‘You say we,’ said Thóra. ‘Who do you mean?’
‘Oh, yes, of course,’ Dís replied. ‘I mean myself and Agúst, my partner in the clinic. He’s a plastic surgeon too, and Alda worked with both of us.’
‘I understand,’ said Thóra. ‘But when you saw this morning that it was a murder investigation - did anyone come to mind as the culprit?’
Dís’s cheeks reddened slightly and she muttered a negative, before enquiring: ‘A thief, maybe?’
‘Well, I don’t know about that,’ Thóra replied. ‘Would anything in Alda’s house have been particularly attractive to thieves?’
‘No, nothing I can think of,’ said Dís. ‘But are burglars that picky? I suppose Alda had everything one might imagine a petty thief would steal - television, stereo equipment, some jewellery. Maybe these things weren’t top of the range, but I would imagine anyone poor enough to take others’ property isn’t very fussy.’
‘That’s true,’ conceded Thóra. ‘But they’re also not usually into killing people and making it look like suicide.’
‘No, I don’t imagine they are,’ said Dis. ‘It’s just that Alda had no enemies I’m aware of, so that was the only thing I could come up with.’
‘No ex-husbands or boyfriends who had been bothering or harassing her?’ asked Thóra.
‘Nothing like that,’ the woman replied. ‘Not to my knowledge. As a matter of fact she was divorced, but as far as I gathered the divorce was amicable, and they hadn’t had any recent contact. As far as boyfriends were concerned, she kept that to herself, if there were any. She never spoke to me about men.’
Thóra found it incredible that the woman hadn’t been in any relationships. The autopsy report stated that she had had breast implants, signs of a face-lift, Botox in her forehead and scars where the bags under her eyes had been removed, along with evidence of stomach stapling and several other minor operations. Why would she undergo such ordeals if not to attract a man’s attention? ‘Could she have been in relationships that she chose not to talk about?’ she asked.
‘Yes, yes,’ replied Dis, and her cheeks flushed again. ‘That’s quite likely. Alda didn’t confide in people much, although she was always pleasant and friendly.’
‘Did she ever mention why she never went to the Westmann Islands, or talk about a bad experience she’d had around the time of the eruption there?’ Considering that Dis had described Alda as the shy, retiring type, Thóra didn’t expect much of an answer to this question.
‘She never talked about the Westmann Islands,’ said Dis. ‘She tended to change the subject if conversation ever turned to anything about the Islands, which wasn’t often.’ She looked curiously at Thóra. ‘What experience are you referring to?’ she asked. ‘Alda never mentioned anything.’
Thóra chose not to answer the doctor’s question, since she didn’t know what had happened. She smiled at the woman and simply said ‘Botox,’ then waited for Dis’s reaction. She clearly couldn’t expect any useful theories on Alda’s murder or insight into her life, so she might as well change the subject.
Thóra didn’t have to wait long for Dis’s reaction, though it was somewhat baffling. The woman leaned back in her chair and said nothing for a moment. She looked straight at Thóra, who would have given a lot to know what she was thinking. ‘What about Botox? Are you thinking of getting some injections?’ She pulled out a pen. ‘If so, you need to make an appointment like everyone else.’
Thóra smiled fiercely, so all the possible wrinkles in her face would show themselves. ‘No, actually I’m not,’ she said. ‘Not right now, anyway. The forensic pathologist’s tests revealed that Botox is one of the likeliest causes of Alda’s death.’
‘What?’ muttered Dis, not completely convincingly in Thóra’s opinion. ‘How could that be? Botox isn’t life-threatening.’
‘Not in the forehead,’ said Thóra. ‘I can’t tell you what the report said, other than that the Botox was used in a very unconventional manner.’ She could see that the doctor was almost biting her tongue with the effort not to blurt out questions. ‘Could Alda possibly have had Botox at home?’ she asked, before Dis’s curiosity could get the better of her.
