My Soul to Take

CHAPTER 6

“Dad’s no fun. He’s asleep. So’s Gylfi. I want to be with you.”

Thóra rubbed the sleep from her eyes and propped herself up in bed. She had grabbed her mobile from the bedside table and answered it before actually managing to wake up, then cleared her throat and spoke to her daughter. She had a vague recollection of a dream about ghosts and crying babies, but it slipped away before she could remember it fully. “Hello, Sóley. Are you awake already?” Looking at the clock, she saw that it was a few minutes to eight. “Oof, it’s so early. It’s Saturday today. Your dad and Gylfi just want to sleep a bit longer so they can be more fun later.”

“Huh.” Her little girl’s high, clear voice was full of reproach. “They won’t be any fun. I only like being with you. You’re fun.” The reception was terrible and Sóley sounded as though she were talking from the bottom of a barrel.

Enjoy it while it lasts, thought Thóra, who had learned from raising Gylfi that this unconditional adoration would not go on forever. Sóley was only six, and although she would soon be seven, there were still a few years left in which Thóra would play the lead role in her life.

“I’ll be back home tomorrow evening. Then we’ll do something fun. I’ll bring you some shells from the beach, if you want.”

“Beach! Is there a beach out there?” Sóley sighed. “Why can’t I be with you? I really want to go to the beach.”

Thóra kicked herself for mentioning the beach. Since they lived on the coast, it had simply not occurred to her that a beach would arouse the girl’s interest. “Oh, sweetie, you know you’re supposed to spend the weekend with your dad. Maybe we can come back here later in the summer.”

“And take the trailer?” Sóley asked excitedly.

Thóra stifled a groan. “Maybe. We’ll see.” If there was one thing she could not stand it was driving with that contraption behind her, and she had still not learned to reverse with it. The few trips they had made with the trailer had been carefully planned so that Thóra hadn’t needed to reverse once. “Go and turn on the television—the cartoons have started. Dad and Gylfi will be up soon. Okay?”

“Okay,” muttered Sóley crossly. “Bye,” she added.

“Bye-bye. I miss you,” said Thóra, and hung up.

She stared at the telephone for a while, wondering how things had ended up like this. Her marriage had fallen apart pretty quickly, and she had never given herself the time to deal with it. For eleven years they had got on fine; then things went rapidly downhill. She and Hannes were divorced a year and a half later. Her conscience nagged her a little about shuttling the children back and forth between their two homes, but there was not much to be done about it now, as she wouldn’t take Hannes back even if he were the world champion at trailer-reversing. She got up, shook off these depressing thoughts, and took a shower. Then she put on a pair of jeans, running shoes, and a hoodie, and felt ready to clamber around in the dusty basement. In the large mirror she saw that all she needed was a balaclava to make a convincing bank robber.

A lavish buffet awaited her in the dining room. Thóra was generally not one for large breakfasts, but the food was so tastefully arranged and looked so tempting that she gave in and took a large plate, which she filled with poached egg, bacon, and toast. She threw some fruit on top, for appearances’ sake, but soon after sitting down she abandoned the idea of health food. Half the tables in the dining room were occupied. Thóra was curious to know what kind of people stayed at such a hotel, which was exorbitantly expensive but based on a hippyish philosophy. She could not identify any common characteristics among the guests, who—although of all ages and various nationalities—seemed to be mainly Icelanders.

At three tables were single guests like Thóra: two men, one old and the other young, and a middle-aged woman. Thóra guessed that they were Icelandic. In some indefinable way, the older man seemed out of place. Thóra guessed his profession as lawyer or accountant. The woman appeared out of sorts too, sitting in melancholy silence with her eyes glued to her coffee cup. On her plate was a pile of food that looked untouched. The woman was such a picture of misery that Thóra instinctively felt sorry for her. The young man, on the other hand, fitted right in, and Thóra allowed her gaze to linger on him. It helped that he was extremely good-looking—dark-haired, tanned, and well muscled, but not a steroid-popping bodybuilder. Thóra smiled wryly, but her face froze when the young man looked over and smiled back. Embarrassed, she drained her coffee and stood up. The young man did the same. One of his legs was bandaged, and he picked up a crutch from the chair beside him. He followed her, hobbling, toward the exit.

“Are you Icelandic?” Thóra heard him say from behind her.

Turning around, Thóra saw that he was no less handsome close up. “Me? Yes, I am, actually,” she said, wishing that she were not dressed like a burglar. “And you?” she asked.

He returned her smile and held out his hand. “No, I’m a Chinese Icelandophile. My name’s Teitur.”

“Thóra.” She shook his outstretched hand.

“You must have just arrived,” he said, looking her straight in the eye. “I’d definitely have noticed you.”

Here we go, Thóra thought to herself, but played it cool. “I arrived yesterday. What about you? Have you been here long?”

The young man showed his sparkling teeth again. “A week.”

