Silence of the Grave

5

Erlendur drove into the oldest part of town, down by the harbour, thinking about Eva Lind and thinking about Reykjavik. He had been born elsewhere and considered himself an outsider even though he had lived in the city for most of his life and had seen it spread across the bays and hills as the rural communities depopulated. A modern city swollen with people who did not want to live in the countryside or fishing villages any more, or could not live there, and came to the city to build new lives for themselves, but lost their roots and were left with no past and an uncertain future. He had never felt comfortable in the city.

Felt like a stranger.

Alli was about 20, scrawny, gingery and freckled; his front teeth were missing, his face was drawn and wan and he had a nasty cough. He was where Baddi had said he would be, sitting inside Kaffi Austurstraeti, alone at a table with an empty beer glass in front of him. He looked asleep, his head drooping and his arms folded over his chest. He wore a dirty green parka with a fur collar. Baddi had given a good description of him. Erlendur sat down at his table.

“Are you Alli?” he asked, but received no reply. He looked around the bar. It was dark inside and only a handful of people sat at the occasional table. A miserable country singer performed a melancholy song about lost love over a loudspeaker above them. A middle-aged barman sat on a stool behind the bar, reading a dogeared paperback.

Erlendur repeated the question and at length prodded the man’s shoulder. He woke up and looked at Erlendur with gormless eyes.

“Another beer?” Erlendur asked, trying his best to smile. A grimace moved across his face.

“Who are you?” Alli asked, his eyes glazed. He made no attempt to conceal his idiotic expression.

“I’m looking for Eva Lind. I’m her father and I’m in a hurry. She phoned me and asked for help.”

“Are you the cop?” Alli asked.

“Yes, I’m the cop,” Erlendur said.

Alli sat up in his seat and looked around furtively.

“Why are you asking me?”

“I know that you know Eva Lind.”

“How?”

“Do you know where she is?”

“You gonna buy me a beer?”

Erlendur looked at him and wondered for an instant whether he was using the right approach, but carried on anyway, he was running out of time. He stood up and walked quickly to the bar. The barman looked up reluctantly from his paperback, put it down with an air of regret and got up from his stool. Erlendur asked for a large beer. He was fumbling for his wallet when he noticed that Alli was gone. He took a quick look around and saw the door closing. Leaving the barman holding the glass of beer, he ran out and saw Alli making for the old houses in Grjotathorp.

Alli did not run very fast and did not last long either. He looked round, saw Erlendur in pursuit and tried to speed up, but had no stamina. Erlendur soon caught up with him and sent him moaning to the ground with a shove. Two bottles of pills rolled out of his pockets and Erlendur picked them up. They looked like Ecstasy. He tore Alli’s coat off and heard more bottles rattling. When he had emptied the coat pockets Erlendur was left holding enough to fill an sizeable medicine cabinet.

“They’ll… kill… me,” Alli panted as he clambered to his feet. There were few people around. An elderly couple on the other side of the street, who had watched the action, hurried away when they saw Erlendur picking up one bottle of pills after another.

“I don’t care,” Erlendur said.

“Don’t take that from me. You don’t know how they…”

“Who?”

Alli huddled up against the wall of a house and started to cry.

“It’s my last chance,” he said, snot running from his nose.

“I don’t give a shit what chance it is. When was the last time you saw Eva Lind?”

Alli snuffled, suddenly glared at Erlendur, as if eying a way out.

“Okay.”

“What?”

“If I tell you about Eva, will you give those back to me?” he asked.

Erlendur thought it over.

“If you know about Eva I’ll let you have it. If you’re lying I’ll come back and use you as a trampoline.”

“Okay, okay. Eva came to see me today. If you see her, she owes me a bunch of money. I refused to give her any more. I don’t deal to pregnant chicks.”

“No,” Erlendur said. “A man of principle, I suppose.”

“She came round with her belly stuck out in the air and whined at me and started getting heavy when I wouldn’t give her anything, then she left.”

“Do you know where she went?”

“No idea.”

“Where does she live?”

“A chick with no money. I need money, see. Or they’ll kill me.”

“Do you know where she lives?”

“Lives? Nowhere. She just crashes where she can. Scrounges. Reckons she can get it for nothing.” Alli snorted disdainfully. “Like you could just give it away. Like it’s just for free.”

