Ashes to Dust (6 page)

She pricked up her ears as the sound of
men’s voices came from across the street. She stood up again in the swing
to see if the woman would be carried into the ambulance, but was careful in
case she got dizzy and fell off. She didn’t want to miss this. First a
policeman
appeared, walked ahead of the paramedics and
opened the door to the ambulance. They followed with the stretcher, and the
girl stiffened. She squinted and shook herself. Maybe there was an explanation
for this?

Maybe the woman was ill and they didn’t
want her to get cold? She jumped from the swing and ran over to the pavement.
The
policeman
who stood there holding open the back
door of the ambulance noticed her and waved her away. ‘There’s
nothing to see here. Go home,’ he called.

Tinna didn’t answer. In general she was
afraid of male authority figures, whether they were doctors, headmasters, bus
drivers, or others who wanted to boss her around in some way. Now, however, she
felt as if the
policeman
was not actually there,
had nothing to do with her. It was almost as if he were a 3D image on a screen,
less real than the paramedics she was staring at. Tinna stood open-mouthed, her
eyes glued to the white blanket covering the woman on the stretcher. She
didn’t move. The woman didn’t have a cold. She was dead, and with
her Tinna’s hope of another, better life in which she was beautiful and
adored. The woman could make people beautiful. She had said so. Tinna turned on
her heel and ran away, without thinking where she was going. If she ran fast
enough she could maybe go faster than her thoughts, and get rid of the
uncomfortable idea that her father might have done the woman some harm. It
would not have been the first time. Or else it had been the visitor who had
snuck out of the house, the one whose note it was. Tinna pushed everything from
her mind except for the thought that she was now burning calories.
Burn, burn, burn.

‘Dead, you say,’ repeated Gudni,
frowning thoughtfully. He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. His
interlocutor was on the phone, so he didn’t need to hold his expressions
in check, although he had been taught at the start of his career to remain as
poker-faced as possible, and never to give any indication of his thoughts. For
Gudni this had never proven to be especially difficult, but sometimes it was
still good to be able to sit alone and allow disappointment, or more rarely,
happiness, to find its natural outlet. ‘How did she die?’

‘The autopsy hasn’t been done but
it looks as if she committed suicide,’ replied Stefán. It
wasn’t possible to tell from his voice whether he thought this tiresome
or tragic, or indeed whether it affected him at all. Perhaps such things were
bread and butter for the police in Reykjavik. ‘We’ll find out
tomorrow, I suppose. I just heard and thought I should let you know. I
obviously didn’t go to the scene myself, so I don’t know anything
more at the moment. I’m leaving tomorrow and then hopefully I’ll
get some more news.’

‘Where was she found?’ Gudni
asked. He would not have considered Alda likely to resort to such desperate
measures, but then again he had only known her as a child and a teenager. She
had had everything going for her then, both beauty and intelligence. Naturally,
though, things could have changed, and perhaps her life had taken a turn for
the worse. He hoped this was not the case, but if it turned out to be so, he
sincerely hoped that her fate was not tied to events in the Islands long past.

‘At home,’ said Stefán.
‘Her colleague found her, I understand. Went to find out why she
hadn’t shown up at work.’

‘This muddies the waters of the
basement case quite a bit,’ Gudni said. He paused for a moment before
adding: ‘Not least because Alda now can’t verify Markus’s
statement.’

‘No,’
came
the curt reply. ‘We didn’t get a chance to question her. We
couldn’t reach her, but when the time of death becomes clear, we might
wonder whether she was trying to escape questioning.’

‘If that were so then one would expect
her to have left behind a note, or something that would clear Markus of all
suspicion,’ said Gudni. ‘It would be cruel to let him take the
blame if she had dirty laundry to hide. They were good friends, I understand,
and it must have been clear to her that she alone could have confirmed his
story. Is it possible she knew nothing about his statement and the discovery of
the bodies?’

‘I have no idea,’ snapped
Stefán. ‘I’ve always tried to avoid filling in the blanks
with speculation at the start of an investigation. We don’t even
know the cause of death. As it is, she appears to have died by her own hand,
but who knows, maybe it was something entirely different - an accident, or even
worse. Tomorrow we’ll search her house, and who knows what we’ll
find.’

‘Hopefully not more bodies,’ said
Gudni.
‘Unless maybe we find the torso that goes with
the head.’
He smiled. ‘Don’t forget to go down to the
basement.’ He hung up and stared at the phone on the table. None of this
made any sense.

Thóra put down the bag of groceries
and fumbled for her mobile phone. The ring tone was muffled and she tried to
remember whether she had put the phone in the right or left pocket of her
jacket, or stuck it in her handbag. She finally found it in her left pocket,
among coins and old VISA receipts. She saw Markus’s number on the screen
and decided not to answer. He could wait until morning. She set the phone on
the table and started to put away the food that she’d bought on the way
home. Hannes would arrive shortly with Sóley; he had come to
Thóra’s rescue, even responding cheerfully to her request and
offering to take their daughter swimming. She hoped that this was the shape of
things to come: that her relationship with her ex was finally starting to take
a friendlier, more relaxed form.

Her phone bleeped. Instead of picking it up
and reading the text message, Thóra finished putting away the groceries
and turned on the oven. She read the directions on the frozen lasagne package
and threw it into the cold oven, contrary to the manufacturer’s
recommendation. Ultimately it all ended up the same: the food would be warm
whether she put it into a preheated oven or a cold one. Then she took her
phone, went into the sitting room and threw herself onto the sofa. The message
was from Markus. ‘Alda is dead. The police want to meet me tomorrow.
Please call me.’‘

Thóra groaned. It looked like
Markus would be her client for a little longer. She sat up and dialled his
number. He was either the unluckiest man in the country, or something else,
something far worse, was behind all of this.

