Silence of the Grave

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.

Robert’s daughter welcomed Elinborg at the door. Elinborg 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. Elinborg was somewhat taken aback but said nothing. Harpa smiled and invited her in. She left the door open, Elinborg entered and closed it behind her. The flat was small but cosy, custom built for its owner.

“I’m sorry about your father,” Elinborg 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,” Elinborg 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.”

Elinborg thought about the mask over Robert’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.” Elinborg 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.”

Elinborg took out the note Robert had written and handed it to her.

“This was apparently when you still owned your chalet,” Elinborg 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.”

Elinborg 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 12thTyneside 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 Kollafjordur and Hvalfjordur.”

“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 Skarphedinn.

Rummaging around in Benjamin’s possessions, Sigurdur Oli 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. Bergthora 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. Bergthora did not want any civil ceremony bullshit. She talked about fireworks and beautiful memories to keep herself warm in her old age. Sigurdur Oli 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 Bergthora either.

Like Erlendur, when he read the letters he sensed Benjamin’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 Oli thought.

Was it capable of killing?

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

Signed Benjamin Knudsen.

Erlendur was leaving the embassy when his mobile rang.

“I found a tenant,” Sigurdur Oli said. “I think.”

“For what?” Erlendur said.

“For the chalet. I’m on my way out of Benjamin’s cellar. Never seen such a bloody mess in my life. I found a note implying that a certain Hoskuldur Thorarinsson paid rent for Grafarholt.”

“Hoskuldur?”

“Yes. Thorarinsson.”

“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 fiancee went missing?” “Hang on, I jotted that down.” Erlendur waited while Sigurdur Oli checked. He took notes at meetings, a practice Erlendur had never managed to make a habit of. He could hear Sigurdur Oli flick through papers and return to the telephone.

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

“No, not yet. Shouldn’t we start with him?” Sigurdur Oli asked, hoping to escape from the cellar.

“I’ll check him out,” Erlendur said, and to Sigurdur Oli’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.”