Ashes to Dust

by Yrsa Sigurdardottir

  ‘So she just died?’ exclaimed Thóra. ‘Can’t something be done in these cases?’

  ‘She suffocated when her trachea swelled shut,’ said Hannes casually, as if he were describing a runny nose. ‘Usually it’s possible to intervene but it proved impossible in this case, maybe because she was so ill before it happened. I don’t know the circumstances.’

  ‘How does one get hold of an autopsy report for an acquaintance, rather than a relative?’ she asked.

  ‘What? Don’t ask me, I don’t spend my time wondering about things like that. I wouldn’t have thought it was possible, though. Only people with personal ties to an individual can get copies of the reports. You can’t just phone up and have it sent to you.’

  ‘One last thing - why isn’t there a universal database with information on allergies?’ asked Thóra.

  ‘That would be a great idea and it’s been discussed, but it hasn’t become a reality yet,’ said Hannes. He was quick to turn to another, more important matter. ‘Are you at home? Can I come and get the golf clubs?’

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Saturday 21 July2007

  Thóra and Bella were standing on the porch of a little wooden house that had seen better days. It was covered by sheets of corrugated iron that were rusting badly. The windows could have done with a clean, and the riot of chickweed in the garden beat Thóra’s jungle hands down. ‘Do you want me to do the talking?’ asked Bella, who had been wildly keen on making this visit, while Thóra dreaded it with all her heart. The house belonged to Alda’s mother, and Thóra knew it would go down badly when she introduced herself as the lawyer of the man who was suspected of murdering the woman’s daughter. It was just a question of how badly.

  ‘No,’ replied Thóra indignantly, wondering if she’d been right to make Bella come along. She had wanted her there as support if it all went wrong and the woman lost control, or even assaulted Thóra. She wasn’t afraid of a woman in her seventies, but she would rather avoid trouble and had thought Bella’s strapping build would have a calming effect. ‘I’ll do it. Just try to look sympathetic. This woman is suffering.’

  They heard footsteps approaching and exchanged a glance before turning back to the door. It was Jóhanna, Alda’s sister, who opened it, and she looked surprised to see them. ‘Hello,’ she said uncertainly, looking furtively behind her.

  ‘Who is it?’ came a shout from inside the house. The voice sounded like an old woman’s.

  ‘Just some women I know,’ called Jóhanna.

  ‘Was that your mother?’ asked Thóra, stopping short of standing on tiptoe and peeking over Jóhanna’s shoulder. ‘I came here hoping for a quick chat with her.’

  ‘It wasn’t a good idea to come here,’ she said. ‘Mother won’t want to talk to you. She’s still absolutely devastated and as long as Markus is a suspect, you’re the enemy. I tried to tell her what you told me, that he was innocent, but she didn’t want to hear it.’

  ‘What women?’ came another shout from inside the house, closer this time.

  Jóhanna looked miserable. ‘Just women, Mother,’ she called back. ‘Don’t worry, you don’t know them.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ came the loud reply. The woman had reached the hallway. ‘As if I don’t know all the women here in…’ She fell silent when she saw Bella and Thóra on the steps. She edged next to her daughter in the narrow doorway, nudging Jóhanna aside, so that only half of her was visible. ‘Good day,’ she said, drying her hands on a dishtowel that she was holding before extending one to them. ‘I am Magnea, Jóhanna’s mother.’

  ‘Hello,’ said Thóra, extending her hand. ‘Thóra Gudmundsdottir. I was actually hoping to meet you.’

  ‘Oh?’ said the woman, and her face darkened. ‘How can I help you, my dear?’

  ‘I was hoping to be able to speak to you a bit about your daughter Alda,’ said Thóra, steeling herself. ‘I am representing Markus Magnusson, who has been wrongly accused of doing her harm.’

  ‘Since when is murdering a woman just “doing her harm”?’ hissed the woman. She took a step backwards, pushed Jóhanna out of the way and slammed the door with all her might. The house number on the wooden plate hanging over the door came loose from the impact and dangled sideways. Thóra counted herself lucky that neither she nor Bella had already put a foot across the threshold.

  She looked at Bella. ‘Wow,’ said her secretary. ‘It must really suck being a lawyer.’

