowed his head into the wind. As so often before at this darkest time of the year he wondered how people had survived for hundreds of years in a country with such a harsh climate.

The frost tightened its grip as evening fell, whipped up by the chill Arctic wind that blasted in from the sea and south over the desolate winter landscape. It plunged down from Mount Skardsheidi, past Mount Esja and ravaged its way over the lowlands where the settlement spread out, a glittering winter city on the northernmost shores of the world. The wind howled and shrieked between the buildings and down the empty streets. The city lay lifeless, as if in the grip of a plague. People stayed inside their houses. They locked their doors, closed their windows and pulled the curtains, hoping against hope that the cold spell would soon be over.