"Tell me."
"I don't want to. I don't want him to talk to me. I don't want him to."
"You don't want him to talk to you? So you mean you don't want him to say the things he says? Is that what you mean?"
"I don't want anything, that's all," Tomas said. "And you stop talking to me too."
The weeks and months passed by and Grimur displayed his favour for his younger son in various ways. Although Simon was never party to their conversations, he found out what they were doing one evening towards the end of the summer. Grimur was getting ready to take some goods from the depot into Reykjavik. He was waiting for a soldier named Mike who was going to help him. Mike had a jeep at his disposal and they planned to fill it with goods to sell in town. The children's mother was cooking the food, which was from the depot as well. Mikkelina was lying in her bed.
Simon noticed Grimur pushing Tomas towards Mikkelina, whispering in his ear and smiling the way he did when he made snide remarks at the boys. Their mother noticed nothing and Simon had no real idea what was going on until Tomas went up to Mikkelina, urged on by Grimur, and said:
"Bitch."
Then he went back to Grimur, who laughed and patted him on the head.
Simon looked over to the sink where his mother was standing. Although she could not have helped overhearing, she did not move and showed no reaction at first, as if trying to ignore it. Except that he saw she was holding a knife in one hand, peeling potatoes, and her knuckles whitened as she gripped the handle. Then she turned slowly with the knife in her hand and stared at Grimur.
"That's one thing you shall never do," she said in a quavering voice.
Grimur looked at her and the grin froze on his face.
"Me?" Grimur said. "What do you mean, never do? I didn't do anything. It was the lad. It was my boy Tomas."
Their mother moved a step closer to Grimur, still wielding the knife.
"Leave Tomas alone."
Grimur stood up.
"Are you going to do anything with that knife?"
"Don't do that to him," she said, and Simon sensed she was beginning to back down. He heard a jeep outside the house.
"He's here," Simon shouted. "Mike's here."
Grimur looked out of the kitchen window then back at their mother, and the tension eased for a moment. She put down the knife. Mike appeared in the doorway. Grimur smiled.
When he got back that night he beat their mother senseless. The next morning she had a black eye and a limp. They heard the grunts when Grimur was pummelling her. Tomas crawled into Simon's bed and looked at his brother through the darkness of night, in shock, continually muttering to himself as if that could erase what had happened.
". . sorry, I didn't mean to, sorry, sorry, sorry. ."
16
Elsa opened the door for Sigurdur Oli and asked him to join her for a cup of tea. As he watched Elsa in the kitchen, he thought about Bergthora. They had argued that morning before leaving for work. After rejecting her amorous advances he had begun clumsily to describe his concerns, until Bergthora became seriously agitated.
"Oh, just a minute," she said. "So we're never supposed to get married? Is that your plan? Is the idea that we just live in limbo with nothing on paper and our children bastards? For ever."
"Bastards?"
"Yes."
"Are you thinking about the big wedding again?"
"Sorry if it bothers you."
"You really want to walk down the aisle? In your wedding dress with a posy in your hand and. ."
"You have such contempt for the idea, don't you?"
"And what's this about children anyway?" Sigurdur Oli said, and immediately regretted it when he saw Bergthora's face turn ever darker.
"Do you never want to have children?"
"Yes, no, yes, I mean, we haven't discussed it," Sigurdur Oli said. "I think we need to discuss that. You can't decide on your own whether we have children or not. That's not fair and it's not what I want. Not now. Not straight away."
"The time will come," Bergthora said. "Hopefully. We're both 35. It won't be long until it's too late. Whenever I try to talk about it you change the subject. You don't want to discuss it. Don't want children or a marriage or anything. Don't want anything. You're getting as bad as that old fart Erlendur."
"Eh?" Sigurdur Oli was thunderstruck. "What was that?"
But Bergthora had already set off for work, leaving him with an horrific vision of the future.
Elsa noticed Sigurdur Oli's thoughts were elsewhere as he sat in her kitchen staring down at his cup.
"Would you like some more tea?" she asked quietly.
