Silence Of The Grave

by Arnaldur Indridason

  One day he would be able to take Mikkelína with them.

  And one day he would be able to defend his mother.

  The terrified brothers ran out of the house and headed for the redcurrant bushes. It was autumn and the bushes were in bloom, with thick foliage and little red berries swollen with juice that burst in their hands when they picked them to fill tins and jars that their mother had given them.

  They threw themselves to the ground on the other side of the bushes, listening to their father's curses and oaths and the sound of breaking plates and their mother's screams. The younger boy covered his ears, but Simon looked in through the kitchen window that cast its yellowish glow out into the twilight, and he forced himself to listen to her howls.

  He had stopped covering his ears. He had to listen if he was to do what he needed to do.

  10

  Elsa was not exaggerating about the cellar in Benjamín's house. It was packed with junk and for a moment Erlendur found the prospect too daunting. He wondered about calling in Elínborg and Sigurdur Óli, but decided to keep that on hold. The cellar measured about 90 square metres and was partitioned off into a number of different-sized rooms, with no doors or windows, full of boxes and more boxes, some labelled, but most not. There were cardboard boxes that once contained wine bottles and cigarettes, and wooden crates, in all conceivable sizes and filled with an endless assortment of rubbish. In the cellar were also old cupboards, chests, suitcases and sundry items that had accumulated over a long time: dusty bicycles, lawn mowers, an old barbecue grill.

  "You can rummage through that as you please," Elsa said when she followed him down. "If there's anything I can help you with, just call me." She half pitied this frowning detective who seemed somewhat absent-minded, shabbily dressed in his tatty cardigan under an old jacket with worn patches on the elbows. She sensed a certain sorrow about him when she talked to him and looked him in the eye.

  Erlendur gave a vague smile and thanked her. Two hours later he found the first documents from Benjamín Knudsen the merchant. He had an awful time working through the cellar. Everything was disorganised. Old and more recent junk was mixed up in huge piles that he had to examine and move in order to make progress into the heap. However, the further he slowly made his way across the floor, the older the rubbish seemed to be that he was sorting through. He felt like having a coffee and a cigarette and he wondered whether to pester Elsa or go out for a break and find a cafe.

  Eva Lind never left his thoughts. He had his mobile on him and was expecting a call from the hospital at any moment. His conscience plagued him for not being with her. Maybe he should take a few days off, sit beside his daughter and talk to her as the doctor had urged him to. Be with her instead of leaving her in intensive care, unconscious, with no family or comforting words, all by herself. But he knew he could never sit idly waiting by her bedside. Work was a form of salvation. He needed it to occupy his mind. Prevent himself from thinking the worst. The unthinkable.

  He tried to concentrate as he worked his way through the cellar. In an old desk he found some invoices from wholesalers addressed to Knudsen's shop. They were handwritten and difficult to decipher, but they seemed to involve deliveries of goods. Similar bills were in the desk cupboard and Erlendur's first impression was that Knudsen had run a grocery. Coffee and sugar were mentioned on the invoices, with figures beside them.

  Nothing about work on a chalet far outside Reykjavik where the city's Millennium Quarter was now being built.

  Eventually the urge for a cigarette got the better of Erlendur and he found a door in the cellar that opened onto a beautifully kept garden. The flowers were just beginning to bud after the winter, although Erlendur paid no particular attention to that as he stood hungrily smoking. He quickly finished two cigarettes. The mobile rang in his jacket pocket when he was about to go back to the cellar. It was Elínborg.

  "How's Eva Lind doing?" she asked.

  "Still unconscious," Erlendur said curtly. Did not want any small talk. "Any developments?" he asked.

  "I talked to that old chap, Róbert. He owned a chalet up by the hill. I'm not quite sure what he was going on about, but he remembered someone roaming around in your bushes."

  "Bushes?"

  "By the bones."

  "The redcurrant bushes? Who was it?"

  "And then I think he died."

  Erlendur heard Sigurdur Óli giggle in the background.

  "The person in the bushes?"

  "No, Róbert," Elínborg said. "So we won't be getting anything more out of him."

  "And who was it? In the bushes?"

  "It's all very unclear," Elínborg said. "There was someone who often used to go there later. That was really all I got out of him. Then he started to say something. Said 'green lady' and then it was all over."

  "Green lady?"

  "Yes. Green."

  "Often and later and green," Erlendur repeated. "Later than what? What did he mean?"

  "As I said, it was very disjointed. I think it might have been . . . I think she was . . ." Elínborg hesitated.