  Thóra tried knocking softly on the door in the hope that the woman would reappear. From inside a muffled shout told them to go away before the police were called. This was pointless, that much was clear, and Thóra and Bella returned to their car. When Thóra was about to start the engine, there was a knock on her window. Jóhanna stood outside, and Thóra rolled it down.

  ‘I told you this was a bad idea,’ she said reproachfully. ‘Now I’ve got to spend what’s left of the weekend calming her down.’ She hugged herself as if she felt cold, though it was unusually warm outside. ‘She’s not herself,’ she said. ‘She’s not usually like that.’

  Thóra nodded. ‘I understand, don’t worry about it,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry to have troubled you, and we wouldn’t have come if I had thought it would go like that.’ This was a white lie, since Thóra had expected precisely this reaction.

  Jóhanna stood outside the car shuffling her feet, clearly holding onto something she wanted to say. ‘What was in the diaries?’ she asked suddenly. ‘I’ve changed my mind, I want to know.’ She hesitated for a second and straightened up. ‘That is, if they said something about Father.’

  ‘I’ve been meaning to let you know, but unfortunately I got caught up in other things,’ said Thóra, reproaching herself for not having tried harder to get in touch with the woman.

  ‘I called once but there was no reply.’ She smiled at Jóhanna. ‘The good news is there was nothing bad about your father in the diary.’

  Jóhanna nodded. It looked as if tears were forming in her eyes. ‘Good,’ she said, and smiled. ‘Good.’

  ‘There were various other things that I wanted to talk to your mother about, though. For example, there are a number of inconsistencies about where Alda was after the evacuation.’ Thóra raised her hand to block the sun, and looked into Jóhanna’s eyes. ‘She wasn’t a boarder at Isafjördur Junior College,’ she said. ‘She was never registered there.’

  ‘Yes, yes, she was,’ protested Jóhanna. ‘I swear it. My memory can’t have failed me that badly.’

  ‘Did you ever see her there?’ asked Thóra. ‘Did you go to visit her, or did she come home for the holidays?’

  Jóhanna seemed to consider the question. ‘I actually don’t remember any visits to her.’ She brightened. ‘Oh, yes, mother went at least once, maybe more.’

  ‘But Alda never came home? There are all kinds of breaks when you’re at college, long and short,’ said Thóra, trying to keep her voice upbeat. ‘You lived in the Westfjords, not so far away. You’d think she would have come to see her parents now and then. Didn’t she?’ She could tell from Jóhanna’s expression that Alda hadn’t come home, not for a long or a short break. ‘Could Alda have been in hospital?’ she asked carefully. ‘Did she have any kind of nervous disorder, perhaps?’

  ‘Not to my knowledge,’ said Jóhanna, any happiness she had Displayed at the contents of the diaries now drained from her face. ‘I might not have been told, since I was so young,’ she added sadly.

  ‘I don’t have evidence of any illness,’ said Thóra. ‘I wanted to ask your mother about it. But I do know for certain that Alda wasn’t in Isafjördur as people suggest, at least not at school there.’

  ‘What else did you want to ask Mother about?’ asked Jóhanna. She seemed angry now, but not with Thóra. ‘Maybe I can get her to talk. I’ll ask her about the school, at least.’

  ‘One of the things I wanted to know, which also concerns you, was whether Alda ever said anything to either of you about being opposed to the excavations. That would help M
arkus,’ said Thóra. She didn’t tell Jóhanna why Alda wouldn’t have wanted Markus’s house to rise from the ashes.

  ‘She didn’t,’ said Jóhanna, shaking her head. ‘Not to me, at least. She might have said something to our mother. Mother and I have a lot to discuss. Is there anything else I might need to know?’

  Thóra told her about the peculiar entries in Alda’s diary. She decided not to mention what she knew about the rape case, and instead asked whether Jóhanna had heard Alda talk about it. ‘Did she ever mention a man by the name of Adolf to you? Or his parents, Valgerdur and Dadi?’

  ‘I’ve never heard them mentioned.’

  ‘You aren’t familiar with them from your childhood?’ asked Thóra. ‘I had the impression they were friends of your parents for a time. They were from the Islands, and they also moved to the Westfjords - to a farmhouse near Holmavik, I think. The woman was a nurse.’

  ‘We lived in Bildudalur,’ said Jóhanna. ‘It’s a long way from Holmavik. I’ve never heard of these people. Not that I remember, anyway.’

