Silence Of The Grave

by Arnaldur Indridason

  "He was never found.

  "Then in the ward here I met a woman who said she had a message for me from the boy in the blizzard. And she said it wasn't my fault and I had nothing to fear. What does it mean? I don't believe in that sort of thing, but what am I supposed to think? All my life it's been my fault, although I'm well aware, and have been for a long time, that I was too young to shoulder any blame. But the guilt torments you like a cancer that eventually kills you.

  "Because that was no ordinary boy I lost my grip on.

  "Because the boy in the blizzard . . . was my brother."

  *

  Their mother slammed the door on the cold autumn wind and in the dim light of the kitchen she could see Grímur sitting opposite Símon at the table. She could not see Grímur's face clearly. This was the first time she had seen him since he had been led away, but as soon as she sensed his presence in the house and saw him again in the twilight, fear enveloped her. She had been expecting him all autumn, but she did not know exactly when he would be released. When she saw Tómas running up to her she realised at once what had happened.

  Simon did not dare move, but, keeping his back rigid, he turned his head to look in the direction of the front door and saw his mother staring at them. She had let go of Tómas, who sneaked into the passage where Mikkelína was standing. She saw the terror in Simon's eyes.

  Grímur sat on the kitchen chair and made no sign of moving. Several moments passed and the only sounds to be heard were the howling of the wind and their mother panting for breath after running up the hill. Her fear of Grímur, which had diminished since the spring, erupted again with full force and in an instant she was back to her old state. As if nothing had happened all the while he was away. Her legs went weak, the ache gnawed harder and harder at her stomach, her expression lost its newfound dignity, she hunched up, made herself as small as she could. Submissive. Obedient. Ready for the worst.

  The children saw the change that came over her as she stood in the kitchen doorway.

  "Simon and I were having a talk," Grímur said, thrusting his head back into the light to reveal his burn. Their mother flinched when she looked him in the face and saw the glaring red scar. She opened her mouth as if to speak or scream, but nothing came out and she stared at Grímur, dumbstruck.

  "Don't you think it's pretty?'' he said,

  There was something strange about Grímur. Something that Simon couldn't quite pin down. More self-confident. More smug. He was a tyrant, that was obvious from his whole attitude towards his family and always had been, but there was something else, something dangerous, and Símon was wondering what it could be when Grímur stood up from the table.

  He walked over to the children's mother.

  "Simon told me about the soldier called Dave who brings fish here."

  Their mother said nothing.

  "It was a soldier called Dave who did this to me," he said, pointing to his scar. "I can't open my eye properly because he thought it was all right to throw coffee over me. First he heated it in a jug until it was so hot that he had to hold it with a cloth, and when I thought he was going to pour a cup for us, he emptied the jug over my face."

  Their mother averted her glance from Grímur to the floor, but did not move.

  "They let him in when my hands were handcuffed behind my back. I think they knew what he was going to do."

  He walked menacingly towards Mikkelína and Tómas in the passageway. Simon sat at the table as if nailed to his seat. Grímur turned back to their mother and walked over to her.

  "It was like they were rewarding him," he said. "Do you know why?"

  "No," their mother said in a low voice.

  "No," Grímur mimicked her. "Too busy fucking him."

  He smiled.

  "I wouldn't be surprised if he turns up floating in the lake. As if he'd fallen in the water fishing for trout."

  Grímur stood right up close to their mother and roughly placed his hand on her stomach.

  "Do you reckon he left something behind?" he asked in a quiet, threatening voice. "Something from the picnics down by the lake? Do you think so? Do you reckon he left something? I can tell you that if he's left anything, I'll kill it. Who knows, I might burn it, like he burned my face."

  "Don't talk like that," their mother said.

  Grímur looked at her.

  "How did that bastard know we were pilfering?" he asked. "Who do you suppose told him what we were doing? Do you know anything about that? Maybe we weren't careful enough. Maybe he saw us. Or maybe he gave someone some trout and saw all the stuff in here, wondered where it came from and asked the little tart who lives here if she knew."

  Grímur tightened his grip on her stomach.

  "You can't look at a uniform without dropping your knickers."

  Silently, Simon stood up behind his father.

  "What do you say to a cup of coffee?" Grímur said to the children's mother. "What do you say to some piping hot, refreshing coffee for breakfast? If Dave lets us. Do you reckon he'll let us?"

  Grímur laughed.

  "Maybe he'll have a drop with us. Are you expecting him? Do you think he'll come and rescue you?"

  "Don't," Símon said behind him.

