“I’ll talk to him,” Erlendur said. “You check whether they can find the boy’s tracks through the garden. If he was bleeding he might have left a trail. Maybe he didn’t fall.”

“Shouldn’t forensics handle that?” Sigurdur Oli mumbled to deaf ears.

“He doesn’t appear to have been attacked here in the garden,” Elinborg said.

“And for God’s sake, try to find his boot,” Erlendur said as he walked off.

“The boy who found him …” Sigurdur Oli began.

“Yes,” Erlendur said, turning round.

“He’s also col…” Sigurdur Oli hesitated.

“What?”

“An immigrant kid,” Sigurdur Oli said.

The boy sat on a step in one of the stairwells of the block of flats, a policewoman sat with him. He had his sports kit wrapped up in a yellow plastic bag and eyed Erlendur with suspicion. They had not wanted to make him sit in a police car. That could have led people to conclude that he was implicated in the boy’s death, so someone had suggested that he wait in the stairwell instead.

The corridor was dirty. An unhygienic odour pervaded the air, mingling with cigarette smoke and cooking smells from the flats. The floor was covered in worn linoleum and the graffiti on the wall seemed illegible to Erlendur. The boy’s parents were still at work. They had been notified. He was dark-skinned with straight jet-black hair that was still damp after his shower, and big white teeth. He was dressed in an anorak and jeans, and holding a woollen hat in his hands.

“It’s awfully cold,” Erlendur said, rubbing his hands.

The boy was silent.

Erlendur sat down beside him. The boy said that his name was Stefan and he was thirteen. He lived in the next block of flats up from this one and had done so for as long as he could remember. His mother was from the Philippines, he said.

“You must have been shocked when you found him,” Erlendur said after a lengthy silence.