Silence Of The Grave

by Arnaldur Indridason

  "She disappeared in 1940. In the spring." "So Benjamín is building his chalet up to that time, then gives up and rents it out instead." "And Höskuldur is one of the tenants." "Have you found out anything else about this Höskuldur character?"

  "No, not yet. Shouldn't we start with him?" Sigurdur Óli asked, hoping to escape from the cellar.

  "I'll check him out," Erlendur said, and to Sigurdur Óli's chagrin added: "See if you can find anything more about him or anyone else in all that rubbish. If there's one note, there may well be more."

  14

  Erlendur sat by Eva Lind's bedside for quite a while after arriving from the embassy, and he turned over in his mind what to talk about. He had no idea what to say to her. He made several attempts, in vain. Ever since the doctor mentioned that it would help if he talked to her, he had repeatedly wondered what to say, but never reached any conclusion.

  He began talking about the weather, but soon gave that up. Then he described Sigurdur Óli and told her how tired he had been looking recently. But there was not much else to say about him. He tried to find something to say about Elínborg, but gave up on that too. Then he told her about Benjamín Knudsen's fiancée, who was supposed to have drowned herself, and about the love letters he found in the merchant's cellar.

  He told Eva Lind he had seen her mother sitting at her bedside.

  Then he fell silent.

  "What's with you and Mum?" Eva Lind had once asked when she was visiting him. "Why don't you talk?"

  Sindri Snaer had come with her, but did not stay long, leaving the two of them together as darkness fell. It was December and there were Christmas songs on the radio, which Erlendur switched off and Eva Lind turned back on, saying she wanted to listen to them. She was several months pregnant and had gone straight for the time being, and as usual when she sat down with him she began to talk about the family she did not have. Sindri Snaer never talked about that, nor about his mother or sister or all that never happened. He was silent and withdrawn when Erlendur spoke to him. Didn't care for his father. That was the difference between the sister and brother. Eva Lind wanted to get to know her father and did not baulk at holding him responsible.

  "Your mother?" Erlendur said. "Can't we turn off those Christmas jingles?"

  He was trying to win time. Eva's probing into the past always threw him into a quandary. He didn't know the answers to give about their short-lived marriage, the children they had, why he had walked out. He didn't have answers to all her questions, and sometimes that enraged her. She had a short fuse as far as her family was concerned.

  "No, I want to hear Christmas songs," Eva Lind said, and Bing Crosby went on dreaming of a white Christmas. "I've never ever heard her say a good thing about you, but she must have seen something in you all the same. At first. When you met. What was it?"

  "Have you asked her?"

  "Yes."

  "And what did she say?"

  "Nothing. That would mean she'd have to say something positive about you and she can't handle that. Can't handle the idea of there being anything good about you. What was it? Why the two of you?"

  "I don't know," Erlendur said, and meant it. He tried to be honest. "We met at a dance. I don't know. It wasn't planned. It just happened."

  "What was going on in your head?"

  Erlendur did not reply. He thought about children who never knew their parents; never found out who they really were. Entered their life when it was as much as halfway through and did not have a clue about them. Never got to know them except as father and mother and authority and protector. Never discovered their shared and separate secrets, with the result that the parents were just as much strangers as everyone else the children met during the course of their lives. He pondered how parents managed to keep their children at arm's length until all that remained was acquired, polite behaviour, with an artificial sincerity that sprang from common experience rather than real love.

  "What was going on in your head?" Eva Lind's questions opened wounds that she picked at constantly.

  "I don't know," Erlendur said, keeping her at a distance as he had always done. She felt that. Maybe she acted in this way to produce such a reaction. Gain one more confirmation. Feel how remote he was from her and how far away she was from understanding him.

  "You must have seen something in her."

  How could she understand when he sometimes did not understand himself ?

  "We met at a dance," he repeated. "I don't expect there was any future in that."

  "And then you just left."

  "I didn't just leave," Erlendur said. "It wasn't like that. But in the end I did leave and it was over. We didn't do it . . . I don't know. Maybe there is no right way. If there is, we didn't find it."

  "But it wasn't over," Eva Lind said.

  "No," Erlendur said. He listened to Bing Crosby on the radio. Through the window he watched the big snowflakes drifting to earth. Looked at his daughter. The rings pierced through her eyebrows. The metal stud in her nose. Her army boots up on the coffee table. The dirt under her fingernails. The bare stomach that showed beneath her black T-shirt and was beginning to bulge.

