Ashes to Dust (42 page)

Thóra sympathized with the woman and
her isolation. ‘What has he said about the eruption?’

‘He’s mentioned it now and again.
Asked sometimes whether 1 heard a booming noise, as if he
were reliving that night.
I can almost recite the whole story,
he’s told me so often. He was one of the first to become aware of the
eruption, since he was awake. I understand it was late on a Monday
night—’

Thóra cut her off. ‘I’m
not looking for information about what time the eruption began, so much as
anything he may have told you about the rescue operation.’ Thóra
could see from the woman’s face that she didn’t really understand,
so she continued, ‘The bodies showed signs of having been outside after
the eruption started, later than the first night. So I wondered whether someone
else could have brought the bodies to the basement without Magnus knowing.
Maybe someone who helped him
clear
out the house, and
therefore knew when it was safe to bring them in.’

‘I see,’ said Maria. ‘He
mostly talked about how he evacuated residents to the mainland on his
ship. I don’t remember how long he said he’d been awake at one
point, but he talked a lot about it.’ She smiled. ‘Fifty, sixty
hours, something like that. He was very proud of it. But that may have been a
slight exaggeration on his part.’ She patted her hair before continuing.
‘He didn’t say much about anything that happened while he was
trying to salvage the household; he said he’d got out most of what
mattered but was still worried about things that he’d forgotten to take:
old books he’d inherited from his father, a compass, some coins and other
things that it’s hard to imagine him missing. He could grumble to himself
about this for hours at a time, but those things had been in a storeroom,
and so they were lost.’

‘Was the storeroom in the
basement?’ asked Thóra. If Magnus never went down to the basement,
someone could have put the bodies there at any point after the eruption.
‘One would have expected him to have taken these things from there, since
they were dear to him.’

Maria shrugged. ‘I have no idea where
the storeroom is,’ she said. ‘It could be in the basement, but that
doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Maggi still might have gone down
there, even if he didn’t manage to find everything. It would be
impossible for me to remember what was in our storeroom if I had to remove the
things I cared about most. None of the objects he mentioned was particularly
large, so he could easily have gone down there without finding them.’

‘But he’s never spoken about the
basement anxiously, or in any way other than his usual tone?’ asked
Thóra.

Maria snapped her fingers. ‘Yes, now I
remember,’ she said triumphantly. ‘He did mention the basement in
connection with the eruption, but not in the way you described. It was before
he got ill so it wasn’t that bizarre, but if it’s true then he certainly
went down there.’ Maria drummed her high heels on the floor as she
thought back. ‘Let’s see… he said he was glad he hadn’t
taken all the family’s possessions down into the basement as he’d
first planned, and had even started to do. He was smiling when he said it,
because he was laughing at himself for having thought the basement would be
safe. So he did go down there - is that bad?’

‘No, not really,’ said
Thóra, who didn’t know whether this meant anything. So Magnus had
gone down but probably only briefly, as he had missed things he wanted to
salvage. Was that because he knew about the bodies and couldn’t bear to
stay there very long, or because he thought there was nothing of interest down
there? ‘Do you think it would make him happy to get his hands on those
items he was looking for?’ asked Thóra.

‘Yes, if it could happen soon,’
replied Maria.
‘And if we managed to give them to him
when he was in a good mood.’
Her eyes clouded and she let her
hands fall into her lap. ‘Otherwise, I don’t know.’

Thóra said nothing, thinking things
over. The basement of the house hadn’t been emptied yet. If she and Bella
went there and found these items, it was entirely possible they would help
clear the old man’s head when he held them in his hands. Since he seemed
to connect them to the eruption, there was a faint chance he would tell
Thóra something useful as a result. If they got on the case that
evening, they could drop by again in the morning, before catching the boat
home. Thóra adjusted her little notebook on her knees and readied her
pen. ‘What was it again that he was looking for?’ She wrote the
things down and stood up to leave.

‘I have some papers for you, from
Leifur,’ said Maria as they left the room. ‘I’m to tell you
that he got them from the archaeologist.’ She grabbed a large pile of
documents and handed them to Thóra. ‘I’m also supposed to
tell you that no one from the excavation team was aware of Alda having
contacted them to try to prevent the house from being dug up.’
Thóra took the stack and saw that it was the log of everything found in
the houses. It would take a while to go through it.

When Thóra left Maria she realized
that she hadn’t learned much of interest except that Magnus had sailed
overnight to the mainland with refugees, returned immediately the next day and
started to salvage what he could. First he had focused on his own house. In
doing so he had had the help of several neighbours, who he helped in return,
but unfortunately Maria hadn’t known whether this included Dadi from next
door. Then Magnus had joined a group of men who went all over Heimaey
performing salvage operations, but Maria didn’t know any of their names.
After a month or so Magnus had started fishing again, by which time his house
was completely buried. Over the following months he’d worked as hard as
he could to keep his ship.

Thóra’s phone rang, and she
answered eagerly when she saw the number of the estate agent Markus said
he’d spoken to on his way east. She had talked to him briefly before
she’d visited Maria, but he’d been busy and had promised to ring as
soon as his work day was finished, which was usually early on Saturdays. That
was clearly not the case today, since it was nearly six o’clock.
Thóra got straight to the point after saying hello.

‘Okay,’ said the youngish voice
at the other end of the phone, when she had finished explaining what she needed
to know. ‘I understand.’

What did he understand?
Icelandic?
Thóra tried not to let her irritation show, although she had spent
longer than was healthy on the phone today. ‘So, did you have this phone
conversation with Markus?’ she asked. ‘It matters a great deal that
you tell the truth, and that you tell the story correctly. You won’t do
Markus any favours by making something up, if he’s remembered this
wrong. You also need to let me know what phone you called him from, so the
police can verify it.’

