'You look down on me like a piece of shit,' she shouted. 'Like you're more important than me. Like you're smarter and better. Like you're better than me and Mum and Sindri! Walking out on us like some bigshot, then ignoring us. Like you're, like you're God fucking Almighty.'
'I tried…'
'You didn't try shit! What did you try? Nothing. Fuck all. Ran out like the creep you are.'
'I've never looked down on you,' he said. 'That's wrong. I can't understand why you say that.'
'Oh yes you do. That's why you left. Because we're so ordinary. So bloody ordinary that you couldn't stand us. Ask Mum! She knows. She says it's all your fault. The whole lot. Your fault. The state I'm in too. What do you reckon to that, mister God fucking Almighty?'
'Not everything your mother says is true. She's angry and bitter and…'
'Angry and bitter! If you only knew how angry and bitter she really is and hates your guts and hates her kids because it wasn't her fault you left because she's the Virgin fucking Mary. It was OUR fault. Sindri and me. Don't you get it, you fucking jerk. Don't you get it, you fucking jerk…'
'Erlendur?'
'What?'
'Are you all right?'
'Fine. Perfectly all right.'
'I'm going to drop in on Robert's daughter.' Elinborg waved her hand in front of his face as if he had slipped into a trance. 'Are you going to the British embassy?'
'Eh?' Erlendur snapped back to his senses. 'Yes, let's do it that way,' he said remotely. 'Let's do it that way. And one thing, Elinborg.'
'Yes?'
'Get the district medical officer back here to take a look at the bones when they're exposed. Skarphedinn doesn't know his arse from his elbow. He increasingly reminds me of some monstrosity out of the Brothers Grimm.'
13
Before Erlendur went to the British embassy he drove to the Vogar district and parked a short distance from the basement flat where Eva Lind had once lived and where he had begun the search for her. He thought back to the child he found in the flat with the cigarette burns on its body. He knew the girl had been taken away from her mother and was in care, and he knew that the man she lived with was the father. A quick enquiry revealed that the mother had twice been to Accident and Emergency in the past year, once with a broken arm and the other time with multiple injuries which she claimed were the result of a road accident.
Another simple check showed that the mother's partner had a police record, although never for violence. He was awaiting sentence on charges of burglary and drug trafficking. Once he had been to prison, for an accumulation of minor crimes. One was an unsuccessful shop robbery.
Erlendur sat in his car for a good while, watching the door to the flat. He refrained from smoking and was about to drive away when the door opened. A man came out, wreathed in smoke from a cigarette, which he flicked into the front garden. He was of average height, powerfully built with long, black hair, dressed in black from top to toe. His appearance fitted the description in the police reports. When the man disappeared around the corner, Erlendur quietly drove away.
Robert's daughter welcomed Elinborg at the door. Elinborg had phoned beforehand. The woman, whose name was Harpa, was confined to a wheelchair, her legs withered and lifeless, but her torso and arms strong. Elinborg was somewhat taken aback but said nothing. Harpa smiled and invited her in. She left the door open, Elinborg entered and closed it behind her. The flat was small but cosy, custom built for its owner.
'I'm sorry about your father,' Elinborg said, following Harpa into the sitting room.
'Thank you,' the woman in the wheelchair said. 'He was extremely old. I hope I don't live that long. There's nothing I'd hate more than to end up as a patient in an institution, waiting to die. Fading away.'
'We're enquiring about people who might have lived in a chalet in Grafarholt, on the north side,' Elinborg said. 'Not so far from yours. Wartime or thereabouts. We spoke to your father shortly before he died and he told us he knew about a family living there, but unfortunately couldn't tell us much more.'
Elinborg thought about the mask over Robert's face. His breathlessness and anaemic hands.
'You mentioned finding some bones,' Harpa said, sweeping back the hair which had fallen over her forehead. 'The ones on the news.'
'Yes, we found a skeleton there and we're trying to discover who it might be. Do you remember this family that your father spoke of?'
'I was seven when the war reached Iceland,' Harpa said. 'I remember the soldiers in Reykjavik. We lived downtown, but I didn't have a clue what it was all about. They were on the hill too. On the south side. They built barracks and a bunker. There was a long slit in it with the barrel of a cannon sticking out. All very dramatic. Our parents told us to keep away from it, my brother and me. I have a vague memory of fences all around it. Barbed wire. We didn't go over that way much. We spent a lot of time in the chalet that Dad built, mostly in the summer, and naturally we got to know the neighbours a little.'
'Your father said that there were three children in that house. They could have been about your age.' Elinborg glanced down at Harpa's wheelchair. 'Maybe you didn't get about.'
'Oh, sure,' Harpa said, rapping her knuckles on the wheelchair. 'This happened later. A car accident. I was 30. I don't remember any children on the hill. I remember children in other chalets, but not up there.'
'Some redcurrant bushes are growing near the site of the old house, where we found the bones. Your father mentioned a lady who went there, later, I believe. She went there a lot… I think he said that anyway… probably dressed in green and she was crooked.'
'Crooked?'
'That's what he said, or I should say, wrote.'
Elinborg took out the note Robert had written and handed it to her.
'This was apparently when you still owned your chalet,' Elinborg went on. 'I understand you sold it some time after 1970.'
'1972,' Harpa said.
'Did you notice this lady?'
'No, and I never heard Dad talk about her. I'm sorry I can't help you, but I never saw that lady and don't know anything about her, though I do remember people at the place you mean.'
'Can you imagine what your father meant by this word? Crooked?'
'What it says. He always said what he meant, nothing more. He was a very precise man. A good man. Good to me. After my accident. And when my husband left me – he stuck it out for three years after the crash, then he was gone.'
Elinborg thought she noticed a smile, but there was no smile on her face.
The official from the British embassy greeted Erlendur with such perfect courtesy and decorum that Erlendur almost thanked him with a bow. He said he was a secretary. Impeccably dressed in a suit and squeaky black leather shoes, he was unusually tall and thin, and spoke very precise Icelandic, much to the delight of Erlendur, who spoke English badly and understood little of it. He sighed with relief when he realised that if one of them was to give a slightly stilted impression in their conversation, it would be the secretary.
The office was as impeccable as the secretary himself, and Erlendur thought about his own workplace which always looked like a bomb had hit it. The secretary – 'Just call me Jim,' he said – offered him a seat.
'I love the way you are so informal here in Iceland,' Jim said.
'Have you lived here for long?' Erlendur asked, not exactly sure why he was behaving like an old lady at a tea party.
'Yes, almost 2,0 years now,' Jim nodded. 'Thank you for asking. And as it happens, World War II is a particular interest of mine. I mean World War II in Iceland. I did an MA on the subject at the London School of Economics. When you rang about those barracks I thought I might be able to help.'