"No, thank you," Sigurdur Oli said. "Elinborg, who's working on this case with me, wanted me to ask if you know whether your uncle Benjamin kept a lock of his fiancee's hair, maybe in a locket or a jar or the like."
Elsa thought about it.
"No," she said, "I don't remember a lock of hair, but I'm not a hundred per cent sure what's down there."
"Elinborg says there should be one. According to the fiancee's sister, who told her yesterday that she gave Benjamin a lock of hair when she went on a trip somewhere, I believe."
"I've never heard about a lock of her hair, or anyone else's for that matter. My family aren't particularly romantic and never have been."
"Are any possessions of hers in the basement? The fiancee's?"
"Why do you want a lock of her hair?" Elsa asked instead of answering his question. She had a prying look on her face which made Sigurdur Oli hesitate. He didn't know how much Erlendur had told her. She saved him the bother of asking.
"You can prove that it's her buried up on the hill," she said. "If you have something from her. You can do a DNA test to find out whether it's her, and if it is, you'll claim my uncle murdered her and left her there. Is that the idea?"
"We're just investigating all the possibilities," Sigurdur Oli said, wanting at all costs to avoid provoking Elsa into a rage on the scale of that he had sparked with Bergthora just half an hour before. This day was not getting off to a very good start. Definitely not.
"That other detective came here, the sad one, and implied that Benjamin was responsible for his fiancee's death. And now you can all confirm that if you find a lock of her hair. I just don't understand it. That you could think Benjamin capable of killing that girl. Why should he do it? What motive could he have had? None. Absolutely none."
"No, of course not," Sigurdur Oli said to calm her down. "But we need to know who the bones belong to and so far we don't have much to go on apart from the fact that Benjamin owned the house and his fiancee disappeared. Surely you're curious about it yourself. You must want to know whose bones they are."
"I'm not certain I do," Elsa said, somewhat calmer now.
"But I can go on looking in the cellar, can't I?" he said.
"Yes, of course. I can hardly stop you doing that."
He finished his tea and went down to the cellar, still thinking about Bergthora. He did not keep a lock of her hair in a locket, and did not feel he needed anything to remind him of her. Not even her photograph in his wallet, like the pictures of wife and children that some men he knew carried around. He felt bad. He needed to talk things over with Bergthora. Sort it all out.
He didn't want to be like Erlendur at all.
*
Sigurdur Oli looked through Benjamin Knudsen's belongings until midday, then popped out to a fast-food joint, bought a hamburger that he barely nibbled at, and read the papers over coffee. Around two he headed back to the cellar, cursing Erlendur for his obstinacy. He had not found the slightest clue as to why Benjamin's fiancee had disappeared, nor any evidence of wartime tenants apart from Hoskuldur. He had not found the lock of hair that Elinborg was so convinced about after reading all those romances. It was Sigurdur Oli's second day in the cellar and he was at the end of his tether.
Elsa was at the door when he returned, and she invited him in. He tried to find an excuse to turn down the invitation, but was
not quick enough to manage it without sounding rude, so he followed Elsa into the sitting room.
"Did you find anything down there?" she asked, and Sigurdur Oli knew that behind this helpful-sounding remark she was in fact actually trying to wheedle information out of him. It didn't occur to him that she might be lonely, which was the impression Erlendur had just minutes after entering her gloomy house.
"I haven't found that lock of hair, anyway," Sigurdur Oli said, nursing his tea. She had been waiting for him. He looked at her, wondering what was in the offing.
"No," she said. "Are you married? Sorry, of course that's none of my business."
"No, that's. . yes, no, not married but living with my partner," Sigurdur Oli said, awkwardly.
"Any children?"
"No, no children," Sigurdur Oli said. "Not yet."
"Why not?"
"Pardon?"
"Why haven't you had any children?"
What's going on here? Sigurdur Oli thought, sipping his tea to win time.
"Stress, I suppose. So busy at work all the time. We're both in demanding jobs and, well, there's no time."
