My Soul to Take: A Novel of Iceland (3 page)
Jonas laughed coldly. "No, not really. It's boxes of old books, drawings, pictures, and all kinds of junk."
"So why do you think this old stuff is relevant to the so-called hidden defect in the property?" she asked skeptically. "And why don't you just look at it yourself?"
"I can't. I tried, but it gives me the creeps. I can't go near it. You're much more down-to-earth; you could probably go through it all without feeling anything."
Thora couldn't argue with that. Ghosts, ghouls, and fairies had not bothered her much until now. The real world gave her enough trouble without needing to cross the borders into fantasy. "Give me a little while to think about it, Jonas. All I can promise is to try and make arrangements to come and visit. I'll call you tomorrow afternoon. Is that
okay?"
"Oh, yes. You can call. I'll be in all day." Jonas hesitated before continuing. "You asked why I thought this old stuff was relevant."
"Yes?" said Thora.
Again Jonas paused before speaking. "I found a photograph in the box I started going through."
"And?"
"It's a picture of the girl I saw in the mirror."
Thursday
, 8
jun
e
2006
THORA FETCHED THE
file containing the documents regarding the property on Snaefellsnes. She couldn't glean much from reading through them; in any case, she found nothing to suggest Jonas's peculiar "hidden defect." It had been a relatively straightforward transaction, apart from Jonas's many stipulations over dates, such as insisting on signing the deeds on a Saturday. Thora had gone along with it, asking no questions in case she prompted a lecture on celestial configurations. On Saturday, luck comes your way, she remembered, from the old proverb. Nothing else about the sale was out of the ordinary. It involved the land and everything on it, including chattels and resources. The sellers were a brother and sister in their fifties, Borkur Thordarson and Elin Thordardottir. They were acting under power of attorney for their mother, who had inherited the land from her own father long before. They had made a lot of money on the deal, and Thora had been green with envy at the time.
She smiled to herself as she wondered how to assess the haunting in order to devalue the property by ten percent, but her smile vanished when she visualized herself trying to persuade the sellers to pay compensation for the damage and citing ghosts as the reason. The brother had mainly handled the transaction on his mother's behalf, and Thora had only met his sister once, when the deeds were signed. She had never met their mother, who according to Borkur was extremely old and bedridden, but the son struck her as pushy and overconfident. His sister, Elin, on the other hand, had been silent and withdrawn. At the time, Thora had the impression that she was not as keen as her brother to sell the property. Recalling all this, she doubted that he would take a claim for compensation lying down. She put the documents to one side and crossed her fingers, hoping Jonas would change his mind. If not, it would take every ounce of her persuasive powers to get him to back down.
She turned to her other pending cases, but the few that had come in were pretty uninspiring. Unfortunately business was slow. With a groan she cursed her own financial stupidity. At the end of the previous year, she had worked on a case for a wealthy German who had paid her handsomely, and if she had had an iota of common sense, she would have used the money to pay off some of her debts. Instead she had put it toward a trailer and an SUV. She didn't know what had come over her. Even worse, she had taken out a loan to help pay for them, plunging herself further into debt. She vaguely recalled having a vision of touring the countryside in the summer sun, a typical modern family on holiday—a divorced mother with her two children, and in her case a daughter of six and a son of sixteen who was himself soon to become a father. The grandchild had not yet been written into this rose-tinted dream, because Thora would probably only see it every other week-end. Hopefully that would not be the same weekend that her own children were spending with their father. It would make an interesting sociological study, she thought: a weekend father who was still so young that he spent every other weekend with his
own
weekend father.
When Thora had finished going through work stuff, she went on the Internet and on a whim searched for information about the land on Snaefellsnes or the old farmsteads situated on the grounds. She Googled the names of the farms that occurred in the deeds of sale, Kirkjustett and Kreppa, but found nothing. With a shrug, she gave up. She decided to check her e-mail and noted, a little wearily, that there was a message from Matthew. She had got to know the German while investigating the case that ultimately earned her the trailer and the SUV, along with the accompanying debts. In fact, she had done more than get to know him—she had got to know him "intimately," as her grandmother would say—and now he wanted to visit her to renew their "intimate" acquaintance. Matthew was inquiring about the best time for him to take a short break in Iceland. Thora was dying for him to come over, but was well aware that the best time would be around 2020, when her daughter turned twenty. She wasn't sure Matthew could wait that long. She closed the message, deciding to w
ait until the morning before re
plying.
