Ashes to Dust (32 page)

Thóra breathed easier after coming back
outside. ‘I have a job for you, Bella,’ she said as they caught
their breath after dragging the door back into place. ‘You need to find
out whether the people who lived here had a child that died, or whether they
might have bought the house from people with children.’

‘How am I supposed to do that?’
panted Bella.

‘You’ll work it out. Maybe the
people at the archive can help you.’

‘I’m sure it’s
closed,’ said Bella, and the relief in her voice was plain.
‘It’s Saturday, remember,’ she added triumphantly.

‘The library is probably open, and
it’s in the same building,’ Thóra replied, who didn’t
want to let Bella off so easily. ‘I’m sure you can get someone to
open it for you, especially if you mention that the checking you want to do is
for Leifur. Just try to be pushy without being rude.’ From the
secretary’s look of surprise, it was clear she had no qualms about being
thought either pushy or rude; that it was, on the contrary, harder for her to
be only one at a time. ‘You’ll work it out,’ repeated
Thóra optimistically, although she knew it was unlikely.

It looked like Matthew wasn’t going to
call back, and Thóra was tired of waiting. Twice she’d caught
herself looking at the screen, to see if he’d called and to check if she
had a signal. Maybe he had tried to phone unsuccessfully throughout the rest of
the ferry trip earlier, and had decided to try again later. The easiest way to
find out was of course to phone him, but Thóra feared that if she called
him first she would seem too excited about hearing his decision, which could
then be misread as eagerness for him to move to Iceland. It irritated her
that she was thinking like this, because normally she got straight to the
point. The problem was that she wasn’t entirely sure how she felt. She
wanted him to come, but she also didn’t want any commitments. Her best
friend had taken up with a foreigner and had quickly lost touch with her circle
of friends, since the others didn’t like speaking English when they got
together. Of course that had been many years ago, and Thóra reminded
herself that she had very little contact with her old girlfriends now anyway.
Most of them had their hands full, just like Thóra, with little time
left over to meet for cups of coffee, much less glasses of wine.

She picked up her mobile and called him. She
would just have to look desperate. She hung up, irritated, when a female German
voice told her that the phone was out of range or turned off. Perhaps Matthew
himself was out at sea, or had switched off his mobile because of work. He wasn’t
the type who spent his work time chatting on the phone to friends and family,
unlike Thóra, who took at least ten such calls per day, mostly from her
children. As she was thinking this, the phone rang. She grinned.

‘Hi, Mum,’ said Gylfi. ‘Did
you find us an apartment for the festival?’

Thóra rolled her eyes. You
couldn’t accuse him of giving up easily.
‘No,
sweetheart.
I have other things to take care of at the moment.’

‘Oh.’ His disappointment was loud
and clear. ‘Sigga and I were starting to really look forward to
it.’

‘All is not lost yet, darling,’
said Thóra. ‘I haven’t had any “
no”s
so far.’ Of course this was because she hadn’t made any more
enquiries since it had first come up.

‘Keep trying,’ Gylfi said.
‘It’ll be great fun. All the guys are going, you know.’

‘Are they going to camp?’ asked
Thóra, who couldn’t imagine Gylfi’s friends setting up tents
without trouble.

‘
Naw
,’
Gylfi replied. ‘They’re renting people’s garages. Maybe you
can get us one of those? That’d be fun.’

Sure, thought Thóra. To her mind, the
word ‘fun’ didn’t apply to a weekend spent huddled among
spare tyres and junk. ‘No thanks,’ she said. ‘You have a
small child who could hurt himself, and you’ll be dragging around your
poor old mother, who needs a shower and a coffee maker, not a garden hose and a
power drill.’

She said goodbye after asking how little Orri
was doing; his upper teeth didn’t want to come out. He was turning out to
resemble his father in this as in other things; Thóra had actually
considered asking Hannes to cut the little boy’s gums open when Gylfi had
gone through the same thing. It was getting late, so the phone call to
Sóley would have to wait until after she had spoken to Markus’s
mother. She was supposed to be there at four o’clock sharp, and although
the streets in the Westmann Islands weren’t numerous, she and Bella had
managed to get hopelessly lost just looking for the excavation site, even
though it was at the foot of the volcano.