The gap where his teeth were missing gave his speech a soft lisp and he suddenly looked like a big child in his dirty parka, trying to put on a brave act.

Snot started dripping from his nose again.

“Where could she have gone?” Erlendur asked.

Alli looked at him and sniffed.

“Will you let me have that back?”

“Where is she?”

“Do I get it back if I tell you?”

“If you’re not lying. Where is she?”

“There was a girl with her.”

“Who? What’s her name?”

“I know where she lives.”

Erlendur took a step closer.

“You’ll get it all back,” he said. “Who was this girl?”

“Ragga. She lives just round the corner. On Tryggva-gata. At the top of the big building overlooking the dock.” Alli hesitantly stretched out his hand. “Okay? You promised. Give it back to me. You promised.”

“There’s no way I could give it back to you, you idiot,” Erlendur said. “If I had the time I’d take you down to the station and throw you in a cell. So you’ve come off the better for it.”

“No, they’ll kill me! Don’t! Let me have it, please. Let me have it!”

Ignoring him, Erlendur left Alli snivelling up against the building, where he cursed himself and banged his head against the wall in feeble rage. Erlendur could hear the curses a long way off, but to his surprise Alli directed them not at him, but at himself.

“Fucking jerk, you’re a fucking jerk…”

He looked round and saw Alli slapping himself in the face.

A little boy, possibly four years old, wearing pyjama bottoms, barefoot, his hair filthy, opened the door and looked up at Erlendur, who stooped down to him. When Erlendur put out his hand to stroke the boy’s cheek he jerked his head back. Erlendur asked if his mother was home, but the boy just gave him a questioning look and made no reply.

“Is Eva Lind with you, sonny?” he asked.

Erlendur had the feeling time was running out. It was two hours since Eva Lind had phoned. He tried to dispel the thought that he was already too late to help her. Tried to imagine what kind of quandary she was in, but soon stopped torturing himself that way and concentrated on finding her. Now he knew who she was with when she left Alli that evening. He could sense he was getting closer to her.

Without answering, the boy darted back into the flat and disappeared. Erlendur followed, but could not see where he went. The flat was pitch dark and Erlendur fumbled to find a light switch on the walls. After trying several that did not work, he groped his way into a small room. At last a solitary light bulb, hanging from the ceiling, flickered on. There was nothing on the floor, only cold concrete. Dirty mattresses were spread all around the flat and on one of them lay a girl, slightly younger than Eva Lind, in tattered jeans and a red T-shirt. A metal box containing two hypodermic needles was open beside her. A thin plastic tube lay curled on the floor. Two men were sleeping on mattresses on either side of her.

Erlendur knelt down by the girl and prodded her, but got no response. He lifted her head, sat her up and patted her cheek. She mumbled. He stood up, lifted her to her feet and tried to make her walk around, and soon she seemed to come to her senses. She opened her eyes. Erlendur noticed a kitchen chair in the darkness and made her sit down. She looked at him and her head slumped to her chest. He slapped her face lightly and she came to again.

“Where’s Eva Lind?” Erlendur asked.

“Eva,” the girl mumbled.

“You were with her today. Where did she go?”

“Eva…”

Her head slumped again. Erlendur saw the little boy standing in the doorway. He was holding a doll in one hand and in the other he had an empty feeding bottle which he held out towards Erlendur. Then he put the bottle in his mouth and Erlendur heard him sucking in the air. He watched the boy and gnashed his teeth before taking out his mobile to call for help.

A doctor arrived with the ambulance, as Erlendur had insisted.

“I have to ask you to give her a shot,” Erlendur said.

“A shot?” said the doctor.

“I think it’s heroin. Have you got any naloxone or narcanti? In your bag?”

“Yes, I…”

“I have to talk to her. Immediately. My daughter’s in danger. This girl knows where she is.”

The doctor looked at the girl, then back at Erlendur. He nodded.

Erlendur had laid the girl back on the mattress and it took her a while to come round. The paramedics stood over her, holding the stretcher between them. The little boy was hiding in the room. The two men lay knocked out on their mattresses.

Erlendur crouched by the girl, who was slowly regaining consciousness. She looked at Erlendur and up to the doctor and the paramedics.

“What’s going on?” she asked in a low voice, as if talking to herself.

