all the light in Alda’s eyes had been extinguished, and she didn’t care about anything. In the west the three of them settled on an abandoned farm owned by Valgerdur’s relatives. The couple made sure to visit friends and relations in the surrounding area several times with Valgerdur claiming to be pregnant, to back up their story. No one suspected a thing. However, things became more complicated when it came to the actual birth. The plan was for Alda to deliver at home with Valgerdur’s assistance, but when it turned out that the placenta was blocking the birth canal they had to rush Alda to the hospital in Isafjordur. There the child was delivered by Caesarean section.
Alda had been bedridden longer than was usual, to recover from the Caesarean section but also because the site of the incision had become infected. In that time, no one had commented on how young the mother was, or expressed any misgivings as to whether she really was Valgerdur Bjolfsdottir. The staff at the hospital did notice how peculiarly the new mother behaved towards the child, appearing to care little for it and refusing to suckle it. However, it seemed as if progress was starting to be made by the time mother and child were released. The midwife who visited them in Holmavik after they’d been discharged informed the hospital that the mother’s behaviour had improved greatly, although she still refused to breastfeed. This woman was not on the hospital staff, so did not realize that the reason for this change in behaviour was that the ‘mother’ was a different person. Dadi had had no trouble keeping visitors away from the hospital, since the couple weren’t any more popular in the west than they had been in the Islands. Alda was released just over two weeks after the birth, with Dadi accompanying her and a newborn male child in her arms. She went to the farm to get her things, then left; the boy remained behind with Valgerdur and Dadi. The hospital in Isafjordur had therefore made no mistake in its drug prescription when Valgerdur was admitted there more than three decades later. In a cruel twist of fate, Alda had been given penicillin for her post-operative infection – an antibiotic to which the real Valgerdur proved severely allergic many years later.
Alda’s mother said that Alda had never spoken about the baby, not wanting to know his name or hear anything about him. Thora did not blame her for that. The child was not welcome in this world in Alda’s eyes, and it had never really been ‘hers’. It was understandable that she had shut out the whole experience and looked past it. Mind you, Thora could well imagine that as the years passed her outlook might have changed, especially when it became clear that she wouldn’t have another child. She didn’t know if Alda had found out Adolf’s name before Halldora Dogg pressed charges against him for rape, or whether she put two and two together when she found out his surname and age. Either way it must have been a great shock for Alda to discover that her only child, the son of a rapist, was as much of a brute as his father. It must have opened up old wounds. Alda must have harboured some feeling for her son, and may have suffered from guilt over giving him away. This would explain the phone calls to Adolf; first she was accusatory, then pleading. Alda had judged him severely. And when she realized who he was, she must have thought she’d failed him. Thora wondered whether that had made her want to come clean, to give Adolf the information that proved his innocence and even tell him about his origins. Adolf, on the other hand, had turned a deaf ear and refused to meet her; he thought she would jeopardize his chance of a quick buck from the hospital compensation. Now that he realized he stood to inherit from Alda, everything looked different. But it was too late for Alda.
Thora had learned while practising law not to judge others by their actions. They had all made disastrous mistakes – Alda’s parents, Dadi and Valgerdur, Adolf, even Markus himself – and none of them had realized the consequences until it was too late. Thora had seen so many inconceivable things in her work that this didn’t surprise her. Most of the missteps her client had taken could be put down to pure stupidity, but the others arose from bad choices, made more often than not in haste or desperation. Alda’s fate had been determined by people on the edge of despair, who had reacted the wrong way at the crucial moment. Thora could only pity those who were left behind and who were now staring their old sins in the face. She felt particularly sorry for Alda’s mother, who was actually a victim of circumstance. Her husband Thorgeir, Markus’s father Magnus, and Dadi and Valgerdur bore the greatest responsibility, but none of them had been given the chance to repent or atone for what they did. So that left an aged mother who many years ago had become entangled in a sequence of events beyond her control, and now had to bury her daughter.
