Yrsa Sigurdardottir
Last Rituals
The first book in the Thora Gudmundsdottir series, 2007
Translated from the Icelandic by Bernard Scudder
This book is dedicated to my dear Oli.
Special thanks to Harald Schmitt,
who lent me his name
and allowed me to kill him.
Yrsa
PROLOGUE
OCTOBER 31, 2005
The head caretaker, Tryggvi, stood by the coffeemaker. The water dripping through the machine was the only sound in the empty building, which housed the university's history department. Soon the bustling cleaners would arrive, chatting and giggling, dragging their carts and vacuums out of the housekeeping room. The caretaker reveled in the silence and the aroma of brewing coffee. He had been employed by the university for over thirty years and had seen his share of changes, not the least of which was the complete turnaround in the nationality of the cleaners who worked under his supervision. When he started they had all been Icelandic and understood his every word; now his interactions with his subordinates consisted of hand gestures and loudly spoken one-word orders. The women were all recent arrivals from Southeast Asia, except for one woman of African descent. Until the faculty members and students arrived for the day, he might as well have been working in Bangkok.
Taking his steaming cup, Tryggvi walked to the window. He lifted the blinds and looked out, taking an appreciative sip of the strong brew. The campus was covered with snow. The temperature was unusually low, causing the white blanket to shimmer as if someone had strewn glitter over the ground during the night. The muffling effect of the snow added to the sense of utter stillness. Tryggvi was reminded of the upcoming Christmas season and felt oddly content.
He watched as a car entered the parking lot.
Tryggvi dropped the blinds and finished his coffee. From within the building he heard the faculty entrance door open as the driver came inside. Of all the staff, professors, lecturers, secretaries, and others whom Tryggvi had to deal with, this man Gunnar was by far the most unpleasant. He was uptight, constantly complained about the janitorial services, and had a superior air about him that always made Tryggvi feel small and uncomfortable. At the beginning of the term the man had accused the cleaning women of stealing a paper he had written about Irish monks in Iceland before the Viking settlement. Luckily the article had resurfaced and the issue had died down. Ever since, Tryggvi did not merely dislike him; he detested him. Why would Asian cleaning women who couldn't even read their own names in Icelandic be tempted to steal some highbrow article about Irish monks? In his eyes this was a cheap attack on people who were unable to defend themselves.
Tryggvi was appalled when Gunnar was appointed head of department. He had already spoken to Tryggvi about various improvements that he expected, one of which was that the cleaning women were to conduct their work in silence. Tryggvi had wanted to tell him that their chatter did not disturb anyone, as the bulk of their work was carried out either before or after anyone else was in the building. Except for Gunnar, of course. Why the man had to show up every morning before the buses even began to run was beyond Tryggvi.
A flutter of voices marked the women's arrival. They gathered in the little coffee room and said their accented hellos, followed by the usual giggling. Tryggvi could not help but smile. Then through their noisy bustle he heard a strange sound from within the building. It was a guttural moan, soft at first but growing louder. Tryggvi shushed the women and listened. The cleaners picked up on the sound, their eyes widening. Two of them made the sign of the cross. Tryggvi put down his coffee and hurried out of the lounge with the women in hot pursuit.
In the corridor, Tryggvi listened as the wailing became a scream. He could not distinguish whether the voice was male or female; he was not even sure it was human. Could an animal have gotten into the building and been injured somehow? The primal howl was suddenly joined by the sound of something falling over and breaking. Tryggvi quickened his pace down the corridor. The sounds seemed to come from the upper story. He took the stairs two at a time. The women were still following, and to Tryggvi's annoyance they now began to scream as well.
The staircase took him to the floor housing the department offices. Despite the wailing from behind him, Tryggvi could tell that the scream definitely came from this level. He broke into a run, followed closely by the cleaners. He opened the fire door to the office corridor and stopped so abruptly that the bevy of howling women crashed into him.
It was not the overturned bookcase or the frantic head of department, crawling on all fours over the books that had spilled across the corridor, that held Tryggvi mesmerized. It was the body lying faceup farther down the hallway, protruding from the alcove where the floor's printer was housed. Tryggvi felt his stomach lurch. What in God's name were those patches on its eyes? And the hands, what was wrong with the hands? The women peeked past Tryggvi and their screams intensified. He felt them pulling anxiously at his shirt, which came untucked. He tried to twist his body free from their grip, but to no avail. The head of department raised his hands in a plea for help, desperate to escape from the repulsive scene behind him. Tryggvi braced himself, suppressing the urge to grab the women and run. He took a step forward and the women let out another chorus of piercing screams. They tried to pull him back but he managed to shake them off. He approached the sobbing Gunnar.
He could make no sense of the mutterings coming from the professor's drooling mouth. On a hunch Tryggvi assumed that the bodyit had to be a body, nothing living could look like thathad fallen onto Gunnar when he opened the door of the printer alcove. Against his will he gazed down at the appalling human remains. The black patches on the eyes were not patches at all. Tryggvi's stomach clenched.
CHAPTER 1
Thora Gudmundsdottir brushed a stray Cheerio from her trousers and quickly tidied herself before entering the lawyers' office. Not so bad. The morning's challenges of getting her six-year-old daughter and sixteen-year-old son
