Ashes to Dust (55 page)

She said goodbye to her secretary after
telling her she didn’t believe in that nonsense, and that Bella
shouldn’t either. Afterwards, however, Thóra didn’t feel that
convinced. She blamed it on a nagging feeling she had had ever since
Markus’s case was closed. Alda’s murderer was still on the loose,
and Thóra hated unsolved cases. She had followed the media closely, but
according to them the investigation appeared to have run aground.

Thóra found it odd to think that in
her pursuit of leads for Markus, she had probably met the murderer. In her mind
many people were suspects, some more likely than others. Highest on her list
were Adolf, Halldora Dogg and the plastic surgeon Dís. She hadn’t
met Dís’s colleague Agúst, so couldn’t gauge the
likelihood of his involvement.

But this was a festival; people were supposed
to enjoy themselves, not wonder about things they couldn’t change.
Thóra forced a smile.

‘Shall we go for a wander?’ she
asked her daughter. ‘You should show off your nose a bit.’

‘I want to visit a tent, like
before,’ said Sóley. The hair- band, which was much too large, had
slipped down over her forehead. ‘They’re so cool.’

‘We can’t just drop in anywhere,
but we’ll walk around and have a look at them,’ said Thóra.
‘There are so many of them and we’ve seen only a small part of the
grounds.’ They walked in the direction of the furthest row of tents
facing the slope. ‘Maybe we’ll see Gylfi and Sigga,’
Thóra said, as she looked hopelessly over the crowd of people on the
hillside.

They had come to the tent right at the end.
No sound came from it, neither talking nor singing, unlike the other tents.
‘Can I look in, Mum?’ implored Sóley.
‘Just
a peek?’

Thóra nodded, since she couldn’t
see that it would do any harm. People appeared to be wandering around and
peering into tents without anyone thinking it the least bit unnatural. Most of
these people were residents of the Islands or had moved away, and were looking
for friends or acquaintances. Sóley pulled the white canvas flap wide
open, forgetting she had promised ‘just a peek’. This tent was much
smaller than Markus and Leifur’s, which had been two tents joined
together. Nor was it as richly furnished: it had one lopsided sofa and two
kitchen stools. On one of them sat Alda’s
sister
 Jóhanna
, with a heaped platter of flatbread and smoked lamb
in front of her. Cling film still covered everything.  Jóhanna
stared at Sóley then looked past her at Thóra, whom she recognized
immediately. ‘Oh, come in,’ she said, looking pleased. She stood up
and beckoned them in. ‘I’ve got plenty of everything.’ The
last sentence sounded even more desperate than the first. Thóra accepted
the offer.

‘It’s really nice to see
you,’
said  Jóhanna
, as she removed
the cling film from the flatbread. ‘What would the kids like?’ she
asked, and started to rattle off all the different types of food in the tent.

After Sóley got her Prince Polo
chocolate and a glass of fizzy orange, Thóra accepted a piece of
flatbread, even though she was far from hungry. She gave Orri another piece to
nibble at, though the child had also had enough to eat. She couldn’t let
the woman go home with her platter of food untouched. ‘Has anything
happened in Alda’s case?’ asked Thóra after swallowing, more
to break the ice than to satisfy her own curiosity. She knew nothing
about  Jóhanna
, and this was the only thing they
had in common.

‘Well, I don’t know what to tell
you,’
said  Jóhanna
. ‘A lot of
leads turned up, but none of them seems to point to her murderer.’

Thóra nodded and took another bite.
‘I know one of the doctors Alda worked with came forward with information
that I had hoped would help.’ Thóra hadn’t tried to persuade
Bragi to tell her what it was about, though she had often been on the verge of
doing so.

 Jóhanna held the plate out to
Sóley in case she wanted some flatbread to go with her other snacks.
‘Yes, yes,’ she replied, putting it down when the girl declined a
slice. ‘That woman handed over the drug, you know, the Botox, which had
been used to…’  Jóhanna stopped and looked at
Sóley. ‘… well, you know. She had taken it from Alda’s
bedside table when she found her… you know… I understand that she hadn’t
wanted her office to become involved in the case, and she thought that Alda had
committed… you know.’

