sexual relationship with someone in the A &E, a doctor or one of the staff. These things do happen.’
‘Would that be reason enough for her job to have been at risk?’ asked Thora, half wondering if it could have been her ex-husband. ‘Are workplace romances prohibited at the hospital?’
‘No,’ Dis replied.‘I don’t think so. Something like that might be kept under wraps, but it’s hardly forbidden. Anyway, the material on her computer could hardly be described as romantic. This was hardcorepornography, plain and simple. It crossed my mind that Alda might have had sex with someone on the hospital premises, which would be taken very seriously.’
Obviously Thora would have to phone Hannes again. He wouldn’t have missed any gossip that followed in the wake of something like this. ‘You don’t have any idea about the person with whom such a thing might have happened? A doctor, or even a patient?’
‘No, I have no idea, this is all just guesswork,’ said Dis. ‘The only reason it occurred to me at all is that I also found emails between Alda and a sex therapist on her computer. It crossed my mind that she might have sought their help after her obsession got her into trouble.’
‘Did the email mention anything like that?’ said Thora.
‘No, they were just confirmations of appointments, whether Alda could make it on this or that particular day and so forth.’
‘Do you remember the name of the therapist, by any chance?’ Yet another person Thora would need to speak to.
Dis nodded. ‘Yes, she’s called Heida. I don’t remember her surname, but there can’t be many sex therapists with that name working in Reykjavik.’
‘Did Alda ever speak to you about a tattoo?’ Thora asked as she wrote down the name. ‘She had wanted to tell her sister something, and it had to do with a tattoo, all a bit mysterious.’
‘A tattoo?’ asked Dis, looking puzzled. Then her face brightened. ‘Actually, yes,’she said. ‘Recently a young man came in who wanted to know if we could remove one, and I remember that Alda was particularly interested. She spoke to him for a long time, asking where he’d had it done, and it almost seemed as if she was thinking of getting one herself. But she just laughed when I asked her about it. Then she mentioned it to me and our secretary Kata over coffee, asking if we thought people ever got a tattoo in memory of a bad experience. We didn’t know what she was on about.’ Dis reached for one of her desk drawers. ‘Since you’re here, I may as well show you this,’ she said, pulling out several pages that were stapled together, as well as a single sheet. ‘I found these papers among the stuff in Alda’s desk after she died. One of the pages is actually a photocopy of a photograph, and it looks to me as though it’s of a tattoo.’She handed Thora the single sheet.
‘Does it say “Love Sex” in English?’ asked Thora, reading from the picture. The image was grainy, and hazy from the photocopier, but the tattoo could be seen quite clearly.
‘Don’t ask me,’ Dis said, peering at the page disdainfully. ‘This isn’t the tattoo the boy wanted to have removed. That was a Chinese word, as I recall. So I don’t have any idea who this came from or why Alda liked it so much. Maybe this man has the tattoo – his photograph was also in her desk drawer. I don’t recognize him at all. Is he your client?’
Thora took the photo, but didn’t recognize the young man in it. Although he looked severe, he was very handsome.‘No, I don’t know who this is.’ She handed the photograph back to Dis.
Dis took it and handed Thora the stapled pages. ‘And then there’s this. Who knows, it might be important. At the time I found it I still believed Alda had killed herself, and even thought that this might have been something to do with it.’ She looked at Thora. ‘It was so strange – Alda was unusually happy the day before all this happened. That didn’t seem to fit in with the idea of suicide, and I’ve been racking my brain trying to understand. Now that it turns out to have been murder, these papers might be irrelevant. I’d be happy for you to look at them, since I have no idea what to do with them.’
‘What are they?’ asked Thora, looking down at the pages.
‘It’s an autopsy report on an older woman who died six months ago,’ replied Dis.‘I’ve never heard of her, so I don’t know how she’s connected to Alda. I thought she might be a close relative and her death might have sent Alda over the edge.’
Thora looked at the top page and read the name of the deceased. Valgerdur Bjolfsdottir. She had recently come across this name. But where? ‘May I take a copy of this?’ she asked.
Chapter Twenty
Thora found the woman’s name as soon as she returned to her office. She typed the name into an Internet search engine, and a link came up to a website about the houses that had disappeared in the Westmann Islands eruption, the same site Thora had looked at out on the Islands. There she found the name on the autopsy report that Alda had kept in her drawer. Thora read her biography on the site: she had lived with her husband, Dadi Karlsson, in the house next to Markus’s childhood home. Thora read through the whole page about this couple, but all she found out was that Valgerdur Bjolfsdottir had worked as a nurse at a hospital in the Westmann Islands, and her husband had been the captain of a fishing boat. Neither of them had moved back to the Islands after the disaster, and Thora could see no particular connection to Alda other than their nursing careers. Perhaps Alda had looked up to this woman so much that she had decided to study nursing, but it could just have been a coincidence. At that time it was less common for young women to educate themselves in different fields, but nursing was very popular. The couple appeared to have been childless – at least there were no children accounted for on the website. This meant that Alda could not be connected to Valgerdur as a friend of her daughter. Clearly Thora wasn’t going to find an answer on the Internet, so she decided to call Leifur and ask him about the couple.
When she’d spoken to him after the detention ruling Leifur had repeated that he wanted to help, and she had promised to let him know if he could assist her in any way.
Leifur answered on the second ring. Thora allowed him to ask her all about the appeal to the High Court before she turned to the task at hand and asked about their ex-neighbours. His reply surprised her: ‘Ugh, those old bores.’ He heaved a sigh. ‘Why are you asking about them?’
‘Valgerdur’s name came up in connection with Alda and I’m trying to find out what they had to do with each other. Were they related, perhaps?’ she asked.
‘Not that I know of,’ he replied.‘They were our neighbours, but I don’t know much about them. Valgerdur was from out of town and I don’t know how she met Dadi, but he was from here. They stayed on the mainland after the evacuation, so I don’t know how you can track them down if that’s what you’re after.’
‘Actually, she’s dead,’said Thora. ‘But I don’t know about him. As a matter of fact I didn’t call to try to get in touch with him, but I was wondering whether there had been any contact between Alda and this Valgerdur. What crossed my mind first was that they were related, but maybe it was something entirely different.’
‘I don’t know whether there was much contact between the two households,’ said Leifur. ‘Valgerdur was no particular friend of Alda’s mother, as I recall, nor were the husbands friends. That pair were so tedious that I can’t imagine any sane man seeking out their company willingly. Dadi was never called anything other than Dadi Horseshoe – with good reason. Picture one upside down on his face. And Valgerdur was nicknamed Horseshoe Two after she entered the picture.’
‘I see,’ said Thora, baffled. ‘I was thinking Alda might have become a nurse to follow in Valgerdur’s footsteps, but that seems unlikely in the light of what you’re saying.’
‘Valgerdur was a school nurse among other things, and I doubt she aroused any great passion for the job in any of the students. She was famous for refusing to send kids home; they actually had to faint right in front of her or puke on the floor to be considered sick. If Alda did know her, I very much doubt she would have been the inspiration for her future career.’
This didn’t help explain Alda’s interest in the woman’s death. ‘There’s one more
