Ashes to Dust (52 page)

‘Everyone makes mistakes,’ said
Thóra automatically. ‘It’s how you learn from them that
matters.’

The woman shook her head. A moment later she
raised her eyes pleadingly towards the white coffin that rested on a low
platform before the altar. ‘That’s exactly what everyone fails to
do.
Everyone.’
She fell silent and Thóra
kept quiet too, thinking it would be best to give her a little time. She was
afraid Alda’s mother might withdraw into her shell if she pushed too hard
to get in. The woman spoke again: ‘Everything was different back then.
Everything young people take for granted today didn’t exist. We had to
work for everything.’

‘Did Alda have a child?’
asked  Jóhanna
angrily. ‘What is this
about?’ Thóra glared at her, not wanting her to rock the boat.
 Jóhanna pretended not to notice. ‘Who was the father?’
she demanded.

Fat tears leaked down the old woman’s
cheeks and fell onto the dark blue shawl she wore around her neck. There they
formed a spreading dark stain. ‘She was raped.
By a
foreigner.’
She was speaking
to
 Jóhanna
as if Thóra were not even present.
‘She went to hospital in a terrible state and she was treated there. They
called us from there. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.’

Thóra had no desire to hear the
description of Alda after the rape.

‘And she discovered she was pregnant
after the attack?’ she asked, as gently as possible.

The woman gave Thóra a startled look,
then
nodded. ‘Yes. Fate can be so cruel, and more
often than not to the most beautiful souls. She was just a girl, had maybe
kissed one boy, probably not even that. She was so good and obedient that we
never had any problems with her, unlike so many kids her age. Just once she
does something differently, and then her world falls apart.
Once.’

 Jóhanna sat speechless next to
her mother, which prompted Thóra to keep the conversation going. She
drew a deep breath. ‘She drank alcohol that
night,
didn’t she? Like all the kids?’

The old woman nodded. ‘She wasn’t
the worst. If she had been any drunker we would have been called and asked to
pick her up. Instead, she was allowed to walk home.’ The woman stared
into her lap. ‘She knew we would find out about it, so she decided to
give herself some time to sober up. She went down to the harbour, thinking the
sea air would help. There she met that terrible man. He was drunk, and he had
his way with her. She couldn’t offer any resistance even though she
fought back as hard as she could. She was so small and delicate, my darling
child.’

‘And is that monster one of the bodies
in the basement?’ asked Thóra, hoping that the question
wouldn’t make her clam up. The woman said nothing, so Thóra tried
again. ‘I have a daughter myself, and I can well imagine what flies
through the minds of the parents when something like this happens. The worst of
it is that we can’t do anything to change it. But Markus has a son, a son
who doesn’t deserve to have his father locked up for the wrong reason.
For his sake, the truth has to come out.’

The woman did not look up, but somehow this
seemed to move her, and when she spoke again her tone was more determined.
‘When Geiri found out from Alda at the hospital who had done it, he
rushed out,’ she said flatly, as if she were reciting a script. ‘I
tried to dissuade him, but it meant nothing. He left me at her bedside and went
and got Magnus.
One for all and all for one.
They
caught the men down at the harbour, on their boat, which Alda had described to
her father. The men were still blind drunk; there were four of them, and two of
them were sleeping. Geiri went into a rage, and Maggi wasn’t much better.
Geiri was completely covered in blood when he came home.’

Thóra said nothing. Thórgeir,
Alda’s father, and Magnus, Markus’s father, were the murderers.
According to this account, Dadi had had nothing to do with it. ‘Did they
use a salmon priest and a large ornamental knife?’ asked Thóra,
certain she knew what the answer would be.

‘No,’ said the old woman, shaking
her head gloomily. ‘They boarded their own ship and fetched a filleting
knife and club they had there. They threw them into the harbour
afterwards.’

Thóra didn’t react, although
this surprised her. She had been so sure that the mallet and knife had been
used. This meant there had to be another reason they were kept among the
children’s clothing in the storeroom. ‘Did anyone know about
this?’ asked Thóra. ‘It couldn’t have happened without
anyone noticing.’ She pushed down the image of the beatings that
sprang to her mind. They were obviously the source of the pool of blood at the
pier.

