Ashes To Dust

Chapter Ten

Thóra was furious to find Bella at breakfast ahead of her. The secretary had taken a seat by the window and on the table in front of her were plates piled up with high-calorie foods. She had such a smug look on her face that Thóra briefly considered taking a seat elsewhere, but she swallowed her pride and sat down opposite Bella.

‘Well,’ she said as she pulled the coffee pot towards her, ‘did you have fun last night?’ She herself had gone straight to her room and phoned home, since her parents had gone out of their way to house-sit and babysit in her absence. This arrangement was much less trouble than taking the whole gang over to their house, including Orri and his mother. Thóra’s father was in high spirits having set up camp in her garage, which he’d been itching to fix up for a very long time although her mother hadn’t been too keen on the idea. In her opinion everything at Thóra’s had gone to the dogs: the filter in the washing machine was blocked, a flood of clothing poured from the wardrobes every time she opened them in search of an outfit for Sóley, and in the farthest corner of the fridge there was a jar of jam that had expired last century. Thóra therefore had to endure a half-hour lecture about what a terrible housewife she was, but she didn’t need her mother to tell her that. At the end of the call she’d been allowed to speak to Sóley, who told her happily that she was wearing Gylfi’s huge socks because

Grandma couldn’t find any of hers. Gylfi then came on and muttered into the receiver that she had to come home -Grandma was driving him completely crazy and Sigga was depressed. Before hanging up Thóra promised him that she would fix everything; she’d been affected by the thought of her daughter- in-law’s depression. She turned on the television and flicked through the channels without finding anything that appealed to her. She ended up watching men in sunglasses play poker, but finally fell asleep before figuring out how the game worked.

‘Crazy,’ said Bella, and she took a large bite of bread and jam. She’d spread the jam so thickly that it was more like jam and bread, causing one corner of the slice to break off from the sheer weight and leave a purple jam stain on her chin. She was completely unperturbed, wiping off the jam with her index finger and sticking it in her mouth. ‘I met some great people.’

‘Good,’ said Thóra, pouring milk into her coffee. ‘Were these people the same age as you?’

‘I didn’t ask for ID,’ said Bella, lifting her own coffee cup to her lips. She regarded Thóra over the rim and wiggled her eyebrows. ‘I slept with someone.’

Thóra choked on her coffee.‘What did you say?’ she spluttered.

‘You heard,’ said Bella proudly.‘It was brilliant. Sailors really know what they’re doing.’

‘Sailorsf’ said Thóra, still aghast. ‘Were there more than one?’ How could this girl get herself a bedmate, or mates, as if it were nothing, when Thóra felt like she herself would have trouble finding an interested party in a men’s prison? Actually, that wasn’t entirely true: more often than not she was the uninterested one, rather than the men she met. Still, she felt irritated.

‘No, it was just the one,’ said Bella. ‘Not for any lack of opportunity – I certainly could have had two.’

Thóra was speechless, and indeed said nothing for the remainder of breakfast. That hardly mattered, because Bella gave her such a comprehensive account of the events of the previous night that Thóra wouldn’t have been able to get a word in edgeways.

Dís hid her head in her hands.‘What do we do now?’ She was still recovering from the shock of finding Alda’s body. The first night after the discovery she had lain in bed, exhausted but unable to fall asleep. She kept wondering if her colleague Agúst could have overlooked some clue that the nurse had felt ill. All of their interactions with Alda that she could remember had to do with work, the next operation or the state of the little storeroom. If there had been any clues, they weren’t making themselves known. In the early hours of morning, just before sleep was finally merciful to her, she comforted herself with the thought that time healed all wounds. But mental scars took much longer to heal than physical ones, and it wasn’t getting easier to come to terms with Alda’s death as time went by. If anything, Dís thought that she felt worse now than the day she’d discovered the nurse’s body. She knew she’d remember that moment forever; after reporting the death, she had waited in the bedroom. In hindsight it would have been wiser to wait down in the living room or the kitchen, or even out in her car, but at the time she’d felt it would be disrespectful to the deceased, so instead she had sat down at the little dressing table at the end of the bed. Barely ten minutes had passed between the end of the emergency call and the ambulance arriving, but those ten minutes had been the longest of her life. For most of that time she had sat stiffly looking at Alda’s body, at the staring eyes directed at the doorway as if there were some great truth to be found there, the gaping mouth that appeared to be contorted in a scream of anguish. Judging from the evidence on the bedside table this was a suicide, although the appearance of the body suggested otherwise. Dís was not familiar enough with pathology or forensic medicine to know how a body should look after overdosing on the type of drugs by the bed, but if the pills had killed Alda it was clear that she hadn’t chosen well. Her fists were clenched, and to Dís it looked as though her usually flawless cheeks had been scratched deeply enough to draw blood, enough blood to form the dark pool in which her head lay.

