Ashes to Dust (50 page)

The door opened and Svala stuck her head
through the gap. ‘Who is Alda’s next of kin?’ she asked.

Thóra looked at the woman in surprise.
This seemed an odd and irrelevant question from someone she had always found
very straightforward, but she replied without comment that she imagined
Alda’s sister or parents must be her heirs, although she hadn’t
ever checked.

‘Precisely, so no children, in other
words,’ said Svala, and closed the door again. Thóra sat and
stared at it. She hadn’t had time to form an opinion on any of this when
the door reopened and Svala appeared in the gap once more. ‘Do you know
anything about her estate?’ she asked. ‘What there is to be
divided?’

Thóra raised her eyebrows. ‘Not
in any detail. I know that she owned her house but it’s impossible to say
how much she owed on the mortgage. It couldn’t have been very much, because
she bought it long before the prices went up. I believe she’d lived there
a long time.’ Thóra didn’t recall whether Alda had any other
property. ‘May I ask why you’re discussing this?’

‘Give me two minutes,’ said
Svala, and the door slammed shut again. Fifteen minutes later she and Adolf
reappeared. Thóra had started to grow uncomfortable. She had a lot to do
before going to the courtroom at two o’clock. Luckily she’d managed
to get Svala to arrange the meeting for nine in the morning, but if it went on
like this it would be almost eleven when Thóra finally made it back to
her office. ‘Well,’ said Svala, taking a seat at her desk.
‘It would appear that Adolf has a little story to tell you. It might
improve your client’s position, but it also might make it worse.
We’ll just have to wait and see. It’s up to you; do you want to
hear it, or should we let it go?’

Thóra chose the former. As things
stood, any new information could only help Markus. The limbo he was in now
was unbearable for him. Even if the court didn’t rule against him, a
large percentage of the Islands’ population would always be convinced of
his guilt, particularly if the custody extension was granted.

‘Tell her what you told me,
Adolf,’ said Svala. It was clear from her tone that she was not best
pleased with him. ‘I stand by what I told you in the corridor.
You’ll benefit more by telling your story than by keeping it to
yourself.’

Adolf did not appear convinced, but began
nevertheless. ‘Alda came to see me,’ he said slowly. ‘She
rang first, but then came anyway after I refused to talk to her.’

‘Did she want to talk about the
tattoo?’ asked Thóra.

He shook his head, his expression just as
unreadable as when Thóra had first set eyes on him earlier that morning.
‘She called me originally to shout at me,’ he said. ‘It was
shortly after that silly bitch Halldora accused me of rape, and at first I
didn’t have any idea who this woman was; I thought it must be her mother,
or something.’

Thóra looked at Svala. ‘Did you
know this?’ she asked. ‘That the nurse who treated the girl had
phoned the suspect to give him a piece of her mind?’

Svala shook her head. ‘I heard most of
this for the first time just now. It’ll become clear why he kept it
secret.’ She gestured at Adolf to continue. ‘There’s more.
Much more.’

Thóra turned back to him. ‘So
she just called you and started yelling without introducing herself?’

‘No, she did introduce herself, but her
name meant nothing to me,’ replied Adolf. After she’d called me
several times, just as hysterical each time, I stopped answering the phone
.‘
He straightened in his chair. ’You
can’t blame me - who’d want some old fishwife hollering at them day
and night
?‘

‘How much time had passed from the date
of the alleged rape before Alda first called you?’ asked Thóra.

Adolf thought for a moment.
‘About a month.
No, a little longer.
Maybe two.’

‘And did she say anything about why she
was calling?’

‘No. She was completely crazy.’
Adolf shrugged. ‘She probably believed Halldora, and thought I was a
rapist. Maybe she was hoping that if she kept on at me long enough I’d
confess to their trumped-up charges.’

Thóra knew this hadn’t been the
first rape case Alda had been involved in, but had no idea whether her reaction
was an isolated incident. Perhaps phone calls like these had been the reason
Alda had been advised to take a leave of absence. ‘Do you think she was a
friend of Halldora, or was it that she realized she knew your parents?’

‘She didn’t know that lying cow
Halldora,’ said Adolf. ‘I actually called her to ask how she
managed to get a nurse on her side in her smear campaign.’

