Silence Of The Grave

by Arnaldur Indridason

  Erlendur dropped the cigarette butt by his feet and stamped it out.

  "Personally, and I can't explain why, I favour the last theory. The one about Benjamín's fiancée would be easiest, if we can link her DNA to the skeleton. The third one could prove toughest for us, because we're talking about someone who went missing, assuming it was ever reported, in a large, populated area, donkey's years ago. That option is wide open."

  "If we find the remains of an embryo with the skeleton, haven't we more or less got the answer?" Elínborg said.

  "That would be a very neat solution, as I say. Was the pregnancy documented?" Erlendur asked.

  "What do you mean?"

  "Do we know it for a fact?"

  "Are you saying that Benjamín might have been lying? And she wasn't pregnant?"

  "I don't know. She could have been pregnant, but not necessarily by him."

  "She cheated on him?"

  "We can speculate until the cows come home before those archaeologists present us with something."

  "What could have happened to that person?" Elínborg sighed, wondering about the bones in the dirt.

  "Maybe they deserved it," Erlendur said.

  "What?"

  "That person. Let's hope so, anyway. Let's hope it wasn't an innocent victim."

  His thoughts turned to Eva Lind. Did she deserve to be lying in intensive care, more dead than alive? Was it his fault? Was anyone to blame except her? Wasn't the state she was in of her own doing? Wasn't her drug addiction her private business? Or did he have some part in it? She was convinced he did, and had told him so when she felt he was being unfair to her.

  "You never should have left us," she shouted at him once. "Okay, you look down on me. But you're no better yourself. You're just as much a goddam loser!"

  "I don't look down on you," he said, but she didn't even listen to him.

  "You look down on me like a piece of shit," she shouted. "Like you're more important than me. Like you're smarter and better. Like you're better than me and Mum and Sindri! Walking out on us like some bigshot, then ignoring us. Like you're, like you're God fucking Almighty."

  "I tried . . ."

  "You didn't try shit! What did you try? Nothing. Fuck all. Ran out like the creep you are."

  "I've never looked down on you," he said. "That's wrong. I can't understand why you say that."

  "Oh yes you do. That's why you left. Because we're so ordinary. So bloody ordinary that you couldn't stand us. Ask Mum! She knows. She says it's all your fault. The whole lot. Your fault. The state I'm in too. What do you reckon to that, mister God fucking Almighty?"

  "Not everything your mother says is true. She's angry and bitter and . . ."

  "Angry and bitter! If you only knew how angry and bitter she really is and hates your guts and hates her kids because it wasn't her fault you left because she's the Virgin fucking Mary. It was OUR fault. Sindri and me. Don't you get it, you fucking jerk. Don't you get it, you fucking jerk . . ."

  "Erlendur?"

  "What?"

  "Are you all right?"

  "Fine. Perfectly all right."

  "I'm going to drop in on Róbert's daughter." Elínborg waved her hand in front of his face as if he had slipped into a trance. "Are you going to the British embassy?"

  "Eh?" Erlendur snapped back to his senses. "Yes, let's do it that way," he said remotely. "Let's do it that way. And one thing, Elínborg."

  "Yes?"

  "Get the district medical officer back here to take a look at the bones when they're exposed. Skarphédinn doesn't know his arse from his elbow. He increasingly reminds me of some monstrosity out of the Brothers Grimm."

  13

  Before Erlendur went to the British embassy he drove to the Vogar district and parked a short distance from the basement flat where Eva Lind had once lived and where he had begun the search for her. He thought back to the child he found in the flat with the cigarette burns on its body. He knew the girl had been taken away from her mother and was in care, and he knew that the man she lived with was the father. A quick enquiry revealed that the mother had twice been to Accident and Emergency in the past year, once with a broken arm and the other time with multiple injuries which she claimed were the result of a road accident.

  Another simple check showed that the mother's partner had a police record, although never for violence. He was awaiting sentence on charges of burglary and drug trafficking. Once he had been to prison, for an accumulation of minor crimes. One was an unsuccessful shop robbery.

  Erlendur sat in his car for a good while, watching the door to the flat. He refrained from smoking and was about to drive away when the door opened. A man came out, wreathed in smoke from a cigarette, which he flicked into the front garden. He was of average height, powerfully built with long, black hair, dressed in black from top to toe. His appearance fitted the description in the police reports. When the man disappeared around the corner, Erlendur quietly drove away.