‘What do you mean? We can’t do anything. She killed herself,’ replied Agúst coldly.‘We’ll bring flowers to the funeral. A wreath or whatever.’ His voice gave no indication that he was upset by Alda’s death, although she had worked for them for a decade.

Dís pulled her hands from her face and sat upright. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ she asked sharply.‘A nurse who has worked with us dies before her time and your idea is to say goodbye to her with flowers – or “whatever”. That’s pretty cold.’ She glanced around the room and asked herself why she was surprised. Agúst’s office was a reflection of his personality: cold and soulless. Although her own office was not all that interesting, his was so bereft of any luxuries and so tidy that in an emergency an operation could be performed on his desk. There was nothing in it that didn’t have a purpose, not a thing displayed simply because it was attractive or amusing. Even the framed pictures on the walls, which depicted the most common plastic surgery techniques, were there for a purpose. Just after hanging them up Agúst had told Dís that they would frighten patients who were reluctant about operations. His logic was that such individuals would thus be forced from the start to determine whether they actually trusted themselves to undergo an operation just to look better. Agúst had recently told Dís that after the photos went up, last minute cancellations had decreased noticeably.

Now he rocked backwards in his seat, clearly surprised. ‘Huh?’ he said, then fell silent. He sighed. ‘I know this may sound cold, but I’m not one for public displays of emotion.’ He reached across and took Dís’s hand, which was resting on the edge of the desk. ‘You know how highly I valued her. I just haven’t been able to get my head around this, I think. All I can think of is how we’re going to find a replacement nurse for the operations that we have coming up.’ He smiled sadly. ‘It’s easier to deal with the small things.’

Dís returned his smile sympathetically. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘It’s not as if I haven’t been thinking about that too.’ She pulled her hand away from his and placed it in her lap. She found it uncomfortable to touch his skin, which was silly considering their latex-covered hands touched all the time during operations. ‘This will all be fine,’ she said, and pushed her chair back. ‘Things have a way of working out.’ She stood up. ‘I think I would feel better if I hadn’t been the one who found her.’

‘Of course,’ replied Agúst. ‘Try to stop thinking about it. Remember Alda as she was in life. She deserves to be remembered that way.’

Dís nodded. Then she asked: ‘Do you think she might have been murdered?’

‘Murdered?’ asked Agúst, flabbergasted. ‘Who would have had any reason to murder her?’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Dís thoughtfully. ‘Some rapist out for revenge?’ she added.

‘For God’s sake, I don’t think so,’ said Agúst, frowning. ‘I’m sure the rape association keeps better control of things than that.’

Dís smiled. ‘They’re called the Emergency Reception Unit Support Team for Rape Victims, and I’m not entirely sure that they do have things under control. I know Alda had had enough of them when she left her job at the A &E.’

Alda’s decision to give up her part-time job had come out of the blue several months earlier. She had been volunteering in the local A &E several nights a week and on the weekends, and among other things had earned a good reputation for her support and assistance of rape victims. She had seemed to enjoy this work, and perhaps her decision to quit was the clue that Dís had been trying to remember. Who knew, maybe the horrors Alda occasionally witnessed there had finally been too much for her to handle. ‘Maybe it was someone else entirely,’ she said cautiously.

‘Like who?’ said Agúst in irritation. ‘Mickey, Goofy and Pluto?’

