Ashes To Dust

Chapter Eight

‘Do you know anything about the volcano?’ Thóra asked as they walked out of their hotel into the warm air.

‘No,’ replied Bella. ‘Nothing except that it erupted.’

‘Yes, as usually happens with volcanoes,’ said Thóra, wondering why she had thought it was worthwhile to bring her secretary. ‘Well, you’ll learn more about it later. The man we’re going to meet knows everything about it, Markus says.’

‘Can’t wait,’ drawled Bella, pulling a pack of cigarettes from her jacket pocket.

Thóra paid no heed and kept walking as the secretary stopped to light up. Bella didn’t hurry to catch up after her cigarette was lit, so they walked the rest of the distance to the harbour-master’s office a few paces apart. Thóra used the time to think about what she wanted to get from this Kjartan Helgason. Apparently he had been out at sea a great deal in his day, and Markus considered him to be among those best informed about the eruption and the rescue work following it, and had said that as Kjartan had been a friend of his father, it should be easy to get him to open up. Thóra had little hope that much would come out of this interview, but she and Bella would at least know a bit more about the eruption afterwards. Maybe he would even have some thoughts about who the men in the basement might be, and could point Thóra in the right direction. She was well aware that the police were working day and night to find out precisely the same thing, and that they had connections out in the world with which Thóra could scarcely compete, despite her owning the whole series of Our Century books. On the other hand, it was clear to her that identifying the bodies would speed, up the investigation significantly, as well as providing clues as to who they might have had dealings with and what they had been doing in the Islands. How people live influences how they die.

Kjartan welcomed them on the steps outside the harbourmaster’s office, where he was having a cigarette with another, younger man. He introduced himself when Thóra arrived and shook her hand firmly. The top bone of his right index finger was missing, and his palm was rough. He appeared to be approaching retirement age: a few dark hairs could still be seen on his otherwise white head. He limped slightly as he showed them in, and told them unexpectedly that he still hadn’t recovered after being struck by a boom nearly twenty years ago.

‘That’s why I stopped going out to sea,’ he said, smiling ruefully. ‘You can’t tread the waves very well with a gammy leg.’ He slapped the top of his thigh.

‘And did you go straight from that to working here?’ asked Thóra as they made their way up to the second floor.

‘No, my dear,’ replied Kjartan, stepping up one more stair with great effort. ‘I’ve done this and that from the time I became a landlubber. I’ve only been here for five years.’

‘And you can’t get an office on the ground floor?’ she exclaimed, surprised that a partially handicapped man should be forced to hobble up the stairs.

‘Yes, I’m sure I could,’replied Kjartan. ‘But I don’t care about that. This bother with the stairs is worth it.’ He opened the door to a small office. ‘I have to have a sea view,’ he said, and pointed out of the window to where the harbour and Heimaklettur Peak appeared. ‘I’m like a puffin. I can’t take off unless I’ve got the sea in my sight.’ He waved his hand around the room. ‘I’d get nothing done.’

It seemed to Thóra from the piles and scraps of paper covering the room that the man’s accomplishments were scarcely exemplary, despite his view of the sea. ‘I live by the sea, too, and I know the feeling,’ she said, lifting a strange- looking device from the nearest chair. ‘Can I put this somewhere else?’ she asked, looking around to find a secure place. Although it looked like it might be a piece of junk, it could just as easily have been valuable, henceits place on a chair rather than on the floor like most other things in the office.

‘Just throw it on the floor,’replied Kjartan as he took his own seat. Thóra placed the object down carefully and sat in the chair. Bella pulled another chair over to Kjartan’s desk and also sat, after removing a plastic bag that appeared to contain some glasses or cups. She put the bag down quite roughly, and Thóra had to wait until the glasses stopped clinking before she started to speak. ‘I hope we’re not dragging you away from home to meet us,’ she said. ‘Markus said that you would be here, but since it’s Sunday I wasn’t sure.’

‘My dear, don’t worry about it,’ replied Kjartan. ‘I needed to work this weekend. There’s only the two of us here trying to catch up with everything because of the reports that need to be done this week. Yet another ridiculous inspection is about to begin.’

