Ashes to Dust (16 page)

‘I received a phone call the other day
from Reykjavik and I told them I knew nothing about it,’ he replied.
‘I doubt they’ll let it go that easily because the man I spoke to
asked a lot of questions about my future travel plans, as well as about Mum and
Dad. He also told me they’d be back in touch, and that we’d be
subpoenaed. I pointed out to him that it wasn’t possible to question my
father, and described his illness. This was on Friday, as I recall, but I
haven’t heard any more from them.’ Leifur shrugged, almost
dismissively, although Thóra couldn’t tell if his lack of interest
was genuine. ‘They’ll come when they come. We’ve got nothing
to hide.’

‘You have nothing to worry
about,’ Thóra reassured him. ‘But what explanation do you
have for the bodies in the basement? You must have given it some
thought.’

Leifur gestured non-committally. ‘Of
course I have,’ he replied. ‘I wish I could say I was able to come
up with an explanation. I have no idea who these people were or how they ended
up there, of all places. It does seem pretty obvious to me that they were
foreigners, though. Four Icelanders could never have disappeared in the
eruption without anyone noticing it.’

‘And were there any foreigners here at
that time?’ asked Thóra. ‘And by “that time” I
mean during the eruption, as well as before it started.’

‘Hmm,’ he mused. ‘Before
the eruption there were always foreigners around, though not as many as now.
They were mostly sailors and people working in the fishing industry, not
tourists like they are these days.’ He smiled apologetically at
Thóra. ‘I have to admit I don’t know whether any foreigners
were here during the eruption itself. I suppose there were some who helped out
during the rescue operation.
Soldiers from the base,
maybe.’

Thóra, who hadn’t thought of
this, made a mental note to ask about disappearances from the Keflavik Naval
Air Station at the time. She hoped that all the information hadn’t been
spirited away on the departure of the Defence Force.

‘Would there be any way for me to speak
to your father?’ she asked cautiously. ‘Maybe he still remembers
this, even though the old days might be slipping from his memory?’

Leifur looked forlorn. ‘I’m
afraid there wouldn’t be much point. Even though Dad has good days
it’s been a long time since it was possible to have a decent conversation
with him. He talks, but the words he strings together are usually meaningless
and unrelated. Mum, on the other hand, is sharp as a tack.’ He regarded
Thóra closely. ‘What are you getting at? Do you think my father
had something to do with this?’

To Thóra’s relief Leifur did not
appear to be angry, just curious.
‘No, not necessarily.
I was hoping he could give me some information about people’s visits to
your house, or hazard a guess at
who
the bodies belonged
to,’ she said. ‘It’s reasonable to suppose he would have paid
closer attention to his own house. The other rescue workers no doubt had less
interest in it.’

‘That’s a good point,’ said
Leifur. ‘But he won’t be able to help you. It’s a shame. Mum
won’t be much help either, since she wasn’t here doing salvage
work. However, she may remember something about any foreigners in the area just
before the eruption.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t know what
else she might know. It may be that she doesn’t remember a single thing
about any of it. It’s been decades. I can only remember bits and pieces
myself.’

A faint smell of smoke drifted in, and Bella
wriggled in her seat. ‘Can I smoke here?’ she asked hopefully.

‘Maria smokes in the kitchen,’ he
replied, and waved Bella to the kitchen door. ‘Please. She’ll be
delighted to have company.’ Bella did not need to be told twice.

‘Did you not know Alda at all?’
Thóra asked after Bella had left. ‘She appears to be a key player
in all of this if your brother’s story about where he got the severed
head holds up. My instinct tells me that the corpses and the head are two
branches of the same story. Anything else would be too much of a
coincidence.’

‘I agree with you there,’ replied
Leifur. ‘Unfortunately I didn’t know Alda at all well. Of course I
knew who she was, and there was quite a lot of contact between our parents in
those days; but as I told you, she was younger than me, so 1 didn’t pay
much attention to her. After we went to the mainland the friendship
between our parents pretty much fizzled out. They moved to the Westfjords, if I
remember correctly, while my father kept on fishing in the South.’

