Ashes To Dust

Chapter Twenty-one

‘Markus, sometimes this is just the way it goes,’ said Thóra encouragingly. ‘It doesn’t necessarily mean that the judges consider you guilty; far from it. I got a strong feeling that they doubted the police’s logic and that they were extremely interested when I ran through all the ways in which not only did things not add up, but they actually worked in your favour. I’m convinced that if they had been asked to rule on your guilt or innocence, you would not be here. That decision was not made purely because the police justified keeping you incarcerated during the investigation. It was also because the case is a serious one: it’s not every day five people are found murdered. That four of them appear to be foreign citizens doesn’t help much, either.’ Thóra was not exaggerating. She had had a good feeling about the case during the hearing and had been certain of coming out victorious, not least when one of the judges had hesitated over the photo of the feminine-looking man and asked whether it was usual to include both sexes in a photo line-up.

‘Well, that makes me feel much better,’ said Markus drily. He looked at Thóra, his anger evident.‘I sit here, locked up, an innocent man, and find myself wondering if I shouldn’t just get myself another lawyer. When I hired you I didn’t expect to end up sitting in prison, suspected of murder. Much less serial murder.’

Thóra did not look away, but answered him frankly. ‘If you want to find another lawyer it’s no skin off my nose. I can even give you the names of several colleagues who have more experience in penal cases than I do. It’s your life and your decision.’ She refrained from adding that she was convinced a change of lawyer would have had no effect on the High Court’s ruling.

Markus nodded, rubbing his face distractedly. He had clearly expected to be released. ‘It’s not really all that long to be locked up,’ he said, more subdued. ‘I don’t doubt that you’ve worked your hardest. I’m just going out of my mind over this; I don’t know what’s what any more. I don’t want to change lawyers.’ He started rubbing his jaw. ‘What did my son say?’ he asked anxiously.

‘Naturally he was horrified, but he seems to be a smart kid so I wouldn’t worry too much about him. He understands the circumstances, and I put a lot of emphasis on this incarceration being exclusively during the investigation, and told him it wasn’t the same as a prison sentence,’ said Thóra. ‘Don’t worry about him.’

‘Maybe you can phone him again for me?’ he asked, and Thóra nodded. ‘Why didn’t they accept that phone call as valid evidence?’ he asked suddenly. ‘I thought it would be enough to show that I was far away from Alda’s home at that precise time? You said it was obvious that the phone was somewhere on the road between Hella and Hvolsvöllur.’

‘The police insist you didn’t have your phone with you,’ said Thóra. ‘They think you had an accomplice, who had your phone with him to provide you with an alibi.’

Markus’s face turned crimson.‘How can they say that?’

‘They’re grasping at straws,’ said Thóra. ‘Shortly before

Alda called you, an unknown person also did. He or she unfortunately has an unlisted number, so it will take more time to find them, if that even proves to be possible. Stefán said you don’t remember who it was. Is that still the case?‘

‘Yes,’ said Markus. ‘But I don’t know what that would change. Isn’t it enough that Alda called me?’

‘It would change everything,’said Thóra. ‘If we could prove it was you that answered your phone, it would be clear that you were the one on the road to your summerhouse, rather than this imaginary accomplice.’

‘I understand,’ said Markus, now rubbing the skin around his eyes. ‘But no.’ He closed his eyes.‘I just can’t remember. Damn it – it was over a week ago.’

‘Try as hard as you can,’ said Thóra. ‘If nothing else, you could give me the names of people who might generally phone you and I could contact them as a last resort. It would take some ammunition away from the police department.’ She was quiet for a moment. ‘It would look better for you if we could pinpoint the person in question while you’re locked up here. Then no one could claim that you influenced a witness.’

‘I’ll try,’ said Markus.‘For example, it’s possible that my brother Leifur called, but he doesn’t have an unlisted number as far as I know. I know that I spoke to him some time that day. He wanted me to drop by, since I was coming to the Islands.’

‘Of course it would be great if it was him,’said Thóra. ‘It would be even better, however, if it was someone a little less connected to you.’ She couldn’t make it any plainer.‘Markus,’ she said softly, ‘you do understand, don’t you, how serious this case is?’ She didn’t wait for a reply but instead continued: ‘I think it’s extremely likely that the four men who were in the basement were connected to your father in one way or another. I’m not necessarily saying he killed them, just that he’s involved in the case. Anything else would be too hard to swallow.’ She saw that Markus was about to protest, so she held up a hand to stall him. ‘Just imagine, the bodies are put in your house at the same time as your father is struggling to save his own family. There must have been better hiding places in the Islands, if your father wasn’t involved. It crossed my mind that he might even have hidden the bodies for one of his friends. Alda’s father, Dadi, or even Kjartan. Even though it’s clear to me that Alda is involved in this somehow, it’s not possible that she killed all these men.’

