My Soul to Take: A Novel of Iceland

by Yrsa Sigurdardottir

  Thora looked at Matthew, her eyes wide. She ended her conversation with Lara, excited at the prospect of exploring the basement for a door to the bunker, but before she rang off, she promised to let Lara know if she found any clues about the fate of the mysterious child.

  "I need to make a quick call," she told Matthew as she dialed the number of the prison. "I promise you I'll explain everything in a minute." Thinking back to the photograph that Birna had asked Robin to take of the basement wall, Thora didn't expect to find a door down there. When Jonas was brought to the telephone, she got straight to the point. "Jonas, I might need to make a hole in the basement wall, under the old part of the hotel. I just wanted to let you know. Are you all right otherwise?"

  THORA, MATTHEW, AND GYLFI STOOD IN THE BASEMENT, IN FRONT of the wall they had agreed must be the one backing on to the lawn. It had taken them a long time to figure out where to begin, but by lifting Soley so that she could see out through the dirty little windows, they could confirm that the wall from Birna's photograph was the right one. Matthew put down the photograph and picked up a sledgehammer. Thora moved back to where Sigga and Soley were watching excitedly. Gylfi stood by Matthew, ready to take turns when the German wanted a break.

  Her son had insisted on joining them when they took shovels out on to the lawn—to make sure that the hatch was there before they began modifying the interior of the hotel—and the girls insisted on coming too, delighted to have something different to do. They found the hatch some thirty centimeters down, just beyond the inscribed rock, but instead of arduously digging around it, they had gone to the basement to look for the door they knew was there somewhere—a hatch that had been buried for decades, said Matthew, would be no easier to open than the one they had struggled with behind Kreppa.

  "What do you reckon you'll find back there?" asked Gylfi, not entirely convinced of the wisdom of breaking it down.

  "Honestly? I have no idea," replied Thora, "but it was obviously designed to keep people away. There's absolutely no reason to concrete over a basement door. It would only have been sealed this way if the point was to hide it."

  "And what if there's nothing there?" he said. "What will the owner say?"

  "Nothing," she reassured him. "I've informed him of our plans, and if worst comes to worst, he'll just have some wall repairs to keep him busy when he gets out of custody." Impatiently, she waved them on. "Fire away!"

  Not needing to be told twice, Gylfi and Matthew pounded at the wall. Thora and the girls looked on expectantly, but soon realized that it would be a lengthy operation. It was more than half an hour, in which time Soley had fallen asleep from boredom on top of a pile of boxes and Sigga was yawning almost constantly, before the gap in the plaster, timber, and rock was big enough to climb through. Matthew and Gylfi stood back with their sleeves rolled up, dirty, sweaty, and out of breath.

  "I'm not going in first," Thora said as she withdrew her head from the hole. "It's awfully stuffy in there. It smells like burning."

  "I'll go," offered Gylfi, but Thora knew him well enough to realize that he didn't mean it.

  "Matthew, you go first," she said, pushing him toward the hole. "Where's the flashlight?"

  After all three had squeezed through the hole, Thora and Gylfi followed Matthew along the dim passage. The slender beam from the flashlight only helped Matthew in front, and the Icelanders bumped into him when he stopped at a door at the end of the passage. He turned around, shining the flashlight under his chin. Both Thora and Gylfi recoiled in horror, much to his amusement. He took the flashlight away from his face and lit up the door. "Shall I open it?"

  They should have said no.

  Chapter 31

  SO I IMAGINE you found this by pure coincidence, like the photograph?" said Thorolfur. "You just happened to be down in the basement armed with sledgehammers and thought it would improve the decor if you removed one of the walls?"

  Thora plucked a sliver of wood from her hair and was pleased to see that it was not a tooth, as she had feared. "No," she said. "I thought I made myself clear. We wanted to be sure we weren't sending you on some fool's errand and wasting the taxpayers' money. There was no way to verify what was down there without checking it. I must admit I didn't expect this." She shuddered as two detectives walked past pushing a wheelbarrow full of bones. A stench of burning wafted with them.