‘But doesn’t her mother live here
in the Islands?’ asked Thóra. ‘That was my understanding
from Kjartan at the harbour-master’s office, and he also said her father
died recently.’ She added in explanation: ‘I met Kjartan yesterday
at Markus’ suggestion.’

Leifur nodded. ‘As I said, I know
that  Jóhanna
, Alda’s sister, still lives
here, but I’m not certain about their mother. To tell the truth, there
was no love lost between me and my father’s old friends.
Especially not after I took over the business.’

‘Oh?’ responded Thóra.
‘What happened?’

Leifur rolled his eyes, exasperated. ‘I
thought Dad was much too sentimental about them. It was as if he felt he owed
them something, particularly Geiri, Alda’s father, even though all of the
negotiations were perfectly above board.’

‘Now I don’t understand,’
she said. ‘What negotiations are you talking about?’

‘The purchase of the first ship,’
replied Leifur. ‘They bought it in partnership, Dad and Geiri,
Alda’s father. That’s how the company worked at first, it was
co-owned by the two of them.’ He pointed out a painting of a ship hanging
on the wall behind her. ‘That’s the boat, Strokkur VE, a hundred-
ton motor trawler. The painting was in Dad’s office. I removed it when I
took over, since to me it was so closely connected to him, and I wanted to make
it clear to everyone that a new skipper was at the helm. I still wanted to be
able to see it, just not at work.’ Leifur smiled. ‘It
wouldn’t be considered an enormous ship today, but in its time people
thought it was quite something.’ His expression was oddly proud and affectionate,
although the painting couldn’t exactly be called a masterpiece.
‘They hadn’t owned the ship for more than a year before the
eruption, and Dad disagreed completely with Geiri over further operations. He
wanted to keep the fishing company going after the eruption, but Geiri simply
gave up and let Dad buy him out.’

‘I saw an old news report from the
period about a trawler that had been sunk to collect insurance money,’
said Thóra. ‘That suggests the industry hadn’t exactly been
easy for everyone.’

‘Very true,’ said Leifur.
‘It was terribly hard for a while. Luckily we never had to resort to the
desperate measures you describe, but we were no doubt not far from it when
things were at their worst.’

‘Was your father a wealthy man before
he started the fishing operation?’ asked Thóra, turning from the
painting to Leifur. ‘I know less than nothing about ships, but I expect
they cost quite a bit.’

Leifur smiled. ‘No, he really
wasn’t wealthy at all. He put everything he had into financing his half,
and even that came nowhere near the total cost of the boat. He and Geiri took
out a large loan to make the purchase, and mortgaged everything they
owned. The ship also had a huge mortgage, of course. Because of that, Dad only
needed to pay Geiri back what he’d contributed originally, but there was
no profit foreseeable in the operation during those first few years and it
was unclear whether it could keep going after the eruption. Part of the
collateral disappeared with our house and that complicated the family’s
finances a great deal.’ Leifur took a sip of wine. ‘But Dad
didn’t give up even when things were going really badly; if anything, he
became more enthusiastic. He managed to keep the ship, and trumped that by
buying the only processing plant here at the harbour for peanuts, while the eruption
was still happening. It had been written off by its former owners when he took
the chance on it, but he got it going again, even before the eruption stopped.
No one would have believed it when the deal was made, because at the time
people thought all the property in the Westmann Islands would be
worthless.’

‘How did your father actually pay his
debts?’ asked Thóra. ‘Was it possible to fish, despite the
disaster?’

