Ashes to Dust (19 page)

The examiner’s conclusion concerning
the men’s nationality was supported by various factors. It was noted
that each taken on its own would not be enough to determine the men’s
origin, but together they lent sufficient weight to the hypothesis that
the men were British. It was also noted that the person or persons who had
transported the bodies to the basement had seemed not to expect them to be
found, since no attempt had been made to remove the dead men’s clothing
or anything else that could be used to identify them. This had proved useful in
determining the men’s nationality, since the brand labels on their
clothing and shoes were still partly legible and turned out to be mostly from
British companies; the brands of the oldest man’s clothing were more
expensive than those of the younger men. The material in the younger
men’s fillings turned out to be the one British
dentists
had used around 1960, and one of them also had a steel pin in his ankle from an
old injury, stamped with the trademark of a British manufacturer. Other things
were taken into account;

the two younger men were both tattooed with
the initials HMS, which if taken to stand for Her Majesty’s Service would
suggest that they could have served in the military for a time and had wished
to commemorate this in ink on their skin. Two of the men also had British pound
notes in their pockets, and one had an elderly packet of British cigarettes.

Thóra wondered if the tattoo that Alda
had mentioned to her sister could conceivably have been the same as the ones
mentioned in the report. What had she said again? Under what circumstances
would you get a tattoo? Could she have been talking about entry into the
military? Thóra shook her head instinctively - it couldn’t be
that. She was sure it had nothing to do with the case, but marked the text to
make it easier to recall that particular detail if tattoos came up again.

The report made for melancholy reading as a
whole, but Thóra was pleased to read that the bodies had probably been
put there after the eruption started. This was based on the discovery of traces
of ash on the back of the men’s jackets - the corpses had been lying on
their backs. The fine layer of ash that slipped in through the chinks in the
house and covered all the surfaces in the basement could not have got in
underneath the bodies after they’d been laid on the floor. In addition,
there were tiny burn holes in the men’s clothing, which indicated that
they’d either been alive and walking around during the eruption and been
hit by the small embers that had rained from the sky during that time, or that
the same had happened while the bodies were being carried to the house. No
embers could have got into the basement, since its few windows had been boarded
up, though fine ash had managed to slip in through all the cracks. In other
words, the men had been on the move during the eruption, alive or dead. This
meant, to Thóra’s great relief, that Markus could not have taken
the corpses there.

When she started reading the section of the
report that focused on the head, she was even more relieved. It began by
describing the box Markus said had contained the head, and it concluded that
the evidence indicated this had indeed been the case. Long-dried-out remains of
blood and other biological matter at the bottom of the box indicated that
the head had been inside. There were also no traces of ash in the hair, which
was taken as an indication that the head had been enclosed in something and had
not got dusty like everything else in the basement. This, too, strengthened
Markus’s defence, and Thóra took a moment to mark this section in
the margin. Unfortunately, analysis of the fingerprints on the box revealed
nothing of significance except that only one set could be distinguished.
The prints in question were recent, and at the time the autopsy report was
written they had not been compared with Markus’s prints, which were not
yet on file. Thóra knew that he would now be called in for
fingerprinting, but was unconcerned as his prints on the box would fit
perfectly with the sequence of events he had described. These were the only
legible prints: any others that may have been on the box had not been
deliberately erased, but rather had faded due to the unusual conditions and to
the time that had passed before the box was discovered. This was unfortunate,
since Alda’s finger prints on the box would have been particularly
useful. These results were not considered conclusive, so the report stated that
the box would be sent to a laboratory overseas that was better equipped to
analyse such things. There were similar plans for the analysis of the
men’s back molars. Thóra hurriedly scribbled a note to herself to
remind her to phone and request that fingerprints be taken from Alda’s
body if more prints were found on the box, although she imagined that would
happen as a matter of course.

Then there was the head itself. Thóra
still hadn’t come across anything to explain Gudni’s snide hints
about Markus, so she steeled herself to find something here. The autopsy
breakdown started quite innocently with notes on the age of the teeth, which
indicated that the head belonged to a young man, probably around twenty years
of age. Then the report turned to the cause of death, which was impossible to determine
in the absence of the body. The evidence suggested the head had been removed
post-mortem. This conclusion was drawn from the saw cuts, which were
unnaturally even, suggesting that the man could not have been alive while they
were made. Thóra looked up from her reading and wondered whether this
meant that a living man, even unconscious, would have moved around while his
head was being sawn off. As before, a surreal feeling came over her when she
thought about the severed head. None of her law tutors at university could have
thought to prepare their students for anything like this, and in fact
Thóra doubted any level of tuition could have prepared her either. She
kept reading. The head was thought to be male based on measurements of X-ray images
of the jawbone, as well as other size ratios of the skull. In addition, stubble
was still perceptible around the chin. There were no dental fillings, so no
attempt could be made to determine the nationality or even the race of the
head. This was bad, in Thóra’s opinion. If it had been another
British man, that would suggest that the head belonged to someone from the same
group of men, with whom Markus had no provable connection. Then she could
easily have argued that Markus had become accidentally entangled in a serious
matter of which he had no knowledge, and therefore had been ignorant of its
significance when he put the box in the basement. As it was, this was not
ideal.