  The hotel was teeming with police officers from neighboring constabularies, as well as expert investigators from Reykjavik. Thora suspected that few of them had any genuine reason to be there, but were driven by mere curiosity. She winced. "As I said, I expected to find the skeleton of one child, not bones stacked up to the ceiling."

  "You didn't realize they were animal bones?" asked Thorolfur. "Maybe it was hard to see properly in the dark down there?"

  "The bones I saw first weren't from an animal," Thora said firmly. "Before the heap collapsed, the flashlight lit up a little woolen mitten. A bone was sticking out below the cuff, so I can only assume there's a dead child in there somewhere. There couldn't be anything except a hand inside the mitten. It was protruding from the stack before it collapsed, so it presumably won't be found until all the bones have been removed. In your shoes, I'd tell the men to proceed with caution because underneath there's a—" She couldn't finish the sentence.

  "As you may have noticed, this is a slow job," Thorolfur said, gesturing at the men and women working around him. "We follow all the procedures governing the investigation of a crime scene, whether we find human bones or not. We need to establish what happened, because it's hardly normal to bury half-burned carcasses like this. So don't worry about us destroying any evidence. You'd do better to keep worrying about Jonas, because this has no bearing on the issue of his guilt."

  "Not even if I told you that under all this lies the skeleton of the illegitimate child of Magnus Baldvinsson, from World War Two?"

  "I don't see why that would make any difference," said Thorolfur offhandedly, although his interest was clearly aroused. "Or perhaps you mean that he murdered his own child, then slaughtered dozens of animals and threw their bones over the body?" He smirked. "And then came back, sixty years later, to pick up where he left off?"

  "It's up to you what you deduce from all this, but paternity will be provable because a DNA sample must be taken from the child's remains. Even though it won't prove who killed her, the paternity test is bound to raise questions and I don't think Magnus Baldvinsson will come out of it smelling of roses."

  "So you're back to your theory that Magnus or Baldvin killed both Birna and Eirikur?" Thorolfur asked.

  Thora picked more debris from her hair. "Not really. Like I told you on the phone I was beginning to think that it could be either Bergur or his wife with a male accomplice," she said. "Matthew and I saw the wife leave the hotel with a waiter who works here. They seemed very close," said Thora. "It occurred to us that Rosa might have seduced him and got him to kill Birna. She could have done that in revenge for the affair with her husband."

  Thorolfur's eyebrows rose so high they disappeared into his hair. "You've met Bergur's wife," he said. "Does she seem a likely seductress?"

  "No, actually, she doesn't," admitted Thora, "but beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so you never know."

  Thorolfur grinned maliciously. "Does this waiter's name happen to be Jokull Gudmundsson?" he asked.

  "Yes," Thora said. "I'm not sure about his second name, but his first name is certainly Jokull. Did you know they were an item?"

  "They're brother and sister," he said. "That presumably explains how 'close' they seemed when you saw them."

  Thora said nothing. Now she understood Jokull's antipathy toward Birna; his brother-in-law had been having an affair with her. It also explained his reaction to her question about Steini. His father had caused the accident, so he was bound to be as touchy about discussing it as his sister was. "Ah," she said finally. "That changes things slightly."

  "Yes, doesn't it?" replied Thorolfur. "But there's n
o harm in telling you that we're still investigating Bergur's possible involvement," he added mildly, giving her no hint as to whether he was a suspect along with Jonas. "I can also tell you that his rifle is being cross-matched with the shell found in the fox's carcass. We don't have the facilities in Iceland, so it was sent abroad. Unfortunately, it takes a few days to get the results from there, but in the meantime we've got a few things to look into." The police inspector took his leave of her, and headed down to the basement to see what progress was being made.

  Thora went over to Matthew, who was reaching the end of his statement to the police. This had taken a considerable time because the officer insisted on using an interpreter.

