Silence of the Grave (7 page)

She said this with an air of regret and Erlendur wondered if she might not be satisfied with her lot in life, living alone in a large house that was a legacy from times gone by. He looked around the room and had the feeling that somehow her entire life was a legacy.

"Do you think we . . . ?"

"Be my guest. Look as much as you want," she said with a vacant smile.

"I was wondering about one thing," Erlendur said, standing up. "Do you know why Benjamín would have rented out the chalet? Was he short of money? He didn't seem to have needed money that much. With this house here. His business. You said he lost it in the end, but during the war he must have earned a decent living and more besides."

"No, I don't think he needed the money."

"So what was the reason?"

"I think someone asked him to. When people started moving to Reykjavík from the countryside during the war. I think he must have taken pity on someone."

"Then he wouldn't necessarily even have charged any rent?"

"I don't know anything about that. I can't believe that you think Benjamín . . ."

She stopped mid-sentence as if reluctant to articulate what she was thinking.

"I don't think anything," Erlendur tried to smile. "It's far too early to start thinking anything."

"I just don't believe it."

"Tell me another thing."

"Yes?"

"Does she have any relatives who are still alive?"

"Who?"

"Benjamín's fiancée. Is there anyone I could talk to?"

"Why? What do you want to look into that for? He would never have done a thing to her."

"I understand that. All the same, we have these bones and they belong to someone and they won't go away. I have to investigate all the avenues."

"She had a sister who I know is still alive. Her name's Bára."

"When did she go missing, this girl?"

"It was 1940," Elsa said. "They told me it was on a beautiful spring day."

9

Róbert Sigurdsson was still alive, but just barely, Sigurdur Óli thought. He sat with Elínborg in the old man's room, thinking to himself as he looked at Róbert's pallid face that he would not want to be 90 years old. He shuddered. The old man was toothless, with anaemic lips, his cheeks sunken, tufts of hair standing up from his ghoulish head in all directions. He was connected to an oxygen cylinder which stood on a trolley beside him. Every time he needed to say something he took off his oxygen mask with a trembling hand and let out a couple of words before he had to put it back on.

Róbert had sold his chalet long ago and it had changed hands twice more before eventually it was demolished and a new one built nearby. Sigurdur Óli and Elínborg woke up the owner of the new chalet shortly before noon to hear this rather vague and disjointed story.

They had the office staff locate the old man while they were driving back from the hill. It turned out that he was in the National Hospital, just turned 90.

Elínborg did the talking at the hospital and explained the case to Róbert while he sat shrivelled up in a wheelchair, gulping down pure oxygen from the cylinder. A lifelong smoker. He seemed in full command of his faculties, despite his miserable physical state, and nodded to show that he understood every word and was well aware of the detectives' business. The nurse who showed them in to him and stood behind his wheelchair told them that they ought not to tire him by spending too long with him.

"I remember . . ." he said in a low, hoarse voice. His hand shook as he put the mask back on and inhaled the oxygen. Then he took the mask off again.

". . . that house, but . . ."

Mask up.

Sigurdur Óli looked at Elínborg and then at his watch, making no attempt to conceal his impatience.

"Don't you want . . ." she began, but the mask came off again.

". . . I only remember . . ." Róbert interjected, wracked with breathlessness.

Mask up.

"Why don't you go to the canteen and get something to eat?" Elínborg said to Sigurdur Óli, who looked again at his watch, at the old man and then at her, sighed, stood up and disappeared from the room.

Mask down.

". . . one family who lived there."

Mask up. Elínborg waited a moment to see whether he would continue, but Róbert said nothing and she pondered how to phrase the questions so that he only needed to answer with a yes or a no, and could use his head without having to speak. She told him she wanted to try that and he nodded. Clear as a bell, she thought.

"Did you own a chalet there during the war?"

Róbert nodded.

"Did this family live there during the war?"

Róbert nodded.

"Do you remember the names of the people who lived in the house at that time?"

Róbert shook his head. No.

"Was it a big family?"

Róbert shook his head again. No.

"A couple with two, three children, more?"

Róbert nodded and held out three anaemic fingers.

"A couple with three children. Did you ever meet these people? Did you have any contact with them or not know them at all?" Elínborg had forgotten her rule about yes and no and Róbert took off his mask.

