Last Rituals

CHAPTER 11

Thora was sitting at Harald Guntlieb's desk, browsing through the pile of papers. She looked up, straightened her back, and turned to Matthew. He sat absorbed in the same task in an armchair in one corner of the study. They had decided to start by examining the documents the police took away when they searched the flat, which had just been returned. There were three large cardboard boxes full of papers of all descriptions and after almost an hour's reading Thora was beginning to lose sight of the point behind all this. The papers were a mixed bag, mostly documents connected with Harald's studies in one way or another along with statements from banks, credit card companies, and other official bodies. Many were in Icelandic so they were little help to Matthew, who had to put a large stack to one side for Thora to peruse later.

"What are we looking for, anyway?" she asked suddenly.

Matthew put his sheaf of papers on a small side table and rubbed his eyes wearily. "Basically, we're looking for a lead, something the police overlooked. For example, an explanation of what happened to the money Harald had transferred here. We could also come across"

Thora interrupted him. "That's no help. What I meant was that we should maybe try to establish who could possibly be connected with the murder or stand to benefit from it. I have absolutely no experience investigating murders and I'd like a better picture before I go through any more papers. I'm not particularly excited by the idea of having to do all this again if we have a bright idea later."

"No, I understand that," said Matthew. "But I'm not quite sure what to say. We're not looking for anything specific we already know about, unfortunately. Maybe we're not looking for anything at all. We're really just trying to figure out what Harald's life was like before the murder so that we have some idea about the circumstances and events that led up to itif something crops up that points us toward the murderer, that's just a bonus. If it helps you narrow things down, you could say that the main motives for murder are jealousy, anger, financial gain, revenge, madness, self-defense, sexual perversion."

Thora waited for more but Matthew had completed his tally. "Nothing else?" she asked. "There must be more motives."

"I didn't claim to be an expert," Matthew retorted. "Sure, there are more motives, but that was all I could think of offhand."

Thora thought before answering him. "All right, let's say those are the main motives. Which of them could apply to Harald's murder? Was he involved with a woman, for example? Could it be a case of jealousy?"

Matthew shrugged. "I think he was unattached. But jealousy could still play a part. Maybe someone loved him and it was unrequited." He paused for a moment, then added: "Actually I think women rarely murder by strangulation, so it's unlikely to have been a crime of passion."

"No," agreed Thora pensively. "Unless it was a crime of passion committed by another man. Was Harald gay, perhaps?"

Matthew shrugged. "No, he definitely wasn't."

"How do you know?" she asked.

"I just know," he replied. Seeing the dubious expression on Thora's face, he added: "It's quite remarkable. I can usually tell straightaway if a man bats for the other side. I don't know how, but I'm very intuitive about it."

Thora decided not to pursue the topic but knew from her own experience that there was an overwhelming probability Matthew was no better than anyone else at identifying people's sexuality. Her ex-husband had the same misconception and Thora had proved him wrong countless times. She changed the subject: "It doesn't seem to have been rape and there were no signs of recent sexual activity, so we can rule that out."

"So now there are fewer possible motives," Matthew said with a wry grin. "We'll get there soon."

Thora ignored him. "So why do you think he was killed?"

Matthew studied her for a moment before answering. "It was probably something to do with money. But I still can't shake off the feeling that it was somehow connected with his studies of sorcery. What happened to his eyes and the symbol carved on the body clearly suggest that. I can't figure out the motive and that annoys me. Why commit a murder for sorcery or something that happened centuries ago?"

"Isn't that a bit far-fetched? The police found no link between the murder and black magic, in spite of what was done to the corpse. They must have investigated that possibility," Thora said, hurriedly adding: "And don't say that they're just stupid. That's far too simplistic."

"Actually, you're right," said Matthew. "They checked if there was any link. I think they thought Harald's research was either madness or some kind of mumbo jumbo. They came here, saw what was hanging on the walls, and took Harald for some kind of weirdo. To them, these precious antiques are just plain disgusting, which isn't so different from your reaction." Matthew waited, but when Thora made no response he went on. "The presence of drugs in his blood didn't help. In the eyes of the police he was a crazy sadistic junkie who was last seen in the company of the same sort of crowd. His companion had no alibi and was stoned out of his mind for good measure. It's not such an unreasonable conclusion to draw but I'm not satisfied with it at all. Too many questions are left unanswered."