  "Was what?" Erlendur asked.

  "Crooked."

  "Crooked?"

  "That was the only description he gave of the person. He'd lost the power of speech and he wrote down that one word, 'crooked'. Then he fell asleep and I think something happened to him because the medical team rushed in to him and . . ."

  Elínborg's voice faded out. Erlendur mulled over her words for a while.

  "So it looks like a lady often used to go to the redcurrant bushes some time later."

  "Perhaps after the war," Elínborg said.

  "Did he remember anyone living in the house?"

  "A family," Elínborg said. "A couple with three children. I couldn't get any more out of him about that."

  "So people did live around there, by the bushes?"

  "It looks that way."

  "And she was crooked. What's being crooked? How old is Róbert?"

  "He's . . . or was . . . I don't know . . . past 90."

  "Impossible to tell what he means by that word," Erlendur said as if to himself. "A crooked woman in the redcurrant bushes. Does anyone live in Róbert's chalet? Is it still standing?"

  Elínborg told him that she and Sigurdur Óli had talked to the present owners earlier that day, but there had been no mention of any woman. Erlendur told them to go back and ask the owners directly whether any people, specifically a woman, had ever been seen around the area of the redcurrant bushes. Also to try to locate any relatives that Róbert may have had to find out whether he'd ever talked about the family on the hill. Erlendur said he would spend a little more time rummaging around in the cellar before going to the hospital to visit his daughter.

  He returned to browsing through Benjamín's things, wondering as he looked around the cellar if it would not take several days to plough through all the junk in there. He squeezed his way back to Benjamín's desk which as far as he could tell contained only documents and invoices connected with his shop. Erlendur did not remember it, but it was apparently on Hverfisgata.

  Two hours later, after drinking coffee with Elsa and smoking a further two cigarettes in the back garden, he reached the grey painted chest on the floor. It was locked but had the key in it. Erlendur had to strain to turn it and open the chest. Inside were more documents and envelopes tied up with an elastic band, but no invoices. A few photographs were mixed in with the letters, some framed and others loose. Erlendur looked at them. He had no idea who the people in the photographs were, but assumed that Benjamín himself was in some. One was of a tall, handsome man who was starting to develop a paunch and was standing outside a shop. The occasion was obvious. A sign was being mounted over the door: KNUDSEN'S SHOP.

  Examining more photographs, Erlendur saw the same man. On some of them he was with a younger woman and they smiled at the camera. All the photographs were taken outdoors and always in sunshine.

  He put them down, picked up the bundle of envelopes, and d
iscovered they contained love letters from Benjamín to his bride-to-be. Her name was Sólveig. Some were merely very brief messages and confessions of love, others more detailed with accounts of everyday incidents. They were all written with great affection for his sweetheart. The letters appeared to be arranged in chronological order and Erlendur read one of them, though somewhat reluctantly. He felt as if he were prying into something sacrosanct, and felt almost ashamed. Like standing up against a window and peeping in.

  My sweetheart,

  How terribly I miss you, my beloved. I have been thinking of you all day and count the minutes until you come back. Life without you is like a cold winter, so drab and empty. Imagine, you being away for two whole weeks. I honestly do not know how I can stand it.

  Yours lovingly

  Benjamín K.

  Erlendur put the letter back in its envelope and took out another from further down the pile, which was a detailed account of the prospective merchant's intention to open a shop on Hverfisgata. He had big plans for the future. Had read that in big cities in America there were huge stores selling all kinds of merchandise, clothes as well as food, where people chose off the shelves what they wanted to buy. Then put it in trolleys that they pushed around the shop floor.

  He went to the hospital towards evening, intending to sit by Eva Lind's side. First he phoned Skarphédinn, who said that the excavation was making good progress, but refused to predict when they would get down to the bones. They had still not found anything in the soil to indicate the cause of the Millennium Man's death.

  Erlendur also phoned Eva Lind's doctor before setting off, and was told that her condition was unchanged. When he arrived at intensive care he saw a woman wearing a brown coat, sitting by his daughter's bedside, and he was almost inside the room when he realised who it was. He tensed up, stopped in his tracks and slowly backed through the door until he was out in the corridor, looking at his ex-wife from a distance.

  She had her back to him, but he knew it was her. A woman of his age, sitting and stooping, plump in a bright purple jogging suit under her brown coat, putting a handkerchief to her nose and talking to Eva Lind in a low voice. What she was saying, he couldn't hear. He noticed she had dyed her hair, but apparently quite some time ago because a white strip was visible at the roots where she parted it. He worked out how old she must be now. Three years older than he was.

