My Soul to Take: A Novel of Iceland

by Yrsa Sigurdardottir

  Wearing a dressing gown, Thora sat sipping the coffee that she had made in the tiny machine in the hotel room. In front of her on a small side table lay Birna's diary. She tapped one page. "This is strange." She looked over at Matthew, who was half dozing under the duvet in the large bed.

  "Are you trying to make absolutely certain that your fingerprints will be on every square inch of that book if it ever ends up in the hands of the police?" he asked drowsily.

  "No, listen," Thora said excitedly. "On the pages before the swastika, she'd been going through the boxes that I looked at in the basement. I recognize the description of some of the things in them." She held up the page to show Matthew. "Look, she's listed some of the contents. Maybe she made some notes. She must have come across the same objects I did, including the Nazi flag. I opened that box first, but she didn't necessarily open them in the same order."

  "So?" asked Matthew. "What does this brilliant discovery of yours mean?"

  Thora put down the diary. "I'm not quite sure," she said, turning to the page with the swastika on it. "It's obvious that it meant something important to her, considering how carefully she drew the symbol and colored it in. Look." She held up the diary again for Matthew to inspect. It was obvious that he could not make out the drawing from where he was lying so Thora handed the diary over with a comment about his failing eyesight.

  "Just wait until you're forty," he said, propping himself up for a better look. He squinted at it, then returned the diary to Thora and put his head back down on the pillow. "It's a very carefully produced drawing, you're quite right. What has she written around it?"

  "This and that," Thora said. "Parts of it are illegible because she's scrawled over it, but I can make out 'Swastika??' and 'So where was he?' This is followed by a couple of phone numbers that I can't read properly because she's crossed them out."

  "Maybe she crossed them off after calling them?"

  "Five, eight, something..." said Thora, her nose almost touching the page. She straightened up and slapped her thigh. "Hang on, I wrote down the numbers that Birna dialed from her hotel room. I could try calling them."

  She fished a piece of paper out of her pocket, went to the phone and dialed the first number. Eventually it was answered. "Kaupthing Bank. May I help you?" said a voice on the other end.

  Thora put the receiver down. "No luck there," she said to Matthew and dialed the next. She put a finger to her lips to indicate to Matthew to keep silent when it answered.

  "Reykjalundur Rehabilitation Clinic. Can I help you?" said a cheerful female voice.

  Thora, who had hoped it would be the private number of someone who would remember Birna, was caught unawares. She decided to get straight to the point. "Hello. My name's Thora."

  "Hello, how can I help you?"

  "I'm looking for information about Birna Halldorsdottir, an architect. She jotted down this number and I was wondering if you knew her, or could check who she knew at your establishment." Thora could have kicked herself—there was no way this approach would work.

  The woman on the other end of the telephone took the inquiry in her stride. "Unfortunately we don't keep records of visits or calls. There are so many patients here that it's impossible."

  "It might not be a patient," said Thora, hoping Birna had been trying to contact an employee.

  "We don't monitor that either," the woman said. "I'm afraid I can't help you. Excuse me, but I have another call. Goodbye."

  "Reykjalundur," she told Matthew, groaning. "A clinic. No way to find out who she called there." She picked up the piece of paper again.

  "This is the last number. Pity I scribbled it down so badly. Is that a five or a six?" She picked up the telephone and dialed once more. On the tenth ring she was about to give up when a mechanical voice informed her that the call was being transferred. This time, the phone was answered after a single ring.

  "City Hall. Can I help you?"

  "Hello," Thora said. "Excuse me, I didn't quite catch that. Did you say 'City Hall?' "

  "Yes," said the girl at the other end. "Were you trying to reach Baldvin?" When Thora hesitated, she added, "I saw you dialed his direct extension. He has a telephone clinic between four and six on Wednesdays. Try again then." Cheerfully, she said goodbye.

  Thora turned to Matthew. "It was the number of Baldvin Baldvinsson's office at City Hall. He's a councilor, so he must have an office there."

  "And who is this Baldvin?" Matthew asked indifferently.

