Arctic Chill de-7

by Arnaldur Indridason

  “Is this cupboard kept locked?” Erlendur asked.

  “No, that is, not during lessons. But apart from that, yes, these cupboards are kept locked.”

  “And all the pupils have access to them?”

  “Yes, in reality. We haven’t regarded woodwork knives as potential murder weapons until now.”

  “But people steal them?” Sigurdur Oli said.

  “That’s nothing new,” Egill said, stroking his beard. “Things go missing. Chisels. Screwdrivers. Even saws. Always something every year.”

  “Wouldn’t it be a good idea to lock the cupboards then?” Erlendur said. “Hand out the tools under some sort of supervision?”

  Egill glared at him.

  “Is that any of your business?” he asked.

  “They’re knives,” Erlendur said. “Carving knives, what’s more.”

  “The classroom is kept locked, isn’t it?” Sigurdur Oli said hurriedly.

  “Wood-carving knives are only a weapon in the hands of morons,” Egill said, ignoring Sigurdur Oli. “Why should the rest of us always have to suffer because of a few morons?”

  “What about-‘ Sigurdur Oli began, but got no further.

  “In addition to which,” Egill persisted, “the kids use these tools in here and can stab themselves or slip them into their schoolbags whenever they like. It’s difficult to keep them under constant supervision.”

  “And presumably all the kids in the school will have attended woodwork lessons since you last counted the knives,” Erlendur pointed out.

  “Yes,” Egill said, his face flushing an angry red. “The workshop is locked between classes. I don’t leave until the last kid has gone, for safety reasons. I always lock up after myself and I’m the one who opens the door when I arrive in the morning and after all the breaks. No one else. Ever.”

  “What about the cleaners?” Sigurdur Oli asked.

  “Oh, and them, of course,” Egill said. “But I haven’t been aware that any of the cupboards have been broken into.”

  “So in your view the most likely scenario is that the knife was taken during a lesson?” Sigurdur Oli said.

  “Don’t start blaming me for that!” Egill almost shouted, beside himself with indignation. “I can’t possibly be expected to keep an eye on everything that goes on here! If some stupid kids want to steal from the workshop it wouldn’t exactly be difficult. And, yes, I reckon it must have been during a lesson. I can’t see how else it could have happened.”

  Erlendur picked up one of the knives and tried to recall what the pathologist had said about the instrument used to stab Elias. A broad but not very long blade, he remembered. The carving knife had a very sharp point, a short blade and a broad reverse by the wooden handle. It was razor sharp. Erlendur imagined that it would not require much force to push it deep into someone’s flesh. It struck him that it would also be possible to produce satisfying scratches on cars with a tool like a carving knife.

  “How many kids do you think we’re talking about?” he asked. “If we assume that the knife was stolen during a lesson?”

  Egill considered.

  “Most of the kids in the school, I expect,” he said.

  “We’ll have to get a photo of one of these knives and circulate it,” Erlendur said.

  “Is this the boy you were asking me about in the car?” Egill asked Erlendur, his eyes fixed on Sigurdur Oli.

  A faint smile twisted Erlendur’s lips. He had riled the woodwork teacher and now Egill was after revenge.

  “We should get moving,” Erlendur said to Sigurdur Oli.

  “Has he told you what happened here in “seventy-nine?” Egill continued. “About the riot?”

  They had reached the door. Sigurdur Oli opened it and stepped out into the corridor.

  “Thanks for your help,” Erlendur said, half turning back to Egill. “This knife business could be very important. You never know what may come out of it”

  Erlendur looked at Sigurdur Oli, who didn’t seem to know what was happening, then closed the door in Egill’s face.

  “The old bugger,” he said as they walked down the corridor. “What’s this riot he was referring to?”

  “It was nothing,” Sigurdur Oli said.

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing, it was just a stupid prank.”

  They had emerged into the open air and were heading towards the car.

  “I find it hard to imagine you involved in a stupid prank,” Erlendur said. “You weren’t at this school very long. Did you get into some sort of trouble?”

  Sigurdur Oli sighed heavily. He opened the car door and got behind the wheel. Erlendur took the passenger seat.