‘What, Alda?’ asked Dis. Thóra said nothing, allowing Dis to realize the stupidity of her question. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Alda didn’t have any Botox, to my knowledge. Of course she had access to it here, but we keep close track of all our supplies and it’s out of the question that she took drugs from this clinic. We’re particularly careful about all our work here and would never have let her take the substance for her own use. Where else she could have got it from, I couldn’t say. The A&E doesn’t keep a supply of it, I know that much.’
‘Where do you get the Botox you use in this office?’ asked Thóra.
‘We order it through the pharmacy that supplies us,’ replied
Dis. ‘We have a good deal there and get a decent enough Discount to allow us not to have to contract with wholesalers. Of course we buy far more goods and drugs than just Botox.’
‘Who was the clinic’s point of contact with the pharmacy?’ asked Thóra.
Dis looked at her. ‘I was. Agúst a couple of times.’ She pressed her lips together. ‘Alda never had anything to do with it,’ she added.
‘You realize that if Alda didn’t have Botox in her house, then whoever murdered her took it there?’ said Thóra. She allowed Dis to digest this for a moment before continuing. ‘There aren’t that many people with access -to those kind of supplies. Certainly not my client.’
Dis’s foundation partially masked the blush that was spreading over her cheeks again, but it didn’t escape Thóra’s notice. ‘I should admit now that I haven’t taken an inventory since the end of last month. It may well be that there’s something missing from the drug cabinet, but if there is it would be the first time.’ She cleared her throat daintily. ‘Neither Agúst nor I had any reason to wish Alda harm. On the contrary, her death was a great blow to us. That’s no secret.’
The woman appeared to be sincere. ‘No doubt the police will be in touch with you,’ said Thóra. ‘The results of the drug test have just come back, and I expect they have had more urgent matters to attend to in the light of this. But they will be here sooner or later. They’ll go over the inventory with you, which may clear a few things up.’
‘The police?’ repeated Dís. ‘Yes, of course. I gave a statement after I found the body. They thought it was suicide at the time, and didn’t really ask me anything.’ She shook her head. ‘Of all the crazy things.’ She closed her eyes and shuddered slightly. ‘It’s unbelievable how self-centred one can be. When you said that, my first thought was how embarrassing it would be to have the police stampeding through here.’ She looked away. ‘Of course that doesn’t matter. We have nothing to hide and hopefully that will be proven as quickly as possible.’
Thóra saw Dís glance at a little clock on her desk. Her time would soon be up. ‘Until recently I’ve heard only good things about Alda, from her childhood friends, her sister, and others. Then I spoke to a woman who worked with her in the A&E and I started to see a different picture emerging. She didn’t actually say anything bad about Alda, but she did suggest that something had happened, although I couldn’t find out exactly what it was. Do you know what might have happened to make Alda resign?’
Dís shook her head. ‘No, I’m afraid not,’ she said. ‘I thought she didn’t want to talk about it, but that she might open up later. Now she’ll never have the chance. It’s easy to be wise in hindsight.’ She shrugged unhappily. ‘I’ve thought a lot about this and can’t say I’ve reached any conclusions. Plenty of wild theories, of course, but nothing more.’
Thóra had the feeling there was more behind this comment. ‘And do you find one theory more plausible than the rest?’
Dis bit her lip. ‘I don’t know if I should tell you this.’ She stared at Thóra, who could do little more than look back at her and wait. ‘I found an unbelievable amount of porno
graphy on Alda’s computer. I was mortified. She didn’t strike me as that type — generally it’s men who get obsessed with it.’ She took a deep breath. ‘After I Discovered it I started putting two and two together and wondered if she’d had a sexual relationship with someone in the A&E, a doctor or one of the staff. These things do happen.’
‘Would that be reason enough for her job to have been at risk?’ asked Thóra, half wondering if it could have been her ex-husband. ‘Are workplace romances prohibited at the hospital?’
‘No,’ Dís replied. ‘I don’t think so. Something like that might be kept under wraps, but it’s hardly forbidden. Anyway, the material on her computer could hardly be described as romantic. This was hardcore pornography, plain and simple. It crossed my mind that Alda might have had sex with someone on the hospital premises, which would be taken very seriously.’
