Arnaldur Indriðason - Silence of the Grave

"No one answered," the mother said.

"No Dave who's coming to save the day?"

"No Dave," the mother said.

"I wonder who grassed on me," Grímur said. "They sent a ship off this morning. Jam-packed with soldiers. Apparently there's a need for soldiers in Europe. They can't all have it cushy in Iceland where there's nothing else to do than shag our wives. Or maybe they've got him. It was a much bigger matter than even I imagined. Heads rolled. Much more important heads than mine. Officers' heads. They weren't very pleased with that."

He pushed Tómas away.

"They weren't very pleased with that at all."

Simon stood up close to his mother.

"There's just one thing in this whole business that I don't understand," Grímur said. By now he was right up against their mother and they could smell the acrid stench he gave off. "I just can't understand it. It's beyond me. I quite understand you dropping your knickers for the first bloke who looked at you when I was gone. You're just a whore. But what was he thinking?"

They almost touched.

"What did he see in you?"

He grabbed her head with both hands.

"You ugly fucking slut."

"We thought he was going to attack her and kill her this time. We were ready for it. I was quivering with fear and Simon was no better. I wondered whether I could get the knife from the kitchen. But nothing happened. They looked each other in the eye and instead of attacking her he backed away."

Mikkelína paused.

"I'd never been so afraid in my life. And Simon was never the same afterwards. He grew more and more distant from us after that. Poor Simon."

She looked down at the floor.

"Dave left our life as suddenly as he entered it," she said. "Mum never heard from him again."

"His surname was Welch," Erlendur said. "And we're investigating what happened to him. What was your stepfather's name?"

"His name was Thorgrímur," Mikkelína said. "He was always called Grímur."

"Thórgrímur," Erlendur repeated. He remembered the name from the list of Icelanders who worked at the depot.

His mobile phone rang in his coat pocket. It was Sigurdur Óli, who was at the excavation on the hill.

"You ought to come up here," Sigurdur Óli said.

"Here?" Erlendur said. "Where is 'here'?"

"On the hill, of course," Sigurdur Óli said. "They've reached the bones and I think we've found out who's buried there."

"Who is it?"

"Benjamín's fiancée."

"Why? What makes you think it's her?" Erlendur had stood up and gone into the kitchen for some privacy.

"Come up and see," Sigurdur Óli said. "It can't be anyone else. Just come and see for yourself."

Then he rang off.

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.