‘Ummm,’ muttered the man.
‘Yes, I called him. Wait a minute,’ he said, and Thóra heard
a rustling of papers. ‘It’s here somewhere,’
came
the voice over the line, and then: ‘Ah. Here it
is.’

‘Here what is?’ asked
Thóra.

‘I was looking for the offer we
discussed. It expired at eight o’clock on the eighth of July, so that
fits perfectly. I called him when it became clear that the sellers
wouldn’t accept it. That’s not strange, because it was quite low.
Markus didn’t particularly like the apartment, although I understand that
his boy was excited about it.’

‘So you called him,’ said
Thóra, trying to direct the man back to what mattered. ‘You called
him, on his mobile?’

‘Yes,’ said the agent.
‘That’s the only number I have for him, I think.’

‘And you can confirm that he was the
one you spoke to?’ she persevered.

‘Not someone
else
using
his phone?’

‘Yes, I spoke to him.
Absolutely,’ said the man resolutely. ‘We talked a bit about what
would happen next, but he was driving, so he couldn’t talk for very
long.’

Thóra looked up at the sky, thrilled.
He could not only confirm that Markus had had his phone, but also that he had
been driving. ‘And what number did you call from?’ she asked.

‘My mobile,’ the agent replied.
‘It was after work and I had come home. I have an unlisted number so it
wouldn’t have shown up on Markus’s screen, if that’s what
you’re asking.’

‘That’s great,’ said
Thóra. She explained that he would have to confirm this with the police,
and asked him to keep the offer paperwork somewhere safe, in case there was any
need for it.

‘Do you know if Markus is still
thinking of buying an apartment?’ asked the young man, sounding anxious.
‘We weren’t able to close a deal that evening. I actually have a
lot of new property for sale, damn good places, actually. He wouldn’t
want to miss this opportunity. I know things are hard for him at the moment and
I’ll try to keep things open for him, but I don’t know how long
I’ll be able to hold off other buyers.’

Thóra smiled to herself.
‘I’m pretty sure Markus has other things on his mind at the moment,
but I expect he’ll be thinking about it again soon. You can try to reach
him by phone after the weekend. Hopefully all this will be over by then.’

After saying goodbye she called
Stefán, rather pleased with herself. The only dilemma she had was what
to tell him about first: the pool of blood, or her conversation with the estate
agent.

Saturday 21 July
2007

The excavation site was completely silent,
except for the creaking beneath Thóra and Bella’s shoes as they
walked through the slag on the pathway. It was as if they were travelling
through a deep valley: nothing could be seen of the world around them apart
from a clear sky and the faint traces of a street that had disappeared from the
surface of the earth a third of a century ago. Thóra couldn’t
block out the uncomfortable feeling that they were being watched through
the broken windows of the empty houses as they walked by. Of course she knew
that there was not a living soul here apart from herself and Bella;
nevertheless she was plagued by unease. She got goosebumps when a light breeze
stirred a loose paper plate lying in front of a little house. The house looked
as if it had once been yellow, but the catastrophe that had overwhelmed it had
given it a dull green appearance. This decrepit shack looked so sad and
neglected that Thóra had to stop for a moment and stare at it. It was
easy to imagine a dust-covered middle-aged woman standing at the window in her
dressing-gown, waiting for life to pick up where it had left off in January
1973. Thóra shook off the image. She wasn’t used to letting her
imagination lead her astray - it must be the guilt she was feeling over their
business in the area. At best, it was immoral. The oppressive silence also
played a part. Thóra was so unused to it. In the quiet neighbourhood
where she lived one could always hear the sound of traffic - even at night an
indistinct hum from cars driving down the surrounding streets managed to reach
her ears. Here, there was no sound, although the town was just below them and
people would barely have gone to bed. Ash and slag clearly swallowed all the
noise, even the squeaking of their shoes. It was like watching television with
the sound muted. Thóra and Bella said nothing on the way to
Markus’s childhood home. Their conversation had petered out around the
time they reached this street and were met by its silence. Thóra even
grabbed Bella’s shoulder and pointed when they stopped in front of
Markus’s house, instead of telling her they had reached their
destination. She realized how ridiculous this was and tried to make up for it
by breaking the silence: ‘It’s this one,’ she whispered, even
though whispering had not been her intention.

Bella stared silently at the house.
‘Come on,’ said Thóra, slightly louder now. She clambered
over the tape, and Bella followed. ‘This’ll be no problem,’
said Thóra, more to persuade herself than her secretary. What if the
archaeologists turned up, or had set up security cameras to track any unwelcome
visitors? No matter how she tried, Thóra could not think up any excuse
for their presence here. They did have a reason for doing this, but wisdom told
Thóra that it was a dubious one. The old man would probably stare at the
stuff they brought back with the same dull gaze he turned on everything else
put in front of him. If they even managed to find what they were looking for.

They came to the door and stood there for a
few moments without saying anything, checking to make sure their torches were
working just as well as when they had set off a quarter of an hour before.

Bella turned her light on and off for the
third time. ‘Are you sure it’s safe?’ she asked, looking at
the door. The oak was deeply scarred and appeared to have bent
under weight
or heat. Large, slender windows on both sides
of the doorway were boarded with dented sheets of corrugated iron, remainders
of Magnus’s attempts to save his family’s home. ‘I
don’t like this, and I don’t understand why I have to go in.
I’ll just keep watch, like last time. The house is collapsing.’
Bella’s voice was plaintive and she pushed loosely at an iron sheet to
back up her fears. As she had no doubt intended, the sheet fell with a dull
crash, and she had to step aside to avoid it hitting her. ‘You
see,’ she said triumphantly.