“And you like it?” Thóra asked stupidly. As a rule she was very awkward in her dealings with the opposite sex if there was the slightest hint of flirtation.

He looked amused. “Oh, yes. It’s fine. I’m here combining business and pleasure, and I’ve managed both pretty well. Apart from this.” Supporting himself on the crutch, he lifted his bandaged leg.

“Oh,” said Thóra. “What happened?”

“I fell off a horse, like an idiot,” he said. “I can recommend everything here except the horse rides. I didn’t fall really: the horse got startled and threw me off. I sprained my ankle, but I thank my lucky stars that someone witnessed the incident and managed to pull me away before anything worse happened. So stay away from the horse rental.”

Thóra grinned. “Don’t worry. I’m highly unlikely to try it.” Thóra would sooner climb on a dog sled than go around on horseback. “You said you’re working here? What kind of work can that be?” she asked curiously. She considered it unlikely that there was much work one could do here, unless the man was a writer.

“I’m a stockbroker. A pretty stressful job, but it has the advantage that I can do it almost anywhere—all you need is a computer and an Internet connection. What about you? What do you do?”

“I’m a lawyer,” Thóra said, nodding eagerly as if he might not believe her. God, she was pathetic sometimes, she thought.

“Oh, right,” said Teitur. “Hey, why don’t I show you around the place? I know it like the back of my hand after a week here.”

Thóra smiled at him. She doubted whether he could have become a local expert in the space of a week. Especially on just one leg. “Who knows? We’ll see.”

“I’m free and easy.” Teitur grinned. “Just give me a shout.”

Thóra thanked him and said goodbye. That would be something else, strolling around the locality with an attractive man instead of crouching in a dusty basement looking at old photographs. Even if he couldn’t move very quickly … Oh, well. Most of the internal organs from the deceased were lying in steel trays. The brain was in one, the lungs in a larger one, the liver in a third, and so on. After working fifteen years as a police detective this gruesome buffet had long since ceased to bother Thórólfur, but he did have to think back several years to recall a body in worse condition. His eyes drifted over to the hollowed-out body of the unidentified woman who was found dead on the beach on Snæfellsnes. She was lying serenely on the autopsy table, her facial features beyond recognition due to extensive injuries and what the doctor had said appeared to be postmortem animal predation. Thórólfur felt saddened. He hoped the woman had either died quickly or lost consciousness before the end. If not, finding her murderer would become even more pressing as a sadistic bastard capable of such torture could not be incarcerated quickly enough.

The doctor in charge of the autopsy walked over to the sink, slipping off his gloves. “So. The woman was brutally raped, but the cause of death was repeated blows to the front of the head. The facial features are unrecognizable as a result of this and of postmortem mutilation by animals, presumably scavengers. It cannot be determined whether the woman was conscious for the duration of the rape, but there are no visible injuries on the body to suggest that she resisted. Thus it seems likely that she had already sustained some cranial injury before the rape began, but was dead when it finished. The deceased may even be assumed to have been beaten during the act.”

“Lovely,” muttered Thórólfur.

“Quite. Anyway, semen, presumably from the assailant, was present in the vagina, and an analysis of that together with the hairs collected by combing her pubic area may identify the assailant. This seems the only likely method of identification. In fact, the exceptional volume of semen gives grounds for investigating the possibility of more than one assailant.” He addressed his words to Thórólfur without ever looking the police detective in the eyes. They had worked together before so Thórólfur knew the man and did not take this as a slight. He had often wondered if the unsociable doctor had become this way from dealing with unresponsive corpses for all of his working life. “And the pins will be carefully described in the autopsy report. It’s not every day that a body is found with such objects in the soles of the feet. I have a suspicion that the murderer attached some significance to that act. The most immediate inference is that he is seriously deranged or sadistic. At least, I can think of no logical explanation for this.” He pointed to ten bloodstained pins that he had extracted from the soles of the woman’s feet and placed in a transparent plastic jar.

He took off his gore-spattered surgical gown and ran his fingers through his hair. “I’ll send everything off for immediate analysis. I know you need the findings quickly.”

“Yeah.” Thórólfur thanked the man and left. Snæfellsnes was a two-hour drive away and his men were waiting. They had a murderer to catch.

Thóra stared at the stack of boxes in the poorly lit basement. Light shone feebly from a bare bulb in the middle of the room and through a tiny window so dirty that it glowed almost brown. The smell of damp crept into her nostrils. Ugh. She should have asked Jónas to have the boxes moved up to her room. To make matters worse, all the timber struts supporting the ceiling above her looked pretty rotten. Thóra grimaced at the thought of the insects that undoubtedly thrived there, but braced herself and went over to the lowest stack. As far as she could tell, there were about twelve large, ancient crates, but the way that they were arranged made it difficult to determine their exact number. Carefully she lifted the lid from the top box, leaning back in case something jumped out. When nothing happened, she peered cautiously inside.

Her eyes widened. She had been expecting almost anything. But not this.