“You don’t remember their names, do you?” Elinborg asked. “They’re not in your diary?”
“No, but you ought to have a report on it. Because of the theft. And he worked in the depot. There are bound to be lists of the employees, of Icelandic workers in the camp on the hill. But maybe it’s too long ago.”
“What about the soldiers?” Erlendur asked. “The ones your courts sentenced.”
“They spent time in military prison. Stealing supplies was a very serious crime. Then they were sent to the front. A death sentence of sorts.”
“And you caught them all.”
“Who knows? But the thieving stopped. The inventories returned to normal. The matter was resolved.”
“So you don’t think any of this is connected with the bones we found?”
“I couldn’t say.”
“You don’t recall anyone who went missing from your ranks, or the British?”
“You mean a deserter?”
“No. An unexplained disappearance. Because of the skeleton. If you know who it might be. Maybe an American soldier from the depot?”
“I simply don’t have a clue. Not a clue.”
They talked to Ed for a good while longer. He gave the impression that he enjoyed talking to them. Seemed to enjoy reminiscing about the old days, armed with his precious diary, and soon they were discussing the war years in Iceland and the impact of the military presence, until Erlendur came to his senses. Mustn’t waste time like that. He stood up, and so did Elinborg, and they both thanked him warmly.
Ed stood up to show them out.
“How did you discover the theft?” Erlendur asked at the door.
“Discover it?” Ed repeated.
“What was your lead?”
“Oh, I see. A phone call. Someone phoned the police headquarters and reported a sizeable theft from the depot.”
“Who blew the whistle?”
“We never found out, I’m afraid. Never knew who it was.”
Simon stood by his mother’s side and watched, dumbfounded, when the soldier spun round with a mixture of astonishment and rage, walked directly across the kitchen and slapped Grimur around the face so hard that he knocked him to the floor.
The three other soldiers stood motionless in the doorway while Grimur’s assailant stood over him and shouted at him something the Icelanders did not understand. Simon could not believe his eyes. He looked at Tomas, transfixed on what was happening, and then at Mikkelina, who stared in horror at Grimur lying on the floor. He looked over at their mother and saw tears in her eyes.
Grimur was off his guard. When they heard two jeeps pull up outside the house the mother had hurried into the passage so that no one would see her. The sight of her with her black eye and burst lip. Grimur had not even stood up from the table, as if he had no worries that what he was doing with the pilferers from the depot would ever be discovered. He was expecting his soldier friends with a batch of merchandise that they planned to store in the house and that evening they were going into town to sell some of the booty. Grimur had plenty of money and had started talking about moving away from the hill, buying a flat, and even talked of buying a car, but only when he was in particularly high spirits.
The soldiers led Grimur out. Put him in one of the jeeps and drove him away. Their leader, the one who knocked Grimur to the floor without the slightest effort — who just walked up to him and hit him as if he did not know how strong Grimur was — said something to their mother and then said goodbye, not with a salute, but with a handshake, and got into the other jeep.
Silence soon returned to the little house. Their mother remained standing in the passage as if the intrusion was beyond her comprehension. She stroked her eye gingerly, fixated on something only she could see. They had never seen Grimur lying on the floor. They had never seen him knocked flat. Never heard anyone shout at him. Never seen him so helpless. They could not fathom what had happened. How it could happen. Why Grimur did not attack the soldiers and beat them to pulp. The children looked at each other. Inside the house, the silence was stifling. They looked at their mother as a strange noise was heard. It came from Mikkelina. She was squatting on her bed and they heard the noise again, and saw that she was beginning to giggle, and the giggling built up into a snigger which she tried to repress at first, but could not, and she erupted into laughter. Simon smiled and started laughing too, and Tomas followed suit, and before long all three were howling with uncontrollable spasms that echoed around the house and carried out onto the hill in the fine spring weather.
Two hours later a military truck pulled up and emptied the house of all the booty that Grimur and his colleagues had stashed indoors. The boys watched the truck drive away, and they ran over the hill and saw it go back to the depot where it was unloaded.
Simon did not know exactly what had happened and he was not sure that his mother did either, but Grimur had received a prison sentence and would not come home for the next few months. At first life continued as normal on the hill. They didn’t seem to take in that Grimur was no longer around. At least, not for the time being. Their mother went about her chores as she always had, and had no qualms about using Grimur’s ill-gotten gains to provide for herself and her children. Later she found herself a job on the Gufunes farm, about half an hour’s walk from the house.
Weather permitting, the boys carried Mikkelina out into the sunshine. Sometimes they took her along when they went fishing in Reynisvatn. If they caught enough trout their mother would fry it in a pan and make a delicious meal. Gradually they were liberated from the grip that Grimur still exerted over them even while he was away. It was easier to wake up in the mornings, the day rushed past care free, and the evenings passed in an unfamiliar calm which was so comfortable that they stayed up well into the night, talking and playing, until they couldn’t keep their eyes open.
Grimur’s absence, however, had the greatest effect on their mother. One day, when she had finally realised that he would not be coming back in the immediate future, she washed every inch of their double bed. She aired the mattresses in the yard and beat the dust and dirt out of them. Then she took out the quilts and beat them too, changed the bed linen, bathed her children in turn with green soap and hot water from a big tub that she put on the kitchen floor, and ended by carefully washing her own hair and her face — which still bore the marks from Grimur’s last assault — and her whole body. Hesitantly she picked up a mirror and looked into it. She stroked her eye and lip. She had grown thinner and her expression was tougher, her teeth protruding a little, her eyes sunk deep and her nose, which had been broken once, had an almost imperceptible curve.
Towards midnight she took all her children into her bed and the four of them slept there together. After that the children slept in the big bed with their mother, Mikkelina by herself on her right and the two boys on her left, happy.
She never visited Grimur in prison. They never mentioned his name all the time he was away.
One morning, shortly after Grimur had been led away, Dave the soldier strolled over the hill with his fishing rod, walked past their house and winked at Simon, who was standing in front of the house, and continued all the way to Hafravatn. Simon set off in pursuit, lying down at a suitable distance to spy on him. Dave spent the day by the lake, relaxed as ever, without apparently minding whether he caught any fish or not. He landed three.
When evening set in he went back up the hill and stopped by their house with his three fish tied together by their tails with a piece of string. Dave was unsure of himself, or so it appeared to Simon, who had run back home to watch him through the kitchen window, where he made sure that Dave could not see him. At last the soldier made up his mind, walked over to the house and knocked on the door.