Arnaldur Indriðason - Silence of the Grave

"Sinful," said Mikkelína, offering her a seat. "Women should be in the forefront everywhere."

Elínborg looked at Erlendur, who gave a half smile. She had picked him up from the office in the afternoon, aware that he had come from the hospital, and found him exceptionally glum. She asked about Eva Lind's condition, thinking it might have worsened, but he said it was stable, and when she asked how he was feeling and whether she could do anything for him, he just shook his head and told her there was nothing to do but wait. She had the impression that the waiting was proving a terrible strain on him, but did not risk broaching the subject. Long experience had taught her that Erlendur had no need to talk about himself to others.

Mikkelína lived on the ground floor in a small block of flats in Breidholt. Her home was small but cosy and while she was in the kitchen making coffee Erlendur walked around the sitting room looking at pictures of what he assumed to be her family. There were not many photographs and none seemed to be from the hill.

She began with a short account of herself while she was going about her business in the kitchen and they listened to her from the sitting room. She started school late, approaching 20 – at the same time as she had her first therapy for her handicap – and she made enormous progress. Erlendur felt she rather skated over her own story, but did not remark on it. In the course of time Mikkelína completed secondary school with extramural classes, enrolled at the university and graduated in psychology. By then she was in her forties. Now she was retired.

She had adopted the boy she called Simon before she went to university. Starting a family would have been difficult for reasons she did not need to go into, she said, with a sardonic smile.

She visited the hill regularly in spring and summer, to look at the redcurrant bushes, and in the autumn she picked berries to make jam. She still had a jar with a little left in it from last autumn's batch and let them have a taste. Elínborg, a doyenne of cooking, praised her for it. Mikkelína told her to keep the rest and apologised for how little there was.

Then she told them how she had seen the city growing over the years and decades, first stretching out to Breidholt and then Grafarvogur, then at lightning speed along the road to Mosfellsbaer and finally up to Grafarholt, the hill where she had once lived and acquired some of her most painful memories.

"I really only have bad memories of that place," she said. "Apart from that short summer."

"Were you born with this disability?" Elínborg asked. She tried to phrase the question as politely as possible, but she decided there was no way of doing so.

"No," Mikkelína said. "I fell ill when I was three. Went to hospital. Mum told me that parents were forbidden to stay in the wards with their children. She couldn't understand such a heartless and repulsive rule: not being allowed to stay with a child that was seriously ill or even on the verge of death. It took her several years to realise I could regain what I had lost with therapy, but my stepfather never let her care for me, send me to the doctor or find out about cures. I have a memory from before I was ill, I don't know whether it's a dream or real – the sun is shining and I'm in the garden of a house, probably where my mother was a maid, and I'm running at full pelt, squealing, and Mum seems to be chasing me. I don't remember anything else. Just that I could run around as I pleased."

Mikkelína smiled.

"I often have that sort of dream. Where I'm healthy and can move as I want, not wagging my head all the time I talk, and I have control over my facial muscles, they don't pull my features all over the place."

Erlendur put down his cup.

"You told me yesterday you named your son after your half-brother, Símon."

"Simon was a wonderful boy. There was none of his father in him. At least I never saw it. He was like Mum. Kind, understanding and helpful. He had endless pity, that child. Hated his father, and his hatred did him harm. He should never have needed to hate anything. And like the rest of us he was smitten with fear throughout his childhood. Terrified when his father went on the rampage. He watched our mother being beaten to a pulp. I used to hide my head under the quilt, but I noticed that Simon sometimes stood watching the attacks, as if he was steeling himself to tackle it, later, when he was strong enough to stand up to his father. When he was big enough to sort him out.

"Sometimes he tried to intervene. Stood in front of our mother, defying him. Mum feared that more than the beatings. She couldn't bear the thought that anything would happen to her children.

"Such an amazingly kind boy, that Simon."

"You talk about him as though he's still a child," Elínborg said. "Did he die?"

Mikkelína smiled, but said nothing.

"And Tómas?" Erlendur said. "There were only three of you."

"Yes, Tómas," Mikkelína said. "He was different from Simon. Their father could tell that."

Mikkelína fell silent.

"Where did your mother phone?" Erlendur asked. "Before she went back to the hill?"

Without answering him either, Mikkelína stood up and went into her bedroom. Elínborg and Erlendur exchanged glances. A moment later Mikkelína came back holding a piece of paper. She unfolded the note, read it and handed it to Erlendur.

"Mum gave me this note," she said. "I clearly remember Dave sliding it across the table to her, but we were never allowed to know what it said. Mum didn't show me it until later. Years later."

Erlendur read the message.

"Dave got an Icelander or a soldier who spoke Icelandic to write the note for him. Mum always kept it, and, of course, I'll take it to the grave with me."

Erlendur looked at the note. Although written in clumsy capitals, the words were very clear.

I KNOW WHAT HE DOES TO YOU.

"Mum and Dave talked about her contacting him as soon as my stepfather got out of prison, and he would come to help her. I don't know the exact arrangements."

"Couldn't anyone at Gufunes help her?" Elínborg asked. "Plenty of people must have worked there."

Mikkelína looked at her.

"My mother had suffered abuse at his hands for a decade and a half. It was physical violence, he beat her, often so brutally that she was bedridden for days afterwards. And it was psychological too, which was maybe a worse form of violence because, as I told Erlendur yesterday, it reduced my mother to nothing. She started to despise herself as much as her husband despised her; she thought for a long time of suicide, but partly because of us, her children, she never went further than contemplating it. Dave made up for some of this in the six months he spent with her, and he was the only person she could have asked for help. She never mentioned to anyone what she'd been through in all those years and I think she was prepared to suffer the beatings again if need be. At worst he'd attack her and everything would be back to normal."

Mikkelína looked at Erlendur.

"Dave never came."

She looked at Elínborg.

"And nothing went back to normal."

"So she phoned, did she?"

Grímur put his arm around Tómas.

"Who did she phone, Tómas? We shouldn't keep secrets. Your mother might think she can keep secrets, but that's a big misunderstanding. Keeping secrets can be dangerous."

"Don't use the boy," their mother said.

"Now she's starting to order me around," Grímur said, rubbing Tómas' shoulders. "How things change. Whatever next?"

Simon positioned himself beside his mother. Mikkelína edged her way towards them. Tómas started crying. A dark stain spread out from the crotch of his trousers.

"And did anyone answer?" Grímur asked. The smile had left his face, the sarcastic tone gone, his expression serious. They could not take their eyes off his scar.