The same went for Klara, Markus’s mother – according to Alda’s mother, she had known about the murders. It would, however, be difficult to prove this unless she confessed, and Thora doubted she would. Klara seemed to have a heart of stone, and with her son Leifur backing her up it was unlikely that she could be made to admit what she knew. Luckily, that was not Thora’s problem. She had had more than enough of this case, with all its corpses.
In the end, though, the question remained: who had murdered Alda? This was the main reason for the police’s reluctance to release Markus, despite their previous declaration that he was no longer a suspect in the case. Thora hadn’t expected them to jump for joy at her revelations, but she was disappointed at how forcefully they objected to his release. They were forced to admit that Markus had in all likelihood never been near the men in the basement. How Alda had ended up with her attacker’s head in a box would no doubt be explained later, but it had nothing to do with Markus. The unwillingness of the police to admit that Markus was no longer a suspect in Alda’s murder was fairly understandable; there wasn’t any other suspect, so it was no small matter to admit they had the wrong man in custody. Thora could feel that the unpleasant sensation in her head, which had started in the church as a faint nagging pain, was getting worse.
‘Couldn’t the woman simply have committed suicide?’ she asked. ‘Is there something that clearly suggests she was murdered? Her psychological state can’t have been good.’
Stefan looked up from the report he’d been going over and frowned. ‘The autopsy proved that she was murdered,’ he said. ‘So I have to reject such speculation.’
Thora sighed deeply. ‘One of the plastic surgeons Alda worked for contacted me about information that she wanted to give to the police. I understood her to mean that the information concerned Alda and was important for the investigation. Could some of what she had to convey shed light on the case?’ She had to pause in her questioning to raise a hand to her forehead and rub it. This dulled the pain, but the headache returned as soon as she dropped her hand. ‘Is there any new information I ought to be made aware of? I think I have the right to know, since you’re starting to direct your attention back towards my client in the case of Alda’s death.’
‘What Alda’s colleague told us changes nothing for Markus,’ said Stefan. ‘We were given information that might be significant, but at this point we can’t say whether it’s positive or negative for him.’
‘Is it possible that Alda’s murderer has ties to her work? The drug used to kill her suggests this quite strongly.’
‘Not any more,’said Stefan calmly. ‘Whoever killed her didn’t need to have access to it.’
Thora gave him an appraising look and cursed her headache under her breath. She was finding it harder and harder to concentrate. The police appeared to have discovered something about the drug that suggested it had already been in Alda’s home. Dis must have explained this to them. She settled for saying ‘I see,’ since it was clear they weren’t going to tell her anything more at this point. ‘The other thing I want to ask is whether you’re planning to speak to the victim in the rape case involving Alda’s son. She could conceivably have wished Alda harm, since she could hardly have been pleased when Alda suddenly switched sides.’
The police lawyer puffed himself up. He was wearing a dark suit that had no doubt cost a pretty penny, and seemed more than ready to appear in the district court. A wide gold ring on his left hand glittered, and Thora was sure he had polished it specially. She, however, had not had much time to get ready, and if the police didn’t drop their request for a custody extension she would have to stop by her office where she kept a white shirt, dark trousers and comfortable high heels for just such an emergency. It didn’t look very good to turn up in court dressed like a tramp, and jeans and a T-shirt hardly sufficed, even though her lawyer’s gown covered most of her. At least she didn’t have to polish a wedding ring.
‘I feel it only right that I point out to you that it is not your role to assist us in the investigation,’intoned the lawyer. ‘We are more than capable of doing our job. You should concentrate on what concerns your client.’
‘And you think it doesn’t serve his interests to find out who really killed Alda?’ retorted Thora. Her cheeks flushed, and her headache was worsening. She felt most of her anger drain away as she realized that if she were him she wouldn’t have been pleased to think she had dressed up and polished her
