Arctic Chill by Arnaldur Indridason

Author:Arnaldur Indridason
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Mystery, Police Procedural, Murder, Mystery & Detective, Iceland, Immigrants, Political, Fiction, Reykjavik, Detective and mystery stories, Investigation, General
ISBN: 9781846550652
Publisher: Harvill Secker
Published: 2008-05-01T04:00:00+00:00

16

The police attached the highest priority to locating Niran, who had not been heard of since the previous day. With the help of the school staff, they gathered information about his friends, boys he knew and spent most of his time with at school. A lower-profile and more personal search was also in progress, known only to Erlendur and based on Marion Briem's memory of Andrés's stepfather. He wanted to keep that line of inquiry quiet because he had the feeling Andrés was lying to them. He had done as much in the past.

When word spread that Sunee, the victim's mother, had spirited her older son away to a safe haven, it became headline news and a talking point all over Iceland. The police were heavily criticised for their ineptitude. Either they had let a key witness slip through their hands or, even worse, they had driven him to flight through their own sheer incompetence. After suspicions were raised that the police had tried to conceal this information, like so much else connected with the investigation, a furore broke out about the information act and lack of cooperation with the media.

Erlendur despised nothing more than having to inform journalists and reporters about 'the progress of the investigation', as it was called. He had long maintained that police investigations had nothing to do with the media and that it could be downright damaging to give constant updates about the latest developments. Sigurdur Óli disagreed. He considered it a matter of course to give information, provided it did not jeopardise the interests of the investigation.

'Interests of the investigation?' Erlendur fumed. 'Who invents phrases like that? That lot can stick it where the sun don't shine. We shouldn't be releasing any bloody information until we ourselves know what's happened. It serves no purpose whatsoever.'

They were sitting in Erlendur's office, with Elínborg. A press conference was to be held later that day in response to demands by the media, but Erlendur had refused to attend. This created quite a rumpus between him and his immediate superiors. The outcome was that Sigurdur Óli would be police spokesman and media liaison, along with the deputy head of Reykjavík CID. Erlendur considered it stupid to waste manpower on such pointless exercises.

He had met Ódinn, Elías's father, the previous day when it transpired that Niran had gone missing again and Sunee refused to disclose his whereabouts. Erlendur went to visit him in the flat on Snorrabraut. Ódinn had taken several days off work. He did not look as if he had slept well that night, he was unkempt and in bad shape.

Sigrídur, Sunee's mother-in-law, had also taken leave from work and Sigurdur Óli visited her at her home. She said she had been on her way to see Sunee when she heard the news, and really could not understand what was going on. She had offered to sleep at their flat that night, but Sunee had declined. Sigrídur had no idea of her movements and could not imagine what had become of Niran.

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