her eyes glued to the white blanket covering the woman on the stretcher. She didn’t move. The woman didn’t have a cold. She was dead, and with her Tinna’s hope of another, better life in which she was beautiful and adored. The woman could make people beautiful. She had said so. Tinna turned on her heel and ran away, without thinking where she was going. If she ran fast enough she could maybe go faster than her thoughts, and get rid of the uncomfortable idea that her father might have done the woman some harm. It would not have been the first time. Or else it had been the visitor who had snuck out of the house, the one whose note it was. Tinna pushed everything from her mind except for the thought that she was now burning calories. Burn, burn, burn.
‘Dead, you say,’ repeated Gudni, frowning thoughtfully. He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. His interlocutor was on the phone, so he didn’t need to hold his expressions in check, although he had been taught at the start of his career to remain as poker-faced as possible, and never to give any indication of his thoughts. For Gudni this had never proven to be especially difficult, but sometimes it was still good to be able to sit alone and allow disappointment, or more rarely, happiness, to find its natural outlet. ‘How did she die?’
‘The autopsy hasn’t been done but it looks as if she committed suicide,’ replied Stefan. It wasn’t possible to tell from his voice whether he thought this tiresome or tragic, or indeed whether it affected him at all. Perhaps such things were bread and butter for the police in Reykjavik. ‘We’ll find out tomorrow, I suppose. I just heard and thought I should let you know. I obviously didn’t go to the scene myself, so I don’t know anything more at the moment. I’m leaving tomorrow and then hopefully I’ll get some more news.’
‘Where was she found?’ Gudni asked. He would not have considered Alda likely to resort to such desperate measures, but then again he had only known her as a child and a teenager. She had had everything going for her then, both beauty and intelligence. Naturally, though, things could have changed, and perhaps her life had taken a turn for the worse. He hoped this was not the case, but if it turned out to be so, he sincerely hoped that her fate was not tied to events in the Islands long past.
‘At home,’ said Stefan.‘Her colleague found her, I understand. Went to find out why she hadn’t shown up at work.’
‘This muddies the waters of the basement case quite a bit,’ Gudni said. He paused for a moment before adding: ‘Not least because Alda now can’t verify Markus’s statement.’
‘No,’ camethe curt reply. ‘We didn’t get a chance to question her. We couldn’t reach her, but when the time of death becomes clear, we might wonder whether she was trying to escape questioning.’
‘If that were so then one would expect her to have left behind a note, or something that would clear Markus of all suspicion,’ said Gudni. ‘It would be cruel to let him take the blame if she had dirty laundry to hide. They were good friends, I understand, and it must have been clear to her that she alone could have confirmed his story. Is it possible she knew nothing about his statement and the discovery of the bodies?’
‘I have no idea,’ snapped Stefan. ‘I’ve always tried to avoid filling in the blanks with speculation at the start of an investigation. We don’t even know the cause of death. As it is, she appears to have died by her own hand, but who knows, maybe it was something entirely different – an accident, or even worse. Tomorrow we’ll search her house, and who knows what we’ll find.’
‘Hopefully not more bodies,’ said Gudni. ‘Unless maybe we find the torso that goes with the head.’ He smiled. ‘Don’t forget to go down to the basement.’ He hung up and stared at the phone on the table. None of this made any sense.
Thora put down the bag of groceries and fumbled for her mobile phone. The ring tone was muffled and she tried to remember whether she had put the phone in the right or left pocket of her jacket, or stuck it in her handbag. She finally found it in her left pocket, among coins and old VISA receipts. She saw Markus’s number on the screen and decided not to answer. He could wait until morning. She set the phone on the table and started to put away the food that she’d bought on the way home. Hannes would arrive shortly with Soley; he had come to Thora’s rescue, even responding cheerfully to her request and offering to take their daughter swimming. She hoped that this was the shape of things to come: that her relationship with her ex was finally starting to take a friendlier, more relaxed form.
Her phone bleeped. Instead of picking it up and reading the text message, Thora finished putting away the groceries and turned on the oven. She read the directions on the frozen lasagne package and threw it into the cold oven, contrary to the manufacturer’s recommendation. Ultimately it all ended up the same: the food would be warm whether she put it into a preheated oven or a cold one. Then she took her phone, went into the sitting room and threw herself onto the sofa. The message was from Markus. ‘Alda is dead. The police want to meet me tomorrow. Please call me.’‘
Thora groaned. It looked like Markus would be her client for a little longer. She sat up and dialled his number. He was either the unluckiest man in the country, or something else, something far worse, was behind all of this.
Chapter Five
Markus dragged his hands frantically through his hair. This was not the first time that Thora had sat in her office with a desperate client, so she knew how to deal with it. It was of little use to tell him everything would be all right, that he needn’t have any worries, this would soon be finished, and so on. Such talk was often far from the truth and only postponed the inevitable. They had just come from being questioned by the police, whichcould have gone worse, but it could also have gone better. Markus had responded frostily when they’d requested biological samples from him, but in the end he calmed down and gave the police samples of both saliva and hair.
‘The positive side of this, Markus, is that they asked you very little about your previous relations with this Alda. Either they think her death occurred naturally, or else they don’t suspect you of having caused it.’ She looked at him sternly. ‘The negative side, on the other hand, is that now Alda cannot substantiate your explanation of the head in the box.’
‘You don’t say,’ growled Markus.
Thora paid no heed to his sarcasm.‘Are you absolutely certain that you two never discussed this by email or in others’ hearing? For instance, your co-workers’?‘
Markus managed a company that dealt in components for ship engines and machinery, and although Thora did not understand anything about how such businesses worked, she knew it was going well and that he had several people working for him. They seemed to be very conscientious employees, because Markus appeared to be anything but indispensable, and had never had to postpone or cancel a meeting with Thora or anyone else involved in the case because of work.
‘No one heard anything,’ answered Markus determinedly.
‘Alda and I spoke mainly by phone and I do that in private. We met fairly irregularly, almost never with anyone else present, and we didn’t discuss this topic in the few instances when there were others around. And I only use email for work. I’m not one of those people who gets emails with jokes or pictures of kittens.’
It had never crossed Thora’s mind that he was. ‘And there were no witnesses to your conversations?’
Markus shook his head, disgruntled.‘No.’
‘When you told the police that Alda had rung you the night In lore we went to the Islands, they were extremely excited. Considering how much they asked you about that telephone call, it must have occurred shortly before she died.’Thora flicked through the copy of Markus’s statement that she’d been given following the questioning. ‘You said that Alda had sounded peculiar, was unusually bad-tempered and distracted, and you’d thought she’d either been anxious about your visit to the basement the next morning or that someone was with her, making it impossible for her to speak freely with you. besides that, you were driving, so you weren’t
