die and think about how to…'
She heaved a deep sigh and went to sit beside Mikkelina.
'It makes you feel ashamed for being the victim of a man like that, you disappear into total loneliness and bar everyone from entering your world, even your own children, because you don't want anyone to set foot in there, least of all them. And you sit bracing yourself for the next attack that comes out of the blue and is full of hatred for something or other, you don't know what, and you spend your whole life waiting for the next attack, when is it coming, how bad will it be, what's the reason, how can I avoid it? The more I do to please him, the more I repulse him. The more submissiveness and fear I show, the more he loathes me. And if I resist, all the more reason for him to beat the living daylights out of me. There's no way to do the right thing. None.
'Until all you think about is how to get it over with. It doesn't matter how. Just get it over with.'
A deathly silence fell. Mikkelina lay motionless in her bed and the boys had inched closer to their mother. They listened, dumbstruck, to every word. Never before had she opened a window into the torment that she had grappled with for so long that she had forgotten everything else.
'It'll be okay,' Dave said.
'I'll help you,' Simon said in a serious voice.
She looked at him.
'I know, Simon,' she said. 'I always have known, my poor Simon.'
The days went by and Dave devoted all his spare time to the family on the hill and spent longer and longer with the children's mother, either indoors or walking around Reynisvatn and over to Hafravatn. The boys wanted to see more of him, but he had stopped going fishing with them and had less time for Mikkelina. But they did not mind. They noticed the change in their mother, they associated it with Dave and were happy for her.
One beautiful autumn day, almost half a year after Grimur was marched away from the hill in the arms of the military police, Simon saw Dave and his mother in the distance, walking towards the house. They were walking close together and for all he could see they were holding hands. As they drew closer they stopped holding hands and moved apart, and Simon realised they did not want to be seen.
'What are you and Dave going to do?' Simon asked his mother one evening that autumn, after dusk had fallen on the hill. They sat in the kitchen. Tomas and Mikkelina were playing cards. Dave had spent the day with them then gone back to the depot. The question had been in the air all summer. The children had discussed it amongst themselves and imagined all kinds of situations that ended with Dave becoming a father to them and expelling Grimur from their sight for ever.
'What do you mean, do?' his mother said.
'When he comes back,' Simon said, noticing that Mikkelina and Tomas had stopped playing cards and were now watching him.
'There's plenty of time to think about that,' their mother said. 'He won't be back for a while.'
'But what are you going to do?' Mikkelina and Tomas turned their heads from Simon to their mother.
She looked at Simon, then at the other two.
'He's going to help us,' she said.
'Who?' Simon said.
'Dave. He's going to help us.'
'What's he going to do?' Simon looked at his mother, trying to work out what she meant. She looked him straight in the eye.
'Dave knows about that sort of person. He knows how to get rid of them.'
'What's he going to do?' Simon repeated.
'Don't worry about it,' his mother replied.
'Is he going to get rid of him for us?'
'Yes.'
'How?'
'I don't know. The less we know, the better, he says, and I shouldn't even be telling you this. Maybe he'll talk to him. Scare him into leaving us alone. He says he has friends in the army who can help him if need be.'
'But what if Dave leaves?'
'Leaves?'
'If he leaves Iceland,' Simon said. 'He won't always be here. He's a soldier. They're always sending troops away. Posting new ones to the barracks. What if he leaves? What will we do then?'
She looked at her son.
'We'll find a way,' she said in a low voice. 'We'll find a way then.'
19
Sigurdur Oli phoned Erlendur, told him about his meeting with Elsa and how she thought that another man – who had got Benjamin's fiancee pregnant – was involved; his identity was unknown. They talked the matter over for a while and Erlendur told Sigurdur Oli what he had found out from the ex-serviceman, Ed Hunter, about the theft from the depot and how a family man from the hill had been arrested for his part in it. Ed believed that the man's wife had been the victim of domestic violence, which corroborated the account given by Hoskuldur, who had heard it from Benjamin.
'All those people are dead and buried long ago,' Sigurdur Oli said wearily. 'I don't know why we're chasing them. It's like hunting ghosts. We'll never meet any of them and talk to them. They're all just part of a ghost story.'
'Are you talking about the green woman on the hill?' Erlendur asked.
'Elinborg said Robert had seen Solveig's ghost wearing a green coat, so we're involved in a genuine ghost hunt.'
'But don't you want to know who's in that grave with one hand sticking up in the air as if they were buried alive?'
'I've spent two days locked in a filthy cellar and I couldn't care less,' Sigurdur Oli said. 'Couldn't care less about all this old bollocks,' he growled, and hung up.
As ever, Erlendur's mind was on Eva Lind, who was lying in intensive care and scarcely expected to live. He was deep in thought about the last argument they had had in his flat, two months before. It was still winter then, with heavy snow, dark and cold. He was not intending to argue with her. He hadn't planned to lose his temper. But she would not give an inch. Any more than usual.
'You can't do that to the baby,' he said in yet another effort to persuade her. He assumed that she was five months pregnant. She had pulled herself together when she found out she was pregnant and, after two attempts, looked as though she would manage to kick her drug habit. He gave her all the support he could, but they both knew that it carried little weight and that their relationship was such that the less he involved himself, the more likely she was to succeed. Eva Lind had an ambivalent attitude towards her father. She sought his company, but found fault with everything about him.
'What do you know about that?' she said. 'What do you know about children? Sure I can have my baby. And I'm going to have my baby by myself.'
He did not know whether she was using drugs or alcohol or a combination of the two, but she was hardly in her right mind when he opened the door for her and let her in. She did not sit on his sofa, she fell onto it. Her belly protruded beneath the unzipped leather jacket, her pregnancy was becoming visible. She was only wearing a thin T-shirt underneath. Outside, the temperature was at least -10°C.
'I thought we'd…'
'We haven't anything,' she interrupted. 'You and me. We haven't anything.'
'I thought you'd decided to take care of your baby. Make sure nothing happened to it. Make sure the drugs didn't affect it. You were going to quit, but you're probably above that. You're probably above taking proper care of your child.'
'Shut up.'
'Why did you come here?'
