My Soul to Take: A Novel of Iceland

by Yrsa Sigurdardottir

  "Unfortunately?" she repeated. "What do you mean?"

  "I wish I'd never seen it. It was horrible," the farmer said frankly. "It was an awful sight. The fox, the needles, the blood . . . and that poor man."

  "The fox?" Thora asked. "There was a fox in here?"

  "Yes," he replied. "Tied to the man's chest. At first I thought it was a wig; then I realized. I stood here unable to move for ages. I just couldn't stop staring." He closed the gate to the stall.

  "Why would anyone tie a fox to their chest, or to someone else's?" Thora speculated. "Do foxes have any special significance in this part of the country?"

  "Not that I know of," Bergur replied. "I have no idea what it was supposed to mean. Perhaps it was just to make it worse for the poor guy. The smell of the fox was disgusting. It had been dead much longer than he had."

  Thora nodded, deep in thought. She couldn't think of a logical explanation. "But what was that about needles? Had the man been injecting himself?" This might explain Thorolfur's bizarre questions about acupuncture and sewing sets.

  Bergur frowned, clearly not enjoying the recollection. He swallowed loudly before speaking. "Pins had been stuck into the soles of his feet." He hesitated before adding, "The same had been done to Birna." He shuddered, then continued, "Whoever did that was some kind of monster."

  "Pins?" Thora asked in astonishment. "Sewing pins?"

  "Yes." Bergur bit his lip. "I'd prefer not to discuss it. I don't like to think about it too much."

  Thora let the matter rest, so astounded that she had no idea what to ask next. Why would anyone stick pins into someone's feet before murdering them? Could Birna and Eirikur have been tortured to extract information? Thora abandoned her speculations and changed the subject. "May I ask if you can account for your whereabouts at the time the police think Birna and Eirikur were murdered?"

  "Yes and no," Bergur said. "I can account for my whereabouts, but I generally go off by myself, so no one can back me up except my wife." He looked defiantly at Thora, as if daring her to contradict him. She couldn't, and thought him much smarter than Jonas, who had fabricated an alibi that was easy to disprove. "She'd never lie to the police," he added dryly, as if that were a great failing.

  "One more thing," Thora said quickly. "What does 'RER' mean?"

  Bergur opened the gate to the stall. "I don't have a clue what it stands for." He pointed to the wall. "Eirikur scratched it on the corrugated iron before he died."

  Thora went back inside with Matthew in pursuit. After she'd explained what Bergur had been saying, they bent down for a closer look at the scrawling. Matthew took out his mobile to photograph it.

  "RER," Thora said, following him back out. "Reb?" she said. " 'Rebbi' is a nickname for a fox. Could he have tried to write 'Rebbi'? That first R could just as easily be a B."

  Bergur shrugged. "I told you—I have no idea." He closed the stall. "I've got to get back indoors. Are we done?"

  There was a creak as the stable door opened. A woman of about Bergur's age came in tentatively. Thora was struck by her appearance. She wasn't ugly, but there was something about her posture and clothing that made her look very unattractive. Her hair was lank and colorless, tied back with a band that had seen better days. There was not a speck of mascara on her stubby eyelashes. She was the kind of woman you'd have trouble describing five minutes after she'd left the room, and she looked like she knew it. From her expression, she wanted the earth to swallow her. Thora tried to send her a smile of encouragement as she hesitated at the open door.

  The woman cleared her throat, then said softly, "Are you coming?" She directed her words at Bergur, as if she hadn't even noticed Thora and Matthew.

  "Yes," said Bergur, without a hint of warmth in his voice. "You go in. I'm coming."

  "Well, then," Thora said breezily. "We should be leaving." She turned to Bergur. "Thank you. It was good to have the opportunity to see the murder scene." She turned to the woman she assumed was Rosa. "Your husband was good enough to show us the stall where the body was found. I'm a lawyer, involved in the case on behalf of a client."

  Rosa nodded, without interest. "Hello, I'm Rosa." She did not offer her hand to shake. Her eyes lingered on Thora for only a fraction of a second before she turned back to her husband. "Are you coming?" she repeated. Bergur said nothing.