  “Me and three others,” Sigurdur Oli said. “We refused to go outside during the break. It was all very innocent. The weather was terrible and we said we weren’t going outside.”

  “Bloody silly of you,” Erlendur said.

  “We chose the wrong teacher,” Sigurdur Oli continued in a serious tone. “He was a temporary supply teacher and we didn’t know him but he managed to get on our nerves. That was probably how it started. Some of the boys had tried to disrupt his lessons by taking the piss out of him and so on. Things got out of hand. He started hurling abuse at us and we answered him back insolently. He got angrier and angrier, and starting trying to drag us outside but we fought back. Then some other teachers and pupils joined in and it ended up in a massive brawl throughout the building. People were injured. It was like everyone was venting their rage at once, pupils on teachers and teachers on pupils. When all attempts to calm the situation failed, someone called the police. It ended up in the papers.”

  “And it was all your fault,” Erlendur said.

  “I was involved and got suspended for two weeks,” Sigurdur Oli said. “All four of us were suspended, along with some others who’d got a bit carried away in the fight. My father went ballistic”

  Erlendur had never heard Sigurdur Oli talk about his father before, never heard him so much as mention his name, and wondered if he should take the opportunity to find out more. The whole thing was completely novel to him. He couldn’t imagine Sigurdur Oli being suspended from school.

  “It… I…” Sigurdur Oli wanted to say more but floundered in his attempt to find the words. “It wasn’t like me at all. I’d never been mixed up in anything like that before and I’ve never lost control of myself since.”

  Erlendur said nothing.

  “I injured the teacher really badly,” Sigurdur Oli said.

  “What happened?”

  “That’s why everyone remembers it. He was taken to hospital.”

  “Why?”

  “He fell and cracked his head on the floor,” Sigurdur Oli said. “I knocked him down and he landed on his head. At first I didn’t think he was going to pull through.”

  “You can’t have been very happy with that on your conscience.”

  “I … I wasn’t very happy at the time. There were various things that…”

  “You don’t have to tell me.”

  “They got divorced,” Sigurdur Oli said. “My parents. That summer.”

  Ah,” Erlendur said.

  “I moved out with my mother. We’d only been here two years.”

  “It’s always rough on the kids. When their parents split up.”

  “Were you discussing me with that woodwork teacher?” Sigurdur Oli asked.

  “No, he recognised you,” Erlendur said. “Remembered the riot”

  “Did he mention my dad at all?” Sigurdur Oli said.

  “He may have done,” Erlendur said guardedly.

  “Dad was always working. I don’t think he ever realised why she left him.”

  “Had it been on the cards for a long time?” Erlendur asked, amazed that Sigurdur Oli was willing to discuss this with him.

  “I didn’t know the background. Still don’t really know what happened. My mother didn’t much like talking about it.”

  “You’re an only child, aren’t yo
u?”

  Erlendur recalled that Sigurdur Oli had once alluded to the fact.

  “I spent a lot of time alone at home,” Sigurdur Oli said, nodding. “Especially after the divorce, when we moved house. Then we moved again. After that we were always moving.”

  Neither of them spoke.

  “It’s weird coming back here after all this time,” Sigurdur Oli said.

  “Small world, this town.”

  “What did he say about Dad?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Dad was a plumber. He was known as Permaflush.”

  “Really?” Erlendur said, feigning ignorance.

  “Egill remembered me clearly. I could tell at once. I remember him too. We were all a bit scared of him.”

  “Well, he’s not exactly Mr Nice Guy,” Erlendur said.

  “I know people used to call Dad that, he was the type. You could make fun of him. Some people are like that. He didn’t mind but I couldn’t stand it.”

  Sigurdur Oli looked at Erlendur.

  “I’ve tried to be everything he wasn’t.”

  She greeted Erlendur at the door with a smile, a small woman in her sixties with thick, brown, shoulder-length hair and friendly eyes that radiated complete ignorance about the purpose of his visit. Erlendur was alone. He had popped over at lunchtime on the off-chance that he would find her at home. The woman lived in Kopavogur and was called Emma, that was all he knew.

