My Soul to Take: A Novel of Iceland (16 page)

THe church
wxs
on an area of grass not far from the beach. It stood at the top of a little hill; tiny, built from jet-black timber, it reminded Thora of the churches she had drawn at primary school—little buildings with a small tower and a cross on the top. Hers had been much more cheerfully colored, in fact, but she had to admit that black suited this church. The white-painted windows and door set it off nicely, and overall it looked as though the local people had built as impressive a church as their finances allowed. Thora couldn't recall ever having seen a church this color before, and wondered whether it was an attempt to replicate the building's original appearance. Scant though her knowledge of architectural history was, she thought the walls had been tarred, which was presumably done instead of painting in the old days. After deciding to herself that this was the explanation, she fed it to Matthew as cold, hard fact. He swallowed it.

The broad stone wall enclosing the churchyard was almost entirely covered with grass and moss, revealing only the occasional flash of gray. Directly in front of the church door was a high iron gate leading into the churchyard. They opened the gate, which gave a mighty creak, and walked through.

"Look," Thora said, "there's the cemetery." A few graves could be seen at the far end.

"Fewer people must have died here than they were expecting," Matthew said, surveying the expanse of ground between the church and the gravestones.

"Yes," Thora said. "That's odd. Vigdis said the church still served the local community, so it might fill up over time."

"Seems unlikely," said Matthew. He went up to the church door and examined the lock. "What am I supposed to do again? Push or pull?"

"Push, I think. Or pull. One of the two," Thora said vaguely. Instead of watching Matthew, she scanned the cemetery and gravestones. "Do you think we'll find Kristin's grave?" she said, turning back to Matthew. He was struggling furiously with the door. "Birna must have been looking for it when she was here."

"I don't know," he snapped. "I'm more concerned with opening this bloody door." He pressed one shoulder against the wood and turned the key. A soft click was heard.
"Na endlich!"
he said proudly, and pushed the door open.
"Bitte, Frau."

The vestibule would have held four people at the most. It led to the nave with an altar, pews, and pulpit. Most of the interior was timber, painted in soft colors and embellished with flower patterns around the edges of the ceiling and along the pews. The overall effect was neat and cozy, with the exception of the altarpiece showing Christ's crucifixion on Calvary.

"Why are these pews so small?" asked Matthew, trying to sit down. His backside hardly fit on to the bench, and the one in front left no leg room.

"I bet it's to make sure you don't fall asleep," Thora replied. "Or to save space. Actually, that's a more likely explanation."

"Unless the Icelanders used to be a nation of dwarves," said Matthew, standing up. He walked over to where Thora stood, by the stairs up to the balcony. "Should we have a look up there?" he asked. "I reckon we've seen everything down here in the fifteen seconds we've been here."

They went up the narrow stairs and on to the balcony. Everything was painted in the same subdued colors. There was a good view over the nave from the handrail and for the first time Thora noticed a brass chandelier in the middle of the ceiling. They looked all around, but there wasn't much to see: just an impressive organ with an open book of sheet music on it and a wooden chest that turned out to contain hymn books and other choral paraphernalia. There was nothing else on the platform.

"That was a waste of time," she said, disappointed. "I expected something much more exciting."

"Like what?" Matthew asked. "There won't be anything connected with the murder here. Birna was just excited about the building. She was an architect, after all."

Thora frowned, unconvinced. "Shouldn't there be some kind of storage room here? Surely the ministers don't have to lug everything to the church and back when they come here for the service."

Matthew shrugged. "There's a Bible on the altar. Maybe that's enough for them. And a couple of candlesticks."

"What about church records? Aren't all churches obliged to keep records?" Thora went back to the handrail for a better view of the church. Maybe there was a cupboard or box cleverly hidden away somewhere, though she couldn't see anything to suggest that. "They have to record everything that takes place here."

Matthew regarded her quizzically. "What do you mean?"