  Róbert's daughter welcomed Elínborg at the door. Elínborg had phoned beforehand. The woman, whose name was Harpa, was confined to a wheelchair, her legs withered and lifeless, but her torso and arms strong. Elínborg was somewhat taken aback but said nothing. Harpa smiled and invited her in. She left the door open, Elínborg entered and closed it behind her. The flat was small but cosy, custom built for its owner.

  "I'm sorry about your father," Elínborg said, following Harpa into the sitting room.

  "Thank you," the woman in the wheelchair said. "He was extremely old. I hope I don't live that long. There's nothing I'd hate more than to end up as a patient in an institution, waiting to die. Fading away."

  "We're enquiring about people who might have lived in a chalet in Grafarholt, on the north side," Elínborg said. "Not so far from yours. Wartime or thereabouts. We spoke to your father shortly before he died and he told us he knew about a family living there, but unfortunately couldn't tell us much more."

  Elínborg thought about the mask over Róbert's face. His breathlessness and anaemic hands.

  "You mentioned finding some bones," Harpa said, sweeping back the hair which had fallen over her forehead. "The ones on the news."

  "Yes, we found a skeleton there and we're trying to discover who it might be. Do you remember this family that your father spoke of ?"

  "I was seven when the war reached Iceland," Harpa said. "I remember the soldiers in Reykjavik. We lived downtown, but I didn't have a clue what it was all about. They were on the hill too. On the south side. They built barracks and a bunker. There was a long slit in it with the barrel of a cannon sticking out. All very dramatic. Our parents told us to keep away from it, my brother and me. I have a vague memory of fences all around it. Barbed wire. We didn't go over that way much. We spent a lot of time in the chalet that Dad built, mostly in the summer, and naturally we got to know the neighbours a little."

  "Your father said that there were three children in that house. They could have been about your age." Elínborg glanced down at Harpa's wheelchair. "Maybe you didn't get about."

  "Oh, sure," Harpa said, rapping her knuckles on the wheelchair. "This happened later. A car accident. I was 30. I don't remember any children on the hill. I remember children in other chalets, but not up there."

  "Some redcurrant bushes are growing near the site of the old house, where we found the bones. Your father mentioned a lady who went there, later, I believe. She went there a lot . . . I think he said that anyway . . . probably dressed in green and she was crooked."

  "Crooked?"

  "That's what he said, or I should say, wrote."

  Elínborg took out the note Róbert had written and handed it to her.

  "This was apparently when you still owned your chalet," Elínborg went on. "I understand you sold it some time after 1970."

  "1972," Harpa said.

  "Did you notice this lady?"

  "No, and I never heard Dad talk about her. I'm sorry I can't help you, but I never saw that lady and don't know anything about her,
though I do remember people at the place you mean."

  "Can you imagine what your father meant by this word? Crooked?"

  "What it says. He always said what he meant, nothing more. He was a very precise man. A good man. Good to me. After my accident. And when my husband left me – he stuck it out for three years after the crash, then he was gone."

  Elínborg thought she noticed a smile, but there was no smile on her face.

  The official from the British embassy greeted Erlendur with such perfect courtesy and decorum that Erlendur almost thanked him with a bow. He said he was a secretary. Impeccably dressed in a suit and squeaky black leather shoes, he was unusually tall and thin, and spoke very precise Icelandic, much to the delight of Erlendur, who spoke English badly and understood little of it. He sighed with relief when he realised that if one of them was to give a slightly stilted impression in their conversation, it would be the secretary.

  The office was as impeccable as the secretary himself, and Erlendur thought about his own workplace which always looked like a bomb had hit it. The secretary – "Just call me Jim," he said – offered him a seat.

  "I love the way you are so informal here in Iceland," Jim said.

  "Have you lived here for long?" Erlendur asked, not exactly sure why he was behaving like an old lady at a tea party.

  "Yes, almost 2,0 years now," Jim nodded. "Thank you for asking. And as it happens, World War II is a particular interest of mine. I mean World War II in Iceland. I did an MA on the subject at the London School of Economics. When you rang about those barracks I thought I might be able to help."

  "You've got a good command of the language."

  "Thank you, my wife's Icelandic."

  "So what about those barracks?" Erlendur asked, getting to the point.