“Do you know about Eva Lind?” Erlendur asked.

“Eva?”

“She was with you tonight. I think she might be in danger. Do you know where she went?”

“Isn’t Eva okay?” she asked, then looked around. “Where’s Kiddi?”

“There’s a little boy in the room over there,” Erlendur said. “He’s waiting for you. Tell me where I can find Eva Lind.”

“Who are you?”

“Her father.”

“The cop?”

“Yes.”

“She can’t stand you.”

“I know. Do you know where she is?”

“She started getting pains. I told her to go to the hospital. She was going to walk there.”

“Pains?”

“Her gut was killing her.”

“Where did she set off from? From here?”

“We were at the bus station.”

“The bus station?”

“She was going to the National Hospital. Isn’t she there?”

Erlendur stood up and the doctor told him the hospital switchboard number. He phoned, only to hear that no one by the name of Eva Lind had been admitted in the past few hours. No woman of her age had been there. He was put through to the maternity ward and tried to describe his daughter as well as he could, but the duty midwife didn’t think she’d seen her.

He ran out of the flat, got into his car and raced to the bus station. There was not a soul around. The bus station closed at midnight. He left his car and hurried along Snorrabraut, broke into a run up the street past the houses in Nordurmyri and scanned the gardens for his daughter. He started calling her name as he drew closer to the hospital, but no one answered.

At last he found her lying in a pool of blood on a lawn sheltered by trees, about 50 metres from the old maternity home. But he was too late. The grass beneath her was stained with blood and so were her jeans.

Erlendur knelt beside his daughter, looked up at the maternity home and saw himself going through the door with Halldora all those years ago when Eva Lind herself was born. Was she going to die at the very same place?

Erlendur stroked Eva’s forehead, unsure about whether he dared moved her.

He thought she was seven months pregnant.

She had tried running away from him, but had given up long ago.

She had left him twice. Both times while they were still living in the basement flat on Lindargata. A whole year elapsed from the first time he beat her up until he lost control of himself again. That was what he called it. When he still talked about the violence he had inflicted on her. She never regarded it as losing control of himself. To her it seemed he never had more self-control than when he was beating the living daylights out of her and showering her with abuse. Even at the height of his frenzy he was cold and collected and sure of what he was doing. Always.

Over time she realised that she too would need to cultivate that quality to be able to triumph over him.

Her first attempt to flee was doomed to failure. She did not prepare herself, did not know the options available, had no idea where to turn and was suddenly standing outside in the chill breeze one February evening with her two children, holding Simon by the hand and carrying Mikkelina on her back, but she had no idea where to go. All she knew was that she had to get away from the basement.

She had seen the vicar who told her that a good wife does not leave her husband. Marriage was sacred in the eyes of God and people had to put up with much in order to keep it together.

“Think about your children,” the vicar said.

“I am thinking about the children,” she replied, and the vicar gave a kindly smile.

She did not try to approach the police. Her neighbours had twice called them when he attacked her, and the officers had gone to the basement to break up a domestic quarrel and then left. When she stood in front of the policemen with a swollen eye and split lip, they told the couple to take things easy. Said they were disturbing the peace. The second time, two years later, the policemen took him outside for a talk. She had screamed about him attacking her and threatening to kill her, and that this was not the first time. They asked if she had been drinking. The question did not register with her. Drinking, they repeated. No, she said. She never drank. They said something to him outside, by the front door. Shook his hand and left.

When they were gone he stroked her cheek with his razor.

That same evening, when he was fast asleep, she put Mikkelina on her back and quietly pushed Simon out of the flat in front of her and up the basement steps. She had made a pushchair for Mikkelina from the carriage of an old pram she found on the rubbish dump, but he had smashed it up in a fit of rage, as if sensing that she was going to leave him and thinking this would restrain her.

Her escape was completely unplanned. In the end she went to the Salvation Army and was given a place to sleep for the night. She had no relatives, neither in Reykjavik nor anywhere else, and the moment that he woke up the next morning and saw that they were gone he ran out to search for them. Roaming the city in his shirt sleeves in the cold, he saw them leaving the Salvation Army. The first she knew of him was when he snatched the boy away from her, picked up her daughter and set off for home without saying a word. The children were too terrified to put up a struggle, but she saw Mikkelina stretch out her arms towards her and break into silent tears.

