Silence Of The Grave

by Arnaldur Indridason

"They'll . . . kill . . . me," Alli panted as he clambered to his feet. There were few people around. An elderly couple on the other side of the street, who had watched the action, hurried away when they saw Erlendur picking up one bottle of pills after another.

  "I don't care," Erlendur said.

  "Don't take that from me. You don't know how they . . ."

  "Who?"

  Alli huddled up against the wall of a house and started to cry.

  "It's my last chance," he said, snot running from his nose.

  "I don't give a shit what chance it is. When was the last time you saw Eva Lind?"

  Alli snuffled, suddenly glared at Erlendur, as if eying a way out.

  "Okay."

  "What?"

  "If I tell you about Eva, will you give those back to me?" he asked.

  Erlendur thought it over.

  "If you know about Eva I'll let you have it. If you're lying I'll come back and use you as a trampoline."

  "Okay, okay. Eva came to see me today. If you see her, she owes me a bunch of money. I refused to give her any more. I don't deal to pregnant chicks."

  "No," Erlendur said. "A man of principle, I suppose."

  "She came round with her belly stuck out in the air and whined at me and started getting heavy when I wouldn't give her anything, then she left."

  "Do you know where she went?"

  "No idea."

  "Where does she live?"

  "A chick with no money. I need money, see. Or they'll kill me."

  "Do you know where she lives?"

  "Lives? Nowhere. She just crashes where she can. Scrounges. Reckons she can get it for nothing." Alli snorted disdainfully. "Like you could just give it away. Like it's just for free."

  The gap where his teeth were missing gave his speech a soft lisp and he suddenly looked like a big child in his dirty parka, trying to put on a brave act.

  Snot started dripping from his nose again.

  "Where could she have gone?" Erlendur asked.

  Alli looked at him and sniffed.

  "Will you let me have that back?"

  "Where is she?"

  "Do I get it back if I tell you?"

  "If you're not lying. Where is she?"

  "There was a girl with her."

  "Who? What's her name?"

  "I know where she lives."

  Erlendur took a step closer.

  "You'll get it all back," he said. "Who was this girl?"

  "Ragga. She lives just round the corner. On Tryggva-gata. At the top of the big building overlooking the dock." Alli hesitantly stretched out his hand. "Okay? You promised. Give it back to me. You promised."

  "There's no way I could give it back to you, you idiot," Erlendur said. "If I had the time I'd take you down to the station and throw you in a cell. So you've come off the better for it."

  "No, they'll kill me! Don't! Let me have it, please. Let me have it!"

  Ignoring him, Erlendur left Alli snivelling up against the building, where he cursed himself and banged his head against the wall in feeble rage. Erlendur could hear the curses a long way off, but to his surprise Alli directed them not at him, but at himself.

  "Fucking jerk, you're a fucking jerk . . ."

  He looked round and saw Alli slapping himself in the face.

  A little boy, possibly four years old, wearing pyjama bottoms, barefoot, his hair filthy, opened the door and looked up at Erlendur, who stooped down to him. When Erlendur put out his hand to stroke the boy's cheek he jerked his head back. Erlendur asked if his mother was home, but the boy just gave him a questioning look and made no reply.

  "Is Eva Lind with you, sonny?" he asked.

  Erlendur had the feeling time was running out. It was two hours since Eva Lind had phoned. He tried to dispel the thought that he was already too late to help her. Tried to imagine what kind of quandary she was in, but soon stopped torturing himself that way and concentrated on finding her. Now he knew who she was with when she left Alli that evening. He could sense he was getting closer to her.

  Without answering, the boy darted back into the flat and disappeared. Erlendur followed, but could not see where he went. The flat was pitch dark and Erlendur fumbled to find a light switch on the walls. After trying several that did not work, he groped his way into a small room. At last a solitary light bulb, hanging from the ceiling, flickered on. There was nothing on the floor, only cold concrete. Dirty mattresses were spread all around the flat and on one of them lay a girl, slightly younger than Eva Lind, in tattered jeans and a red T-shirt. A metal box containing two hypodermic needles was open beside her. A thin plastic tube lay curled on the floor. Two men were sleeping on mattresses on either side of her.

  Erlendur knelt down by the girl and prodded her, but got no response. He lifted her head, sat her up and patted her cheek. She mumbled. He stood up, lifted her to her feet and tried to make her walk around, and soon she seemed to come to her senses. She opened her eyes. Erlendur noticed a kitchen chair in the darkness and made her sit down. She looked at him and her head slumped to her chest. He slapped her face lightly and she came to again.

