Ashes to Dust (26 page)

Markus was clearly not going to be heading
home after this interview.

Tinna lay in bed, her eyes wide open. She was
tired, but she knew that you burned fewer calories in your sleep than you did
while awake, so it was out of the question to take an afternoon nap. Through
the closed door she could hear her mother tidying up in the front room. Things
were unbearable since she’d left her job to look after Tinna,
because it made everything so difficult. When her mother had been gone the
whole day it was easy to say that she’d eaten food that she’d
actually thrown away. That wasn’t possible now, because her mother
watched her so carefully. On a normal day, Tinna would have been out there
drying the dishes or helping tidy up, but she didn’t feel like it. She
was angry at her mother, and it would be boring. Her mother had found her at
the computer earlier, reading one recipe after another in utter fascination.
Mum had lost it, saying Tinna would be better off eating some food than staring
at it on the screen. The exchange ended with her mother starting to cry, and
Tinna had disappeared into her room. Her mum would never understand how
she felt, and it was useless trying to explain. Tinna longed for the food on
the screen, craved it even. However, she never gave in to the temptation of
making or buying any of it, since she felt better denying herself than
succumbing.

The vacuum cleaner started again outside, and
Tinna put her hands over her ears to block out the noise. It was an old hoover
that a friend of her mother’s had given her when the last one broke.
Tinna tried to guess how long it would take for her mother to finish and leave.
She always did the floors of the little apartment last, so she must be nearly
finished. Then she would go to the shops, but before their falling-out she had
asked Tinna to come with her. Tinna certainly wouldn’t be going now, and
the thought actually made her extremely happy. Instead she could use the opportunity
to have a long shower, and then wipe away the water in the bath-tub to cover
her tracks. Her mother must never know that she had taken another shower, or
she might call the hospital again and have Tinna readmitted. She knew now that
Tinna took showers to wash off the calories and that the more often she washed,
the more calories she got rid of. She felt the longing to start scrubbing herself
grow stronger, especially since the disgusting drink that the doctor had given
her was still in her stomach. What she wanted most was to puke it up, but she
knew she wouldn’t get away with it. No, it was better to send this nasty
nourishment down the plughole.

She knew it hadn’t been that long ago
that she’d avoided showers like the plague in case the water allowed
calories to pass through her skin. She pushed away this thought, since she
found it uncomfortable to compare the two theories. Which was right? Was it a
mistake to wash too often? She pressed her eyes closed again and lay with her
hands over her ears. By neither seeing nor hearing she could clear her mind.
Despite the noise of the hoover she managed to make herself feel as if she
weren’t there. She would just lie here and lose weight. Maybe then she
could finally become what she wanted to be: slim. Nobody else understood her,
not her mother or the doctors. Her father was the best of them, because even
though he often said she was too thin, he didn’t seem interested enough
in her to force her to eat. So with him, she was able to choose for herself how
much she ate. She’d often been able to stay with him a whole weekend
without actually eating anything. He just didn’t notice. Her mother, on
the other hand, was more observant, and it was after one such weekend that she
got some sort of court order to prevent Tinna from staying with her father. Now
she could never be with him for more than four hours at a time.

Images kept springing into her head. The
lady
visiting her father. The
lady’s
house.
The visitor who had sneaked out.
The note.
The
lady
carried out to
the ambulance beneath a white sheet. The
lady
who
could have helped her so much. The
lady
God had sent
from Heaven to make Tinna slim. The
lady
who made
others beautiful, and would have loved Tinna however she looked. The
lady
who would have understood her. Tinna tried to
avoid thinking about it. She had to shut out everything. One, two, three…
she focused on meaningless numbers and didn’t know whether she was
saying them out loud or silently. She had counted up to thirty-four when
someone grabbed her shoulder and shook her. She opened her eyes but kept her
hands over her ears.

‘Come on, Tinna,’ she heard her
mother say, and Tinna relaxed the pressure on her ears. ‘You’re
coming with me to the hospital.’