Thóra relaxed a bit, but at the same time sympathized with the man, who certainly appeared to have a lot of work to do, considering the condition of the office. ‘Okay, good,’ she said, then turned to the matter at hand. ‘Markus has perhaps explained to you my business, which is to say, I am assisting him in a case that appears to be connected to the eruption,’ she began. ‘He told me that you knew everything about everything.’ She added quickly, hopefully:‘and everyone…?’

‘Is that what they say?’ said Kjartan, with a pleased smirk. ‘I don’t know about that, but I am familiar with this case of Markus’s.’ He did not take his eyes off Thóra. ‘This is a small place. Every single person here knows pretty much everything about the discovery of the bodies, both what’s been written about in the papers and the aspects that aren’t being discussed in public.’

Thóra smiled reluctantly. It was to be expected. The Westmann Islands were inhabited by nearly four thousand people in approximately thirteen square kilometres, so the story must have circulated very quickly. Now she just had to hope that the same had occurred with the story behind the corpses. ‘What exactly happened here in the Islands the night of the eruption, and the day before Markus’s home was buried by ash? Markus has told me what he remembers, but naturally he was just a teenager, so he was sent to the mainland straight away that night. I understand that he didn’t return to the Islands until some time had passed, and by then his house was gone.’

‘I suppose you’re hoping to hear that someone besides Markus went down into the basement?’ asked Kjartan. He rocked back and forth on his office chair, which creaked.

‘I’m interested in knowing whether it might be at all possible to rule out such a thing,’ answered Thóra cautiously. She had to be careful not to let the old man turn the meeting into an opportunity to satisfy his own curiosity. ‘If you could perhaps explain to me how all this happened, and try to remember anything that might be important for Markus’s case?’

‘I don’t know whether what I remember could help Markus in any way.’ Kjartan leaned forward quickly. His chair creaked again. ‘I would hope so – I like the boy. His father and I were great friends. He was never called anything other than“Krusi krona” here in the old days, since he used to go on and on about money.’

Thóra smiled. It had been decades since Markus had been a boy, but in the mind of this man he seemed to have stayed at that age. ‘Still, it would be good to hear your side of the story. One never knows what details will be revealed,’ she said. ‘How did it start? As far as I know, the eruption began without warning.’

Now it was Kjartan’s turn to smile.‘The eruption on Surtsey was a clear warning, in my opinion.’ He reached out to the wall behind him and took down a framed map of the Islands. The map was faded and dusty; Kjartan blew most of the dust off, then pointed at Surtsey and ran his finger along the islands that lined up in a horseshoe from Surtsey to Heimaey itself. ‘It doesn’t take a genius to realize that the volcanic belt is located here. It isn’t a great distance,’he said, placing his little finger on Heimaey and his thumb on Surtsey. ‘About thirteen, fourteen nautical miles.’ He laid the map on the desk in front of him. ‘The Surtsey eruption began in 1963, and Eldfell blew in 1973. Ten years is a short time on the scale of geological history.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Thóra.‘But it’s still quite a long time for human beings. So the inhabitants of the Westmann Islands stopped worrying about eruptions sometime after the upheaval on Surtsey ended?’

‘Yes, yes, that’s right,’said Kjartan. ‘Actually the only warning that people got was several small earthquakes the evening before the eruption started. No one paid much attention to them, since people thought the tremors came from the area where they’d recently finished constructing the Búrfell power plant. Now I’m no specialist in quakes, but I was told that one of the three seismographs set up to record the movements of the earth’s crust was broken, making it impossible to determine their epicentre with any great precision. Not a single person put two and two together when they felt the tremors.’ Kjartan paused. ‘There were actually various other signs that no one paid any attention to,’ he added, avoiding her eyes.‘A woman who lived on the edge of town, at the place where the eruption began, was amazed to see that the elves were packing up and moving out two days before it started.’

‘Elves?’ repeated Thóra carefully. ‘I see.’ She decided to keep her opinion to herself where elves were concerned.

‘Yes, and several days earlier, a little girl told her parents that an eruption was about to happen at the place where the fissure was formed.’ Kjartan shrugged. ‘There are other stories like this, about unexplained events just prior to the disaster, but one never knows how much store to set by them. An amateur painter, for example, did a painting of the area showing the volcano and lava before these events occurred. I actually believe that some people can somehow sense catastrophes before they happen – just as animals seem to. However, I’m not one of them.’

Thóra silently thanked God for that small mercy. ‘Then the eruption started in the middle of the night?’

