Silence of the Grave (12 page)

13

Before Erlendur went to the British embassy he drove to the Vogar district and parked a short distance from the basement flat where Eva Lind had once lived and where he had begun the search for her. He thought back to the child he found in the flat with the cigarette burns on its body. He knew the girl had been taken away from her mother and was in care, and he knew that the man she lived with was the father. A quick enquiry revealed that the mother had twice been to Accident and Emergency in the past year, once with a broken arm and the other time with multiple injuries which she claimed were the result of a road accident.

Another simple check showed that the mother's partner had a police record, although never for violence. He was awaiting sentence on charges of burglary and drug trafficking. Once he had been to prison, for an accumulation of minor crimes. One was an unsuccessful shop robbery.

Erlendur sat in his car for a good while, watching the door to the flat. He refrained from smoking and was about to drive away when the door opened. A man came out, wreathed in smoke from a cigarette, which he flicked into the front garden. He was of average height, powerfully built with long, black hair, dressed in black from top to toe. His appearance fitted the description in the police reports. When the man disappeared around the corner, Erlendur quietly drove away.

Róbert's daughter welcomed Elínborg at the door. Elínborg had phoned beforehand. The woman, whose name was Harpa, was confined to a wheelchair, her legs withered and lifeless, but her torso and arms strong. Elínborg was somewhat taken aback but said nothing. Harpa smiled and invited her in. She left the door open, Elínborg entered and closed it behind her. The flat was small but cosy, custom built for its owner.

"I'm sorry about your father," Elínborg said, following Harpa into the sitting room.

"Thank you," the woman in the wheelchair said. "He was extremely old. I hope I don't live that long. There's nothing I'd hate more than to end up as a patient in an institution, waiting to die. Fading away."

"We're enquiring about people who might have lived in a chalet in Grafarholt, on the north side," Elínborg said. "Not so far from yours. Wartime or thereabouts. We spoke to your father shortly before he died and he told us he knew about a family living there, but unfortunately couldn't tell us much more."

Elínborg thought about the mask over Róbert's face. His breathlessness and anaemic hands.

"You mentioned finding some bones," Harpa said, sweeping back the hair which had fallen over her forehead. "The ones on the news."

"Yes, we found a skeleton there and we're trying to discover who it might be. Do you remember this family that your father spoke of ?"

"I was seven when the war reached Iceland," Harpa said. "I remember the soldiers in Reykjavik. We lived downtown, but I didn't have a clue what it was all about. They were on the hill too. On the south side. They built barracks and a bunker. There was a long slit in it with the barrel of a cannon sticking out. All very dramatic. Our parents told us to keep away from it, my brother and me. I have a vague memory of fences all around it. Barbed wire. We didn't go over that way much. We spent a lot of time in the chalet that Dad built, mostly in the summer, and naturally we got to know the neighbours a little."

"Your father said that there were three children in that house. They could have been about your age." Elínborg glanced down at Harpa's wheelchair. "Maybe you didn't get about."

"Oh, sure," Harpa said, rapping her knuckles on the wheelchair. "This happened later. A car accident. I was 30. I don't remember any children on the hill. I remember children in other chalets, but not up there."

"Some redcurrant bushes are growing near the site of the old house, where we found the bones. Your father mentioned a lady who went there, later, I believe. She went there a lot . . . I think he said that anyway . . . probably dressed in green and she was crooked."

"Crooked?"

"That's what he said, or I should say, wrote."

Elínborg took out the note Róbert had written and handed it to her.

"This was apparently when you still owned your chalet," Elínborg went on. "I understand you sold it some time after 1970."

"1972," Harpa said.

"Did you notice this lady?"

"No, and I never heard Dad talk about her. I'm sorry I can't help you, but I never saw that lady and don't know anything about her, though I do remember people at the place you mean."

"Can you imagine what your father meant by this word? Crooked?"

"What it says. He always said what he meant, nothing more. He was a very precise man. A good man. Good to me. After my accident. And when my husband left me – he stuck it out for three years after the crash, then he was gone."

Elínborg thought she noticed a smile, but there was no smile on her face.

