Ashes to Dust (44 page)

A damaged fishing smack comes to the Islands
19 January, anchors at the pier, moves berths and then leaves during the night.
Paddi the Hook watches it sail away.

Teenagers, among them Alda and Markus, get
drunk at a school dance that same night. Magnus, Markus’s father, goes to
fetch him. Alda probably walks home. Something bad happens to Alda, which she
describes indirectly in her diary.

Magnus and Dadi ‘Horseshoe’ are
seen down at the harbour that night. A lot of blood is found on the pier the
following morning, where the smack was originally moored.

Detective Gudni is called to the scene. He is
told of Dadi’s presence at the harbour, but not that Magnus was with him.

Dadi denies having been involved in anything
illegal and states that he knows nothing about any blood.

Four men, most likely British, are beaten to
death - unclear exactly when.

Leifur returns to the Islands to scold his
brother for his drinking.

Alda gives Markus the box, and asks him to
store it for her. She is in a frantic state.

Eruption during the night.

The residents flee to the mainland, some of
them on fishing vessels, and Alda asks Markus what he did with the box. He
tells her.

Magnus and his partner Thórgeir,
Alda’s father, return to the Islands to salvage their possessions. Magnus
mostly empties his family home, although not the basement.

Alda, her mother and her sister move to the
Westfjords, where she supposedly attends Isafjördur Junior College -
suddenly one year ahead of her previous school year. However, no one at the
school has a record of her attendance there.

Markus’s mother and her children move
to Reykjavik.

Valgerdur and Dadi move west, settle in the
vicinity of Holmavik. There they finally have a child. She wants little to do
with the child - perhaps she suffers from post-partum depression?

Some time
during the first two weeks of the eruption, the
bodies are moved to the basement.

Magnus buys up Thórgeir’s shares
in the fishing company and continues to run the business alone. He acquires a
processing plant for peanuts and lands his catch in the Islands, despite the
continuing eruption.

Markus attends Reykjavik Junior College.

Alda is registered at the same school, but
for home attendance until after the
new year
.
Markus meets her again for the first time since the eruption and they do not
discuss the box.

Alda studies nursing.

Markus marries and divorces, has one son.
Markus does not work for his father’s company.
Maintains
his friendship with Alda.

Leifur, Markus’s brother, takes over
the family business when their father becomes ill. He has worked there since
completing his studies in business.

When plans are made to excavate
Markus’s parents’ house, Alda asks Markus to prevent it, but keeps
this secret from her sister.

Alda takes a leave of absence from the
A&E.

Alda familiarizes herself with
Valgerdur’s autopsy report.

Alda for some reason keeps a picture of a
tattoo bearing the words ‘Love Sex’, as well as a picture of an
unidentified young man.

Alda has links to pornographic websites on
her computer and is seeing a sex therapist.

Markus does what he can to prevent the
excavation of his childhood home but settles for being allowed to get the box
from the basement after Alda consents to this arrangement. He travels to the
Islands.

Alda is murdered.

Markus finds the bodies in the basement and a
man’s head in the box.

A possible murder weapon is found in a box
with children’s clothes, also in the basement.

Thóra put down the paper and tried
unsuccessfully to recall more details that might possibly make a difference.
She also tried to determine how much of this might be unconnected to the
murder, but couldn’t actually think of anything. It was the same as with
the items in the storeroom - if she crossed something off the list it would
probably turn out to be the vital clue. She sighed and tried to concentrate.
Could Alda have killed the men? It didn’t matter how hard Thóra
tried to imagine such an attack, with the men rolling drunk and the teenage
Alda in a murderous frenzy with a salmon priest on the pier - it didn’t
add up. What was she supposed to have done with the bodies after such a
horrific deed? Thóra didn’t know any teenage girl who had the
strength to struggle with the body of a full-grown man, still less if she had
had to make four trips. If they’d been murdered in the basement, things would
look different. Then Alda wouldn’t have needed to move the bodies at all.
This, however, did not fit, since the murders were committed before the
eruption. At least, Markus had put the box with the man’s head there
before it happened. In addition, there were burn marks on the men’s
clothing, which suggested that they had been out in the open after the tephra
had started to rain down. And Alda had left the Islands by then. Thóra
felt the blood on the pier must be connected to this.