"No time for children? Have you really got anything better to do with your time? What does your girlfriend do?"
"She's a partner in a computer firm," Sigurdur Oli said, poised to thank her for the tea and say he needed to get going. He did not plan to be interrogated about his private life by some posh old maid who had clearly gone strange from living alone, the way women like her eventually do — until they end up snooping around everyone's private business.
"Is she a good woman?" Elsa asked.
"Her name's Bergthora," said Sigurdur Oli, on the verge of becoming impolite. "She's a terribly good woman." He smiled. "Why are you. .?"
"I've never had a family," Elsa said. "Never had any children. Nor a husband for that matter. I don't care about that, but I would have liked children. They'd be 30 today, perhaps. In their thirties. I sometimes think about that. Grown-up. With their own children. I don't really know what happened. Suddenly you're middle-aged. I'm a doctor. Not many women studied medicine when I enrolled. I was like you, I didn't have the time. Didn't have time for a life of my own. What you're doing now isn't your own life. It's just work."
"Yes, well, I suppose I should. ."
"Benjamin didn't have a family either," Elsa went on. "That was all he wanted, a family. With that girl."
Elsa stood up and so did Sigurdur Oli. He expected her to say goodbye, but instead she went over to a large oak cabinet with beautiful glass doors and carved drawers, opened one of them, took out a little Chinese trinket box, lifted the lid and pulled out a silver locket on a slender chain.
"He did keep a lock of her hair," she said. "There's a photograph of her in the locket too. Her name was Solveig." Elsa gave a hint of a smile. "The apple of Benjamin's eye. I don't think that's her buried on the hill. The thought is unbearable. That would mean Benjamin harmed her. He didn't. Couldn't. I'm convinced of that. This lock of hair will prove it."
She handed Sigurdur Oli the locket. He sat down again, opened it carefully and saw a tiny lock of black hair on top of a photograph of its owner. Without touching the hair he manoeuvred it onto the lid of the necklace to be able to see the photograph. It showed the petite face of a girl of 20, dark-haired with beautifully curved eyebrows above big eyes staring enigmatically into the lens. Lips that suggested determination, a small chin, her face slender and pretty. Benjamin's fiancee. Solveig.
"Please excuse me for holding back," Elsa said. "I've thought the matter over and weighed it up and I couldn't bring myself to destroy that lock of hair. Whatever emerges from the investigation."
"Why did you conceal it?"
"I needed to think things over."
"Yes, but even. ."
"It gave me quite a shock when your colleague — Erlendur, isn't it? — started insinuating that it might be her up there, but once I'd thought more about it. ." Elsa shrugged as if in resignation.
"Even if the DNA test proves positive," Sigurdur Oli said, "that doesn't necessarily mean that Benjamin murderered her. The analysis won't give any answers to that. If that is his fiancee up on the hill, there could be another reason besides Benjamin. ."
Elsa interrupted him.
"She. . what's it called these days. . she dumped him. 'Broke off their engagement' is probably the old phrase. Back when people used to get engaged. She did it the day that she disappeared. Benjamin didn't reveal that until much later. To my mother, on his deathbed. She told me. I've never told anyone before. And I would have taken it to my grave if you hadn't found those bones. Do you know yet whether it's a male or a female?"
"Not yet, no," Sigurdur Oli said. "Did he say anything about why she broke off their engagement? Why she left him?"
He sensed Elsa hesitating. They looked each other in the eye and he knew she had already given too much away to back down now. He felt that she wanted to tell him what she knew. As if she were bearing a heavy cross and the time had come to put it down. At last, after all these years.
"It wasn't his child," she said.
"Not Benjamin's child?"
"No."
"She wasn't pregnant by him?"
"No."
"So whose was it?"
"You have to understand that times were different then," Elsa said. "Today women have abortions like going to the dentist. Marriage has no special meaning even if people want to have children. They live together. They separate. Start living with someone else. Have more children. Split up again. It wasn't like that. Not in those days. Having a child out of wedlock used to be unthinkable for women. It brought shame, they would be outcasts. People were merciless, they called them tarts."
