Last Rituals

was on maternity leave when Harald's body was found. Or that the history department hadn't decided to investigate the murder itself. 'Well, well.'

'So what did you do with the finger?' asked Matthew.

'Um, weerthrew it away,' Gunnar mumbled. His blush spread up his cheeks and across his scalp. 'It was definitely not connected with the murder so there seemed no reason to bring up this dreadful business with the police. They had plenty of other things to think about.'

'Well, well,' Thora repeated. Fingers, eyes, a letter about severed earswhat next?

CHAPTER 18

Thora straightened up and leaned back in her chair. She had just finished plugging the last cable into the computer and all that remained was to switch it on. She and Matthew were in Harald's studyafter bidding farewell to the cryptic Gunnar Gestvik. 'I must confess that I find this theory of yours and the Guntliebs about a mystery murderer increasingly unlikely.' She switched on the computer and a low hum indicated that it was booting up. 'The blood on Hugi's clothes, for examplehow does that fit in with your theory?' Matthew said nothing, so she continued. 'And the papers just nowI don't quite see the link between the murder and a university dissertation, especially because Harald was clearly straying from the subject a little when gathering his material.'

'I just know it,' Matthew said, without looking directly at her.

Something about his manner struck Thora as odd. Besides the fact that it was not like him to avoid eye contact, she noticed that he was staring fixedly at the screen of his mobile phone, as if hoping someone would call and extricate him from this conversation. Thora crossed her arms and scowled. 'You're hiding something from me.'

Matthew went on gazing hopefully at his phone. 'Well, I hope I haven't revealed all my secrets during our short acquaintance,' he said with forced joviality.

'Oh, come onyou know exactly what I mean. There's more to it than the missing money and eyes.' Thora still had trouble discussing the gouged-out eyes. She still could not manage to express the idea clearly; words somehow failed to encapsulate it. 'Really, that's all there isoh, yes, and an e-mail that says nothing and now a finger at the university that the professors panicked over and threw away.'

Matthew put his mobile in his pocket. 'Even if I were hiding something from youwould you still take my word for it that Hugi can't be the murderer, or at least couldn't have done it alone?'

Thora laughed out loud. 'Nonot really.'

Matthew stood up. 'That's a shame. To tell you the truth, I can't make decisions about certain information by myself,' he said, quickly adding: 'That is, if there was anything else.'

'Let's imagine that's the caseand that the person who can decide to include me in the picture would allow itwouldn't it be worth checking?'

Matthew looked at her pensively, then left the room. Thora noticed his mobile was back in his hand. Hopefully he'd gone out to use it. She cocked her ear and could hear the muffled sound of his voice from the corridor.

A little gray box in the center of the computer screen told her to enter the administrator password. Not knowing it, she had to go by guesswork: Harald, Malleus, Windows, Hexe, and the like. None of them worked, although Thora had been very pleased with herself and sure she had clinched it when she thought of the term Hexe, which stood for 'witch' in German. She leaned back and looked around for inspiration. On a shelf above the desk was a framed photograph that she reached out for. It was of a young disabled girl in a wheelchair. It didn't take a rocket scientist to realize that this was Harald's sister, who had died some years before. What was her name again? Wasn't she named after her mother? Whose name was what? Anna? No, but it began with A. Agatha or Angelina. Ameliaher name was Amelia Guntlieb. Thora tried that. Nothing happened. With a sigh she decided to enter it without the capital: amelia.

Bingo! The computer emitted the familiar Windows jingle: dum-deedum-dee, and Thora was in. She wondered how long the police had spent trying to find the password, but realized they must have a computer expert who could get in by the back door. They would hardly spend hours on trial and error.

It took a while before it dawned on Thora what the picture was on the unusual desktop wallpaper. It wasn't every day that she saw the inside of a mouth on a seventeen-inch screen, let alone a mouth with the tongue pinned on either side with two stainless steel tongs and a fiery red slit along it from the tipor rather, tips. Although she was not well versed in the practice, the photograph had obviously been taken when a tongue was being split down the middle. The operation was either still in progress or just completed. Thora would have bet money on the identity of the tongue's owner. It must be Harald himself. She shook herself to stave off nausea and opened Explorer, which immediately filled the screen, removing the wretched image from her sight.

A quick search showed that there were almost four hundred Word documents on the computer. She arranged them by date with the most recent at the top. Their names were self-explanatory. A common feature of the file names at the top was that they all contained the word hexe somewhere. Since it was so late, Thora reached over to her handbag and took out a flash memory stick. She copied all the witchcraft files to examine at her leisure at home that eveningif Matthew would reveal what the Guntliebs had been keeping from her. If he didn't, she intended to spend the evening working out whether she could afford to tell them to get lost. She had absolutely no interest in working as some kind of luxury interpreter.

There was still no sign of Matthew, so Thora decided to search for scanned files. She asked the search function to find all the. pdf extensions and was rewarded with sixty names. She arranged them by date and copied the most recent ones to the memory stick. She had plenty to keep her busy that evening, that was certain. Then it occurred to her to search for Jpegs, and she called them up too. Harald had clearly owned a digital camera, which he had used prolifically. Hundreds of file names appeared, but they told her nothing because they were labeled by a series of numbers automatically generated when the pictures were downloaded from the camera. Harald had not bothered to rename them. Thora selected 'thumb-nail view' to see the content immediately. Once again she arranged them by date. She noticed that the most recent ones had been taken inside the flat. The subjects were oddsome showed nothing in particular, most of them taken in the kitchen during preparations for a meal that was photographed in detail. No people were shown but hands could be seen in two of them, which Thora copied to her memory stick in case they belonged to the murderer. You never know, she thought. The other photographs were of a gigantic pasta meal at various stagesthese she left alone.

Scrolling down, Thora noticed that many of the photographs were quite embarrassing for the subjects, taken during an assortment of sex acts. She blushed for the participants as they rolled past in succession on the screen. Much as she would have liked to, she did not feel happy about enlarging them for fear that Matthew would walk in and find her prying. She also came across myriad photographs from the tongue operation, including the one Harald had chosen for his desktop wallpaper. It was impossible to see who was present, but some torsos were visible and Thora copied those too. Other files contained all manner of scenes from what seemed to be action- packed parties, interspersed withand these seemed completely out of placeIcelandic landscapes and journeys through them. Several were very dark and featured little more than gray rock facesThora thought she could make out a cross carved on one of them when she enlarged it. A whole series had been taken in a small village that Thora did not recognize, many of them in a museum where what looked like manuscripts were on exhibit along with a slab of basalt in a showcase. One shot showed a sign that Thora enlarged to see if she could identify the museum, only to be disappointedit simply said: No Photographs. Thora gave up on the pictures for the time being; by now she was down to fairly old ones that could hardly be linked with the case. She opened Harald's e-mail to see what it contained. In the in-box were seven unread messages. More had presumably arrived since Harald was murdered, but the police must have checked them.

Matthew walked in and Thora looked up from the e-mail. He sat down in his chair again with a twisted smile on his face. 'Well?' she said impatiently, wanting to hear what he had to say.

'Well,' Matthew echoed, leaning forward in his chair. He rested his elbows on his knees and clenched his hands as if about to pray. 'Before I tell you what you think you have to know,' he said, emphasizing the word 'think,' 'you must promise me one thing.'

'What?' Thora was quite sure of his reply.