After driving in circles for ten minutes,
Thóra finally managed to find the street and the house. It had proven to
be even more complicated than the search for the
Pompeü
of the North site, because this time Bella wasn’t there to help her,
having gone to the library to try and wheedle her way into the archive and dig
around for information on Valgerdur and Dadi. Thóra was therefore
slightly late when she parked the car in front of the old woman’s house.
She carefully smoothed out her trousers and fixed the barely visible crease in
the front of them, then smoothed her blouse and headed for the front door. She
wanted to make a good impression: people of Markus’s parents’ age
wanted to see respectable individuals working as lawyers, and no doubt
preferred them to be men. It was important that the old woman not be shocked by
Thóra’s appearance when they met for the first time. To that end,
Thóra was wearing the best, smart-but- not-fancy outfit in her closet.

Thóra rang the bell and stood stiffly
waiting for someone to come to the door. It was Leifur’s wife Maria who
opened it. A faint smell of alcohol drifted from her but she didn’t
appear tipsy at all as she stood there in the doorway, dressed elegantly in a
Burberry shirt and skirt. Thóra knew this woman would immediately notice
her inexpensive clothing.

‘You’re late,’ said Maria
angrily.

‘Oh,’ said Thóra, off
guard. ‘I didn’t realize.’ She looked at the clock on the
wall and then her watch and noticed that the latter was off by six minutes.
‘I got lost.’

‘Got lost?’ said the woman
scathingly.
‘In the Westmann Islands?’
She
didn’t wait for a reply but instead waved Thóra in. ‘Klara
is waiting,’ she said, and walked into the house.

Thóra followed her sheepishly, and
could only think that she hoped her bottom would look that good when she was
fifty. Her only physical workout these days was caring for her grandchild,
which had given her impressive biceps. She cheered up at the thought that she
could at least beat this elegant woman at arm-wrestling.

Leifur’s wife stopped at a sliding
double-door that opened into an old-fashioned but splendid front room. ‘
In
you go. She’s got so much to tell you.’ She
walked away, adding sarcastically: ‘As long as you know what to
ask.’

Saturday 21 July
2007

The chilly gaze of the old woman undeniably
resembled that of her younger son, Markus, but in other respects they were
unalike. She had greying hair, but her face was mostly free of wrinkles. Her
skin was the only thing about Klara that seemed young, though; she was wearing
a highly patterned,
multicoloured
dress, plainly cut.
Her eyes had the watery look of old age, but they did not hide her displeasure
at having to sit here and speak to Thóra, who had already asked her
several polite questions with little response. Klara was probably around
eighty, and wore her age gracefully as she sat there, straight-backed, on the
large dark sofa. Carved lions’ paws adorned both the sofa’s arms
and feet. The sofa suited Klara. In fact, she fitted perfectly into the room,
whose every surface was dotted with crystal vases. Markus’s father, in
contrast, didn’t look at all at home in this austere, old- fashioned
setting. Thóra felt sorry for him. He sat in one of the more modern
chairs in the room, an upholstered reclining armchair, and was wearing a
tracksuit over a turtleneck sweater, with a fleece blanket wrapped around his
shoulders. On his feet he wore sheepskin moccasins. Leifur, who had come in
behind Thóra, took a seat next to his father. She wasn’t entirely
sure why he was here. Perhaps he was meant to act as a kind of watchdog, to
protect his mother and make sure Thóra didn’t go too far with her
questions. He hadn’t said anything about coming along when Thóra
had spoken to him the night before.

‘So you don’t remember any
foreigners being around at that time?’ Thóra asked the old woman,
then
added: ‘They were probably British, four of
them.’ The old
lady’s
strong perfume was
making her feel a little light-headed.