  Grímur released his grip on their mother and turned to Simon.

  "Don't do that," Simon said.

  "Simon!" his mother snapped. "Stop it!"

  "Leave Mum alone," Simon said in a trembling voice.

  Grímur turned back to their mother. Mikkelína and Tómas watched from the passage. He leaned over to her and whispered in her ear.

  "Maybe you'll just go missing one day like Benjamín's girlfriend."

  Their mother watched Grímur, ready for an attack that she knew could not be avoided.

  "What do you know about that?" she asked.

  "People disappear. All kinds of people. Posh people too. So scum like you can go missing. Who'd ask about you? Unless your mother from the Gasworks is looking for you. Do you think she might be?"

  "Leave her alone," Símon said, still standing by the kitchen table.

  "Simon?" Grímur said. "I thought we were friends. You and me and Tómas."

  "Leave her alone," Símon said. "You have to stop hurting her. You have to stop it and go away. Go away and never come back."

  Grímur had walked up to him and stared at him as if he were a total stranger.

  "I've been away. I was away for six months and this is the welcome I get. The missus shagging soldiers and little Simon wants to throw his dad out. Are you big enough to handle your dad, Simon? Do you think so? Do you reckon you'll ever be big enough to fight me?"

  "Simon!" his mother said. "It's all right. Take Tómas and Mikkelína down to Gufunes and wait for me there. Do you hear, Simon? Do as you're told."

  Grímur grinned in Simon's face.

  "And now the missus is running the whole show. What does she think she is? Funny how everyone's changed in this short time."

  Grímur looked down the passage to the rooms.

  "And what about the freak? Is the cripple going to answer back too? Da, da, da, da, that fucking cripple that I should have strangled years ago. Is this all the thanks I get? Is this my thanks?" he shouted down the passage.

  Mikkelína scuttled away from the doorway to the dark passage. Tómas stayed there watching Grímur, who smiled at him.

  "But me and Tómas are friends," Grímur said.

  "Tómas would never betray his dad. Come here, son. Come to Daddy."

  Tómas went up to him.

  "Mum phoned," he said.

  "Tómas!" their mother shouted.

  25

  "I don't think Tómas intended to help him. It's more likely that he thought he was helping Mum. Perhaps he wanted to scare him to do her a favour. But I think it's most likely he didn't know what he was doing. He was so small, the dear child."

  Mikkelína looked at Erlendur. He and Elínborg were in her sitting room and had listened to her account of the mother from the hill and Grímu
r, how they met and the first time he hit her, how the violence gradually intensified and twice she tried to flee from him, how he threatened to kill her children. She told them about life on the hill, the soldiers, the depot, the thefts and the soldier called Dave who went fishing in the lake, and about the summer their father was imprisoned and her mother and the soldier fell in love, how her brothers carried Mikkelína out into the sunshine, how Dave took them for picnics, and about the cold autumn morning when her stepfather returned.

  Mikkelína took all the time she needed to tell her story, and tried not to omit any part of the family's history that she thought might be relevant. Erlendur and Elínborg sat and listened, drinking the coffee Mikkelína had made for them and eating the cake she had baked because, she said, she knew Erlendur would be coming. She greeted Elínborg sincerely and asked if there were many women detectives.

  "Next to none," Elínborg smiled.

  "Sinful," said Mikkelína, offering her a seat. "Women should be in the forefront everywhere."

  Elínborg looked at Erlendur, who gave a half smile. She had picked him up from the office in the afternoon, aware that he had come from the hospital, and found him exceptionally glum. She asked about Eva Lind's condition, thinking it might have worsened, but he said it was stable, and when she asked how he was feeling and whether she could do anything for him, he just shook his head and told her there was nothing to do but wait. She had the impression that the waiting was proving a terrible strain on him, but did not risk broaching the subject. Long experience had taught her that Erlendur had no need to talk about himself to others.

  Mikkelína lived on the ground floor in a small block of flats in Breidholt. Her home was small but cosy and while she was in the kitchen making coffee Erlendur walked around the sitting room looking at pictures of what he assumed to be her family. There were not many photographs and none seemed to be from the hill.

  She began with a short account of herself while she was going about her business in the kitchen and they listened to her from the sitting room. She started school late, approaching 20 – at the same time as she had her first therapy for her handicap – and she made enormous progress. Erlendur felt she rather skated over her own story, but did not remark on it. In the course of time Mikkelína completed secondary school with extramural classes, enrolled at the university and graduated in psychology. By then she was in her forties. Now she was retired.

