Last Rituals

CHAPTER 18

Thora straightened up and leaned back in her chair. She had just finished plugging the last cable into the computer and all that remained was to switch it on. She and Matthew were in Harald's studyafter bidding farewell to the cryptic Gunnar Gestvik. "I must confess that I find this theory of yours and the Guntliebs about a mystery murderer increasingly unlikely." She switched on the computer and a low hum indicated that it was booting up. "The blood on Hugi's clothes, for examplehow does that fit in with your theory?" Matthew said nothing, so she continued. "And the papers just nowI don't quite see the link between the murder and a university dissertation, especially because Harald was clearly straying from the subject a little when gathering his material."

"I just know it," Matthew said, without looking directly at her.

Something about his manner struck Thora as odd. Besides the fact that it was not like him to avoid eye contact, she noticed that he was staring fixedly at the screen of his mobile phone, as if hoping someone would call and extricate him from this conversation. Thora crossed her arms and scowled. "You're hiding something from me."

Matthew went on gazing hopefully at his phone. "Well, I hope I haven't revealed all my secrets during our short acquaintance," he said with forced joviality.

"Oh, come onyou know exactly what I mean. There's more to it than the missing money and eyes." Thora still had trouble discussing the gouged-out eyes. She still could not manage to express the idea clearly; words somehow failed to encapsulate it. "Really, that's all there isoh, yes, and an e-mail that says nothing and now a finger at the university that the professors panicked over and threw away."

Matthew put his mobile in his pocket. "Even if I were hiding something from youwould you still take my word for it that Hugi can't be the murderer, or at least couldn't have done it alone?"

Thora laughed out loud. "Nonot really."

Matthew stood up. "That's a shame. To tell you the truth, I can't make decisions about certain information by myself," he said, quickly adding: "That is, if there was anything else."

"Let's imagine that's the caseand that the person who can decide to include me in the picture would allow itwouldn't it be worth checking?"

Matthew looked at her pensively, then left the room. Thora noticed his mobile was back in his hand. Hopefully he'd gone out to use it. She cocked her ear and could hear the muffled sound of his voice from the corridor.

A little gray box in the center of the computer screen told her to enter the administrator password. Not knowing it, she had to go by guesswork: Harald, Malleus, Windows, Hexe, and the like. None of them worked, although Thora had been very pleased with herself and sure she had clinched it when she thought of the term Hexe, which stood for "witch" in German. She leaned back and looked around for inspiration. On a shelf above the desk was a framed photograph that she reached out for. It was of a young disabled girl in a wheelchair. It didn't take a rocket scientist to realize that this was Harald's sister, who had died some years before. What was her name again? Wasn't she named after her mother? Whose name was what? Anna? No, but it began with A. Agatha or Angelina. Ameliaher name was Amelia Guntlieb. Thora tried that. Nothing happened. With a sigh she decided to enter it without the capital: amelia.

Bingo! The computer emitted the familiar Windows jingle: dum-deedum-dee, and Thora was in. She wondered how long the police had spent trying to find the password, but realized they must have a computer expert who could get in by the back door. They would hardly spend hours on trial and error.

It took a while before it dawned on Thora what the picture was on the unusual desktop wallpaper. It wasn't every day that she saw the inside of a mouth on a seventeen-inch screen, let alone a mouth with the tongue pinned on either side with two stainless steel tongs and a fiery red slit along it from the tipor rather, tips. Although she was not well versed in the practice, the photograph had obviously been taken when a tongue was being split down the middle. The operation was either still in progress or just completed. Thora would have bet money on the identity of the tongue's owner. It must be Harald himself. She shook herself to stave off nausea and opened Explorer, which immediately filled the screen, removing the wretched image from her sight.

A quick search showed that there were almost four hundred Word documents on the computer. She arranged them by date with the most recent at the top. Their names were self-explanatory. A common feature of the file names at the top was that they all contained the word hexe somewhere. Since it was so late, Thora reached over to her handbag and took out a flash memory stick. She copied all the witchcraft files to examine at her leisure at home that eveningif Matthew would reveal what the Guntliebs had been keeping from her. If he didn't, she intended to spend the evening working out whether she could afford to tell them to get lost. She had absolutely no interest in working as some kind of luxury interpreter.

