answers to all her questions, and sometimes that enraged her. She had a short fuse as far as her family was concerned.
'No, I want to hear Christmas songs,' Eva Lind said, and Bing Crosby went on dreaming of a white Christmas. 'I've never ever heard her say a good thing about you, but she must have seen something in you all the same. At first. When you met. What was it?'
'Have you asked her?'
'Yes.'
'And what did she say?'
'Nothing. That would mean she'd have to say something positive about you and she can't handle that. Can't handle the idea of there being anything good about you. What was it? Why the two of you?'
'I don't know,' Erlendur said, and meant it. He tried to be honest. 'We met at a dance. I don't know. It wasn't planned. It just happened.'
'What was going on in your head?'
Erlendur did not reply. He thought about children who never knew their parents; never found out who they really were. Entered their life when it was as much as halfway through and did not have a clue about them. Never got to know them except as father and mother and authority and protector. Never discovered their shared and separate secrets, with the result that the parents were just as much strangers as everyone else the children met during the course of their lives. He pondered how parents managed to keep their children at arm's length until all that remained was acquired, polite behaviour, with an artificial sincerity that sprang from common experience rather than real love.
'What was going on in your head?' Eva Lind's questions opened wounds that she picked at constantly.
'I don't know,' Erlendur said, keeping her at a distance as he had always done. She felt that. Maybe she acted in this way to produce such a reaction. Gain one more confirmation. Feel how remote he was from her and how far away she was from understanding him.
'You must have seen
How could she understand when he sometimes did not understand himself?
'We met at a dance,' he repeated. 'I don't expect there was any future in that.'
'And then you just left.'
'I didn't just leave,' Erlendur said. 'It wasn't like that. But in the end I did leave and it was over. We didn't do it… I don't know. Maybe there is no right way. If there is, we didn't find it.'
'But it wasn't over,' Eva Lind said.
'No,' Erlendur said. He listened to Bing Crosby on the radio. Through the window he watched the big snowflakes drifting to earth. Looked at his daughter. The rings pierced through her eyebrows. The metal stud in her nose. Her army boots up on the coffee table. The dirt under her fingernails. The bare stomach that showed beneath her black T-shirt and was beginning to bulge.
'It's never over,' he said.
Hoskuldur Thorarinsson lived in a flat in the basement of his daughter's elegant detached house in Arbaer and gave the impression of being pleased with his lot. He was a small, nimble man with silvery hair and a silver beard around his little mouth, wearing a checked labourer's shirt and beige corduroys. Elinborg tracked him down. There weren't many people in the national registry named Hoskuldur and past retirement age. She telephoned most of them, wherever they lived in Iceland, and this particular Hoskuldur from Arbaer told her, you bet he rented from Benjamin Knudsen, that poor, dear old chap. He remembered it well although he did not spend long in the chalet on the hill.
They sat in his living room, Erlendur and Elinborg, and he had made coffee and they talked about this and that. He told them he was born and bred in Reykjavik, then started complaining how those bloody conservatives were throttling the life out of pensioners as if they were a bunch of layabouts who couldn't provide for themselves. Erlendur decided to cut the old man's ramblings short.
'Why did you move out to the hill? Wasn't it rather rural for someone from Reykjavik?'
'You bet it was,' Hoskuldur said as he poured coffee into their cups. 'But there was no alternative. Not for me. You couldn't find housing anywhere in Reykjavik at that time. People crammed into the tiniest rooms during the war. All of a sudden all the yokels could come to town and earn hard cash instead of getting paid with a bowl of curds and a bottle of booze. Slept in tents if they had to. The price of housing went sky high and I moved out to the hill. What are those bones you found there?'
'When did you move to the hill?' Elinborg asked.
'It would have been some time around 1943, I reckon. Or '44. I think it was autumn. In the middle of the war.'
'How long did you live there?'
'I was there for a year. Until the following autumn.'
'Did you live alone?'
'With my wife. Dear old Elly. She's passed away now.'
'When did she die?'
'Three years ago. Did you think I buried her up on the hill? Do I look like the type, dearie?'
'We can't find the records of anyone who lived in that house,' Elinborg said without answering his remark. 'Neither you nor anyone else. You didn't register as domiciled there.'
'I can't remember how it was. We never registered. We were homeless. Others were always prepared to pay more than us, then I heard about Benjamin's chalet and spoke to him. His tenants had just moved out and he took pity on me.'
'Do you know who the tenants were? The ones before you?'
'No, but I remember the place was spotless when we moved in.' Hoskuldur finished his cup of coffee, refilled it and took a sip. 'Spick and span.'
'What do you mean, spick and span?'
'Well, I remember Elly specifically commenting on it. She liked that. Everything scrubbed and polished and not a speck of dust to be seen. It was just like moving into a hotel. Not that we were rough, mind you. But that place was exceptionally well kept. Clearly a housewife who knew her business, my Elly said.'
'So you never saw any signs of violence or the like?' Erlendur asked, having kept silent until now. 'Bloodstains on the walls for example.'
Elinborg looked at him. Was he teasing the old man?
'Blood? On the walls? No, there was no blood.'
'Everything in order then?'
'Everything in order. Definitely.'
'Were there any bushes by the house when you were there?'
'There were a couple of redcurrant bushes, yes. I remember them clearly because they were laden with fruit that autumn and we made jam from the berries.'
'You didn't plant them? Or your wife, Elly?'
'No, we didn't plant them. They were there when we moved in.'
'You can't imagine who the bones belonged to that we found buried up there?' Erlendur asked.
'Is that really why you're here? To find out if I killed anyone?'
'We think a human body was buried there some time during the war or thereabouts,' Erlendur said. 'But you're not suspected of murder. Far from it. Did you ever talk to Benjamin about the people who lived in the chalet before you?'
'As it happens, I did,' Hoskuldur said. 'Once when I was paying the rent and praised the immaculate condition the previous tenants had left the house in. But he didn't seem interested. A mysterious man. Lost his wife. Threw herself in the sea, I heard.'
'Fiancee. They weren't married. Do you remember British troops camped on the hill? Or Americans rather, that late in the war?'
'It was crawling with British after the occupation in 1940. They set up barracks on the other side of the hill and had a cannon to defend Reykjavik against an attack. I always thought it was a joke, but Elly told me not to make fun of it. Then the British left and the Americans took over. They were camped on the hill when I moved there. The British had left years before.'