  "Do you reckon we're off to join Jonas in prison?" Matthew said, grinning, as they walked away. "The way I look right now I'd fit right in there," he added. His clothes were covered in dust and earth, since he hadn't had time to change since the bones had fallen on them.

  Thora looked him up and down, amused. "How long is it since you've got this dirty?" she asked, removing what turned out to be a fragment of bone from his sweater.

  "Ages," he replied. "We don't break down many walls at the bank, and I've never encountered a heap of bones the size of that one down-stairs."

  Thora shuddered. She told him about the connection between Rosa and Jokull—hardly the Bonnie and Clyde they'd imagined. "You know," she said, "I bet the person who put up that inscribed rock out here knew what was underneath it. It must have been intended as a kind of gravestone. A secret memorial."

  "Which presumably means the child didn't die a natural death. Otherwise why would it be disguised?" said Matthew, as they arrived at Thora's room. "Besides, no one in their right mind would put a dead child in a place like that unless they had something to hide."

  "I think Magnus laid that gravestone," she replied, opening the door. She went straight over to the telephone on the bedside table. "I'm going to call Elin and ask if she knows anything about it. Maybe she and her brother remember when it was put up, and by whom."

  "Do you think she'll want to talk to you?" he asked.

  "I doubt she'll slam the phone down on me this time," she said. "Not when I tell her the skeleton of a child has been found on land where her grandfather and his brother lived, and which has been owned by the family for decades." She looked up Elin's number. "And I'll trick her by using the hotel telephone in case she happens to recognize my mobile number." She turned back to the telephone. "Hello, this is Thora Gudmundsdottir," she said when it was answered.

  "What do you want?" snapped Elin peevishly. Thora could hear that she was in a car.

  "Firstly, I wanted to let you know that a huge stack of bones has just been found at the farm."

  "And what business is that of mine?" cried Elin. "It's the same old story. There seem to have been dozens of bodies found in the area since Jonas bought the land. I heard on the radio this morning that he was taken into custody."

  "Yes, that's right," said Thora, trying to conceal her annoyance that the media had got hold of Jonas's case. "However, these bones have nothing to do with him, as they were probably there long before he acquired the property. If memory serves, your family built the current farm buildings, and have always owned them. Isn't that right? I'm afraid this could be far worse for you and your brother than for Jonas. Most of the bones are from animals, but in all probability a child's skeleton will also come to light."

  "What?" Elin exclaimed shrilly. "A child's skeleton?" She seemed genuinely shocked and confused. "What child?"

  "We don't know yet," said Thora. "The police will be speaking to you very soon, so it's probably best I don't tell you too much. I just wanted to ask you one thing." She paused, but Elin said nothing, so she continued. "Behind the house, on the eastern side, is a large rock carved with a verse that I think comes from a folktale. Someone must have put it there, because it's not a work of nature. Do you know anything about this rock, or do you know who put it there?"

  "The rock?" said Elin, astonished. "What's that got to do with anything?"

  "Maybe nothing," said Thora untruthfully. "I'd just like to find out what it is, in order to rule it out as evidence." She crossed her fingers, hoping Elin would believe her.

  "I can assure you it's nothing to do with this," declared Elin. "My mother put that rock up many years ago. It was an advance wedding present to herself, or so she said. Don't ask me why—she never explained it any further—but you can be quite sure it has nothing to do with any dead child."

  Thora was surprised to hear that Malfridur, Grimur's daughter, had placed the rock there, but she carried on. "One last thing. What were you and your brother, Borkur, doing over this way on Sunday evening? I have a printout from the police showing the vehicles that passed through the tunnel that day and you were both there."

  "We came to meet you," answered Elin irritably. "Don't you remember? You came to see us on the Monday. We'd decided to beat the morning traffic and go up to Stykkisholmur the previous evening. Surely you don't imagine Borkur and I are involved in this murder case?"

  Thora demurred awkwardly. "It's just one of a number of points I want to be able to tick off," she explained.

  "Well, you can tick this off too: Borkur didn't go west to kill anyone on Thursday either," snapped Elin.

