Ashes To Dust

Chapter Four

Thóra leaned back in her chair and sighed, trying to decide who to ask to pick up her daughter Sóley – for the second day in a row. Her mother was out of the question. She had helped out the previous evening when Thóra had been delayed in the Westmann Islands, and besides that, her parents were on their way to the theatre. She would never hear the end of it if her mother missed the play she’d been looking forward to for months. It was some sort of dramatized documentary about the injustices women suffer in the modern world. Thóra smiled to herself. Her father would be eternally grateful if she rescued him from this theatre trip, but she decided not to ruin their plans. Her mother’s disappointment would last far longer than her father’s gratitude.

She decided to call her ex-husband. Hannes would not be best pleased. The work of an emergency physician was no less demanding than that of a lawyer, and the days were longer and harder. He took the kids every other weekend and sometimes asked to have more time with them when it was convenient, but in general he was not receptive to taking them at short notice. Hannes had a new wife, and his life now revolved mainly around the two of them and their needs. Thóra’s, on the other hand, revolved around everyone but herself; lately all of her time had been going into her work, her two children and her grandson, who had recently turned one. The grandchild actually came part and parcel with a fourth child – her daughter- in law. Sigga was seventeen, a year younger than Thóra’s son Gylfi, but there was not much difference between them in terms of maturity. Somehow the young parents had managed to keep their relationship going despite their belly flop into the deep end of adulthood. They stayed with Thóra every other week, and in between the girl went home to her parents with the little boy – without Gylfi. The relationship between Gylfi and Sigga’s parents was a chilly one; they seemed unable to forgive him for their daughter’s untimely pregnancy. This was no secret to anyone, least of all Gylfi, so Thóra was happy when he decided to stay at home whilst Sigga was with them. In this way she managed to keep her son to herself a little longer and continue with his upbringing, which had been cut short when he had accidentally increased the human population.

Thóra put the receiver under her chin and adjusted a framed photograph of her grandson as she selected the number. The little boy had been christened Orri, after countless other proposals by the young parents that still made Thóra shudder. He was irresistible; blond and big-eyed, and still with round, chubby cheeks even though he had long since stopped bottle- feeding. It warmed Thóra’s heart to see him, and she was looking forward to taking care of him next week even though the household’s stress levels increased perceptibly when mother and son were around. She smiled at the little boy in the photo and crossed her fingers when the phone was finally answered. ‘Hello, Hannes. Could you do me a small favour? I won’t be able to pick up Sóley…

‘The girl watched from the playground as the ambulance drove up to the house. She twisted in the swing and let it turn her back in a semi-circle. She was happy that the sirens weren’t on because if they were, that meant it was serious. Maybe the lady had just fallen down and broken her foot? Once her friend broke her foot and then an ambulance came to get her. Tinna puffed up her cheeks then let the air leak out while she thought about all of this. Fat cheeks. Skinny cheeks. Fat cheeks. Skinny cheeks. She stopped playing bellows with her cheeks and sat deep in thought. Here was proof that you didn’t need to eat to become fat. Air could make you fat. She stiffened. Everything was full of air. It was everywhere, and there was nowhere to hide. She would have to try to breathe less.

A dull thud came from the ambulance and Tinna directed her attention back there. She was hoping that someone would come out of the house so that she could find out what had happened, but the bustle around the ambulance was better than nothing. The house was more interesting- maybe they’d arrested a criminal inside, but the walls blocked her view. If they were thin walls maybe she could see through them, just as it would be possible one day to see through her. She squinted in the hope of seeing better, but it didn’t help. Yet something was going on: the first police car to arrive had had its sirens on. No police car had come when her friend broke her foot in the school playground, so it was unlikely that they’d come to the lady’s house because of an accident. If it was a robbery, then Tinna hoped that the police would put the robber in jail. She was a nice lady who didn’t deserve anything bad to happen to her. The swing creaked. The girl watched as two men stepped out of the ambulance and took a stretcher from the back. She sighed. This wasn’t good. When was she going to meet the ladynow? Maybe she’d be in the hospital for a long time. Last time Tinna went to the hospital she didn’t get to go home for forty days. But that didn’t change anything. This could always wait. She’d often waited longer than a few months for something. For things that were really important.

