Silence Of The Grave

by Arnaldur Indridason

  Bára 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. Sólveig 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 Sólveig?"

  "I don't know," Bára 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 Benjamín have interpreted it as an act of betrayal?" he asked. "If Sólveig refused to name the father of the child?"

  "No one knows what passed between them at their last meeting," Elsa said. "Benjamín 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 Óli in turn.

  "Benjamín may well have taken it as betrayal," she said in a low voice.

  "Sorry, what did you say?" Erlendur asked her.

  "Benjamín 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 Óli said.

  "And you have the lock of hair," Elsa said. "For identification."

  Elínborg stood up. It had been a long day and she wanted to go home. She thanked Bára and apologised for disturbing her so late in the evening. Bára told her not to worry. She followed Elínborg to the door and closed it behind her. A moment later the bell rang and Bára opened it again.

  "Was she tall?" Elínborg asked.

  "Who?" Bára said.

  "Your sister," Elínborg said. "Was she unusually tall, average height or short? What kind of build did she have?"

  "No, she wasn't tall," Bára 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 Benjamín 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."

  "And?" Erlendur said.

  "Yes, sorry, well, we have the skeleton of the foetus, which was at least seven months old."

  "Yes," Erlendur said impatiently.

  "And there's nothing odd about that. Except . . ."

  "Go on."

  "It could well have been already born when it died. Or maybe stillborn. That's impossible to tell. But it's not the mother lying underneath it."

  "Hang on . . . What makes you say that?"

  "It can't be the mother lying under the child or buried with it, however you want to put it."

  "Not the mother? What do you mean? Who is it then?"

  "There's no doubt," the medical officer said. "You can tell from the pelvis."

  "The pelvis?"

  "The adult skeleton is a male. It was a man who was buried under the baby."

  27

  The winter on the hill was long and tough.

  The children's mother kept on working at the Gufunes dairy and the boys took the school bus every morning. Grímur went back to delivering coal. After the racket was discovered, the army did not want to give him his old job again. The depot was closed and the barracks were moved en bloc down to Hálogaland. Only the fencing and fence posts remained, and the concreted yard that had been in front of the barracks. The cannon was removed from the bunker. People said the war was nearing its end. The Germans were retreating in Russia and a major counter-offensive was said to be pending on the western front.

  Grímur more or less ignored the children's mother that winter. Hardly uttered a word, except to hurl abuse at her. They no longer shared a bed. The mother slept in Simon's room, while Grímur wanted Tómas to stay in his. Everyone except Tómas noticed how her stomach slowly swelled during the winter until it protruded like a bitter-sweet memory of the events of the summer, and a terrifying reminder of what would happen if Grímur stuck to his threats.

  She played down her condition as best she could. Grímur threatened her regularly. Said he would not let her keep the baby. He would kill it at birth. Said it would be a retard like Mikkelína and the best thing would be to kill it straight away. "Yank-fucker," he said. But he did not physically assault her that winter. He kept a low profile, sneaking silently around her like a beast preparing to pounce on its prey.

  She tried talking about a divorce, but Grímur laughed at her. She did not discuss her condition with the people at the dairy and concealed the fact that she was pregnant. Perhaps, right to the end, she thought that Grímur would recant, that his threats were empty, that when it came to the crunch he would not carry out his threats, that he would be like a father to the child in spite of everything.

  In the end she resorted to desperate measures. Not to take vengeance on Grímur, although she had ample reason, but to protect herself and the child she was about to bear.

  Mikkelína strongly sensed a growing tension between her mother and Grímur during that tough winter and also noticed a change in Simon that she found no less disturbing. He had always been fond of his mother, but now he hardly left her side from the time he came home from school and she finished work. He was more nervous after Grímur came back from prison on that cold autumn morning. As far as he could, he avoided his father and his anxiety about his mother haunted him more with each day that went by. Mikkelína heard him talking to himself sometimes and occasionally it sounded as if he was talking to someone she could not see who could not possibly be in their house: an imaginary person. Sometimes she heard him say out loud what he had to do to protect their mother and the child she would bear by his friend Dave. How it fell to him to guard her against Grímur. How the baby's life depended on him. No one else was at hand. His friend Dave would never return.

  Simon took Grímur's threats very seriously. He firmly believed that he would not allow the baby to live. That Grímur would take it and they would never see it. Carry it off up the mountain and come back without it.

  Tómas was silent as ever, but Mikkelína sensed a change in him as the winter wore on. Grímur allowed Tómas to spend the night in his room after he forbade the children's mother to sleep in the double bed and forced her to sleep in Tómas' bed, which was too small for her and uncomfortable. Mikkelína did not know what Grímur said to Tómas, but soon Tómas adopted a very different attitude towards her. He would not have anything to do with her and distanced himself from Simon as well, despite how close they had always been. Their mother tried to talk to Tómas, but he always backed away from her, angry, silent and helpless.

  "Simon's turning a bit funny," Mikkelína heard Grímur say to
Tómas once. "He's going funny like your mother. Keep a watch out for him. Make sure you don't get like him. Because then you'll turn funny too."

  Once Mikkelína heard her mother talking to Grímur about the baby, the only time he allowed her to speak her mind, as far as she knew. Her mother's stomach was bulging by then and he prohibited her to work at the dairy any longer.

  "You give up your job and say you have to look after your family," Mikkelína heard him order her.

  "But you can say it's yours," her mother said.

  Grímur laughed at her.

  "You can."

  "Shut up."

  Mikkelína noticed that Simon was eavesdropping as well.

  "You could easily say it's your child," their mother said in a soothing voice.