She turned the page and read on. She
hadn’t read more than two more lines when she clapped her hand over her
mouth. This was what Gudni had meant. She looked up at the ceiling and drew a
deep breath. The thing she had seen in the head’s mouth in the basement,
and thought to be a tongue, was something very, very different.

Tuesday
17 July
2007

Adolf reread the brief message he had typed
before pushing send. He was lying on the sofa at
home,
with one eye on a golf tournament whose location and name he didn’t know
He didn’t like golf, but was oddly fascinated by how boring it was on
television. He stared as if hypnotized as one white ball after another was
whipped into the air, vanished against the pale sky and then reappeared,
bouncing and rolling along the manicured grass. Adolf wondered if he’d
forgotten to turn his phone’s ringer back on when he left his
lawyer’s office. But he hadn’t, and the message he’d just
sent had definitely gone out.

He put down the phone, sat up on the sofa and
reached for the newspaper. He had to find something to do this evening, since
his friends weren’t answering his calls or texts. This didn’t
really surprise him: people with jobs were usually busy on weekdays. He himself
had been laid off after his arrest, and had made no effort to find himself
another job. He had enough to deal with after the death of his mother. When all
this trouble with the court case was over he would apply for a job somewhere
else, but it wouldn’t really work right now, as it wouldn’t look
good to start a new job and have to ask for time off to go to court. He opened
the paper and turned to the cinema listings. If no one wanted to do anything
tonight he would go and see a film. He couldn’t imagine sitting at home
alone, fighting against his anxiety. Plan B was much more sensible: go to the
gym and work out until he was exhausted, then go and take in one of the summer
blockbusters that demanded nothing of him except that he
stay
awake. He wondered whether he should take his daughter along; it would do her
good to get out of the house, and he would have someone to talk to during the
trailers. Although he was well into his thirties he still felt uncomfortable
going to the cinema alone, though it wasn’t quite as unthinkable as it
had been when he was a teenager. He might have to reconsider his trip to the
gym if he took Tinna along, though, since she hardly had the strength to lift
her towel after a shower, much less any weights.

Fuck the gym, he could go there later. He
called his daughter and she agreed to go and see a film with him that evening,
her choice. There was neither interest nor
uninterest
in her voice, and he had the impression that she’d agreed to see him out
of a sense of duty. It had always been hard for him to understand her. He had
only been with her mother for one night and had never had a good relationship
with her. So he didn’t know whether it was just he who had difficulty
connecting to her emotionally or whether the same went for her other relatives.
In truth, he suspected he wasn’t the only one. The poor girl had always
had some sort of mental trouble, but it was only recently that she’d
started acting so depressed that you couldn’t help but notice it.
Thinking about it reminded Adolf that he still hadn’t told his lawyer
about Tinna’s illness and this was probably a big mistake. Maybe he could
gain the judge’s sympathy if she testified? He had always been pretty
good to her, looked after her every other weekend since she was tiny —
after the paternity test was performed, of course. Even though he’d more
often than not left her with his parents, he’d heard that children
benefited from being around their grandparents, and no harm had been done to
her even though you’d be hard pushed to find another couple as boring as
them.

When his father died two years ago, Adolf had
hoped his mother’s condition would improve somewhat, that her mood would
brighten and she would somehow change into another person. His parents had
always squabbled over stupid little things for as long as he could remember,
and had managed to scare all their friends and relatives away. Actually one or
two of his relatives had occasionally dropped by out of a sense of familial
duty, but they had always been scared off by the oppressive atmosphere in the
house. The only words the couple had spoken in the presence of others had been
poorly concealed pot-shots at each other or rants against the rest of society.
There had been no news topic so mundane that they couldn’t find a way to
turn it on its head and complain about it for hours at a time. Adolf shuddered
slightly at the memory. He didn’t know whether the root of this
behavioural pattern had lain with his mother or his father, since he
couldn’t remember them being anything apart from terribly unhappy. If the
problem had been his father, then his mother had been so worn down by the time
he finally died that her true nature had been erased. She continued to grumble,
but now just directed it into thin air. So it hadn’t been a day of great
mourning for their only son when she had died recently. Adolf thought this
seemed appropriate: they had both chosen their own unhappiness over everything
else, including their own child, and didn’t deserve to have anyone grieve
for them.

What had that Alda said about them, again?
That they had applied for a divorce early in their marriage? If that was true,
there was no doubt in his mind that they would have been better off going
through with it than ruining what was left of their lives and making each other
unhappy. He couldn’t fathom how two such different people came up with
the idea of marrying, unless something had happened after the marriage that had
changed them so much that they couldn’t change back. He didn’t
believe that, but thought they had simply been thoroughly unpleasant people by
nature and had raged and ranted at each other in the hope that two negatives
would make a positive. Instead they had lived in utter misery and hostility
until the end. He did not intend to finish up like that. If he was that
negative too, he wasn’t going to make things worse by living with or
marrying a female version of
himself
. Again he thought
about the pending court case. Maybe he could also get the judge’s
sympathy via the story of his upbringing? Of course he had wanted for nothing
in material terms, since his parents had been quite well off, but he had lacked
affection. He was so pleased with this idea that he decided to write it down to
give to his lawyer. This was bound to work, especially if Tinna could be called
upon to testify and persuaded to say that he was her main guardian. No judge
with a trace of humanity could sentence him to prison after hearing a testimony
like that from a sick child. Adolf was glad she still looked like a child, even
though she was now sixteen.