She stood up, tidied her desk, and sighed. She wondered if her main problem was the desire for a better life, free from debt and untimely grandchildren, but realized that it was much simpler than that. She was depressed purely because she now had to walk past Bella on her way out. Bella, the secretary from hell, whom she and Bragi had been tricked into taking on as part of the lease agreement when they opened their office. Thora steeled herself and hurried away.
"I'm off, then," she said as she walked past the reception desk. She wondered fleetingly if it might be possible to raise the desk higher, to show less of the unattractive young woman behind it, then with a pang of guilt flashed the secretary an unconvincing smile. "See you tomorrow!"
Bella raised a heavy eyebrow and squinted at Thora. She added a scowl to complete her look of displeasure. "Are you still here? Huh."
"Huh? What do you mean, huh?" replied Thora, confused. "Where else am I supposed to be? You saw me come in after lunch and you haven't seen me leave. I don't make a habit of jumping out of the window."
"Pity," Thora thought she heard Bella mutter, but she couldn't be sure. In a much louder voice the girl said, "Your ex phoned about something, but I said you weren't in. He wouldn't leave a message."
Thora was pleased, because Hannes's telephone calls were seldom a source of joy. She certainly did not want to give Bella the chance to gloat about the negative aspects of her life. She decided to let it go, long resigned to the futility of arguing with this creature, so she smiled again at Bella and took her coat from the cloakroom. She was poised to escape, standing by the door with her hand on the handle, when the girl cleared her throat to indicate that there was something else.
"Oh, yes, and the leasing company phoned. You're behind on your installments on the trailer."
Thora did not even turn back, just strolled calmly into the corridor and closed the door behind her. At that moment she would gladly have accepted the massage that Jonas had promised her, with or without hot stones.
Chapter 2
BIRNA LOOKED AROUND HER AND TOOK A DEEP BREATH. SHE PEERE
D
through the thin fog hovering above the water and watched a pair of seagulls plunging to compete for food. Neither bird won and they rose back up with a great fluttering of wings. Then they vanished into the denser bank of fog that hung a little farther out. It was low tide and wet seaweed lay spread across the rocky expanse. This was an unusual beach: no sand, only boulders of all shapes and sizes, their surface smoothed by the passage of a million tides. The position of the beach was unique, as well: a small cove surrounded by high cliffs of columnar basalt, which could have been custom-designed by the Creator as a high-rise dwelling for seabirds. Every ledge was occupied, with a corresponding volume of noise. Birna walked over to where the cliffs formed another cove, leading on from the one she was in now. The tide flowed in through a stone arch, and the cove was completely enclosed by cliffs. It could only be seen through the narrow gap between the high walls of rock, but the squawking of the birds inside nonetheless resounded along the whole of the beach.
Birna stopped. The fog had suddenly thickened, reducing her visibility to just a few meters. She inhaled deeply again, this time through her nose, savoring the scent of the sea. If she could, she would sleep out here in the open, wreathed in fog. She had absolutely no desire to go back to the hotel. It should not have been that way. She had loved that building and swelled with childlike pride every time she saw it, even while it was still under construction, the barest bones of what it would become. She had even liked the hole that had been dug for the foundation. The site of the hotel had somehow captured her imagination the first time she visited. The land overlooked the open sea on the southern shore of Snaefellsnes. In this it was like most other farms in the district, although slightly more remote; the farmhouse only came into view when one had walked almost right up to it. It had been built on a grassy patch in a rough field of lava that reached almost to the water's edge. The dramatic scenery inspired her. So did the old house. She had been commissioned to design a gigantic annex, which must not overwhelm or smother the main house. This had caused her a lot of worry— modesty was often the greatest challenge; grandeur, that was a piece of cake.
The sensations that the project aroused were unfamiliar to her. Much as she loved architecture, the other buildings she had designed had not made her feel this way, but she knew exactly why. This hotel was far and away her most successful project. From the moment she began sketching the first draft at her studio in Reykjavik, she had realized that she was on the right track. The building was so much better than all her previous efforts. She realized that she would make a name for herself at last. She would become sought after.