  "Where's Eva Lind?" Erlendur asked.

  "Eva," the girl mumbled.

  "You were with her today. Where did she go?"

  "Eva . . ."

  Her head slumped again. Erlendur saw the little boy standing in the doorway. He was holding a doll in one hand and in the other he had an empty feeding bottle which he held out towards Erlendur. Then he put the bottle in his mouth and Erlendur heard him sucking in the air. He watched the boy and gnashed his teeth before taking out his mobile to call for help.

  A doctor arrived with the ambulance, as Erlendur had insisted.

  "I have to ask you to give her a shot," Erlendur said.

  "A shot?" said the doctor.

  "I think it's heroin. Have you got any naloxone or narcanti? In your bag?"

  "Yes, I . . ."

  "I have to talk to her. Immediately. My daughter's in danger. This girl knows where she is."

  The doctor looked at the girl, then back at Erlendur. He nodded.

  Erlendur had laid the girl back on the mattress and it took her a while to come round. The paramedics stood over her, holding the stretcher between them. The little boy was hiding in the room. The two men lay knocked out on their mattresses.

  Erlendur crouched by the girl, who was slowly regaining consciousness. She looked at Erlendur and up to the doctor and the paramedics.

  "What's going on?" she asked in a low voice, as if talking to herself.

  "Do you know about Eva Lind?" Erlendur asked.

  "Eva?"

  "She was with you tonight. I think she might be in danger. Do you know where she went?"

  "Isn't Eva okay?" she asked, then looked around. "Where's Kiddi?"

  "There's a little boy in the room over there," Erlendur said. "He's waiting for you. Tell me where I can find Eva Lind."

  "Who are you?"

  "Her father."

  "The cop?"

  "Yes."

  "She can't stand you."

  "I know. Do you know where she is?"

  "She started getting pains. I told her to go to the hospital. She was going to walk there."

  "Pains?"

  "Her gut was killing her."

  "Where did she set off from? From here?"

  "We were at the bus station."

  "The bus station?"

  "She was going to the National Hospital. Isn't she there?"

  Erlendur stood up and the doctor told him the hospital switchboard number. He phoned, only to hear that no one by the name of Eva Lind had been admitted in the past few hours. No woman of her age had been there. He was put through to the maternity ward and tried to describe his daughter as well as he could, but the duty midwife didn't think she'd seen her.

  He ran out of the flat, got into his car and raced to the bus station. There was not a soul around. The bus station closed at midnight. He left his car and hurried along Snorrabraut, broke into a run up
the street past the houses in Nordurmýri and scanned the gardens for his daughter. He started calling her name as he drew closer to the hospital, but no one answered.

  At last he found her lying in a pool of blood on a lawn sheltered by trees, about 50 metres from the old maternity home. But he was too late. The grass beneath her was stained with blood and so were her jeans.

  Erlendur knelt beside his daughter, looked up at the maternity home and saw himself going through the door with Halldóra all those years ago when Eva Lind herself was born. Was she going to die at the very same place?

  Erlendur stroked Eva's forehead, unsure about whether he dared moved her.

  He thought she was seven months pregnant.

  *

  She had tried running away from him, but had given up long ago.

  She had left him twice. Both times while they were still living in the basement flat on Lindargata. A whole year elapsed from the first time he beat her up until he lost control of himself again. That was what he called it. When he still talked about the violence he had inflicted on her. She never regarded it as losing control of himself. To her it seemed he never had more self-control than when he was beating the living daylights out of her and showering her with abuse. Even at the height of his frenzy he was cold and collected and sure of what he was doing. Always.

  Over time she realised that she too would need to cultivate that quality to be able to triumph over him.

  Her first attempt to flee was doomed to failure. She did not prepare herself, did not know the options available, had no idea where to turn and was suddenly standing outside in the chill breeze one February evening with her two children, holding Símon by the hand and carrying Mikkelína on her back, but she had no idea where to go. All she knew was that she had to get away from the basement.

  She had seen the vicar who told her that a good wife does not leave her husband. Marriage was sacred in the eyes of God and people had to put up with much in order to keep it together.

  "Think about your children," the vicar said.

  "I am thinking about the children," she replied, and the vicar gave a kindly smile.

