Silence of the Grave - By Arnaldur Indridason Page 0,1

realise that he was holding a human bone – a rib, ten centimetres long. It was off white in colour and worn smooth where it had broken so the edges were no longer sharp, and inside the break were brown blotches, like dirt.

He guessed that it was the front of the rib and saw that it was quite old.

When the mother heard the baby crying, she looked into the sitting room and saw her standing at the sofa beside the stranger. She put down the bowl of popcorn, went over to her daughter, picked her up and looked at the man, who seemed oblivious both to her and to the screaming baby.

"What happened?" the mother asked anxiously as she tried to comfort her child. She raised her voice in an effort to shout over the noisy boys.

The man looked up, got slowly to his feet and handed the mother the bone.

"Where did she get this?" he asked.

"What?" she said.

"This bone," he said. "Where did she get this bone?"

"Bone?" the mother said. When the girl saw the bone again she calmed down and made a grab for it, crosseyed with concentration, more drool dangling from her gaping mouth. The baby snatched the bone and examined it in her hands.

"I think that's a bone," the man said.

The baby put it in her mouth and calmed down again.

"The thing she's gnawing," he said. "I think it's a human bone."

The mother looked at her baby chomping on the bone.

"I've never seen it before. What do you mean, a human bone?"

"I think it's part of a human rib," he said. "I'm a medical student," he added by way of explanation, "in my fifth year."

"Rubbish! Did you bring it with you?"

"Me? No. Do you know where it came from?" he asked.

The mother looked at her baby, then jerked the bone out of its mouth and threw it on the floor. Once again, the baby broke into a wail. The man picked up the bone to examine it more closely.

"Her brother might know . . ."

He looked at the mother, who looked back awkwardly. She looked at her crying daughter. Then at the bone, and then through the sitting-room window at the half-built houses all around, then back at the bone and the stranger, and finally at her son, who came running in from one of the children's bedrooms.

"Tóti!" she called out. The boy ignored her. She waded into the crowd of children, pulled her son out with considerable difficulty and stood him in front of the medical student.

"Is this yours?" he asked the boy, handing him the bone.

"I found it," Tóti said. He didn't want to miss any of his birthday party.

"Where?" his mother asked. She put the baby down on the floor and it stared up at her, uncertain whether to begin howling again.

"Outside," the boy said. "It's a funny stone. I washed it." He was panting for breath. A drop of sweat trickled down his cheek.

"Outside where?" his mother asked. "When? What were you doing?"

The boy looked at his mother. He did not know whether he'd done anything wrong, but the look on her face suggested as much, and he wondered what it could be.

"Yesterday, I think," he said. "In the foundations at the end of the road. What's up?"

His mother and the stranger looked each other in the eye.

"Could you show me exactly where you found it?" she asked.

"Do I have to? It's my birthday party," he said.

"Yes," his mother said. "Show us."

She snatched up her baby from the floor and pushed her son out of the room in the direction of the front door. The man followed close behind. The children fell silent when their host was grounded and they watched his mother push Tóti out of the house with a stern look on her face, holding his little sister on her arm. They looked at each other, then set off after them.

This was in the new estate by the road up to Lake Reynisvatn. The Millennium Quarter. It was built on the slopes of Grafarholt hill, on top of which the monstrous brown-painted geothermal water tanks towered like a citadel over the suburb. Roads had been cleared up the slope on either side of the tanks and a succession of houses was being built along them, the occasional one already sporting a garden, freshly laid turf and saplings that would eventually grow and provide shade for their owners.

The throng set off in hot pursuit behind Tóti along the uppermost street next