Silence of the Grave (5 page)

Over time she realised that she too would need to cultivate that quality to be able to triumph over him.

Her first attempt to flee was doomed to failure. She did not prepare herself, did not know the options available, had no idea where to turn and was suddenly standing outside in the chill breeze one February evening with her two children, holding Símon by the hand and carrying Mikkelína on her back, but she had no idea where to go. All she knew was that she had to get away from the basement.

She had seen the vicar who told her that a good wife does not leave her husband. Marriage was sacred in the eyes of God and people had to put up with much in order to keep it together.

"Think about your children," the vicar said.

"I am thinking about the children," she replied, and the vicar gave a kindly smile.

She did not try to approach the police. Her neighbours had twice called them when he attacked her, and the officers had gone to the basement to break up a domestic quarrel and then left. When she stood in front of the policemen with a swollen eye and split lip, they told the couple to take things easy. Said they were disturbing the peace. The second time, two years later, the policemen took him outside for a talk. She had screamed about him attacking her and threatening to kill her, and that this was not the first time. They asked if she had been drinking. The question did not register with her. Drinking, they repeated. No, she said. She never drank. They said something to him outside, by the front door. Shook his hand and left.

When they were gone he stroked her cheek with his razor.

That same evening, when he was fast asleep, she put Mikkelína on her back and quietly pushed Simon out of the flat in front of her and up the basement steps. She had made a pushchair for Mikkelína from the carriage of an old pram she found on the rubbish dump, but he had smashed it up in a fit of rage, as if sensing that she was going to leave him and thinking this would restrain her.

Her escape was completely unplanned. In the end she went to the Salvation Army and was given a place to sleep for the night. She had no relatives, neither in Reykjavik nor anywhere else, and the moment that he woke up the next morning and saw that they were gone he ran out to search for them. Roaming the city in his shirt sleeves in the cold, he saw them leaving the Salvation Army. The first she knew of him was when he snatched the boy away from her, picked up her daughter and set off for home without saying a word. The children were too terrified to put up a struggle, but she saw Mikkelína stretch out her arms towards her and break into silent tears.

What was she thinking?

Then she hurried after them.

After the second attempt he threatened to kill her children, and she did not try to run away after that. That time she was better prepared. She imagined that she could start a new life. Move north with the children to a fishing town, rent a room or small flat, work in a fish factory and make sure that they wanted for nothing. On the second attempt she took time to plan everything. She decided to move to Siglufjördur to begin with. There were plenty of jobs to be had now that the worst years of the depression were over, outsiders flocked there to work and she could keep a low profile alone with two children. She could spend a while in the workers' dormitory before finding a room of her own.

The bus journey for her and the children did not come cheap and her husband kept a tight hold on every penny he earned at the harbour. Over a long time she had managed to scrape together a few coins until she had enough for the fare. She took all the children's clothes that she could fit into a small suitcase, a handful of personal belongings and the pushchair, which could still carry Mikkelína after she mended it. She hurried down to the bus station, looking everywhere in terror as if she expected to meet him on the next street corner.

He went home at lunchtime as usual and immediately realised that she had left him. She knew she was supposed to have lunch ready when he came home and had never allowed herself not to. He saw that the pushchair was missing. The wardrobe was open. Remembering her previous attempt, he marched straight to the Salvation Army and made a scene when he was told she was not there. He didn't believe them, and ran all over the building, into the rooms and the basement, and when he could not find them he attacked the Salvation Army captain who ran the shelter, knocked him to the ground and threatened to kill him if he did not say where they were.

When eventually he realised that she had not gone to the Salvation Army after all, he prowled the town without catching sight of her. He stormed into shops and restaurants, but she was nowhere to be seen. His rage and desperation intensified as the day wore on and he went home out of his mind with fury. He turned the basement flat upside down in search of hints as to where she might have gone, then ran to two of her old friends from the time she worked for the merchant, barged his way in and called out to her and the children, then ran back out without a word and disappeared.