  "Well, I haven't had much time, but I did find some embassy reports about the camps we built during the war. We might need to send for more information. That's for you to judge. There were a couple of barracks on what is now Grafarholt golf course."

  Jim picked up some papers from the table and browsed through them.

  "There was also, what do you call it, a fortification there. Or a bunker? A tower. A huge cannon. A platoon from the 12th Tyneside Scottish Battalion manned the cannon, but I still haven't found out who was in the barracks. It looks like a depot to me. Why it was located on the hill I'm not sure, but there were barracks and bunkers all over the place there, on the way to Mosfellsdalur, in Kollafjördur and Hvalfjördur."

  "We were wondering about a missing person from the hill, as I told you over the phone. Do you know whether any soldiers who were there were lost or reported missing?"

  "Do you think the skeleton you found might be a British soldier?"

  "Perhaps it's not very likely, but we think that the body was buried during the war and if the British were in the area it's a good idea to be able to rule them out, at least."

  "I'll check it for you, but I don't know how long they keep such records. I think the Americans took over the camp like everything else when we left in 1941. Most of our troops were sent to other countries, but not all of them."

  "So the Americans ran that camp?"

  "I'll check that too. I can talk to the American embassy about it and see what they say. That will save you the bother."

  "You had military police here."

  "Precisely. That might be the best place to start. It will take a few days. Maybe weeks."

  "We have plenty of time," Erlendur said, thinking of Skarphédinn.

  Rummaging around in Benjamín's possessions, Sigurdur Óli was bored stiff. Elsa had greeted him at the front door, shown him down to the cellar and left him there, and he had spent four hours turning out cupboards, drawers and countless boxes, without knowing exactly what he was looking for. Bergthóra was preoccupying his thoughts. He wondered whether she would be as much of a nymphomaniac when he got home as she had been over the past few weeks. He made up his mind to ask her straight out whether there was any particular reason for her sudden appetite for him, and whether that reason might just be that she wanted a baby. But that question, he knew, would mean broaching another matter that they had sometimes discussed without reaching any conclusion: wasn't it time to get married with all the appropriate ceremony and trimmings?

  That was the question burning on her lips between the passionate kisses that she smothered him with. He still had to make his mind up about that issue and always dodged answering. His train of thought was: their life together was going smoothly, their love was flourishing, why ruin it by getting married? All the fuss. A stag party. Walking down the aisle. All those guests. Inflated condoms in the bridal suite. Unspeakably naff. Bergthóra did not want any civil ceremony bullshit. She talked about fireworks and beautiful memories to keep herself warm in her old age. Sigurdur Óli mumbled. Thought it was too early to think about old age. The problem was unresolved, it was clearly up to him to settle it and he had no idea what he wanted, apart from no church wedding and not hurting Bergthóra either.

  Like Erlendur, when he read the letters he sensed Benjamín's genuine love and fondness for the girl who had vanished from the streets of Reykjavik one day and was said to have thrown herself into the sea. My lovely. Dearest. How I miss you.

  All that love, Sigurdur Óli thought.

  Was it capable of killing?

  The bulk of the papers concerned Knudsen's shop, and Sigurdur Óli had given up all hope of finding anything remotely constructive when he pulled a note out of an old filing cabinet and read:

  Höskuldur Thórarinsson.

  Rent in advance for Grafarholt.

  8 krónur.

  Signed Benjamín Knudsen.

  Erlendur was leaving the embassy when his mobile rang.

  "I found a tenant," Sigurdur Óli said. "I think."

  "For what?" Erlendur said.

  "For the chalet. I'm on my way out of Benjamín's cellar. Never seen such a bloody mess in my life. I found a note implying that a certain Höskuldur Thórarinsson paid rent for Grafarholt."

  "Höskuldur?"

  "Yes. Thórarinsson."

  "What's the date on the note?"

  "No date. No year. Actually it's only an invoice from Knudsen's shop. The rent receipt is written on the back. And I also found invoices for what might well be construction materials for the chalet. It's all charged to the shop and the invoices are dated 1938. He may have started building the chalet around that time or been working on it."

  "What year did we say his fiancée went missing?" "Hang on, I jotted that down." Erlendur waited while Sigurdur Óli checked. He took notes at meetings, a practice Erlendur had never managed to make a habit of. He could hear Sigurdur Óli flick through papers and return to the telephone.