She had often wondered why this project had seized her imagination so immediately and why the outcome had been such a success. There was nothing remarkable about the old house or the land, although the house was unusually grand for its age. It had also been exceptionally well maintained, considering no one had lived in it for about fifty years. She soon realized that someone had looked after the house over the years, perhaps intending to use it as a holiday home or to get away from the city, but those plans had never materialized. Inside the building, there was nothing to indicate that the twenty-first century had begun. A thick layer of dust had covered everything, but mousetraps here and there showed that someone had made sure that the interior and furnishings escaped unnecessary damage. The first time Birna went there, she had found it difficult to look at the tiny skeletons in some of the traps, but otherwise the house had impressed her, inside and out.
Birna looked at her watch. What was wrong with the man? Had he been delayed at that stupid seance? The message had been clear enough. She took out her mobile and scrolled through the texts. Yes, perfectly straightforward: "
Meet me @ cave @ 9 2nite
." What a load of shit. Before putting her mobile back in her pocket, she double-checked that the cove was out of range. It was. That was one of the most annoying things about this area, she thought, bad mobile reception.
She decided to walk back to the cave. Maybe he was there. Although the cave was high up on the shore, visibility was so poor that she could have missed him. Also, the screeching of the birds drowned out everything else, so she wouldn't have heard him arrive. She set off, taking care to look down because it was easy to lose one's footing on the stones. They crunched together beneath the weight of her feet. Hopefully he had finally come around to her way of thinking. She had expended enough energy on this whole business. She didn't really think he'd changed his mind, as he'd been so adamantly opposed. If by any chance he had, she knew she had herself to thank for his change of heart. She had given in and slept with him. The sex was intended to influence Jonas's decision in her favor; she had certainly not done it for her own pleasure. It was important to have several projects on the go when the competition came around. Although she had the prize pretty much in the bag, she needed to be sure, so she had to take on that burden. What did one quick shag matter, compared with winning the competition? She would be the talk of the town and, more important, her peers. Birna smiled to herself at the thought.
An unusually loud squawking from the cliff pulled her out of her reverie. It was as if all the birds of the heavens were calling out in unison. Perhaps they wanted to remind the world beyond the fog that they existed. Birna sighed. It had turned cold and she wrapped her anorak more tightly around her. What sort of summer was this, anyway? She reached the cave but could see no one. On the off chance that he was there she called out, but no one answer
ed. Ten minutes. She would give
him ten minutes and then leave. This was just plain rude. Anger flared inside her, warming her slightly. How dare he make her wait like this? It wasn't like being late for a meeting at a cafe in Reykjavik. There she could flick through magazines to kill the time, but here there was nothing to do. And beautiful as the area was, right now there was nothing to see but fog.
Five minutes. She would give him just five minutes. She wanted to get back and she was dying for a piss. An odd thought struck her, nothing to do with the beach or being made to wait alone in the freezing fog. She felt suddenly sad that she had not learned more about the geology of this area and other parts of Snafellsnes. For example, how was Kirkjufell, the mountain that fascinated her, formed? It stood alone in the sea on the northern shore of the peninsula, and she knew enough geology to tell that it was not volcanic. She wished she had taken more interest in her studies when she was at school. When she got back home, she was going to look it up, just as she had planned to do the first time she had seen the mountain.
Birna jumped as the noise of the birds got louder again, raucous cries from farther up the cliff she was leaning against. She took two steps away from the wall of rock. She shuddered, gripped by a feeling of unease, not for the first time. There was something about this place. Not just the obvious, those weirdos who worked at the hotel and claimed to be spiritual assistants to the guests. The guests too. All nutcases, but not quite as bad as the staff. No, there was something else wrong here. Something that had slowly but surely intensified, making its presence known on her first inspection and beginning with goose bumps on her upper arms when she saw the skeletons of the mice. It had now transformed into a persistent unease that Birna found difficult to identify. It wasn't the rubbish about ghosts that scared her—she was pretty sure the hotel staff made those stories up, although only God knew why.