She paused.
“I’m not trying to justify what he did to us and the way he treated us,” she said. “There’s no justification for that. But I wanted to know who he was.”
She stopped again.
“And your mother?” Erlendur asked, though he sensed that Mikkelina intended to tell him everything she considered important and would go about it her own way. He did not want to put pressure on her. She had to tell the story at her own pace.
“She was unlucky,” Mikkelina said forthrightly, as if this was the only sensible conclusion to draw. “She was unlucky to end up with that man. It’s as simple as that. She had no family, but by and large she had a decent upbringing in Reykjavik and was a maid in a respectable household when she met him. I haven’t managed to find out who her parents were. If it ever was written down, the papers are lost.”
Mikkelina looked at Erlendur.
“But she found true love before it was too late. He entered her life at the right moment, I think.”
“Who? Who entered her life?”
“And Simon. My brother. We didn’t realise how he felt. The strain he was under for all those years. I felt the treatment that my stepfather dished out to my mother and I suffered for her, but I was tougher than Simon. Poor, poor Simon. And then Tomas. There was too much of his father in him. Too much hatred.”
“Sorry, you’ve lost me. Who entered your mother’s life?”
“He was from New York. An American. From Brooklyn.”
Erlendur nodded.
“Mum needed love, some kind of love, admiration, recognition that she existed, that she was a human being. Dave restored her self-respect, made her human again. We always used to wonder why he spent so much time with Mum. What he saw in her when no one else would even look at her apart from my stepfather, and then only to beat her up. Then he told Mum why he wanted to help her. He said he sensed it the moment he saw her the first time he brought over some trout; he used to go fishing in Reynisvatn. He recognised all the signs of domestic violence. He could see it in her eyes, in her face, her movements. In an instant he knew her entire history.”
Mikkelina paused and looked across the hill to the bushes.
“Dave was familiar with it. He was brought up with it just like Simon, Tomas and me. His father was never charged and never sentenced, and never punished for beating his wife until her dying day. They lived in awful poverty, she contracted TB and died. His father beat her up just before she passed away. Dave was a teenager then, but he was no match for his father. He left home the day of his mother’s death and never went back. Joined the army a few years later. Before the war broke out. They sent him to Reykjavik during the war, up here where he walked inside a shack and saw his mother’s face again.”
They sat in silence.
“By then he was big enough to do something about it,” Mikkelina said.
A car drove slowly past them and stopped by the foundations of the house. The driver stepped out and looked around towards the redcurrant bushes.
“Simon’s come to fetch me,” Mikkelina said. “It’s late. Do you mind if we continue tomorrow? You can call on me at home if you want.”
She opened the car door and called out to the man, who turned round.
“Do you know who’s buried there?” Erlendur asked.
“Tomorrow,” Mikkelina said. “We’ll talk tomorrow. There’s no rush,” she said. “No rush about anything.”
The man had walked over to the car by now to help Mikkelina.
“Thank you, Simon,” she said and got out of the car. Erlendur stretched over the seat to take a better look at him. Then he opened his door and got out.
“That can’t be Simon,” he said to Mikkelina, looking at the man who was supporting her. He could not have been older than 35.
“What?” Mikkelina said.
“Wasn’t Simon your brother?” Erlendur asked, looking at the man.
“Yes,” Mikkelina said, then seemed to understand Erlendur’s bewilderment. “Oh, he’s not that Simon,” she said with a smile. “This is my son, whom I named after him.”
24
The next morning Erlendur held a meeting with Elinborg and Sigurdur Oli at his office, told them about Mikkelina and what she had said, and that he would meet her again later that day. He was certain she would tell him who was buried on the hill, who had put him there and why. Then the bones would be excavated towards evening.
“Why didn’t you get it out of her yesterday?” asked Sigurdur Oli, who had woken replenished after a quiet evening with Bergthora. They had discussed the future, including children, and agreed about the best arrangement for everything; likewise the trip to Paris and the sports car they would rent.
“Then we can stop this fucking around,” he added. “I’m fed up with these bones. Fed up with Benjamin’s cellar. Fed up with the two of you.”
“I want to go with you to see her,” Elinborg said. “Do you think she’s the handicapped girl Ed saw in the house when he arrested that man?”
“It’s highly likely. She had two half-brothers, Simon and Tomas. That fits with the two boys he saw. And there was an American soldier by the name of Dave, who helped them in some way. I’ll talk to Ed about him. I don’t have his surname.
“I thought a soft approach was the right way to handle her, she’ll tell us what we need to know. There’s no point in rushing this matter.”
He looked at Sigurdur Oli.
“Have you finished in Benjamin’s cellar?”
“Yes, finished it yesterday. Didn’t find a thing.”
“Can you rule out that it’s his fiancee buried up there?”
“Yes, I think so. She threw herself in the sea.”
“Is there any way to confirm the rape?” Elinborg wondered.
“I think the confirmation’s on the bottom of the sea,” Sigurdur Oli said.
“How did they put it, a summer trip to Fljot?” Erlendur asked.
“A real countryside romance,” Sigurdur Oli said with a smile.
“Arsehole!” Erlendur said.
Ed welcomed Erlendur and Elinborg at the front door and showed them into the sitting room. The table was covered with documents relating to the depot. There were faxes and photocopies on the floor and open diaries and books spread all over the room. Erlendur had the feeling he had conducted a major investigation. Ed flicked through a pile of papers on the table.
“Somewhere here I have a list of the Icelanders who worked at the depot,” he said. “The embassy found it.”
“We’ve located one of the tenants frorn the house you went to,” Erlendur said. “I think she’s the handicapped girl you were talking about.”
“Good,” Ed said, engrossed in his search. “Good. Here it is.”
He gave Erlendur a handwritten list of the names of nine Icelanders who worked at the depot. Erlendur recognised the list. Jim had read it out to him over the phone and was going to send him a copy. Erlendur remembered he had forgotten to ask Mikkelina her stepfather’s name.
“I found out who blew the whistle,” Ed said. “Informed on the thieves. My old colleague from the military police in Reykjavik lives in Minneapolis now. We’ve stayed in touch off and on so I phoned him. He remembered the matter, phoned someone else and found the name of the informant.”