The official from the British embassy greeted Erlendur with such perfect courtesy and decorum that Erlendur almost thanked him with a bow. He said he was a secretary. Impeccably dressed in a suit and squeaky black leather shoes, he was unusually tall and thin, and spoke very precise Icelandic, much to the delight of Erlendur, who spoke English badly and understood little of it. He sighed with relief when he realised that if one of them was to give a slightly stilted impression in their conversation, it would be the secretary.

The office was as impeccable as the secretary himself, and Erlendur thought about his own workplace which always looked like a bomb had hit it. The secretary – "Just call me Jim," he said – offered him a seat.

"I love the way you are so informal here in Iceland," Jim said.

"Have you lived here for long?" Erlendur asked, not exactly sure why he was behaving like an old lady at a tea party.

"Yes, almost 2,0 years now," Jim nodded. "Thank you for asking. And as it happens, World War II is a particular interest of mine. I mean World War II in Iceland. I did an MA on the subject at the London School of Economics. When you rang about those barracks I thought I might be able to help."

"You've got a good command of the language."

"Thank you, my wife's Icelandic."

"So what about those barracks?" Erlendur asked, getting to the point.

"Well, I haven't had much time, but I did find some embassy reports about the camps we built during the war. We might need to send for more information. That's for you to judge. There were a couple of barracks on what is now Grafarholt golf course."

Jim picked up some papers from the table and browsed through them.

"There was also, what do you call it, a fortification there. Or a bunker? A tower. A huge cannon. A platoon from the 12
^th
Tyneside Scottish Battalion manned the cannon, but I still haven't found out who was in the barracks. It looks like a depot to me. Why it was located on the hill I'm not sure, but there were barracks and bunkers all over the place there, on the way to Mosfellsdalur, in Kollafjördur and Hvalfjördur."

"We were wondering about a missing person from the hill, as I told you over the phone. Do you know whether any soldiers who were there were lost or reported missing?"

"Do you think the skeleton you found might be a British soldier?"

"Perhaps it's not very likely, but we think that the body was buried during the war and if the British were in the area it's a good idea to be able to rule them out, at least."

"I'll check it for you, but I don't know how long they keep such records. I think the Americans took over the camp like everything else when we left in 1941. Most of our troops were sent to other countries, but not all of them."

"So the Americans ran that camp?"

"I'll check that too. I can talk to the American embassy about it and see what they say. That will save you the bother."

"You had military police here."

"Precisely. That might be the best place to start. It will take a few days. Maybe weeks."

"We have plenty of time," Erlendur said, thinking of Skarphédinn.

Rummaging around in Benjamín's possessions, Sigurdur Óli was bored stiff. Elsa had greeted him at the front door, shown him down to the cellar and left him there, and he had spent four hours turning out cupboards, drawers and countless boxes, without knowing exactly what he was looking for. Bergthóra was preoccupying his thoughts. He wondered whether she would be as much of a nymphomaniac when he got home as she had been over the past few weeks. He made up his mind to ask her straight out whether there was any particular reason for her sudden appetite for him, and whether that reason might just be that she wanted a baby. But that question, he knew, would mean broaching another matter that they had sometimes discussed without reaching any conclusion: wasn't it time to get married with all the appropriate ceremony and trimmings?

That was the question burning on her lips between the passionate kisses that she smothered him with. He still had to make his mind up about that issue and always dodged answering. His train of thought was: their life together was going smoothly, their love was flourishing, why ruin it by getting married? All the fuss. A stag party. Walking down the aisle. All those guests. Inflated condoms in the bridal suite. Unspeakably naff. Bergthóra did not want any civil ceremony bullshit. She talked about fireworks and beautiful memories to keep herself warm in her old age. Sigurdur Óli mumbled. Thought it was too early to think about old age. The problem was unresolved, it was clearly up to him to settle it and he had no idea what he wanted, apart from no church wedding and not hurting Bergthóra either.

Like Erlendur, when he read the letters he sensed Benjamín's genuine love and fondness for the girl who had vanished from the streets of Reykjavik one day and was said to have thrown herself into the sea.
My lovely. Dearest. How I miss you.

All that love, Sigurdur Óli thought.

Was it capable of killing?