  He had not seen her close up for two decades. Not since he walked out and left her with the two children. She, like Erlendur, had not remarried, but she had lived with several men, some better than others. Eva Lind told him about them when she was older and started seeking his company.

  Although the girl was suspicious of him at first, they had nonetheless reached a certain understanding and he tried to help her whenever he could. The same applied to the boy, who was much more distant from him. Erlendur had virtually no contact with his son.

  Erlendur watched his ex-wife and backed further down the corridor. He wondered whether to join her, but could not bring himself to. He expected trouble and did not want a scene in this place. Did not want that kind of scene anywhere. Did not want it in his life if he could avoid it. They had never properly come to terms with their failed relationship which, Eva Lind told him, was what hurt her the most.

  How he had left.

  He turned round and walked slowly down the corridor, thinking about the love letters in Benjamín K.'s cellar. Erlendur could not remember properly, and the question remained unanswered when he got home, slumped in the armchair and allowed sleep to push it out of his mind.

  Had Halldóra ever been his sweetheart?

  11

  It was decided that Erlendur, Sigurdur Óli and Elínborg would handle the Bones Mystery, as the media was calling it, by themselves. The CID couldn't afford to put more detectives onto what was not a priority case. An extensive narcotics investigation was in full swing, using up a great deal of time and manpower, and the department could not deploy any more people on historical research, as their boss Hrólfur put it. No one was sure yet that it was even a criminal case at all.

  Erlendur dropped in at the hospital early the next morning on his way to work, and sat by his daughter's bedside for two hours. Her condition was stable. There was no sign of her mother. For a long while he sat in silence, watching his daughter's thin, bony face, and thought back. Tried to recall the time he'd spent with his daughter when she was small. Eva Lind had just turned two when her parents separated, and he remembered her sleeping between them in their bed. Refusing to sleep in her cot, even though, because they only had a small flat with that single bedroom, a sitting room and kitchen, it was in their bedroom. She climbed out of hers, flopped into the double bed and snuggled up between them.

  He remembered her standing by the door of his flat, well into her teens by then, after she had tracked down her father. Halldóra flatly refused to allow him to see the children. Whenever he tried to arrange to meet them she would hurl abuse at him and he felt that every word she said was the absolute truth. Gradually he stopped calling them. He had not seen Eva Lind for all that time and then suddenly there she was, standing in his doorway. Her expression looked familiar. Her facial features were from his side of the family.

  "Aren't you going to invite me in?" she said after he had taken a long stare at her. She was wearing a black leather jacket, tattered jeans and black lipstick. Her nails were painted black. She was smoking, exhaling through her nose.

  There was still a teenage look about her face, almost pristine.

  He dithered. Caught unawares. Then invited her inside.

  "Mum threw a wobbler when I said I was coming to see you," she said as she walked past him, trailing smoke, and slammed herself down in his armchair. "Called you a loser. Always says that. To me and Sindri. 'A fucking loser, that father of yours.' And then: 'You're just like him, fucking losers.'"

  Eva Lind laughed. She searched for an ashtray to put out her cigarette, but he took the butt and stubbed it out for her.

  "Why . . ." he began, but did not manage to finish the sentence.

  "I just wanted to see you," she said. "Just wanted to see what the hell you look like."

  "And what do I look like?" he asked.

  She looked at him.

  "Like a loser," she said.

  "So we're not that different," he said.

  She stared at him for a long time and he thought he detected a smile.

  *

  When Erlendur arrived at the office, Elínborg and Sigurdur Óli sat down with him and told him how they had learned nothing more from the present owners of Róbert's chalet. As the new owners put it, they had never noticed any crooked woman anywhere on the hill. Róbert's wife had died ten years before. They had two children. One of them, the son, died around the same time at the age of 60, and the other, a woman of 70, was waiting for Elínborg to call on her.

  "And what about Róbert, will we get anything more out of him?" Erlendur asked.

  "Róbert passed away last night," Elínborg said with a trace of guilt in her voice. "He'd had enough of life. Seriously. I think he wanted to call it a day. A miserable old vegetable. That's what he said. God, I'd hate to waste away in hospital like that."

  "He wrote a few words in a notebook just before he died," Sigurdur Óli said. "She killed me."

  "Aiee, that sense of humour," groaned Elínborg.

  "You don't need to see any more of him today," Erlendur said, nodding in Sigurdur Óli's direction. "I'm going to send him to Benjamín's cellar to dig out some clues."