There was still no sign of Matthew, so Thora decided to search for scanned files. She asked the search function to find all the. pdf extensions and was rewarded with sixty names. She arranged them by date and copied the most recent ones to the memory stick. She had plenty to keep her busy that evening, that was certain. Then it occurred to her to search for Jpegs, and she called them up too. Harald had clearly owned a digital camera, which he had used prolifically. Hundreds of file names appeared, but they told her nothing because they were labeled by a series of numbers automatically generated when the pictures were downloaded from the camera. Harald had not bothered to rename them. Thora selected "thumb-nail view" to see the content immediately. Once again she arranged them by date. She noticed that the most recent ones had been taken inside the flat. The subjects were oddsome showed nothing in particular, most of them taken in the kitchen during preparations for a meal that was photographed in detail. No people were shown but hands could be seen in two of them, which Thora copied to her memory stick in case they belonged to the murderer. You never know, she thought. The other photographs were of a gigantic pasta meal at various stagesthese she left alone.

Scrolling down, Thora noticed that many of the photographs were quite embarrassing for the subjects, taken during an assortment of sex acts. She blushed for the participants as they rolled past in succession on the screen. Much as she would have liked to, she did not feel happy about enlarging them for fear that Matthew would walk in and find her prying. She also came across myriad photographs from the tongue operation, including the one Harald had chosen for his desktop wallpaper. It was impossible to see who was present, but some torsos were visible and Thora copied those too. Other files contained all manner of scenes from what seemed to be action-packed parties, interspersed withand these seemed completely out of placeIcelandic landscapes and journeys through them. Several were very dark and featured little more than gray rock facesThora thought she could make out a cross carved on one of them when she enlarged it. A whole series had been taken in a small village that Thora did not recognize, many of them in a museum where what looked like manuscripts were on exhibit along with a slab of basalt in a showcase. One shot showed a sign that Thora enlarged to see if she could identify the museum, only to be disappointedit simply said: No Photographs. Thora gave up on the pictures for the time being; by now she was down to fairly old ones that could hardly be linked with the case. She opened Harald's e-mail to see what it contained. In the in-box were seven unread messages. More had presumably arrived since Harald was murdered, but the police must have checked them.

Matthew walked in and Thora looked up from the e-mail. He sat down in his chair again with a twisted smile on his face. "Well?" she said impatiently, wanting to hear what he had to say.

"Well," Matthew echoed, leaning forward in his chair. He rested his elbows on his knees and clenched his hands as if about to pray. "Before I tell you what you think you have to know," he said, emphasizing the word "think," "you must promise me one thing."

"What?" Thora was quite sure of his reply.

"What I am about to tell you is in absolute confidence and must not go any further. Before I tell you I need confirmation that you'll keep this secret. Understand?"

"How am I supposed to know if I can keep a secret when I don't have a clue what it is?"

Matthew shrugged. "It's a risk you'll just have to take. I can honestly say to you that you will want to tell someonejust so you know I'm not leading you into a trap."

"Who will I want to tell?" asked Thora. "That seems important to me."

"The police," Matthew replied, without hesitation.

"You, or Harald's family, have information that could be important to the case, but you've decided to keep it secret? Do I understand that correctly?"

"Yep," said Matthew.

"Well, well," said Thora. She thought about it. Presumably a code of ethics obliged her to inform the authorities of information that could relate to a public prosecution, so she ought to turn down the offer and notify the police that Matthew was concealing evidence connected with the murder. On the other hand, she was well aware that he would deny the allegation and her part in the investigation would then be over. That served no one's interests. So with a rather elastic ethical interpretation she could conclude that she was obliged to swear to keep her mouth shut and, armed with this new information, do her utmost to solve the mystery confronting them. Everyone happy. Thora mulled all this over in silence. A fairly dubious conclusion, but the best of a bad jobthe code of ethics must allow for extenuating circumstances when the end justifies the means. If not, then it was time to change it.