Tinna stood up on her swing to get a better view. She held on tight, dizzy from standing up so quickly. When she closed her eyes the unpleasant feeling passed, as always. She reminded herself that it was a good sign to get dizzy, it was almost equal to passing out and that meant the body was burning fat. When Tinna opened her eyes again the men with the stretcher had gone into the house and there was no movement to be seen outside it. The ambulance was parked right in front of the house, blocking her view of the door. She stretched herself as high as she could, trying to see if the door was open, but with no luck. Should she go home or wait for the ladyto be carried out? She was in no rush to go home; no one was there, her mother worked until five and didn’t get any break even though it was a staff day at Tinna’s school. There was nothing waiting for her at home.

She bent her knees and swung standing up, without particularly intending to do so. It was good to feel the air playing through her hair and she sped up a bit, only to slow down immediately when she remembered that the air was not her friend. Her heart pounded in her chest as she tried to settle the swing. As soon as it stopped she felt immediately better, and wondered what she should say to the lady, how she could put into words that she knew who she was for real. Tinna smiled to herself. The lady would be surprised and was sure to be happy, too. It was still stuck in her memory how sad I he lady had been when her father had reacted so terribly to what she was trying to tell him. Her dad was a real idiot. A grumpy, drunken idiot who didn’t understand Tinna, any more than her mother did. She was a lot worse, talking constantly about food, food, food and how Tinna had to eat, and sometimes she even cried. So Tinna always preferred to go to her father’s every other weekend because he didn’t expect anything from her. He told her she ought to eat but then didn’t pay any more attention to whether she did or not, unlike her mother. That was fine by her. Her dad was so uninterested in Tinna that he hadn’t even caught on that she’d heard everything that had passed between him and the lady the night she came to visit. Tinna had let herself in without her father or the visitor being aware of it, and the anger in her dad’s voice made her even keener not to draw attention to herself. She knew how to make herself inconspicuous, especially since that was her goal: in the end, she would become invisible. If she had already reached that goal she would have been able to step between them and watch the lines on their faces and their body language as they argued. ‘But she wasn’t quite that good yet, so she settled for sneaking to the sitting-room door and listening in on their conversation. When they finished she went out again and pretended to be arriving just as the lady was leaving the house. Her father was unusually sulky when he let her in, but she acted as if nothing were wrong and in the end he returned to normal, not caring about anything but the game on television.

The lady had no more idea than her father that Tinna had listened in; perhaps she had no idea at all that she even existed. Unlike Tinna’s father, however, she would be happy to discover that Tinna had heard what had passed between them and would no doubt want to get to know her better. Tinna had got her name and telephone number from a note that she’d left behind on the table for Tinna’s father, so that he could contact her later. That had turned out to be a work of patience since her dad had torn the paper to pieces and thrown them on the floor, so Tinna had to piece together the tatters just to be able to read what was written there. Once she had the woman’s name and telephone number it was easy to find her address. Tinna had sometimes come here just to watch the house without particularly knowing why or what she was hoping to find. The evening before, things had finally been different, and Tinna had watched with great interest. In fact little had actually happened, but maybe all would be explained later. She thought about the note that had blown away on the wind and got stuck in the shrubbery. Tinna had taken it and hidden it at home. It mattered. She knew that for sure – just not why or how. But it would come to light someday.

She sat back down in the swing and hooked her delicate elbows around the brown chains. The smell of iron on her palms reminded her of last summer, when she had tried to swing right over the bar, certain that by doing so she would burn a thousand calories. She still had an ugly scar on her right foot after the attempt failed miserably. The air then hadn’t made her fatter, but thinner. It made it all so difficult the rules kept changing, and Tinna had to be constantly on the look-out if she didn’t want to become fat, fatter, fattest.

She pricked up her ears as the sound of men’s voices came from across the street. She stood up again in the swing to see if the woman would be carried into the ambulance, but was careful in case she got dizzy and fell off. She didn’t want to miss this. First a policeman appeared, walked ahead of the paramedics and opened the door to the ambulance. They followed with the stretcher, and the girl stiffened. She squinted and shook herself. Maybe there was an explanation for this?

Maybe the woman was ill and they didn’t want her to get cold? She jumped from the swing and ran over to the pavement. The policeman who stood there holding open the back door of the ambulance noticed her and waved her away. ‘There’s nothing to see here. Go home,’ he called.

