Silence of the Grave

'I don't know.'

'It's your conscience. Isn't it? Your conscience is gnawing at you, and you expect my sympathy for the awful state you're in. That's why you come here. To get some pity and to feel better about yourself.'

'Right on. This is just the place to come if you want a conscience, Saint Arsehole.'

'You'd decided the name. You remember? If it's a girl.'

'You decided it. Not me. You. Like always. You decide everything. If you want to leave then you just leave, don't give a shit about me or anyone else.'

'She's supposed to be called Audur. You wanted that.'

'Don't you think I know your game? Don't you think I can see through you? You're shit scared… I know what I've got in my stomach. I know it's a human being. I know that. You don't have to remind me. There's no need.'

'Good,' Erlendur said. 'Sometimes you seem to forget. Forget there's not just you to think about any more. It's not just you getting stoned. When you get stoned your baby does too, and gets much more damaged by it than you.'

He paused.

'Maybe it was a mistake,' he said. 'Not having an abortion.'

She looked at him.

'Fuck you!'

'Eva…'

'Mum told me. I know exactly what you wanted.'

'What?'

'And you can call her a cheap liar, but I know it's true.'

'What are you talking about?'

'She said you'd deny it.'

'Deny what?'

'That you didn't want me.'

'What?'

'You didn't want me. When you got her pregnant.'

'What did your mother say?'

'That you didn't want me.'

'She's lying.'

'You wanted her to have an abortion…'

'That's a lie…'

'… then you pass judgment on me, no matter how I try. Always judging me.'

'That's not true. That wasn't even considered. I don't know why she told you that, but it's not true. It wasn't an option. We never even mentioned it.'

'She knew you'd say that. She warned me.'

'Warned you? When did she tell you all this?'

'When she knew I was pregnant. She said you wanted to send her for an abortion and she said you'd deny it. She said you'd say everything that you've just said.'

Eva Lind stood up and walked over towards the door.

'She's lying, Eva. Believe me. I don't know why she said that. I know she hates me, but surely not that much. She's manipulating you against me. You must see that. Saying that sort of thing is… is… it's repulsive. You can tell her that.'

'Tell her yourself,' Eva Lind shouted. 'If you dare.'

'It's repulsive to tell you that. Making up a story just to poison our relationship.'

'Actually, I believe her.'

'Eva…'

'Shut up.'

'I'll tell you why it can't be true. Why I could never…'

'I don't believe you!'

'Eva… I had…'

'Shut your gob. I don't believe a word you say.'

'Then you ought to get out of here,' he said.

'Yeah, right,' she provoked him. 'Get rid of me.'

'Get out!'

'You're repulsive!' she shouted, and stormed out.

'Eva!' he called after her, but she was gone.

He neither heard from her nor saw her until his mobile rang when he was standing over the skeleton on the hill two months later.

Erlendur sat in his car, smoking and thinking that he should have reacted differently, swallowed his pride and tracked Eva down when his anger abated. Told her again that her mother was lying, he would never have suggested an abortion. Never could have. And not leave her to send him an SOS. She was simply not mature enough to go through all this, did not realise what she had got herself into and had no sense of her responsibility.

Erlendur feared breaking the news to her when she regained consciousness. If she regained consciousness. For the sake of doing something, he picked up the phone and called Skarphedinn.

'Just show a little patience,' the archaeologist said, 'and stop phoning me all the time. We'll let you know when we've got down to the bones.'

Skarphedinn was acting as though he had taken over the investigation, he became more arrogant by the day.

'When will that be?'

'Difficult to say,' he said, and Erlendur imagined his yellow teeth beneath his beard. 'We'll just have to see. Leave us in peace to get on with the job.'

'You must be able to tell me something. Was it a man? A woman?'

'Patience is the key to every puzzle…'

Erlendur hung up on him. He was lighting another cigarette when the phone rang. It was Jim from the British embassy. Ed and the US embassy had discovered a list with the names of Icelandic employees at the depot and Jim had just received it by fax. He had not found anything himself about Icelandic employees while the British ran the depot. There were nine names on the list and Jim read them to Erlendur over the phone. Erlendur did not recognise any of them and gave Jim the fax number at his office so that he could send it there.

He drove into Vogar and parked, as before, some distance from the basement that he had burst into in search of Eva Lind. He waited, wondering what it was that made men behave the way that this one did towards his wife and child, but the conclusion he reached was the usual one: they were bloody idiots. He couldn't articulate what he wanted to do with that man. Whether he intended anything more than spying on him from his car. He couldn't erase from his mind the memory of the little girl with cigarette burns on her back. The man denied having done anything to the child and the mother backed up his claim, so the authorities could do little else apart from take the child away from them. The man's case was with the Director of Public Prosecutions. Maybe he would be charged. Maybe not.

Erlendur pondered the options available to him. There weren't many, and all of them were bad. If the man had gone back to the flat the night he was looking for Eva Lind and the baby was sitting on the floor with burns on its back, Erlendur would have attacked the sadist. Several days had elapsed since then and he could not attack him out of the blue for what he had done. Could not go straight up and thump him, although that was what he most wanted to do. Erlendur knew he could not talk to him. Men like that laughed at threats. He would laugh in Erlendur's face.

Erlendur didn't see anyone entering or leaving the building for the two hours he sat in his car smoking.

In the end he gave up and drove to the hospital to see his daughter. Tried to forget all this, like so much else he had needed to forget in the past.