‘Was it possible to trace where the
Botox came from, and perhaps find some fingerprints on the bottle?’ asked
Thóra, managing to phrase her question without saying you know.

‘They only found Alda’s
fingerprints. That doesn’t necessarily mean anything, because the
one who… you know… could have used gloves. They found traces of
latex powder, I understand,’
said  Jóhanna
,
furrowing her brow slightly. ‘However, they were able to trace where the
Botox came from. The other doctor, Agúst is his name, had bought it.
I’m not sure whether they’re telling the truth. Alda isn’t
here any longer to defend herself, and it would be easy for them to make up
anything. He says he and Alda had a kind of agreement: she got an
unlimited supply of the substance and could do with it whatever she wanted. In
return, she used her position at the A&E to put him in touch with
patients.’

‘What?’ asked
Thóra.
‘I’m not sure I understand you.’

‘I’m not surprised,’
said  Jóhanna
. ‘As I was saying,
we’ve only got Agúst’s word on this. He says that Alda
sifted out the patients with facial injuries, or who had been wounded or
scarred in some other way that might require a plastic surgeon’s help.
She was supposed to recommend that they have their scars — or nose, or
whatever part it was — fixed, and then give them Agúst’s
business card. Many of the patients would have been drunk or in shock, and
thought that they were being ordered to go to another doctor - that this was a
follow-up treatment after the initial examination in the A&E. So they
flocked to Agúst’s office.’

‘And was it not possible to check out
this story?’ asked Thóra. The police would hardly let such a vague
report go uninvestigated.

‘Yes, Alda and Agúst did in fact
exchange a number of email messages. Dís passed them on to the police,
along with the Botox. The messages proved this was going on. Apparently there
was also a rumour about it going round the A&E, but as everyone knows
it’s not that hard to forge an email, and workplace gossip has never been
considered a trustworthy source.’

Thóra nodded, even though she had no
idea how to send a fake email. Nor did it seem likely that Dís would be
able to do so. The A&E gossip mentioned
by
 Jóhanna
must have been what Hannes had hinted at but
refused to discuss. ‘Why did Alda need Botox?’ asked Thóra.
‘Couldn’t she get them to give her injections for free?’

‘She supposedly invited friends and
acquaintances home and gave them injections for a fee, but much lower than at
the plastic surgeon’s, and naturally it was far less trouble for
people,’ said  Jóhanna, and she shook her head.
‘They’re saying Alda was getting a fair bit of extra income from
this.’

‘Is that right? Do you believe she did
this?’

‘No, I can’t imagine it.
It’s one thing to tell your sister she can come and get Botox, and quite
another for every old bag in town to be queuing up at her door.’

There was no need to discuss this any
further.  Jóhanna had thought that she was the only one receiving
this service, and the same probably went for all the other women. ‘Has
anyone come up with an explanation for why one of the men in the basement
was… you know…’ Thóra looked out of the corner of her
eye at Sóley, who was intently folding up the wrapper of her chocolate
bar. She drew her index finger across her throat.

 Jóhanna shook her head.
‘DNA tests have shown that Adolf is not the son of the man whose head was
cut off,’ she said. ‘His father was one of the men in the basement
who was… whole.’ Thóra grimaced. Had Alda dismembered the
wrong man? She dared not speak her thoughts aloud for fear Jóhanna would
clam up. She would never accept that Alda had had anything to do with it.
‘He’s put in a claim for Alda’s estate, and Mother and I have
been told that it will probably be approved. So it won’t fall to
us,’ said Jóhanna, who appeared completely unperturbed. ‘The
worst of it is that he doesn’t want to talk to us, won’t even meet
us. He didn’t even go to his mother’s funeral.’

‘I’m sure that will improve over
time,’ said Thóra, without much conviction. It was unlikely that
Adolf would mend his ways. ‘Alda’s story is just so tragic.’

‘Yes, but this does explain some
things,’ said Jóhanna. ‘Now I appreciate why she and her
husband divorced. He was a wonderful man, but from what I understand now
she’d never actually been able to have sex after the rape. She had
recently started seeing a sex therapist, but to my knowledge the treatment
hadn’t produced any results. At least, Alda had never been with any
men.’ Orri’s head had sunk to his chest, along with the untouched
flatbread. He was fast asleep in Thóra’s arms. ‘Is he
yours?’
asked  Jóhanna
.

