"And nothing went back to normal."
*
"So she phoned, did she?"
Grimur put his arm around Tomas.
"Who did she phone, Tomas? We shouldn't keep secrets. Your mother might think she can keep secrets, but that's a big misunderstanding. Keeping secrets can be dangerous."
"Don't use the boy," their mother said.
"Now she's starting to order me around," Grimur said, rubbing Tomas' shoulders. "How things change. Whatever next?"
Simon positioned himself beside his mother. Mikkelina edged her way towards them. Tomas started crying. A dark stain spread out from the crotch of his trousers.
"And did anyone answer?" Grimur asked. The smile had left his face, the sarcastic tone gone, his expression serious. They could not take their eyes off his scar.
"No one answered," the mother said.
"No Dave who's coming to save the day?"
"No Dave," the mother said.
"I wonder who grassed on me," Grimur said. "They sent a ship off this morning. Jam-packed with soldiers. Apparently there's a need for soldiers in Europe. They can't all have it cushy in Iceland where there's nothing else to do than shag our wives. Or maybe they've got him. It was a much bigger matter than even I imagined. Heads rolled. Much more important heads than mine. Officers' heads. They weren't very pleased with that."
He pushed Tomas away.
"They weren't very pleased with that at all."
Simon stood up close to his mother.
"There's just one thing in this whole business that I don't understand," Grimur said. By now he was right up against their mother and they could smell the acrid stench he gave off. "I just can't understand it. It's beyond me. I quite understand you dropping your knickers for the first bloke who looked at you when I was gone. You're just a whore. But what was he thinking?"
They almost touched.
"What did he see in you?"
He grabbed her head with both hands.
"You ugly fucking slut."
*
"We thought he was going to attack her and kill her this time. We were ready for it. I was quivering with fear and Simon was no better. I wondered whether I could get the knife from the kitchen. But nothing happened. They looked each other in the eye and instead of attacking her he backed away."
Mikkelina paused.
"I'd never been so afraid in my life. And Simon was never the same afterwards. He grew more and more distant from us after that. Poor Simon."
She looked down at the floor.
"Dave left our life as suddenly as he entered it," she said. "Mum never heard from him again."
"His surname was Welch," Erlendur said. "And we're investigating what happened to him. What was your stepfather's name?"
"His name was Thorgrimur," Mikkelina said. "He was always called Grimur."
"Thorgrimur," Erlendur repeated. He remembered the name from the list of Icelanders who worked at the depot.
His mobile phone rang in his coat pocket. It was Sigurdur Oli, who was at the excavation on the hill.
"You ought to come up here," Sigurdur Oli said.
"Here?" Erlendur said. "Where is 'here'?"
"On the hill, of course," Sigurdur Oli said. "They've reached the bones and I think we've found out who's buried there."
"Who is it?"
"Benjamin's fiancee."
"Why? What makes you think it's her?" Erlendur had stood up and gone into the kitchen for some privacy.
"Come up and see," Sigurdur Oli said. "It can't be anyone else. Just come and see for yourself."
Then he rang off.
26
Fifteen minutes later, Erlendur and Elinborg were in Grafarholt. They said a hurried farewell to Mikkelina, who watched in surprise as they walked out of the door. Erlendur did not tell her what Sigurdur Oli had said over the phone about Benjamin's fiancee, only that he had to go to the hill because the skeleton was finally being uncovered, and he asked her to save her story for now. Apologised. They would talk more later.
"Shouldn't I come with you?" Mikkelina asked from the hallway, where she stood watching them through the doorway. "I have. ."
"Not now," Erlendur interrupted her. "We'll have a better talk later. There's a new development."
Sigurdur Oli was waiting for them on the hill and took them to Skarphedinn, who was standing by the grave.
"Erlendur," the archaeologist greeted him. "We're getting there. It didn't take so long in the end."
"What have you found?" Erlendur asked.
"It's a female," Sigurdur Oli said self-importantly. "No question about it."