‘Dadi, Valgerdur’s husband, went
after them,’ said the woman. ‘Valgerdur was on duty when Alda
arrived at the hospital, and it was she who called and told us what had
happened to Alda. I had the feeling she enjoyed giving us the news. Then she
hung around the whole time that Alda was crying and telling us what had
happened. She offered to call Dadi and get him to find the man, and
that’s what he did. He stumbled on Magnus and my Geiri at the fateful
moment.’

‘So Dadi was a witness to it?’
asked Thóra. The woman nodded. ‘And he told no one?’

The woman smiled coldly. ‘No, he
didn’t.’

‘The police never heard anything about
it, apart from being notified about the pool of blood the next morning?’
exclaimed Thóra. She had always suspected Gudni knew more than he was
letting on, but it seemed she had misread him. Maybe he had been trying to hide
his suspicions, not his knowledge.

‘No,’ replied
Alda’s mother.
‘Naturally they suspected something because of all the blood on the pier,
but they didn’t find any other evidence so they couldn’t do much
about it. Then the eruption started, and people had other things to think
about.’

‘But what about Dadi and
Valgerdur?’ asked
Thóra.
‘I’ve been led to understand that she was quite a gossip. How were
they able to keep quiet about it? Dadi was even questioned about the pool of
blood. He was spotted with Magnus at the scene that night, though the police
never heard about it.’

‘Dadi offered to help us,’ said
the woman with a humourless laugh. ‘Two of the men had died on the
boat, and they were left there. Geiri and Maggi had beaten the other two to
death on the pier,
then
dragged them on board. The
only way they could think of to hide what they’d done was to move the
smack farther out in the harbour. Dadi helped them do that,
then
came to see us that night - along with Valgerdur, who by then was off duty - and
offered to get the bodies and the boat out of there before anyone stirred down
at the harbour. Geiri and Magnus were in shock after the incident, and in no
condition to clean up after themselves.’ Thóra nodded in
encouragement, her eyes wide. ‘Geiri phoned Maggi, who had gone home, and
he came round. It was agreed that Dadi and Valgerdur would make sure no one
would suspect a thing. Then they left, and I don’t know what happened
next. I didn’t want to know anything else. Magnus went with them.’
The woman shuddered. ‘I was in shock, though I didn’t realize it at
the time. Geiri had a job but I wasn’t working, and we had two girls to
take care of, one of them in a terrible state. If he’d gone to prison,
everything would have fallen apart.’

‘Who cut off the man’s
head?’ asked Thóra. She assumed the one who’d been
decapitated was the one who had raped Alda.

The woman looked at Thóra in
bewilderment. ‘That I don’t know,’ she said, and seemed to be
completely sincere. ‘I never saw the bodies, and no one mentioned
anything like that. I was absolutely staggered when they were found. But I
can’t say he didn’t deserve it.’ This last was said without
any bitterness or triumph, the words seeming to come out automatically.

Thóra suddenly felt sure that it was
Alda who had gone from the hospital down to the harbour and cut off the
rapist’s head. She did not want to ask her mother about it, but it would
explain how the girl had ended up with the head. ‘Could Alda have left
the hospital that night?’ she asked, without explaining herself any
further.

‘I doubt it. She was on sedatives.
Valgerdur said she was sleeping when she went off duty. Why do you ask?’

Thóra did not reply, but instead asked
how the bodies had ended up in Magnus’s basement. ‘Did he help Dadi
move them?’

The woman shook her head. ‘No, he
didn’t. Magnus actually went back down to the harbour with Dadi to
rescue a falcon he’d seen in a cage on board the foreigners’ boat,
and to take any valuables they had there. The finances of his and Geiri’s
company were in very bad shape. I believe he couldn’t bring himself to
look into the cupboard where they’d shoved the bodies, so I’m sure
he never offered to keep them at his place. The plan was to sink the fishing
smack with the bodies still on board.’

‘Turns out they were bird
smugglers,’ said Thóra. This explained Magnus’s rambling
about birds. He was still wondering whether the falcon he had freed had
survived.

