She opened the door wide enough to step through and saw Markus on the stairs, looking pale as a corpse. His face nearly matched the white helmet that he wore on his head. Thora tried not to read too much into it, since the only light was coming from their torches, giving everything an otherworldly glow. She gulped. The air there was even more stagnant, dustier. ‘What do you want to show me?’ she asked. ‘Let’s get this over with.’
Markus set off down the stairs into the darkness. The beam from his torch was of little use amid the dust and ash and there was no way to see where the steps ended. ‘I don’t know how to describe it,’ said Markus in a strangely calm voice, as he went down the stairs. ‘You’ve got to believe me when I say that this is not what I came here looking for. But it’s clear now that you have to get an injunction against the excavation and have the house covered over again.’
Thora pointed her light at her feet. She had no wish to trip on the stairs and tumble into the basement head first.‘Is there something bad here that you weren’t aware of?’
‘Yes, you could say that,’ he replied. ‘I would never have allowed the excavation to go ahead if this was what I wanted to hide. That’s for certain.’ He was standing now on the basement floor. ‘I think I’ve got myself into a really bad position.’
Thora stepped off the final stair and took her place by his side. ‘What do you mean by“this”?’ she asked, shining her light around. The little that she could discern appeared completely innocent: an old sled, a badly dented bird cage, numerous boxes and miscellaneous rubbish scattered here and there, all of it covered with dust and soot.
‘Over here,’ said Markus. He led her to the edge of a partition. ‘You have to believe me – I knew nothing about this.’ He pointed his torch downwards.
Thora peered at the floor, but couldn’t see anything that could have frightened Markus that much, only three mounds of dust. She moved her torch over them. It took her some time to realize what she was seeing – and then it was all she could do not to let the torch slip from her hand. ‘Good God,’ she said. She ran the light over the three faces, one after another. Sunken cheeks, empty eye-sockets, gaping mouths; they reminded her of the photographs of mummies she’d once seen in National Geographic. ‘Who are these people?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Markus, clearly in shock himself. ‘But that doesn’t matter. What’s certain is that they’ve been dead for quite some time.’ He raised one of his hands to cover his nose and mouth, even though there was no smell from the corpses, then grimaced and looked away.
Thora, on the other hand, could not tear her eyes away from the remains. Markus hadn’t been exaggerating when he said that this looked bad for him. ‘What did you want to hide, then, if it wasn’t this?’ she asked in astonishment. ‘You’d better have an answer when this gets out.’ He appeared on the verge of protesting, and she hurriedly added: ‘You can forget about the house being buried again as if nothing ever happened. I can promise you that that’s not an option.’ Why was nothing ever simple? Why couldn’t Markus just have come up from the basement with his arms full of old pornographic pictures? She aimed her torch at him.
‘Show me what you were looking for,’ she said, her anxiety heightened by the nervous expression on his face. ‘Surely it can’t be worse than this.’
Markus was silent for a few moments. Then he cleared his throat and shone his light into a nook right next to them.‘It was this,’ he said, not letting his eyes follow the torch’s beam. ‘I can explain everything,’ he added nervously, looking at his feet.
‘Oh, Jesus!’ cried Thora, as her torch clattered to the floor.
Chapter Two
‘To tell you the truth, I don’t know whether I should be happy or not that your bizarre discovery of human remains should have occurred before I retired.’ The police officer looked from one of them to the other. Thora, Hjortur and Markus all smiled awkwardly. They were at the police headquarters in the Westmann Islands, where they’d been made to wait for a very long time for the chief inspector, who now sat before them. He’d clearly taken his time in the basement, had wanted to see the evidence with his own eyes before speaking to them. ‘My name is Gudni Leifsson. I’m almost retired,’ he added, ‘after a career of nearly forty years.’ He clasped his hands together. ‘I’d like to see others do better.’ Thora did her best to appear interested in his remarkable career, with limited success; what she wanted most was to ask what time it was, since she couldn’t miss the last plane to Reykjavik. What a waste of time this was.
‘But that’s the way things go.’ The police inspector shook his head slowly and clicked his tongue.‘I have never seen anything like this.’ He smiled wryly.‘Maybe it’s fate playing games with the authorities in Reykjavik?’
Thora raised her eyebrows.‘What?’ she enquired, although she had no desire whatsoever to prolong this conversation. ‘How do you mean?’
‘I’m not surprised you have to ask. A lawyer from Reykjavik could hardly be expected to keep up to speed with what happens out here in the sticks.’ The old man looked at her reproachfully, but Thora ignored him. ‘It’s only been a short time since the detectives we had stationed here were moved to the mainland in order to cut costs. The trivial crimes committed here didn’t justify the expense.’ He smiled broadly. ‘Until now.’ He looked at Markus meaningfully before continuing:‘Three bodies and one head.’ He tutted again.‘You were always up to mischief as a boy, Markus, but isn’t this taking it a bit too far? It’s quite a leap from stealing rhubarb to mass murder.’
Markus leaned forward, his expression open and sincere. ‘I swear that I know nothing about these bodies. They’re nothing to do with me.’ He sat back again, seemingly satisfied, and brushed dust off the arms of his jacket.
Thora sighed deeply and decided to interrupt Markus before he got the chance to say that he’d only had something to do with the head. ‘Before we go any further, I would like to ask where this is going. Is this a formal interrogation?’ She thought- but did not say – that if it were it would be ridiculous to interview Markus and Hjortur together. Their interests were completely at odds. ‘If so, I wish to state that as Markus’s lawyer, I question your procedures.’
Inspector Leifsson pursed his lips and sucked air through his teeth as if trying to clean between them. ‘It may be that you work differently in Reykjavik, Madam Lawyer,’ he said coldly.‘There, you presumably go “by the book”, as they say, although one never actually knows which book they mean. Here, on the other hand, I’m in charge. If I want to speak to you, as, for example, I do now, then I shall do so. It can’t hurt anyone, can it? Least of all your client, Markus.’ He smiled at Thora, but it did not reach his eyes. ‘Unless you think he’s got something on his conscience?’ He looked at Markus.‘The bodies appeared to be quite old. Perhaps he killed all of them, back when he was a spotty teenager?’ He paused, regarding her levelly.‘But my heart tells me it isn’t so. I think we’ll find some sort of logical explanation for this mess, which I was hoping we could just clear up without having to go through formal channels. And I’m happy to take the blame for that.’
Thora placed a restraining hand on Markus’s shoulder. ‘I wish to speak with my client before we go anyfurther, and afterwards we will go by this famous“book”, so that everything is above board.’
Gudni shrugged. He seemed to be in good shape for a man his age, as far as Thora could tell; fairly trim, and with a good head of hair. She couldn’t shake the impression that he looked like Clint Eastwood, and she had an overwhelming desire to stick a toothpick in the corner of his mouth to get the full effect. He stared at her for a moment as if he knew what she was thinking, before turning to Markus. ‘Is that what you want, Markus, my friend?’ he asked the other man, who sat mutely at Thora’s side.
Markus squirmed uneasily in his chair. In front of him sat the authority figure of his youth, who remembered him stealing vegetables from people’s gardens, or whatever it was that the old police officer had mentioned at the start of their conversation. ‘I haven’t done anything,’ he muttered, glancing sideways at Thora. ‘Is there really any reason why we have to go through all this official stuff?’