"How come?" Elinborg said. "Are you a doctor all of a sudden?"
"This doesn't call for a doctor," Sigurdur Oli said. "It's obvious."
"There are two skeletons in the grave," Skarphedinn said. "One of an adult, probably a woman, the other of a baby, a tiny baby, maybe even unborn. It's lying like that, in the skeleton."
Erlendur looked at him in astonishment.
"Two skeletons?"
He glanced at Sigurdur Oli, took two steps forward and peered down into the grave where he saw at once what Skarphedinn meant. The large skeleton was almost unearthed and it lay exposed in front of him with its hand up in the air, the jaw gaping, full of soil, and the ribs were broken. There was soil in the empty sockets of the eyes, tufts of hair lay across the forehead and the skin had not yet completely rotted from the face.
On top of it lay another tiny skeleton, curled up in the foetal position. The archaeologists had carefully brushed the dirt away from it. The arms and thighbones were the size of pencils and the cranium was the size of a tennis ball. It was lying below the ribcage of the large skeleton with its head pointing downwards.
"Could it be anyone else?" Sigurdur Oli asked. "Isn't that the fiancee? She was pregnant. What was her name again?"
"Solveig," Elinborg said. "Was her pregnancy that far advanced?" she said as if to herself, staring down at the skeletons.
"Do they call it a baby or a foetus at this stage?" Erlendur asked.
"I don't have a clue," Sigurdur Oli said.
"Nor do I," Erlendur said. "We need an expert. Can we take the skeletons as they are to send to the morgue on Baronsstigur?" he asked Skarphedinn.
"What do you mean, as they are?"
"One on top of the other."
"We still have to unearth the large skeleton. If we clear a little more soil away from it, with little sweeps and brushes, then go under it, carefully, we ought to be able to lift the whole lot, yes. I think that should work. You don't want the pathologist to look at them here? In this position?"
"No, I want them indoors," Erlendur said. "We need to examine all this under optimum conditions."
By dinner time, the skeletons were removed intact from the ground. Erlendur, Sigurdur Oli and Elinborg watched the bones being lifted out. The archaeologists handled the task with great professionalism and Erlendur had no regrets about having called them in. Skarphedinn managed the operation with the same efficiency he had shown during the excavation. He told Erlendur that they had taken quite a liking to the skeleton, which they called the "Millennium Man" in Erlendur's honour, and that they would miss it. But their job was not finished. Having developed an interest in criminology in the process, Skarphedinn intended to go on combing the soil with his team for clues about the incident on the hill all those years ago. He had taken photographs and videos of every stage of the excavation, and said that it could make an interesting lecture for the university, especially if Erlendur ever found out how the bones had got there in the first place, he added, with a smile that exposed his fangs.
The skeletons were taken to the morgue on Baronsstigur. The pathologist was on holiday with his family in Spain and would not be back for at least a week, he had told Erlendur over the phone that same afternoon, basking in the sun at a barbecue, and tipsy to boot, the detective thought. Once the bones had been exhumed and loaded into a police van, the medical officer supervised
the operation and made sure they were stored in the proper place in the morgue.
As Erlendur had insisted, instead of being separated the skeletons were transported together. To keep their relative positions as intact as possible the archaeologists had left a lot of dirt between them. So it was quite a heap lying on the table in front of Erlendur and the district medical officer when they stood together bathed in the bright fluorescent light of the autopsy room. The skeletons were wrapped in a large white blanket that the medical officer pulled back, and the two men stood contemplating the bones.
"What we probably need most is to date both skeletons," Erlendur said and looked at the medical officer.
"Yes, dating," the medical officer said thoughtfully. "You know that there's really precious little difference between a male and female skeleton except for the pelvis, which we can't see clearly enough for the little skeleton and the layer of dirt between them. All 206 bones seem to be in place on the big one. The ribs are broken, as we knew. It's fairly large, quite a tall woman. That's my first impression, but actually I'd prefer not to have anything to do with it. Are you in a hurry? Can't you wait for a week? I'm no specialist in autopsies or dating of bodies. I might miss all kinds of details mat a qualified pathologist would notice, weigh up, intuit. If you want a proper job done, you should wait. Is there any rush? Can't it wait?" he repeated.
