Arnaldur Indriðason - Silence of the Grave

"You'll never need to see it. I'll give it away as soon as it's born and you won't ever need to see it."

"Everyone knows my wife shags Yanks," Grímur says. "They all know you've been playing the field."

"No one knows," she said. "No one. There was no one who knew about me and Dave."

"How do you think I knew about it, you twat? Because you told me? Don't you think that kind of story gets around?"

"Yes, but no one knows he's the father. No one knows."

"Shut up," Grímur said. "Shut up or…"

They all waited to see what that long winter would bring and what was in some terrible way inevitable. It began when Grímur slowly began to fall ill.

Mikkelína stared at Erlendur.

"She started to poison him that winter."

"Poison?" Erlendur said.

"She didn't know what she was doing."

"How did she poison him?"

"Do you remember the Dúkskot case in Reykjavik?"

"When a young woman killed her brother with rat poison? Yes, it was some time around the beginning of the last century."

"Mum didn't intend to kill him with it. She only wanted to make him ill. So she could have the baby and get it out of his way before he found out the baby was gone. The woman from Dúkskot fed her brother rat poison. Put big doses in his curds, he even saw her do it but didn't know what it was, and he managed to tell someone because he didn't die until several days later. She gave him schnapps with his curds to take the taste away. At the inquest they found phosphorus in his body, which has a slow toxic effect. Our mother knew that story, it was a famous Reykjavik murder. She got hold of rat poison at the Gufunes dairy. Stole small doses which she put in his food. She used very little at a time so that he wouldn't taste it or suspect anything. Instead of keeping the poison at home she brought back what she needed each time, but when she gave up her job at the dairy she took a large dose home and hid it. She had no idea what effect it would have on him or whether such small doses would even work at all, but after a while the effects seemed to come on. He got weaker, was often ill or tired, vomited. Couldn't make it to work. Lay in bed suffering."

"Did he never suspect anything?" Erlendur asked.

"Not until it was too late," Mikkelína said. "He had no faith in doctors. And of course she didn't encourage him to go for a check-up."

"What about when he said they would take care of Dave? Did he ever mention that again?"

"No, never," Mikkelína said. "He was just bluffing really. Saying things to scare her. He knew that she loved Dave."

Erlendur and Elínborg were in Mikkelína's sitting room, listening to her story. They had told her that it was a male skeleton underneath the baby in the grave in Grafarholt. Mikkelína shook her head; she could have told them that before had they not hurried away without saying why.

She wanted to know about the baby skeleton and when Erlendur asked whether she wanted to see it, she said no.

"But I'd like to know when you don't need it any more," she said. "It's about time she was laid to rest in hallowed ground."

"She?" Elínborg said.

"Yes. She," Mikkelína said.

Sigurdur Óli told Elsa what the medical officer had discovered: the body in the grave could not be her uncle Benjamín's fiancée. Elínborg phoned Sólveig's sister, Bára, to tell her the same news.

While Erlendur was setting off with Elínborg to see Mikkelína, Ed called on his mobile to let him know that he still had not managed to find out what became of Dave Welch; he did not know whether he was posted away from Iceland, or even when that might have been. He said he would go on searching.

Earlier that morning Erlendur had gone to intensive care to visit his daughter. Her condition was unchanged and Erlendur sat beside her for a good while, and resumed his tale about his brother who had frozen to death on the moors above Eskifjördur when Erlendur was ten. They were rounding up sheep with their father when the storm broke. The brothers lost sight of their father and soon afterwards of each other. Their father made it back to the farm, exhausted. Search parties were mounted.

"They found me by sheer chance," Erlendur said. "I don't know why. I had the presence of mind to dig a shelter for myself in a snowdrift. I was more dead than alive when they poked at the snow and the stick happened to touch my shoulder. We moved away. Couldn't live there any more, knowing about him up on the moor. Tried to start a new life, in Reykjavík… In vain."

At that moment a doctor looked in. He and Erlendur greeted each other and briefly discussed Eva Lind's condition. Unchanged, the doctor said. No hint of a recovery or that she was regaining consciousness. They fell silent. Said goodbye. The doctor turned at the door.

"Don't expect any miracles,'' he said, and noticed a cold smile on Erlendur's face.

Now Erlendur was sitting opposite Mikkelína, thinking about his daughter in her hospital bed and his brother lying in the snow. Mikkelína's words trickled into his mind.

"My mother wasn't a murderer," she said.

Erlendur looked at her.

"She wasn't a murderer," Mikkelína repeated. "She thought she could save the baby. She feared for her child."

She darted a glance at Elínborg.

"After all, he didn't die," she said. "He didn't die from the poison."

"But you said he didn't suspect anything until it was too late," Elínborg said.

"Yes," Mikkelína said. "It was too late by then."

The night that it happened, Grímur seemed more subdued after lying in bed all day racked with pain.

Their mother felt pains in her stomach and towards evening she had gone into labour with very rapid contractions. She knew it was too soon. The baby would be premature. She had the boys bring the mattresses from the beds in their room and from Mikkelína's divan in the kitchen, spread them out on the kitchen floor, and around dinner time she lay down on them.

She told Simon and Mikkelína to have clean sheets and hot water ready to wash the baby. After having three children, she knew the procedures.

It was still winter and dark, but the weather had unexpectedly turned warmer and it had rained during the day; spring would soon arrive. Their mother had been outdoors that day clearing the beds around the redcurrant bushes and pruning dead branches. She said the berries would be good when she made jam that autumn. Simon did not let her out of his sight and went to the bushes with her. She tried to calm him down by saying that everything would be all right.

"Nothing will be all right," Simon said, and repeated it: "Nothing will be all right. You mustn't have that baby. You mustn't. That's what he says, and he'll kill it. He says so. When's the baby due?"

"Don't you worry," his mother said. "When the baby's born I'll take it to town and he'll never see it. He's ill and helpless. He lies in bed all day and can't do anything."

"But when's the baby due?"

"It could be at any time," his mother said soothingly. "Maybe sometime soon, then it's over and done with. Don't be afraid, Simon. You must be strong. For my sake, Simon."

"Why don't you go to hospital? Why don't you leave here to have the baby?"

"He won't let me," she said. "He'd fetch me and order me to give birth at home. He doesn't want anyone to find out. We'll say we found it. Entrust it to the care of good people. That's the way he wants it. Everything will be all right."

"But he says he'll kill it."

"He won't do that."

"I'm so scared," Simon said. "Why does it have to be like this? I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do," he repeated, and she could tell he was plagued by anxiety.

Now he stood looking down at his mother, who was lying on the mattresses in the kitchen. Apart from the double bedroom, that was the only place in the house large enough, and she began to strain in absolute silence. Tómas was in Grímur's room. Símon had crept to the door and closed it.