She arrived in Siglufjördur at two o'clock in the morning after travelling almost non-stop all day. The coach had made three stops to allow the passengers to stretch their legs, eat their packed lunches or buy a meal. She had taken sandwiches and bottles of milk, but they were hungry again when the bus drew into Haganesvík in Fljót, where a boat was waiting to ferry the passengers to Siglufjördur, in the cold of night. After she found the workers' dormitory, the foreman showed her into a little room with a single bed and lent her a mattress to spread on the floor, with two blankets, and they spent their first night of freedom there. The children fell asleep the moment they touched the mattress, but she lay in bed staring out into the darkness and, unable to control the trembling that passed through her whole body, she broke down and wept.

He found her a few days later. One possibility that occurred to him was that she had left the city, perhaps by bus, so he went down to the station, asked around and found out that his wife and children had taken the northbound bus to Siglufjördur. He spoke to the driver who remembered the woman and children clearly, especially the disabled girl. He caught the next coach north and was in Siglufjördur just after midnight. Threading his way from one dormitory to the next, he eventually found her asleep in her little room, shown the way by a foreman he had woken up. He explained matters to the foreman. She had gone to the village ahead of him, he said, but they probably would not be staying very long.

He crept into the room. A dull glow entered from the street through a small window and he stepped over the children on the mattress, bent over her until their faces almost touched, and shook her. She was fast asleep and he shook her again, more roughly, until she opened her eyes, and he smiled when he saw the genuine terror in her eyes. She was about to scream for help, but he put his hand over her mouth.

"Did you seriously think you'd manage it?" he whispered threateningly.

She stared up at him.

"Did you seriously think it'd be that easy?"

She shook her head slowly.

"Do you know what I really want to do now?" he hissed between his clenched teeth. "I want to take that girl up the mountainside and kill her, and bury her where no one will ever find her, and say the poor bugger must have crawled into the sea. And you know what? That's what I'm going to do. I'll do it this minute. If there's as much as a squeak from the boy I'll kill him too. Say he crawled into the sea after her."

She gave a low whimper when she darted a look at the children, and he smiled. He took his hand from her mouth.

"I'll never do it again," she groaned. "Never. I'll never do it again. Sorry. Sorry. I don't know what I was thinking. Sorry. I'm crazy. I know. I'm crazy. Don't let the children pay for it. Hit me. Hit me. As hard as you can. Hit me as hard as you can. We can leave if you want."

Her desperation repulsed him.

"No, no," he said. "This is what you want. So let's just have it your way."

He made as if to reach out for Mikkelína who was sleeping by Símon's side, but the girl's mother grabbed his hand, frightened out of her wits.

"Look," she said, hitting herself in the face. "Look." She tugged at her hair. "Look." She sat up and threw herself back against the cast-iron head of the bed, and whether she meant to or not she knocked herself out cold and slumped before him, unconscious.

They started back early the next morning. She had been working at the fish factory for a few days and he went with her to collect her wages. By working in the salting yard she could keep an eye on her children, who played nearby or stayed in the room. He explained to the foreman that they were going back to Reykjavík. They had received news that altered their plans and she had some pay owing to her. The foreman scribbled on a piece of paper and pointed to the office. He looked at her as he handed her the paper. She seemed poised to say something. He mistook her fear for shyness.

"Are you all right?" the foreman asked.

"She's fine," her husband said and strutted away with her.

When they returned to their basement flat in Reykjavík he did not touch her. She stood in the living room wearing her shabby coat and holding the suitcase in her hand, expecting the thrashing of a lifetime, but nothing happened. The blow she had dealt herself had caught him unawares. Instead of going to fetch help he tried to nurse her and bring her round, the first act of care he had shown her since they were married. When she came round he said she had to understand that she could never leave him. He would sooner kill her and the children. She was his wife and always would be.

Always.