  "The grandson of old Magnus," she replied, reaching for the diary. She peered at the numbers that had been crossed out. "He's considered one of the most promising politicians around, but I doubt whether Birna called him to discuss converting his grandfather's summer house for year-round use. And I'm certain this is one of the numbers Birna wrote down in the diary." She flicked back through it. "I think I also saw an e-mail address before, but I didn't read it properly. That might be his." She leafed quickly through the book until she found a page where "baldvin.baldvinsson@reykjavik.is

  " was written in the margin. "Here it is. It can't be anyone else."

  "What do you think she wanted with him?" Matthew asked.

  "I don't know, but I do know we have to take another shot at the old man," Thora replied. Then she picked up the diary again and flicked through it. "There's bound to be loads of useful information here if I only knew how to sort the wheat from the chaff."

  "Can you imagine how delighted the police would be if they had that diary?" asked Matthew. "They might have the murderer behind bars by now."

  "What do you mean?" said Thora. "Are you saying the police are cleverer than me?"

  "No, no," Matthew replied, "but you don't have the resources to investigate a matter like this."

  Thora picked up the diary and started reading. At a loss for an answer to his remark, she pretended to absorb herself in a page she opened at random. It turned out to be the plan for the building site and Birna's comments. "What's wrong with this spot??? Old plans???" She scrutinized the two pages, then moved on when she noticed nothing new. On the next page was written "Maybe the rock?" After it was "There must be plans—talk to Jonas."

  Thora stood up and walked over to the window. It offered a view of the area that had interested Birna so much, and Thora wanted to see if anything about it caught her eye. She pulled back the curtain and looked over the grass. The land was fairly level and seemed to Thora like an ideal plot for construction. She consulted the previous pages in an attempt to work out the location of the annex. It was on the east side of the hotel area, far enough away not to obstruct the view from the rooms that had already been built.

  "There's nothing wrong with that land," she said, more to herself than to Matthew. "It's just an ordinary lawn. The grass needs cutting, though." She squinted. Sticking up from the green grass as it rippled in the wind was a large gray rock. "Come on," she said to Matthew, tugging at the corner of the duvet. "Get dressed. We have to go and look at a rock."

  Chapter 23

  AND YOU DRAGGED me out of bed for this?" complained Matthew, looking around. They were standing in the tall grass in the meadow behind the hotel. "It's just grass," he said.

  "I'm not interested in the grass," said Thora as she bent over the rock protruding from the green expanse. "I want to look at this."

  "Oh, well, in that case, I understand completely," he said as he walked over to where she was. He shook his head. "It's a gray stone, Thora," he said. "You don't need to touch it to confirm that."

  "Yes, but it doesn't belong here," Thora told him, pushing the grass away from it. It was triangular, like a huge piece of Toblerone. "Look around you," she said, "do you see other rocks in the meadow?"

  "No," conceded Matthew after glancing around. "The plot thickens," he added sarcastically.

  "Seriously, though," Thora said, looking up from where she knelt. "People went to great lengths to clear the rocks out of meadows in the old days. Why would they leave behind a huge rock in the middle of it?" />
  "Because it was too heavy?" he suggested, squatting down beside her. "Or could it be an enchanted elvish rock?"

  Thora shook her head. "No, they were much larger rocks; boulders, really." She stood up and went around to the other side of the rock. "I'm no expert, but I think this side has been smoothed down. Look." Matthew followed her around the rock and saw that she was right. On the other side the surface was rough and uneven, but here the stone appeared to have been sawn or cut, and then polished. Thora ran her palm over it. "Look at that," she said, excited. "There's something carved in it." She pushed the long grass away and they saw a worn inscription in the middle of the rock.

  "What does it say?" Matthew asked.

  Thora bent down closer and peered at the inscription. Her first thought was that it was a gravestone, but she soon saw that a verse had been carved into it, not a name and dates. She read out:

  Kerns I should have cast,

  A farm was meant for me,

  I should have been wed,

  Just like thee.

  "What does it mean?" Matthew asked eagerly. "Is it something significant?"