"Okay," Thora said eventually. "I promise to tell no onenot even the policewhatever it is you are about to tell me." Matthew smiled, pleased, but before he could begin his revelation she added hastily: "But in return you must promise me that if this secret of yours proves Hugi's innocence, and if we can't demonstrate that in any other way, we will pass on the information to the authorities before the trial starts." Matthew opened his mouth, but Thora hadn't finished: "And the authorities won't be told that I knew. And"

Matthew cut her short. "No more 'ands'please." Now it was his turn to think things over. He regarded Thora steadily. "Agreed. You say nothing and I'll let the police know about the letter if we can't prove Hugi innocent in good time before the trial."

The letter? Yet another letter? Thora was beginning to think this was one huge farce, but then she remembered the autopsy photographs, which were still vivid in her mind. "What letter are you referring to?" she asked. "I still stand by my promise."

"Harald's mother received a letter shortly after the murder," Matthew replied. "The letter convinced her and her husband that the suspect could not be guilty. It was sent after Hugi had been taken into custody and therefore unable to send things through the post office. I doubt that the police would have done him the favor of posting it for himespecially because I presume they would first have read what it said."

"Which was?" Thora asked impatiently.

"What it said was nothing specialexcept that it was quite unpleasant about Harald's mother. But it was written in bloodHarald's blood."

"Yuck!" Thora said, before she could stop herself. She tried to imagine how it might feel to receive a letter written with her dead son's blood, but could not do it. It was too bizarre. "Who was the letter fromdid it say? And how did you know it was Harald's blood?"

"The letter was in Icelandic and signed with Harald's name, but a handwriting expert ruled that it wasn't his hand. He couldn't absolutely confirm this because it was written with a rough instrument. This complicated a comparison with Harald's normal hand, so it was sent for tests, including whether the blood was his. It turned out to beunquestionably. In fact they also found traces of blood from a passerine bird that had apparently been mixed with Harald's blood."

Thora's eyes widened. Bird's blood? That repulsed her even more than human blood. "What did the letter say?" Thora asked. "Do you have it with you?"

"I don't have the original, if that's what you mean," Matthew answered. "His mother wouldn't hand it over, nor a copy of it. She may well have destroyed it. It was quite disgusting."

Thora looked disappointed. "So what? I have to know what it said. Did you get someone to translate it?"

"Yes, we did. It was a love poem that began sweetly but soon turned rather nasty." He smiled at Thora. "You're lucky that I managed to copy it outyou see, I was given the job of translating it, with the help of an Icelandic-German dictionary. I probably wouldn't win a prize for the translation but the meaning was obvious." While he spoke, Matthew produced a folded sheet of paper from his jacket pocket. He handed it to Thora. "I might not have written some of the letters down properlyI didn't recognize all of them, but it ought to be fairly close."

Thora read the poem. It was long, considering it had been written in blood. She could not imagine how much blood it would have taken to write all those letters. Matthew had written it out in capitalspresumably to match the original. On the sheet of paper was written:

I look at you,

but you bestow on me

love and dearness

with your whole heart.

Sit nowhere,

stay nowhere,

unless you love me.

I ask of Odin

and all those

who can decipher

women's runes

that in this world

you will nowhere rest

or thrive

unless you love me

with all your heart.

Then in your bones

you will burn all over

and in your flesh

half as bad again.

May misfortune befall you

unless you love me,

your legs shall freeze,

may you never earn honor

or happiness.

Sit burning,

may your hair rot,

may your clothes rip,

unless willingly

you wish me yours.

Thora felt odd reading itthe poem was quite macabre. She looked up at Matthew. "I don't recognize it, unfortunately. Who does that sort of thing?"

"I don't have the faintest idea," Matthew replied. "The original was even more repulsive, it was written on skincalfskin. It takes a sick man to do something like that to a dead man's mother."

"Why his mother? Wasn't it sent to his father too?"

"There was more with it, in German. I didn't write it down but I more or less remember what it said."

"And what was that?" Thora asked.

"It was a short textsomething along the lines of: 'MotherI hope you like the poem and the presentyour son Harry.' And the word 'son' was double-underlined."