"In other words you think Harald's studies of witchcraft and sorcery are linked with the murder?" asked Thora, hoping that he would say no. If they were irrelevant to the investigation, she could put more than half the papers to one side immediately.

"Well, I'm by no means certain," said Matthew. "But I've begun to have a strong suspicion that they are. Look at this, for example." He flicked through the pile of papers in his lap and handed Thora a printout of an e-mail from Harald.

Thora read it. The heading showed that it had been sent by Harald to a certain malcolm@gruniv.uk and was written in English, dated eight days before the murder.

Hi Mal,

Well, take a seat, buddy. FOUND IT, THANK YOU VERY MUCH. Call me Your Lordship from now on. I knew it, I knew it, I knew itnot that I want to accuse you of skepticism. Honest.

Just a few tiny details leftsome fucking idiot's trying to back out. Soget ready for the newstotally brilliant, I'm thinking of celebrating, if you know what I mean. I'll be in touch, you old wanker.

H

When Thora had finished reading it she looked at Matthew. "Do you think it's a clue?"

"Maybe," said Matthew. "Maybe not."

"The police must have contacted this Malcolm. They would hardly have made do with just printing it out."

"Maybe." Matthew shrugged. "Maybe not."

"Well, at least we can contact him to learn what Harald found."

"And whether he knows anything about the fucking idiot Harald mentioned."

Thora put down the e-mail. "Where's his computer? He must have had a computer." She pointed to a mouse pad on the desk.

"The police still have it," replied Matthew. "Presumably they'll return it with Harald's other effects."

"Maybe we'll find more e-mails," Thora said hopefully.

"And maybe not," responded Matthew, smiling. He stood and reached up to a bookshelf above the desk. "Here, take this home to read. It's a good introduction to Harald's mental world." He handed her a paperback of The Witches' Hammer.

Thora took the book and looked up at Matthew, in surprise. "This is a new book. Is it really still in print?"

He nodded. "It isbut I don't think many people buy it except out of curiosity these days. When you read it, though, bear in mind that it wasn't always that way."

Thora put the book in her bag. She stood up and stretched. "Is it okay to use the bathroom?"

Matthew smiled again. "Maybe. Maybe not." He hurried to add: "Yes, I think that should be all right. If the police burst in to investigate it further, I'll hold them off until you've finished."

"How sweet of you." Thora went out into the corridor and walked over to the bathroom. She got sidetracked, though, because the walls were adorned with more pictures and antique relics that aroused her curiosity. Actually, they aroused more horror than curiosity. But there was no denying that they were quite fascinating. It was similar to how people slow down when they drive past the scene of an accident. The pictures must have been from the grandfather's collection because the theme was the same as in the living room and the bedroom: death and the Devil.

Unlike the other rooms, there was little in the bathroom to suggest the former tenant's interests. The few movables inside were arranged very systematically in doorless cupboardsall in a matching style. Thora looked at herself in the impeccably polished mirror above the sink and ran her fingers through her hair to freshen up her appearance a little. She noticed a toothbrush in one of the cupboards. It did not seem to have been used. Then she took a more critical look around. There must have been another bathroom in the apartment that Harald usedthis one was far too perfect. No question.

When Thora went back to the study she lingered in the doorway and said: "There must be another bathroom in the apartment."

Matthew looked up, startled. "What do you mean?"

"The bathroom off the hallway is virtually unused. There's no way Harald would have used dental floss that matched the color scheme."

Matthew grinned. "Top marks. Now don't go claiming you don't know how to investigate." He pointed to the part of the flat they had been through before. "There's a door in the bedroom. The bathroom's in there."