  "It's never over," he said.

  Höskuldur Thórarinsson lived in a flat in the basement of his daughter's elegant detached house in Árbaer and gave the impression of being pleased with his lot. He was a small, nimble man with silvery hair and a silver beard around his little mouth, wearing a checked labourer's shirt and beige corduroys. Elínborg tracked him down. There weren't many people in the national registry named Höskuldur and past retirement age. She telephoned most of them, wherever they lived in Iceland, and this particular Höskuldur from Árbaer told her, you bet he rented from Benjamín Knudsen, that poor, dear old chap. He remembered it well although he did not spend long in the chalet on the hill.

  They sat in his living room, Erlendur and Elínborg, and he had made coffee and they talked about this and that. He told them he was born and bred in Reykjavík, then started complaining how those bloody conservatives were throttling the life out of pensioners as if they were a bunch of layabouts who couldn't provide for themselves. Erlendur decided to cut the old man's ramblings short.

  "Why did you move out to the hill? Wasn't it rather rural for someone from Reykjavik?"

  "You bet it was," Höskuldur said as he poured coffee into their cups. "But there was no alternative. Not for me. You couldn't find housing anywhere in Reykjavik at that time. People crammed into the tiniest rooms during the war. All of a sudden all the yokels could come to town and earn hard cash instead of getting paid with a bowl of curds and a bottle of booze. Slept in tents if they had to. The price of housing went sky high and I moved out to the hill. What are those bones you found there?"

  "When did you move to the hill?" Elínborg asked.

  "It would have been some time around 1943, I reckon. Or '44. I think it was autumn. In the middle of the war."

  "How long did you live there?"

  "I was there for a year. Until the following autumn."

  "Did you live alone?"

  "With my wife. Dear old Ellý. She's passed away now."

  "When did she die?"

  "Three years ago. Did you think I buried her up on the hill? Do I look like the type, dearie?"

  "We can't find the records of anyone who lived in that house," Elínborg said without answering his remark. "Neither you nor anyone else. You didn't register as domiciled there."

  "I can't remember how it was. We never registered. We were homeless. Others were always prepared to pay more than us, then I heard about Benjamín's chalet and spoke to him. His tenants had just moved out and he took pity on me."

  "Do you know who the tenants were? The ones before you?"

  "No, but I remember the place was spotless when we moved in." Höskuldur finished his cup of coffee, refilled it and took a sip. "Spick and span."

  "What do you mean, spick and span?"

  "Well, I remember Ellý specifically commenting on it. She liked th
at. Everything scrubbed and polished and not a speck of dust to be seen. It was just like moving into a hotel. Not that we were rough, mind you. But that place was exceptionally well kept. Clearly a housewife who knew her business, my Ellý said."

  "So you never saw any signs of violence or the like?" Erlendur asked, having kept silent until now. "Bloodstains on the walls for example."

  Elínborg looked at him. Was he teasing the old man?

  "Blood? On the walls? No, there was no blood."

  "Everything in order then?"

  "Everything in order. Definitely."

  "Were there any bushes by the house when you were there?"

  "There were a couple of redcurrant bushes, yes. I remember them clearly because they were laden with fruit that autumn and we made jam from the berries."

  "You didn't plant them? Or your wife, Ellý?"

  "No, we didn't plant them. They were there when we moved in."

  "You can't imagine who the bones belonged to that we found buried up there?" Erlendur asked.

  "Is that really why you're here? To find out if I killed anyone?"

  "We think a human body was buried there some time during the war or thereabouts," Erlendur said. "But you're not suspected of murder. Far from it. Did you ever talk to Benjamín about the people who lived in the chalet before you?"

  "As it happens, I did," Höskuldur said. "Once when I was paying the rent and praised the immaculate condition the previous tenants had left the house in. But he didn't seem interested. A mysterious man. Lost his wife. Threw herself in the sea, I heard."

  "Fiancée. They weren't married. Do you remember British troops camped on the hill? Or Americans rather, that late in the war?"

  "It was crawling with British after the occupation in 1940. They set up barracks on the other side of the hill and had a cannon to defend Reykjavik against an attack. I always thought it was a joke, but Ellý told me not to make fun of it. Then the British left and the Americans took over. They were camped on the hill when I moved there. The British had left years before."

  "Did you get to know them?"