"Didn't know them." Mask up again. The nurse was growing restless as she stood behind the wheelchair glaring at Elínborg as if she ought to stop immediately and looking ready to intervene at any second. Róbert took off his mask.

". . . die."

"Who? Those people? Who died?" Elínborg leaned over closer to him, waiting for him to take the mask off again. Yet again he put a trembling hand to the oxygen mask and took it off.

"Useless . . ."

Elínborg could tell that he was having trouble speaking and she strained with all her might to urge him on. She stared at him and waited for him to say more.

Mask down.

". . . vegetable."

Róbert dropped his mask, his eyes closed and his head sank onto his chest.

"Ah," the nurse said curtly, "So now you've finished him off for good." She picked up the mask and stuck it over Róbert's nose and mouth with unnecessary force as he sat with his head on his chest and his old eyes closed as if he had fallen asleep. Maybe he really was dying for all Elínborg knew. She stood up and watched the nurse push Róbert over to his bed, lift him like a feather out of the wheelchair and lay him down there.

"Are you trying to kill the poor man with this nonsense?" the nurse said, a strapping woman aged about 50 with her hair in a bun, wearing a white coat, white trousers and white clogs. She glared ferociously at Elínborg. "I should never have allowed this," she muttered in self-reproach. "He'll hardly live until the morning," she said in a loud voice directed back at Elínborg, with an obvious tone of accusation.

"Sorry," Elínborg said, without being completely aware why she was apologising. "We thought he could help us about some old bones. I hope he's not feeling too bad."

Lying flat out now, Róbert suddenly opened his eyes. He looked around as if gradually realising where he was, and took off his oxygen mask despite the nurse's protests.

"Often came," he panted, ". . . later. Green . . . lady . . . bushes . . ."

"Bushes?" Elínborg said. She thought for a moment. "Do you mean the redcurrants?"

The nurse put the mask back on Róbert, but Elínborg thought she detected a nod towards her.

"Who was it? Do you mean yourself? Do you remember the redcurrant bushes? Did you go there? Did you go to the bushes?"

Róbert slowly shook his head.

"Get out and leave him alone," the nurse ordered Elínborg, who had stood up to lean over to Róbert, but not too closely so as not to provoke her more than she already had.

"Can you tell me about it?" Elínborg went on. "Did you know who it was? Who used to go to the redcurrant bushes?"

Róbert had closed his eyes.

"Later?" Elínborg continued. "What do you mean later?"

Róbert opened his eyes and lifted up his old, bony hands to indicate that he wanted a pencil and piece of paper. The nurse shook her head and told him to rest, he had been through enough. He clutched her hand and looked imploringly at her.

"Out of the question," the nurse said. "Would you please get out of here," she said to Elínborg.

"Shouldn't we let him decide? If he dies tonight . . ."

"We?" the nurse said. "Who's we? Have you been looking after these patients for 30 years?" she snorted. "Will you get out before I have you removed."

Elínborg glanced down at Róbert who had closed his eyes again and seemed to be asleep. She looked at the nurse and reluctantly started moving towards the door. The nurse followed her and shut the door behind her the moment Elínborg was out in the corridor. Elínborg thought of calling in Sigurdur Óli to argue with the nurse and inform her how important it was for Róbert to tell them what he wanted to say. She dropped the idea. Sigurdur Óli was certain to enrage her even more.

Elínborg walked down the corridor and could see Sigurdur Óli in the canteen devouring a banana with an apish look on his face. On her way to join him, she stopped. There was an alcove or TV den at the end of the corridor and she retreated into it and hid behind a tree that was planted in a huge pot and stretched all the way up to the ceiling. She waited there, watching the door, like a lioness hiding in the grass.

Before long the nurse came out of Róbert's room, breezed down the corridor and through the canteen for the next ward. She did not notice Sigurdur Óli, nor he her as he chomped on his banana.

Elínborg sneaked out of her hiding place behind the tree and tiptoed back to Róbert's room. He was lying asleep in the bed with the mask over his face just as when she had left him. The curtain was closed, but the dim glow of a lamp shed light into the gloom. She went over to him, hesitated for a moment and looked around furtively before bracing herself to prod the old man.