Obviously Thóra would have to phone Hannes again. He wouldn’t have missed any gossip that followed in the wake of something like this. ‘You don’t have any idea about the person with whom such a thing might have happened? A doctor, or even a patient?’
‘No, I have no idea, this is all just guesswork,’ said Dís. ‘The only reason it occurred to me at all is that I also found emails between Alda and a sex therapist on her computer. It crossed my mind that she might have sought their help after her obsession got her into trouble.’
‘Did the email mention anything like that?’ said Thóra.
‘No, they were just confirmations of appointments, whether Alda could make it on this or that particular day and so forth.’
‘Do you remember the name of the therapist, by any chance?’ Yet another person Thóra would need to speak to.
Dís nodded. ‘Yes, she’s called Heida. I don’t remember her surname, but there can’t be many sex therapists with that name working in Reykjavik.’
‘Did Alda ever speak to you about a tattoo?’ Thóra asked as she wrote down the name. ‘She had wanted to tell her sister something, and it had to do with a tattoo, all a bit mysterious.’
‘A tattoo?’ asked Dís, looking puzzled. Then her face brightened. ‘Actually, yes,’ she said. ‘Recently a young man came in who wanted to know if we could remove one, and I remember that Alda was particularly interested. She spoke to him for a long time, asking where he’d had it done, and it almost seemed as if she was thinking of getting one herself. But she just laughed when I asked her about it. Then she mentioned it to me and our secretary Kata over coffee, asking if we thought people ever got a tattoo in memory of a bad experience. We didn’t know what she was on about.’ Dís reached for one of her desk drawers. ‘Since you’re here, I may as well show you this,’ she said, pulling out several pages that were stapled together, as well as a single sheet. ‘I found these papers among the stuff in Alda’s desk after she died. One of the pages is actually a photocopy of a photograph, and it looks to me as though it’s of a tattoo.’ She handed Thóra the single sheet.
‘Does it say “Love Sex” in English?’ asked Thóra, reading from the picture. The image was grainy, and hazy from the photocopier, but the tattoo could be seen quite clearly.
‘Don’t ask me,’ Dís said, peering at the page disdainfully. ‘This isn’t the tattoo the boy wanted to have removed. That was a Chinese word, as I recall. So I don’t have any idea who this came from or why Alda liked it so much. Maybe this man has the tattoo - his photograph was also in her desk drawer. I don’t recognize him at all. Is he your client?’
Thóra took the photo, but didn’t recognize the young man in it. Although he looked severe, he was very handsome. ‘No, I don’t know who this is.’ She handed the photograph back to Dís.
Dís took it and handed Thóra the stapled pages. ‘And then there’s this. Who knows, it might be important. At the time I found it I still believed Alda had killed herself, and even thought that this might have been something to do with it.’ She looked at Thóra. ‘It was so strange — Alda was unusually happy the day before all this happened. That didn’t seem to fit in with the idea of suicide, and I’ve been racking my brain trying to understand. Now that it turns out to have been murder, these papers might be irrelevant. I’d be happy for you to look at them, since I have no idea what to do with them.’
‘What are they?’ asked Thóra, looking down at the pages.
‘It’s an autopsy report on an older woman who died six months ago,’ replied Dís. ‘I’ve never heard of her, so I don’t know how she’s connected to Alda. I thought she might be a close relative and her death might have sent Alda over the edge.’
Thóra looked at the top page and read the name of the deceased. Valgerdur Bjolfsdottir. She had recently come across this name. But where? ‘May I take a copy of this?’ she asked.