Thora looked up from the page at Matthew. "What present? Was there a present with the letter?"

"No, not according to his parents, and I believe them. They were out of their minds after it arrived and in no state to lie convincingly."

"Why is it signed 'Harry'? Was the person who wrote it running out of blood?"

"No, his elder brother called him 'Harry' when they were small. Only a handful of people know that nicknamewhich is one reason why the letter had such an effect on his mother."

Thora looked at Matthew. "Did she treat him badly? Is that true?" She thought back to that photograph of the lonely little boy.

Matthew did not answer immediately. When he finally spoke he chose his words carefully; it was evidently important to him to express himself properly about the private affairs of employers whom he seemed to respect highly. "I swear that I don't know. It was more as if she avoided him. But I do know that if their relationship had been normal, she would have sent the letter to the Icelandic police. It clearly struck a nerve." He paused for a moment, watching Thora thoughtfully before continuing. "She asked to talk to you. Mother-to-mother."

"Me?" Thora gaped. "What does she want from me? To apologize for her bizarre behavior toward her child?"

"She didn't say," Matthew replied. "She just said she wanted to talk to you, but not right now. She wanted time to get over the shock."

Thora said nothing. Of course she would talk to the woman if she insisted, but it would be a long time before she would console someone who had mistreated her child. "I can't see the motive behind that letter," she said, to change the subject.

"Nor can I," replied Matthew at once. "There's something so crazy about pretending Harald sent it himself that I think the murderer must be a psychopath."

Thora stared at the sheet of paper. "Could the person who wrote it be implying that Harald was dead and would come back to haunt his mother?"

"Why?" asked Matthew reasonably. "Who could expect to benefit from tormenting her like that?"

"Harald, of course, except that he was dead," Thora said. "His sister perhapsmaybe their mother mistreated her too?"

"No," Matthew replied. "She wasn't mistreatedI can promise you that. She's the apple of her parents' eye."

"So who can it be?" Thora asked, floundering.

"Not Hugi anyway. Unless he had an accomplice."

"Pity we didn't know about the blood on his clothes when we spoke to him this morning." Thora looked at her watch. "Maybe they'll let me talk to him on the phone." She dialed directory assistance and got the number of the prison. The duty sergeant gave her permission to talk to Hugi on condition that they kept the conversation short. She held impatiently for several minutes listening to a digital rendition of Fur Elise. Finally, a breathless Hugi came on the line.

"Hello."

"Yes, hello, Hugi. This is Thora Gudmundsdottir who came to see you this morning. I won't keep you long but unfortunately we forgot to ask you about the blood on your clothes. How do you explain that?"

"That fucking shit." Hugi groaned. "The police asked me about it. I don't know what bloodstained T-shirt they mean, but I explained the blood on my clothes from the night before."

"How?" Thora asked.

"Harald and I went to the toilet to snort up during the party. He got this huge nosebleed and some of it splashed me. The bathroom was tiny."

"Couldn't you get that corroborated?" Thora asked. "Didn't any of the other guests remember you coming out of the bathroom covered in blood?"

"I wasn't exactly covered in blood. They were all off their heads too. No one mentioned it. No one noticed, I guess."

Damn, thought Thora. "But the bloodstained T-shirt in your closetdo you know how it got there?"

"I haven't the foggiest." A short silence followed before he added: "I think the cops planted it. I didn't kill Harald and didn't mop up any blood with a T-shirt. I don't even know if it's my T-shirt or someone else's. They never let me see it."

"Those are serious accusations, Hugi, and to tell you the truth I don't think the police do that sort of thing. There must be another explanation, if you're telling the truth." They ended the call, and Thora filled Matthew in.

"Well, he has an explanation for half of it," he said. "We have to find out from the other guests at the party if they remember any nosebleeds."

"Yes," Thora said, hardly expecting it to be worth the hassle. "But even if they do, the T-shirt in the closet still needs to be explained."

A ping came from the computer, and they both looked at the screen. "You have new mail" appeared on a tab in the right-hand corner. Thora grabbed the mouse and clicked the envelope icon.

It was an e-mailfrom Mal.