Tinna didn’t answer. In general she was afraid of male authority figures, whether they were doctors, headmasters, bus drivers, or others who wanted to boss her around in some way. Now, however, she felt as if the policeman was not actually there, had nothing to do with her. It was almost as if he were a 3D image on a screen, less real than the paramedics she was staring at. Tinna stood open-mouthed, her eyes glued to the white blanket covering the woman on the stretcher. She didn’t move. The woman didn’t have a cold. She was dead, and with her Tinna’s hope of another, better life in which she was beautiful and adored. The woman could make people beautiful. She had said so. Tinna turned on her heel and ran away, without thinking where she was going. If she ran fast enough she could maybe go faster than her thoughts, and get rid of the uncomfortable idea that her father might have done the woman some harm. It would not have been the first time. Or else it had been the visitor who had snuck out of the house, the one whose note it was. Tinna pushed everything from her mind except for the thought that she was now burning calories. Burn, burn, burn.

‘Dead, you say,’ repeated Gudni, frowning thoughtfully. He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. His interlocutor was on the phone, so he didn’t need to hold his expressions in check, although he had been taught at the start of his career to remain as poker-faced as possible, and never to give any indication of his thoughts. For Gudni this had never proven to be especially difficult, but sometimes it was still good to be able to sit alone and allow disappointment, or more rarely, happiness, to find its natural outlet. ‘How did she die?’

‘The autopsy hasn’t been done but it looks as if she committed suicide,’ replied Stefán. It wasn’t possible to tell from his voice whether he thought this tiresome or tragic, or indeed whether it affected him at all. Perhaps such things were bread and butter for the police in Reykjavik. ‘We’ll find out tomorrow, I suppose. I just heard and thought I should let you know. I obviously didn’t go to the scene myself, so I don’t know anything more at the moment. I’m leaving tomorrow and then hopefully I’ll get some more news.’

‘Where was she found?’ Gudni asked. He would not have considered Alda likely to resort to such desperate measures, but then again he had only known her as a child and a teenager. She had had everything going for her then, both beauty and intelligence. Naturally, though, things could have changed, and perhaps her life had taken a turn for the worse. He hoped this was not the case, but if it turned out to be so, he sincerely hoped that her fate was not tied to events in the Islands long past.

‘At home,’ said Stefán.‘Her colleague found her, I understand. Went to find out why she hadn’t shown up at work.’

‘This muddies the waters of the basement case quite a bit,’ Gudni said. He paused for a moment before adding: ‘Not least because Alda now can’t verify Markus’s statement.’

‘No,’ camethe curt reply. ‘We didn’t get a chance to question her. We couldn’t reach her, but when the time of death becomes clear, we might wonder whether she was trying to escape questioning.’

‘If that were so then one would expect her to have left behind a note, or something that would clear Markus of all suspicion,’ said Gudni. ‘It would be cruel to let him take the blame if she had dirty laundry to hide. They were good friends, I understand, and it must have been clear to her that she alone could have confirmed his story. Is it possible she knew nothing about his statement and the discovery of the bodies?’

‘I have no idea,’ snapped Stefán. ‘I’ve always tried to avoid filling in the blanks with speculation at the start of an investigation. We don’t even know the cause of death. As it is, she appears to have died by her own hand, but who knows, maybe it was something entirely different – an accident, or even worse. Tomorrow we’ll search her house, and who knows what we’ll find.’

‘Hopefully not more bodies,’ said Gudni. ‘Unless maybe we find the torso that goes with the head.’ He smiled. ‘Don’t forget to go down to the basement.’ He hung up and stared at the phone on the table. None of this made any sense.

Thóra put down the bag of groceries and fumbled for her mobile phone. The ring tone was muffled and she tried to remember whether she had put the phone in the right or left pocket of her jacket, or stuck it in her handbag. She finally found it in her left pocket, among coins and old VISA receipts. She saw Markus’s number on the screen and decided not to answer. He could wait until morning. She set the phone on the table and started to put away the food that she’d bought on the way home. Hannes would arrive shortly with Sóley; he had come to Thóra’s rescue, even responding cheerfully to her request and offering to take their daughter swimming. She hoped that this was the shape of things to come: that her relationship with her ex was finally starting to take a friendlier, more relaxed form.

Her phone bleeped. Instead of picking it up and reading the text message, Thóra finished putting away the groceries and turned on the oven. She read the directions on the frozen lasagne package and threw it into the cold oven, contrary to the manufacturer’s recommendation. Ultimately it all ended up the same: the food would be warm whether she put it into a preheated oven or a cold one. Then she took her phone, went into the sitting room and threw herself onto the sofa. The message was from Markus. ‘Alda is dead. The police want to meet me tomorrow. Please call me.’‘

Thóra groaned. It looked like Markus would be her client for a little longer. She sat up and dialled his number. He was either the unluckiest man in the country, or something else, something far worse, was behind all of this.