‘No, I don’t,’ Klara
replied. ‘I had enough to worry about at home, and I didn’t go down
to the harbour much, where any foreigners were most likely to be.’

‘I see,’ said Thóra.
‘And your husband didn’t do business with any foreigners?’

‘I never paid attention to his work, so
I really don’t know,’ the woman replied, looking a little
affronted. ‘Magnus’s work was entirely his business, I never got
involved — that’s how it was in those days.’ She glanced
sideways at her husband, who was sitting looking silently out of the window.

Thóra decided to change the subject
and ask about Valgerdur and Dadi. Maybe the old
lady
would relax if the conversation focused on someone else. ‘The name of
your former neighbour, Valgerdur Bjolfsdottir, has been mentioned in connection
with Alda Thórgeirsdóttir. I’m not sure how they are
connected, but I was hoping you might be able to tell me.’

‘I don’t know anything about
that,’ said Klara quickly, almost before Thóra finished speaking.

‘Anything about what?’ asked
Thóra, certain Klara was hiding something - she hadn’t even tried
to remember anything.
‘About the connection between
them?’
Without waiting for a reply she smiled sympathetically at
the woman, trying to convey that she knew it was a long story. ‘What
little I’ve heard about Valgerdur and Dadi has all pointed the same way
— everyone seems to be in agreement that they were a pretty tedious
couple. It would be good to hear your opinion of them.’

‘How could that possibly be of use to
Markus?’ Leifur asked, surprised and obviously annoyed. ‘I was led
to believe the purpose of this meeting was to gather information that might
help him.’

The old woman gave her son a sharp look.
‘I think I can answer for myself,’ she said bad-temperedly. She
turned to Thóra. ‘Although I’m in agreement with Leifur in
that I don’t really understand how this is connected to Markus,
it’s hardly a secret that both Valgerdur and Dadi were particularly
unpleasant people. She was a busybody who enjoyed other people’s
misfortunes,’ she said, scowling. ‘I suppose she was trying to
console herself for her own rotten luck.’

‘What was so rotten about it?’ Thóra
asked. ‘I heard she was a nurse and he was a sailor. There are definitely
worse jobs.’

‘It didn’t have anything to do
with work or money. They met when Valgerdur started at the hospital here as a
student nurse. It must have been clear to her even before they’d
exchanged rings that Dadi loved the bottle more than her, so it was a loveless
and difficult marriage. At first they were no unhappier than the rest of the
neighbourhood, really, but then things started to go downhill. We could hear
everything, because our bedroom window faced theirs. I actually pitied her at
first.’

‘So what
changed?’ asked Thóra, who had started to feel sorry for poor
Valgerdur herself.

‘She betrayed my trust so badly that
nothing could ever heal the wound,’ said Klara, pursing her lips.

‘Could you go into a little more
detail?’ said Thóra. ‘I don’t want to pry, but I have
to understand what was going on in the neighbourhood if I want to help Markus.
I’m fairly certain that whoever put the bodies there was known
locally.’

Klara looked at Thóra without saying
anything at first, then raised her eyebrows and let out a low moan. ‘I
don’t see how this piece of ancient history could possibly matter
today.’ She cleared her throat. ‘But nor do I see why I
shouldn’t entrust you with the information.’ She sat up straighten
‘After listening to Dadi shouting and Valgerdur sobbing for six months, I
decided to speak to her and offer her a shoulder to cry on, because she seemed
so lonely. All her relatives lived in Reykjavik and in those days people
didn’t carry around their telephones, ready to discuss things wherever
and whenever it suited them. I spoke to her confidentially and told her
that she wasn’t the only one with a domineering and drunken
husband, that
it was only too common, and she could turn to
me if she needed any help.’ Klara tapped her nose meaningfully.
‘She thanked me by repeating the names I had told her, of the other
abusive husbands, to anyone who would listen - the men as well as their wives.
It took me many months to win back the trust of those women.’

‘Could she have been so desperate to
make friends that she sacrificed you on the altar of popularity?’ asked
Thóra, trying to imagine being the newcomer in a close-knit community.