Bara listened to Elinborg’s account without blinking. As usual, she was alone in her huge house, surrounded by wealth, and showed no reaction.

“Our father wanted her to have an abortion,” she said. “Our mother wanted to take her to the countryside, let her give the baby away and come back as if nothing had happened, then marry Benjamin. My parents talked it over for ages, then called Solveig in to see them.”

Bara stood up.

“Mother told me this later.”

She went over to an imposing oak sideboard, opened a drawer and took out a small white handkerchief which she dabbed against her nose.

“They presented the two options to her. The third option was never discussed. Namely, having the baby and making it part of our family. Solveig tried to persuade them, but they refused to hear a word of it. Didn’t want to know about it. Wanted to kill the baby or give it away. No alternatives.”

“And Solveig?”

“I don’t know,” Bara said. “The poor girl, I don’t know. She wanted the child, she wouldn’t think of doing anything else. She was just a child herself. She was no more than a child.”

Erlendur looked at Elsa.

“Could Benjamin have interpreted it as an act of betrayal?” he asked. “If Solveig refused to name the father of the child?”

“No one knows what passed between them at their last meeting,” Elsa said. “Benjamin told my mother the main points, but it’s impossible to know whether he mentioned every important detail. Was she really raped? My Lord!”

Elsa looked at Erlendur and Sigurdur Oli in turn.

“Benjamin may well have taken it as betrayal,” she said in a low voice.

“Sorry, what did you say?” Erlendur asked her.

“Benjamin may well have thought she betrayed him,” Elsa repeated. “But that doesn’t mean he murdered her and buried her body on the hill.”

“Because she kept quiet,” Erlendur said.

“Yes, because she kept quiet,” Elsa said. “Refused to name the father. He didn’t know about the rape. I think that’s quite certain.”

“Could he have had an accomplice?” Erlendur asked. “Maybe got someone to do the job for him?”

“I don’t follow.”

“He rented his chalet in Grafarholt to a wife-beater and a thief. That tells us nothing in itself, but it’s a fact all the same.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Wife-beater?”

“No, that’s probably plenty for now. Maybe we’re jumping to conclusions, Elsa. It’s probably best to wait for the pathologist’s report. Please excuse us if we…”

“No, by no means, no, thank you for keeping me informed. I appreciate that.”

“We’ll let you know how the case proceeds,” Sigurdur Oli said.

“And you have the lock of hair,” Elsa said. “For identification.”

Elinborg stood up. It had been a long day and she wanted to go home. She thanked Bara and apologised for disturbing her so late in the evening. Bara told her not to worry. She followed Elinborg to the door and closed it behind her. A moment later the bell rang and Bara opened it again.

“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.”

27

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.