"Weddings, christenings, confirmations—it's all written down in the church records." Crossing to the wall at the far end of the balcony by the stairs, Thora walked along it hoping to find a hatch. "I knew it!" she shouted excitedly, spotting a rectangular hatch on the ceiling above. "There's something up there."

Joining her, Matthew looked up. The ceiling was low, so he had no trouble opening the hatch. They both looked up into the dark hole. "I think I can see steps," he said. "We need more light."

Thora flicked an old-fashioned switch by the stairs and a few wall lights came on. "Is that better?"

"Yes and no," he said. "It's better in that I can
see,
but worse in that I can see there's nothing there."

"Nothing? No books?" asked Thora disconsolately, craning to see inside.

"No," replied Matthew. "It's just for access to the steeple, as far as I can tell. I doubt any books are kept there." He grabbed the edge of the opening with both hands and heaved himself up. "No, there's definitely nothing here." He lowered himself to the floor and clapped his hands to brush the dust off them. "Maybe Vigdis knows where the church records are kept. She has the keys, so who knows, maybe she's been put in charge of stuff like that."

"I'm just going to have a closer look at the altar," Thora said. "It must be here somewhere." They descended from the balcony, and she walked ahead of Matthew toward the suffering Jesus. A cursory glance revealed only the Bible and two large candlesticks. They sat on a table covered in a beautifully embroidered purple cloth, against the far wall beneath the altarpiece. Lifting the cloth, she saw that the table was in fact a small cupboard. "Matthew, look," she called. She bent down and took hold of the recessed handles. Fortunately the cupboard was unlocked and the doors opened with a soft creak. Thora beamed triumphantly over her shoulder at Matthew and took out three large leather-bound books.

The top one looked quite new, and when Thora opened it, she knew she needn't waste any time examining it: the date on the first page was 1996. She opened the next book and flicked through it until she found a date around 1940. "I think Kristin was here during the war," she said to Matthew. "The film-star photos I found under the rafters were from then." She flipped through the whole section, but found nothing. There were several births, christenings, marriages, and deaths, but no Kristin was to be found anywhere.

There was something strange about the entry for 1941, where the left-hand page ended with the name of a bride but the page facing it appeared to refer to a funeral. "That's odd," she said, opening the book wider and examining the join in the center. She handed it to Matthew. "Look," she said, "a page has been removed. Maybe two."

Matthew examined the book and nodded. "You're right," he said, passing the register back to Thora. "Bizarre. Who would do such a thing? Someone who wanted to erase a wedding?"

"Or someone who wanted to erase a child's christening," Thora said. "If you erase the birth records of a child born in that era, you've pretty much succeeded in wiping out every trace of it. I don't know whether the national registry had been established by then, and even if it was, we can't know whether it was used properly in rural areas. It can't have been too difficult to keep yourself, or someone else, outside the system."

They replaced the books after Thora had searched through them all with no sign of Kristin.

Outside in the cemetery, they didn't need to walk past many graves to appreciate how much times had changed. Most of the graves in the tiny cemetery bore inscriptions like "Boy—stillborn" or "Girl— unchristened." More often than not, several children of the same parents lay side by side, or one gravestone served a group of siblings. Thora carefully examined every inscription in the hope of finding names she recognized. She found two graves whose headstones bore the name Kristin, but both occupants had died in old age. She thought it unlikely that these women were connected with the inscription under the rafters.

Eventually they came to two neighboring plots separated by a low fence. Both had particularly large and impressive headstones, at least five feet high and carved from pale stone. Orange moss or lichen had spread across them. The carving on one showed a snake curling around to bite its tail, along with an oil lamp. Thora recognized neither symbol, but she remembered that there was a lamp on the cover of the Gideon Bible. She asked Matthew whether the images meant anything to him, but they didn't. She read the inscription, which bore the names of the family from Kirkjustett, the farm that was now part of Jonas's hotel. At the top was the head of the household: "Bjarni Thorolfsson, farmer from Kirkjustett, b. 1896 d. 1944." Beneath it stood "His wife, Adalheidur Jonsdottir, b. 1900 d. 1928." Two more names were inscribed below: "Bjarni b. 1923 d. 1923" and "Gudny b. 1924 d. 1945."