Svala gasped. ‘You called the girl? She
didn’t mention that in the police statement, and the prosecutor
hasn’t said anything about it either.’

‘Maybe Halldora didn’t want
anyone to know about the phone call. She actually wanted to talk to me, and she
offered to drop the charges if I would go out with her.’ Adolf frowned.
‘It’s like I’ve always said — her pride was hurt. 1
don’t know what I was thinking dragging her home with me that night, but
I was drunk and high and didn’t realize what a dog she was. The next
morning she clearly thought she’d hit the jackpot and kept going on about
our “relationship” and God knows what else. I got rid of her
as quickly as I could, but she came back the next night. I let her in by
mistake and it was like she thought we’d become an item. Why
couldn’t she see how badly we went together, her always talking, talking,
talking and me…?’ He didn’t finish the sentence.

‘So when did she decide to press
charges against you?’ asked Thóra. ‘You sleep together and
the next evening she comes to visit. And after that, just under another
twenty-four hours go by before she makes her allegation.’ Thóra
knew she’d gone beyond the limits of what pertained directly to
Alda’s murder, but she wanted to have everything clear before they
discussed the woman. That way she could get a better feeling for Adolf’s
reactions, and she might be able to tell if he was lying about anything
important.

Adolf looked at Svala, who indicated that he
should continue. ‘I gave her pills on her second visit, to stop her from
getting pregnant. I thought I’d forgotten them the night before because I
was so drunk. That’s the only reason I let her in.’ He didn’t
even have the decency to look ashamed when he said this. ‘But it turns
out I probably did remember on Saturday night, so she got a large
enough—’

Svala interrupted him, either embarrassed by
his insensitivity or in a hurry to conclude the meeting. ‘Anyway, the
girl started bleeding heavily and went to A&E. That’s where we see
what kind of person she is: she put two and two together and started coming
after Adolf. After the thing with the morning-after pills came out, she said
she’d been raped.’

‘She called me from the hospital, while
she was waiting for the doctor or something,’ Adolf said suddenly.
‘She asked whether I’d done this, and what
was I
thinking since we were a couple. I laughed at her because it was so ridiculous.
I probably shouldn’t have done that. She went completely nuts and
said I would regret it. Then she went and shouted rape after I hung up on her.
That’s what she’s like, she’s mental.’

Svala cleared her throat. ‘You
didn’t tell me about this before,’ she said. ‘We could easily
check out the phone call.’

‘I didn’t rape her. I thought at
least I’d be considered innocent until proven guilty. I didn’t
do anything.’ Adolf stared at each of them in turn, his eyes shining with
the conviction of a simpleton. ‘I didn’t want to have to admit what
I did with the drug. I’ll get a bad reputation on the scene.’

Thóra supposed the ‘scene’
was picking up young women in bars. All the feelings this man had stirred in
her before he opened his mouth had long since gone cold. She was glad she never
went out on the town, and that it would be many years before Sóley would
start doing so; she had heard enough about Adolf and Halldora’s
‘relationship’. ‘You claim Halldora didn’t know
Alda,’ she said. ‘But you haven’t told me whether Alda
realized who your parents were. Was that what inspired the phone
call
?’

Adolf bared his teeth a little. He reminded
Thóra uncomfortably of a snake. ‘I never said she
didn’t know Alda; she knew her, but it wasn’t her that got Alda to
call me. Halldora said Alda was her counsellor or something.’ He
shrugged. ‘As far as my parents are concerned, you’ve got to
remember that while all of this was going on I was tied up in a lawsuit with
the hospital that murdered my mother.’

Thóra raised her eyebrows;
‘murdered’ was a bit extreme for a medical error. ‘I do know about
that, yes.’

‘You’ll remember that his mother
died when she was given a large dose of penicillin, even though she was
allergic to it,’ interjected Svala. ‘I’m about to reach a
settlement with the hospital, compensating Adolf for their mistake.’

Thóra was already aware of all this.
‘I understand that you brought a lawsuit against the hospital,’ she
said patiently, ‘but why don’t you carry on telling me about
Alda?’

