Ashes to Dust (28 page)

‘That’s true,’ conceded
Thóra. ‘But they’re also not usually into killing people and
making it look like suicide.’

‘No, I don’t imagine they
are,’ said Dis. ‘It’s just that Alda had no enemies I’m
aware of, so that was the only thing I could come up with.’

‘No ex-husbands or boyfriends who had
been bothering or harassing her?’ asked Thóra.

‘Nothing
like
that,’ the woman replied. ‘Not to my knowledge. As a matter of fact
she was divorced, but as far as I gathered the divorce was amicable, and they
hadn’t had any recent contact. As far as boyfriends were concerned, she
kept that to herself, if there were any. She never spoke to me about
men.’

Thóra found it incredible that the
woman hadn’t been in any relationships. The autopsy report stated that
she had had breast implants, signs of a face-lift, Botox in her forehead and
scars where the bags under her eyes had been removed, along with evidence of
stomach stapling and several other minor operations. Why would she undergo such
ordeals if not to attract a man’s attention? ‘Could she have been
in relationships that she chose not to talk about?’ she asked.

‘Yes, yes,’ replied Dis, and her
cheeks flushed again. ‘That’s quite likely. Alda didn’t
confide in people much, although she was always pleasant and friendly.’

‘Did she ever mention why she never
went to the Westmann Islands, or talk about a bad experience she’d had
around the time of the eruption there?’ Considering that Dis had
described Alda as the shy, retiring type, Thóra didn’t expect much
of an answer to this question.

‘She never talked about the Westmann
Islands,’ said Dis. ‘She tended to change the subject if conversation
ever turned to anything about the Islands, which wasn’t often.’ She
looked curiously at Thóra. ‘What experience are you referring
to?’ she asked. ‘Alda never mentioned anything.’

Thóra chose not to answer the
doctor’s question, since she didn’t know what had happened. She
smiled at the woman and simply said ‘Botox,’ then waited for
Dis’s reaction. She clearly couldn’t expect any useful theories on
Alda’s murder or insight into her life, so she might as well change the
subject.

Thóra didn’t have to wait long
for Dis’s reaction, though it was somewhat baffling. The woman leaned
back in her chair and said nothing for a moment. She looked straight at
Thóra, who would have given a lot to know what she was thinking.
‘What about Botox? Are you thinking of getting some injections?’
She pulled out a pen.
‘If so, you need to make an
appointment like everyone else.’

Thóra smiled fiercely, so all the
possible wrinkles in her face would show themselves. ‘No, actually
I’m not,’ she said. ‘Not right now, anyway. The forensic
pathologist’s tests revealed that Botox is one of the likeliest causes of
Alda’s death.’

‘What?’ muttered Dis, not
completely convincingly in Thóra’s
opinion.
‘How could that be? Botox isn’t life-threatening.’

‘Not in the forehead,’ said
Thóra. ‘I can’t tell you what the report said, other than
that the Botox was used in a very unconventional manner.’ She could see
that the doctor was almost biting her tongue with the effort not to blurt out
questions. ‘Could Alda possibly have had Botox at home?’ she
asked, before Dis’s curiosity could get the better of her.

‘What, Alda?’ asked Dis.
Thóra said nothing, allowing Dis to realize the stupidity of her
question.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Alda
didn’t have any Botox, to my knowledge. Of course she had access to it here,
but we keep close track of all our supplies and it’s out of the question
that she took drugs from this clinic. We’re particularly careful about
all our work here and would never have let her take the substance for her own
use. Where else she could have got it from, I couldn’t say. The A&E
doesn’t keep a supply of it, I know that much.’

‘Where do you get the Botox you use in
this office?’ asked Thóra.

‘We order it through the pharmacy that
supplies us,’ replied

Dis. ‘We have a good deal there and get
a decent enough Discount to allow us not to have to contract with wholesalers.
Of course we buy far more goods and drugs than just Botox.’

‘Who was the clinic’s point of
contact with the pharmacy?’ asked Thóra.

Dis looked at her. ‘I was.
Agúst a couple of times.’
She pressed her lips
together. ‘Alda never had anything to do with it,’ she added.

