Ashes to Dust

by Yrsa Sigurdardottir

  ‘Bird smuggling?’ said Thóra. ‘Birds of prey, like falcons, maybe?’

  ‘Yes, falcons and eagles, and probably some other species I don’t know about,’ replied Stefán. ‘I know it’s possible to get huge sums for them abroad. At the time, the police had been informed that these men were travelling through the country asking about nesting sites. It seems likely that they planned to return in the summer to steal eggs and hatchlings. If they hadn’t sailed away when they did, they would at least have been brought in for questioning. We think the scars on their hands were caused by raptors’ claws. They’d been doing it for years.’

  ‘Do you know if they had any falcons, or other birds, with them?’ asked Thóra, and told Stefán about Magnus’s repeated references to a falcon.

  ‘No, not as far as I know,’ he replied. ‘But you know you can’t take much of what Alzheimer’s patients say seriously.’

  ‘But it seems obvious from this that Magnus was involved,’ she said, furious at Stefán’s contrary attitude. ‘He also definitely mentioned a cuckoo, so he was probably talking about the boat.’

  ‘I’m not going to get into that. Of course we will investigate all potential leads, but your man isn’t getting out just because his father blurts out something so open to interpretation, which may or may not be linked to the case.’

  ‘So you’re not going to investigate Markus’s father, or Dadi ? I know one of them is senile and the other dead, but there’s nothing preventing you from changing the focus of your enquiry.’

  ‘Of course we’re following every lead, as I said,’ replied Stefán. ‘Among other things, we’re examining the knife and the salmon priest you found in the basement, although it’s too early to know what they will tell us. So there’s no point making snide comments about our working methods. On the other hand, nothing has been discovered that proves your client is not involved. Far from it. He’s the only one behaving suspiciously. For example, he denies having put the head there.’

  ‘You know his explanation for that,’ fumed Thóra. ‘An explanation from which he has never deviated, despite countless interrogations and now solitary confinement.’

  ‘That may be because he knows no one can confirm or deny it,’ said Stefán. ‘And it may be that he himself orchestrated that convenient state of affairs.’

  Thóra didn’t feel like responding to these insinuations. Markus had an alibi for Alda’s murder, and besides, Dís’s information directed the spotlight away from him. It didn’t actually matter how convinced Stefán was of his guilt: no judge would be persuaded that Markus had murdered her. ‘Obviously I will object vigorously to your request for an extension of custody,’ she snapped. ‘For your sake, I hope you have more than just your opinion to bring to the table tomorrow.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Stefán. ‘Whatever you say. See you tomorrow, bright and early.’

  Thóra did not respond to this asinine comment, taking her leave and hanging up. She had allowed her anger to show in her voice, and felt a little bit better. This was not shaping up to be the cosy TV evening with her daughter she’d hoped for. It also looked as though she wouldn’t be finished with the case before Matthew arrived. Thóra stood up and started to scrape together the files that she needed to go over to prepare herself. Hopefully she could work on the case at home without upsetting Sóley. If not, she would wait until her daughter had gone to bed and work on it late into the night. Lately her relationship with her daughter had been characterized by too many broken promises. She was torn from her thoughts about Sóley by the realization that she was supposed to call Markus’s son, Hjalti. He simply moaned ‘No’ when Thóra told him about the police’s decision, then she could hear his rapid breathing. ‘I should remind you that even though the police are still pursuing this, there’s nothing to say that the ruling will go their way,’ she tried to assure him.

  ‘Yes, there is,’ said Hjalti, sounding petulant - more like a small child than a young man. ‘They’re going to torture him into confessing.’

  ‘Let’s not start accusing the police of torture,’ said Thóra evenly. She knew how to handle children by now, since she had all sizes and shapes of them at home. The boy needed to hear an adult tell him that everything would be all right; that his father would be released from prison, come home shortly, and buy Hjalti an apartment in the Islands, as he had planned. ‘These cases are very tough while they’re going on, and often those who least deserve it end up caught in the slipstream. I have no doubt that your father is one of those. If he didn’t murder any of those people, he won’t be convicted. I’ll make sure of it.’ She was going to add something about the truth always coming out, but the boy interrupted her.