  She did not try to approach the police. Her neighbours had twice called them when he attacked her, and the officers had gone to the basement to break up a domestic quarrel and then left. When she stood in front of the policemen with a swollen eye and split lip, they told the couple to take things easy. Said they were disturbing the peace. The second time, two years later, the policemen took him outside for a talk. She had screamed about him attacking her and threatening to kill her, and that this was not the first time. They asked if she had been drinking. The question did not register with her. Drinking, they repeated. No, she said. She never drank. They said something to him outside, by the front door. Shook his hand and left.

  When they were gone he stroked her cheek with his razor.

  That same evening, when he was fast asleep, she put Mikkelína on her back and quietly pushed Simon out of the flat in front of her and up the basement steps. She had made a pushchair for Mikkelína from the carriage of an old pram she found on the rubbish dump, but he had smashed it up in a fit of rage, as if sensing that she was going to leave him and thinking this would restrain her.

  Her escape was completely unplanned. In the end she went to the Salvation Army and was given a place to sleep for the night. She had no relatives, neither in Reykjavik nor anywhere else, and the moment that he woke up the next morning and saw that they were gone he ran out to search for them. Roaming the city in his shirt sleeves in the cold, he saw them leaving the Salvation Army. The first she knew of him was when he snatched the boy away from her, picked up her daughter and set off for home without saying a word. The children were too terrified to put up a struggle, but she saw Mikkelína stretch out her arms towards her and break into silent tears.

  What was she thinking?

  Then she hurried after them.

  After the second attempt he threatened to kill her children, and she did not try to run away after that. That time she was better prepared. She imagined that she could start a new life. Move north with the children to a fishing town, rent a room or small flat, work in a fish factory and make sure that they wanted for nothing. On the second attempt she took time to plan everything. She decided to move to Siglufjördur to begin with. There were plenty of jobs to be had now that the worst years of the depression were over, outsiders flocked there to work and she could keep a low profile alone with two children. She could spend a while in the workers' dormitory before finding a room of her own.

  The bus journey for her and the children did not come cheap and her husband kept a tight hold on every penny he earned at the harbour. Over a long time she had managed to scrape together a few coins until she had enough for the fare. She took all the children's clothes that she could fit into a small suitcase, a handful of personal belongings and the pushchair, which could still carry Mikkelína after she mended it. She hurried down to the bus station, looking everywhere in terror as if she expected to meet him on the next street corner.

  He went home at lunchtime as usual and immediately realised that she had left him. She knew she was supposed to have lunch ready when he came home and had never allowed herself not to. He saw that the pushchair was missing. The wardrobe was open. Remembering her previous attempt, he marched straight to the Salvation Army and made a scene when he was told she was not there. He didn't believe them, and ran all over the building, into the rooms and the basement, and when he could not find them he attacked the Salvation Army captain who ran the shelter, knocked him to the ground and threatened to kill him if he did not say where they were.

  When eventually he realised that she had not gone to the Salvation Army after all, he prowled the town without catching sight of her. He stormed into shops and restaurants, but she was nowhere to be seen. His rage and desperation intensified as the day wore on and he went home out of his mind with fury. He turned the basement flat upside down in search of hints as to where she might have gone, then ran to two of her old friends from the time she worked for the merchant, barged his way in and called out to her and the children, then ran back out without a word and disappeared.

  She arrived in Siglufjördur at two o'clock in the morning after travelling almost non-stop all day. The coach had made three stops to allow the passengers to stretch their legs, eat their packed lunches or buy a meal. She had taken sandwiches and bottles of milk, but they were hungry again when the bus drew into Haganesvík in Fljót, where a boat was waiting to ferry the passengers to Siglufjördur, in the cold of night. After she found the workers' dormitory, the foreman showed her into a little room with a single bed and lent her a mattress to spread on the floor, with two blankets, and they spent their first night of freedom there. The children fell asleep the moment they touched the mattress, but she lay in bed staring out into the darkness and, unable to control the trembling that passed through her whole body, she broke down and wept.

  He found her a few days later. One possibility that occurred to him was that she had left the city, perhaps by bus, so he went down to the station, asked around and found out that his wife and children had taken the northbound bus to Siglufjördur. He spoke to the driver who remembered the woman and children clearly, especially the disabled girl. He caught the next coach north and was in Siglufjördur just after midnight. Threading his way from one dormitory to the next, he eventually found her asleep in her little room, shown the way by a foreman he had woken up. He explained matters to the foreman. She had gone to the village ahead of him, he said, but they probably would not be staying very long.