Where was the body that was missing its head?
It would probably never be found, since it hadn’t turned up during the
last thirty-four years, even during the excavation. They had already dug up all
the houses that they planned to salvage from the ash, so there was no hope of
finding anything new that way. In addition, hundreds of houses had been buried
beneath lava during the eruption, so the body in question could be inside one
of them, and thus gone forever. Then again that could hardly be the case,
because why would the murderer or murderers have moved only one of the bodies
from house to house? Why move the others from a house that was about to be
buried by lava to one that was being buried under ash? She was certain of one
thing - if she herself had needed to get rid of a body under such
circumstances, she would have chosen the house that would end up under lava.
And then, of course, it was possible that the men had not been murdered in the
Islands after all, despite the blood on the pier. Perhaps the murderers
didn’t have ties to the Islands or the Westmann Islanders, but instead
were outsiders who had transported the bodies there to hide them. Thóra
sighed thoughtfully. If so, it had been a bad plan.

No, everything suggested that Markus’s
father was the key to the case, not people from the mainland. If the bodies
were put there without his knowledge, the murderer would hardly have hidden the
mallet and knife in a box in the nearest storeroom, nor left these
possible murder weapons next to the bodies. Thóra tried to imagine how
Magnus might have played a part in all of this. Maybe he and Dadi had ended up
in a scuffle with the crew of the smack, killed the men and brought their
bodies to the basement. But that didn’t fit with Paddi seeing the smack
sail away. Could it be that the paths of these men had crossed out at sea
rather than on land, and the blood had ended up on the pier when Magnus and
Dadi were dragging the bodies ashore? Thóra frowned. Could the two of
them, Magnus and Dadi, have sailed Magnus’s ship? She had no idea how
many people were needed to handle a boat that size. They would never have
managed to get a whole crew of men to keep quiet about something like this. Of
course Thóra had seen the ship in a painting at Leifur’s house,
but that image told her precisely nothing, since she had never even pissed in
the sea, much less seen how a fishing operation worked. The trip with
Bella and Paddi the Hook could hardly be counted. This led her to something
else: if the bodies belonged to the crew of the British smack, then where was
the boat?

An unexpected thud came from the door of
Thóra’s room, snapping her out of her reverie. The sound came
again, but now it was clearly a knock. Thóra stood up and went to the
door, where she was flabbergasted to see Bella, dressed and ready to go.

‘I’m ready,’ said Bella.
She looked at Thóra and appeared to be unhappy with her boss, who
wasn’t dressed yet. ‘I couldn’t sleep because my room was too
quiet.’

Thóra looked at the clock and saw that
it was almost eight. ‘I’m coming,’ she said apologetically.
‘Would you like to go down to breakfast and get us a table?’ She
handed Bella the page with her summary of events. ‘You can look over this
while you wait. A second set of eyes.’ It was apparent from the young woman’s
expression that she had never heard this idiom before.

‘I’ll be down in ten
minutes,’ said Thóra, smiling as she closed the door on her
secretary.

‘Can’t I have the list a bit
longer?’ asked Bella, sipping the black coffee she’d poured for
herself. Thóra couldn’t count the number of sweet rolls that had
disappeared into the girl as they ate their breakfast.

‘No problem,’ said Thóra
in surprise. ‘Did you see anything in it?’

Bella shook her head. ‘No, not
yet,’ she said. ‘Actually you forgot to put in about Adolf and the
rape.’ She turned the list towards Thóra. ‘I stuck it in
there,’ she said, pointing at an illegible scribble in the margin.

‘I definitely overlooked a few other
things,’ said Thóra. ‘If you remember anything else you can
certainly add it. It’s not sacred.’

‘I’m also wondering if I should
check on this tattoo for you,’ said Bella, pointing at the list.
‘Love Sex,’ she muttered. ‘That’s so lame.’

A foreign couple at the next table, who had
been immersed in a guidebook, finally understood two words of the women’s
conversation and smiled knowingly at each other.