‘The Westmann Islands fleet had a
record catch that winter. Dad caught more fish than he ever had before, but he
didn’t land his catches in the Islands until after he’d purchased
the plant. Dad was hard-working, but he was also lucky. Good catches and
inflation that ate up the loan over time helped him start raking it in. When
the processing operation got off the ground, slowly but surely he was able to
build up his own fleet of ships, and over time he added a trawler, then another
and so forth. He also laid the foundations of the company as it exists
today during the eruption. His boldness when everything appeared hopeless
worked to make him wealthy, while his friend, who lost his courage during the
hard times, was left behind with nothing to show for it.’

‘I saw a photograph of your father,
this Geiri and others at Kjartan’s office,’ said Thóra.
‘One of them was the police inspector Gudni Leifsson, whom I understand
was one of your father’s friends. As I understand it, their friendship
was severed at some point.’

Leifur shook his head. ‘No, father and
Gudni have been friends their whole life. But Kjartan took offence when he was
connected to a case of liquor smuggling. He thought that Gudni should have
turned a blind eye to his part in it, in the light of their being friends. Dad
wasn’t involved in that, luckily. I don’t understand why Kjartan is
still going on about it, since the case was dismissed and he never suffered at
all because of it.’

Leifur cleared his throat and fiddled with a
button on his shirt. Thóra got the impression that he wasn’t
telling her the whole truth, but didn’t think he was lying, exactly. He
looked quizzically at her. ‘Is Gudni making life hard for you?’

‘No,’ said Thóra
half-heartedly.
‘At least, not yet.
Hopefully
this investigation will be over before he can.’

Leifur’s jaw clenched and he seemed
on the verge of saying something, but at that moment Maria and Bella
reappeared, trailing smoke behind them, so he stopped. Much to
Thóra’s relief, the main course was leg of lamb. She was sure
Leifur hadn’t told her everything. Those who are not used to hiding the
truth always give themselves away.

Tuesday 17 July
2007

Thóra put down her mobile phone and
heaved a sigh. ‘No answer,’ she said regretfully to Bella.
‘That was the last one.’ They were sitting in the hotel lobby,
where Thóra had gone online to look for the telephone numbers of women
Markus thought had been friends with Alda when she was young. Thóra had
called him shortly after she got up to tell him that she was making no progress
in the search for anyone who could back up his story about the box. Markus had
told her some names, and judging by the list Thóra had scribbled down
Alda had been extremely popular. Unfortunately Markus had difficulty
remembering surnames, so after a long search Thóra ended up with only
five names. Three had answered and they all told the same story. They had been
great friends with Alda in the old days but hadn’t kept in touch, since
unlike them Alda had moved to the Westfjords after the eruption and
hadn’t returned to the Islands with her parents after a year.

According to the women, the majority of the
refugees had lived in and around Reykjavik, but for some reason Alda’s
family ended up out in the countryside. They didn’t know whether this had
happened because of relatives or work, since they never spoke to Alda at the time,
although they had all tried to find her. She hadn’t been in the
‘Eruption Class’ that was put together in the Bustadur School for
teenagers from the Islands, nor on the trip to Norway the summer after the
eruption, to which all of the children from the Westmann Islands between six
and sixteen had been invited. One of the women thought this was odd, saying
that Alda had often spoken of how much she wanted to go abroad. None of them
recalled Alda having entrusted a secret to them right before the eruption, nor
had any of them been on board the same boat to the mainland as Alda on the
night of the evacuation. So they could not bear witness to any conversation
between Alda and Markus, although they all remembered Markus very
well,
and they all even mentioned how much of a crush he had
had on her. The only thing that came out of these conversations was that one of
the women professed herself amazed that Alda hadn’t accompanied her
parents back to the Islands when they finally returned, instead choosing to
move to Reykjavik and attend junior college there under the protective wing of
her father’s family. The woman even
thought
it
likely that Alda had never again set foot in the Islands after the eruption.

Thóra switched off her phone and put
it into her handbag. ‘If it’s true that Alda never came back here,
that’s a pretty good indication that something happened,’ she said.