"These are the people from the photograph I told you about, the ones Magnus Baldvinsson knew." Matthew didn't need to speak Icelandic to understand the headstone, so he stooped to read it. Thora continued, "According to Magnus, the farmer and his daughter died of TB, and his wife of blood poisoning years earlier." She pointed to the dates on Adalheidur's inscription. "A girl who works for Jonas claims that incest was committed at the farm. Presumably it involved Bjarni and his daughter, Gudny."

"We can't assume that's true," Matthew pointed out. "How would a girl her age know about incest that took place seventy years ago?"

"Her grandmother told her," said Thora. "As a rule I don't think grandmothers tell lies."

"Not all grandmothers are the same." Matthew grinned. "I'd take a story like that with a pinch of salt, even if it was a sweet little old lady telling it."

"I suppose so," Thora conceded. "And I hope for Gudny's sake that it
was
nonsense." Then she pointed out the name of the son who had died in his first year. "I noticed on the photographs that Adalheidur appeared to be pregnant, but there were no pictures of a baby. He must have only lived a few days."

"Like most children around here," Matthew said, indicating the other graves. "More than half of these seem to be children who didn't survive infancy."

"It does seem that people here had trouble raising their children to adulthood," she said, looking around. "Unless infant mortality was this common all over Iceland." She shuddered. "Thank God that's all in the past," she said, moving on to the next gravestone, which was more modest. "That's strange." It looked half empty. "Just two inscriptions: 'His wife, Kristrun Valgeirsdottir, b. 1894 d. 1940' and below it 'Edda Grimsdottir b. 1921 d. 1924.' " Thora looked at Matthew. "The husband's name is missing, but it must be Grimur Thorolfsson, the elder brother. The woman has the same name as his wife, and the child as his daughter."

"Is he likely to be the 'dad' who killed Kristin? Maybe a murderer would not have been buried with his loved ones," he said. "Or could he still be alive? Either way, he's not buried here."

Thora shook her head. "No, that can't be right. Magnus said Grimur died a few years after moving to Reykjavik."

"Where is he, then?" asked Matthew. "He's supposed to be here. There's plenty of room for his name. It feels weird, seeing it blank."

Thora turned and looked around the cemetery. "He can't be buried here, since he's not mentioned on this stone." They strolled around the rest of the churchyard but found neither Grimur's nor Kristin's grave. "Maybe Kristin was just a cat after all," Thora said glumly, as they left through the squeaking gate.

"Then what about the missing page in the church records? I think our next move should be talking to the brother and sister who sold Jonas the land," said Matthew. "You could use that ghost nonsense as a pretext to grill them about the history of the farm, and about Grimur and Kristin."

Thora nodded thoughtfully. That wasn't a bad idea . . .

Elin Thordardottir kept her hand on the telephone after
hanging up. She heaved a deep sigh, lifted it again and put it to her ear. She quickly dialed a number and waited impatiently for an answer. "Borkur," she blurted, "guess what?"

"What is it, Elin? Now's not a good time." Borkur was always moody when his sister phoned him. "There's a situation here."

"What's going on?" Elin asked, although she knew it must involve Svava, Borkur's wife, who was a bag of nerves, always on the brink of a nervous breakdown over something minor.

"None of your business," growled Borkur. "What do you want?"

Accustomed to his unfriendliness, Elin ignored it. In fact, she enjoyed winding him up. She had always been against selling the land but had given in to his constant nagging in the end. It was a pity their mother had not opposed the idea, because the place had still belonged to her even though the proceeds would go to her children. Borkur had managed to talk her into selling. Now Elin had the chance to take revenge on her brother for his bossiness. "A woman called Thora phoned. She's a lawyer for Jonas, who bought Kirkjustett and Kreppa." She paused deliberately, determined to force him to ask.