Free Arctic Chill by Arnaldur Indridason

later,' the man said.
    He stared at Elínborg. His wife stood beside the table and said nothing. The children wolfed down their food. Biggi looked at Elínborg as he sucked up a piece of spaghetti. He had tomato sauce all round his mouth.
    'Do you know whether Elías was on his own when he went home from school today?' Elínborg asked.
    Biggi shook his head, his mouth full of spaghetti.
    The man looked at his wife.
    'I don't think that has anything to do with Biggi,' he said.
    'He was really sweet, that boy, polite and well brought-up,' the woman said. 'He was the only one who thanked us for inviting him to the birthday party and he wasn't noisy like the other kids.'
    As she said this she looked at her husband, as if justifying having invited Elías to their son's birthday party. Elínborg looked at the parents in turn and then at the children, who had stopped eating and were watching the adults apprehensively. They sensed that an argument was brewing.
    'When was this birthday party?' Elínborg asked, looking at the mother.
    'Three weeks ago.'
    'Around Christmas? And everything went well?'
    'Yes, very well. Don't you think so, Biggi?' she asked with a glance at her son. She avoided looking at her husband.
    Biggi nodded. He looked at his father, uncertain whether he ought to say what he wanted to say.
    'Will you please leave us in peace now?' the man said, standing up. 'We'd like to eat.'
    'Did you see Elías when he came to the birthday party?'
    'I work eighteen hours a day,' the man said.
    'He's never home,' the woman said. 'There's no need to be so rude to her,' she added, darting a look at her husband.
    'Do immigrants get on your nerves?' Elínborg asked.
    'I've got nothing against those people,' the man said. 'Biggi doesn't know that kid in the slightest. They weren't friends. We can't help you with anything. Now will you please leave us alone!'
    'Of course,' Elínborg said, looking down at the plates
    of spaghetti. She pondered for a moment, then gave up and left.
     
    'It was a very ordinary day at school,' Agnes, Elías's form teacher, told Sigurdur Óli. 'I think I can say that. Except that I moved the boy to a different seat in the classroom. I'd been meaning to for some time and I finally did it this morning.'
    They were sitting in the study at Agnes's house. She had produced a cigarette from a drawer. Sigurdur Óli watched her cast a surreptitious glance at the door, then sit down by the window, light the cigarette and blow the smoke outside. He could not understand people who wanted to kill themselves by smoking. He was convinced that smoking caused more harm than any other single factor in the world, and sometimes lectured on the subject at work. Erlendur, a smoker, paid no heed and once answered that he was convinced that what caused more harm than any other single factor in the world was dyed-in-the-wool killjoys like Sigurdur Óli.
    'Elías was a bit late,' Agnes continued. 'He wasn't usually, although he used to dawdle a bit. He was often the last to leave the class, the last to get his books out and that sort of thing. He would be thinking about something completely different. He was a sort of "flight attendant".' Agnes made a sign for quotation marks with her fingers.
    'Flight attendant?'
    'Vilhjálmur calls them that, the sports teacher. He's from the Westman Islands.'
    Sigurdur Óli gave her a blank look.
    'The children who are last to leave after gym.'
    'You moved him to a different seat?' Sigurdur Óli said, at a complete loss about flight attendants and the Westman Islands.
    'It's not uncommon,' Agnes said. 'We do it for various reasons. I only did it indirectly because of him. Elías was good at maths. He was way ahead of his classmates, even of the rest of his year, but the boy who sat beside him, poor old Birgir – or Biggi, as he's known – has trouble puzzling out how two and two could possibly make four.'
    Agnes looked Sigurdur Óli in the eye.
    'I know I shouldn't say things like that,' she