Arnaldur Indridason - Arctic Chill

Anton vacillated in front of him.

“He’s lying, he can’t have said that.”

“Yeah, right,” Sigurdur Oli said. “You two can discuss it down at the station.”

He made to grab Anton’s arm and lead him out but the boy tore himself away.

“I only scratched one car,” he said. “Doddi did the rest. He’s lying!”

Sigurdur Oli drew a deep breath.

“We didn’t do anything to that boy,” Anton added, as if to make it quite clear.

“You mean you and your mate?” Sigurdur Oli said.

“Doddi, yes. He’s lying! It was him who scratched the cars.”

It was time to ease up the pressure a little, so Sigurdur Oli took a step back from the boy.

“How many cars was it?”

“I don’t know. A few.”

“Do you know the Icelandic teacher Kjartan’s car?”

“Yes.”

“Did you scratch his car? Outside the school?”

Anton hesitated before answering.

“That was Doddi. I didn’t even know. He just told me about it. He can’t stand Kjartan. Does Mum have to find out about this?”

“What did you make the scratches with?” Sigurdur Oli asked, ignoring his question.

A knife,” Anton said.

“What kind of knife?”

“It was Doddi’s.”

“He said it was yours,” Sigurdur Oli lied.

“It was his knife.”

“What kind of knife was it?”

“Like the one on TV,” Anton said.

“On TV?”

“The one they were showing pictures of. It was like our knife.”

Sigurdur Oli was speechless. He stared at the boy who gradually cottoned on to the fact that he had said something important. He wondered what it could have been and when it suddenly struck him, it was like a blow to the face. It had not occurred to him. Of course it was the same knife! He had seen pictures of it on television but had not made the connection with the damage that he and his mate Doddi had done to a few cars on the way to school. He began to see his situation as part of something much larger and more serious.

Sigurdur Oli took out his phone.

“I didn’t do it,” Anton said. “I swear it.”

“Do you know where the knife is now?”

“Doddi has it. Doddi had it all along.”

Sigurdur Oli watched the boy as he waited for Erlendur to answer, then glanced round the little flat, noting how Anton had made himself comfortable before the intrusion.

“Call your mother,” he said. “You’re coming with me. Tell her to meet you down at the station.”

“Yes.” Erlendur answered his phone.

“I think I’m on to something,” Sigurdur Oli said. Are you at the station?”

“What have you got?” Erlendur asked.

“Is the knife there?”

“Yes, what are you going to do?”

“I’m on my way,” Sigurdur Oli said.

When the police arrived to fetch Doddi an hour or so later he was not at home. A man in his early forties answered the door to the two officers and looked them up and down. Doddi’s mother appeared in the doorway as well. They did not know where the boy was and demanded to be told what he had done wrong. The police officers said they did not know, they had simply been sent to bring him in to the police station on Hverfisgata along with a guardian.

“Since he’s under age,” one of them elaborated.

The officers were both in uniform and driving a patrol car. The intention was to put the fear of God into Doddi. They were standing on the doorstep of the small town house where Doddi lived, explaining their business, when the man, who turned out to be the boy’s stepfather, called out that there he was, there was Doddi!

“Come here!” he called. “Doddi, get over here!” The boy was walking round the corner of a nearby house, taking a footpath that cut through the area. He stopped dead when he heard his stepfather’s call, then spotted the police car, the two officers looking in his direction and his mother’s head craning from the doorway. It took him a moment to grasp the situation. He contemplated making a run for it, then decided it would be futile.

After an interrogation lasting nearly three hours, Doddi finally confessed to Sigurdur Oli that he had stolen a carving knife from the school and used it to vandalise cars that he and his friend Anton passed on their way to school. Both boys flatly denied having touched Elias, however, claiming that they did not even know him and had no idea who killed him. It was more than a week since they had scratched the car belonging to the young woman whom they had seen dashing back inside her block of flats, leaving the engine running. They did not realise that she had spotted them. At first they meant to steal the car as it had been handed to them on a plate with the engine left running and all, but when it came to the point they couldn’t be bothered. Doddi walked along beside it, scraping the point of the knife along the paintwork, then they ran and hid. This was the first time they had seen the owner of one of the cars they had vandalised and it heightened the adrenalin. They waited for the woman to come out again in order to watch her reaction when she saw the scratch. She soon came dashing back out of the house and opened the car door but stopped dead when she saw the scratch along the bodywork. She bent down to take a closer look, then peered round, walked out into the car park and scanned in all directions, before taking a frantic glance at her watch, returning to her car and driving away.

The knife found at the recycling depot was in a box in the interview room and Doddi recognised it immediately. The police pathologist confirmed that it could well be the murder weapon.

Elinborg was in another interview room with Anton. The boys” statements matched in all the main details. Doddi had stolen the knife, and the initiative when it came to satisfying their destructive urge had largely been his.

“How did the knife end up in the recycling bin?” Elinborg asked Anton, who had been extremely cooperative ever since arriving at the police station.

“I don’t know,” Anton replied.

“Did you use it to attack Elias?”

“No,” Anton said. “I didn’t touch him.”

“Why did you throw the knife away?”

“I didn’t.”

“What about your mate, Doddi?”

“I don’t know. He had the knife last.”

“He says you had it.”

“He’s lying.”

“Did you know the knife was used to kill Elias?”

“No.”

“Do you know Niran, Elias’s brother?”

“No, not at all, except that he’s at my school. I don’t know him at all.”

In the other interview room similar questions were being flung at Doddi who claimed that Anton had had the knife last.

“How long is it since you took the knife from the carpentry workshop?” Sigurdur Oli asked.

“About ten days or …” Doddi thought. “Yeah, something like that. It was straight after the Christmas holidays.”

“Where did you last see it?”

Anton took it home with him.”

“He says you had it”

“He’s lying.”

“Do you know who Elias was?”

“Yes.”

“Did you know him?”

“No. Not at all.”

“Did you stab him to death?”

“No.”

“Did you stab him to death with the knife that you stole from the carpentry workshop?”

“No. I didn’t do anything.”

“Why did you scratch those cars?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“We were bored.”

In the other room, Elinborg stared at Anton for a long time without saying a word, then rose to her feet. She had been sitting still for too long and her whole body ached. She leaned against the wall and folded her arms.

“Where were you when Elias was attacked?” she asked.

Anton could not give a clear account of his whereabouts. At first he said he had been at home, that he had gone straight home from school. Then he suddenly remembered that he had gone to a computer-games shop with Doddi.