Arctic Chill by Arnaldur Indridason

home? Could you sense anything like that about him?'
    'No, nothing. I didn't see anything unusual outside. The kids were heading off home. I don't think anyone was waiting for him. But then, I wasn't thinking along those lines. You don't think about that sort of thing.'
    'Not until afterwards,' Sigurdur Óli said.
    'Yes, of course. But as I say, I didn't notice anything unusual. He displayed no signs of fear during the lesson. Didn't say anything to me. He was just the same as always. After all, nothing of that kind has ever happened here before. Never. I can't understand anyone wanting to attack Elías, simply can't understand it. It's horrific'
    'Do you know the Icelandic teacher at the school, a man by the name of Kjartan?'
    'Yes.'
    'Apparently he has certain views about immigrants.'
    'That's putting it mildly'
    'Do you agree with him?'
    'Me? No, he strikes me as a nutjob. He ...'
    'He what?'
    'He's rather bitter,' Vilhjálmur said. 'Have you met him?'
    'No.'
    'He's an old sporting hero,' Vilhjálmur said. 'I remember him well from handball. Damn good player. Then something happened, he was badly injured and had to quit. Just as he was turning professional. He'd been signed up by a Spanish club. I think that festers. He's not a likeable sort of character.'
    Shouts and cries came from the boys' changing rooms along the corridor. Vilhjálmur set off in that direction to calm the boys down.
    'Do you know what happened?' he said over his shoulder.
    'Not yet,' Sigurdur Óli said.
    'Hope you catch the bastard. Was it racially motivated?'
    'We don't know anything.'
     
    Kjartan's wife was in her early thirties, slightly younger than the Icelandic teacher himself, and rather scruffily dressed in jogging pants that detracted unnecessarily from her looks. Two children stood behind her. Sigurdur Óli cast a glance inside the dim flat. The couple did not appear particularly house-proud. Instinctively, he thought about his own flat where everything was spick and span. The thought sent a warm feeling through him as he stood outside in the cold, pierced by the bitter wind. This flat was one of four in the building, on the ground floor.
    The woman called her husband and he came to the door, also
    wearing jogging pants and a vest that looked two sizes too small and emphasised
    its owner's expanding paunch. He seemed to make do with shaving once a week
    and there was a bad-tempered look on his face that Sigurdur Óli could
    not quite fathom, something about his eyes that expressed antipathy and anger.
    He remembered having seen that expression before, that face, and recalled
    Vilhjálmur's words about the fallen sports star.
    A face from the past, Erlendur would have said. He sometimes made remarks that Sigurdur Óli disliked because he did not understand them, snatches from those old tales that were Erlendur's only apparent interest in life. The two men were poles apart in their thinking. While Erlendur sat at home reading old Icelandic folklore or fiction, Sigurdur Óli would sit in front of the television watching American cop shows with a bowl of popcorn in his lap and a bottle of Coke on the table. When he joined the police force he modelled himself on such programmes. He was not alone in thinking that a job with the police could sharpen one's image. Recruits still occasionally turned up for work dressed like American TV cops, in jeans and back-to-front baseball cap.
    'Is it about the boy?' Kjartan said, making no move to invite Sigurdur Óli in out of the cold.
    'About Elías, yes.'
    'It was only a matter of time,' Kjartan said with an intolerant ring to his voice. 'They shouldn't let those people into the country,' he went on. 'It only causes conflict. This had to happen sooner or later. Whether it was this boy in this school in this district at this time or someone else at some other time ... it makes no difference. It would have happened and will happen again. You can bet'
    Sigurdur Óli began to recall more of Kjartan's story