  "Hardly at all. They kept themselves to themselves. They didn't smell as bad as the British, my Ellý said. Much cleaner and smarter. Elegant. So much more elegant than them. Like in the films. Clark Gable. Or Cary Grant."

  Cary Grant was British, Erlendur thought, but didn't bother to correct a know-it-all. He noticed that Elínborg ignored it as well.

  "Built better barracks too," Höskuldur went on undaunted. "Much better barracks than the British. The Americans concreted the floors, didn't use rotten planks like the British did. Much better places to live. Everything the Americans touched. All much better and smarter."

  "Do you know who took over the chalet when you and Ellý moved out?" Erlendur asked.

  "Yes, we showed them around the place. He worked on the farm at Gufunes, had a wife and two kids and a dog. Lovely people, but I can't for the life of me remember their names."

  "Do you know anything about the people who lived there before you, who left it in such good condition?"

  "Only what Benjamín told me when I started talking about how nicely his house had been kept and telling him that Ellý and I set our standards just as high."

  Erlendur pricked up his ears and Elínborg sat up in her seat. Höskuldur said nothing.

  "Yes?" Erlendur said.

  "What he said? It was about the wife." Höskuldur paused again and sipped his coffee. Erlendur waited impatiently for him to finish his story. His eagerness had not escaped Höskuldur, who knew he had the detective begging now.

  "It was very interesting, you can be sure of that," Höskuldur said. The police wouldn't go away from him empty-handed. Not from Höskuldur. He sipped his coffee yet again, taking his time about it.

  My God, Elínborg thought. Won't the old bore ever get round to it? She had had enough of old fogeys who either died on her or put on airs.

  "He thought the husband battered her."

  "Battered her?" Erlendur repeated.

  "What's it called these days? Domestic violence?"

  "He beat his wife?" Erlendur said.

  "That's what Benjamín said. One of that lot who beat their wives and their kids too. I never lifted a finger against my Ellý."

  "Did he tell you their names?"

  "No, or if he did, I forgot it long ago. But he told me another thing that I've often thought about since. He said that she, that man's wife, was conceived in the old Gasworks on Raudarárstígur. Down by Hlemmur. At least that was what they said. Just like they said Benjamín killed his wife. His fiancée, I mean."

  "Benjamín? The Gasworks? What are you talking about?" Erlendur had completely lost his thread. "Did people say Benjamín killed his fiancée?"

  "Some thought so. At the time. He said so himself."

  "That he killed her?"

  "That people thought he'd done something to her. He didn't say that he killed her. He'd never have told me that. I didn't know him in the slightest. But he was sure that people suspected him and I remember there was some talk of jealousy."

  "Gossip?"

  "All gossip of course. We thrive on it. Thrive on saying nasty things about other people."

  "And wait a minute, what was that about the Gasworks?"

  "That's the best rumour of all. Haven't you heard it? People thought the end of the world was nigh so they had an all-night orgy in the Gasworks. Several babies were born afterwards and this woman was one of them, or so Benjamín thought. They were called the doomsday kids."

  Erlendur looked at Elínborg, then back at Höskuldur.

  "Are you pulling my leg?"

  Höskuldur shook his head.

  "It was because of the comet. People thought it would collide with Earth."

  "What comet?"

  "Halley's comet, of course!" the know-it-all almost shouted, outraged by Erlendur's ignorance. "Halley's comet! People thought the Earth would collide with it and be consumed in hellfire!"

  15

  Earlier that day Elínborg had located Benjamín's fiancée's sister, and when she and Erlendur left Höskuldur she told him she wanted to talk to her. Erlendur nodded, saying that he was going to the National Library to try to find newspaper articles about Halley's comet. Like most know-it-alls, as it turned out, Höskuldur did not know much about what really happened. He went round in circles until Erlendur could not be bothered to listen any more and took his leave, rather curtly.

  "What do you think about what Höskuldur was saying?" Erlendur asked her when they got back to the car.

  "That Gasworks business is preposterous," Elínborg said. "It'll be interesting to see what you can find out about it. But of course what he said about gossip is perfectly true. We take a special delight in telling nasty stories about other people. The rumour says nothing about whether Benjamín was actually a murderer, and you know that."

  "Yes, but what's that idiom again? No smoke without fire?"

  "Idioms," Elínborg muttered. "I'll ask his sister. Tell me another thing. How's Eva Lind doing?"

  "She's just lying in bed. Looks as though she's peacefully sleeping. The doctor told me to talk to her."