What was she thinking?

Then she hurried after them.

After the second attempt he threatened to kill her children, and she did not try to run away after that. That time she was better prepared. She imagined that she could start a new life. Move north with the children to a fishing town, rent a room or small flat, work in a fish factory and make sure that they wanted for nothing. On the second attempt she took time to plan everything. She decided to move to Siglufjordur to begin with. There were plenty of jobs to be had now that the worst years of the depression were over, outsiders flocked there to work and she could keep a low profile alone with two children. She could spend a while in the workers’ dormitory before finding a room of her own.

The bus journey for her and the children did not come cheap and her husband kept a tight hold on every penny he earned at the harbour. Over a long time she had managed to scrape together a few coins until she had enough for the fare. She took all the children’s clothes that she could fit into a small suitcase, a handful of personal belongings and the pushchair, which could still carry Mikkelina after she mended it. She hurried down to the bus station, looking everywhere in terror as if she expected to meet him on the next street corner.

He went home at lunchtime as usual and immediately realised that she had left him. She knew she was supposed to have lunch ready when he came home and had never allowed herself not to. He saw that the pushchair was missing. The wardrobe was open. Remembering her previous attempt, he marched straight to the Salvation Army and made a scene when he was told she was not there. He didn’t believe them, and ran all over the building, into the rooms and the basement, and when he could not find them he attacked the Salvation Army captain who ran the shelter, knocked him to the ground and threatened to kill him if he did not say where they were.

When eventually he realised that she had not gone to the Salvation Army after all, he prowled the town without catching sight of her. He stormed into shops and restaurants, but she was nowhere to be seen. His rage and desperation intensified as the day wore on and he went home out of his mind with fury. He turned the basement flat upside down in search of hints as to where she might have gone, then ran to two of her old friends from the time she worked for the merchant, barged his way in and called out to her and the children, then ran back out without a word and disappeared.

She arrived in Siglufjordur at two o’clock in the morning after travelling almost non-stop all day. The coach had made three stops to allow the passengers to stretch their legs, eat their packed lunches or buy a meal. She had taken sandwiches and bottles of milk, but they were hungry again when the bus drew into Haganesvik in Fljot, where a boat was waiting to ferry the passengers to Siglufjordur, in the cold of night. After she found the workers’ dormitory, the foreman showed her into a little room with a single bed and lent her a mattress to spread on the floor, with two blankets, and they spent their first night of freedom there. The children fell asleep the moment they touched the mattress, but she lay in bed staring out into the darkness and, unable to control the trembling that passed through her whole body, she broke down and wept.

He found her a few days later. One possibility that occurred to him was that she had left the city, perhaps by bus, so he went down to the station, asked around and found out that his wife and children had taken the northbound bus to Siglufjordur. He spoke to the driver who remembered the woman and children clearly, especially the disabled girl. He caught the next coach north and was in Siglufjordur just after midnight. Threading his way from one dormitory to the next, he eventually found her asleep in her little room, shown the way by a foreman he had woken up. He explained matters to the foreman. She had gone to the village ahead of him, he said, but they probably would not be staying very long.

He crept into the room. A dull glow entered from the street through a small window and he stepped over the children on the mattress, bent over her until their faces almost touched, and shook her. She was fast asleep and he shook her again, more roughly, until she opened her eyes, and he smiled when he saw the genuine terror in her eyes. She was about to scream for help, but he put his hand over her mouth.

“Did you seriously think you’d manage it?” he whispered threateningly.

She stared up at him.

“Did you seriously think it’d be that easy?”

She shook her head slowly.

“Do you know what I really want to do now?” he hissed between his clenched teeth. “I want to take that girl up the mountainside and kill her, and bury her where no one will ever find her, and say the poor bugger must have crawled into the sea. And you know what? That’s what I’m going to do. I’ll do it this minute. If there’s as much as a squeak from the boy I’ll kill him too. Say he crawled into the sea after her.”

She gave a low whimper when she darted a look at the children, and he smiled. He took his hand from her mouth.

“I’ll never do it again,” she groaned. “Never. I’ll never do it again. Sorry. Sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking. Sorry. I’m crazy. I know. I’m crazy. Don’t let the children pay for it. Hit me. Hit me. As hard as you can. Hit me as hard as you can. We can leave if you want.”

