nearby or stayed in the room. He explained to the foreman that they were going back to Reykjavik. They had received news that altered their plans and she had some pay owing to her. The foreman scribbled on a piece of paper and pointed to the office. He looked at her as he handed her the paper. She seemed poised to say something. He mistook her fear for shyness.
'Are you all right?' the foreman asked.
'She's fine,' her husband said and strutted away with her.
When they returned to their basement flat in Reykjavik he did not touch her. She stood in the living room wearing her shabby coat and holding the suitcase in her hand, expecting the thrashing of a lifetime, but nothing happened. The blow she had dealt herself had caught him unawares. Instead of going to fetch help he tried to nurse her and bring her round, the first act of care he had shown her since they were married. When she came round he said she had to understand that she could never leave him. He would sooner kill her and the children. She was his wife and always would be.
Always.
She never tried to run away after that.
The years went by. His plans to become a fisherman came to nothing after only three trips. He suffered from severe sea sickness that he could not shake off. On top of that, he found he was afraid of the sea, and never overcame that either. He was scared that the boat would sink. Scared of falling overboard. Scared of bad weather. On his last trip a storm struck and, convinced that the boat would capsize, he sat crying in the mess, thinking his days were numbered. After that, he never went to sea again.
He seemed incapable of showing tenderness towards her. At best he treated her with total indifference. For the first two years of their marriage he seemed to regret having hit her or having cursed her so foully that she burst into tears. But as time went by he stopped showing any sign of guilt, as if what he did to her had ceased to be unnatural or a disfiguration of their relationship, and had become something necessary and right. It sometimes occurred to her, which perhaps he too knew deep down inside, that the violence he inflicted on her was above all a manifestation of his own weakness. That the more he hit her, the more wretched he himself became. He blamed her for it. Screamed that it was her fault that he treated her as he did. She was the one who made him do it.
They had few friends, and shared none, and after they started living together she soon became isolated. On the rare occasions when she met her old friends from work she never talked about the violence she had to put up with from her husband, and over time she lost touch with them. She felt ashamed. Ashamed of being beaten and thrashed when she least expected it. Ashamed of her black eyes, split lips and bruises all over her body. Ashamed of the life she lived, which was surely incomprehensible to others, abominable. She wanted to hide it. Wanted to hide herself in the prison he made for her. Wanted to lock herself inside, throw away the key and hope that no one would find it. She had to accept his maltreatment. Somehow it was her destiny, absolute and immutable.
The children meant everything to her. In effect they became the friends and soul mates she lived for, especially Mikkelina, but also Simon when he grew older and the younger boy, who was given the name Tomas. She chose the names for the children herself. The only attention he paid to them was when he complained about them. How much food they ate. The noise they made at night. The children suffered for the violence he inflicted on her and brought her precious comfort in times of need.
He knocked out of her what little self-respect she had. Reticent and unassuming by nature, she was eager to please everyone, kind, helpful, even submissive. Smiled awkwardly when spoken to and had to steel herself not to look shy. Such feebleness filled him with an energy that drove him to abuse her until she had nothing left of her own self. Her entire existence revolved around him. His whims. Serving him. She stopped taking care of herself the way she once had. She stopped washing regularly. Stopped thinking about her appearance. Rings appeared under her eyes, her face went flabby and a greyness descended upon her, she developed a stoop, her head down on her chest as if she did not dare to look up properly. Her thick, pretty hair grew lifeless and dull and stuck to her head, filthy. She cut it herself using kitchen scissors when she felt it was too long.
Or when he felt it was too long.
Ugly old bag.
6
The archaeologists continued excavating in the morning after the bones were found. The policemen who had patrolled the area that night showed them where Erlendur had exposed the hand and Skarphedinn was furious when he saw how Erlendur had picked away at the soil. Bloody amateurs, he was heard muttering into his beard well past noon. To him, an excavation was a sacred ritual in which the soil was peeled back, one stratum after another, until the history of all that lay beneath came to light and the secrets were revealed. Every detail mattered, every handful of dirt might contain vital evidence and charlatans could destroy important data.
He preached all this to Elinborg and Sigurdur Oli, who had done nothing wrong, in between giving orders to his team. Work progressed very slowly by these painstaking archaeological methods. Ropes were stretched across the length and breadth of the area, marking out zones according to a specific system. The crucial consideration was to leave the position of the skeleton unmoved during the excavation; they made sure that the hand did not budge even when they brushed the dirt away from it, and scrutinised every grain of soil.
'Why is the hand sticking up out of the ground?' Elinborg asked Skarphedinn, stopping him as he hurried busily past.
'Impossible to say,' Skarphedinn said. 'In a worstcase scenario the person lying there could have been alive when he was covered with the earth and tried to put up some resistance. Tried to dig his way out.'
'Alive!' Elinborg groaned. 'Digging his way out?'
'That's not necessarily the case. We can't rule out that the hand ended up in that position when the body was put in the ground. It's too soon to say anything about that.'
Sigurdur Oli and Elinborg were surprised that Erlendur had not turned up for the excavation. Eccentric and unpredictable as he was, they also knew of his great fascination with missing persons, past and present, and the buried skeleton could well be the key to an old disappearance that Erlendur would delight in unearthing from parched documents. When it was past midday Elinborg tried to phone him at home and on his mobile, but to no avail.
Around two o'clock, Elinborg's mobile rang.
'Are you up there?' a deep voice said over the phone, and she recognised it at once.
'Where are you?'
'I got delayed. Are you at the excavation?'
'Yes.'
'Can you see the bushes? I think they're redcurrant. About 30 metres east of the foundations, standing almost in a straight line, going south.'
'Redcurrant bushes?' Elinborg squinted and scoured around for some bushes. 'Yes,' she said, 'I can see them.'
'They were planted a long time ago.'
'Yes.'
'Check why. Whether anyone lived there. Whether there was a house there in the old days. Go down to the City Planning Office and get some maps of the area, even aerial photos if they have any. You might need to look up documents from the beginning of the century until 1960 at least. Maybe even later.'
'Do you think there was a house on the hill here?' Elinborg said, looking all around. She made no attempt to conceal her disbelief.
'I think we ought to check it out. What's Sigurdur Oli doing?'
'He's browsing through the files of missing persons since World War II, to start with. He was waiting for you. Said you enjoyed that sort of thing.'
'I spoke to Skarphedinn just now and he said he remembered a camp there, on the other side, the south slope of Grafarholt, in wartime. Where the golf course is now.'
'A camp?'
'A British or American camp. Military. Barracks. He couldn't remember the name. You ought to check that too.