  Thora tried to defuse the tension with a final question, one she was glad Matthew couldn't understand. "Last question, I promise," she said. "I saw a young man in a wheelchair outside the hotel. I think he's local. Do you happen to know how he was injured?" Bergur and Rosa stared at her, frozen to the spot. "You know, the one who's badly burned?" she clarified. She didn't need to say anything else, because the stream of curses Rosa suddenly unleashed left no doubt that she knew who Thora meant. Thora looked on, speechless, as Bergur grabbed his wife by the arm and led her away.

  Matthew put his hand on her shoulder. "I can't tell you how badly I want to get out of this foul-smelling place, but I'm not leaving until you tell me what the hell you said to that poor woman."

  MAGNUS BALDVINSSON SMILED TO HIMSELF. OLD AND TIRED THOUGH he was, he still had moments when he felt young again. This was one of those moments. He dialed the number and waited cheerfully for his wife to answer, took a good sip of the cognac he had bought at the bar and relished the warmth of the golden liquid before swallowing. "Hello, Frida," he said. "It's over."

  "What?" she said. "Are you coming home? What's happened?"

  "The police have arrested a man for Birna's murder," Magnus answered, lifting his glass and swirling the brandy in front of his eyes.

  "You can tell Baldvin to come and fetch me whenever it's convenient."

  "He's out east preparing for the party conference. I don't think he's expected home until late tonight," said his wife, her voice tinged with fear. "Do you want me to ask someone else to drive over and get you?"

  "No, don't worry," said Magnus jovially. The familiar glow of pride in his grandson added to his joy that the tension and fear of the past few days was finally over. "I enjoy driving with him, so I can wait. Also, I want to hear all about the conference."

  "He's been asking after you constantly since he drove you out there," she said. "He'll be glad to have you back home." There was a short silence before she added, with a mixture of suspicion and apprehension, "Are you two up to something?"

  "No, of course not," said Magnus firmly. "Well, I'd better go. Tell Baldvin to come when it suits him. I'll be here."

  They exchanged farewells and Magnus hung up. He let his hand rest on the receiver for a while. He didn't know whether it was the alcohol or the sight of his wrinkled, clawlike hand, but something had dragged him back into the real world, and he felt like an old man again. To his astonishment, he felt a tear run down his lined face, and he watched it drop onto his trouser leg. Staring at the stain, he was overcome with guilt and misery.

  Oh, Kristin.

  Thora rubbed her eyes. “ I don’t know how much this helps, but I was right—the verse on Grimur Thorolfsson's gravestone is from The Sayings of the High One," she said as she leaned back in her chair from the computer. She beamed proudly at Matthew until she realized that he had no idea what she was talking about. "The Sayings of the High One are proverbs of wisdom, attributed to the god Odin. A lot of their advice is still very relevant." Thora recognized the lack of interest on Matthew's face from her own schooldays, the first time she learned about The Sayings. "Anyway," she went on. "It says here that the verse describes how bad people feel when they are dependent on others."

  "Which doesn't really tell us anything," said Matthew. "Everyone knows that."

  "Actually, I think it tells us a lot," she argued. "For example, it was obviously carved on to Grimur's gravestone for a good reason. It wasn't chosen at random."

  She turned back to the screen and searched for the verse they'd found on the rock behind the hotel. The results were less productive; all she found was a reference to Jon Arnason's nineteenth-century folkt
ale collection on a page about the practice of abandoning children outside, and although she tried several times, she couldn't locate the poem itself.

  "That verse is connected with the abandoning of infants," she told Matthew. "It says here that the cries of unbaptized babies who were left outside to die of exposure can be heard when the wind blows in the place where they died. Also that the ghosts of these babies can move around by lifting themselves on to one knee and dragging themselves along by one hand." She looked up at Matthew. "Was that what you saw out of the window?" He shot her an evil look, and Thora turned back to the computer, grinning. "The next time you see one, make sure it doesn't manage to crawl three circles around you, because you'll go mad. You should try to chase it away. Then it'll go off and eventually find its mother." She looked back at Matthew, smiling innocently.

  "Very funny," he said grumpily. "I wasn't joking—I definitely heard it."

  "I need to get hold of a copy of those folktales and look through them." Thora yawned. "But that can wait."