  She had adopted the boy she called Simon before she went to university. Starting a family would have been difficult for reasons she did not need to go into, she said, with a sardonic smile.

  She visited the hill regularly in spring and summer, to look at the redcurrant bushes, and in the autumn she picked berries to make jam. She still had a jar with a little left in it from last autumn's batch and let them have a taste. Elínborg, a doyenne of cooking, praised her for it. Mikkelína told her to keep the rest and apologised for how little there was.

  Then she told them how she had seen the city growing over the years and decades, first stretching out to Breidholt and then Grafarvogur, then at lightning speed along the road to Mosfellsbaer and finally up to Grafarholt, the hill where she had once lived and acquired some of her most painful memories.

  "I really only have bad memories of that place," she said. "Apart from that short summer."

  "Were you born with this disability?" Elínborg asked. She tried to phrase the question as politely as possible, but she decided there was no way of doing so.

  "No," Mikkelína said. "I fell ill when I was three. Went to hospital. Mum told me that parents were forbidden to stay in the wards with their children. She couldn't understand such a heartless and repulsive rule: not being allowed to stay with a child that was seriously ill or even on the verge of death. It took her several years to realise I could regain what I had lost with therapy, but my stepfather never let her care for me, send me to the doctor or find out about cures. I have a memory from before I was ill, I don't know whether it's a dream or real – the sun is shining and I'm in the garden of a house, probably where my mother was a maid, and I'm running at full pelt, squealing, and Mum seems to be chasing me. I don't remember anything else. Just that I could run around as I pleased."

  Mikkelína smiled.

  "I often have that sort of dream. Where I'm healthy and can move as I want, not wagging my head all the time I talk, and I have control over my facial muscles, they don't pull my features all over the place."

  Erlendur put down his cup.

  "You told me yesterday you named your son after your half-brother, Símon."

  "Simon was a wonderful boy. There was none of his father in him. At least I never saw it. He was like Mum. Kind, understanding and helpful. He had endless pity, that child. Hated his father, and his hatred did him harm. He should never have needed to hate anything. And like the rest of us he was smitten with fear throughout his childhood. Terrified when his father went on the rampage. He watched our mother being beaten to a pulp. I used to hide my head under the quilt, but I noticed that Simon sometimes stood watching the attacks, as if he was steeling himself to tackle it, later, when he was strong enough to stand up to his father. When he was big enough to sort him out.

  "Sometimes he tried to intervene. Stood in front of our mother, defying him. Mum feared that more than the beatings. She couldn't bear the thought that anything would happen to her children.

  "Such an amazingly kind boy, that Simon."

  "You talk about him as though he's still a child," Elínborg said. "Did he die?"

  Mikkelína smiled, but said nothing.

  "And Tómas?" Erlendur said. "There were only three of you."

  "Yes, Tómas," Mikkelína said. "He was different from Simon. Their father could tell that."

  Mikkelína fell silent.

  "Where did your mother phone?" Erlendur asked. "Before she went back to the hill?"

  Without answering him either, Mikkelína stood up and went into her bedroom. Elínborg and Erlendur exchanged glances. A moment later Mikkelína came back holding a piece of paper. She unfolded the note, read it and handed it to Erlendur.

  "Mum gave me this note," she said. "I clearly remember Dave sliding it across the table to her, but we were never allowed to know what it said. Mum didn't show me it until later. Years later."

  Erlendur read the message.

  "Dave got an Icelander or a soldier who spoke Icelandic to write the note for him. Mum always kept it, and, of course, I'll take it to the grave with me."

  Erlendur looked at the note. Although written in clumsy capitals, the words were very clear.

  I KNOW WHAT HE DOES TO YOU.

  "Mum and Dave talked about her contacting him as soon as my stepfather got out of prison, and he would come to help her. I don't know the exact arrangements."

  "Couldn't anyone at Gufunes help her?" Elínborg asked. "Plenty of people must have worked there."

  Mikkelína looked at her.

  "My mother had suffered abuse at his hands for a decade and a half. It was physical violence, he beat her, often so brutally that she was bedridden for days afterwards. And it was psychological too, which was maybe a worse form of violence because, as I told Erlendur yesterday, it reduced my mother to nothing. She started to despise herself as much as her husband despised her; she thought for a long time of suicide, but partly because of us, her children, she never went further than contemplating it. Dave made up for some of this in the six months he spent with her, and he was the only person she could have asked for help. She never mentioned to anyone what she'd been through in all those years and I think she was prepared to suffer the beatings again if need be. At worst he'd attack her and everything would be back to normal."