‘That’s what Geiri said,’
replied the woman. ‘In fact on board they found a map showing some likely
nesting sites of eagles and falcons. No one knows whether they already had the
falcon, or whether they’d captured him on this trip. Magnus let it go
that night in the hope that it would return to the wild.’

 Jóhanna was staring at her
mother. Thóra couldn’t imagine what was going through her mind.
Was she too angry to speak, or struck dumb with shock?

‘Why did Dadi and Valgerdur want to
help you?’ Thóra asked. ‘Were they not as unfriendly as
I’ve been told?’

Again a cold smile appeared on the old
woman’s face. ‘There’s no such thing as a free lunch,’
she said. ‘But it’s not always the right person who has to
pay.’

Thóra didn’t understand.
‘What do you mean? Did they want to be paid for keeping it quiet and
disposing of the bodies?’

‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘In
return, Magnus was supposed to take the blame for everything in a case for
which Dadi was under suspicion.
Smuggling liquor, which
he’d been doing for years.
Magnus agreed to it, since he hardly
had a choice. Murder and smuggling aren’t exactly comparable crimes in
the eyes of the courts, nor of the public for that matter.’ The woman
paused and drew a deep breath. ‘Our payment was even higher. Valgerdur
had persuaded Alda to tell her at the hospital where she was in her menstrual
cycle. If she turned out to be carrying a child, they wanted to take it in
secret and bring it up themselves.’ She looked into Thóra’s
eyes. ‘Alda paid her debt to those barbarians; she agreed to it after we
worked up the courage to tell her everything. Under normal circumstances, she
would have had an abortion. Valgerdur threw out her medical report and made
sure Alda was discharged before the doctors came round the wards the next
morning. She told the nurses on the night shift that Alda w.is there to sleep
off her drunkenness, that she was the daughter of a friend of Valgerdur and
that she was doing her a favour. She asked them to keep quiet about it, which
they did. So no one looked in on Alda until we returned early the next morning
to fetch her - what was left of her. She was never the same again.’

‘Did Markus have anything to do with
it?’ asked Thóra. ‘Was he connected to the murders in any
way?’

‘No,’ said the woman. ‘He
was just one of the kids who drank too much. He was lying at home on the couch
dead drunk, according to Magnus. He never came near any of it.’

Thóra exhaled slowly and shuddered.
She was standing outside the Midtown Church again, but now she relished the
unrelenting rain; it felt as if the cold drops were renewing and cleansing her
after her conversation with Alda’s mother. She took out her mobile and
called the police.

‘I think we’d better talk,
Stefán,’ she said. ‘Something tells me that you’ll
drop your appeal to extend custody when you hear what I have to tell
you.’

Tinna woke with tears on her cheeks, sobbing
weakly. She had no idea why she was crying. She was still in hospital, but
didn’t recognize the room. There was no dust at the bottom of the
lampshade on the ceiling, and the paint on the walls was a different colour,
but only slightly; this one was just a little more yellow. She tried to turn
over but felt a pain in her left arm and breast. The pain wasn’t sharp,
but felt as if she’d been frozen and was just thawing out. Tinna looked
down. She appeared to have bandages beneath her gown, both on her left breast
and just below her shoulder. What had happened? Had she been injured in her
sleep, but been so tired that she hadn’t woken up, either then or when
her wounds were dressed? She was still tired and felt dizzy. Had she taken
pills? She couldn’t remember, and in any case that was irrelevant. There
was only one thing that mattered. She had to talk to someone. Someone adult who
would listen to her, not just look at her and pretend to pay attention. She could
almost see what went through their minds while they feigned interest in her:
She’s sick. She’s pathetic. We know best. We know best. We’ll
let her talk but we know best.

Tinna pushed the red button and waited
impatiently for the nurse to come. Why was it taking so long? The hospital
corridors were short. It shouldn’t take more than a few seconds. Maybe no
one cared about her. What am I going to do with you, Tinna? Her mother’s
words echoed in her head. Maybe she had decided to leave Tinna here, and told
the people at the hospital not to bother with her. Tinna’s breathing was
irregular and she felt queasy. The door opened and a woman in the too-familiar
white uniform appeared. What if this one was foreign?
Or
deaf?