‘No. Like you, for example,’ said Dís calmly, pulling a little paper bag from the pocket of her scrubs.

Agúst stood up. He didn’t seem angry, just surprised. ‘Me?’

Dís went over and put the bag on the desk in front of him. ‘I took this from the table beside her bed. Judging by her body, her death wasn’t painless. Not at all what one would expect if sleeping pills had killed her.’

Agúst looked Dís in the eye, stubbornly. ‘And this makes you think that I killed her?’

‘Look in the bag,’ she said softly. ‘I haven’t completely lost my mind.’

Agúst looked down at the bag and grabbed it. He glanced quickly back up at Dís.

‘Be careful not to touch what’s inside,’ she said calmly. ‘This might have to go to the police.’ She saw Agúst’s expression harden and hurried to add, earnestly: ‘If you were connected to this in some way then it goes no further. If not, then I’ve got to turn this in somehow. I took it from her bedside table.’ She pointed at the bag. ‘But that’s a problem for later. First we’ve got to get this cleared up.’ He looked at her. ‘Don’t look at me like that until you’ve seen what it is. Take a look.’

Agúst pulled the plastic down carefully with his index finger. He didn’t need to open the bag the whole way, as he recognized the contents as soon as they appeared.‘Fucking hell,’ he said quietly, and his head drooped. ‘What do we do now?’

‘All I know is that no one raised a single objection against the excavation except for Markus,’ said Hjortur, walking over to a shelf that appeared about to break under the strain of folders and a tall stack of papers. The archaeologist placed the pages he was holding on the top of the stack and turned back to Thóra and Bella.‘Not his parents, and not his brother. And I can assure you that this Alda you mentioned never got in touch with me. She might have discussed things with someone else here in this office, but if she did no one has mentioned it.’

Thóra nodded dejectedly. ‘Would you be willing to ask? If she had, it could make a difference.’

Hjortur gave her a look that combined pity with irritation. ‘I will, but I doubt it’ll lead anywhere.’

Thóra sensed that she would have to tread lightly in her dealings with the archaeologist so that he wouldn’t block her out. He wasn’t obliged to answer her questions or assist her in any way. ‘Thank you very much,’ she said humbly. ‘I know the discovery of the bodies threw a large spanner in your works, and I expect you’re just as eager as I am for the case to be solved. One might say we share a common interest.’

Hjortur didn’t take the bait. ‘I certainly hope that the police conclude this as soon as possible, but I’m not in as much of a rush as you are. What’s waiting for me has been there for thirty-five years, so several days or weeks ahead or behind schedule isn’t going to change the overall picture. We’re not comrades.’ He crossed his arms. ‘If there’s nothing else I can help you with, I would really prefer to keep working. I’m using this down-time to finish several reports that have been hanging over my head. We’re not just sitting here twiddling our thumbs because the area is temporarily closed.’

Bella snorted, and Thóra hurried to say something before her secretary butted in. ‘I wanted to ask you a couple of questions, and I promise to be quick,’ she said.‘You’ll be rid of us before you know it.’ She smiled and hoped for the best, but Bella was staring stonily at the archaeologist.

Thóra wasn’t sure if it was her honey or her secretary’s vinegar that moved Hjortur, but he agreed to sit down with them for a few minutes. They followed him into a small conference room. ‘Has anything been found in the excavation that could possibly be connected to the discovery of the bodies?’ Thóra began.‘Something that might have had no particular significance when it was found, but might now, in the light of what was in the basement? I’m not confining my question to Markus’s parents’ house.’

‘No,’ replied Hjortur. ‘I don’t remember any such thing. Nor have I given it much thought.’

‘I expect you log and store everything that you find,’ said Thóra. ‘Is there any chance of us being allowed to have a look at those things?’