The bulk of the papers concerned Knudsen's shop, and Sigurdur Óli had given up all hope of finding anything remotely constructive when he pulled a note out of an old filing cabinet and read:

Höskuldur Thórarinsson.

Rent in advance for Grafarholt.

8 krónur.

Signed
Benjamín Knudsen.

Erlendur was leaving the embassy when his mobile rang.

"I found a tenant," Sigurdur Óli said. "I think."

"For what?" Erlendur said.

"For the chalet. I'm on my way out of Benjamín's cellar. Never seen such a bloody mess in my life. I found a note implying that a certain Höskuldur Thórarinsson paid rent for Grafarholt."

"Höskuldur?"

"Yes. Thórarinsson."

"What's the date on the note?"

"No date. No year. Actually it's only an invoice from Knudsen's shop. The rent receipt is written on the back. And I also found invoices for what might well be construction materials for the chalet. It's all charged to the shop and the invoices are dated 1938. He may have started building the chalet around that time or been working on it."

"What year did we say his fiancée went missing?" "Hang on, I jotted that down." Erlendur waited while Sigurdur Óli checked. He took notes at meetings, a practice Erlendur had never managed to make a habit of. He could hear Sigurdur Óli flick through papers and return to the telephone.

"She disappeared in 1940. In the spring." "So Benjamín is building his chalet up to that time, then gives up and rents it out instead." "And Höskuldur is one of the tenants." "Have you found out anything else about this Höskuldur character?"

"No, not yet. Shouldn't we start with him?" Sigurdur Óli asked, hoping to escape from the cellar.

"I'll check him out," Erlendur said, and to Sigurdur Óli's chagrin added: "See if you can find anything more about him or anyone else in all that rubbish. If there's one note, there may well be more."

14

Erlendur sat by Eva Lind's bedside for quite a while after arriving from the embassy, and he turned over in his mind what to talk about. He had no idea what to say to her. He made several attempts, in vain. Ever since the doctor mentioned that it would help if he talked to her, he had repeatedly wondered what to say, but never reached any conclusion.

He began talking about the weather, but soon gave that up. Then he described Sigurdur Óli and told her how tired he had been looking recently. But there was not much else to say about him. He tried to find something to say about Elínborg, but gave up on that too. Then he told her about Benjamín Knudsen's fiancée, who was supposed to have drowned herself, and about the love letters he found in the merchant's cellar.

He told Eva Lind he had seen her mother sitting at her bedside.

Then he fell silent.

"What's with you and Mum?" Eva Lind had once asked when she was visiting him. "Why don't you talk?"

Sindri Snaer had come with her, but did not stay long, leaving the two of them together as darkness fell. It was December and there were Christmas songs on the radio, which Erlendur switched off and Eva Lind turned back on, saying she wanted to listen to them. She was several months pregnant and had gone straight for the time being, and as usual when she sat down with him she began to talk about the family she did not have. Sindri Snaer never talked about that, nor about his mother or sister or all that never happened. He was silent and withdrawn when Erlendur spoke to him. Didn't care for his father. That was the difference between the sister and brother. Eva Lind wanted to get to know her father and did not baulk at holding him responsible.

"Your mother?" Erlendur said. "Can't we turn off those Christmas jingles?"

He was trying to win time. Eva's probing into the past always threw him into a quandary. He didn't know the answers to give about their short-lived marriage, the children they had, why he had walked out. He didn't have answers to all her questions, and sometimes that enraged her. She had a short fuse as far as her family was concerned.

"No, I want to hear Christmas songs," Eva Lind said, and Bing Crosby went on dreaming of a white Christmas. "I've never ever heard her say a good thing about you, but she must have seen something in you all the same. At first. When you met. What was it?"

"Have you asked her?"

"Yes."

"And what did she say?"

"Nothing. That would mean she'd have to say something positive about you and she can't handle that. Can't handle the idea of there being anything good about you. What was it? Why the two of you?"

"I don't know," Erlendur said, and meant it. He tried to be honest. "We met at a dance. I don't know. It wasn't planned. It just happened."

"What was going on in your head?"