Thora turned round. She remembered the door, which she had thought led to a closet. She thought about getting back to the papers but decided that she wanted to find out what the bathroom looked like first. A smile came to her face when she looked inside the door. There was a shower compartment instead of a bathtub, but in other respects it was just like any other bathroom in a normal household. All kinds of hygiene products were strewn around the sink, none of them matching anything else. Thora popped her head inside the shower compartment. On a shelf attached to the wall were two bottles of shampoo, one upside down, a razor, a used bar of soap, and a tube of toothpaste. A bottle hung from the shower control labeled "Shower Power." This all looked more familiar and she felt a slight relief.

But what pleased her most was the magazine rack beside the toilet: if this wasn't typical of people who lived alone, she didn't know what was. Curious to find out what sort of magazines Harald read, she browsed through the rack. It was quite a mixture: several car magazines, one historical journal, two copies of Der Spiegel, a tattoo magazine that Thora quickly flicked past, and one edition of Bunte. Thora looked at it in surprise. Bunte was a typical women's magazine, carrying the same kind of celebrity stories as Hello! The idea of Harald reading something like this would never have crossed her mind. Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes smiled at her from the cover under the headline "Tom Cruise wird Papa"Tom Cruise to Be a Dad!" The Hollywood couple's pregnancy held as much interest for Thora as an article on cultivating cucumbers, so she returned the magazine to its place.

"I knew it," said Thora triumphantly when she returned to the study.

"I knew it too," Matthew answered. "I just didn't know you knew."

Thora was about to cap this retort when her mobile rang. She fished it out of her handbag.

"Mom," said Soley's little voice. "When will you be back?"

Thora looked at her watch. It was later than she had realized. "Very soon, darling. Is everything okay?"

Silence, then: "Oh, yes. I'm just bored. Gylfi won't talk to me anymore. It's no fun being alone with him. He's in there jumping on his bed and howling, and he won't let me in."

Although Thora could not quite picture the scene, Gylfi was clearly not babysitting properly. "Listen, darling," she said gently. "I'll be home soon. Tell your brother to stop playing around and to come out and look after you."

They exchanged good-byes and Thora put her phone back in her handbag. Inside it, she noticed the note she had written with questions for Matthew about the documents in the file. She took it out and unfolded it. "I'd like to ask you a few things about the documents that were in the file."

"A few?" he said in surprise. "I expected more than 'a few'quite a few at the very least. But fire away."

Thora was unsure of herself as she looked at the list. Damn it, had she overlooked so many points? She tried to act nonchalant. "Actually these are the main points, there were too many minor details to write them all down." With a smile, she continued. "For example, the army. Why were those documents in the file when Harald was actually medically unfit for military service?"

"Military service, yes. I just included it to give you the fullest possible picture of Harald's life. It might be irrelevant but you never know where the threads join up."

"Do you think the murder is linked to the army?" Thora was skeptical.

"No, definitely not," replied Matthew. He shrugged. "But in Harald's case you can never tell."

"But why did he do national service?" Thora asked. "Judging from his profile he would have been more likely to be against military warfare."

"You're quite right. He was called up, as it happens, but under normal circumstances he would definitely have gone for community service. You know about that option for conscripts?" Thora nodded. "He didn't opt out of service, however. His sister Amelia had just died and it upset him deeply. I suspect he made the decision in a mental crisis. This was at the beginning of 1999, and in November or December of that year Germany decided to send troops to Kosovo. Harald went there with a smile on his face. I'm not sure about all the details of his military career but I do know that he was a model conscript, steadfast and tough. So the incident in Kosovo took the army completely by surprise."

"What happened?" asked Thora.

Matthew gave a wry smile. "It's quite a funny storyin a way. Especially bearing in mind that the expedition to Kosovo was the first German mission abroad since the Second World War. Up to then German soldiers had only been involved in peacekeeping work abroad. So it was vital for our troops to be model soldiers."

"Harald wasn't, then?"

"Oh, no. You could call him unlucky. After he'd been there about three months his regiment arrested a Serb who was suspected of having information about a fatal bombing. It cost three German soldiers their lives and many others were injured. The Serb was detained in the basement of the building where the German regiment was stationed. Harald was one of the guards. He was on duty alone when the prisoner had been there for two or three nights and still hadn't confessed a thing. Harald had mentioned to his superior that he knew a thing or two about interrogation techniques and was given permission to try to get some information out of the prisoner that night." Matthew looked at Thora. "Of course, the man who authorized this had no idea that Harald was well versed in the history of torture. He must have expected Harald to put his head round the door every so often to ask the prisoner a few innocent questions."

