'… sorry, I didn't mean to, sorry, sorry, sorry…'
16
Elsa opened the door for Sigurdur Oli and asked him to join her for a cup of tea. As he watched Elsa in the kitchen, he thought about Bergthora. They had argued that morning before leaving for work. After rejecting her amorous advances he had begun clumsily to describe his concerns, until Bergthora became seriously agitated.
'Oh, just a minute,' she said. 'So we're never supposed to get married? Is that your plan? Is the idea that we just live in limbo with nothing on paper and our children bastards? For ever.'
'Bastards?'
'Yes.'
'Are you thinking about the big wedding again?'
'Sorry if it bothers you.'
'You really want to walk down the aisle? In your wedding dress with a posy in your hand and…'
'You have such contempt for the idea, don't you?'
'And what's this about children anyway?' Sigurdur Oli said, and immediately regretted it when he saw Bergthora's face turn ever darker.
'Do you never want to have children?'
'Yes, no, yes, I mean, we haven't discussed it,' Sigurdur Oli said. 'I think we need to discuss that. You can't decide on your own whether we have children or not. That's not fair and it's not what I want. Not now. Not straight away.'
'The time will come,' Bergthora said. 'Hopefully. We're both 35. It won't be long until it's too late. Whenever I try to talk about it you change the subject. You don't want to discuss it. Don't want children or a marriage or anything. Don't want anything. You're getting as bad as that old fart Erlendur.'
'Eh?' Sigurdur Oli was thunderstruck. 'What was that?'
But Bergthora had already set off for work, leaving him with an horrific vision of the future.
Elsa noticed Sigurdur Oli's thoughts were elsewhere as he sat in her kitchen staring down at his cup.
'Would you like some more tea?' she asked quietly.
'No, thank you,' Sigurdur Oli said. 'Elinborg, who's working on this case with me, wanted me to ask if you know whether your uncle Benjamin kept a lock of his fiancee's hair, maybe in a locket or a jar or the like.'
Elsa thought about it.
'No,' she said, 'I don't remember a lock of hair, but I'm not a hundred per cent sure what's down there.'
'Elinborg says there should be one. According to the fiancee's sister, who told her yesterday that she gave Benjamin a lock of hair when she went on a trip somewhere, I believe.'
'I've never heard about a lock of her hair, or anyone else's for that matter. My family aren't particularly romantic and never have been.'
'Are any possessions of hers in the basement? The fiancee's?'
'Why do you want a lock of her hair?' Elsa asked instead of answering his question. She had a prying look on her face which made Sigurdur Oli hesitate. He didn't know how much Erlendur had told her. She saved him the bother of asking.
'You can prove that it's her buried up on the hill,' she said. 'If you have something from her. You can do a DNA test to find out whether it's her, and if it is, you'll claim my uncle murdered her and left her there. Is that the idea?'
'We're just investigating all the possibilities,' Sigurdur Oli said, wanting at all costs to avoid provoking Elsa into a rage on the scale of that he had sparked with Bergthora just half an hour before. This day was not getting off to a very good start. Definitely not.
'That other detective came here, the sad one, and implied that Benjamin was responsible for his fiancee's death. And now you can all confirm that if you find a lock of her hair. I just don't understand it. That you could think Benjamin capable of killing that girl. Why should he do it? What motive could he have had? None. Absolutely none.'
'No, of course not,' Sigurdur Oli said to calm her down. 'But we need to know who the bones belong to and so far we don't have much to go on apart from the fact that Benjamin owned the house and his fiancee disappeared. Surely you're curious about it yourself. You must want to know whose bones they are.'
'I'm not certain I do,' Elsa said, somewhat calmer now.
'But I can go on looking in the cellar, can't I?' he said.
'Yes, of course. I can hardly stop you doing that.'
He finished his tea and went down to the cellar, still thinking about Bergthora. He did not keep a lock of her hair in a locket, and did not feel he needed anything to remind him of her. Not even her photograph in his wallet, like the pictures of wife and children that some men he knew carried around. He felt bad. He needed to talk things over with Bergthora. Sort it all out.
He didn't want to be like Erlendur at all.
Sigurdur Oli looked through Benjamin Knudsen's belongings until midday, then popped out to a fast-food joint, bought a hamburger that he barely nibbled at, and read the papers over coffee. Around two he headed back to the cellar, cursing Erlendur for his obstinacy. He had not found the slightest clue as to why Benjamin's fiancee had disappeared, nor any evidence of wartime tenants apart from Hoskuldur. He had not found the lock of hair that Elinborg was so convinced about after reading all those romances. It was Sigurdur Oli's second day in the cellar and he was at the end of his tether.
Elsa was at the door when he returned, and she invited him in. He tried to find an excuse to turn down the invitation, but was not quick enough to manage it without sounding rude, so he followed Elsa into the sitting room.
'Did you find anything down there?' she asked, and Sigurdur Oli knew that behind this helpful-sounding remark she was in fact actually trying to wheedle information out of him. It didn't occur to him that she might be lonely, which was the impression Erlendur had just minutes after entering her gloomy house.
'I haven't found that lock of hair, anyway,' Sigurdur Oli said, nursing his tea. She had been waiting for him. He looked at her, wondering what was in the offing.
'No,' she said. 'Are you married? Sorry, of course that's none of my business.'
'No, that's… yes, no, not married but living with my partner,' Sigurdur Oli said, awkwardly.
'Any children?'
'No, no children,' Sigurdur Oli said. 'Not yet.'
'Why not?'
'Pardon?'
'Why haven't you had any children?'
What's going on here? Sigurdur Oli thought, sipping his tea to win time.
'Stress, I suppose. So busy at work all the time. We're both in demanding jobs and, well, there's no time.'
'No time for children? Have you really got anything better to do with your time? What does your girlfriend do?'
'She's a partner in a computer firm,' Sigurdur Oli said, poised to thank her for the tea and say he needed to get going. He did not plan to be interrogated about his private life by some posh old maid who had clearly gone strange from living alone, the way women like her eventually do – until they end up snooping around everyone's private business.
'Is she a good woman?' Elsa asked.
'Her name's Bergthora,' said Sigurdur Oli, on the verge of becoming impolite. 'She's a terribly good woman.' He smiled. 'Why are you…?'
'I've never had a family,' Elsa said. 'Never had any children. Nor a husband for that matter. I don't care about
