Silence of the Grave (24 page)

26

Fifteen minutes later, Erlendur and Elínborg were in Grafarholt. They said a hurried farewell to Mikkelína, who watched in surprise as they walked out of the door. Erlendur did not tell her what Sigurdur Óli had said over the phone about Benjamín's fiancée, 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?" Mikkelína 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 Óli was waiting for them on the hill and took them to Skarphédinn, 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 Óli said self-importantly. "No question about it."

"How come?" Elínborg said. "Are you a doctor all of a sudden?"

"This doesn't call for a doctor," Sigurdur Óli said. "It's obvious."

"There are two skeletons in the grave," Skarphédinn 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 Óli, took two steps forward and peered down into the grave where he saw at once what Skarphédinn 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 Óli asked. "Isn't that the fiancée? She was pregnant. What was her name again?"

"Sólveig," Elínborg 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 Óli said.

"Nor do I," Erlendur said. "We need an expert. Can we take the skeletons as they are to send to the morgue on Barónsstígur?" he asked Skarphédinn.

"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 Óli and Elínborg watched the bones being lifted out. The archaeologists handled the task with great professionalism and Erlendur had no regrets about having called them in. Skarphédinn 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, Skarphédinn 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 Barónsstígur. 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 Benjamín Knudsen's niece immediately instead of waiting until the next morning, and he went to see her with Sigurdur Óli 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 Benjamín's fiancée. 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 Benjamín murdered his fiancée?"

"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. Benjamín 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 Óli 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 Benjamín's fiancée 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 Benjamín 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 Óli, back at Erlendur, and sat down again.

"It's a misunderstanding," she said. "And you'd realise that if you'd known Benjamín the way I did. He wouldn't have hurt a fly. Never."

"He found out his fiancée was pregnant," Sigurdur Óli 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 Óli that Benjamín didn't know who got his fiancée 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 Sólveig's mother went to see him later and told him the story. When everything had blown over. After Sólveig 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. Sólveig kept quiet about the father of the child. For some reason, she kept quiet. Didn't tell Benjamín 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 Sólveig when she was visiting his family in Fljót."

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, Elínborg was telling Bára what had been found in the grave and that the most likely hypothesis was that it was the body of Sólveig, Benjamín's fiancée. That Benjamín had probably buried her there. Elínborg 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.

Bára listened to Elínborg'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 Benjamín. My parents talked it over for ages, then called Sólveig in to see them."

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."