He shook his head. ‘No, I can’t imagine we’d allow you to do that. The plan is to let the owners of the houses go over the items with us in the later stages and try to reach an agreement on what happens to them,’ he said, pushing his empty coffee cup aside.‘The idea is to set up an exhibition of these items on the site of the excavations, and hopefully in the houses themselves. As you know, the Westmann Islands Municipality owns everything that comes out from under the ash, on the other hand we would certainly want to try to appease the original owners of these items. Something that might mean nothing to us could be invaluable to its former owner, for sentimental reasons.’Hjortur took a deep breath. ‘Many people have contacted us because of this, mainly looking for photo albums and such like, although there have been some enquiries about things like graduation caps, trophies and wristwatches. We do log everything that’s found, and it’s stored in such a way that it’s easy to trace which item came from each house. It would be a huge undertaking to go through all that, so we can’t allow it at this stage.’

‘Haven’t the police made a request to search through the items?’ asked Thóra. ‘One would think they would at least have some interest in whatever was found in Markus’s house.’

Hjdrtur shook his head. ‘Not yet, and hopefully they won’t want to. A lot of work has gone into our system and it would be a huge pain to have to tamper with the boxes.’

‘Do you have anything against my going through the item log?’ asked Thóra. ‘That might be of some help to me.’

Hjortur’s lips thinned.‘I’ll have to check,’ he said tightly.

Thóra decided to back off a little.‘Might someone have had access to the basement before Markus?’ she asked. ‘Was the door open or closed while the ground floor was cleaned?’

‘Are you asking whether the corpses were put there before or after the house was excavated?’ said Hjortur.

‘Yes, actually, I am,’ replied Thóra. ‘It would certainly increase the number of people who could have links to the case.’

‘I believe we shut the basement door as soon as we reached it, and you were quite satisfied with how we did it, as I recall,’ he said, stony faced. ‘It wasn’t more than a couple of hours from when we dug out the door until it was nailed shut. Everything was in accordance with our agreement. Of course anyone who wanted to go down there could have, but it’s out of the question that anyone took a corpse down into that basement since the excavation.’

‘But how can you be sure?’ asked Thóra. ‘Don’t get me wrong – I’m not suggesting that you or your people had anything to do with it.’

‘I went down there with the police after the corpses were found, and it didn’t take much archaeological expertise to realize that they’d been lying there for years or even decades, rather than several days.’

‘Wouldn’t it be possible to make it look that way?’ persisted Thóra. ‘To throw dust over the corpses, or something, making it appear as though they’d been lying there untouched for years?’

‘No,’ said Hjortur resolutely.

‘Do you have any guesses as to who the people lying there were?’ she said. ‘You’re from here, aren’t you?’

Hjortur smiled into his beard. ‘The volcano erupted on my third birthday, so I can’t tell you anything about the event or the people who lived here,’ he said. ‘However, I think it’s out of the question that these are men from the Islands. Everyone escaped the eruption, so four people couldn’t have disappeared.’

Thóra decided not to mention the man who had suffocated in the basement of the pharmacy.

‘Still, you must have thought about it?’ she said. ‘Who those people were? As an archaeologist, you must be curious about your own dig?’

‘Of course I’ve thought about it,’ agreed Hjortur. ‘But I don’t have much imagination so I didn’t really get anywhere. I can tell you one thing, though,’ he added. ‘Just out of curiosity I looked over the newspapers from that time period – we have them here on old-fashioned microfilm – and I found nothing about missing persons, either Icelandic or otherwise. So they appear not to have been missed, which is very odd.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I don’t know how well you could see when you were down there but they’d set up floodlights by the time they came to get me. It looked to me as if at least two of the men were wearing wedding rings. What sort of men were they if their wives didn’t even look for them?’

An unpleasant thought about her ex-husband crossed Thóra’s mind, but she pushed it away. ‘Good question,’ she settled for saying. Then she asked: ‘Did you notice anything that would indicate the men were sailors? I was sort of toying with the notion that this could be related to the Cod War.’

Hjortur shook his head slowly. ‘As far as I could see and can remember, they weren’t wearing waterproofs, or anything else you’d expect to see on sailors at that time,’ he said. ‘That’s not saying much, though, since sailors aren’t always dressed in their work clothes, any more than anyone else is.’ He smiled and looked down at his scruffy jeans.

‘I understand,’ said Thóra, who had been hoping for a different answer, perhaps even that the men had been holding ropes and nets. She thought for a moment before continuing. ‘Do you think someone might have got confused and put the bodies in the wrong place?’ she asked. ‘Was the eruption bad enough at any point to make visibility that poor?’

