Silence of the Grave

7

He sat by his daughter’s bedside until about six in the evening. Halldora did not turn up. Sindri Snaer kept his word and did not come to the city. There was no one else. Eva Lind’s condition was unchanged. Erlendur had neither eaten nor slept since the previous day, and was exhausted. He was in touch with Elinborg by telephone during the day and decided to meet her and Sigurdur Oli at the office. He stroked his daughter’s cheek and kissed her on the forehead when he left.

He didn’t talk about the night’s events when he sat down with Sigurdur Oli and Elinborg at their meeting that evening. The two of them had heard through the station grapevine about what had happened to his daughter, but didn’t dare ask about it.

“They’re still scratching their way down to the skeleton,” Elinborg said. “It’s going terribly slowly. I think they’re using toothpicks now. The hand you found is sticking up out of the ground, they’re down to the wrist. The medical officer examined it, but the only definite thing he can say is that it’s a human with fairly small hands. Not much joy there. The archaeologists haven’t found anything in the soil to suggest what happened or who is buried there. They think they’ll have dug down to the torso late tomorrow afternoon or evening, but that doesn’t mean we’ll get any neat answers about who it is. Naturally, we’ll have to search elsewhere for those.”

“I’ve been looking up statistics on missing persons in the Reykjavik area,” Sigurdur Oli said. “There are more than 40 disappearances from the ’30s and ’40s which remain unsolved to this day, and it’s probably one of those. I’ve sorted the files by sex and age and I’m just waiting for the pathologist’s report on the bones.”

“Do you mean someone from the hill disappeared?” Erlendur asked.

“Not according to the addresses on the police reports,” Sigurdur Oli said, “though I haven’t been through them all. Some place names I don’t recognise. When we’ve excavated the skeleton and got an accurate age, size and sex from the pathologist we can surely narrow the group down quite a bit. I expect it’s someone from Reykjavik. Isn’t that a reasonable assumption?”

“Where’s the pathologist?” Erlendur asked. “The one pathologist we have.”

“He’s on holiday,” Elinborg said. “In Spain.”

“Did you check whether there was ever a house by those bushes?” Erlendur asked her.

“What house?” Sigurdur Oli asked.

“No, I haven’t got round to it,” Elinborg said. She looked at Sigurdur Oli. “Erlendur reckons there were houses on the north side of the hill and the British or American military had a base on the south side. He wants us to talk to everyone who owns a chalet in the area down from Reynisvatn and their grandmothers too and then I’m supposed to go to a seance and have a word with Churchill.”

“And that’s just for starters,” Erlendur said. “What are your theories about the skeleton?”

“Isn’t it obviously a murder?” Sigurdur Oli said. “Committed half a century ago or more. Hidden in the ground all that time and no one knows a thing.”

“He, or rather, this person,” Elinborg corrected herself, “was clearly buried to conceal a crime. I think we can take that as read.”

“It’s not true that no one knows a thing,” Erlendur said. “There’s always someone who knows something.”

“We know the ribs are broken,” Elinborg said. “That has to be a sign of a struggle.”

“Does it?” Sigurdur Oli said.

“Well, doesn’t it?”

“Can’t being in the ground cause that?” Sigurdur Oli said. “The weight of the soil. Even temperature change. The freeze-thaw effect. I talked to that geologist you called in and he said something about that.”

“There must have been a struggle because someone’s been buried. That’s obvious, isn’t it?” Elinborg looked at Erlendur and saw that his thoughts were miles away. “Erlendur?” she said. “Don’t you agree?”

“If it is a murder,” said Erlendur, coming back to earth.

“If it’sa murder?” Elinborg asked.

“We know nothing about that,” Erlendur said. “Maybe it’s an old family burial plot. Maybe they couldn’t afford a funeral. Maybe it’s the bones of some old bloke who popped off and was buried there with everyone’s knowledge. Maybe the body was put there a hundred years ago. Maybe 50. What we still need is a decent lead. Then we can waffle as much as we like.”

“Isn’t it the law that you have to bury people in hallowed ground?” Sigurdur Oli said.

“I think you can have yourself buried where you please,” Erlendur said, “if someone’s prepared to have you in their garden.”

“What about the hand sticking up out of the ground?” Elinborg said. “Isn’t that a sign of a struggle?”