Thóra thought tattoos were pretty dumb
at the best of times, so Love Sex was no worse than anything else as far as she
was concerned. ‘What are you thinking of doing?’ she asked.
‘Do you know much about tattoos?’

‘I’ve got three,’ replied
Bella, and she started to fiddle with the collar of her sweater. She pulled it
down and Thóra caught a glimpse of a unicorn on the upper slope of the
girl’s hefty breast. ‘One,’ she said, arching in her seat to
show Thóra her belly. ‘Two…’ The foreign couple were
now staring at them.

‘It’s okay, I believe you,’
said Thóra uncomfortably. ‘But what are you going to do with this
tattoo?’

Bella tidied her clothing and adjusted
herself in her seat. ‘I’m going to see whether anyone recognizes
it. There aren’t many tattoo shops in Reykjavik, so it won’t take
long. It’s an unusual tattoo, I think,’ she said. ‘At least,
I’ve never seen it in any albums.’

‘Albums?’ repeated Thóra,
blankly.

‘Tattoo parlours have books or folders
with drawings of the tattoos that they offer,’ said Bella, casually.
‘When I got mine done I had a look at the selection, but I don’t
remember one saying Love Sex.’

The young couple at the next table giggled.
‘Definitely check on it if you feel like it,’ said Thóra, as
she tried to ignore them. ‘I doubt it will make any difference, but you
never know.’ She looked at her watch and stood up. ‘We should get
going,’ she said, grabbing her bag from where it hung on the back of her
chair. ‘Now let’s see whether we can’t score a hit with
Gudni.’

Bella snorted. ‘Good luck with
that,’ she said, apparently far from optimistic.

‘So you thought you’d left your
wallet in the basement when you went down there with Markus?’ asked
Gudni, clearly not believing a word of what Thóra was saying. He leaned
back and glowered at her. He had agreed to meet them at the police station when
Thóra called him just after eight in the morning, and she had heard in
his voice that she’d woken him up.

‘Yes,’ said Thóra
peevishly. ‘Does it matter?’ She pointed at the salmon priest on
Gudni’s desk. Next to it
lay
the knife that had
been in the same box. ‘Here you have the possible murder weapons in an
unsolved case with four corpses, so I think you should be thanking me for
stepping in, rather than questioning my story.’

‘I just think it’s best that we
have everything clear,’ said Gudni calmly. ‘You and this…
lady…’ he pointed at Bella.

‘Lady?’ snarled Bella.
Thóra remembered how strange she’d felt the first time someone had
called her a
lady
rather than a girl or young woman,
but this was neither the time nor the place to share that experience with her
secretary.

Gudni raised an eyebrow at Bella, but
continued. ‘You travel all the way to the Islands, then instead of coming
to me or the archaeologists to check if your lost wallet might be in the
basement, you wait until the evening then go to the house yourself?’

‘I’m sorry,’ interrupted
Thóra. ‘But we didn’t see any signs saying that it was still
a closed crime scene, so we wanted to save you the trouble and just go down
there ourselves. I hope you’re not saying the house is still under your
jurisdiction?’

‘No, actually it isn’t,’
replied Gudni. ‘We finished up yesterday, but that doesn’t alter
the fact that there’s a large notice at the end of the access road
stating clearly that people walking through have to remain outside the boundary
tape.’

‘Oh, is there?’ said
Thóra, smiling innocently at him. ‘We completely missed
that.’ She pointed again at the objects on the table. ‘In any case,
I have handed over evidence from a serious murder case, but all that seems to
matter to you is our little mix-up.’ Thóra wasn’t entirely
sure if the warning sign was legally enforceable, but suspected not. ‘I
would like to know whether you consider this a significant discovery or not,
and I would also like the mallet and the knife to be taken into consideration
if you are thinking of requesting an extension of Markus’s custody
period. The weapons are not his, and I’m certain that a forensic
examination will show he’s never touched them.’ Thóra had
contacted Markus and told him about the weapons before going to the police
station. Stunned, he had denied ever having laid a finger on them, let alone
hidden them in the storeroom.