  "No, there's no rush," said Matthew. "I have a feeling it won't get you any closer to catching the murderer."

  "You never know," she said, entering the details for her final search—for information on the tuberculosis epidemic in Iceland. Very few pages came up, and she browsed through them. "What rotten luck," she said. "TB drugs came on the market in 1946. A year after Gudny died." After reading a little more, she logged out and stood up. "I can understand why neither Gudny nor her father wanted to go to a sanatarium. According to what I just read, the attempts to treat or cure TB were very unappealing. Collapsing one lung, removing several ribs, stuff that did no good and in many cases left the patients severely disabled."

  Matthew tapped on her shoulder. "This is all fascinating, but I think you ought to look around and see who just walked in."

  Thora looked over toward the lobby, but averted her gaze immediately. "What does she want? Do you think she saw me?"

  "Maybe she's come to beat you up," he whispered in her ear. "But if it's any consolation, my money's on you."

  Without answering, Thora stole another glance. She watched Jokull, the waiter and groundsman, walk over to where Bergur's wife was hesitating at the reception desk. He was wearing an anorak and out-door shoes, and hugged Rosa fondly before they left the building together. Neither seemed to notice Thora or Matthew.

  Thora turned to him. "How on earth do they know each other?"

  Chapter 26

  I KNOW IT'S almost time for you to leave the office, Bella," Thora said wearily. "I'm not asking you to do it tonight. You can check it out in the morning." She shook her head at Matthew as her secretary complained at the other end of the line. "Bella, I just thought it was an ideal job for you since you're so fond of horses." As ever, Thora wondered how the gargantuan Bella would ever manage to mount a horse. "All you have to do is to find out whether there is any connection between horses and foxes, or between foxes and death." She sighed and closed her eyes when Bella interrupted with another question. "Bella, I don't know what you're supposed to look for. Just try and find out whether foxes and horses, especially stallions, have anything in common." Thora realized she'd have to explain herself better. "The point is that a man was found in the stables, trampled to death by a stallion. A dead fox was tied to the body. There must be a reason."

  Matthew winked and smiled at Thora. He was well aware of the friction between her and her secretary, and enjoyed listening in even when he didn't understand a word. "Say hello from me," he whispered.

  Thora pulled a face at him. "Yes, yes, Bella. You'll find something. You did a great job in the cemetery and I'm sure you will now. And Matthew sends his regards." She smiled sweetly at him as she spoke. "He really wants to go to the stables with you when we get back. We went to one earlier today and he was absolutely enchanted. Now he can't wait to try mucking out and feeding the horses. The Germans love Icelandic horses." She said goodbye and turned to Matthew. "Bella has invited you to go with her to the stables when we get back to town," she said. "She sends her love."

  "Ha, ha," Matthew said. "Hilarious. I hope you told her about the great welcome you received when we visited the stables. You managed to say—what?—three whole words before Rosa went berserk."

  "You must admit that she reacted very oddly," said Thora, "no matter how inappropriate the question. I have to find out what her relationship is with Jokull."

  "She did overreact a little bit," he admitted, "but I did warn you not to go poking your nose in."

  "The funny thing is that I was trying to be polite because I thought Bergur was so nasty to her," said Thora. "Asking about the boy in the wheelchair was all I could think of."

  "More's the pity," said Matthew. "Can't you find anything about it on the Internet? His injuries clearly aren't congenital; they look like they were sustained in a fire—and fires are generally newsworthy. Especially if someone gets hurt. You must be able to access old stories on newspaper Web sites."

  "Yes, I'm sure I could try," Thora said. "It would just be so much easier if I found someone from here who could tell me. I don't know what I'm looking for; I don't even know whether it happened a decade or a month ago. The papers seldom report injuries—they tend to say the victim is in critical condition, badly injured, doing as well as can be expected, et cetera. Besides, I don't even know if it was a house fire or if the lad simply fell into a hot spring." She sighed. "And I really ought to concentrate on trying to help poor Jonas."

  Matthew grunted. "If you can," he said. "You have to admit he might be guilty."

  "Yes, unfortunately I do," she conceded. "But I'm fairly sure that he didn't commit those murders."