She never tried to run away after that.

The years went by. His plans to become a fisherman came to nothing after only three trips. He suffered from severe sea sickness that he could not shake off. On top of that, he found he was afraid of the sea, and never overcame that either. He was scared that the boat would sink. Scared of falling overboard. Scared of bad weather. On his last trip a storm struck and, convinced that the boat would capsize, he sat crying in the mess, thinking his days were numbered. After that, he never went to sea again.

He seemed incapable of showing tenderness towards her. At best he treated her with total indifference. For the first two years of their marriage he seemed to regret having hit her or having cursed her so foully that she burst into tears. But as time went by he stopped showing any sign of guilt, as if what he did to her had ceased to be unnatural or a disfiguration of their relationship, and had become something necessary and right. It sometimes occurred to her, which perhaps he too knew deep down inside, that the violence he inflicted on her was above all a manifestation of his own weakness. That the more he hit her, the more wretched he himself became. He blamed her for it. Screamed that it was her fault that he treated her as he did. She was the one who made him do it.

They had few friends, and shared none, and after they started living together she soon became isolated. On the rare occasions when she met her old friends from work she never talked about the violence she had to put up with from her husband, and over time she lost touch with them. She felt ashamed. Ashamed of being beaten and thrashed when she least expected it. Ashamed of her black eyes, split lips and bruises all over her body. Ashamed of the life she lived, which was surely incomprehensible to others, abominable. She wanted to hide it. Wanted to hide herself in the prison he made for her. Wanted to lock herself inside, throw away the key and hope that no one would find it. She had to accept his maltreatment. Somehow it was her destiny, absolute and immutable.

The children meant everything to her. In effect they became the friends and soul mates she lived for, especially Mikkelína, but also Símon when he grew older and the younger boy, who was given the name Tómas. She chose the names for the children herself. The only attention he paid to them was when he complained about them. How much food they ate. The noise they made at night. The children suffered for the violence he inflicted on her and brought her precious comfort in times of need.

He knocked out of her what little self-respect she had. Reticent and unassuming by nature, she was eager to please everyone, kind, helpful, even submissive. Smiled awkwardly when spoken to and had to steel herself not to look shy. Such feebleness filled him with an energy that drove him to abuse her until she had nothing left of her own self. Her entire existence revolved around him. His whims. Serving him. She stopped taking care of herself the way she once had. She stopped washing regularly. Stopped thinking about her appearance. Rings appeared under her eyes, her face went flabby and a greyness descended upon her, she developed a stoop, her head down on her chest as if she did not dare to look up properly. Her thick, pretty hair grew lifeless and dull and stuck to her head, filthy. She cut it herself using kitchen scissors when she felt it was too long.

Or when he felt it was too long.

Ugly old bag.

6

The archaeologists continued excavating in the morning after the bones were found. The policemen who had patrolled the area that night showed them where Erlendur had exposed the hand and Skarphédinn was furious when he saw how Erlendur had picked away at the soil. Bloody amateurs, he was heard muttering into his beard well past noon. To him, an excavation was a sacred ritual in which the soil was peeled back, one stratum after another, until the history of all that lay beneath came to light and the secrets were revealed. Every detail mattered, every handful of dirt might contain vital evidence and charlatans could destroy important data.

He preached all this to Elínborg and Sigurdur Óli, who had done nothing wrong, in between giving orders to his team. Work progressed very slowly by these painstaking archaeological methods. Ropes were stretched across the length and breadth of the area, marking out zones according to a specific system. The crucial consideration was to leave the position of the skeleton unmoved during the excavation; they made sure that the hand did not budge even when they brushed the dirt away from it, and scrutinised every grain of soil.

"Why is the hand sticking up out of the ground?" Elínborg asked Skarphédinn, stopping him as he hurried busily past.

"Impossible to say," Skarphédinn said. "In a worstcase scenario the person lying there could have been alive when he was covered with the earth and tried to put up some resistance. Tried to dig his way out."