‘You realize that if Alda didn’t
have Botox in her house, then whoever murdered her took it there?’ said
Thóra. She allowed Dis to digest this for a moment before continuing.
‘There aren’t that many people with access -to those
kind
of supplies.
Certainly not my
client.’

Dis’s foundation partially masked the
blush that was spreading over her cheeks again, but it didn’t escape
Thóra’s notice. ‘I should admit now that I haven’t
taken an inventory since the end of last month. It may well be that
there’s something missing from the drug cabinet, but if there is it would
be the first time.’ She cleared her throat daintily. ‘Neither
Agúst nor I had any reason to wish Alda harm. On the contrary, her death
was a great blow to us. That’s no secret.’

The woman appeared to be sincere. ‘No
doubt the police will be in touch with you,’ said Thóra.
‘The results of the drug test have just come back, and I expect they have
had more urgent matters to attend to in the light of this. But they will be
here sooner or later. They’ll go over the inventory with you, which may
clear a few things up.’

‘The police?’ repeated
Dís. ‘Yes, of course. I gave a statement after I found the
body. They thought it was suicide at the time, and didn’t really ask me
anything.’ She shook her head.
‘Of all the crazy
things.’
She closed her eyes and shuddered slightly.
‘It’s unbelievable how self-centred one can be. When you said that,
my first thought was how embarrassing it would be to have the police stampeding
through here.’ She looked away. ‘Of course that doesn’t
matter. We have nothing to hide and hopefully that will be proven as quickly as
possible.’

Thóra saw Dís glance at a
little clock on her desk. Her time would soon be up. ‘Until recently
I’ve heard only good things about Alda, from her childhood friends, her
sister, and others. Then I spoke to a woman who worked with her in the A&E
and I started to see a different picture emerging. She didn’t actually say
anything bad about Alda, but she did suggest that something had happened,
although I couldn’t find out exactly what it was.
Do
you know what might have happened to make Alda resign?’

Dís shook her head. ‘No,
I’m afraid not,’ she said. ‘I thought she didn’t want
to talk about it, but that she might open up later. Now she’ll never have
the chance. It’s easy to be wise in hindsight.’ She shrugged
unhappily. ‘I’ve thought a lot about this and can’t say
I’ve reached any conclusions.
Plenty of wild theories,
of course, but nothing more.’

Thóra had the feeling there was more
behind this comment. ‘And do you find one theory more plausible than the
rest?’

Dis bit her lip. ‘I don’t know if
I should tell you this.’ She stared at Thóra, who could do little
more than look back at her and wait. ‘I found an unbelievable amount of
pornography on Alda’s computer. I was mortified. She didn’t
strike me as that type — generally
it’s
men who get obsessed with it.’ She took a deep breath. ‘After I
Discovered it I started putting two and two together and wondered if
she’d had a sexual relationship with someone in the A&E, a doctor or
one of the staff. These things do happen.’

‘Would that be reason enough for her
job to have been at risk?’ asked Thóra, half wondering if it could
have been her ex-husband. ‘Are workplace romances prohibited at the
hospital?’

‘No,’ Dís replied.
‘I don’t think so. Something like that might be kept under wraps,
but it’s hardly forbidden. Anyway, the material on her computer could
hardly be described as romantic. This was
hardcore
pornography, plain and simple. It crossed my mind that Alda might have had sex
with someone on the hospital premises, which would be taken very
seriously.’

Obviously Thóra would have to phone Hannes
again. He wouldn’t have missed any gossip that followed in the wake of
something like this. ‘You don’t have any idea about the person with
whom such a thing might have happened? A
doctor,
or
even a patient?’

‘No, I have no idea, this is all just
guesswork,’ said Dís. ‘The only reason it occurred to me at
all is that I also found emails between Alda and a sex therapist on her
computer. It crossed my mind that she might have sought their help after her
obsession got her into trouble.’

‘Did the email mention anything like
that?’ said Thóra.

‘No, they were just confirmations of
appointments, whether Alda could make it on this or that particular day and so
forth.’

‘Do you remember the name of the
therapist, by any chance?’ Yet another person Thóra would need to
speak to.

