His mother smiled.
Tomas had always been mysterious, reticent, a loner, a little nervous and shy, the silent type. The previous winter Grimur seemed to notice something in him that aroused his interest more than in Simon. He would pay attention to Tomas and take him into another room. When Simon asked his brother what they had talked about Tomas said nothing, but Simon insisted and wheedled out of him that they had been talking about Mikkelina.
“What was he saying to you about Mikkelina?” Simon asked.
“Nothing,” Tomas said.
“Yes he was, what?” Simon said.
“Nothing,” Tomas said with an embarrassed look, as if he was trying to conceal something from his brother.
“Tell me.”
“I don’t want to. I don’t want him to talk to me. I don’t want him to.”
“You don’t want him to talk to you? So you mean you don’t want him to say the things he says? Is that what you mean?”
“I don’t want anything, that’s all,” Tomas said. “And you stop talking to me too.”
The weeks and months passed by and Grimur displayed his favour for his younger son in various ways. Although Simon was never party to their conversations, he found out what they were doing one evening towards the end of the summer. Grimur was getting ready to take some goods from the depot into Reykjavik. He was waiting for a soldier named Mike who was going to help him. Mike had a jeep at his disposal and they planned to fill it with goods to sell in town. The children’s mother was cooking the food, which was from the depot as well. Mikkelina was lying in her bed.
Simon noticed Grimur pushing Tomas towards Mikkelina, whispering in his ear and smiling the way he did when he made snide remarks at the boys. Their mother noticed nothing and Simon had no real idea what was going on until Tomas went up to Mikkelina, urged on by Grimur, and said:
“Bitch.”
Then he went back to Grimur, who laughed and patted him on the head.
Simon looked over to the sink where his mother was standing. Although she could not have helped overhearing, she did not move and showed no reaction at first, as if trying to ignore it. Except that he saw she was holding a knife in one hand, peeling potatoes, and her knuckles whitened as she gripped the handle. Then she turned slowly with the knife in her hand and stared at Grimur.
“That’s one thing you shall never do,” she said in a quavering voice.
Grimur looked at her and the grin froze on his face.
“Me?” Grimur said. “What do you mean, never do? I didn’t do anything. It was the lad. It was my boy Tomas.”
Their mother moved a step closer to Grimur, still wielding the knife.
“Leave Tomas alone.”
Grimur stood up.
“Are you going to do anything with that knife?”
“Don’t do that to him,” she said, and Simon sensed she was beginning to back down. He heard a jeep outside the house.
“He’s here,” Simon shouted. “Mike’s here.”
Grimur looked out of the kitchen window then back at their mother, and the tension eased for a moment. She put down the knife. Mike appeared in the doorway. Grimur smiled.
When he got back that night he beat their mother senseless. The next morning she had a black eye and a limp. They heard the grunts when Grimur was pummelling her. Tomas crawled into Simon’s bed and looked at his brother through the darkness of night, in shock, continually muttering to himself as if that could erase what had happened.
“…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.”