Wednesday 11 July
2007

Markus dragged his hands frantically through
his hair. This was not the first time that Thóra had sat in her office
with a desperate client, so she knew how to deal with it. It was of little use
to tell him everything would be all right, that he needn’t have any
worries,
this
would soon be finished, and so on. Such
talk was often far from the truth and only postponed the inevitable. They
had just come from being questioned by the police,
which
could have gone worse, but it could also have gone better. Markus had responded
frostily when they’d requested biological samples from him, but in the
end he calmed down and gave the police samples of both saliva and hair.

‘The positive side of this, Markus, is
that they asked you very little about your previous relations with this Alda.
Either they think her death occurred naturally, or else they don’t suspect
you of having caused it.’ She looked at him sternly. ‘The negative
side, on the other hand, is that now Alda cannot substantiate your explanation
of the head in the box.’

‘You don’t say,’ growled
Markus.

Thóra paid no heed to his sarcasm.
‘Are you absolutely certain that you two never discussed this by email or
in others’ hearing? For instance, your co-workers’
?‘

Markus managed a company that dealt in
components for ship engines and machinery, and although Thóra did not
understand anything about how such businesses worked, she knew it was going
well and that he had several people working for him. They seemed to be very
conscientious employees, because Markus appeared to be anything but
indispensable, and had never had to postpone or cancel a meeting with
Thóra or anyone else involved in the case because of work.

‘No one heard anything,’ answered
Markus determinedly.

‘Alda and I spoke mainly by phone and I
do that in private. We met fairly irregularly, almost never with anyone else
present, and we didn’t discuss this topic in the few instances when there
were others around. And I only use email for work. I’m not one of those
people who gets emails with jokes or pictures of kittens.’

It had never crossed Thóra’s
mind that he was. ‘And there were no witnesses to your
conversations?’

Markus shook his head, disgruntled.
‘No.’

‘When you told the police that Alda had
rung you the night
In
lore we went to the Islands,
they were extremely excited. Considering how much they asked you about that
telephone call, it must have occurred shortly before she died.’
Thóra flicked through the copy of Markus’s statement that
she’d been given following the questioning. ‘You said that Alda had
sounded peculiar, was unusually bad-tempered and distracted, and you’d
thought she’d either been anxious about your visit to the basement the
next morning or that someone was with her, making it impossible for her to
speak freely with you.
besides
that, you were driving,
so you weren’t able to speak to her for very long.’

I just got that feeling. She didn’t say
anything to suggest that there was someone with her - it just sounded a bit as
if there was.‘

‘The reason I’m asking is that
perhaps someone overheard this final conversation of yours and could confirm
she’d mentioned your visit to the basement. That could help us,
especially if she mentioned the box and said something about having given it to
you.’ Thóra smiled encouragingly at Markus.

He scowled. ‘Of course I don’t
remember the conversation in detail, but I’m fairly sure she didn’t
say any such thing. She asked me not to mess this up and said that I should
take a bag with me in case the box had rotted.’ He shuddered. ‘She
could have given me a better idea of what it was that I was going down there to
get. I don’t know how she ever thought I could put the head in a bag and
walk out of there with it as if nothing had ever happened. I wouldn’t
have even been able to touch it.’

‘Considering how much you’d done
for her already, without asking any questions, she doubtless thought
you’d just continue in the same vein,’ replied Thóra.

‘I was just a kid,’ said Markus
heavily. ‘Things have changed since then.’ He straightened up in
his chair, and she could not deny that he did not look like anyone’s
fool. He undeniably possessed a degree of masculine charm. His face was
anything but delicate, its strong lines almost coarse. Thóra suspected
that he dyed his hair, since there was not a single grey to be seen even though
he was nearly fifty years old. This suggested he was preoccupied with his
appearance, which fitted with the impeccable and obviously expensive clothing
he always wore.

‘Yes, I understand that,’
Thóra said. ‘But maybe she hadn’t actually ever realized
it.’ She put down the report. ‘I’m going to ask the police
department if they have any information about whether Alda had visitors that
night. Maybe we’ll be lucky.’ She looked at Markus. ‘Of
course the fact remains that you say you didn’t know about the corpses
down there. What are we supposed to do about that?’ She leaned back in
her chair. ‘The only person who objected when they were going to excavate
the house was you. One would assume that whoever put the bodies there would
have tried to prevent the excavation in one way or another.’ She thought
carefully about how to phrase what came next. ‘It’s my
understanding that your parents are still alive. Could one of them have
encouraged you in your efforts to block the excavation?’

Markus stared silently at Thóra for a
moment. ‘If you’re suggesting that they had something to do with
this, you’re out of your mind.’

‘You didn’t answer my
question,’ Thóra said calmly. ‘Did they encourage you or
not?’

Markus smiled bitterly. ‘My father has
Alzheimer’s. He’s in no shape either to encourage or discourage
anyone. Mum, on the other hand, has all her spark-plugs firing, and her
feelings about the excavation were the opposite of mine. She was even really
excited about it. She was hoping to recover some fine dinnerware from the
house. Even though Dad had managed to get most of what we owned out of the house
before it disappeared, he still left quite a few things behind. He hadn’t
given much thought to the dinnerware.’

Thóra nodded. The man had no doubt put
a lot of effort into saving the home’s stereo system and such like. Of
course, Markus’ mother’s excitement about the excavation did not
rule out her husband as a suspect; he could very well have put the bodies there
without his wife knowing. ‘Someone put the bodies there, that much is
certain. Does anyone come to mind?’