‘Yes,’ said Kjartan, seemingly relieved that Thóra didn’t want to talk about the supernatural.‘The fissure opened at two o’clock in the morning and started spewing lava. It wasn’t more than two hundred metres from the nearest farm, so it’s a miracle that everyone was saved.’

‘People must have been terrified,’ said Thóra. ‘I’ve never been near an eruption, but the noise must have been incredible.’

‘It might be hard to believe, but there wasn’t that much noise,’ he replied. ‘Most of those who lived nearest the site were woken by the noise, but many people who lived farther away had to be woken up. Police cars, fire engines and other vehicles drove around the streets of the town with their sirens on, to warn people. A little later the decision was made to evacuate the Islands, and people were asked to go down to the harbour. Most people didn’t need to be told twice, and for some reason most of them had flocked down there anyway. A few people, however, had to be persuaded to leave.’

‘Didn’t they realize the danger they were in?’ asked Thóra. ‘I’d have thought a spouting volcano in your back garden might be pretty persuasive.’

‘Of course it was the middle of the night, and people were still a bit sleepy. Some people thought there was a fire; the first person to see the eruption called the police and reported one. He was the farmer in Kirkjubasr, and the fissure went through his farm. Just over two kilometres long, if you can imagine it.’ Kjartan appeared almost proud that this hadn’t simply been a little tourist eruption. ‘Now, others thought that some sort of war had broken out. The Cold War was in full force by then – as was the Cod War, of course. And keep in mind that the present-day landscape is deceiving and you can’t really tell what happened from how it looks now.

The Eldfell cone didn’t exist at that time – it was formed in the eruption. It was just flat land, and suddenly a row of lava spouts appeared out of the earth. From a distance they could very well have appeared to be burning buildings, or a big grass fire. And of course, everyone reacts differently in a crisis.‘Kjartan smiled to himself, remembering. ’I ended up talking a woman out of her house, which was very close to the fissure vent. She had got up and started making pancakes! We had a hell of a job persuading her to put down her pan.‘

Thóra laughed. She noticed that Bella was sitting there as if fossilized; she’d not moved a muscle since sitting down. Thóra didn’t know whether that was good or bad; either the girl was paying rapt attention, or she was miles away. ‘But in the end you got everyone off the Islands?’

‘Yes, we did. We managed to get everyone up and on the move in about an hour, and people made their own way down to the harbour. The weather had been unfit for sailing the day before, so the entire fishing fleet was in the port. Otherwise enormous carnage would have occurred, since it was only a short time from the start of the eruption until red-hot ash and debris started raining over the town. Tephra, it’s called. That made everything much more dangerous.’ Kjartan leaned back.‘Those of us on the rescue crews really had to run for it. It looked as if the lava would close the harbour, since the fissure reached all the way down to the seaward approach at Ystaklettur Cliff. We were in a really tight spot -we needed to get five thousand people out of there. Not to mention the sheep and chickens.’

‘Sheep and chickens?’ echoed Thóra. ‘You sent farm animals to the mainland by boat? What about the dogs and cats?’

She hadn’t thought about that. Naturally there had been other living things on the island besides people.

‘Dog ownership was forbidden at the time, but most of the cats were left behind. There was no chance to round them all up. Most of them died as the eruption went on, from the toxic fumes. The sheep, on the other hand, were sent immediately to the mainland on helicopters from the American base, while the chickens were transported by ship,’ replied Kjartan. He stopped suddenly. ‘Even though I watched my own house disappear beneath the lava, the hardest part of the eruption was when the cows from Kirkjubaer were led down to the harbour to be slaughtered. It was horrific. The farm was the first building to disappear, since the volcano was on that farmer’s land, and he was quite old and in no position to start farming again. There was no other option, but it was pitiful. Natural disasters affect animals terribly, and to make matters worse I think the cows sensed that this trip down to the harbour would be their last.’ He cleared his throat. ‘The farmer went to the mainland the next morning by plane. Everything that he owned fitted into a little box that he held in his lap the whole way.’

Thóra pushed the image out of her mind – Markus’s box was enough for her. ‘In other words, everyone abandoned the town?’ she asked.

