Johanna looked miserable.‘Just women, Mother,’ she called back. ‘Don’t worry, you don’t know them.’
‘Nonsense,’ camethe loud reply. The woman had reached the hallway. ‘As if I don’t know all the women here in…’ She fell silent when she saw Bella and Thora on the steps. She edged next to her daughter in the narrow doorway, nudging Johanna aside, so that only half of her was visible. ‘Good day,’ she said, drying her hands on a dishtowel that she was holding before extending one to them.‘I am Magnea, Johanna’smother.’
‘Hello,’ said Thora, extending her hand. ‘Thora Gudmundsdottir. I was actually hoping to meet you.’
‘Oh?’ said the woman, and her face darkened. ‘How can I help you, my dear?’
‘I was hoping to be able to speak to you a bit about your daughter Alda,’ said Thora, steeling herself.‘I am representing Markus Magnusson, who has been wrongly accused of doing her harm.’
‘Since when is murdering a woman just“doing her harm”?’ hissed the woman. She took a step backwards, pushed Johanna out of the way and slammed the door with all her might. The house number on the wooden plate hanging over the door came loose from the impact and dangled sideways. Thora counted herself lucky that neither she nor Bella had already put a foot across the threshold.
She looked at Bella. ‘Wow,’ said her secretary. ‘It must really suck being a lawyer.’
Thora tried knocking softly on the door in the hope that the woman would reappear. From inside a muffled shout told them to go away before the police were called. This was pointless, that much was clear, and Thora and Bella returned to their car. When Thora was about to start the engine, there was a knock on her window. Johanna stood outside, and Thora rolled it down.
‘I told you this was a bad idea,’she said reproachfully. ‘Now I’ve got to spend what’s left of the weekend calming her down.’ She hugged herself as if she felt cold, though it was unusually warm outside. ‘She’s not herself,’she said. ‘She’s not usually like that.’
Thora nodded. ‘I understand, don’t worry about it,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry to have troubled you, and we wouldn’t have come if I had thought it would go like that.’ This was a white lie, since Thora had expected precisely this reaction.
Johanna stood outside the car shuffling her feet, clearly holding onto something she wanted to say.‘What was in the diaries?’ she asked suddenly. ‘I’ve changed my mind, I want to know.’ She hesitated for a second and straightened up. ‘That is, if they said something about Father.’
‘I’ve been meaning to let you know, but unfortunately I got caught up in other things,’ said Thora, reproaching herself for not having tried harder to get in touch with the woman.
‘I called once but there was no reply.’ She smiled at Johanna.‘The good news is there was nothing bad about your father in the diary.’
Johanna nodded. It looked as if tears were forming in her eyes. ‘Good,’ she said, and smiled.‘Good.’
‘There were various other things that I wanted to talk to your mother about, though. For example, there are a number of inconsistencies about where Alda was after the evacuation.’Thora raised her hand to block the sun, and looked into Johanna’s eyes. ‘She wasn’t a boarder at Isafjordur Junior College,’ she said. ‘She was never registered there.’
‘Yes, yes, she was,’ protested Johanna. ‘I swear it. My memory can’t have failed me that badly.’
‘Did you ever see her there?’asked Thora. ‘Did you go to visit her, or did she come home for the holidays?’
Johanna seemed to consider the question. ‘I actually don’t remember any visits to her.’ She brightened. ‘Oh, yes, mother went at least once, maybe more.’
‘But Alda never came home? There are all kinds of breaks when you’re at college, long and short,’ said Thora, trying to keep her voice upbeat. ‘You lived in the Westfjords, not so far away. You’d think she would have come to see her parents now and then. Didn’t she?’ She could tell from Johanna’s expression that Alda hadn’t come home, not for a long or a short break. ‘Could Alda have been in hospital?’ she asked carefully. ‘Did she have any kind of nervous disorder, perhaps?’
‘Not to my knowledge,’ said Johanna, any happiness she had Displayed at the contents of the diaries now drained from her face. ‘I might not have been told, since I was so young,’ she added sadly.
‘I don’t have evidence of any illness,’ said Thora. ‘I wanted to ask your mother about it. But I do know for certain that Alda wasn’t in Isafjordur as people suggest, at least not at school there.’
‘What else did you want to ask Mother about?’ asked Johanna. She seemed angry now, but not with Thora. ‘Maybe I can get her to talk. I’ll ask her about the school, at least.’
‘One of the things I wanted to know, which also concerns you, was whether Alda ever said anything to either of you about being opposed to the excavations. That would help Markus,’ said Thora. She didn’t tell Johanna why Alda wouldn’t have wanted Markus’s house to rise from the ashes.
‘She didn’t,’ said Johanna, shaking her head. ‘Not to me, at least. She might have said something to our mother. Mother and I have a lot to discuss. Is there anything else I might need to know?’
Thora told her about the peculiar entries in Alda’s diary. She decided not to mention what she knew about the rape case, and instead asked whether Johannahad heard Alda talk about it. ‘Did she ever mention a man by the name of Adolf to you? Or his parents, Valgerdur and Dadi?’
‘I’ve never heard them mentioned.’
‘You aren’t familiar with them from your childhood?’ asked Thora. ‘I had the impression they were friends of your parents for a time. They were from the Islands, and they also moved to the Westfjords – to a farmhouse near Holmavik, I think. The woman was a nurse.’
‘We lived in Bildudalur,’ said Johanna. ‘It’s a long way from Holmavik. I’ve never heard of these people. Not that I remember, anyway.’
Thora took out the picture of the young man, which she had wanted to show to Alda’s mother. And do you recognize this man at all?‘ she asked.
Johanna took the piece of paper.‘Is this a photocopy?’ she asked, and Thora nodded apologetically. Johanna held it by its edge and peered at the subject. ‘No,’ she said, handing it back. ‘I feel like he’s familiar somehow, but I don’t know who he is.’
‘Do you know what it is about him that looks familiar?’ asked Thora hopefully.
Johanna scratched behind her ear. ‘I have a feeling he looks a little like my cousin, but that’s silly.’ She dropped her hand. ‘No, I’ve never seen this man.’
‘I can assure you that I would remember if my father-in-law Magnus had said anything about people’s heads getting cut off,’ said Maria, drawing herself up to her full height and trying to look down at Thora. Thora, however, was taller than her, and her chair had thicker cushions, which increased their height difference. The two of them sat in the front room in Maria and Leifur’s house, where Thora had been invited after a drawn-out telephone negotiation with Leifur concerning the wisdom of telling the police about the pool of blood and his father’s possible involvement. In the end Leifur had agreed to meet up for the sake of his brother, as Thora had repeatedly suggested, and had taken it upon himself to tell his mother Klara about the developments in the case. Thora was enormously grateful not to have that job, since she could get nothing out of the old woman. She seemed determined to hide from Thora anything that could be considered unfavourable to her husband. Thora was also relieved that Leifur kept himself at a distance, since it was enough to deal with one irritated person at a time. Maria, however, had been no happier than Leifur with the suggestion that her father-in- law might have been linked to the case.
Now Thora smiled icily at Maria.‘That may be,’ she said. ‘But you know,there’s a