  He introduced himself and when she heard that he was a detective she invited him into an overheated sitting room. He hastily removed his coat and unbuttoned his jacket. It was minus nine outside. They sat down. Everywhere there were signs that she lived alone. She had an aura of extraordinary calm, a serenity that suggested a solitary existence.

  “Have you always lived alone?” he asked to break the ice and help her relax, only realising too late what a personal question it was. She seemed to think so too.

  “Is that something the police need to know?” she asked, her manner so deadpan that he wasn’t sure if she was teasing him.

  “No,” Erlendur said sheepishly. “Of course not.”

  “What do the police want with me?” the woman asked.

  “We’re looking for a man,” he said. “He was once a neighbour of yours. You lived in the flat opposite him. It’s rather a long time ago, so I don’t know if you’ll remember him, but I thought it was worth a try.”

  “Does it have something to do with that terrible case in the news, with that boy?”

  “No,” Erlendur said, telling himself that this was not strictly a lie. He didn’t know exactly what he was looking for or why he was intruding on this woman.

  “It’s dreadful knowing that something like that can happen,” the woman said. “That a child should be attacked like that, it’s quite incomprehensible, an incomprehensible outrage.”

  “Yes, it is,” Erlendur said.

  “I’ve only lived in three places in my life,” the woman added. “The place where I was born, the block of flats you’re talking about and here in Kopavogur. That’s it. What year was this?”

  “I’m not absolutely certain, but we’re probably talking about the end of the sixties or beginning of the seventies. It was a small family. A mother and son. She may possibly have been living with a man at the time she was resident in the block. It’s him I’m looking for. He wasn’t the boy’s father.”

  “Why are you looking for him?”

  “It’s a police matter,” Erlendur said and smiled. “Nothing serious. We just need to have a word with him. The woman’s name was Sigurveig. The boy was called Andres.”

  Emma hesitated.

  “What?” Erlendur said.

  “I remember them well,” she said slowly. “I remember that man. And the boy. The mother, Sigurveig, was an alcoholic. I used to see her coming home late at night, drunk. I don’t think she looked after the boy properly. I don’t think he was very happy.”

  “What can you tell me about the man she lived with?”

  “His name was Rognvaldur. I don’t know his patronymic, I never heard it. He was at sea, wasn’t he? Anyway, he wasn’t home much. I don’t think he drank, at least not like her. I didn’t really understand what they saw in each other, they were such different types.”

  “Do you mean they didn’t seem fond of each other or … ?”

  “I never understood that relationship. I used to hear them quarrelling, I could hear it through their door if I was on the landing—”

  She abruptly broke off her account as if she felt it necessary to clarify.

  “I wasn’t eavesdropping,” she said, with a faint smile. “They used to argue pretty loudly. The laundry was in the basement and I’d be on my way down there or coming home …”

  “I see,” Erlendur said, picturing her standing on the landing with ears pricked outside her neighbours” door.

  “He spoke to her as if she was worthless. Always denigrating her, mocking and humiliating her. I didn’t like him, from what little I had to do with him, not that that was much. But I heard what he was like. Nasty. A nasty piece of work.”

  “What about the boy?” Erlendur asked.

  “Quiet as a mouse, poor little thing. He avoided the man completely. I had the impression he wasn’t happy. I don’t know what it was, he was somehow so forlorn. Oh, those poor little dears, some of them are just so vulnerable …”

  “Can you describe this Rognvaldur for me?” Erlendur asked when she trailed off in mid-sentence.

  “I can do better than that,” Emma said. “I believe I have a photo of him somewhere.”

  “You do?”

  “Where he’s walking past the block of flats. My friend took a picture of me standing outside the front door and it turned out that he was in the background.”

  She stood up and went over to a cabinet. Inside were a number of photograph albums, one of which she removed. Erlendur looked around the flat. Everything was spotlessly tidy. He guessed that she put her photos in an album the moment she had them developed. Probably numbered them and labelled them with the date and a short caption. What else was one to do alone in a flat like this during the long, dark winter evenings?

  “One of his forefingers was missing,” Emma said as she brought the album over. “I noticed it once. He must have had an accident”

  “I see,” Erlendur said.

