Fat tears leaked down the old woman’s cheeks and fell onto the dark blue shawl she wore around her neck. There they formed a spreading dark stain. ‘She was raped. By a foreigner.’ She was speaking to Johanna as if Thora were not even present.‘She went to hospital in a terrible state and she was treated there. They called us from there. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.’
Thora had no desire to hear the description of Alda after the rape.
‘And she discovered she was pregnant after the attack?’ she asked, as gently as possible.
The woman gave Thora a startled look, then nodded. ‘Yes. Fate can be so cruel, and more often than not to the most beautiful souls. She was just a girl, had maybe kissed one boy, probably not even that. She was so good and obedient that we never had any problems with her, unlike so many kids her age. Just once she does something differently, and then her world falls apart. Once.’
Johanna sat speechless next to her mother, which prompted Thora to keep the conversation going. She drew a deep breath. ‘She drank alcohol that night,didn’t she? Like all the kids?’
The old woman nodded. ‘She wasn’t the worst. If she had been any drunker we would have been called and asked to pick her up. Instead, she was allowed to walk home.’ The woman stared into her lap. ‘She knew we would find out about it, so she decided to give herself some time to sober up. She went down to the harbour, thinking the sea air would help. There she met that terrible man. He was drunk, and he had his way with her. She couldn’t offer any resistance even though she fought back as hard as she could. She was so small and delicate, my darling child.’
‘And is that monster one of the bodies in the basement?’ asked Thora, hoping that the question wouldn’t make her clam up. The woman said nothing, so Thora tried again. ‘I have a daughter myself, and I can well imagine what flies through the minds of the parents when something like this happens. The worst of it is that we can’t do anything to change it. But Markus has a son, a son who doesn’t deserve to have his father locked up for the wrong reason. For his sake, the truth has to come out.’
The woman did not look up, but somehow this seemed to move her, and when she spoke again her tone was more determined.‘When Geiri found out from Alda at the hospital who had done it, he rushed out,’ she said flatly, as if she were reciting a script. ‘I tried to dissuade him, but it meant nothing. He left me at her bedside and went and got Magnus. One for all and all for one. They caught the men down at the harbour, on their boat, which Alda had described to her father. The men were still blind drunk; there were four of them, and two of them were sleeping. Geiri went into a rage, and Maggi wasn’t much better. Geiri was completely covered in blood when he came home.’
Thora said nothing. Thorgeir, Alda’s father, and Magnus, Markus’s father, were the murderers. According to this account, Dadi had had nothing to do with it. ‘Did they use a salmon priest and a large ornamental knife?’ asked Thora, certain she knew what the answer would be.
‘No,’ said the old woman, shaking her head gloomily. ‘They boarded their own ship and fetched a filleting knife and club they had there. They threw them into the harbour afterwards.’
Thora didn’t react, although this surprised her. She had been so sure that the mallet and knife had been used. This meant there had to be another reason they were kept among the children’s clothing in the storeroom. ‘Did anyone know about this?’ asked Thora. ‘It couldn’t have happened without anyone noticing.’ She pushed down the image of the beatings that sprang to her mind. They were obviously the source of the pool of blood at the pier.
‘Dadi, Valgerdur’s husband, went after them,’ said the woman. ‘Valgerdur was on duty when Alda arrived at the hospital, and it was she who called and told us what had happened to Alda. I had the feeling she enjoyed giving us the news. Then she hung around the whole time that Alda was crying and telling us what had happened. She offered to call Dadi and get him to find the man, and that’s what he did. He stumbled on Magnus and my Geiri at the fateful moment.’
‘So Dadi was a witness to it?’asked Thora. The woman nodded. ‘And he told no one?’
The woman smiled coldly. ‘No, he didn’t.’
‘The police never heard anything about it, apart from being notified about the pool of blood the next morning?’exclaimed Thora. She had always suspected Gudni knew more than he was letting on, but it seemed she had misread him. Maybe he had been trying to hide his suspicions, not his knowledge.
‘No,’ replied Alda’s mother.‘Naturally they suspected something because of all the blood on the pier, but they didn’t find any other evidence so they couldn’t do much about it. Then the eruption started, and people had other things to think about.’
‘But what about Dadi and Valgerdur?’ asked Thora.‘I’ve been led to understand that she was quite a gossip. How were they able to keep quiet about it? Dadi was even questioned about the pool of blood. He was spotted with Magnus at the scene that night, though the police never heard about it.’
‘Dadi offered to help us,’ said the woman with a humourless laugh. ‘Two of the men had died on the boat, and they were left there. Geiri and Maggi had beaten the other two to death on the pier, then dragged them on board. The only way they could think of to hide what they’d done was to move the smack farther out in the harbour. Dadi helped them do that, thencame to see us that night – along with Valgerdur, who by then was off duty – and offered to get the bodies and the boat out of there before anyone stirred down at the harbour. Geiri and Magnus were in shock after the incident, and in no condition to clean up after themselves.’ Thora nodded in encouragement, her eyes wide. ‘Geiri phoned Maggi, who had gone home, and he came round. It was agreed that Dadi and Valgerdur would make sure no one would suspect a thing. Then they left, and I don’t know what happened next. I didn’t want to know anything else. Magnus went with them.’The woman shuddered. ‘I was in shock, though I didn’t realize it at the time. Geiri had a job but I wasn’t working, and we had two girls to take care of, one of them in a terrible state. If he’d gone to prison, everything would have fallen apart.’
‘Who cut off the man’s head?’ asked Thora. She assumed the one who’d been decapitated was the one who had raped Alda.
The woman looked at Thora in bewilderment. ‘That I don’t know,’ she said, and seemed to be completely sincere. ‘I never saw the bodies, and no one mentioned anything like that. I was absolutely staggered when they were found. But I can’t say he didn’t deserve it.’ This last was said without any bitterness or triumph, the words seeming to come out automatically.
Thora suddenly felt sure that it was Alda who had gone from the hospital down to the harbour and cut off the rapist’s head. She did not want to ask her mother about it, but it would explain how the girl had ended up with the head. ‘Could Alda have left the hospital that night?’ she asked, without explaining herself any further.
‘I doubt it. She was on sedatives. Valgerdur said she was sleeping when she went off duty. Why do you ask?’
Thora did not reply, but instead asked how the bodies had ended up in Magnus’s basement. ‘Did he help Dadi move them?’
The woman shook her head. ‘No, he didn’t. Magnus actually went back down to the harbour with Dadi to rescue a falcon he’d seen in a cage on board the foreigners’ boat, and to take any valuables they had there. The finances of his and Geiri’s company were in very bad shape. I believe he couldn’t bring himself to look into the cupboard where they’d shoved the bodies, so I’m sure he never offered to keep them at his place. The plan was to sink the fishing smack with the bodies still on board.’
‘Turns out they were bird smugglers,’ said Thora. This explained Magnus’s rambling about birds. He was still wondering whether the falcon he had freed had survived.
‘That’s what Geiri said,’replied the woman. ‘In fact on board they found a map showing some likely nesting sites of eagles and falcons. No one knows whether they already had the falcon, or whether they’d captured him on this trip. Magnus let it go that night in the hope that it would return to the wild.’
Johanna was staring at her mother. Thora couldn’t imagine what was going through her mind. Was she too angry to speak, or struck dumb with shock?
‘Why did Dadi and Valgerdur want to help you?’ Thora asked. ‘Were they not as unfriendly as I’ve been told?’
Again a cold smile appeared on the old woman’s face. ‘There’s no such thing as
