mention the information that has recently come to our attention, we no longer consider Markus to have had a hand in that.’
Stefan’s tone made it clear that he disagreed with this position. He was just as convinced of Markus’s guilt as before, but the police department’s lawyer had probably made the decision and informed him that there was no way to corroborate his suspicions. It seemed clear to Thora that the new information Stefan had mentioned had come from the plastic surgeon, Dis. According to Bragi, after their meeting he and Dis had gone together to the police station, where the doctor had told the police some facts pertinent to the investigation.
‘What information was this?’
‘As your client is no longer a suspect in Alda’s case, that is none of your business,’ said Stefan.‘Now he’s only a suspect in the small matter of the bodies found on the Islands.’
‘Do you mean you’re going to overlook what I found out about them?’ snapped Thora.
‘We don’t see that these details of yours make much of a difference,’ said Stefan.‘We’d already received information about some of them from Gudni, including the mysterious pool of blood. Even if Markus’s father was involved, that doesn’t preclude Markus playing his own part in it.’
‘I don’t understand your reasoning,’ said Thora, feeling her spirits start to sink.‘There’s no indication that Markus isn’t telling the truth about the head in the box, and what little evidence has come to light seems to point to other people.’
‘Your man is involved in the case, whether you like it or not.’
‘Do you even know who the dead men were? Even if you’re in no hurry, it’s in my client’s interests that the case be resolved quickly.’
‘Yes,’ said Stefan, without appearing to register Thora’s jibe. ‘They were the crew of a boat that disappeared off the coast of Iceland in January 1973. We sent X-rays of the teeth abroad and all the men have been identified.’
‘What?’ said Thora.She recalled what she had read about two shipwrecks in Our Century, one with a crew of Icelanders and Faroese and the other a crew of four British men, one of whom had been found. She had ruled out both incidents, since they didn’t seem to fit. ‘Which boat was it, and when did it sink?’ she asked.
‘I see no harm in telling you that,’ said Stefan, and she heard him rustling some papers.‘It was a fishing smack named the Cuckoo, and it was seen last on the eighteenth of January 1973 off the south coast.’
Thora sat silently, her mind reeling. Magnus had mentioned a cuckoo but she had not made the connection, the vessel’s name from the Our Century article forgotten. ‘I read an old news report about it,’ she said. ‘It said the body of one of the four-man crew had washed up on shore, along with some other wreckage. If the bodies in the basement are the rest of the crew, then this begs the question: who did the head belong to?’ Could it be that there was no connection between the three bodies and the head in the box after all?
‘There’s no doubt about who the fourth man in the basement was,’ said Stefan. ‘Body parts were washed ashore, among them a torso. Its head was missing, and it was thought at the time that it had been torn off by the force of the wreck. The body was in terrible condition and it was missing more than just the head: an arm was gone, and also the body part that was found along with the head.’He cleared his throat. ‘That is to say, in its mouth.’
Thora knew which body part he meant. She was struggling to understand what this new information meant for Markus. The crew had vanished before the eruption, while he was still in the Islands. But she couldn’t see how Stefan and his colleagues would prove any link between them and Markus. This must have been the boat that stopped at the Islands on the night Markus was at the school dance, then at home in a drunken stupor. ‘Did these men have any connection to alcohol smuggling?’ she asked.
Stefan hesitated. ‘Yes…you could say smuggling plays a part in this story,’ he said. ‘How did you know?’ She told him about the alcohol smuggling case, and her suspicion that it was connected to the murders. She also mentioned that she’d already told Inspector Gudni Leifsson about it. Stefan, however, didn’t appear to think this significant. ‘No, it didn’t have anything to do with liquor smuggling,’ he said.‘These men were stealing birds, and searching for nesting sites before the spring.’
‘Bird smuggling?’ said Thora. ‘Birds of prey, like falcons, maybe?’
‘Yes, falcons and eagles, and probably some other species I don’t know about,’ replied Stefan.‘I know it’s possible to get huge sums for them abroad. At the time, the police had been informed that these men were travelling through the country asking about nesting sites. It seems likely that they planned to return in the summer to steal eggs and hatchlings. If they hadn’t sailed away when they did, they would at least have been brought in for questioning. We think the scars on their hands were caused by raptors’ claws. They’d been doing it for years.’
‘Do you know if they had any falcons, or other birds, with them?’ asked Thora, and told Stefan about Magnus’s repeated references to a falcon.
‘No, not as far as I know,’ he replied. ‘But you know you can’t take much of what Alzheimer’s patients say seriously.’
‘But it seems obvious from this that Magnus was involved,’ she said, furious at Stefan’s contrary attitude. ‘He also definitely mentioned a cuckoo, so he was probably talking about the boat.’
‘I’m not going to get into that. Of course we will investigate all potential leads, but your man isn’t getting out just because his father blurts out something so open to interpretation, which may or may not be linked to the case.’
‘So you’re not going to investigate Markus’s father, or Dadi? I know one of them is senile and the other dead, but there’s nothing preventing you from changing the focus of your enquiry.’
‘Of course we’re following every lead, as I said,’ replied Stefan. ‘Among other things, we’re examining the knife and the salmon priest you found in the basement, although it’s too early to know what they will tell us. So there’s no point making snide comments about our working methods. On the other hand, nothing has been discovered that proves your client is not involved. Far from it. He’s the only one behaving suspiciously. For example, he denies having put the head there.’
‘You know his explanation for that,’ fumed Thora. ‘An explanation from which he has never deviated, despite countless interrogations and now solitary confinement.’
‘That may be because he knows no one can confirm or deny it,’ said Stefan. ‘And it may be that he himself orchestrated that convenient state of affairs.’
Thora didn’t feel like responding to these insinuations. Markus had an alibi for Alda’s murder, and besides, Dis’s information directed the spotlight away from him. It didn’t actually matter how convinced Stefan was of his guilt: no judge would be persuaded that Markus had murdered her.‘Obviously I will object vigorously to your request for an extension of custody,’ she snapped. ‘For your sake, I hope you have more than just your opinion to bring to the table tomorrow.’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Stefan.‘Whatever you say. See you tomorrow, bright and early.’
Thora did not respond to this asinine comment, taking her leave and hanging up. She had allowed her anger to show in her voice, and felt a little bit better. This was not shaping up to be the cosy TV evening with her daughter she’d hoped for. It also looked as though she wouldn’t be finished with the case before Matthew arrived. Thora stood up and started to scrape together the files that she needed to go over to prepare herself. Hopefully she could work on the case at home without upsetting Soley. If not, she would wait until her daughter had gone to bed and work on it late into the night. Lately her relationship with her daughter had been characterized by too many broken promises. She was torn from her thoughts about Soley by the realization that she was supposed to call Markus’s son, Hjalti. He simply moaned ‘No’ when Thora told him about the police’s decision, then she could hear his rapid breathing. ‘I should remind you that even though the police are still pursuing this, there’s nothing to say that the ruling will go their way,’ she tried to assure him.
‘Yes, there is,’ said Hjalti, sounding petulant – more like a small child than a young man.‘They’re going to torture him into confessing.’