  ‘But what if someone didn’t commit a murder himself, just helped the murderer? What then?’ he asked frantically.

  Thóra knew that this ‘someone’ was the boy’s father, and that Hjalti had realized that Markus might be tied to the murderer or murderers. He was, in other words, not completely clueless, poor boy, although he was deeply troubled. ‘In my opinion there’s nothing to suggest that your father did anything that makes him an accomplice. He might have helped the murderer unknowingly, but that’s not a crime.’ She hoped he wouldn’t start asking what she meant, since she didn’t want to talk to the boy about the severed head in the box.

  ‘Okay,’ said Hjalti, his voice still tinged with nervousness. ‘Maybe I’ll come tomorrow at two o’clock. Is that all right?’

  ‘I don’t think you’ll get to see your father, if that’s what you’re hoping,’ said Thóra. ‘But you can always come and wait outside, if you want. Then I could meet you afterwards and tell you how it went, which might make you feel better.’ The boy agreed to this, although she wished he hadn’t. They said goodbye.

  The phone rang again, and this time it was Bella. ‘I’ve found the tattoo,’ she said. ‘You’d better come and see this.’

  The recent smoking ban hadn’t reached the tattoo parlour; Bella blew a thick cloud of smoke in Thóra’s direction. The multicoloured man who owned the parlour also had a burning cigarette between his lips, so Thóra couldn’t scold Bella. She settled for a glare, wondering what she was actually doing here: Markus was pretty much absolved of all suspicion in Alda’s murder, and the Love Sex tattoo wasn’t linked to the bodies in the basement. However, she didn’t want to make light of Bella’s investigation of the tattoo’s origin, so she acted as though nothing were out of the ordinary. ‘So you think it’s unlikely that this tattoo was put on anyone else?’ asked Thóra.

  ‘That would be a pretty fucking huge coincidence,’ said the man, without removing the cigarette from the corner of his mouth. He took a puff and blew out the smoke, still without touching the cigarette. In the light of Bella’s prowess with the men in the Islands, Thóra wondered for a moment whether they’d just been up to something. ‘A girl made it up from two tattoos I’ve got in this folder.’ He lifted his foot and kicked at a tired old folder on the couch in front of Thóra. His black army boot shoved it across to her.

  Thóra smiled politely and reached for it. ‘Why do you remember this so well?’ she asked, looking around. Every wall was hung with drawings or photos of tattoos. ‘It looks like you do a lot of these. You can hardly be expected to remember each and every one.’ Unless he was a modern version of the old farmers who were said to be able to recognize every sheep marking in the country, she thought.

  ‘Nah,’ said the man, crossing his muscular arms. When Thóra had first walked into the tiny, dilapidated tattoo parlour she had thought he was wearing a garish fitted T-shirt beneath his leather waistcoat. She was wrong. His arms were covered with colourful pictures from the backs of his hands up: tigers and rainforest foliage that rippled as though in the wind when he flexed or contracted his muscles. ‘I actually remember a lot of them. Usually the most beautiful ones, but also the really lame ones.’

  Thóra cleared her throat. ‘And which group does this belong to?’ she asked, pointing at the photocopy of t
he Love Sex tattoo Bella had brought with her.

  The man looked at Thóra with disdain. ‘That’s fucked up, Grandma. Absolutely fucked up.’

  Thóra wanted to keep the man in a good mood, so she didn’t waste any time objecting to being called grandma — after all, she was one, albeit prematurely. ‘And you remember this, even though it’s been six months since you… did it?’ she asked, uncertain which verb one used for tattooing. ‘I don’t see a picture of it anywhere on your wall,’ she added, though it was impossible to rule out a picture of this particular tattoo being hidden there somewhere.

  ‘I’m not about to hang that on my wall, any more than I would the hundreds of butterflies I’ve put on girls’ ankles over the years,’ said the man, and he curled his lip in disgust. ‘If I had to say which I hate most, the butterflies or this disaster, then I would actually say this one. It’s one of the saddest ones I’ve ever done - that girl was an absolute nutter, away with the fairies.’