‘My father didn’t do it,’said Markus, but without the intensity of conviction that accompanied most of his statements. ‘I just don’t believe it.’

‘Maybe not,’ said Thóra.‘But he knew about it. He had to.’ She drew a deep breath and gestured around at the narrow prison visiting room they sat in. ‘You can’t let your concern for your father be your shackles now. I suggest that I speak to your mother and arrange to meet your father. Maybe we’ll get something out of him; you never know. The oldest memories often survive the longest in people with Alzheimer’s. Even if you’re released in a few days, this case will hang over you until it’s been solved. If the perpetrator is found, at least some people won’t always consider you guilty.’ She gave him a moment for this to sink in.‘Think about it, and I’ll phone you tonight.’

Markus looked up and smiled. ‘Only sixty-eight more hours of this.’

‘Did you know that Alda was obsessed with sex?’ Thóra changed the subject, not sure how best to phrase the question. ‘In fact, her computer was full of pornography.’

Markus’s eyes widened. ‘No, I didn’t know that,’ he said. ‘She was always something of a prude. Could it have had something to do with her work?’

‘Maybe,’ said Thóra, although she couldn’t really see how this would have helped her work at either the clinic or the A &E. She took out the photos Dís had given her and showed them to him. ‘Do you recognize this tattoo at all?’

Markus peered at the picture.‘No,’ he said. ‘Never seen this.Who’d have something this pitiful written on them?’ he asked, giving her back the page.

‘To tell you the truth, I don’t know,’ she said, passing him the photo of the young man that had also been found in Alda’s desk. ‘How about this man; do you know him?’ Markus was visibly surprised when he saw the photo, but he said nothing, simply shook his head and returned the photo to her.‘You’ve never seen him?’ Thóra asked.

‘No; at first he reminded me of a boy 1 used to know years ago, but I can see that it was taken recently,’ said Markus. ‘Who is he, then?’

‘No idea,’ said Thóra.‘I was hoping you’d know.’ She put away the pages.‘When did you next meet Alda after the evacuation?’ she asked.‘I was told she’d attended Isafjördur Junior College for a while, but no one knew of her there. Could that have been a misunderstanding?’

‘No, not at all,’ replied Markus.‘Alda went west and started school in Isafjördur after the new year. She then changed schools when she moved to Reykjavik around a year later. That’s when we renewed our acquaintance, because I was going to Reykjavik Junior College, where she transferred to.’ He stared into space, counting under his breath. ‘It was at the beginning of 1974. I was in my first year then.’

‘What year was Alda in?’

‘She was in the same year as me. We were the same age, and she’d finished the first part of the college year out west.’

‘The way I heard it, Alda registered for junior college immediately after the eruption,’ said Thóra. ‘She started in the middle of the winter term, and so was moved up a year. I found this quite unusual – is that really what happened?’

‘I heard the same story,’ replied Markus. ‘She was the brightest student in her class, so she’d easily have been able to jump ahead a year.’

‘But then wouldn’t she have been a year ahead of you at Reykjavik Junior College?’ asked Thóra.

‘Yes, but maybe she hadn’t passed her exams the spring after the eruption, or regretted not having been able to take the autumn term,’ said Markus impatiently. Clearly he thought this discussion a complete waste of time.

‘Let’s turn to something else,’ said Thóra. ‘I understand that the Friday evening before the volcano blew, there was a school dance at which the students in your class all planned to get drunk. Do you remember?’

Markus nodded his head sheepishly.‘That’s the first time I ever drank alcohol, though it might sound unbelievable,’ he said. ‘Most of my friends started experimenting around the time they were confirmed.’ He looked embarrassed but kept going. ‘Dad handled alcohol badly, if you catch my drift. So I planned never to drink, because I didn’t want to be like him.’

‘That was an unusually wise decision for a boy of your age,’ said Thóra.

‘It didn’t last long,’ said Markus, and he smiled remorsefully. ‘Pretty much everyone was going to the party and I couldn’t weasel my way out of it. It was the first time I ever got drunk, and I’ll never forget that night.’

‘Do you remember whether Alda was picked up or whether she made her own way home?’ asked Thóra.‘Did she perhaps go down to the harbour?’

Markus looked at her, surprised. ‘She certainly wasn’t picked up,’ he said. ‘She wasn’t that drunk; she was in better shape than the rest of us. On the other hand, I had to get picked up by Dad, which was awful. He wasn’t very pleased, that’s for sure. But whether Alda went down to the harbour that night, I have no idea. I doubt it. Why do you ask?’

