Ashes to Dust (41 page)

 Jóhanna seemed to consider the
question. ‘I actually don’t remember any visits to her.’ She
brightened. ‘Oh, yes, mother went at least once, maybe more.’

‘But Alda never came home? There are
all kinds of breaks when you’re at college, long and short,’ said
Thóra, trying to keep her voice upbeat. ‘You lived in the
Westfjords, not so far away. You’d think she would have come to see her
parents now and then. Didn’t she?’ She could tell
from  Jóhanna’s
expression that Alda
hadn’t come home, not for a long or a short break. ‘Could Alda have
been in hospital?’ she asked carefully. ‘Did she have any kind of
nervous disorder, perhaps?’

‘Not to my knowledge,’ said
Jóhanna, any happiness she had
Displayed
at the
contents of the diaries now drained from her face. ‘I might not have been
told, since I was so young,’ she added sadly.

‘I don’t have evidence of any
illness,’ said Thóra. ‘I wanted to ask your mother about it.
But I do know for certain that Alda wasn’t in Isafjördur as people
suggest, at least not at school there.’

‘What else did you want to ask Mother
about?’ asked Jóhanna. She seemed angry now, but not with
Thóra. ‘Maybe I can get her to talk. I’ll ask her about the
school, at least.’

‘One of the things I wanted to know,
which also concerns you, was whether Alda ever said anything to either of you
about being opposed to the excavations. That would help Markus,’ said
Thóra. She didn’t tell Jóhanna why Alda wouldn’t have
wanted Markus’s house to rise from the ashes.

‘She didn’t,’
said  Jóhanna
, shaking her head.
‘Not to me, at least.
She might have said something to
our mother. Mother and I have a lot to discuss. Is there anything else I might
need to know?’

Thóra told her about the peculiar
entries in Alda’s diary. She decided not to mention what she knew about
the rape case, and instead asked
whether  Jóhanna
had heard Alda talk about it. ‘Did she ever mention a man by the name of
Adolf to you?
Or his parents, Valgerdur and Dadi?’

‘I’ve never heard them
mentioned.’

‘You aren’t familiar with them
from your childhood?’ asked Thóra. ‘I had the impression
they were friends of your parents for a time. They were from the Islands, and
they also moved to the Westfjords - to a farmhouse near Holmavik, I think. The
woman was a nurse.’

‘We lived in Bildudalur,’
said  Jóhanna
. ‘It’s a long way from
Holmavik. I’ve never heard of these people. Not that I remember,
anyway.’

Thóra took out the picture of the
young man, which she had wanted to show to Alda’s mother. And do you
recognize this man at all
?‘
she asked.

 Jóhanna took the piece of paper.
‘Is this a photocopy?’ she asked, and Thóra nodded
apologetically.  Jóhanna held it by its edge and peered at the
subject. ‘No,’ she said, handing it back. ‘I feel like
he’s familiar somehow, but I don’t know who he is.’

‘Do you know what it is about him that
looks familiar?’ asked Thóra hopefully.

 Jóhanna scratched behind her
ear. ‘I have a feeling he looks a little like my cousin, but that’s
silly.’ She dropped her hand. ‘No, I’ve never seen this
man.’

‘I can assure you that I would remember
if my father-in-law Magnus had said anything about people’s heads getting
cut off,’ said Maria, drawing herself up to her full height and trying to
look down at Thóra. Thóra, however, was taller than her, and her
chair had thicker cushions, which increased their height difference. The two of
them sat in the front room in Maria and Leifur’s house, where
Thóra had been invited after a drawn-out telephone negotiation with
Leifur concerning the wisdom of telling the police about the pool of blood and
his father’s possible involvement. In the end Leifur had agreed to meet
up for the sake of his brother, as Thóra had repeatedly suggested, and
had taken it upon himself to tell his mother Klara about the developments in
the case. Thóra was enormously grateful not to have that job, since she
could get nothing out of the old woman. She seemed determined to hide from
Thóra anything that could be considered unfavourable to her husband.
Thóra was also relieved that Leifur kept himself at a distance, since it
was enough to deal with one irritated person at a time. Maria, however, had
been no happier than Leifur with the suggestion that her father-in-law
might have been linked to the case.