“It seems to be,” Erlendur said, “I think something’s been kept secret all these years. Someone was hustled away and never supposed to be found. But then Reykjavik caught up with him and now it’s up to us to find out what happened.”

“If he… let’s just say him, the Millennium Man…” Sigurdur Oli said, “if he was murdered all those years ago, isn’t it a pretty safe bet that the murderer has died of old age by now? And if he’s not dead already he’ll have one foot in the grave, so it’s ridiculous to track him down and punish him. Everyone connected with the case is probably dead already so we won’t have witnesses even if we ever find out what happened. So…”

“What are you driving at?”

“Shouldn’t we ask whether we ought to be continuing this investigation in the first place? I mean, is it worth it?”

“You mean just forget it?” Erlendur asked. Sigurdur Oli shrugged indifferently. “A murder’s a murder,” Erlendur said. “It doesn’t matter how many years ago it was committed. If this is a murder, we need to find out what happened, who was killed and why and who the murderer was. I think we ought to approach this like any other investigation. Get information. Talk to people. With luck we’ll stumble onto a solution.”

Erlendur stood up.

“We’re bound to pick up something. Talk to the chalet owners and their grandmothers.” He looked at Elinborg. “Find out whether there was a house by those bushes. Take an interest in it.”

He bade them an absent-minded farewell and went out into the corridor. Elinborg and Sigurdur Oli looked each other in the eye and Sigurdur Oli nodded towards the door. Elinborg stood up and went after Erlendur.

“Erlendur,” she said, stopping him.

“Yes, what?”

“How’s Eva Lind doing?” she asked hesitantly.

Erlendur looked at her and said nothing.

“We heard about it here at the station. How she was found. It was a terrible thing to hear. If there’s anything Sigurdur Oli or I can do for you, don’t hesitate to ask.”

“There’s nothing to be done,” Erlendur said wearily. “She’s just lying in the ward and no one can do a thing.” He hesitated. “I went through that world of hers when I was looking for her. I knew some of it because I’ve had to find her in those places before, those streets, those houses, but I never cease to be surprised at the life she leads, the way she treats herself, abuses herself. I’ve seen the crowd she hangs around with, the people she turns to in desperation, people she even does indescribable things for.” He paused. “But that’s not the worst thing. Not the hovels or the small-time crooks or the dope dealers. It’s right, what her mother said.”

Erlendur looked at Elinborg.

“I’m the worst part of all this,” he said, “because I was the one who let them down.”

When Erlendur got home he sat in an armchair, exhausted. He called the hospital to ask about Eva Lind and was told that her condition was unchanged. They would contact him as soon as any change occurred. He thanked them and rang off. Then sat staring into space, deep in thought. He thought about Eva Lind lying in intensive care, about his ex-wife and the hatred that still coloured her life, about the son he only spoke to when something was wrong.

Through his thoughts he felt the deep silence that reigned in his life. Felt the solitude all around him. The burden of monotonous days piling up in an unbreakable chain that enveloped him, tightened around him and smothered him.

Just as he was about to fall asleep his thoughts turned to his childhood, when the days grew brighter again after the dark winter and life was innocent and free from care and concern. Although it was rare, he could sometimes escape into the peacefulness of the past and then, for a brief time, he felt good.

If he could block out the loss.

He woke with a start when someone had already been ringing him for a good while, first the mobile in his pocket and then the home telephone on the old desk which was one of the few pieces of furniture in the sitting room.

“You were right,” Elinborg said when he finally answered. “Oh, sorry, did I wake you?” she asked. “It’s only ten,” she added apologetically.

“What was I right about?” Erlendur said, not fully awake.

“There was a building on that spot. By the bushes.”

“Bushes?”

“The redcurrant bushes. In Grafarholt. It was built in the 1930s and demolished around 1980. I asked the City Planning Office to contact me as soon as they found out and they’ve just been on the phone, they worked all evening looking for it.”

“What sort of building was it?” Erlendur asked, tired. “A house, a stable, kennel, chalet?”

“A house. A kind of chalet or that sort of thing.”

“From what time?”

“Before 1940.”

“And who was the owner?”

“His name was Benjamin. Benjamin Knudsen. A merchant.”

“Was?”

“He died. Years ago.”