‘Somewhere between two and three hundred men remained behind to try to salvage whatever they could. Everyone else – among them the women and children, of course – was sent to the mainland. It was God’s mercy that the fleet was in the harbour. It would not have gone so well if the boats had been out fishing, I can tell you that.’Kjartan looked out for a moment over the harbour before turning back to the two women. ‘People were piled up on board the boats and packed in everywhere they could fit. The seasickness was awful. It’s no fun to be tossed about on the waves, surrounded by the stink of fish, if you’re not used to it. Not to mention if you’re sleep-deprived and suffering from shock.’Bella obviously was listening, because out of the corner of her eye Thóra saw her grimace. ‘Were there any other boats in the harbour apart from the ones from the Westmann Islands?’ she asked. ‘Foreign vessels, for example?’

‘No, none,’ replied Kjartan immediately, glowering at her. ‘Out of the question.’

Thóra decided not to pursue this, although she had hoped that a foreign boat might have been moored there.‘Do you remember anything about Markus that night, or Alda, his girlfriend?’

‘No,’ replied Kjartan, without hesitation. He fell silent, clearly unwilling to elaborate.

‘Are you absolutely certain?’asked Thóra, surprised at the swiftness of his response. ‘He wasn’t there with his father, your friend?’

‘I must have seen his father, although I don’t specifically remember it,’ scowled Kjartan. ‘He worked on a rescue crew and was in the Islands during the days following the eruption, although I don’t recall whether I met him that night. I don’t remember the boy at all, nor Alda for that matter. There was a crowd of people there. They all had their arms piled high with whatever they had decided was most valuable at the moment they were forced to head to the harbour, the most incredible collection of things. In most cases what truly mattered was left behind; photo albums and other keepsakes were forgotten in the mad rush to save new standard lamps or other worldly goods that would soon become worthless.’

‘But are you sure you fully realize which Alda I’m talking about?’ persisted Thóra. She thought it peculiar that Kjartan hadn’t hesitated at all when she mentioned her name. Perhaps he’d heard Markus’s explanation for the severed head and had already remembered who she was. She hoped this wasn’t the case, because it would mean Markus had been very indiscreet.

‘There was only one Alda in the Islands at that time. She was the same age as Markus, and her father was one of our friends. His name was Thórgeir and he died recently. He was one of those who stayed behind to assist the rescue crews along with me and Markus’s father Magnus.’

‘Did you know Alda died this week?’asked Thóra.

‘Yes, I heard about that,’ he replied. ‘Her mother and sister still live in the Islands, and I know both of them. The whole thing is, in a word, tragic, and I don’t understand what causes people to take such desperate measures. Her mother is devastated, understandably.’ Kjartan glanced very quickly out over the harbour before continuing. He seemed to wish to change the subject, clearly finding it difficult to talk about sensitive issues, like so many men of his generation. ‘But I don’t remember either Alda or Markus being there that night. Try to imagine five thousand people milling about out here. It was utter bedlam, and there was no time to talk to shocked teenagers.’

‘Markus said that he’d been evacuated to the mainland on the same boat as Alda, and that they’d spoken on board,’ said Thóra. ‘Is it possible to verify this? In other words, are there records of who went on which boat to the mainland that night?’

Kjartan shrugged. ‘I simply don’t know. The Red Cross took down the names of those who landed and arranged for people to be sent to Reykjavik from Thórlakshofn. I think they also recorded which people were taken in by relatives and so on. Whether the records say which ships people travelled on I don’t know, and if they did who’s to say if such papers were even preserved?’

‘They’re probably in the National Archive,’ cried Bella, suddenly. She blushed slightly when Thóra and Kjartan looked at her in surprise. They had both forgotten her.‘That’s where I would put them, anyway,’ she added, before abruptly shutting up.

‘There’s also an archive here in town,’ said Kjartan. ‘On the first floor of the library. They might have those papers there.’

‘If not, then they’re probably in the National Archive, as you suggested, Bella,’ said Thóra, pleased with her secretary’s interest. This was a possible assignment for the girl while they were here, she thought. Bella could search for the documents in the town’s archive and dig through them until she found Markus and Alda’s names. If they didn’t show up in the search, Bella could continue in Reykjavik later. There was a lot at stake, because although such documents would not suffice in themselves to clear Markus of all suspicion, they would at least provide some support to his story. He had told Alda on the ship that the box had been left behind in the basement, and since Alda was no longer living, Markus was in dire need of anything, no matter how small, to help support his statement. Thóra turned to Kjartan. ‘The men who remained behind to do the rescue work,’ she said, ‘could they travel between the Islands freely, or was there some sort of system in place?’