  Thora leaned back from the rock. "I don't know really," she said. "It looks like a verse, but I don't understand it entirely. There's a word here whose meaning I'm not sure of." Thora bent back down to the stone to make sure that she had definitely read the word "kerns" correctly. She stood back up. "I wonder if this is what bothered Birna about the meadow?"

  "This rock?" He laughed. "I doubt it. It'd be easy to remove, so I can't see that it would have prevented the land being developed." He looked back across the meadow. "This is a perfectly ordinary patch of grass with a rock in it. Perhaps the verse is by a farmer who had a high opinion of his own poetry. There may have been a flower bed or a pet's grave here. Is the verse anything to do with animals?"

  "No," Thora said, standing up. " ' Kerns,'" she said thoughtfully. "Could it be that the word I thought was 'keens' in Birna's diary was this word?"

  "Search me," said Matthew. "Why do you think it hasn't been mown here?" he asked suddenly, looking down. The grass was so thick that he couldn't see his shoes.

  "What?" Thora said. "Why should it be? It's great like this. Natural."

  "In the meadow at the other end of the hotel, the grass has been mown," Matthew pointed out.

  "Actually, you're right." She pointed at a little brown mound of dirt close to them. "What's this?" she asked, going to look at it.

  "Is there no end to your powers of detection?" said Matthew as they peered down at the low pile. "Look, you found some dirt."

  "I know it's dirt," Thora said. "The question is, what's it doing on top of the grass?"

  Matthew looked around. "It looks as if someone has been digging in the meadow," he said. "There are more heaps of dirt here and there."

  "What's the explanation? Could it be connected with the hotel annex?" She started walking away. "Maybe Vigdis at reception knows, and she might also know why this patch has not been mown."

  "You can ask her at the same time if she knows whether Birna had somewhere to work other than her room," Matthew said as he followed her.

  She turned around, grinning. "Are you beginning to think I'm on the right track?"

  Matthew smiled enigmatically back. "You're as far off the track as a cross-eyed racehorse."

  VIGDIS WAS SITTING AT HER PLACE AT RECEPTION, BUT HER CHEEKS were flushed and feverish, her eyes glassy, and her hands trembling. She was so distracted that she didn't notice them until they resorted to clearing their throats loudly. She jumped and finally looked up, open-mouthed. Then she slammed down the telephone receiver she had been staring at. "Jesus Christ!" she said, and shuddered. "Is everything okay?" asked Thora.

  Vigdis looked up at her, wide-eyed. "No, it most certainly is not," she answered, her voice quavering. "Everything is so far from being okay that I really don't know what to say."

  "What happened?" Thora asked anxiously. "There wasn't another body found, was there?"

  "No, there wasn't," Vigdis answered. "I just heard who it was who died in the stables." Her cheeks grew redder. "It was Eirikur," she said, shaking her head sadly.

  "Eirikur?" repeated Thora. "Who's he?"

  "Who was he," Vigdis corrected her. "We have to get used to talking about him in the past tense. God, this is weird. First Birna, and now Eirikur."

  "And he is...?" Thora repeated, then hastened to correct herself.

  "Was, I mean."

  "He was the aura reader at the hotel here," Vigdis replied. "A tall guy, thin, going bald." She moaned. "This is unbelievable."

  Thora relayed the news to Matthew. Not knowing the German word for "aura," she tried to mime it, which Matthew in turn mistakenly interpreted as a halo. Impatiently, Thora said she would explain his field of work later. She turned her attention back to Vigdis. "How do you know this?" she asked. "Did someone call you?"

  "Yes," whimpered Vigdis. "His sister. They found a credit-card receipt in his pocket and traced the name. They phoned her and asked her to come and identify the body. She was his next of kin. The body's in Reykjavik now." She sighed as if that were the worst thing about the whole matter. "His sister was completely devastated. She said he'd been trampled to death."

  "By a horse?" asked Thora. The cause of death hadn't been given when the police spoke to Jonas.

  "She didn't say. I was so shocked that it didn't even occur to me to ask." Vigdis looked suddenly terrified. "Do you think it's safe to stay here? What's going on?"

