Free Voices by Arnaldur Indridason

I,' he said.
'Good,' she said. 'Thank you for everything. Thanks for the Drambuie,' she added as she finished her liqueur. He had also ordered a Drambuie for himself to keep her company, but hadn't touched it.
Erlendur lay stretched out on the bed in his hotel room looking up at the ceiling. It was still cold in the room and he was wearing his clothes. Outside, it was snowing. It was a soft, warm and pretty snow that fell gently to the ground and melted instantaneously. Not cold, hard and merciless like the snow that caused death and destruction.
'What are those stains?' Elínborg asked the father.
'Stains?' he said. 'What stains?'
'On the carpet,' Erlendur said. He and Elínborg had just returned from seeing the boy in hospital. The winter sun lit up the stair carpet that led to the floor where the boy's room was.
'I don't see any stains,' the father said, bending down to scrutinise the carpet.
'They're quite clear in this light,' Elínborg said as she looked at the sun through the lounge window. The sun was low and pierced the eyes. To her, the creamy marble tiles on the floor looked as if they were aflame. Close by the stairway stood a beautiful drinks cabinet. It contained spirits, expensive liqueurs, red and white wines rested forward onto their necks in racks. There were two glass windows in the cabinet and Erlendur noticed a smudge on one of them. On the side of the cabinet facing the staircase, a little drip had been spilt, measuring roughly a centimetre and a half. Elínborg put her finger on the drip and it was sticky.
'Did anything happen by this cabinet?' Erlendur asked.
The father looked at him.
'What are you talking about?'
'It's like something's been splashed on it. You've cleaned it recently.'
'No,' the father said. 'Not recently.'
'Those marks on the staircase,' Elínborg said. 'They look like a child's footprints to me.'
'I can't see any footprints on the staircase,' the father said. 'Just now you were talking about stains. Now they're footprints. What are you implying?'
'Were you at home when your son was assaulted?'
The father said nothing.
'The attack took place at the school,' Elínborg went on. 'School was over for the day but he was playing football and when he set off home they attacked him. That's what we think happened. He hasn't been able to talk to you, nor to us. I don't think he wants to. Doesn't dare. Maybe because the boys said they would kill him if he told the police. Maybe because someone else said they would kill him if he talked to us.'
'Where's all this leading?'
'Why did you come home early from work that day? You came home around noon. He crawled home and up to his room, and shortly afterwards you arrived and called the police and an ambulance.'
Elínborg had already been wondering what the father was doing at home in the middle of a weekday, but had not asked him until now.
'No one saw him on his way home from school,' Erlendur said.
'You're not implying that I attacked ... that I attacked my own boy like that? Surely you're not implying that?'
'Do you mind if we take a sample from the carpet?'
'I think you ought to get out of here,' the father said.
'I'm not implying anything,' Erlendur said. 'Eventually the boy will say what happened. Maybe not now and maybe not after a week or a month, maybe not after one year, but he will in the end.'
'Out,' the father said, enraged and indignant by now. 'Don't you dare ... don't you dare start... You leave. Get out. Out!'
Elínborg went straight to the hospital and into the children's ward. The boy was asleep in his bed with his arm suspended from the hook. She sat down beside him and waited for him to wake up. After she had stayed by the bedside for fifteen minutes the boy stirred and noticed the tired-looking policewoman, but the sad-eyed man in the woollen cardigan who had been with her earlier that day was nowhere to be seen now. Their eyes met and Elínborg did her utmost to smile.
'Was it your dad?'
She went back to the father's house when