Erlendur noticed beads of sweat on the medical officer's forehead and recalled someone saying he always tried to avoid too much responsibility.
"Either way," Erlendur said. "There's no rush. I don't think so anyway. Unless the excavation throws up something that we don't know about, some tragedy."
"You mean someone who's kept an eye on the excavation knows what's been going on and sets off a chain of events?"
"We'll see," Erlendur said. "Let's wait for the pathologist. It's not a question of life or death. But see what you can do for us all the same. Take a look in your own good time. You might be able to remove the little skeleton without damaging any evidence."
The district medical officer nodded as if uncertain about his next move.
"I'll see what I can do," he said.
Erlendur decided to talk to Benjamin Knudsen's niece immediately instead of waiting until the next morning, and he went to see her with Sigurdur Oli that evening. Elsa answered the door and invited them into her sitting room. They all sat down. She looked more tired to Erlendur and he feared her reaction to the discovery of two skeletons; he imagined it must be a strain for her to have this old business dragged out again after so many years and find her uncle implicated in a murder.
He told her what the archaeologists had unearthed on the hill: it was probably Benjamin's fiancee. Elsa looked at each detective in turn while Erlendur was finishing his account, and she was unable to suppress her disbelief.
"I don't believe you," she cried. "Are you saying that Benjamin murdered his fiancee?"
"There's a probability. ."
"And buried her on the hill by their chalet? I don't believe it. I just don't understand where you're taking all this. There must be some other explanation. There simply has to be. Benjamin was no murderer, I can tell you that. You've been free to roam around this house and rummage in the cellar as you please, but this is going too far. Do you think I would have let you go through the cellar if I, if the family, had anything to hide? No, this is going too far. You ought to leave," she said and stood up. "Now!"
"It's not as if you're involved," Sigurdur Oli said. He and Erlendur sat tight. "It's not as if you knew something and concealed it from us. Or. .?"
"What are you implying?" Elsa said. "That I knew something? Are you accusing me of complicity? Are you going to arrest me? Do you want to put me in prison? What a way to conduct yourselves!" She stared at Erlendur.
"Calm down," Erlendur said. "We found a skeleton of a baby with the adult skeleton. It's been disclosed that Benjamin's fiancee was pregnant. The natural conclusion is that it's her. Don't you think so? We're not implying anything. We're just trying to solve the case. You've been exceptionally helpful and we appreciate that. Not everyone would have done all you have. However, the fact remains that your uncle Benjamin is the main suspect now that we've recovered the bones."
Elsa glared down at Erlendur as if he was an intruder in her house. Then she seemed to soften a little. She looked at Sigurdur Oli, back at Erlendur, and sat down again.
"It's a misunderstanding," she said. "And you'd realise that if you'd known Benjamin the way I did. He wouldn't have hurt a fly. Never."
"He found out his fiancee was pregnant," Sigurdur Oli said. "They were going to be married. He was obviously madly in love with her. His future revolved around his love, the family he was going to start, his business, his position in society. He cracked up. Maybe he went too far. Her body was never recovered. She was supposed to have thrown herself into the sea. She disappeared. Maybe we've found her."
"You told Sigurdur Oli that Benjamin didn't know who got his fiancee pregnant," Erlendur said guardedly. He wondered whether they may have jumped the gun and he cursed the pathologist in Spain. Perhaps they should have saved this visit for later. Waited for confirmation.
"That's right," Elsa said. "He didn't know." "We've heard that Solveig's mother went to see him later and told him the story. When everything had blown over. After Solveig went missing." Elsa's expression changed to one of surprise. "I didn't know that," she said. "When was that?" "Later," Erlendur said. "I don't know exactly. Solveig kept quiet about the father of the child. For some reason, she kept quiet. Didn't tell Benjamin what happened. Broke off their engagement and wouldn't say who the father was. Possibly to protect her family. Her own father's good name."
