Strange Shores

55

On his last morning at Bakkasel he woke up after a bad night’s sleep, unable to feel his extremities, so he hurried out to the car and switched on the heater. He had brought the Thermos and cigarettes with him and once he had warmed up a little, he poured coffee into the lid of the flask and lit up. He stayed there until he had got the blood back into his limbs. The box containing the bones lay beside him on the passenger seat. Daníel had given it to him in parting, saying he had no idea what to do with all his father’s junk and repeating that it would be best to set fire to the garage. Erlendur had thanked him and brought the bones back to the croft.

Judging by the label on the lid, Daníel senior had stumbled upon them while walking across the north flank of Hardskafi, a considerable distance from the spot where Erlendur had been found in a state close to death. Bergur must have strayed further north than anyone would have believed possible — assuming these were his brother’s remains. But they weren’t necessarily proof that he died on the mountain. The remains could have arrived there in the mouth of a fox, for example. The bones themselves couldn’t tell Erlendur much, lying in a cardboard box in a garage in Seydisfjördur, but it was enough. He was convinced they were the chin and cheekbone of a child, and immediately felt a powerful intuition that they could only belong to his brother.

During the night he had considered sending them off for tests. He could have them dated and get an expert opinion on how long they had been at the mercy of the elements. But the process would take time and it was uncertain what the results would show. He came to the conclusion that he didn’t need the help of science. He was sure in his own mind, and soon an idea began to form about what he should do with the bones.

Having finished the coffee and smoked two cigarettes, Erlendur started the car and drove slowly away from Bakkasel along the track to the Eskifjördur road, then headed in the direction of the village. Turning off just before it, he parked by the gate of the graveyard. Once there he remained in the car for a while with the engine running, still savouring the blast of warm air from the heater. He picked up the box, opened it and inspected the two bones. If there had been any more, surely Daníel would have picked them up too? Erlendur had been plagued by such questions all night. He knew he would have to climb the north flank of the mountain, not necessarily in search of further remains, as he had no idea where the bones had been found or how they had got there. No, he must go there for other reasons.

He stepped out of the car, box in hand, and fetched the spade from the boot. He wouldn’t need to dig nearly as deep this time, merely scratch the surface of his mother’s grave.

He found his parents’ plot and stood there in the raw air, thinking about the years that had passed since the accident, since they had lived in the east. His mother had coped well with the bustle and traffic when they moved to Reykjavík, but his father had never been happy, finding the city brash, noisy and alien. At the time new suburbs had been springing up almost overnight. These were now old and established, yet districts were forever being added to the city to cater for incomers from the countryside, who didn’t all adapt easily to their new circumstances. And so the years passed, time crawling on inexorably into a future that no one from the obsolete past would recognise.

Like his father, Erlendur had never settled into the new environment, never understood what he was doing there or adjusted properly. All he knew was that somewhere on his journey through life time had come to a standstill, and he had never managed to wind the mechanism up again. When he stood there with the bones in his hands, he had experienced no elation, no sense that his suffering was at last over and he had received answers to the questions that had dogged him ever since his brother’s disappearance. Any hope of happiness was long forgotten.

Erlendur raised his eyes to the mountains. Snow was falling on their slopes.

He shifted his gaze to the cemetery, to the rows of headstones and crosses. Born. Died. Buried. Beloved wife. Blessed be your memory. Rest in peace. Death above and all around.

Death in a small box.

Looking again at the bones, he knew in his heart that he had recovered two tiny fragments of his brother’s remains. For years he had been trying to envisage how he would react if he ever found himself in this position. Now an answer of sorts was at hand. But he felt numb. Empty. These little fragments of bone couldn’t satisfy his questions. It was impossible to say exactly where his brother had died and it would always be a mystery how his bones had ended up on the northern slopes of Hardskafi. Nothing would alter the fact that he had died in a blizzard at the age of eight. The discovery of his bones brought Erlendur no fresh insights. It was merely confirmation of what he already knew. After all these years, however, it did bring some small sense of closure, however paltry. What remained was a feeling of emptiness more desolate than anything he had ever experienced.

His gaze wandered among the graves and crosses, and somewhere in his mind a year and date registered as familiar, as significant. He went back over the inscriptions, trying to work out which was nagging at his memory. The year 1942 caught his eye.

He walked over to the headstone of weathered granite that projected a metre above the snow. It turned out to be the year that a woman called Thórhildur Vilhjálmsdóttir had died. She had been born in 1850. Erlendur did some quick mental arithmetic. She had been ninety-one when she passed away. She had been born on 7 September in the mid-nineteenth century and died on 14 January 1942, in the middle of the Second World War.

He considered the date again. She had died on 14 January in the year Matthildur went missing. Thórhildur had died a week before the storm in which the British servicemen came to grief. A week before Matthildur vanished.

He frowned down at the woman’s grave. No doubt the stone had been erected some time after her death, maybe years or even decades later. It was impossible to tell. But one could be fairly confident that not much more than a week would have elapsed between her death and funeral. The storm of 21 January might have occasioned a delay but it was also possible that Thórhildur had been buried before it struck.

Erlendur stood, lost in thought, concentrating on the date. January 1942. He considered the storm that had been raging, and Matthildur’s death, and Ezra. But most of all he focused on Jakob and the options that would have been available to him. He realised that he would need to consult a copy of the parish register.

After receiving directions to the vicar’s house from the staff at the petrol station, he drove straight round and rang the doorbell. A middle-aged woman answered and he asked to see the vicar. The woman explained that he had gone on a short trip to Reykjavík but would be back in a couple of days.

‘Do you know where I could get hold of the parish registers dating back to the Second World War?’ he asked, making an effort to hide his impatience.

‘Parish registers?’ repeated the woman. ‘I’m afraid I don’t. You mean the old ones? I expect they’re kept at the Regional Museum in Egilsstadir. That would be my guess. Though no doubt my husband Rúnar could help you if he was here.’

Erlendur thanked her, drove back to the petrol station and borrowed their phone to ring the museum. He hadn’t charged his mobile once since arriving in the east. He was informed that the Eskifjördur parish registers were indeed in their archives and he was welcome to consult them if he wished. He had noted down Thórhildur’s dates before leaving the graveyard, so he got back in his car and made the now familiar journey up the Fagridalur Valley to Egilsstadir.

When he asked to see the Eskifjördur church records dating back to the war, the museum curator, who turned out to be the man who had answered the phone, couldn’t have been more obliging. Having shown Erlendur to a table where he could peruse the ledger at his leisure, he went and fetched it.

Erlendur turned the pages until he reached the beginning of 1942. There had only been the one funeral between New Year and March. He recalled Ezra telling him that he had encountered Jakob in the cemetery in March, two months after Matthildur went missing, and that he had been digging a grave at the time.

Thórhildur had been buried on 23 January, two days after the storm. Nine days after she had passed away.

The vicar’s brief, cryptic marginal note came as no surprise to Erlendur.

Gr. d. by Jak. R.

Grave dug by Jakob Ragnarsson.