director. Thora did not recognize the hospital. Judging by the name it was not one of the large state hospitals. She assumed it was either an exorbitant private hospital or a clinic for the wealthy. The space for recording the baby's religion had been filled in with 'Roman Catholic.' If her memory did not deceive her, Thora recalled that around one in every three Germans was of that denomination, with a higher percentage in the south of the country. As a student in Germany, Thora had been surprised by how many Catholics there were. She had always associated Germans with Lutheranism and believed that Catholics were found mainly in more southerly countries such as Italy, Spain, and France.
Thora read on.
The next few pages were plastic photo album sheets, filled mostly with photographs of the Guntliebs on various occasions. Accompanying each photograph was a strip of white paper with the names of the people it showed. Quickly flicking through the pictures, she saw that Harald was in every one. Besides family shots there were school photos of him at various ages, with the obligatory smartly combed look. Thora wondered why the photographs were in the folder. The only logical reason was to remind the reader that the murder victim had once been a living person. It worked.
The first photographs, which were the oldest, showed a small and chubby boy, with either his brotherwho appeared to be two or three years olderor his mother. Thora was struck by how beautiful Amelia Guntlieb was. Although some of the photographs were rather grainy, she was obviously one of those women who always seem effortlessly elegant. Thora was captivated by one shot in particular in which the mother was helping her son practice walking. Taken outside in the garden, it showed Frau Guntlieb holding Harald's hands as he stumbled forward with the clumsy gait of a one-year-old, one foot in the air, leg bent firmly at the knee. Frau Guntlieb was smiling into the camera and her beautiful face radiated joy. The cold voice that Thora had heard over the telephone did not seem to fit that expression. The boy was young enough that his features were still hidden behind baby fat and a stubby nose, but the resemblance between mother and son could nevertheless be seen.
The next photographs showed Harald at around two or three. Now he bore an even closer resemblance to his mother, although without appearing girlish. His mother was in the photographs too, pregnant first, then smiling as she held a baby wrapped in a thick blanket in her arms. In that particular shot Harald was beside the chair she was sitting in, standing on his tiptoes to peep at the bundled-up baby, his sister. His mother had her hand around his shoulders. From the label under the photograph Thora saw that the girl had been named Amelia after her mother. Amelia Maria. This was the girl who had died from a congenital disease. Judging from the photograph, the family had not realized at first that she was ill. The mother, at least, looked ecstatic and free from worry. In the next scenes, however, something had changed. Where before she had been smiling in every photo, Frau Guntlieb now seemed distant and sad. In one pose she wore a smile for form's sake, but it did not reach her eyes. Nor was there any of the physical contact between her and Harald that had characterized the earlier photographs. The little boy seemed subdued and confused as well. The baby girl was nowhere to be seen.
Part of the family history seemed to have been omitted, because the next series took Thora at least five years forward in time. It began with a posed family photograph, the first to feature Herr Guntlieb. He was a respectable- looking man, clearly a bit older than his wife. All the people in the photograph were dressed up smartly and a baby had joined the group, lying in her mother's arms. This must have been the youngest child, the only one alive today. The little sick girl was back, in a wheelchair this time. It did not take a doctor to realize how seriously handicapped she was, strapped into the wheelchair with her head thrown back and mouth hanging open. Her lower jaw hung to one side, indicating that she had little control over it. This seemed to be the case with her limbs too: one arm was bent at the elbow and the hand was abnormally close to it. The fingers of that hand were curled into a claw. Her other hand lay powerless in her lap. Behind the wheelchair stood Harald, eight years old at a guess. His expression was unlike anything Thora had seen her own son produce at that age; the child seemed devastated. Although the other family membersHerr and Frau Guntlieb and Harald's elder brotherwere not exactly the picture of happiness, the boy looked tragically miserable. Something had clearly happened and Thora wondered whether such a young child could be so affected by his younger sister's illness. Perhaps he simply had psychological problems, which was not unknown among children. He may have been depressed as a child and competing for attention with his younger siblings proved too much for him. If so, it was obvious from the following photographs that the parents did not know how to respond. None of them showed any physical affection for the boy, who always stood apart from the family except in a few instances when his elder brother was by his side. It was as if his mother had simply forgotten him or was deliberately ignoring him. Thora reminded herself not to draw too many conclusions from the photographs. They captured only moments from these people's lives and could never give a complete picture of what they did or thought.
There was a knock on the door and Bragi, Thora's partner in the law firm and its founder, peeped inside. 'Got a minute?'
Thora nodded and Bragi stepped inside. He was approaching sixty, stout and hefty, one of those men who are not just tall but simply huge. Thora thought the best way to describe him was that he was two sizes too large in every respectfingers, ears, nose and all. He slammed himself down in the chair facing her desk and pulled over the folder Thora was looking at. 'How did it go?'
'The meeting? Fine, I think,' Thora answered, watching Bragi as he flicked casually through the family photographs she had just been examining.
'This lad looks awfully morose,' said Bragi, pointing to a photograph of Harald. 'Is he the one who was murdered?'
'Yes,' Thora replied. 'They're rather strange photos.'
'Well, I don't know. You should see my childhood photos. I was a hopeless kid. Miserable, a total loser. As clearly shown by any photos from that time.'
Thora read nothing into this. She was used to all manner of peculiar remarks from Bragi. He was bound to be exaggerating in calling himself a hopeless loser as a boy, just as he did when he talked about how he had to work full-time as a night watchman weighing fish at the harbor and on a fishing boat over the weekends just to pay his way through law school. Nonetheless, she liked him. He had never been anything but kind to her, from the day three years ago when he invited her into a law partnership with him, which she gratefully accepted. At that time she was working with a medium-sized law firm and was relieved to get out; she did not miss the conversations beside the coffee machine about salmon fishing and neckties.
Bragi pushed the folder back to Thora. 'Are you going to take it on?'
'Yes, I think so,' she replied. 'It's a change. Besides, it's always fun to tackle something new.'
Bragi grunted. 'That's not always the case, I'll tell you that. I didn't find it exciting having to deal with colon cancer a few years back even though that was quite new to me.'
Not wanting to pursue that line, Thora hurried to say: 'You know what I mean.'
Bragi stood up. 'Yes, sure. I just wanted to warn you not to expect too much.' He walked over to the door, then turned round and added: 'Tell me, do you think you can use Thor on this case at all?'
Thor had just graduated from law school and had been working for them for a little over half a year. He was something of a loner, unsociable, but all his work was exemplary and Thora saw nothing wrong with having his help if she needed it. 'I'd been thinking more about using him to take over other cases for me so that I could focus on this one. I have plenty of projects that he can easily keep afloat.'
'No problem, just do as you think best.'
Thora picked up the folder again and flipped through the remaining photographs, watching Harald grow up into a handsome young man with his mother's fair complexion. His father was much darker and not quite as memorable as his mother. The last page held only two photographs: one from a graduation ceremony, presumably at the University of Munich, and the other showing either the beginning or the end of his military serviceat least, Harald was wearing a German army uniform. Thora was not knowledgeable enough to be able to tell which regiment he belonged to. She assumed that this would come to light in the chapter on military service referred to on the contents page.
The next pages contained photocopies of Harald's certificates for completing various stages of his education, and it was obvious that he had been extraordinarily clever. He always earned top grades, which Thora knew from her own experience was not easy to achieve in the German educational system. The last account, from the University of Munich where Harald earned a B.A. in history, was in the same vein. In fact, he had graduated
