30
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. Gudny, who was sitting with them, interpreted.
'I've cried enough,' she said.
Gudny 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, Gudny 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.