Now Thóra smiled icily at Maria.
‘That may be,’ she said. ‘But you know
,
there’s a difference between remembering something and talking about it.
None of you seems to have had much interest in informing me of some very
salient facts.’

Maria had twisted her hair up into a bun,
which didn’t suit her. ‘You understand why we have little interest
in seeing an old man hounded by the police. It could finish him off. This is
just an old
story,
no one knows what’s true or
false.’

‘But what about Markus?’ asked
Thóra.
‘You can’t expect him to take the
blame to protect his father?’

‘Yes, actually, I can,’ said
Maria, almost petulantly. ‘If it were up to me, Maggi would be kept out
of it and Markus would be found not guilty. They’re not going to throw an
innocent man into prison.’

‘It wouldn’t be the first
time,’ said Thóra, but she resolved to avoid arguing with the
woman over the situation between father and son. Maria was obviously fond of
the old man, as anyone could see from the way she looked after him. ‘I
don’t know if you realize that though this case may be connected to the
blood on the pier, that’s not to say that Magnus killed them. If you help
me, I might be able to prove that.’

Maria fidgeted for a moment in her seat while
she appeared to digest this. She crossed her legs and then re-crossed them. The
balls of Thóra’s feet began to ache in sympathy
again,
the woman’s stilettos were so high. ‘I can say with a clear
conscience that Magnus has never mentioned a severed head,’ she said
eventually. ‘What little he says now is all about the past, but he has
never spoken about
either a
bodiless head or a
headless body, let alone whole corpses. I believe that’s because he had
nothing to do with this.’ Her head drooped sadly. ‘Whether you
believe it or not, Magnus was a wonderful man. When I came here he was the only
one who understood me, and very often supported me in my disagreements with
Leifur and my mother-in-law. They always knew better than me about everything,
be it child-rearing, cooking, politics, buying a car, or anything. Magnus took
my side; he realized how lonely I was.’

‘I don’t doubt that Magnus is a
fine man,’ said Thóra. ‘I came to you simply in the hope
that he had said something that could help me in my search for the guilty or innocent
parties. He wouldn’t need to have said it recently; he could have said
something a long time ago that was strange or indecipherable.’
Thóra looked imploringly at Maria.
‘If you could
just try to remember anything like that.’

Maria smiled. ‘Strange or
indecipherable,’ she echoed. ‘It would be easier to remember the
sensible and coherent things Magnus has said since the start of his
illness.’ She shook her head. ‘Naturally his condition has worsened
a great deal in recent years, but even before that he wasn’t making much
sense. Of course he talked more back then, and understood more; but still, what
he said had very little to do with what was happening around him. I could be
talking about the weather and he would be on about fishing equipment, or something
just as unrelated.’

‘Do you remember if he ever said
anything before like what he was trying to say to me?’ asked
Thóra. ‘About
Alda,
or a falcon?’

‘Yes, actually he did,’ said
Maria. ‘I don’t see how it relates to this, but he’s often
mentioned birds.
Especially falcons.

He used to sit at the window - actually he
still does - for hours at a time, looking out. If a large bird flies by, he
often asks me if it’s the falcon. I always say yes, because I think
that’s the answer he’s hoping for
.‘
Maria glanced at the window of the front room where they were sitting. A handsome
seagull flew past, as if to order. She cleared her throat delicately and
continued. ’He hasn’t mentioned Alda very often, and there
wasn’t any way for me to understand what he meant when he did, since I
didn’t know who she was until recently. I thought he was talking about a
relative, or even a childhood sweetheart of his
.‘

‘What did he say about her?’
asked Thóra. ‘It might make more sense in the light of everything
that’s happened.’ She decided not to ask more about the falcons;
any ties this bird had to the case were tenuous at best, and it was more important
to hear what Maria had to say about Alda. ‘Has he ever said anything
clearer about “the poor child”? Anything clearer about difficulties
in her youth, stuff like that?’