"Alive!" Elínborg groaned. "Digging his way out?"

"That's not necessarily the case. We can't rule out that the hand ended up in that position when the body was put in the ground. It's too soon to say anything about that."

Sigurdur Óli and Elínborg were surprised that Erlendur had not turned up for the excavation. Eccentric and unpredictable as he was, they also knew of his great fascination with missing persons, past and present, and the buried skeleton could well be the key to an old disappearance that Erlendur would delight in unearthing from parched documents. When it was past midday Elínborg tried to phone him at home and on his mobile, but to no avail.

Around two o'clock, Elínborg's mobile rang.

"Are you up there?" a deep voice said over the phone, and she recognised it at once.

"Where are you?"

"I got delayed. Are you at the excavation?"

"Yes."

"Can you see the bushes? I think they're redcurrant. About 30 metres east of the foundations, standing almost in a straight line, going south."

"Redcurrant bushes?" Elínborg squinted and scoured around for some bushes. "Yes," she said, "I can see them."

"They were planted a long time ago."

"Yes."

"Check why. Whether anyone lived there. Whether there was a house there in the old days. Go down to the City Planning Office and get some maps of the area, even aerial photos if they have any. You might need to look up documents from the beginning of the century until 1960 at least. Maybe even later."

"Do you think there was a house on the hill here?" Elínborg said, looking all around. She made no attempt to conceal her disbelief.

"I think we ought to check it out. What's Sigurdur Óli doing?"

"He's browsing through the files of missing persons since World War II, to start with. He was waiting for you. Said you enjoyed that sort of thing."

"I spoke to Skarphédinn just now and he said he remembered a camp there, on the other side, the south slope of Grafarholt, in wartime. Where the golf course is now."

"A camp?"

"A British or American camp. Military. Barracks. He couldn't remember the name. You ought to check that too. Check whether the British reported anyone missing from the camp. Or the Americans who took it over from them."

"British? Americans? In the war? Wait a minute, where do I find that out?" Elínborg asked in surprise. "When did the Americans take over from them?"

"1941. Could have been a supply depot. Anyway that's what Skarphédinn thought. Then there's the question of the chalets on the hill and around it. Whether there could be a missing person connected with them. Even just stories or suspicions. We need to talk to the local chalet owners."

"That's a lot of work for some old bones," Elínborg said peevishly, kicking at the gravel around the foundation where she stood. "What are you doing?" she then asked, almost accusingly.

"Never you mind," Erlendur said and rang off.

*

He walked back into intensive care wearing a thin green paper smock with a gauze over his mouth. Eva Lind lay in a big bed in a single room on the ward. She was connected to all kinds of equipment and devices that Erlendur had never even seen before and an oxygen mask covered her mouth and nose. He stood by the bed head, looking down at his daughter. She was in a coma. Had not yet regained consciousness. Over what he could see of her face, an air of peace reigned which Erlendur had not seen before. A calmness unfamiliar to him. When she lay like that her features became stronger, her brows sharper, her cheeks stretching the skin and her eyes sunk into their sockets.

He had called emergency services when he could not manage to bring Eva Lind back to consciousness where she lay in front of the old maternity home. He felt a weak pulse and laid his coat over her, trying to tend to her as best he could, but not daring to move her. The next thing he knew, the same ambulance turned up that had come to Tryggvagata, with the same doctor in it. Eva Lind was gently lifted onto a stretcher and slid inside the ambulance, which sped off the short distance remaining to Accident and Emergency.

She was sent straight into surgery that lasted almost the rest of the night. Erlendur paced the little waiting room by the operating theatre, wondering whether he ought to let Halldóra know. He baulked at phoning her. In the end he found some kind of solution. He woke up Sindri Snaer, told him about his sister and asked him to contact Halldóra so that she could visit the hospital. They exchanged a few words. Sindri was not planning to come to the city anytime soon. Saw no reason to make a journey just for Eva Lind's sake. Their conversation faded out.