Dís nodded. ‘Yes, she’s
called
Heida
. I don’t remember her surname, but
there can’t be many sex therapists with that name working in
Reykjavik.’

‘Did Alda ever speak to you about a
tattoo?’ Thóra asked as she wrote down the name. ‘She had wanted
to tell her sister something, and it had to do with a tattoo, all a bit
mysterious.’

‘A tattoo?’ asked Dís,
looking puzzled. Then her face brightened. ‘Actually, yes,’
she said. ‘Recently a young man came in who wanted to know if we could
remove one, and I remember that Alda was particularly interested. She spoke to
him for a long time, asking where he’d had it done, and it almost seemed
as if she was thinking of getting one herself. But she just laughed when I
asked her about it. Then she mentioned it to me and our secretary Kata over
coffee, asking if we thought people ever got a tattoo in memory of a bad
experience. We didn’t know what she was on about.’ Dís
reached for one of her desk drawers. ‘Since you’re here, I may as
well show you this,’ she said, pulling out several pages that were
stapled together, as well as a single sheet. ‘I found these papers among
the stuff in Alda’s desk after she died. One of the pages is actually a
photocopy of a photograph, and it looks to me as though it’s of a tattoo.’
She handed Thóra the single sheet.

‘Does it say “Love Sex” in
English?’ asked Thóra, reading from the picture. The image was
grainy, and hazy from the photocopier, but the tattoo could be seen quite
clearly.

‘Don’t ask me,’ Dís
said, peering at the page disdainfully. ‘This isn’t the tattoo the
boy wanted to have removed. That was a Chinese word, as I recall.
So I don’t have any idea who this came from or why Alda liked
it so much.
Maybe this man has the tattoo - his photograph was also in
her desk drawer. I don’t recognize him at all. Is he your client?’

Thóra took the photo, but didn’t
recognize the young man in it. Although he looked severe, he was very handsome.
‘No, I don’t know who this is.’ She handed the photograph
back to Dís.

Dís took it and handed Thóra
the stapled pages. ‘And then there’s this. Who knows, it might be
important. At the time I found it I still believed Alda had killed herself, and
even thought that this might have been something to do with it.’ She looked
at Thóra. ‘It was so strange — Alda was unusually happy
the day before all this happened. That didn’t seem to fit in with the
idea of suicide, and I’ve been racking my brain trying to understand. Now
that it turns out to have been murder, these papers might be irrelevant.
I’d be happy for you to look at them, since I have no idea what to do
with them.’

‘What are they?’ asked
Thóra, looking down at the pages.

‘It’s an autopsy report on an
older woman who died six months ago,’ replied Dís.
‘I’ve never heard of her, so I don’t know how she’s
connected to Alda. I thought she might be a close relative and her death might
have sent Alda over the edge.’

Thóra looked at the top page and
read the name of the deceased. Valgerdur Bjolfsdottir. She had recently come
across this name.
But where?
‘May I take a copy
of this?’ she asked.

Friday 20 July
2007

Thóra found the woman’s name as
soon as she returned to her office. She typed the name into an Internet search
engine, and a link came up to a website about the houses that had disappeared
in the Westmann Islands eruption, the same site Thóra had looked at out
on the Islands. There she found the name on the autopsy report that Alda had
kept in her drawer. Thóra read her biography on the site: she had lived
with her husband, Dadi Karlsson, in the house next to Markus’s childhood
home. Thóra read through the whole page about this couple, but all she
found out was that Valgerdur Bjolfsdottir had worked as a nurse at a hospital
in the Westmann Islands, and her husband had been the captain of a fishing
boat. Neither of them had moved back to the Islands after the disaster, and
Thóra could see no particular connection to Alda other than their
nursing careers. Perhaps Alda had looked up to this woman so much that she had
decided to study nursing, but it could just have been a coincidence. At that
time it was less common for young women to educate themselves in different
fields, but nursing was very popular. The couple appeared to have been
childless - at least there were no children accounted for on the website.
This meant that Alda could not be connected to Valgerdur as a friend of her
daughter. Clearly Thóra wasn’t going to find an answer on the
Internet, so she decided to call Leifur and ask him about the couple.