"What do you mean, her father's good name?" "His nephew raped Solveig when she was visiting his family in Fljot."
Elsa slumped into her seat and instinctively put her hand to her mouth in shock. "I can't believe it," she sighed.
At the same time, at the other end of the city, Elinborg was telling Bara what had been found in the grave and that the most likely hypothesis was that it was the body of Solveig, Benjamin's fiancee. That Benjamin had probably buried her there. Elinborg stressed that all the police had to go on was that he was the last person to see her alive and a child had been found with the skeleton on the hill. All further analysis of the bones was still pending.
Bara listened to Elinborg's account without blinking. As usual, she was alone in her huge house, surrounded by wealth, and showed no reaction.
"Our father wanted her to have an abortion," she said. "Our mother wanted to take her to the countryside, let her give the baby away and come back as if nothing had happened, then marry Benjamin. My parents talked it over for ages, then called Solveig in to see them."
Bara stood up.
"Mother told me this later."
She went over to an imposing oak sideboard, opened a drawer and took out a small white handkerchief which she dabbed against her nose.
"They presented the two options to her. The third option was never discussed. Namely, having the baby and making it part of our family. Solveig tried to persuade them, but they refused to hear a word of it. Didn't want to know about it. Wanted to kill the baby or give it away. No alternatives."
"And Solveig?"
"I don't know," Bara said. "The poor girl, I don't know. She wanted the child, she wouldn't think of doing anything else. She was just a child herself. She was no more than a child."
Erlendur looked at Elsa.
"Could Benjamin have interpreted it as an act of betrayal?" he asked. "If Solveig refused to name the father of the child?"
"No one knows what passed between them at their last meeting," Elsa said. "Benjamin told my mother the main points, but it's impossible to know whether he mentioned every important detail. Was she really raped? My Lord!"
Elsa looked at Erlendur and Sigurdur Oli in turn.
"Benjamin may well have taken it as betrayal," she said in a low voice.
"So
rry, what did you say?" Erlendur asked her.
"Benjamin may well have thought she betrayed him," Elsa repeated. "But that doesn't mean he murdered her and buried her body on the hill."
"Because she kept quiet," Erlendur said.
"Yes, because she kept quiet," Elsa said. "Refused to name the father. He didn't know about the rape. I think that's quite certain."
"Could he have had an accomplice?" Erlendur asked. "Maybe got someone to do the job for him?"
"I don't follow."
"He rented his chalet in Grafarholt to a wife-beater and a thief. That tells us nothing in itself, but it's a fact all the same."
"I don't know what you're talking about. Wife-beater?"
"No, that's probably plenty for now. Maybe we're jumping to conclusions, Elsa. It's probably best to wait for the pathologist's report. Please excuse us if we. ."
"No, by no means, no, thank you for keeping me informed. I appreciate that."
"We'll let you know how the case proceeds," Sigurdur Oli said.
"And you have the lock of hair," Elsa said. "For identification."
Elinborg stood up. It had been a long day and she wanted to go home. She thanked Bara and apologised for disturbing her so late in the evening. Bara told her not to worry. She followed Elinborg to the door and closed it behind her. A moment later the bell rang and Bara opened it again.
"Was she tall?" Elinborg asked.
"Who?" Bara said.
"Your sister," Elinborg said. "Was she unusually tall, average height or short? What kind of build did she have?"
"No, she wasn't tall," Bara said with a hint of a smile. "Far from it. She was strikingly short. Exceptionally petite. A wisp of a thing, our mother used to say. And it was funny seeing her and Benjamin walking along holding hands, because he was so tall that he towered over her."
The district medical officer phoned Erlendur, who was sitting by his daughter's bedside at the hospital just before midnight.
"I'm at the morgue," the medical officer said, "and I've separated the skeletons. I hope I haven't damaged anything. I'm no pathologist. There's earth all over the tables and the floor, a filthy mess really."
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