Arnaldur Indridason - Silence Of The Grave

"Was she tall?" Elinborg asked.

"Who?" Bara said.

"Your sister," Elinborg said. "Was she unusually tall, average height or short? What kind of build did she have?"

"No, she wasn't tall," Bara said with a hint of a smile. "Far from it. She was strikingly short. Exceptionally petite. A wisp of a thing, our mother used to say. And it was funny seeing her and Benjamin walking along holding hands, because he was so tall that he towered over her."

The district medical officer phoned Erlendur, who was sitting by his daughter's bedside at the hospital just before midnight.

"I'm at the morgue," the medical officer said, "and I've separated the skeletons. I hope I haven't damaged anything. I'm no pathologist. There's earth all over the tables and the floor, a filthy mess really."

"And?" Erlendur said.

"Yes, sorry, well, we have the skeleton of the foetus, which was at least seven months old."

"Yes," Erlendur said impatiently.

"And there's nothing odd about that. Except. ."

"Go on."

"It could well have been already born when it died. Or maybe stillborn. That's impossible to tell. But it's not the mother lying underneath it."

"Hang on. . What makes you say that?"

"It can't be the mother lying under the child or buried with it, however you want to put it."

"Not the mother? What do you mean? Who is it then?"

"There's no doubt," the medical officer said. "You can tell from the pelvis."

"The pelvis?"

"The adult skeleton is a male. It was a man who was buried under the baby."

The winter on the hill was long and tough.

The children's mother kept on working at the Gufunes dairy and the boys took the school bus every morning. Grimur went back to delivering coal. After the racket was discovered, the army did not want to give him his old job again. The depot was closed and the barracks were moved en bloc down to Halogaland. Only the fencing and fence posts remained, and the concreted yard that had been in front of the barracks. The cannon was removed from the bunker. People said the war was nearing its end. The Germans were retreating in Russia and a major counter-offensive was said to be pending on the western front.

Grimur more or less ignored the children's mother that winter. Hardly uttered a word, except to hurl abuse at her. They no longer shared a bed. The mother slept in Simon's room, while Grimur wanted Tomas to stay in his. Everyone except Tomas noticed how her stomach slowly swelled during the winter until it protruded like a bitter-sweet memory of the events of the summer, and a terrifying reminder of what would happen if Grimur stuck to his threats.

She played down her condition as best she could. Grimur threatened her regularly. Said he would not let her keep the baby. He would kill it at birth. Said it would be a retard like Mikkelina and the best thing would be to kill it straight away. "Yank-fucker," he said. But he did not physically assault her that winter. He kept a low profile, sneaking silently around her like a beast preparing to pounce on its prey.

She tried talking about a divorce, but Grimur laughed at her. She did not discuss her condition with the people at the dairy and concealed the fact that she was pregnant. Perhaps, right to the end, she thought that Grimur would recant, that his threats were empty, that when it came to the crunch he would not carry out his threats, that he would be like a father to the child in spite of everything.

In the end she resorted to desperate measures. Not to take vengeance on Grimur, although she had ample reason, but to protect herself and the child she was about to bear.

Mikkelina strongly sensed a growing tension between her mother and Grimur during that tough winter and also noticed a change in Simon that she found no less disturbing. He had always been fond of his mother, but now he hardly left her side from the time he came home from school and she finished work. He was more nervous after Grimur came back from prison on that cold autumn morning. As far as he could, he avoided his father and his anxiety about his mother haunted him more with each day that went by. Mikkelina heard him talking to himself sometimes and occasionally it sounded as if he was talking to someone she could not see who could not possibly be in their house: an imaginary person. Sometimes she heard him say out loud what he had to do to protect their mother and the child she would bear by his friend Dave. How it fell to him to guard her against Grimur. How the baby's life depended on him. No one else was at hand. His friend Dave would never return.

Simon took Grimur's threats very seriously. He firmly believed that he would not allow the baby to live. That Grimur would take it and they would never see it. Carry it off up the mountain and come back without it.

Tomas was silent as ever, but Mikkelina sensed a change in him as the winter wore on. Grimur allowed Tomas to spend the night in his room after he forbade the children's mother to sleep in the double bed and forced her to sleep in Tomas' bed, which was too small for her and uncomfortable. Mikkelina did not know what Grimur said to Tomas, but soon Tomas adopted a very different attitude towards her. He would not have anything to do with her and distanced himself from Simon as well, despite how close they had always been. Their mother tried to talk to Tomas, but he always backed away from her, angry, silent and helpless.

"Simon's turning a bit funny," Mikkelina heard Grimur say to Tomas once. "He's going funny like your mother. Keep a watch out for him. Make sure you don't get like him. Because then you'll turn funny too."

Once Mikkelina heard her mother talking to Grimur about the baby, the only time he allowed her to speak her mind, as far as she knew. Her mother's stomach was bulging by then and he prohibited her to work at the dairy any longer.

"You give up your job and say you have to look after your family," Mikkelina heard him order her.

"But you can say it's yours," her mother said.

Grimur laughed at her.

"You can."

"Shut up."

Mikkelina noticed that Simon was eavesdropping as well.

"You could easily say it's your child," their mother said in a soothing voice.

"Don't try that," Grimur said.

"No one needs to know anything. No one need find out."

"It's too late to try to put things right now. You should have thought of that when you were out on the moor with that fucking Yank."

"Or I could have it adopted," she said cautiously. "I'm not the first one this has happened to."

"Sure you're not," Grimur said. "Half the bloody city's been screwing them. But don't think that makes you any better for it."

"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," Grimur 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," Grimur 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 Grimur slowly began to fall ill.

*

Mikkelina 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 Dukskot 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 Dukskot 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."