Tinna shook her head and closed her eyes
again. She felt her mother pull her clawed fingers away from her ears, forcing
her to listen. Her mother was much stronger than she was, so resistance was
futile. After Tinna became as slim as she planned to be, she would also be
incredibly strong, and then no one would be able to force her to listen when
she yearned for silence. ‘No,’ said Tinna quietly, but realized as
soon as the word fell from her lips that she’d shouted it.

‘Yes,’ said her mother, her eyes
sad. ‘You can come with me or I’ll be forced to call an ambulance.
It’s up to you.’ She let go of Tinna’s hand and looked at
her. Suddenly she ran her fingers through her daughter’s hair and several
tears rolled down her cheeks. ‘Get up, darling,’ she said, without
doing so herself. ‘You’ve got to come with me.’

Tinna wondered whether she could say anything
to change her mother’s mind, but realized almost immediately that it was
no use. This was not the first time this had happened. Maybe her mother would
let her stay at home if she told her what had happened between her father and
the
lady
. Especially if she told her the
lady
was dead, and that her father might have played a part
in it. Maybe he knew the visitor who had slunk out of the
lady’s
house. It might be possible to use the note to find out. It had been blown out
of the car. Tinna’s mother couldn’t stand her father and would
definitely want to hear the story, but Tinna decided to say nothing. Even
though her father didn’t pay much attention to her, he was generally good
to her and had promised to buy her some clothes. He was expecting to come into
a great deal of money, and then they could go shopping in town. If Tinna told
anyone what she knew, he wouldn’t get any money and she’d get no
new clothes. Her mother would never keep the secret, and it was no fun having a
secret everyone knew. No, it would be better to get up and go to the car. She
could act as if everything was fine and hopefully the doctor would just
scold her mother for wasting his time. Tinna knew exactly what she was doing.
If not, then she could point out again that it was her body and that it only
belonged to her. Not to her mother and not to this doctor who peered so closely
at her. She straightened up and swung her feet over the edge of the bed. Her
mother started crying even harder.

‘Look at your legs, sweetheart,’
she said, and swallowed. She stood up and walked out of the room.
‘I’ll get the car keys. Put on your parka. It’s
raining.’ Her voice cracked and she sniffed.

Tinna stood up carefully. She felt dizzy but
she mustn’t under any circumstances faint. Then they’d put her
straight into the psych ward and keep her there for a long, long time. She
breathed slowly and took several hesitant steps, picking up the English
dictionary her aunt had given her as.
a
confirmation
present. It was heavy, so Tinna would lose weight on her way out to the car.
She cheered up. At the hospital she would get to take a shower, and then another
when the shifts changed. Maybe it wasn’t all bad.

Adolf put down the phone and wondered about
this strange disease afflicting his daughter. He couldn’t understand it
at all. The girl had never been chubby; before she got sick she’d had a
bit of baby fat but nothing you’d notice. Now she was a walking skeleton
who refused to eat, and at this rate no man would want her even if she offered
to pay him for it. It wasn’t that he thought of her in that way - she was
too young and besides, she was his daughter. But this appeared to be the life
that awaited her if she carried on with this nonsense.

Tinna’s mother had been hysterical on
the telephone and insisted that the girl was mortally ill. He didn’t
quite agree with that — he was sure that in the end she would be so
hungry that she would have to eat something. He did vaguely recall a headline
in some gossip magazine about a famous model who’d died of anorexia, but
that was different. That woman had starved herself because of work, but Tinna
had no reason to do so. In the end, she would come round.

He stood up from the sofa and went into the
kitchen to look for coffee, but to no avail. All he found was a little jar of
instant granules that had expired several months earlier. Nevertheless, he
prepared a large mug of the slop and gulped it down at high speed, black and
sugarless. He needed to perk up a bit and be wide awake when he spoke to his
lawyer. He found that since he’d lost his job he was paying less
attention to the world around him and was generally more apathetic. It was
probably because he had too much time on his hands, which meant that he dragged
things out until the last minute. He shook himself to speed up the effect of
the caffeine in his blood. He didn’t remember who had recommended this method,
but it always seemed to work. He phoned his lawyer.