Kjartan shook his head. ‘For the first two or three days there was no organization at all. People just worked like mad on their own initiative, salvaging what they could. And then it changed and started becoming more orderly. Although attempts were made to control the operations, it was actually nature that controlled everything according to its whims. It also wasn’t long before more rescue crews came from the mainland, but unfortunately I don’t have any precise numbers available on their size or how they were organized. I do recall that there were three or four hundred people here at the height of the rescue operation.’ Kjartan looked Thóra in the eye. ‘If you’re asking whether any of them could have gone into the house and put the bodies there, or killed those people in the basement, the answer is absolutely yes. It wouldn’t have been at all difficult. The houses that they’re digging up now weren’t immediately buried by ash – at least two weeks passed from the start of the eruption until the ash covered them. I wouldn’t have wanted to enter them myself at that point because they were so close to the vent, but someone may well have been desperate enough to take the risk. About four hundred houses were covered by lava and obviously those couldn’t be saved. That row of houses, on the other hand, was buried under ash, which doesn’t have the same destructive power as molten rock. If I’d been hiding bodies I would have put them in houses that clearly would have been covered by lava, but of course that would have taken an enormous amount of courage. Lava doesn’t flow that quickly, but there are few sights more terrifying. It doesn’t spare anything. And it wasn’t just the burning lava that would have held most people back, but also the toxic gases it produced.’

‘Do you have any idea who these people were that were found in the basement?’ asked Thóra. ‘Do you know whether anyone went missing? From the rescue crews, for example?’

‘I have no idea,’ replied Kjartan. ‘As far as I know, they all returned home in the end. No one died in the eruption.’

‘Except the man in the basement of the pharmacy,’ said Thóra.

‘That wasn’t the eruption,’he replied. ‘He was an alcoholic.’

Thóra was speechless. This was clearly the accepted view in the Islands. Alcoholics didn’t count. She was determined not to let this put her off. ‘But you must have wondered who these people were?’ she continued. ‘The Westmann Islands aren’t very large, so naturally it’s most likely that these men had some kind of tie to them.’

‘Not a clue,’ said Kjartan, and he tightened his lips. ‘From what I’ve seen in the news, no one knows who these people are, or how they ended up in the basement.’

‘That’s correct,’ said Thóra patiently. ‘But it doesn’t hurt to wonder. It occurred to me that this might be connected to the Cod War, that they were sailors who died in an accident at sea or in some quarrel between the Icelanders and the British. I guess I’m assuming that they’re Englishmen.’

‘I doubt that,’ replied Kjartan.‘There were various difficulties at the time, but they never developed into anything like what you’re suggesting. Besides, it couldn’t have been kept secret if something like that had happened. We would never have been able to kill four Brits without it becoming a huge incident. I have no idea who these people were, unfortunately.’

Thóra decided not to press any further, but was surprised that the man might not at least have considered the possibility that the dead people were foreigners. It was absolutely indisputable – four Icelanders simply could not have vanished without being missed. An uneasy feeling came over her. The man before her knew more than he wanted to reveal. He’d been more than prepared to chat about unimportant things. She looked at Bella and stood up. ‘Well, this was informative.’ She shook Kjartan’s hand. ‘Maybe we’ll get a chance to disturb you further, if anything else occurs to me.’

On the way out she noticed a framed photograph on the wall next to the doorway. It showed five people with their arms around each other’s shoulders. They were all wearing helmets, while in the background a jet of ash stretched to the sky. One of the men was clearly Kjartan in his younger years. All of them looked exhausted, and none smiled at the camera. ‘Is Markus’s father in this photograph, perhaps?’

Kjartan walked up to it and pointed at one of the men. ‘That’s him. Magnus. And then there’s Geiri, or Thórgeir. Alda’s father.’

‘This is clearly you here, but who are the other two?’ Thóra asked.

Kjartan snorted rudely. ‘That’s Dadi,’ he said, pointing at a rather ugly man who was a good deal shorter than the others. ‘A boring bastard who was married to an even more boring woman.’ He moved his finger. ‘And this is Gudni.’

‘The policeman?’ asked Thóra, turning to Kjartan. ‘Was he one of the friends that you mentioned?’

‘Was isthe operative word,’ replied Kjartan.