Maria shook her head. ‘It’s been
quite a while since he’s mentioned Alda, so of course I don’t
remember it word for word. When he mentioned her name it was always in connection
with some sorrow or drama that he never explained properly.’ Maria
squinted thoughtfully.
‘Something about making a
sacrifice, and how such a thing was sometimes justified.
Once or twice I
tried to ask him more about it, since it sounded more interesting than his
endless stories about sailing and the fishing company, but he always went back
into his shell immediately and clammed up. It was actually as if he
hadn’t realized he’d been speaking out loud until I
responded.’

‘And it never came out what sort of
sacrifice he was talking about?’ asked Thóra. She couldn’t
ask if the sacrifice had something to do with the head, since Maria had been so
adamant that Magnus had never mentioned it.

Maria shook her head.
‘No,
never.
Whoever she was, she’s stayed longer in his mind than a lot
of other things in his life. Actually, he mentioned spirits — I mean
alcohol - once or twice in direct connection with the sacrifice. I doubt that
this Alda ever had anything to do with liquor, so it’s probably not
related to the sacrifice, if there ever was any sacrifice.’

‘Spirits?’ asked Thóra.
Hadn’t the friendship between Kjartan the harbour-master and Gudni fallen
apart because of something to do with alcohol? ‘What did he say about
spirits?’

‘If I remember correctly it was
something along the lines of the spirits making it even, and did I agree? Of
course I just said yes, told him they definitely balanced it out. That seemed
to cheer him up,’ said Maria, shrugging. ‘But as far as the
“sacrifice” is concerned, I should probably mention that when I
realized who this Alda was it occurred to me that she had sacrificed her
relationship with Markus, but I’ve never been able to think of anything
that might require such a sacrifice.’

‘Has your father-in-law ever mentioned
Markus in the same breath as Alda, or this sacrifice of hers?’ asked
Thóra curiously. So far she had been repeatedly led to believe that
Markus’s crush had not been reciprocated. Maybe that wasn’t the
case at all. But why couldn’t Alda have been with him if she’d
wanted to?

Maria shook her head again thoughtfully.
‘No, I don’t think so. I would have asked Markus about it if I had
made the connection between him and this mysterious sacrifice. What sacrifice
could such a young woman make?’ She scowled. ‘Sacrifice her
education to have a child, or vice versa? Donate one of her kidneys for a
sibling? I simply can’t think of anything.
Nothing
serious enough to preoccupy an old man who isn’t even related to
her.’
She looked at her watch, then crossed and re-crossed her
legs again. Thóra got the feeling she did this regularly in order to
prevent varicose veins. If that were the case, this woman and
Thóra’s ex-mother-in- law would have got on like a house on fire.
‘And of course it could be pure nonsense,’ said Maria, without much
conviction. ‘He mixed up names a lot, and I find some of what he
says turns out to be either daydreams or misunderstandings.’ She
shrugged. ‘When the brain cracks, a lot of things can go haywire, which
is why Magnus sometimes thought scenes from films were memories from his own
life. He sometimes talked about how he went parachuting, helped sink some
criminals’ boat, met Sophia Loren, and other things like that. I
don’t imagine any of it actually happened.’

Thóra sat and thought for a minute.
‘Has he said anything about the eruption?’ she asked. Maria was
right,
the testimony of such a sick man could not be
taken seriously unless it could be confirmed by some other means. There may
have been no sacrifice, or if there had been, maybe it hadn’t been Alda
who was involved, meaning the incident had no relation to this case.

‘Of course he has,’ sighed Maria.
‘Everyone who wasn’t an infant at the time of the disaster has
plenty to say about it. For a while I feared that I would never be accepted
into the community because I hadn’t ever breathed in a decent amount of
ash.’ She looked at Thóra sadly. ‘That fear turned out not
to be unfounded. I’ve never properly adapted to the community here,
though I don’t think it’s entirely because of the eruption.’