Hjortur shrugged. ‘Well, I don’t know,’ he said. ‘It seems unlikely, but I can’t be a hundred per cent certain.’ He scratched his head. ‘There’s also the possibility that the house where the bodies were supposed to have been put had already disappeared, and Markus’s house was chosen instead. There’s an excellent website about the houses that disappeared, both the ones in the area the lava swallowed and those that were buried in ash that we’re digging up. Maybe you’ll find something useful there.’

Thóra smiled at him as he scribbled down the web address. He had made an excellent point; it was possible that the corpses were not supposed to have ended up there at all, and the whims of the volcano had determined where they could be buried. Why would a man put bodies in his own basement if there were numerous other houses available? Had the bodies and the head ended up in the same place by accident? This riddle about the bodies was starting to infuriate Thóra. She had to uncover the story behind them. Mostly for Markus’s sake, but also to satisfy her own curiosity.

Thóra sat with a steaming cappuccino in the same restaurant that she and Bella had eaten in the night before. She had noticed they had computer access for customers, so she could kill two birds with one stone by having a cup of coffee and looking online. They had split up their to-do list: Bella would visit the archive, while she looked at the website

Hjortur had recommended. Thóra knew her task was nicer than Bella’s – she got to sit in a cosy environment with a cup of coffee while Bella searched through dusty files for two names – but she felt this division of labour to be a small come-uppance for the uneven distribution of luck with men the night before. Although Thóra had in part sent Bella away to get her out of her sight, she really hoped her secretary would accomplish her task, although the chances of this were slim. Thóra had sent her to the archive without first checking to see whether files transferred to Reykjavik the night of the eruption even existed there, but since Bella hadn’t contacted her it seemed she’d found something to rummage through. Either that or the archivist happened to be a man, and Bella had seduced him.

Thóra scanned the text on the screen. She quickly found information on Markus’s house and its residents at the time, and recognized the names of his parents and brother. She noted down the names of their nearest neighbours, and then those of the residents of the other ten houses on the street. All the names told her was that Kjartan, whom she and Bella had met at the harbour-master’s office, looked to have lived in the house next to Markus’s. At least, the name of the family head was Kjartan Helgason. There could have been two men with the same name, but no other information on him was to be found on the website.

Thóra clicked on the next link, Residents of Sudurvegur Street, and found short biographies of four residents. Luckily, one of these biographical blurbs was about Kjartan Helgason and, even better, the article was accompanied by a photograph. Thóra recognized him immediately. On the downside, his biography didn’t tell her much except that Kjartan had had a long career at sea, thenworked in various jobs before taking up his current position as harbour-master. He had married and had four children; they were all adults now. Upon finishing this article Thóra skimmed through the other biographies, but found nothing that seemed likely to help Markus. The only thing that drew her attention was how many children there had been in each home. Apart from one couple that appeared to be childless, Magnus and his wife Klara had had the fewest children, just their two sons Leifur and Markus.

Thóra finished her coffee and phoned Bella to check on her progress – and set her mind at rest about the archivist’s safety. Her secretary was sullen. The files were obviously in the archive, but Bella hadn’t yet been able to discover which boat Markus had travelled on. Thóra regretted not having asked Markus what the boat was called, since the files were arranged by name of vessel. Thóra did her best to be encouraging and tell Bella how important her task was, then she said goodbye and informed her secretary that she was going back to the hotel, where they would meet and decide how best to take advantage of the rest of the day until their dinner with Leifur and his family.

The weather was so pleasant that Thóra decided to make a detour and enjoy the sunshine. She walked past a souvenir shop and went in to buy a statue of a puffin for Sóley, as well as a tiny pair of woollen mittens for her grandson Orri. Just as the saleswoman was ringing up the items, Bella called.

‘Guess what I found out?’ she said proudly. ‘Markus and Alda took the same boat to the mainland.’

Thóra thanked her, hung up and smiled happily at the saleswoman as she handed her her credit card. They’d cleared the first hurdle.