Thora's eyes opened wide. "Did he torture him?"

"Let's just say that the Serb would gladly have swapped places with the men in the naked pyramid at Abu Ghraib. I'm not condoning what happened, but that was like Disneyland compared with what the poor Serb had to put up with that night. When the shift changed the next morning Harald had managed to get the man to tell everything he knewand a lot more besides. But instead of earning the praise he thought he deserved, Harald was discharged on the spotas soon as his superiors saw the barely breathing heap of raw meat lying in its own blood on the floor of the cell. Of course the affair was hushed up because it would have tarnished the army's reputation. All the official documents state that Harald left the army for health reasons."

"So how do you know this?" Thora asked, relieved at being able to ask a reasonably normal question.

"I know people," said Matthew enigmatically. "And I talked to Harald after he got back from Kosovo. He was a changed man, I can tell you. Whether it was his experience of military life or the taste of blood I can't tell. But he became even weirder than before."

"How?" Thora asked, curious.

"Just weirder," Matthew replied. "In appearance and behavior. He enrolled in college soon after thishe left home so I didn't see him so often. From the few occasions when we ran into each other it was quite obvious that he was caught in a downward spiral. Presumably his grandfather's death shortly afterward didn't help either. They were very close."

Thora did not know what to say. Harald Guntlieb was clearly no ordinary person. Looking at her notes, she remembered the victim of erotic asphyxiation who was described in the newspaper clipping. But she decided she'd had enough for now. She glanced at her mobile and saw that it was late. "Matthew, I have to go home. My list isn't finished but I have plenty to digest for the time being."

They quickly tidied up the papers they had been rummaging through in the study. They made sure not to mix up the piles of documents they had sorted. The thought of the extra work that would have involved was unbearable.

As she put the final pile neatly to one side Thora turned to Matthew and asked: "Did Harald make a willconsidering all the assets he owned?"

"Actually he did leave a willquite a recent one in fact," said Matthew. "He'd always had one, but changed it in the middle of September. He made a trip to Germany specifically to meet the Guntliebs' lawyer to draw up a new version. But no one knows what it says."

"Really?" Thora said, surprised. "Why not?"

"It was in two partswith instructions to open one before the other. It stated that the second part must not be opened until Harald had been buriedwhich hasn't been possible because of the investigation."

"Was that all it said?" Thora asked.

"No, there were also instructions about where he wanted to be buried."

"And where is that?"

"In Icelandwhich is strange considering the short time he spent here. The country seems to have captivated him. Another instruction was that his parents have to attend the funeral and stand at the foot of the grave for at least ten minutes after the casket is lowered. If they fail to comply, all his possessions will be bequeathed to a tattoo parlor in Munich."

Thora asked him to repeat that. "So didn't he expect them to turn up?"

"Evidently not," replied Matthew. "But he made absolutely certain of it with that clausehis parents don't care to be splattered across the tabloids because their son left a small fortune to a tattoo parlor."

"Do you think they'll inherit it, then?" Thora asked. "That is, if they turn up."

"No," Matthew replied. "They couldn't really care lessthey just don't want to end up in the gutter press."

He thought for a moment.

"I think his sister Elisa will probably inherit most of his belongings. But a good share of the money will doubtless go to someone here in Icelandthe lawyer implied that strongly when he was pressed. The second part of the will must be opened here, according to Harald's instructions."

"I wonder who it is," Thora said, curious.

"I don't have a clue," responded Matthew. "But he or she had ample reason to kill Harald, if they knew about it beforehand."

Thora was relieved to leave the apartment. She was tired and wanted to go home to her children. Yet she felt somehow uncomfortable. She had the feeling she had overlooked something. But no matter how she tried to recall it after she was alone in her "Bibbi's Garage" car, she could not put her finger on what was eluding her. And when she parked in her drive she forgot it completely.