By dinner time, the skeletons were removed intact from the ground. Erlendur, Sigurdur Oli and Elinborg watched the bones being lifted out. The archaeologists handled the task with great professionalism and Erlendur had no regrets about having called them in. Skarphedinn 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, Skarphedinn 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 Baronsstigur. 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.
“What we probably need most is to date both skeletons,” Erlendur said and looked at the medical officer.
“Yes, dating,” the medical officer said thoughtfully. “You know that there’s really precious little difference between a male and female skeleton except for the pelvis, which we can’t see clearly enough for the little skeleton and the layer of dirt between them. All 206 bones seem to be in place on the big one. The ribs are broken, as we knew. It’s fairly large, quite a tall woman. That’s my first impression, but actually I’d prefer not to have anything to do with it. Are you in a hurry? Can’t you wait for a week? I’m no specialist in autopsies or dating of bodies. I might miss all kinds of details mat a qualified pathologist would notice, weigh up, intuit. If you want a proper job done, you should wait. Is there any rush? Can’t it wait?” he repeated.
Erlendur noticed beads of sweat on the medical officer’s forehead and recalled someone saying he always tried to avoid too much responsibility.
“Either way,” Erlendur said. “There’s no rush. I don’t think so anyway. Unless the excavation throws up something that we don’t know about, some tragedy.”
“You mean someone who’s kept an eye on the excavation knows what’s been going on and sets off a chain of events?”
“We’ll see,” Erlendur said. “Let’s wait for the pathologist. It’s not a question of life or death. But see what you can do for us all the same. Take a look in your own good time. You might be able to remove the little skeleton without damaging any evidence.”
The district medical officer nodded as if uncertain about his next move.
“I’ll see what I can do,” he said.
Erlendur decided to talk to Benjamin Knudsen’s niece immediately instead of waiting until the next morning, and he went to see her with Sigurdur Oli that evening. Elsa answered the door and invited them into her sitting room. They all sat down. She looked more tired to Erlendur and he feared her reaction to the discovery of two skeletons; he imagined it must be a strain for her to have this old business dragged out again after so many years and find her uncle implicated in a murder.
He told her what the archaeologists had unearthed on the hill: it was probably Benjamin’s fiancee. Elsa looked at each detective in turn while Erlendur was finishing his account, and she was unable to suppress her disbelief.
“I don’t believe you,” she cried. “Are you saying that Benjamin murdered his fiancee?”
“There’s a probability…”
“And buried her on the hill by their chalet? I don’t believe it. I just don’t understand where you’re taking all this. There must be some other explanation. There simply has to be. Benjamin was no murderer, I can tell you that. You’ve been free to roam around this house and rummage in the cellar as you please, but this is going too far. Do you think I would have let you go through the cellar if I, if the family, had anything to hide? No, this is going too far. You ought to leave,” she said and stood up. “Now!”
“It’s not as if you’re involved,” Sigurdur Oli said. He and Erlendur sat tight. “It’s not as if you knew something and concealed it from us. Or…?”
“What are you implying?” Elsa said. “That I knew something? Are you accusing me of complicity? Are you going to arrest me? Do you want to put me in prison? What a way to conduct yourselves!” She stared at Erlendur.
“Calm down,” Erlendur said. “We found a skeleton of a baby with the adult skeleton. It’s been disclosed that Benjamin’s fiancee was pregnant. The natural conclusion is that it’s her. Don’t you think so? We’re not implying anything. We’re just trying to solve the case. You’ve been exceptionally helpful and we appreciate that. Not everyone would have done all you have. However, the fact remains that your uncle Benjamin is the main suspect now that we’ve recovered the bones.”
Elsa glared down at Erlendur as if he was an intruder in her house. Then she seemed to soften a little. She looked at Sigurdur Oli, back at Erlendur, and sat down again.
“It’s a misunderstanding,” she said. “And you’d realise that if you’d known Benjamin the way I did. He wouldn’t have hurt a fly. Never.”
“He found out his fiancee was pregnant,” Sigurdur Oli said. “They were going to be married. He was obviously madly in love with her. His future revolved around his love, the family he was going to start, his business, his position in society. He cracked up. Maybe he went too far. Her body was never recovered. She was supposed to have thrown herself into the sea. She disappeared. Maybe we’ve found her.”
“You told Sigurdur Oli that Benjamin didn’t know who got his fiancee pregnant,” Erlendur said guardedly. He wondered whether they may have jumped the gun and he cursed the pathologist in Spain. Perhaps they should have saved this visit for later. Waited for confirmation.
“That’s right,” Elsa said. “He didn’t know.” “We’ve heard that Solveig’s mother went to see him later and told him the story. When everything had blown over. After Solveig went missing.” Elsa’s expression changed to one of surprise. “I didn’t know that,” she said. “When was that?” “Later,” Erlendur said. “I don’t know exactly. Solveig kept quiet about the father of the child. For some reason, she kept quiet. Didn’t tell Benjamin what happened. Broke off their engagement and wouldn’t say who the father was. Possibly to protect her family. Her own father’s good name.”
“What do you mean, her father’s good name?” “His nephew raped Solveig when she was visiting his family in Fljot.”
Elsa slumped into her seat and instinctively put her hand to her mouth in shock. “I can’t believe it,” she sighed.
At the same time, at the other end of the city, Elinborg was telling Bara what had been found in the grave and that the most likely hypothesis was that it was the body of Solveig, Benjamin’s fiancee. That Benjamin had probably buried her there. Elinborg stressed that all the police had to go on was that he was the last person to see her alive and a child had been found with the skeleton on the hill. All further analysis of the bones was still pending.