  Thóra smiled to herself, thinking she had made a similarly hasty judgement of him just a few seconds earlier. ‘Did she explain what this was supposed to mean?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I didn’t ask, either. I tried to talk her out of it, but she wouldn’t listen. I even spent some time showing her other, much cooler illustrations, but it was like throwing pearls at swine.’

  Thóra thought about pointing out that one cast pearls before swine and not at them, but changed her mind. Instead she asked: ‘Did a woman by the name of Alda Thórgeirsdóttir ever ask you for information about this same tattoo? She was a nurse.’

  The man nodded his head. ‘Like I told her…’ he pointed at Bella. ‘It’s mental that more than one person has contacted me to ask about this horrible thing. I’ve never had the same reaction to any of the tattoos I’m actually proud of. If you want me to put the same one on you, the answer is no.’

  ‘Did Alda want to get the same tattoo?’ asked Thóra.

  ‘No,’ he replied, and smiled to reveal large teeth, stained brown by tobacco. ‘She wanted to know whether the tattoo had been done here, and when I said yes she wanted to know when.’

  ‘And could you answer her?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, I keep records of my tattoos so I just looked it up. The woman was so incredibly excited about it, I’d never seen anything like it. She said she was working on an investigation for the A&E, and this tattoo had turned up.’ The man stubbed out his cigarette, which had burned all the way down to the filter. ‘She pointed out that the investigation wasn’t connected to me or my working methods in any way, not that I thought it would be, since I’m really careful with hygiene here.’

  ‘I’m sure you are,’ said Thóra, avoiding looking at a dirty spot on his black leather waistcoat. ‘Was it long ago that she called?’

  ‘No, not really,’ replied the man. ‘Several weeks, two months at most. She said she’d been searching for the origin of the tattoo before but hadn’t known about my parlour, since it wasn’t in the phone book. She’d recently heard about me from a boy who wanted to get rid of a tattoo that I did.’ Again the man snarled in disgust. ‘The little tosser.’

  ‘Could we have that same information?’ asked Thóra. ‘We won’t use it against you, any more than the other woman did.’

  ‘As long as you don’t let it get around where this crappy tattoo was done,’ grinned the man. ‘Apart from that it’s no skin off my nose, provided I can find it quickly. I’m closed now, and I’d rather be on my way home.’

  The same went for Thóra.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Monday 23 July 2007

  Sóley was asleep, her head in her mother’s lap. Thóra stroked her daughter’s hair as she reached for the remote and turned off the television. The show that had sent the little girl to dreamland had also been well on its way to sending Thóra there. She yawned, placed a pillow beneath the girl’s head and spread a blanket over her. Sóley murmured a little in protest but did not wake up. Thóra took out the files that she’d brought with her from the office. After coming home from the tattoo parlour, Thóra had whipped up a meal — she boiled some water and poured it over a packet of ramen noodles. Afterwards Gylfi had disappeared to Sigga’s place, to spend the evening with her and their son Orri. So Thóra and Sóley had spent the evening alone together. They had made themselves comfy on the sofa when Sóley had finished her homework, but the television schedule was so dull that the little girl had fallen asleep during the first programme they watched.

  Thóra settled into the easy chair next to the sofa and looked at the top page, where she had written the name of the girl who had offended the tattooist’s delicate artistic sensibilities: Halldora Dogg Einarsdottir, 26 February 2007. That was the day the girl had had her tattoo done, according to the man. This didn’t tell Thóra anything, so she tried looking the girl up in the electoral register. She was born in 1982, so had been twenty-five years old at the time. Her name sounded familiar, so Thóra tried to search for her on the Internet, but found nothing.

  Why had Alda been interested in this girl? Thóra guessed it wasn’t because of the tattoo itself. For a moment she wondered if it could have been because of her job at the plastic surgeon’s office, or for some unfathomable personal reason. She couldn’t understand how the girl could be connected to Alda’s murder, even though something told her she must be. Of course, there was one easy way to discover whether and how the girl knew Alda. Perhaps she would turn out to be the one Thóra had searched high and low for - the one to whom Alda had entrusted the secret of the head in the box. Markus really needed that to be the case. Thóra looked at the clock and saw that it was nine thirty, not too late for a phone call. She found the number in the phone book and made the call.

