Silence of the Grave

24

The next morning Erlendur held a meeting with Elinborg and Sigurdur Oli at his office, told them about Mikkelina and what she had said, and that he would meet her again later that day. He was certain she would tell him who was buried on the hill, who had put him there and why. Then the bones would be excavated towards evening.

“Why didn’t you get it out of her yesterday?” asked Sigurdur Oli, who had woken replenished after a quiet evening with Bergthora. They had discussed the future, including children, and agreed about the best arrangement for everything; likewise the trip to Paris and the sports car they would rent.

“Then we can stop this fucking around,” he added. “I’m fed up with these bones. Fed up with Benjamin’s cellar. Fed up with the two of you.”

“I want to go with you to see her,” Elinborg said. “Do you think she’s the handicapped girl Ed saw in the house when he arrested that man?”

“It’s highly likely. She had two half-brothers, Simon and Tomas. That fits with the two boys he saw. And there was an American soldier by the name of Dave, who helped them in some way. I’ll talk to Ed about him. I don’t have his surname.

“I thought a soft approach was the right way to handle her, she’ll tell us what we need to know. There’s no point in rushing this matter.”

He looked at Sigurdur Oli.

“Have you finished in Benjamin’s cellar?”

“Yes, finished it yesterday. Didn’t find a thing.”

“Can you rule out that it’s his fiancee buried up there?”

“Yes, I think so. She threw herself in the sea.”

“Is there any way to confirm the rape?” Elinborg wondered.

“I think the confirmation’s on the bottom of the sea,” Sigurdur Oli said.

“How did they put it, a summer trip to Fljot?” Erlendur asked.

“A real countryside romance,” Sigurdur Oli said with a smile.

“Arsehole!” Erlendur said.

Ed welcomed Erlendur and Elinborg at the front door and showed them into the sitting room. The table was covered with documents relating to the depot. There were faxes and photocopies on the floor and open diaries and books spread all over the room. Erlendur had the feeling he had conducted a major investigation. Ed flicked through a pile of papers on the table.

“Somewhere here I have a list of the Icelanders who worked at the depot,” he said. “The embassy found it.”

“We’ve located one of the tenants frorn the house you went to,” Erlendur said. “I think she’s the handicapped girl you were talking about.”

“Good,” Ed said, engrossed in his search. “Good. Here it is.”

He gave Erlendur a handwritten list of the names of nine Icelanders who worked at the depot. Erlendur recognised the list. Jim had read it out to him over the phone and was going to send him a copy. Erlendur remembered he had forgotten to ask Mikkelina her stepfather’s name.

“I found out who blew the whistle,” Ed said. “Informed on the thieves. My old colleague from the military police in Reykjavik lives in Minneapolis now. We’ve stayed in touch off and on so I phoned him. He remembered the matter, phoned someone else and found the name of the informant.”

“And who was it?” Erlendur asked.

“His name was Dave, David Welch, from Brooklyn. Private.”

The same name Mikkelina mentioned, Erlendur thought.

“Is he alive?” he asked.

“We don’t know. My friend’s trying to trace him through the Pentagon. He might have been sent to the front.”

Elinborg enlisted Sigurdur Oli’s help in investigating the identity of the depot workers and the whereabouts of them and their descendants. Erlendur asked her to meet him again that afternoon before they went to see Mikkelina. First he was going to the hospital to see Eva Lind.

He walked down the corridor in intensive care and looked in at his daughter, who lay motionless as ever, her eyes closed. To his enormous relief, Halldora was nowhere to be seen. He looked down the ward to where he had accidentally wandered when he’d had the bizarre conversation with the little woman about the boy in the blizzard. Inching his way down the corridor to the innermost room, he noticed that it was empty. The woman in the fur coat had gone and there was no one in the bed where the man had been lying between this world and the next. The self-styled medium was gone too, and Erlendur wondered whether it ever actually happened, or whether it was a dream. He stood in the doorway for a second, then turned and went into his daughter’s room, softly closing the door behind him. He wanted to lock it, but there was no lock. He sat down beside Eva Lind. Sat silently at her bedside, thinking about the boy in the blizzard.

A good while passed before Erlendur finally plucked up the courage, and heaved a deep sigh.

“He was eight years old,” he said to Eva Lind. “Two years younger than I was.”

He thought about how the medium had said that he accepted it, that it was no one’s fault. Such simple words out of the blue told him nothing. He had been battling against that blizzard all his life, and all the passage of time did was intensify it.

“I lost my grip,” he said to Eva Lind.

He heard the scream in the storm.

“We couldn’t see each other,” he said. “We held hands so there was no distance between us, but still I couldn’t see him for the blizzard. And then I lost my grip.”