"So I gather," Sigurdur Oli said. His mind turned to Bergthora and it gradually dawned on him why Elsa had been asking about his private life.
"Benjamin was prepared to marry her," Elsa continued. "Or at least that's what he later told my mother. Solveig didn't want that. She wanted to break off their engagement and told him so straight out. Just like that. Without any warning."
"Who was the father then?"
"When she left Benjamin she asked him to forgive her. For leaving him. But he didn't. He needed more time."
"And she disappeared?"
"She was never seen again after she said goodbye to him. When she didn't return home that evening they started looking for her and Benjamin wholeheartedly took part in the search. But she was never found."
"What about the father of her child?" Sigurdur Oli asked again. "Who was he?"
"She didn't tell Benjamin. She left without ever letting him know. That's what he told my mother, at least. If he did know, he certainly never told her."
"Who could it have been?"
"Could have been?" Elsa repeated. "It doesn't matter who it could have been. The only important thing is who it was."
"Do you mean the father was involved in her disappearance?"
"What do you think?" Elsa asked.
"You and your mother never suspected anyone?"
"No, no one. Nor did Benjamin, as far as I know."
"Could he have fabricated the whole story?"
"I can't say for sure, but I don't think Benjamin told a lie in his life."
"I mean, to detract attention from himself."
"I'm not aware that he ever came under any suspicion, and it was quite a long time later that he told my mother all this. It was just before he died."
"He never stopped thinking about her."
"That's what my mother said."
Sigurdur Oli thought for a moment.
"Could the shame have led her to suicide?"
"Definitely. She not only betrayed Benjamin, she was pregnant and refused to say whose child it was."
"Elinborg, the woman I work with, talked to her sister. She said their father committed suicide. Hanged himself. That it was tough for Solveig because they were particularly close."
"Tough for Solveig?"
"Yes
."
"That's odd!"
"How so?"
"He did hang himself, but it could hardly have upset Solveig."
"What do you mean?"
"They said he was driven to it by grief."
"Grief?"
"Yes, that's the impression I got."
"Grief over what?"
"His daughter's disappearance," Elsa said. "He hanged himself after she went missing."
17
At long last, Erlendur found something to talk to his daughter about. He had done a lot of research at the National Library, gathering information from newspapers and journals that were published in Reykjavik in 1910, the year that Halley's comet passed the Earth with its tail supposedly full of cyanide. He obtained special permission to browse through the papers instead of running them through the microfilm reader. He loved poring over old newspapers and journals, hearing them rustle and inhaling the scent of yellowed paper, experiencing the atmosphere of the time they preserved on their crisp pages, then, now and for ever.
Evening had set in when he sat down at Eva Lind's bedside and began telling her about the discovery of the skeleton in Grafarholt. He told her about how the archaeologists demarcated small areas above the site of the bones, and about Skarphedinn with his fangs which prevented him from closing his mouth completely. He told her about the redcurrant bushes and Robert's strange description of the crooked, green lady. He told her about Benjamin Knudsen and his fiancee, who vanished one day, and the effect her disappearance had on her lover as a young man, and he told her about Hoskuldur, who had rented the chalet during the war, and of Benjamin's mention of the woman who lived on the hill and who had been conceived in the gas tank the night that everyone thought the world would be destroyed.
"It was the year Mark Twain died," Erlendur said.
Halley's comet was heading towards Earth at an unimaginable speed with its tail full of poisonous gases. Even if the Earth escaped being smashed to smithereens in a collision, people believed, it would pass through the comet's tail and all life would perish; those who feared the worst imagined themselves consumed by fire and acid. Panic broke out, not only in Iceland but all over the world. In Austria, in Trieste and Dalmatia, people sold all they owned for next to nothing, to go on a spree for the short time they assumed they had left to live. In Switzerland, the young ladies' finishing schools stood empty because families thought they should be together when the comet destroyed Earth. Clergymen were instructed to talk about astronomy in laymen's terms to allay people's fears.
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