‘I’ve found out that on that same night something happened at the pier. It was completely covered in blood the next morning, which raises the question of whether these bodies had something to do with it. It crossed my mind that Alda might have somehow stumbled into whatever happened and even got hold of the head there.’

Markus looked at her blankly. ‘And then what? Kept it until she asked me about the box on Monday evening? The eruption started on Monday night, so she would have had the head with her for forty-eight hours.’

‘Did the box smell at all?’ asked Thóra, but Markus could only shake his head. ‘Do you remember whether Alda had been in a bad mood, or in any way different from usual, the weekend of the dance and the following Monday? I’m pretty sure something happened to her the night of the dance, and I imagine it might be somehow connected to the bodies and the head.’ She told him about the diary.

‘I actually didn’t see her that weekend,’ said Markus. ‘She was ill, so she stayed indoors. She didn’t come to school on Monday either, so I was surprised when she called and asked me to meet her that evening and to come alone. It was all very mysterious, but of course I understand the reason now, having seen what was in the box she gave me. She was acting oddly that evening, I know that much. You’d have to ask someone else whether she was like that the whole weekend, because I didn’t see her.’

Thóra nodded. ‘And what about the night when Alda’s hair was cut off in the school gym?’ she said. ‘I’m sure it’s completely unconnected to the case, but you never know.’

‘I was ill, so luckily I wasn’t there,’ replied Markus heatedly. ‘I would have been furious. It was a terrible thing to do, and it didn’t help that the teachers had no idea who did it. They couldn’t even find the hair.’

‘So you knew who did it?’ asked Thóra.

‘No, unfortunately. Or fortunately, for him – I would have made him pay for it.’

‘Are you sure the person in question was male?’ she said. ‘To me it seems very much like something a jealous girl would do.’

Markus looked at her, startled. Clearly he hadn’t thought of this. ‘Yes, I just assumed it was a boy. I suspected a boy named Stefán, who kind of had a crush on Alda, but he flat- out denied it and I was forced to believe him, he was so convincing.’

Thóra remembered the entry in Alda’s diary that had said she had kissed ‘Stebbi’,which was short for Stefán. She assumed this was the same boy.‘Could it have been anyone else?’

‘No, probably not. Alda was friends with everyone and I don’t know of anyone who resented her. I did everything in my power to find out who did it, though. When I discovered the gym had been unlocked the whole night, I stopped trying.

It could have been anyone in the Islands, although there weren’t many people who would do such a disgusting thing.‘

It was no use discussing this any further. The only thing she’d accomplished by bringing up the hair story was to annoy Markus. ‘What do you know about your neighbours from before the volcano went up, Valgerdur and Dadi, who lived next door to you?’ she asked. ‘They were nicknamed Dadi Horseshoe and Horseshoe Two. Could they have been connected to these bodies in any way?’

Markus looked at her flatly.‘Definitely,’ he said. ‘If the men died of boredom.’

On the way into town from Litla-Hraun, Thóra called Reykjavik Junior College and to her surprise someone picked up. The man sighed when she informed him of her business, but promised to find the information she requested. Unfortunately it would take him a little while, he said, so he recommended that she phone back in fifteen minutes, which she duly did. ‘I’ve found it,’ he said breathlessly. ‘Alda Thórgeirsdóttir was registered in the school in the autumn of 1973 and graduated with honours from the language department in the spring of 1977.’

‘Did you say autumn 1973?’ said Thóra. ‘Didn’t she start her studies after the new year? It was my understanding that she started there with you in the middle of the winter term, having transferred from Isafjördur Junior College, where she attended the previous term.’ Thóra decided not to confuse the man any further by adding that Alda was also supposed to have been studying at Isafjördur Junior College in the spring term, 1973. In any case, the woman at the office there had denied that Alda had been a student there that winter.

‘There’s nothing here from Isafjördur Junior College,’ said the man, and Thóra heard him rustling papers. ‘She was clearly registered with us that autumn, but was kept out of school that term due to health concerns. It doesn’t say what her illness was as that kind of information is confidential, and kept elsewhere. But whatever it was, she was attending school here in good health in January 1974.’

Thóra thanked the man and said goodbye. Alda had obviously never attended junior college in the west. That story was a fabrication. The best Thóra could come up with was that Alda had been admitted to a psychiatric ward and it had been a sensitive subject. All those years ago mental diseases were shameful and taboo. Thóra thought it fairly likely that any mental breakdown Alda had suffered had had something to do with the box she’d handed over to Markus. It couldn’t have been healthy for an innocent teenager to handle a severed human head.