‘Did you know that the nurse who wanted
to meet me is dead?’ was the first thing she said.

‘No,’ lied
Adolf.
He’d seen the death
notice several days earlier and had felt relieved. ‘Does it
matter?’

His lawyer cleared her throat. ‘I would
have thought so, yes,’ she said. ‘It was my understanding that she
had information that might have helped you. You needed her, I can tell you
that much.’

‘I didn’t rape the damn
girl,’ snarled Adolf. This was all bullshit. They’d never pin it on
him.

‘You don’t need to keep telling
me,’ said his lawyer, with a hint of fatigue in her voice. ‘If this
Alda had been able to testify in your favour, it would have meant a great deal.
Your position is bad enough as it is.’

‘How can someone be accused of rape
after more than twenty-four hours?’ he said heatedly. ‘If I had
raped her for real she would have gone straight to the police or the hospital.
Not home.’

‘That does work in your favour, but
it’s actually not uncommon, and therefore doesn’t suffice in
itself. I remember that she had some injuries and unexplained bleeding from her
genitals.’ Adolf didn’t feel like saying anything, and she
continued, ‘Of course you already know all this, there’s no use
going over and over it.’ She paused for a moment but was met by more
silence, so she started again: ‘When this Alda called me, she said she
wanted to speak to you before she came to meet me. I tried to get her to change
her mind, but she insisted. Did she contact you?’

‘No,’ Adolf lied for the second
time. ‘She didn’t.’

‘That’s too bad,’ said the
lawyer. ‘Are you absolutely sure?’ It was clear from her tone that
she didn’t believe him, so perhaps to cover this she added:
‘It’s just that Alda treated the girl when she went to A&E, so
whatever it was that she wanted to say would probably have made a great deal of
difference. As it stands now, the hospital report is very bad for you.’

Adolf knew all this. ‘I told you, Alda
didn’t come.’

‘What you actually said was that she
hadn’t contacted you, but it doesn’t matter.’ The woman
sounded unconvinced. ‘You let me know if you suddenly remember a phone
call or a visit from her that slipped your mind.’

Adolf let her question go in one ear and
out the other. ‘That’s not going to happen.’ He hesitated
slightly but then continued, ‘I’m not in the mood. My daughter is
ill and she’s been admitted to hospital. As a matter of fact, her
life’s in danger.’ To judge by the silence on the other end of the
phone this surprised his lawyer, who was usually imperturbable.
‘Still, I’m sure she’ll recover. Maybe she could even
testify…’

Friday 20 July
2007

Yesterday’s stormclouds had disappeared
and been replaced by thin wispy clouds in an otherwise clear blue sky. It was
as if God had been puffing on a cigar and exhaled in the direction of
Iceland. Thóra sat outside on her veranda, enjoying the morning. The
pages of the Morgunbladid daily newspaper lying on the table in front of
her rustled in the breeze and steam drifted up from her coffee cup. She closed
the paper and took a sip of coffee. Mercifully, Morgunbladid had gone easy on
Markus in its report on his arrest and the detention order pending trial. This
was perhaps no surprise, since the judge had been on the fence. For a while
Thóra even thought that he would deny the state prosecutor’s
request. However, this did not happen, although he did reduce the recommended
custody period from three weeks to five days. Thóra’s objection
and her remarks on evidence that pointed to Markus’s innocence may have
helped. For the first time in her life she wanted a cigarette, or at least to
smell cigarette smoke. Passive smoke from Bella was probably to blame, unless
she was losing her mind. Thóra hoped that it was the former. She
couldn’t afford to fall apart today, since the High Court would rule on
the detention order this afternoon.