“Couldn’t anyone at Gufunes help her?” Elinborg asked. “Plenty of people must have worked there.”

Mikkelina 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.”

Mikkelina looked at Erlendur.

“Dave never came.”

She looked at Elinborg.

“And nothing went back to normal.”

“So she phoned, did she?”

Grimur put his arm around Tomas.

“Who did she phone, Tomas? 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,” Grimur said, rubbing Tomas’ shoulders. “How things change. Whatever next?”

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

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

“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,” Grimur 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 Tomas 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,” Grimur 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.”

Mikkelina 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 Thorgrimur,” Mikkelina said. “He was always called Grimur.”

“Thorgrimur,” 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 Oli, who was at the excavation on the hill.

“You ought to come up here,” Sigurdur Oli said.

“Here?” Erlendur said. “Where is ‘here’?”

“On the hill, of course,” Sigurdur Oli said. “They’ve reached the bones and I think we’ve found out who’s buried there.”

“Who is it?”

“Benjamin’s fiancee.”

“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 Oli said. “It can’t be anyone else. Just come and see for yourself.”

Then he rang off.

26

Fifteen minutes later, Erlendur and Elinborg were in Grafarholt. They said a hurried farewell to Mikkelina, who watched in surprise as they walked out of the door. Erlendur did not tell her what Sigurdur Oli had said over the phone about Benjamin’s fiancee, 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?” Mikkelina 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 Oli was waiting for them on the hill and took them to Skarphedinn, 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 Oli said self-importantly. “No question about it.”

“How come?” Elinborg said. “Are you a doctor all of a sudden?”

“This doesn’t call for a doctor,” Sigurdur Oli said. “It’s obvious.”

“There are two skeletons in the grave,” Skarphedinn 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 Oli, took two steps forward and peered down into the grave where he saw at once what Skarphedinn 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 Oli asked. “Isn’t that the fiancee? She was pregnant. What was her name again?”

“Solveig,” Elinborg 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 Oli said.

“Nor do I,” Erlendur said. “We need an expert. Can we take the skeletons as they are to send to the morgue on Baronsstigur?” he asked Skarphedinn.

“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.”