‘Not exactly,’ said Thóra.
‘He’s my grandson.’ She adjusted the boy in her lap.

‘Did you know that Alda was a
grandmother?’ asked the other woman sadly. Thóra shook her head.
‘She never knew it, but Adolf has a daughter. She’s very ill,
unfortunately. Mum has gone to visit her in hospital. She was with her this
morning.’

‘How is your mother?’ asked
Thóra.
is
she any better?‘

 Jóhanna smiled unhappily.
‘She’s not very well. She’s very unhappy with how slowly the
investigation of Alda’s murder is going.’ She looked at her watch.
‘She promised to drop by, but I don’t know if she’ll make it.
She’s been absolutely impossible this afternoon, ever since she
returned from her hospital visit. She had some sort of VISA receipt and needed
desperately to find out who it belonged to. It was impossible to read the
signature clearly but I went into the bank system from my home computer and I
managed to dig it up. Hjalti Markusson. She calmed down after that. God knows
why. I’m worried about her; I think she’s obsessed with Leifur and
Markus’s family.’  Jóhanna looked around the empty
tent. ‘Mother and I are more or less invisible these days. She takes it
very much to heart, even though she doesn’t say so. Leifur and Markus
seem to have come out of this as some sort of heroes, along with their father,
but it’s as if people aren’t sure how they should act towards us. I
don’t get it.’

Thóra thought she knew what was going
on. People were unsure of the state of the relationship between these two
families after everything that had happened. Markus had been locked up,
but  Jóhanna’s
mother had neglected to
tell the authorities that he wasn’t involved at all in the old case. So
it was safer to be on the side of the fishing mogul than of the widow and her
daughter, the bank clerk. ‘Well,’ said Thóra, ‘I guess
I should start making my way back home.’ She stood up, trying to
ignore  Jóhanna’s
mournful look. She
couldn’t do it. ‘Will you be here tomorrow?’ she asked.
‘We’ll be around, and we’d be happy to drop by.’ The
smile
on  Jóhanna’s
face said
everything that needed to be said.

It looked as though all the guests in Leifur
and Markus’s tent had left in a rush, and if Thóra had come just a
few minutes later she might have found the place empty. ‘We’re
heading over for the singing,’ said Markus, even more garrulous than when
Thóra had left their tent earlier. ‘A good spot has been reserved
for us and I’m sure we can make some room for you.’

Thóra declined. ‘No, thank you,
I’ve got to get home. I just came to fetch the pushchair,’ she
said.

‘Bring her the pushchair,
Hjalti,’ said Leifur, his speech even more slurred than Markus’s.

The boy stood up without looking at her. He
had removed his fake beard but was still wearing the red hat. He seemed very
ill at ease, and Thóra was starting to find it peculiar. Maybe he was
one of those who couldn’t hold his liquor - or perhaps he was ashamed of
his father when he drank. He lifted the pushchair and heaved it clumsily across
the tent. Thóra could not grab it because of the child in her arms, but
Maria reached for it and after a short struggle managed to open it and set it
up for Thóra. Thóra hardly dared to lay Orri in it for fear that
it would collapse on him. The woman stood unsteadily next to Thóra, and
nearly lost her balance when the tent flaps opened.

Thóra could tell from the look on
Leifur’s face that the visitor was not particularly welcome. The corners
of Markus’s mouth had also drooped a little, but otherwise his face was
impassive. Thóra had her back to the entrance, but looked around to see
who it was. Alda’s mother had arrived. She still looked as devastated as
when Thóra had seen her after the funeral, but now there was a kind of
grim determination in her face. ‘Perhaps my Geiri and your father were
friends,’ said the old woman, at first hesitantly, but growing bolder
with every word. ‘But I have never really known much about Magnus.
Destiny favoured him more than most, at least in the beginning. He took a risk
and continued his fishing operation, and caught more fish than ever
before. He took the blame for Dadi, but because of the eruption the case was
forgotten. You, his sons, have lived off your father your entire lives. People
tiptoe around you both - especially you, Leifur.’