He tried to concentrate as he worked his way through the cellar. In an old desk he found some invoices from wholesalers addressed to Knudsen’s shop. They were handwritten and difficult to decipher, but they seemed to involve deliveries of goods. Similar bills were in the desk cupboard and Erlendur’s first impression was that Knudsen had run a grocery. Coffee and sugar were mentioned on the invoices, with figures beside them.
Nothing about work on a chalet far outside Reykjavik where the city’s Millennium Quarter was now being built.
Eventually the urge for a cigarette got the better of Erlendur and he found a door in the cellar that opened onto a beautifully kept garden. The flowers were just beginning to bud after the winter, although Erlendur paid no particular attention to that as he stood hungrily smoking. He quickly finished two cigarettes. The mobile rang in his jacket pocket when he was about to go back to the cellar. It was Elinborg.
“How’s Eva Lind doing?” she asked.
“Still unconscious,” Erlendur said curtly. Did not want any small talk. “Any developments?” he asked.
“I talked to that old chap, Robert. He owned a chalet up by the hill. I’m not quite sure what he was going on about, but he remembered someone roaming around in your bushes.”
“Bushes?”
“By the bones.”
“The redcurrant bushes? Who was it?”
“And then I think he died.”
Erlendur heard Sigurdur Oli giggle in the background.
“The person in the bushes?”
“No, Robert,” Elinborg said. “So we won’t be getting anything more out of him.”
“And who was it? In the bushes?”
“It’s all very unclear,” Elinborg said. “There was someone who often used to go there later. That was really all I got out of him. Then he started to say something. Said ‘green lady’ and then it was all over.”
“Green lady?”
“Yes. Green.”
“Often and later and green,” Erlendur repeated. “Later than what? What did he mean?”
“As I said, it was very disjointed. I think it might have been… I think she was…” Elinborg hesitated.
“Was what?” Erlendur asked.
“Crooked.”
“Crooked?”
“That was the only description he gave of the person. He’d lost the power of speech and he wrote down that one word, ‘crooked’. Then he fell asleep and I think something happened to him because the medical team rushed in to him and…”
Elinborg’s voice faded out. Erlendur mulled over her words for a while.
“So it looks like a lady often used to go to the redcurrant bushes some time later.”
“Perhaps after the war,” Elinborg said.
“Did he remember anyone living in the house?”
“A family,” Elinborg said. “A couple with three children. I couldn’t get any more out of him about that.”
“So people did live around there, by the bushes?”
“It looks that way.”
“And she was crooked. What’s being crooked? How old is Robert?”
“He’s… or was… I don’t know… past 90.”
“Impossible to tell what he means by that word,” Erlendur said as if to himself. “A crooked woman in the redcurrant bushes. Does anyone live in Robert’s chalet? Is it still standing?”
Elinborg told him that she and Sigurdur Oli had talked to the present owners earlier that day, but there had been no mention of any woman. Erlendur told them to go back and ask the owners directly whether any people, specifically a woman, had ever been seen around the area of the redcurrant bushes. Also to try to locate any relatives that Robert may have had to find out whether he’d ever talked about the family on the hill. Erlendur said he would spend a little more time rummaging around in the cellar before going to the hospital to visit his daughter.
He returned to browsing through Benjamin’s things, wondering as he looked around the cellar if it would not take several days to plough through all the junk in there. He squeezed his way back to Benjamin’s desk which as far as he could tell contained only documents and invoices connected with his shop. Erlendur did not remember it, but it was apparently on Hverfisgata.
Two hours later, after drinking coffee with Elsa and smoking a further two cigarettes in the back garden, he reached the grey painted chest on the floor. It was locked but had the key in it. Erlendur had to strain to turn it and open the chest. Inside were more documents and envelopes tied up with an elastic band, but no invoices. A few photographs were mixed in with the letters, some framed and others loose. Erlendur looked at them. He had no idea who the people in the photographs were, but assumed that Benjamin himself was in some. One was of a tall, handsome man who was starting to develop a paunch and was standing outside a shop. The occasion was obvious. A sign was being mounted over the door:KNUDSEN’S SHOP.
Examining more photographs, Erlendur saw the same man. On some of them he was with a younger woman and they smiled at the camera. All the photographs were taken outdoors and always in sunshine.
He put them down, picked up the bundle of envelopes, and discovered they contained love letters from Benjamin to his bride-to-be. Her name was Solveig. Some were merely very brief messages and confessions of love, others more detailed with accounts of everyday incidents. They were all written with great affection for his sweetheart. The letters appeared to be arranged in chronological order and Erlendur read one of them, though somewhat reluctantly. He felt as if he were prying into something sacrosanct, and felt almost ashamed. Like standing up against a window and peeping in.
My sweetheart,
How terribly I miss you, my beloved. I have been thinking of you all day and count the minutes until you come back. Life without you is like a cold winter, so drab and empty. Imagine, you being away for two whole weeks. I honestly do not know how I can stand it.
Yours lovingly
Erlendur put the letter back in its envelope and took out another from further down the pile, which was a detailed account of the prospective merchant’s intention to open a shop on Hverfisgata. He had big plans for the future. Had read that in big cities in America there were huge stores selling all kinds of merchandise, clothes as well as food, where people chose off the shelves what they wanted to buy. Then put it in trolleys that they pushed around the shop floor.
He went to the hospital towards evening, intending to sit by Eva Lind’s side. First he phoned Skarphedinn, who said that the excavation was making good progress, but refused to predict when they would get down to the bones. They had still not found anything in the soil to indicate the cause of the Millennium Man’s death.
Erlendur also phoned Eva Lind’s doctor before setting off, and was told that her condition was unchanged. When he arrived at intensive care he saw a woman wearing a brown coat, sitting by his daughter’s bedside, and he was almost inside the room when he realised who it was. He tensed up, stopped in his tracks and slowly backed through the door until he was out in the corridor, looking at his ex-wife from a distance.
She had her back to him, but he knew it was her. A woman of his age, sitting and stooping, plump in a bright purple jogging suit under her brown coat, putting a handkerchief to her nose and talking to Eva Lind in a low voice. What she was saying, he couldn’t hear. He noticed she had dyed her hair, but apparently quite some time ago because a white strip was visible at the roots where she parted it. He worked out how old she must be now. Three years older than he was.