  Thóra took out the picture of the young man, which she had wanted to show to Alda’s mother. And do you recognize this man at all?‘ she asked.

  Jóhanna took the piece of paper. ‘Is this a photocopy?’ she asked, and Thóra nodded apologetically. Jóhanna held it by its edge and peered at the subject. ‘No,’ she said, handing it back. ‘I feel like he’s familiar somehow, but I don’t know who he is.’

  ‘Do you know what it is about him that looks familiar?’ asked Thóra hopefully.

  Jóhanna scratched behind her ear. ‘I have a feeling he looks a little like my cousin, but that’s silly.’ She dropped her hand. ‘No, I’ve never seen this man.’

  ‘I can assure you that I would remember if my father-in-law Magnus had said anything about people’s heads getting cut off,’ said Maria, drawing herself up to her full height and trying to look down at Thóra. Thóra, however, was taller than her, and her chair had thicker cushions, which increased their height difference. The two of them sat in the front room in Maria and Leifur’s house, where Thóra had been invited after a drawn-out telephone negotiation with Leifur concerning the wisdom of telling the police about the pool of blood and his father’s possible involvement. In the end Leifur had agreed to meet up for the sake of his brother, as Thóra had repeatedly suggested, and had taken it upon himself to tell his mother Klara about the developments in the case. Thóra was enormously grateful not to have that job, since she could get nothing out of the old woman. She seemed determined to hide from Thóra anything that could be considered unfavourable to her husband. Thóra was also relieved that Leifur kept himself at a distance, since it was enough to deal with one irritated person at a time. Maria, however, had been no happier than Leifur with the suggestion that her father-in-law might have been linked to the case.

  Now Thóra smiled icily at Maria. ‘That may be,’ she said. ‘But you know, there’s a difference between remembering something and talking about it. None of you seems to have had much interest in informing me of some very salient facts.’

  Maria had twisted her hair up into a bun, which didn’t suit her. ‘You understand why we have little interest in seeing an old man hounded by the police. It could finish him off. This is just an old story, no one knows what’s true or false.’

  ‘But what about Markus?’ asked Thóra. ‘You can’t expect him to take the blame to protect his father?’

  ‘Yes, actually, I can,’ said Maria, almost petulantly. ‘If it were up to me, Maggi would be kept out of it and Markus would be found not guilty. They’re not going to throw an innocent man into prison.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be the first time,’ said Thóra, but she resolved to avoid arguing with the woman over the situation between father and son. Maria was obviously fond of the old man, as anyone could see from the way she looked after him. ‘I don’t know if you realize that though this case may be connected to the blood on the pier, that’s not to say that Magnus killed them. If you help me, I might be able to prove that.’

  Maria fidgeted for a moment in her seat while she appeared to digest this. She crossed her legs and then re-crossed them. The balls of Thóra’s feet began to ache in sympathy again, the woman’s stilettos were so high. ‘I can say with a clear conscience that Magnus has never mentioned a severed head,’ she said eventually. ‘What little he says now is all about the past, but he has never spoken about either a bodiless head or a headless body, let alone whole corpses. I believe that’s because he had nothing to do with this.’ Her head drooped sadly. ‘Whether you believe it or not, Magnus was a wonderful man. When I came here he was the only one who understood me, and very often supported me in my disagreements with Leifur and my mother-in-law. They always knew better than me about everything, be it child-rearing, cooking, politics, buying a car, or anything. Magnus took my side; he realized how lonely I was.’

  ‘I don’t doubt that Magnus is a fine man,’ said Thóra. ‘I came to you simply in the hope that he had said something that could help me in my search for the guilty or innocent parties. He wouldn’t need to have said it recently; he could have said something a long time ago that was strange or indecipherable.’ Thóra looked imploringly at Maria. ‘If you could just try to remember anything like that.’

  Maria smiled. ‘Strange or indecipherable,’ she echoed. ‘It would be easier to remember the sensible and coherent things Magnus has said since the start of his illness.’ She shook her head. ‘Naturally his condition has worsened a great deal in recent years, but even before that he wasn’t making much sense. Of course he talked more back then, and understood more; but still, what he said had very little to do with what was happening around him. I could be talking about the weather and he would be on about fishing equipment, or something just as unrelated.’