  “Maybe he was doing some carpentry. It was only a stump. On his left hand.”

  Emma sat down with the album and turned the pages until she found the picture. Erlendur was right, the photos were carefully arranged in chronological order and clearly labelled. He suspected that every single one had a place in her memory.

  “I simply adore looking through these albums,” Emma said, inadvertently confirming Erlendur’s guess.

  “They can be precious,” he said. “Memories.”

  “Here it is,” she said. “It’s actually not a bad picture of him.”

  She handed Erlendur the album and pointed to the photo. There was Emma, more than thirty years younger, smiling at the camera, a slender figure wearing a headscarf, a pretty little cardigan and Capri pants. The picture was in black and white. Behind her he saw the man she referred to as Rognvaldur. He was also looking at the camera but had raised a hand as if to shield his face, as if it had dawned on him too late that he might be caught in the shot. He was thin with a receding hairline, fairly large protruding eyes and delicate eyebrows below a high, intelligent forehead.

  Erlendur stared at the man’s face and a shiver ran down his spine when he realised that he had seen him before, very recently. He had changed extraordinarily little despite the passage of time.

  “What’s the matter?” Emma asked.

  “It’s him!” Erlendur groaned.

  “Him?” Emma said. “Who?”

  “That man! Is it possible? What did you say his name was?”

  “Rognvaldur.”

  “No, his name’s not Rognvaldur.”

  “Oh, then I must be mistaken. D
o you know him?”

  Erlendur looked up from the album.

  “Is it possible?” he whispered.

  He looked again at the man in the picture. He didn’t know anything about him but he had been inside his home and knew who he was.

  “Did he call himself Rognvaldur?”

  “Yes, that was his name,” Emma said. “I don’t think I’m making it up.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Erlendur said.

  “Why? What’s the matter?”

  “He wasn’t called Rognvaldur when I met him,” Erlendur said.

  “You’ve met him?”

  “Yes, I’ve met that man.”

  “So? If he wasn’t called Rognvaldur, what was his name?”

  Erlendur didn’t answer immediately.

  “What was he called?” Emma repeated.

  “He was called Gestur,” Erlendur said absently, staring at the picture of Sunee’s neighbour from across the landing, the man who had invited him in, the man who knew both Elias and Niran.

  22

  Erlendur was present when they entered Gestur’s flat across the landing from Sunee’s. Elinborg was with him. The Reykjavik District Court had issued them with a search warrant that afternoon. According to the police officers who had been guarding the staircase since the boy’s body was found, Sunee’s neighbour from the top floor but one had not shown his face at all. Erlendur was the only person to have met and spoken to him. He had not been seen since.

  In the end there was no need to break down the door. Gestur rented his flat like the other residents on the staircase, and Erlendur had managed to obtain a spare key. When all the necessary documents were in place and their ringing and knocking had elicited no response, Erlendur put the key in the lock and opened the door. He knew that he had only Andres’s intimation that there was a paedophile in the area, and Andres was an accomplished liar, but Erlendur was disposed to believe him this time. There was something about Andres’s manner when he spoke of this man. Some old fear that still haunted him.

  The flat was unchanged since Erlendur’s last visit, apart from the fact that someone seemed to have gone over the whole place with a cloth and disinfectant. The smell of cleaning fluid hung in the air. The kitchen shone like a mirror, as did the bathroom. The living-room carpet had obviously been recently vacuumed, and Gestur’s bedroom looked as if no one had ever slept there. Erlendur was more aware this time of how sparsely furnished the flat was. When he first entered he’d had the impression that it was larger than Sunee’s place, although they were, in fact, identical. Standing in the middle of the living room, he thought he knew why: there was very little furniture in Gestur’s flat. Erlendur had entered it on a dark winter’s evening and Gestur had only turned on one lamp but even so he had sensed the emptiness. There were no pictures on the walls. The living room contained only two armchairs and a coffee table, besides a small dining table with three chairs, and a bookcase containing foreign paperbacks. There was nothing in the bedroom but a bed and an empty bedside table. The kitchen contained three plates, three glasses and three sets of cutlery, a small frying pan and two saucepans of different sizes. Everything had been thoroughly cleaned and put away.