Yrsa Sigurðardóttir - The Silence of the Sea

The master bedroom seemed smaller than it was due to all the furniture it contained. A cot, its bedclothes unmade, had been fitted in beside the king-size bed. Thóra squeezed between them to reach the bedside table. It didn’t take a genius to work out that it had been used by Lára; on top lay a cheap necklace and reading glasses with pink plastic frames that no man would have been seen dead in. The two drawers contained nothing of interest, only an empty pill card and some dog-eared romantic novels with pictures of muscular men embracing long-haired beauties on their covers. No bank statements.

Ægir’s bedside drawer proved more rewarding. Under some foreign magazines featuring watches and sports cars, she discovered not bank letters but all kinds of work-related papers. Conscious of their fate, Thóra felt that the couple should have used the bed for other activities besides reading love stories, car magazines and work documents. She leafed through the pile of papers in case any of them related to the family’s accounts but found nothing. Instead, she was brought up short by a drawing. It looked like the plans of a ship that bore a striking resemblance to the yacht. Summoning up a mental picture of the cabins on board, she decided that this was indeed a plan of the different decks on the Lady K . The yacht’s name did not actually appear anywhere, but the page had been badly photocopied: the drawings were at a slant and it was possible that they had been part of a larger sheet. She sifted through the rest of the papers more attentively, noticing a few other pages that struck her as odd. All contained information about the yacht’s furnishings and equipment, and it was hard to imagine why an employee of the resolution committee would have been reading them in bed. She decided to take the whole pile of papers with her to study in more detail; if there was an explanation for this, it wasn’t immediately obvious. Perhaps Ægir had been required to study the make and design of the vessel for the valuation. But in bed?

When she put her head round the door of the last room on the landing, she hit the jackpot. It had been used as a study and she glimpsed a stack of bills on the small desk beside the computer. Flicking quickly through them she found bank giros for two mortgage payments and the interest on a car loan. The balances on the three loans were higher than she had hoped, but not alarmingly so. Next she scanned the shelves where she spotted several files marked ‘Tax – home’, together with the year, and took away the most recent, which turned out to be full of receipts and bank statements.

When she went downstairs Margeir was still sitting in the kitchen. A battered wallet lay on the table and he was gazing at a photo in a clear plastic pocket. ‘Is that a picture of the girls?’ Thóra put down the file and took a seat opposite him. The chair creaked as if weakened by standing idle for three weeks.

‘Yes, the twins.’ He turned the wallet so that Thóra could see the photo properly. When she picked it up, the smooth, shabby leather felt slippery to the touch. She focused on the picture.

‘Which one of them is this?’ She pointed at the solemn little girl standing beside her exact replica, who in contrast was smiling and had slung an arm round her sister’s shoulders.

Leaning over to see, Margeir replied: ‘Bylgja.’

‘Did she always wear those glasses?’ Thóra pointed at the bright-red frames on the child’s nose.

‘Yes. They were almost identical except that Bylgja was very short-sighted. She hated wearing glasses but she was too young for contact lenses or a laser operation. Her mother went to great lengths to find a pair she was reconciled to. Cheerful, don’t you think?’ Thóra smiled stupidly and agreed. Failing to notice her odd expression, Margeir carried on talking: ‘But there aren’t many pictures of her wearing them. She generally took them off when the camera came out. That’s why I’m so fond of this picture; it shows her the way she usually looked.’

Thóra took another glance, then returned the wallet without comment. Although the photo was small and the quality poor, the red frames were beyond a doubt the pair she had found in the wardrobe on board the yacht. How on earth could they have ended up there? What was the child doing in the cupboard? Almost certainly hiding. The question was: from who?

‘I’m not wasting your time. They were there.’ Thóra stood crimson-faced behind the police officer as he rooted around in the artfully fitted wardrobe with his backside in the air. The fragrance of citrus wood did nothing to alleviate her discomfort, nor did the mirrors on the cupboard doors, which reflected her embarrassment back at her. ‘It was a red and orange cocktail dress and the glasses were tangled up in some dangly bits on the hem.’

‘Could you be mistaken about the colour?’ His voice emerged muffled from among the evening gowns.

‘No. Definitely not. I remember thinking it was hardly surprising the glasses hadn’t been spotted because they were almost the same colour as the dress. But I was preoccupied with Karítas at the time – it didn’t occur to me that they could be significant.’ He didn’t respond, merely continued to dig around among the clothes. ‘You see, I assumed the glasses must have ended up there before the yacht was repossessed.’

The officer extricated himself and rose stiffly to his feet. ‘You should have informed us immediately.’

Thóra blew the fringe out of her eyes, annoyed. It was at least the tenth time he had mentioned this since she met him by the yacht. The same went for his colleague to whom she had reported the discovery of the glasses. She missed her friend with the green eyes and suspected that this man and the one who had answered the phone were the officers he had bawled out for their oversight in relation to Halldór’s body. That would explain their conduct towards her; they must be pleased to be in a position to offload the blame onto somebody else. ‘As I explained, it slipped my mind. I didn’t work out the connection until this morning when I saw a photo of the girl wearing the glasses. She didn’t have them on in the few other pictures I’d seen of her. To give you an idea of how little importance I attached to them, I didn’t even check to see if they were still there the second time I came aboard – even though I opened the closet.’

‘You should have let us know anyway. It’s not up to you to decide what is or isn’t significant.’

‘No. You’re right about that.’ Thóra gritted her teeth and tried to keep her cool. She was aware of a throbbing behind her eyes that threatened to develop into a full-blown headache if she didn’t leave the boat soon. She was clearly not cut out to be a sailor if she was in danger of feeling seasick in port. ‘Of course, I should have rung and told you about every single thing I saw, shouldn’t I? Like the towel in the bathroom. Two towels, actually. But I forgot.’

The policeman stood up straight and although Thóra was tall, he towered over her. The cabin may have been luxurious but it had a low ceiling, which had the effect of accentuating his height and making him seem almost a giant. ‘There’s no call for sarcasm.’

‘No, sorry.’ She relaxed her jaw. If she didn’t want to ruin her good relations with the police she had better find a way to lighten the atmosphere. Better drop the matter and get to the point. ‘Anyway, I don’t understand what can have happened to the dress.’ She opened the wardrobes one after the other and peered inside, though they had already conducted a thorough search. ‘Someone must have taken it.’ She took a step back to get a better view of the one that was open. ‘I couldn’t swear to it, but now I come to think of it some of the other dresses may be missing as well.’ She rubbed off the fingerprint powder that had coated her hands when she opened the doors. A forensics officer had gone round first, taking prints from the cupboards, light switches and the chest of drawers in the cabin, in case any new ones had appeared since the initial examination of the yacht. He had also vacuumed all the wardrobes in search of biological material which might prove that Bylgja or Arna had been hiding inside them. While he was working, Thóra and the policeman had been forced to cool their heels in the corridor, exchanging small talk that became increasingly strained with every moment that passed. Perhaps that was why, once they entered the cabin, they had quickly begun to get on each other’s nerves.