Yrsa Sigurðardóttir - The Silence of the Sea

‘No idea.’ Bella didn’t raise her eyes from the screen. The bluish glow illuminated her broad, chalk-white face, rendering her pallor more corpse-like than ever. ‘But there’s no point wasting any more time thinking about it. I’ve already told you – it’s Karítas.’

‘Well, perhaps.’ Thóra closed the cupboard and picked up her briefcase. She hadn’t told Bella what the police had disclosed about the possibility that a dead woman had been found on board. She didn’t quite trust her, though as far as she was aware the secretary had never leaked any information. In any case, the details were as yet unconfirmed, so there was no need to give Bella further grounds for believing that Karítas was dead. ‘Why are you here so early?’ Perhaps the secretary was so gripped by the case that she felt compelled to come to work before the day’s regular business began.

‘I owe money on my home Internet account.’ Bella flung Thóra a scornful look. No doubt it was meant to convey that they didn’t pay her a wage fit for a human being. But to earn that, of course, one would have to do some actual work. ‘I’ve put in a bid on eBay that I want to keep an eye on. The time’s nearly up and I don’t want anyone jumping in at the last minute and outbidding me.’

Thóra paused and turned. ‘You say you can’t afford to pay for the Internet, yet you’re always shopping on-line. If I were you I’d concentrate on paying off those little debts first.’

Bella rolled her eyes. ‘They’re not “little”.’ She fiddled with the mouse and puffed out her cheeks. ‘Look, I’m doing deals, okay? If I buy this box for the right price I can sell it on afterwards for a profit. So I’m making money, not spending it.’

‘Box?’ Thóra was puzzled. ‘What kind of box can you buy and sell for a profit?’

‘Batman Lego. Arkham Asylum.’

Thóra didn’t trust herself to repeat this. ‘How can it be an investment to buy boxes of Lego?’ Perhaps Bella had finally gone round the bend, but, then again, it was probably no worse than putting one’s money in Icelandic shares if the experience of the last few years was anything to go by. ‘Is it a collector’s item?’

Bella nodded. ‘Yes, and this bloke obviously has no idea what he’s got his hands on.’ She grinned and squinted at the eBay screen. ‘The packaging is intact, all the booklets are included and there isn’t a single piece missing. There were seven figures in the box.’

Thóra gave a tentative smile, unsure whether seven represented an unusually large or small number. ‘Good luck.’ She decided this brief insight into Bella’s world was quite enough to be going on with and went into her office. If she had found a box of Lego at home she would doubtless have handed it to Orri, probably even helped him tear open the packaging. Unable to resist the temptation, she pulled up eBay to see what all the fuss was about. When she finally managed to track down the precious box it turned out to be a real anti-climax. It consisted of a small Lego figure in a Batman costume, a selection of his enemies, and some bricks for building a house or prison. An investment was not the first thing that sprang to mind. Noticing that the auction was due to close in half an hour, she felt tempted to outbid Bella by a fraction, just for the hell of it, but didn’t have the heart. Instead, she knuckled down to work.

After spending half an hour studying the laws relating to life insurance and missing persons, and reading the Reykjavík District Court’s verdict in the case of the Icelander who had vanished from a sailing vessel, she was still unsure what to advise Ægir’s parents about how long the process might take. All she could say with confidence was that it would take time and, if no new evidence emerged, the case would probably be delayed by the court. The one encouraging sign was that the life cover had eventually been paid out in the case of the missing Icelander. If she presented sufficiently careful arguments, the same result could probably be achieved for Ægir and Lára. She rang the police to chase up the documents she’d requested and to her delight was informed that after lunch she could pick up all the papers they were currently prepared to release. However, they warned her to ring ahead to avoid a wasted journey as they were rushed off their feet and unsure when they would have time to make the copies. Before hanging up, she asked if there was any new information about the person who had been washed up on shore but was told again that they were not prepared to release a statement as yet. Well, all would be revealed eventually and in the meantime she could occupy herself by working on the letter and report for the insurance company.

The document soon filled up with a feeble attempt to explain a set of circumstances so implausible that there was a risk her letter would be dismissed as a bad joke. After wrestling for ages with a recalcitrant sentence, Thóra gave up, stood and stretched. It troubled her that she didn’t know why Ægir and Lára had insured their lives for such a vast sum. Ægir’s stepping into the breach to replace the injured crew member also struck her as highly irregular. When she had spoken to his manager on the phone, it turned out that the man had a vague memory of agreeing to the suggestion in order to cut costs, but when she pressed him for a concrete figure that she could quote in her report, he hesitated. In point of fact, the saving had been negligible; the cost of around a week’s wages for one foreign sailor, possibly with a bonus, and a flight ticket home. Ægir’s boss admitted that this was an insignificant amount in the context, and therefore an unnecessary economy. He concluded by saying what she did not want to hear; that it had been Ægir’s personal decision to make up the shortfall as he had been very keen to make the voyage. In other words, it had been his idea.

This was the weakest link in the entire case. It would have been better, from Thóra’s point of view, if Ægir had been given no choice in the matter. As it was, his decision raised the possibility that the family’s disappearance had been premeditated. If she subsequently discovered that their debts were sky high, there was a risk the circumstances would appear even more dubious, so she had better find out the worst as soon as possible. Sitting down again, she picked up the phone to Ægir’s parents and asked them if they could discover how much their son and daughter-in-law owed the bank, as well as any other financial institutions and the tax authorities. The old couple baulked at this, pleading ignorance and raising so many potential objections that in the end Thóra extracted their permission to dig out the information herself. She was unlikely to succeed as they still needed a court order to declare Ægir and Lára dead before the family would be permitted to administer their estate. As a last resort, they might have to search their house for receipts or paying-in slips. Sigrídur, who had answered the phone, received this suggestion with even less enthusiasm, and the upshot was that once again they agreed that Thóra should undertake the task. If it did come to that, Sigrídur asked Thóra to fetch more clothes and toys for Sigga Dögg because she and her husband still couldn’t bring themselves to set foot in their son’s house.

Thóra was about to fetch herself a coffee and check on the results of the eBay auction when the phone rang. ‘Some old woman for you.’ Bella’s voice was replaced by that of an older lady who introduced herself as Begga, Karítas’s mother. ‘You came round to see me, remember? You left your card in case I needed to get in touch.’

‘Of course. Hello. How are you?’ Thóra asked.

‘Oh, fine,’ the woman replied, sounding falsely hearty. ‘I just wanted to let you know that I heard from Karítas yesterday.’ Unable to think of an immediate response, Thóra allowed a silence to develop, which the woman obviously found uncomfortable. ‘You asked after her? I just thought you’d like to know.’