  Thora said nothing, not wanting to reveal that she'd had no idea Borkur had been on the move that day. Elin obviously thought Thora had a list of cars for each day. "So why did he come?" she inquired cautiously.

  "He won't be pleased that I've told you," replied the other woman. "I had a hard enough time getting it out of him." The loud screech of a horn cut her off, and when she came back on the line, she was swearing. "Stupid old bastard! Why don't they take their driving licenses away before they go senile at the wheel?" she said crossly, before continuing. "The only reason I'm telling you what he was up to is to get rid of you, and prevent any more unfounded allegations against us."

  "I really don't mind why you're telling me," retorted Thora. "So what was he doing?"

  "He went to see a real estate agent who was very keen to see the remaining farming properties, with a view to selling them," said Elin. "He knows I want to wait, and he did it against my wishes. The real estate agent can confirm it, if you want to check."

  Thora said goodbye and hung up. "Borkur and Elin's mother had the rock placed there," she told Matthew. "They're very odd people, which is hardly surprising in view of their family medical history— both the grandparents had mental problems—but they're probably innocent of both murders. She gave me reasonable explanations for being here, at any rate."

  Thora stood up and picked up the bags containing Jon Arnason's folktale collection. "If I can find the verse, there may be some further explanation of it in the accompanying text. That might tell us why their mother had the verse carved into the rock, and had it put there." She put the bags on the desk. "I must remember to return the books on our way back to Reykjavik," she said. "My fines are already enough to pay for a whole annex to the library at home. I don't want to do the same all over the country."

  "You're not going to read all those, are you?" asked Matthew as he watched Thora extract one weighty volume after another. "Maybe I'll have a shower in the meantime."

  "It won't take long to look it up," said Thora. She turned to the contents page in volume I and found the entry for "abandoned children." "Here it is," she exclaimed eagerly and looked up from the book. "Here's a story with the title 'I Should Have Been Wed.' That must be it." Thora rapidly scanned the brief story, then placed the open book in her lap.

  "What is it?" asked Matthew. "I can't tell if that expression means good news or bad."

  "Nor can I," said Thora. "It's the story of a mother who left her infant outside to die. Some years later she had another daughter, whom she raised. When the girl reached marriageable age, a young man asked for her hand and they were betrothed. In the midst of the wedding ceremony, there was a banging at the window, and the guests heard this
verse chanted: 'Kerns I should have cast, a farm was meant for me, I should have been wed, just like thee.' " She looked at Matthew. "It was the ghost of the dead child, speaking to her sister."

  "So the verse is a reference to the fact that the sister is enjoying what should have been the lot of the child left to die?" asked Matthew.

  "Yes, that's the obvious meaning," said Thora. "Could Gudny have had another child?" She was shaking her head even as she said it. "No, I don't think so."

  "But who got what should have belonged to the child?" asked Matthew. "Presumably the child was her mother's heir?"

  Thora puffed out her cheeks, then slowly let the air escape. "It depends when Gudny died of TB. If the child predeceased her, of course the child couldn't inherit anything from her mother. If the child died after Gudny's death, that changes things. Gudny's father died first. Since he was a widower, and she was his only child, Gudny would have been his sole heir, so the child would have inherited all her mother's assets on her death."

  "And if that's the case, someone would have profited from the child's death," said Matthew, "inheriting all Gudny's assets, which would have gone to the child. Who would it be, in this case?"

  "The mother's closest relative," said Thora. "Grimur, Gudny's uncle and the child's great-uncle." She closed the book. "Lara, Soldis's grand-mother, said he had money troubles, so he could have killed her to prevent her reaching adulthood. As soon as the girl married or had a child of her own, Grimur would lose his claim to the inheritance."

  "That's incredibly callous," said Matthew. "But he wasn't the one who put the rock there. His daughter, Malfridur, Elin and Borkur's mother, must have known of the body under there. It's no coincidence that she placed a stone with that inscription in that very location."