  "Don't try that," Grímur said.

  "No one needs to know anything. No one need find out."

  "It's too late to try to put things right now. You should have thought of that when you were out on the moor with that fucking Yank."

  "Or I could have it adopted," she said cautiously. "I'm not the first one this has happened to."

  "Sure you're not," Grímur said. "Half the bloody city's been screwing them. But don't think that makes you any better for it."

  "You'll never need to see it. I'll give it away as soon as it's born and you won't ever need to see it."

  "Everyone knows my wife shags Yanks," Grímur says. "They all know you've been playing the field."

  "No one knows," she said. "No one. There was no one who knew about me and Dave."

  "How do you think I knew about it, you twat? Because you told me? Don't you think that kind of story gets around?"

  "Yes, but no one knows he's the father. No one knows."

  "Shut up," Grímur said. "Shut up or . . ."

  They all waited to see what that long winter would bring and what was in some terrible way inevitable. It began when Grímur slowly began to fall ill.

  *

  Mikkelína stared at Erlendur.

  "She started to poison him that winter."

  "Poison?" Erlendur said.

  "She didn't know what she was doing."

  "How did she poison him?"

  "Do you remember the Dúkskot case in Reykjavik?"

  "When a young woman killed her brother with rat poison? Yes, it was some time around the beginning of the last century."

  "Mum didn't intend to kill him with it. She only wanted to make him ill. So she could have the baby and get it out of his way before he found out the baby was gone. The woman from Dúkskot fed her brother rat poison. Put big doses in his curds, he even saw her do it but didn't know what it was, and he managed to tell someone because he didn't die until several days later. She gave him schnapps with his curds to take the taste away. At the inquest they found phosphorus in his body, which has a slow toxic effect. Our mother knew that story, it was a famous Reykjavik murder. She got hold of rat poison at the Gufunes dairy. Stole small doses which she put in his food. She used very little at a time so that he wouldn't taste it or suspect anything. Instead of keeping the poison at home she brought back what she needed each time, but when she gave up her job at the dairy she took a large dose home and hid it. She had no idea what effect it would have on him or whether such small doses would even work at all, but after a while the effects seemed to come on. He got weaker, was often ill or tired, vomited. Couldn't make it to work. Lay in bed suffering."

  "Did he never suspect anything?" Erlendur asked.

  "Not until it was too late," Mikkelína said. "He had no faith in doctors. And of course she didn't encourage him to go for a check-up."

  "What about when he said they would take care of Dave? Did he ever mention that again?"

  "No, never," Mikkelína said. "He was just bluffing really. Saying things to scare her. He knew that she loved Dave."

  Erlendur and Elínborg were in Mikkelína's sitting room, listening to her story. They had told her that it was a male skeleton underneath the baby in the grave in Grafarholt. Mikkelína shook her head; she could have told them that before had they not hurried away without saying why.

  She wanted to know about the baby skeleton and when Erlendur asked whether she wanted to see it, she said no.

  "But I'd like to know when you don't need it any more," she said. "It's about time she was laid to rest in hallowed ground."

  "She?" Elínborg said.

  "Yes. She," Mikkelína said.

  Sigurdur Óli told Elsa what the medical officer had discovered: the body in the grave could not be her uncle Benjamín's fiancée. Elínborg phoned Sólveig's sister, Bára, to tell her the same news.

  While Erlendur was setting off with Elínborg to see Mikkelína, Ed called on his mobile to let him know that he still had not managed to find out what became of Dave Welch; he did not know whether he was posted away from Iceland, or even when that might have been. He said he would go on searching.

  Earlier that morning Erlendur had gone to intensive care to visit his daughter. Her condition was unchanged and Erlendur sat beside her for a good while, and resumed his tale about his brother who had frozen to death on the moors above Eskifjördur when Erlendur was ten. They were rounding up sheep with their father when the storm broke. The brothers lost sight of their father and soon afterwards of each other. Their father made it back to the farm, exhausted. Search parties were mounted.

  "They found me by sheer chance," Erlendur said. "I don't know why. I had the presence of mind to dig a shelter for myself in a snowdrift. I was more dead than alive when they poked at the snow and the stick happened to touch my shoulder. We moved away. Couldn't live there any more, knowing about him up on the moor. Tried to start a new life, in Reykjavík . . . In vain."

  At that moment a doctor looked in. He and Erlendur greeted each other and briefly discussed Eva Lind's condition. Unchanged, the doctor said. No hint of a recovery or that she was regaining consciousness. They fell silent. Said goodbye. The doctor turned at the door.

  "Don't expect any miracles,'' he said, and noticed a cold smile on Erlendur's face.

  Now Erlendur was sitting opposite Mikkelína, thinking about his daughter in her hospital bed and his brother lying in the snow. Mikkelína's words trickled into his mind.

  "My mother wasn't a murderer," she said.

  Erlendur looked at her.

  "She wasn't a murderer," Mikkelína repeated. "She thought she could save the baby. She feared for her child."

  She darted a glance at Elínborg.

  "After all, he didn't die," she said. "He didn't die from the poison."

  "But you said he didn't suspect anything until it was too late," Elínborg said.

  "Yes," Mikkelína said. "It was too late by then."

  *

  The night that it happened, Grímur seemed more subdued after lying in bed all day racked with pain.

  Their mother felt pains in her stomach and towards evening she had gone into labour with very rapid contractions. She knew it was too soon. The baby would be premature. She had the boys bring the mattresses from the beds in their room and from Mikkelína's divan in the kitchen, spread them out on the kitchen floor, and around dinner time she lay down on them.