  "That's up to everyone to decide for themselves," Thora said, adding reassuringly, "I don't think there's a serial killer on the loose, if that's what you mean. We don't even know yet that this man didn't die accidentally. It may just be a coincidence." Thora thought for a moment. "Did his sister mention whether the police were treating it as suspicious?"

  "No, she didn't." Vigdis hesitated. "But there was something odd about her," she said. "When she said goodbye, she told me to be careful. It was as if she were suggesting that there was something wrong." Vigdis's eyes narrowed inquisitively. "But who would have wanted to kill Eirikur?" she asked. "He wasn't exactly a barrel of laughs, but he wasn't a bad person. Oh, the poor man." She blinked and Thora had the feeling that she was trying to squeeze out tears. "Maybe I should've treated him more decently. He was so weird, though, and he had a habit of coming over for a chat just when I was busiest."

  Thora didn't want to witness any histrionics, or waste time consoling Vigdis. "Was he a horse lover, do you know?" she asked.

  "God, no, I don't think so," Vigdis replied. "He was so pale that I doubt he ever went outdoors except for a smoke." Then she added firmly, "He was definitely not horsey."

  "Was he...interested in foxes?" Thora asked, trying not to think about how stupid she sounded.

  "Foxes?" said Vigdis, astonished. "What do you mean?"

  "Oh, nothing," Thora replied. She threw in another fox question, since she had already made herself sound like an idiot. "His sister didn't mention foxes, did she?"

  "No," Vigdis said, and looked at Thora with the cautious expression of someone who doubts the mental health of the person they are talking to. "I've told you everything she told me."

  "Do you think Eirikur had any business going to the stables?" Thora asked, determined not to discuss foxes any further. "Were he and Bergur, the farmer there, friends?"

  Vigdis lifted one eyebrow. "He wasn't Bergur's friend," she said, adding in a seductively gossipy tone, "But Birna... Birna and Bergur were intimate friends."

  "Yes, I gathered that," Thora said, and watched Vigdis's relish at delivering gossip evaporate. "Did Eirikur talk to Birna much, or mention her? Were they friends at all?"

  "Definitely not," Vigdis said confidently. "There couldn't be two more different types than those two. He was a bit, well, I mean . . ." She faltered.

  "You may as well tell the truth," said Thora. "There's no need to pretend he was a saint just because he's dead."

  This appeared to
cheer Vigdis up. "You're right," she said. "The truth is, Eirikur was a slob. He was dirty. He hardly ever shaved. He dressed like a tramp. He was Bolshie, frankly, and a bit of a miser." Vigdis clearly didn't need to be told twice to take off her rose-tinted glasses. "Birna, she looked after herself, always nicely turned out. Deep down, though, she was completely different. Sweet enough if she needed something, but if she didn't, forget it. She had Jonas wrapped right around her finger." She finally stopped to draw breath. "Actually, there is one thing she and Eirikur had in common: they were both obsessed with money. Apart from that, they were chalk and cheese."

  Thora nodded gravely, taking care not to show her alarm at this flood of vitriol. "So they never spent any time together?" she asked. "Eirikur wouldn't have known what she was up to any more than anyone else?"

  "No, absolutely not," said Vigdis with authority. "Birna wouldn't have talked to Eirikur if they were the last two people on earth."

  "I see," said Thora. "Tell me, did Eirikur or Birna behave at all differently just before they died? Do you remember them doing or saying anything unusual?"

  Vigdis thought it over, then shook her head. "No, I don't recall that. I don't actually remember the last time I saw Birna, but if she'd been acting strangely, I'm sure I'd remember. The last time I spoke to Eirikur was when he came by looking for Jonas." She put her hand over her mouth. "Oh, that was probably just before he died."

  Thora took a deep breath. "And did he find Jonas?" she asked calmly.

  "Well, I don't know," the girl replied. "I told him to try his office, but I didn't see if they met up."

  Thora didn't know what else to ask about Eirikur, so she returned to her original question. "Why is it," she said, "that the west side of the lawn seems to have been mown, but not the east side?"