  ‘Hi!’ The voice sounded young, in a rather false way, as if the girl were trying to appear childish.

  ‘Hello. Is this Halldora Dogg Einarsdottir?’ Thóra asked.

  ‘Speaking.’ The voice still sounded uncomfortably like a little girl’s.

  Thóra introduced herself and asked whether she might be able to ask her several questions, since her name had come up in a case involving her client.

  Nothing could be heard on the other end of the line, but when the girl started talking again her voice was much more mature. ‘What case?’ she asked, all her cheerfulness gone.

  ‘It’s a murder case,’ replied Thóra. ‘As I said, your name has come up in connection with it, and I wanted to take the opportunity to ask you some questions that might hopefully explain your connection to the murdered woman.’

  ‘Who’s been murdered?’ asked the girl. Her surprise was evident. Then she added, almost excitedly: ‘I haven’t murdered anyone!’

  ‘Sorry for not being clear,’ said Thóra. ‘You’re not under any suspicion, and besides, I don’t work for the police. I’m simply trying to rule out whether you’re tied to the case indirectly. In other words, I’m in no way suggesting that you’re linked to the murder at all.’

  ‘Did you say you’re a lawyer?’ asked the girl, still sounding very suspicious. ‘Are you working for Adolf?’ Her voice turned shrill on the last word.

  ‘No, not at all,’ said Thóra, wondering whether to admit she knew his name. She didn’t take the risk. ‘The man I represent is named Markus.’

  ‘I don’t know any Markus,’ said the girl angrily. ‘Are you sure you’re not working for Adolf?’

  ‘Absolutely sure,’ said Thóra. She decided to get to the point of the phone call. ‘Did you know a woman by the name of Alda Thórgeirsdóttir?’ There was a long silence punctuated only by the girl’s heavy breaths, and Thóra decided to repeat the question to be certain that the girl had understood her.

  The girl drew a breath so sharp that a whistling sound could clearly be heard through the phone. Then she spoke again, her voice betraying her shock at the question. ‘How could you lie? Lawyers can’t lie.’

  Thóra didn’t understand what she meant. ‘Isn’t it easier to answer this with a simple yes o
r no? I haven’t lied to you about anything, if that’s what you think.’

  ‘You are working for Adolf,’ hissed the girl. ‘I know you are, I should press charges against you.’

  ‘Press charges against me?’ asked Thóra, flabbergasted. ‘I think there may have been a misunderstanding.’ She didn’t want the girl to think she was afraid of this threat. ‘The only thing I’m trying to clear up is whether you knew Alda Thórgeirsdóttir or have heard of her.’

  A few moments passed before the girl replied. Thóra supposed that she was contemplating whether it would be better to deny this, confirm it or simply hang up. The name obviously rang some bells. ‘I know who she is,’ said the girl suddenly, her voice harsh.

  ‘Could you tell me where or how you got to know her, or heard of her?’ asked Thóra, pleased finally to be making some headway in this peculiar conversation.

  ‘No,’ replied the girl. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

  Thóra rolled her eyes. What now? ‘Did it have something to do with your tattoo? Love Sex?’

  There was silence on the other end, then the girl hung up.

  Thóra put down the thick sheaf of papers. She had had enough of what seemed to be an endless reckoning of every item that could conceivably have been taken from the houses that had been excavated. She still hadn’t laid eyes on anything that could make a difference in Markus’s case, except perhaps the countless broken bottles that had been found in Kjartan’s garage and Dadi’s shed. Thóra thought it was obvious that they’d hurriedly tried to hide the evidence of their stash of grain alcohol when the police investigation had started to point towards them. The list did not include Markus’s home, since the house was still to be emptied when the list had been written, but Thóra hadn’t noticed any bottles there, intact or broken. That didn’t mean much; they could have been hidden in a part of the house that she hadn’t seen, although she doubted it. Kjartan had been extremely convincing when he told her Magnus hadn’t been involved in the smuggling operation. A flash of pain shot through her shoulders. She had to stand up and stretch.