Erlendur chain smoked beneath a sign that said smoking was strictly prohibited – until a surgeon wearing a gauze mask walked past and gave him a dressing-down for infringing the ban. Erlendur's mobile rang when the doctor had gone. It was Sindri with a message from Halldóra: "It would do Erlendur good to take on some of the responsibility for once."

The surgeon who had led the operating team spoke to Erlendur towards the morning. The prognosis wasn't good. They hadn't been able to save the baby and it was uncertain whether Eva Lind herself would pull through.

"She's in a very bad state," said the surgeon, a tall but delicate man aged around 40.

"I understand that," Erlendur said.

"Persistent malnutrition and drug abuse. There's not much chance the baby would have been born healthy so . . . although it's a nasty thing to say of course . . ."

"I understand," Erlendur said.

"Did she ever contemplate an abortion? In cases like this it's . . ."

"She wanted to have the baby," Erlendur said. "She thought it could help her, and I encouraged her too. She wanted to stop. There's some tiny part of Eva that wants to escape from this hell. A tiny part that sometimes comes out and wants to give it all up. But normally it's a completely different Eva who's in charge. More ferocious and merciless. Some Eva who eludes me. Some Eva who seeks this destruction. This hell."

Realising that he was talking to a man he did not know in the slightest, Erlendur fell silent.

"I can imagine it's difficult for parents to have to go through this," the surgeon said.

"What happened?"

"Placenta abruptio.
A massive internal haemorrhage that occurred when the placenta was torn, combined with toxic effects that we are still awaiting the results on. She lost a lot of blood and we haven't managed to bring her back to consciousness. That need not mean anything in particular. She's extremely weak."

After a pause the surgeon said, "Have you contacted your people? So they can be with you or . . ."

"There aren't any 'my people'," Erlendur said. "We're divorced. Her mother and I. I've let her know. And Eva's brother. He's working in the countryside. I don't know whether her mother will come here. It's like she's had enough. It's been very tough for her. All the time."

"I understand."

"I doubt that," Erlendur said. "I don't understand it myself."

He took out a couple of small plastic bags and a box of pills from his coat pocket and showed them to the doctor.

"She might have taken some of this," he said.

The surgeon took the drugs from him and looked at them.

"Ecstasy?"

"Looks like it."

"That's one explanation. We identified a number of substances in her blood."

Erlendur hesitated. He and the surgeon said nothing for a while.

"Do you know who the father is?" the surgeon asked.

"No."

"Do you think she knows?"

Erlendur looked at him and shrugged in resignation. Then they fell silent again.

"Is she going to die?" Erlendur asked after some time.

"I don't know," the surgeon said. "We can only hope for the best."

Erlendur hesitated about asking his question. He'd been grappling with it, horrific as it was, without reaching any conclusion. He was not certain that he wanted to insist. In the end he went ahead.

"Can I see it?"

"It? You mean . . . ?"

"Can I see the foetus? Can I have a look at the baby?"

The surgeon looked at Erlendur without the slightest hint of surprise on his face, only understanding. He nodded and told Erlendur to follow. They walked along the corridor and into an empty room. The surgeon pressed a button and the fluorescent lights on the ceiling flickered before shedding a bluish white light around the room. He went over to a cold steel table and lifted up a little blanket to reveal the dead baby.

Erlendur looked down and stroked his finger across its cheek.

It was a girl.

"Will my daughter come out of this coma, can you tell me that?"

"I don't know," the doctor said. "It's impossible to tell. She'll have to want to herself. It depends a lot on her."

"The poor girl," Erlendur said.

"They say that time heals all wounds," the surgeon said when he felt Erlendur was about to lose his grip. "That's just as true of the body as of the mind."

"Time," Erlendur said, putting the blanket back over the baby. "It doesn't heal any wounds."