Erlendur did not reply. He thought about children who never knew their parents; never found out who they really were. Entered their life when it was as much as halfway through and did not have a clue about them. Never got to know them except as father and mother and authority and protector. Never discovered their shared and separate secrets, with the result that the parents were just as much strangers as everyone else the children met during the course of their lives. He pondered how parents managed to keep their children at arm's length until all that remained was acquired, polite behaviour, with an artificial sincerity that sprang from common experience rather than real love.

"What was going on in your head?" Eva Lind's questions opened wounds that she picked at constantly.

"I don't know," Erlendur said, keeping her at a distance as he had always done. She felt that. Maybe she acted in this way to produce such a reaction. Gain one more confirmation. Feel how remote he was from her and how far away she was from understanding him.

"You must have seen
something
in her."

How could she understand when he sometimes did not understand himself ?

"We met at a dance," he repeated. "I don't expect there was any future in that."

"And then you just left."

"I didn't just leave," Erlendur said. "It wasn't like that. But in the end I did leave and it was over. We didn't do it . . . I don't know. Maybe there is no right way. If there is, we didn't find it."

"But it wasn't over," Eva Lind said.

"No," Erlendur said. He listened to Bing Crosby on the radio. Through the window he watched the big snowflakes drifting to earth. Looked at his daughter. The rings pierced through her eyebrows. The metal stud in her nose. Her army boots up on the coffee table. The dirt under her fingernails. The bare stomach that showed beneath her black T-shirt and was beginning to bulge.

"It's never over," he said.

Höskuldur Thórarinsson lived in a flat in the basement of his daughter's elegant detached house in Árbaer and gave the impression of being pleased with his lot. He was a small, nimble man with silvery hair and a silver beard around his little mouth, wearing a checked labourer's shirt and beige corduroys. Elínborg tracked him down. There weren't many people in the national registry named Höskuldur and past retirement age. She telephoned most of them, wherever they lived in Iceland, and this particular Höskuldur from Árbaer told her, you bet he rented from Benjamín Knudsen, that poor, dear old chap. He remembered it well although he did not spend long in the chalet on the hill.

They sat in his living room, Erlendur and Elínborg, and he had made coffee and they talked about this and that. He told them he was born and bred in Reykjavík, then started complaining how those bloody conservatives were throttling the life out of pensioners as if they were a bunch of layabouts who couldn't provide for themselves. Erlendur decided to cut the old man's ramblings short.

"Why did you move out to the hill? Wasn't it rather rural for someone from Reykjavik?"

"You bet it was," Höskuldur said as he poured coffee into their cups. "But there was no alternative. Not for me. You couldn't find housing anywhere in Reykjavik at that time. People crammed into the tiniest rooms during the war. All of a sudden all the yokels could come to town and earn hard cash instead of getting paid with a bowl of curds and a bottle of booze. Slept in tents if they had to. The price of housing went sky high and I moved out to the hill. What are those bones you found there?"

"When did you move to the hill?" Elínborg asked.

"It would have been some time around 1943, I reckon. Or '44. I think it was autumn. In the middle of the war."

"How long did you live there?"

"I was there for a year. Until the following autumn."

"Did you live alone?"

"With my wife. Dear old Ellý. She's passed away now."

"When did she die?"

"Three years ago. Did you think I buried her up on the hill? Do I look like the type, dearie?"

"We can't find the records of anyone who lived in that house," Elínborg said without answering his remark. "Neither you nor anyone else. You didn't register as domiciled there."

"I can't remember how it was. We never registered. We were homeless. Others were always prepared to pay more than us, then I heard about Benjamín's chalet and spoke to him. His tenants had just moved out and he took pity on me."

"Do you know who the tenants were? The ones before you?"

"No, but I remember the place was spotless when we moved in." Höskuldur finished his cup of coffee, refilled it and took a sip. "Spick and span."

"What do you mean, spick and span?"

"Well, I remember Ellý specifically commenting on it. She liked that. Everything scrubbed and polished and not a speck of dust to be seen. It was just like moving into a hotel. Not that we were rough, mind you. But that place was exceptionally well kept. Clearly a housewife who knew her business, my Ellý said."

"So you never saw any signs of violence or the like?" Erlendur asked, having kept silent until now. "Bloodstains on the walls for example."