Chapter Twenty
Friday 20 July2007
Thóra found the woman’s name as soon as she returned to her office. She typed the name into an Internet search engine, and a link came up to a website about the houses that had disappeared in the Westmann Islands eruption, the same site Thóra had looked at out on the Islands. There she found the name on the autopsy report that Alda had kept in her drawer. Thóra read her biography on the site: she had lived with her husband, Dadi Karlsson, in the house next to Markus’s childhood home. Thóra read through the whole page about this couple, but all she found out was that Valgerdur Bjolfsdottir had worked as a nurse at a hospital in the Westmann Islands, and her husband had been the captain of a fishing boat. Neither of them had moved back to the Islands after the disaster, and Thóra could see no particular connection to Alda other than their nursing careers. Perhaps Alda had looked up to this woman so much that she had decided to study nursing, but it could just have been a coincidence. At that time it was less common for young women to educate themselves in different fields, but nursing was very popular. The couple appeared to have been childless - at least there were no children accounted for on the website. This meant that Alda could not be connected to Valgerdur as a friend of her daughter. Clearly Thóra wasn’t going to find an answer on the Internet, so she decided to call Leifur and ask him about the couple.
When she’d spoken to him after the detention ruling Leifur had repeated that he wanted to help, and she had promised to let him know if he could assist her in any way.
Leifur answered on the second ring. Thóra allowed him to ask her all about the appeal to the High Court before she turned to the task at hand and asked about their ex-neighbours. His reply surprised her: ‘Ugh, those old bores.’ He heaved a sigh. ‘Why are you asking about them?’
‘Valgerdur’s name came up in connection with Alda and I’m trying to find out what they had to do with each other. Were they related, perhaps?’ she asked.
‘Not that I know of,’ he replied. ‘They were our neighbours, but I don’t know much about them. Valgerdur was from out of town and I don’t know how she met Dadi, but he was from here. They stayed on the mainland after the evacuation, so I don’t know how you can track them down if that’s what you’re after.’
‘Actually, she’s dead,’ said Thóra. ‘But I don’t know about him. As a matter of fact I didn’t call to try to get in touch with him, but I was wondering whether there had been any contact between Alda and this Valgerdur. What crossed my mind first was that they were related, but maybe it was something entirely different.’
‘I don’t know whether there was much contact between the two households,’ said Leifur. ‘Valgerdur was no particular friend of Alda’s mother, as I recall, nor were the husbands friends. That pair were so tedious that I can’t imagine any sane man seeking out their company willingly. Dadi was never called anything other than Dadi Horseshoe — with good reason. Picture one upside down on his face. And Valgerdur was nicknamed Horseshoe Two after she entered the picture.’
‘I see,’ said Thóra, baffled. ‘I was thinking Alda might have become a nurse to follow in Valgerdur’s footsteps, but that seems unlikely in the light of what you’re saying.’
‘Valgerdur was a sch
ool nurse among other things, and I doubt she aroused any great passion for the job in any of the students. She was famous for refusing to send kids home; they actually had to faint right in front of her or puke on the floor to be considered sick. If Alda did know her, I very much doubt she would have been the inspiration for her future career.’
This didn’t help explain Alda’s interest in the woman’s death. ‘There’s one more thing you might be able to help me with,’ said Thóra. ‘It’s to do with some files I’m having trouble getting hold of.’ She wished she didn’t have to ask Leifur for help. ‘I’ve been trying to see a copy of the log of objects removed from the excavated houses.’
‘And who has those records?’ asked Leifur briskly, sounding confident that he would be able to get hold of them.
‘The archaeologist in charge of the excavations is named Hjortur Fridriksson,’ she replied. ‘He was going to see if he could get them for me, but I haven’t heard from him since.’
‘I’ll take care of it,’ said Leifur, and Thóra had no doubt that he would.
However, she was no closer to a connection between Alda and Valgerdur. She went through the autopsy report Dís had copied for her, but understood almost none of it, other than that Valgerdur had been admitted to the hospital in Isafjördur with a severe streptococcus infection and had been given antibiotics intravenously, causing a bad allergic reaction which had led to her death the very same night. Alda had neither marked the text nor made notes in the margins, making it difficult to see what had sparked her interest in the death of this woman.
Once again Hannes came to Thóra’s mind. He might be able to see something in this that she couldn’t. She knew she would have to seek out his help sooner or later, although she would have preferred it to be later. It would have to wait until evening, though, as Hannes didn’t take his mobile to work and she didn’t feel like having him paged just to listen to him complain that she’d called him out of an operation.
Ashes to Dust Page 20