Her desperation repulsed him.

“No, no,” he said. “This is what you want. So let’s just have it your way.”

He made as if to reach out for Mikkelina who was sleeping by Simon’s side, but the girl’s mother grabbed his hand, frightened out of her wits.

“Look,” she said, hitting herself in the face. “Look.” She tugged at her hair. “Look.” She sat up and threw herself back against the cast-iron head of the bed, and whether she meant to or not she knocked herself out cold and slumped before him, unconscious.

They started back early the next morning. She had been working at the fish factory for a few days and he went with her to collect her wages. By working in the salting yard she could keep an eye on her children, who played nearby or stayed in the room. He explained to the foreman that they were going back to Reykjavik. They had received news that altered their plans and she had some pay owing to her. The foreman scribbled on a piece of paper and pointed to the office. He looked at her as he handed her the paper. She seemed poised to say something. He mistook her fear for shyness.

“Are you all right?” the foreman asked.

“She’s fine,” her husband said and strutted away with her.

When they returned to their basement flat in Reykjavik he did not touch her. She stood in the living room wearing her shabby coat and holding the suitcase in her hand, expecting the thrashing of a lifetime, but nothing happened. The blow she had dealt herself had caught him unawares. Instead of going to fetch help he tried to nurse her and bring her round, the first act of care he had shown her since they were married. When she came round he said she had to understand that she could never leave him. He would sooner kill her and the children. She was his wife and always would be.

Always.

She never tried to run away after that.

The years went by. His plans to become a fisherman came to nothing after only three trips. He suffered from severe sea sickness that he could not shake off. On top of that, he found he was afraid of the sea, and never overcame that either. He was scared that the boat would sink. Scared of falling overboard. Scared of bad weather. On his last trip a storm struck and, convinced that the boat would capsize, he sat crying in the mess, thinking his days were numbered. After that, he never went to sea again.

He seemed incapable of showing tenderness towards her. At best he treated her with total indifference. For the first two years of their marriage he seemed to regret having hit her or having cursed her so foully that she burst into tears. But as time went by he stopped showing any sign of guilt, as if what he did to her had ceased to be unnatural or a disfiguration of their relationship, and had become something necessary and right. It sometimes occurred to her, which perhaps he too knew deep down inside, that the violence he inflicted on her was above all a manifestation of his own weakness. That the more he hit her, the more wretched he himself became. He blamed her for it. Screamed that it was her fault that he treated her as he did. She was the one who made him do it.

They had few friends, and shared none, and after they started living together she soon became isolated. On the rare occasions when she met her old friends from work she never talked about the violence she had to put up with from her husband, and over time she lost touch with them. She felt ashamed. Ashamed of being beaten and thrashed when she least expected it. Ashamed of her black eyes, split lips and bruises all over her body. Ashamed of the life she lived, which was surely incomprehensible to others, abominable. She wanted to hide it. Wanted to hide herself in the prison he made for her. Wanted to lock herself inside, throw away the key and hope that no one would find it. She had to accept his maltreatment. Somehow it was her destiny, absolute and immutable.

The children meant everything to her. In effect they became the friends and soul mates she lived for, especially Mikkelina, but also Simon when he grew older and the younger boy, who was given the name Tomas. She chose the names for the children herself. The only attention he paid to them was when he complained about them. How much food they ate. The noise they made at night. The children suffered for the violence he inflicted on her and brought her precious comfort in times of need.

He knocked out of her what little self-respect she had. Reticent and unassuming by nature, she was eager to please everyone, kind, helpful, even submissive. Smiled awkwardly when spoken to and had to steel herself not to look shy. Such feebleness filled him with an energy that drove him to abuse her until she had nothing left of her own self. Her entire existence revolved around him. His whims. Serving him. She stopped taking care of herself the way she once had. She stopped washing regularly. Stopped thinking about her appearance. Rings appeared under her eyes, her face went flabby and a greyness descended upon her, she developed a stoop, her head down on her chest as if she did not dare to look up properly. Her thick, pretty hair grew lifeless and dull and stuck to her head, filthy. She cut it herself using kitchen scissors when she felt it was too long.

Or when he felt it was too long.

Ugly old bag.