  "Who did, then?" asked Matthew. "Things would look a lot better if there was another suspect."

  Thora thought about it. "Bergur would be the obvious candidate, but I have no idea why he'd kill Eirikur." She bit her lip. They were leaning against Matthew's rental car in the hotel car park, where Thora had gone to call Bella. "We can rule out everyone who was at the seance, surely?" mused Thora. "It was going on at the time Birna was murdered, according to the police."

  "Do we know the exact time of death yet?" asked Matthew.

  "Thorolfur said it was between nine and ten last Thursday," she replied. "He must have based that on the autopsy. That also fits with the text message asking her to turn up at nine." She sighed. "The seance began at eight o'clock. It took us about half an hour from the beach, so if the murderer left the seance on foot, he would never have got back before the interval at half past nine. The drive to the hotel had been dug up, so no one could have got there by car, and it would have taken too long to walk up to the main road."

  "Do you know who was at the seance?" said Matthew. "There's not much point trying to rule out a whole group of people if you don't know their names."

  "No, but I'm sure Vigdis knows who was due to attend. She was in charge of selling tickets," said Thora. "And a lot of people would have paid by credit card, so we could find out some of the names."

  "Shouldn't you be concentrating on the people who might be suspects rather than those who definitely aren't?" he suggested.

  "Yes, but this way I can eliminate a lot of people. Also, it would give me a list of people who may have seen Jonas hanging around in the interval and could give him an alibi," Thora said. She watched as a seagull flew above them. "Unless the murderer flew," she said idly, then suddenly straightened up. "What about by sea?" she said. "Could he have had a motorboat and sailed into the bay?"

  Matthew was unconvinced. "Isn't that a bit tenuous?" he said. "I've been to the bay and I don't much fancy trying to land on the beach. It would take the bottom of the boat out." But then a thought occurred to him, and he added thoughtfully, "Actually, there was a concrete jetty not far from there. That might be a possibility." He paused, still thinking. "In that case, the boat would have been tied up at the hotel jetty before the seance and someone might remember it. Let's go and check it out."

  They
walked down past the hotel to the jetty, which lay in a small cove east of the main hotel building. When they reached the end of it, Matthew turned around and looked back at the hotel. "We're not very visible here," he said, pointing. They could see the roof of the hotel from where they stood, but no windows or doors. "You could do pretty much anything here without being disturbed. I guess someone could have left the building and sailed from here out to the cove where Birna was murdered. It's probably not that far by sea." He looked around. "But I don't see any evidence that the jetty gets much use. There aren't even any ropes or mooring posts."

  Thora leaned over the side of the jetty but saw no rubber tires padding the edge, or any other sign that the jetty was in regular use. "I agree," she said, "but I'm still going to ask Vigdis if she remembers seeing a boat that evening." The wind changed, and the stench from the beached whale engulfed them. "Jesus!" exclaimed Thora, staring along the beach. "There's the whale's carcass, look!" She pointed at a huge black mound, some distance away.

  Matthew put his hand over his nose and mouth, but squinted in the direction Thora had pointed. "What on earth is that? This must be the worst smell in the world."

  "Should we take a look?" Thora said. "If we just follow this cove around, it won't take us a minute."

  Matthew looked at Thora in disbelief. "Honestly? You're serious. You want to go and look at a disgusting pile of rotting blubber."

  "Yes, of course I do. It's right there," said Thora, but then her mobile phone rang. She groaned when she saw the number. Why couldn't they have been farther along the beach where there was no reception?

  "Hello," she said.

  "Were you planning to answer my texts, or were you just going to ignore them?" said her ex-husband angrily. "I don't know where the hell you are, but I'm a little tired of playing hide-and-seek with you. I wasn't born yesterday; I know you've turned your phone off because you're off somewhere with some man you only just met."

  Thora didn't dignify that with a response, but she had to say something after a speech like that. "If you'll shut up for one minute, Hannes," she said, "I'll be able to tell you that I'm out here working, and if you had ever ventured outside the big city you would know that not everywhere has good mobile reception." She had no qualms about saying this, although she'd only known it herself for a few days. "All I have to say is that Gylfi and Soley are just outside Selfoss and they need to be collected. Sigga is with them."