He paused.

“That’s why you mustn’t let go. That’s why you have to survive this and come back and get healthy again. I know your life hasn’t been easy, but you destroy it as if it were worthless. As if you were worthless. But that’s not right. You’re not right to think that. And you mustn’t think that.”

Erlendur looked at his daughter in the dull glow from the bedside lamp.

“He was eight. Did I say that? A boy, just like any other boy, fun to be with and always smiling, we were friends. You can’t take that for granted. Normally there’s some rivalry. Fighting, bragging and arguments. But not between us. Maybe because we were completely different. He impressed people. Unconsciously. Some people are like that. I’m not. There’s something in those people that breaks down all the barriers, because they act completely the way they are, have nothing to hide, never shelter behind anything, are just themselves, straightforward. Kids like that…”

Erlendur fell silent.

“You remind me of him sometimes,” he continued. “I didn’t see it until later. When you tracked me down after all those years. There’s something about you that reminds me of him. Something you’re destroying, and that’s why I’m hurt by the way you treat your life and yet I don’t seem able to do anything about it. I’m as helpless with you as when I stood in that blizzard and felt my grip slipping. We were holding hands and I lost my grip and I could feel it happening and sensed it was the end. We would both die. Our hands were frozen and we couldn’t hold on. I couldn’t feel his hand, apart from that split second when I lost hold of it.”

Erlendur paused and looked down at the floor.

“I don’t know whether that’s the reason for all of this. I was ten and I’ve blamed myself ever since. I couldn’t shake it off. Don’t want to shake it off. The pain is like a fortress around a sorrow I don’t want to release. Maybe I should have done that long ago, to come to terms with the life that was saved and give it a purpose. But that didn’t happen and hardly will at this stage. We all have our burdens. Maybe I don’t suffer more than anyone else who has lost a loved one, but I can’t deal with it at all.

“Something switched off in me. I never found him again and I dream about him all the time and I know he’s still there somewhere, roaming around in the blizzard, alone and abandoned and cold, until he drops down where he can’t be found and never will be, and the storm rages against his back and he’s buried by the snow in the twinkling of an eye, and no matter how I search and shout, I can’t find him and he can’t hear me, and he’s lost to me for ever.”

Erlendur looked at Eva Lind.

“It was like he’d gone straight to God. I was found. I was found and I survived and I lost him. I couldn’t tell them a thing. Couldn’t say where I’d been when I lost him. Couldn’t see out of my eyes for that bloody blizzard. I was ten years old and almost frozen to death and couldn’t tell them a thing. They mounted a search party and people combed the moor carrying lamps from dawn to dark for days on end, shouting for him and prodding the snow with sticks, and they split up and took dogs and we could hear the shouts and the barking, but nothing happened. Never.

“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 Grimur sitting opposite Simon at the table. She could not see Grimur’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 Tomas 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 Tomas, who sneaked into the passage where Mikkelina was standing. She saw the terror in Simon’s eyes.

Grimur 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 Grimur, 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,” Grimur 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 Grimur, dumbstruck.

“Don’t you think it’s pretty?’’ he said.

There was something strange about Grimur. 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 Simon was wondering what it could be when Grimur 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 Grimur 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 Mikkelina and Tomas in the passageway. Simon sat at the table as if nailed to his seat. Grimur 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,” Grimur 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.”

Grimur 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.

Grimur 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.”

Grimur 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?” Grimur 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?”

Grimur laughed.

“Maybe he’ll have a drop with us. Are you expecting him? Do you think he’ll come and rescue you?”

“Don’t,” Simon said behind him.

Grimur 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.

Grimur turned back to their mother. Mikkelina and Tomas watched from the passage. He leaned over to her and whispered in her ear.

“Maybe you’ll just go missing one day like Benjamin’s girlfriend.”

Their mother watched Grimur, 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,” Simon said, still standing by the kitchen table.

“Simon?” Grimur said. “I thought we were friends. You and me and Tomas.”

“Leave her alone,” Simon said. “You have to stop hurting her. You have to stop it and go away. Go away and never come back.”

Grimur 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 Tomas and Mikkelina down to Gufunes and wait for me there. Do you hear, Simon? Do as you’re told.”

Grimur 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.”

Grimur 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.

Mikkelina scuttled away from the doorway to the dark passage. Tomas stayed there watching Grimur, who smiled at him.

“But me and Tomas are friends,” Grimur said.

“Tomas would never betray his dad. Come here, son. Come to Daddy.”

Tomas went up to him.

“Mum phoned,” he said.

“Tomas!” their mother shouted.