  ‘Do you remember if he ever said anything before like what he was trying to say to me?’ asked Thóra. ‘About Alda, or a falcon?’

  ‘Yes, actually he did,’ said Maria. ‘I don’t see how it relates to this, but he’s often mentioned birds. Especially falcons.

  He used to sit at the window - actually he still does - for hours at a time, looking out. If a large bird flies by, he often asks me if it’s the falcon. I always say yes, because I think that’s the answer he’s hoping for.‘ Maria glanced at the window of the front room where they were sitting. A handsome seagull flew past, as if to order. She cleared her throat delicately and continued. ’He hasn’t mentioned Alda very often, and there wasn’t any way for me to understand what he meant when he did, since I didn’t know who she was until recently. I thought he was talking about a relative, or even a childhood sweetheart of his.‘

  ‘What did he say about her?’ asked Thóra. ‘It might make more sense in the light of everything that’s happened.’ She decided not to ask more about the falcons; any ties this bird had to the case were tenuous at best, and it was more important to hear what Maria had to say about Alda. ‘Has he ever said anything clearer about “the poor child”? Anything clearer about difficulties in her youth, stuff like that?’

  Maria shook her head. ‘It’s been quite a while since he’s mentioned Alda, so of course I don’t remember it word for word. When he mentioned her name it was always in connection with some sorrow or drama that he never explained properly.’ Maria squinted thoughtfully. ‘Something about making a sacrifice, and how such a thing was sometimes justified. Once or twice I tried to ask him more about it, since it sounded more interesting than his endless stories about sailing and the fishing company, but he always went back into his shell immediately and clammed up. It was actually as if he hadn’t realized he’d been speaking out loud until I responded.’

  ‘And it never came out what sort of sacrifice he was talking about?’ asked Thóra. She couldn’t ask if the sacrifice had something to do with the head, since Maria had been so adamant that Magnus had never mentioned it.

  Maria shook her head. ‘No, never. Whoever she was, she’s stayed longer in his mind t
han a lot of other things in his life. Actually, he mentioned spirits — I mean alcohol - once or twice in direct connection with the sacrifice. I doubt that this Alda ever had anything to do with liquor, so it’s probably not related to the sacrifice, if there ever was any sacrifice.’

  ‘Spirits?’ asked Thóra. Hadn’t the friendship between Kjartan the harbour-master and Gudni fallen apart because of something to do with alcohol? ‘What did he say about spirits?’

  ‘If I remember correctly it was something along the lines of the spirits making it even, and did I agree? Of course I just said yes, told him they definitely balanced it out. That seemed to cheer him up,’ said Maria, shrugging. ‘But as far as the “sacrifice” is concerned, I should probably mention that when I realized who this Alda was it occurred to me that she had sacrificed her relationship with Markus, but I’ve never been able to think of anything that might require such a sacrifice.’

  ‘Has your father-in-law ever mentioned Markus in the same breath as Alda, or this sacrifice of hers?’ asked Thóra curiously. So far she had been repeatedly led to believe that Markus’s crush had not been reciprocated. Maybe that wasn’t the case at all. But why couldn’t Alda have been with him if she’d wanted to?

  Maria shook her head again thoughtfully. ‘No, I don’t think so. I would have asked Markus about it if I had made the connection between him and this mysterious sacrifice. What sacrifice could such a young woman make?’ She scowled. ‘Sacrifice her education to have a child, or vice versa? Donate one of her kidneys for a sibling? I simply can’t think of anything. Nothing serious enough to preoccupy an old man who isn’t even related to her.’ She looked at her watch, then crossed and re-crossed her legs again. Thóra got the feeling she did this regularly in order to prevent varicose veins. If that were the case, this woman and Thóra’s ex-mother-in- law would have got on like a house on fire. ‘And of course it could be pure nonsense,’ said Maria, without much conviction. ‘He mixed up names a lot, and I find some of what he says turns out to be either daydreams or misunderstandings.’ She shrugged. ‘When the brain cracks, a lot of things can go haywire, which is why Magnus sometimes thought scenes from films were memories from his own life. He sometimes talked about how he went parachuting, helped sink some criminals’ boat, met Sophia Loren, and other things like that. I don’t imagine any of it actually happened.’