Róbert did not budge. She tried again but he was sleeping like a log. Elínborg assumed he must be in a very deep sleep, if not simply dead, and she bit her nails while she wondered whether to prod him harder or disappear and forget the whole business. He had not said much. Only that someone had been hanging around the bushes on the hill. A green lady.

She was turning to leave when Róbert suddenly opened his eyes and stared at her. Elínborg was unsure whether he recognised her, but he nodded and she felt sure she detected a grin behind his oxygen mask. He made the same sign as before to ask for a paper and pencil and she searched in her coat for her notebook and pen. She put them in his hands and he started writing in big capitals with a shaky hand. It took him a long time and Elínborg cast a terrified look towards the door, expecting the nurse to enter at any moment and start shouting curses. She wanted to tell Róbert to hurry, but did not dare to pressure him.

When he had finished writing, his pallid hands slumped onto the quilt, and the book and pen with them, and he closed his eyes. Elínborg picked up the book and was about to read what the old man had written when the cardiac monitor that he was connected to suddenly started to beep. The noise was ear-piercing when it broke out in the silent room and Elínborg was so startled that she jumped back. She looked down at Róbert for a moment, unsure of what to do, then rushed straight out of the room, down the corridor and into the canteen where Sigurdur Óli was still sitting, his banana finished. An alarm rang somewhere.

"Did you get anything out of the old sod?" Sigurdur Óli asked Elínborg when she sat down beside him, gasping for breath. "Hey, are you okay?" he added when he noticed her puffing and panting.

"Yes, I'm fine," Elínborg said.

A team of doctors, nurses and paramedics came running through the canteen and into the corridor in the direction of Róbert's room. Soon afterwards a man in a white gown appeared, pushing in front of him a piece of equipment that Elínborg thought was a cardiac massage device, and went down the corridor as well. Sigurdur Óli watched the crowd disappear around the corner.

"What the hell have you been up to now?" Sigurdur Óli said, turning to Elínborg.

"Me?" Elínborg muttered. "Nothing. Me! What do you mean?"

"What are you sweating like that for?" Sigurdur Óli asked.

"I'm not sweating."

"What happened? Why is everyone running?"

"No idea."

"Did you get anything out of him? Is he the one who's dying?"

"Come on, try to show a bit of respect," Elínborg said, looking all around.

"What did you get out of him?"

"I haven't checked yet," Elínborg said. "Shouldn't we get away from here?"

They stood up and walked out of the canteen, left the hospital and sat down in Sigurdur Óli's car. He drove off.

"So, what did you get out of him?" Sigurdur Óli asked impatiently.

"He wrote me a note," Elínborg sighed. "Poor man."

"Wrote you a note?"

She took the book out of her pocket and flicked through it until she found the place Róbert had written in it. A single word was jotted there, in the trembling hand of a dying man, an almost incomprehensible scribble. It took her a while to puzzle out what he had written in the notebook, then she became convinced, although she did not understand the meaning. She stared at Robert's last word in this mortal life:
CROOKED.

*

That evening it was the potatoes. He did not think they were boiled well enough. They could equally have been over-boiled, boiled to a pulp, raw, unpeeled, badly peeled, over-peeled, not cut into halves, not in gravy, in gravy, fried, unfried, mashed, sliced too thick, sliced too thin, too sweet, not sweet enough . . .

She could never figure him out.

That was one of his strongest weapons. The attacks always occurred without warning and when she was least expecting them, just as often when everything seemed rosy as when she could sense that something was upsetting him. He was a genius at keeping her on tenterhooks and she could never feel safe. She was always tense in his presence, ready to be at his beck and call. Have the food ready at the right time. Have his clothes ready in the morning. Keep the boys under control. Keep Mikkelína out of his sight. Serve him in every way, even though she knew it was pointless.

She had long ago given up all hope that things would get better. His home was her prison.

After finishing dinner he picked up his plate, surly as ever, and put it in the sink. Then went back to the table as if on his way out of the kitchen, but stopped where she still sat at the table. Not daring to look up, she watched the two boys who were sitting with her and went on eating her meal. Every muscle in her body was on the alert. Perhaps he would leave without touching her. The boys looked at her and slowly put down their forks.