‘The thing is, I didn’t want
anything to get in the way of me getting the compensation, so that’s why
I wasn’t pleased about Alda harassing me,’ said Adolf. ‘After
the first phone call she seemed to give up, so I just stopped worrying about
it. But then she started calling me again a few months later, and even though she
didn’t sound quite as crazy this time she was basically spouting the same
old rubbish underneath it all. I didn’t want to hear it, which is why I
hung up on her. I stopped answering the phone even after she said she had
information that could help me, and kept apologizing over and over for having
wrongly accused me.’ He closed his eyes. ‘Once I humoured her and
said I’d meet her at a cafe, but then I changed my mind. I have no idea
if she showed up or not.’

‘Was that shortly before she was
murdered?’ asked Thóra.

‘Yes. Something like that,’
replied Adolf mysteriously. ‘I actually saw her several days before she
died. She came to my house all smiles and apologies, like I said. I let her
talk, then gave up and threw her out. She never called again, and I thought she
had finally got the message that I didn’t want anything to do with her.
Then I saw the obituary in the papers a few days later.’ He smiled
nastily. ‘The phone calls stopped automatically, in other words.’

‘Have you ever been to Alda’s
house?’ asked Svala anxiously. Then she added: ‘
Don’t
say anything if you have.’

‘No, I’ve never been to her house
and I have no idea where she lives,’ replied Adolf.

‘Lived,’ Thóra corrected
him. ‘She’s dead, as we know.’ She took a deep breath before
continuing. Hopefully this would lead to something useful rather than just
ending up as a lesson in the psychology of self-obsessed individuals.
‘Why was Alda so interested in you and this case?’ she asked again.
‘Was it because of your parents?’

Adolf grinned at her. It was as if he
suddenly realized that he alone had information that Thóra needed. He
seemed determined to make the most of it. ‘You’re in luck,’
he said, staring at her. ‘I wouldn’t be telling you this if Alda had
died penniless.’

‘In that case, it’s certainly
lucky that she didn’t,’ said Thóra, unsmiling. ‘And
are you ever going to get round to telling me, or not?’ She wasn’t
going to jump through hoops for him. The police would squeeze it out of him if
necessary.

The corners of Adolf’s mouth drooped.
‘Of course I’ve only got her word for it,’ he muttered.
‘It might be bullshit.’

‘We’ll let others be the judge of
that,’ said Svala. ‘Tell her what Alda said.’

‘Okay,’ said Adolf, shifting in
his chair to face Thóra. ‘She said she was my mother.’ He
looked away again. ‘I’m not the person I thought I was.’ Then
he added nonchalantly: ‘If it is true then I’m her natural heir, of
course, so I don’t care which of them
was my mother
.
I can inherit from both of them.’ He shot a sideways glance at Svala.
‘It’s a win-win situation,’ he said with a grin.

Thóra stared at his swarthy
features and pictured Alda, blonde and fair-skinned. Two less similar people
were hardly possible to imagine. Had Alda been out of her mind? She didn’t
have any children: the autopsy report had even stated clearly that she’d
never given birth. Thóra’s mind was racing, there were so many
questions. Could Alda have donated her eggs to Valgerdur, making Adolf a
test-tube baby? She couldn’t remember when such technology had first made
it to Iceland, but it seemed doubtful that it had been available in the 1970s.
If Alda were this man’s mother, who could the father be?
Markus?
Did this mean Valgerdur Bjolfsdottir did not raise
Adolf? And if not, where was the son she raised?

Tuesday 24 July
2007

Adolf was born on 27 October 1973, so it
wasn’t hard to estimate his conception at some time around the eruption
in January. Could Alda be his mother? After the meeting with Svala and Adolf,
Thóra immediately called Litla-Hraun Prison in the hope that Markus
would shed some light on Adolf’s assertion. She had no idea what Markus
was thinking as she told him the story; he hotly denied that it was possible,
but then had to admit that Alda had dropped off his radar for precisely the
same period as the alleged pregnancy, and actually rather longer, since she
wasn’t seen for almost a year. He repeatedly expressed his shock at
‘this bullshit’ and wondered aloud who could possibly believe that
Alda would have kept this a secret from him. Thóra wasn’t as
convinced as him, and knew that at least one other person knew the truth of the
matter: Alda’s mother. She hurried to finish her conversation with Markus
but was careful to promise him that they would meet before the district court
made its decision on the custody extension. She reassured him that
everything pointed towards that decision going his way. Markus was obviously
nervous and reluctant to end the conversation, but Thóra finally managed
to calm him down and hang up.