Yrsa Sigurðardóttir - The Silence of the Sea

‘No. But have you verified that Karítas and her PA have left Lisbon? Have you checked the flights and so on?’

The detective studied her with his strange green eyes and sucked his front teeth. The younger man contented himself with assuming an intelligent expression, as if he too were considering whether it would be right to answer her question. ‘We’ve checked that, yes. In light of the captain’s report we thought it only right to request that information, though we wouldn’t usually go to these lengths unless a person was reported missing. We were hoping to be able to rule out the possibility that one of them was the female body on board by establishing that they both travelled on from Lisbon by other means.’

‘And?’

‘The PA flew to Frankfurt the day the yacht left port, but Karítas doesn’t appear to have left the city, at least not by air.’ He clicked his tongue. ‘Though of course that doesn’t preclude other methods of travel. She could have taken the train or driven. Even left by sea, for that matter. Or, since she was within the Schengen area, flown under a different name. I don’t know how people like her live their lives; she might have used an alias. But wherever she is and however she got there, she’s no longer in Lisbon. Her mother claims to be in touch with her, though sporadically, and insists she’s alive and kicking – in Brazil. I’m not so sure; nobody by her name has flown to Brazil during the last month. We checked that as well. You’d need a passport to go there and we believe she’s travelling on an Icelandic passport as her mother is fairly certain that she hasn’t applied for foreign citizenship. As long as her mother insists she’s alive, though, there’s little we can do.’

Thóra sat back in her chair. She was convinced now that the woman found dead on board was Karítas. It was a relief to have something straight at last. But in reality she was still just as perplexed, since this only gave rise to further questions, such as who had killed her and why? And what was worse – could Ægir have been responsible?

‘Does this look like the same handwriting to you?’ Thóra held up the two pages to Matthew and watched as he examined them.

‘No. That’s pretty clear, even though one’s only a signature and the other a short text. And people often sign their names quite differently from their normal style.’ He took a closer look. ‘But these are so distinctive that it’s unlikely they could be by the same person. If I were to guess, I’d say this one was written by a woman and that one by a man.’ He pushed the papers back over to her.

It was what Thóra had wanted to hear. One of the documents was the last page of the life insurance policy bearing Ægir’s signature, the other the photocopy of the piece of paper on which an unknown individual had written Karítas’s name and phone number. ‘That’s what I thought. But then who was the woman who wrote this for Ægir? Karítas herself?’

‘Not necessarily.’ Matthew yawned. He had left work early and dropped by in the hope of persuading Thóra to call it a day. Instead, she had dragged him into her office to pick his brains about various problems that were preoccupying her. ‘It could be anyone.’

‘Like who?’ Thóra stared at the page as if she expected the owner of the handwriting to jump out at her. ‘You don’t acquire celebrities’ phone numbers just anywhere. Karítas lives abroad so she’s unlikely to be in the telephone directory, and I gather from Bella that she doesn’t have many friends in this country.’

Matthew shrugged indifferently. ‘I wouldn’t know. Maybe it was her mother. Didn’t you say she lived in Iceland?’

‘It wasn’t her. That’s exactly what occurred to me before you arrived, so I rang her. She denied having given Karítas’s number to Ægir or anyone else. She was very emphatic about it.’

‘What does it matter?’ Matthew had plainly lost interest. ‘Even if you do track down the person who wrote it, I don’t see why it’s so desperately important.’

‘Maybe not, but I’d be happier if I could be sure that Karítas and Ægir weren’t acquainted and had never spoken. If it suddenly emerges that they had met, it wouldn’t be hard for the insurance company to cast a dubious light on their connection.’

‘I don’t see why. He was working on the yacht repossession, wasn’t he? Would it have been that irregular for him to communicate with the former owners? Perhaps the note dates from when the committee was in the process of confiscating the vessel. He may have wanted to give her the option of settling or paying off part of the debt.’

‘She didn’t have any stake in the yacht, so it would have been extremely unorthodox for him to contact her about the settlement.’

‘Might she have contacted him , then? On her husband’s behalf – in the hope of talking him round?’

‘I don’t know.’ Thóra was trying to ignore Matthew’s obvious eagerness to leave. ‘Maybe Fannar has solved the mystery. I asked him to look into it and he promised to let me know. Would you mind waiting five minutes, just while I ring him to chase it up? After that I’m all yours.’

Matthew looked put out but in the end he grudgingly agreed to allow her five minutes. Not ten, mind. Or even six. Five minutes precisely. He stood up and announced that he would wait in the lobby.

As a result, Thóra’s request to be put through to Fannar came out rather breathlessly, and she was still flustered as she explained her business to him. Fortunately, he cottoned on immediately and said he had been about to ring her on the same subject. Apparently their receptionist had remembered the incident straight away, since it had involved a high-profile figure. When Karítas had rung to enquire who was handling the yacht affair, the receptionist had been unwilling to reveal the information, but Karítas had sounded distressed and claimed she needed to go on board to fetch a few personal effects that she’d left behind by mistake. As Ægir was not in his office, the woman had agreed to pass on the request to him but refused to give Karítas his name. Ægir had apparently been astonished when the receptionist gave him the message. Although she hadn’t been privy to any telephone conversation between them, she believed they must have spoken at some point because about a week later Karítas had called again, this time asking for Ægir by name. Fannar added that when the receptionist subsequently expressed curiosity about their conversation, Ægir had turned bright red and insisted that he hadn’t been in contact with her. The woman had also noticed that after the conversation with Karítas, Ægir had received two or three phone calls from abroad, which had been diverted to her when he didn’t answer his direct line. The caller had refused to leave a message, so she didn’t know what they were about, yet she clearly remembered Ægir’s odd expression each time she had mentioned them to him.

Thóra rose to her feet at the end of the phone call, glad to be leaving work early for a change but simultaneously disappointed not to be able to follow up the lead. This was yet another piece of bad news, since she now had little doubt that the mysterious body on board was Karítas and that she had died in Lisbon – at around the time Ægir and his family were in the city.

On the plus side, at least she hadn’t exceeded Matthew’s five-minute limit.

The heavens absorbed the white trail left behind by the jet. Despite its great altitude, the plane’s wings and outline were just visible, unless it was his imagination filling in the gaps. No doubt the airliner was full of people; some on holiday, others travelling for work. Ægir envied every single one of them. They were in paradise compared to the hell that reigned here on board the yacht. He shaded his eyes against the sun. It was strangely unsettling to watch the jet recede into the distance, taking with it his foolish dream of salvation coming from on high. Dropping his hand, he looked down.