Elínborg looked at him. Was he teasing the old man?

"Blood? On the walls? No, there was no blood."

"Everything in order then?"

"Everything in order. Definitely."

"Were there any bushes by the house when you were there?"

"There were a couple of redcurrant bushes, yes. I remember them clearly because they were laden with fruit that autumn and we made jam from the berries."

"You didn't plant them? Or your wife, Ellý?"

"No, we didn't plant them. They were there when we moved in."

"You can't imagine who the bones belonged to that we found buried up there?" Erlendur asked.

"Is that really why you're here? To find out if I killed anyone?"

"We think a human body was buried there some time during the war or thereabouts," Erlendur said. "But you're not suspected of murder. Far from it. Did you ever talk to Benjamín about the people who lived in the chalet before you?"

"As it happens, I did," Höskuldur said. "Once when I was paying the rent and praised the immaculate condition the previous tenants had left the house in. But he didn't seem interested. A mysterious man. Lost his wife. Threw herself in the sea, I heard."

"Fiancée. They weren't married. Do you remember British troops camped on the hill? Or Americans rather, that late in the war?"

"It was crawling with British after the occupation in 1940. They set up barracks on the other side of the hill and had a cannon to defend Reykjavik against an attack. I always thought it was a joke, but Ellý told me not to make fun of it. Then the British left and the Americans took over. They were camped on the hill when I moved there. The British had left years before."

"Did you get to know them?"

"Hardly at all. They kept themselves to themselves. They didn't smell as bad as the British, my Ellý said. Much cleaner and smarter. Elegant. So much more elegant than them. Like in the films. Clark Gable. Or Cary Grant."

Cary Grant was British, Erlendur thought, but didn't bother to correct a know-it-all. He noticed that Elínborg ignored it as well.

"Built better barracks too," Höskuldur went on undaunted. "Much better barracks than the British. The Americans concreted the floors, didn't use rotten planks like the British did. Much better places to live. Everything the Americans touched. All much better and smarter."

"Do you know who took over the chalet when you and Ellý moved out?" Erlendur asked.

"Yes, we showed them around the place. He worked on the farm at Gufunes, had a wife and two kids and a dog. Lovely people, but I can't for the life of me remember their names."

"Do you know anything about the people who lived there before you, who left it in such good condition?"

"Only what Benjamín told me when I started talking about how nicely his house had been kept and telling him that Ellý and I set our standards just as high."

Erlendur pricked up his ears and Elínborg sat up in her seat. Höskuldur said nothing.

"Yes?" Erlendur said.

"What he said? It was about the wife." Höskuldur paused again and sipped his coffee. Erlendur waited impatiently for him to finish his story. His eagerness had not escaped Höskuldur, who knew he had the detective begging now.

"It was very interesting, you can be sure of that," Höskuldur said. The police wouldn't go away from him empty-handed. Not from Höskuldur. He sipped his coffee yet again, taking his time about it.

My God, Elínborg thought. Won't the old bore ever get round to it? She had had enough of old fogeys who either died on her or put on airs.

"He thought the husband battered her."

"Battered her?" Erlendur repeated.

"What's it called these days? Domestic violence?"

"He beat his wife?" Erlendur said.

"That's what Benjamín said. One of that lot who beat their wives and their kids too. I never lifted a finger against my Ellý."

"Did he tell you their names?"

"No, or if he did, I forgot it long ago. But he told me another thing that I've often thought about since. He said that she, that man's wife, was conceived in the old Gasworks on Raudarárstígur. Down by Hlemmur. At least that was what they said. Just like they said Benjamín killed his wife. His fiancée, I mean."

"Benjamín? The Gasworks? What are you talking about?" Erlendur had completely lost his thread. "Did people say Benjamín killed his fiancée?"

"Some thought so. At the time. He said so himself."

"That he killed her?"

"That people thought he'd done something to her. He didn't say that he killed her. He'd never have told me that. I didn't know him in the slightest. But he was sure that people suspected him and I remember there was some talk of jealousy."

"Gossip?"

"All gossip of course. We thrive on it. Thrive on saying nasty things about other people."