Yrsa Sigurdardottir - Ashes To Dust

‘ There was blood,’ muttered the young officer, his own face blood-red. ‘There were small pools on both sides of the head, from injuries to the woman’s cheeks and neck.’

‘Oh, now you decide to tell us?’hissed Stefán loudly. ‘You maybe want me to fix the report for you? Something like that was certainly supposed to go in it! I’m so bloody amazed, I’m almost speechless.’ Various words could be used to describe Stefán’s state at that moment, but ‘speechless’was not one of them.

‘We were told that the woman’s injuries were self-inflicted. I think there was blood and skin under her nails.’ The young man straightened up. ‘I want it put on record that the doctor who came with the ambulance ruled this asuicide at the scene. It was also him who deduced this about the blood, and that’s why I didn’t feel there was any reason to write it down in the report. We proceeded with our work under the conviction that this was a suicide, since there was nothing to suggest otherwise.’ He looked curiously at his boss. ‘What exactly was discovered in the autopsy?’

Stefán scowled. ‘It appears she didn’t die of poisoning. The doctor tested her blood and stomach contents for the active ingredient in the drugs found on the bedside table. It wasn’t present in any life-threatening amount.’

The young officer raised his eyebrows.‘Then how did she die?’

Stefán had calmed down completely. He was relieved to hear that a doctor had declared it a suicide at the scene, since this mostly cleared his men of any blame for ruining the case. ‘Of course it’ll probably be necessary to conduct further tests before it’s possible to confirm it, but the doctor thought it most likely that the woman suffocated.’

‘Suffocated?’ echoed the young police officer. ‘Choked?’

Stefán shook his head. ‘It’s still uncertain. The examiner hasn’t ruled out illness as the cause, but he says he wants the home of the deceased searched better in order to determine whether a person or persons unknown might have played a part in her death.’

‘I see,’ said the young man, utterly relieved that Stefán’s disposition appeared to have returned to normal. ‘Our shift is finishing – do you want us to go back there first thing in the morning, or…?’

‘Stefán’s eyes narrowed. ’No. You’ll go now. Immediately.‘ He dared the young man to object by staring directly into his eyes. ’You’ll go over every square centimetre and then write a detailed report, as if you were investigating a murder scene. I want a copy of the report waiting for me on my desk tomorrow morning.‘ He waved his hand at the door. ’I would hurry up if I were you, before your colleagues go home – and you’re left in the lurch.‘ The younger man opened his mouth his to object, but stopped. He walked to the door. When he was standing in the doorway, Stefán added: ’Take note of all the calls to or from her home phone and her mobile. Since she probably died on the Sunday evening, calls from that particular time are naturally the most important.‘

‘Will do,’ replied the young man, with a touch of bitterness in his voice. What a fucking mess. He was tired after a long day and completely ready to throw himself onto the sofa and stare at the television. It wasn’t an attractive thought, having to comb through an entire house in search of God knows what.

‘One other thing,’ called Stefán as the door was closing.

‘Sir?’ The young man stuck his head back through the doorway.

‘I am particularly interested in knowing whether Alda called the mobile phone of Markus Magnusson that same night, and how long the phone call lasted. Understand?’

‘Understood.’

The door closed. Stefán stared at it and thought things over. He knew that he should call his colleague in the Westmann Islands and inform him of these developments, but he really had no desire to do so. It could wait. He was going to go down to the National Hospital, meet the examiner, and have a look at Alda’s body. He stood up. He had to admit it wasn’t just because of his job that he wanted to go there: the examiner had mentioned that the woman had been rather significantly enhanced – a word Stefán couldn’t understand until he got a better explanation for it. Stefán’s wife was always complaining that she wanted to get breast enhancements, so he wanted to see some for himself. Who knew, maybe he would give her the green light if he liked what he saw.

The only guests at the prizegiving that Saturday morning were the children who had won and their parents. Sóley sat between her mother and her brother Gylfi, smiling broadly. The competition had been part of the Arts Week at the City Library and involved drawing pictures of home appliances that made a family’s life easier, and Sóley had spent an entire afternoon conscientiously drawing and colouring. To Thóra’s great surprise her daughter had won; up until that point Sóley had displayed limited talent in the arts. The girl who had won in the oldest age group walked back to her seat with a little bouquet and a cheque from the sponsors of the competition, one of the largest electrical equipment companies in the country. The city librarian called Sóley, who took her place next to the woman, red-cheeked.

‘Congratulations on your victory,’ said the librarian, taking Sóley’s small hand. She pointed at the girl’s picture, which was hanging in a special display along with the other illustrations that had been entered in the competition. There were actually not very many of them, just as Thóra had suspected when she received the news that Sóley had won. ‘I have to say, this is a very artistically drawn picture of a steam iron that you’ve done,’ said the librarian as she handed Sóley a large envelope and bouquet.

Thóra knitted her brow. Why had Sóley drawn a picture of an iron? Her ex-husband had taken it with him when they separated, because none of Thóra’s clothing required ironing. She doubted that Sóley knew what it looked like, but it seemed she’d done a decent job even without a model. Thóra looked proudly from the picture to her daughter, whose cheeks were even redder than before as she stood there next to the librarian with the prize in her arms, staring at her toes. Sóley seemed on the verge of tears, but she clenched her teeth.

‘It’s a snowmobile. Not a steam iron,’ said Sóley, chewing her bottom lip.

Now it was the librarian’s turn to blush slightly, but to Thóra’s great relief she resolved the problem successfully by saying that she’d misread her notes. On the other hand, Gylfi’s burst of laughter did not help, and as they stood there afterwards in front of the picture he continued to giggle.

‘It looks exactly like an iron,’he said. ‘How did you ever get the idea of drawing a snowmobile? Do you think it’s a household appliance?’

Thóra leapt to her daughter’s rescue. ‘Of course it is. In the countryside snowmobiles count as home appliances.’ She tightened her grip on her daughter’s hand, while Sóley hung her head. ‘Don’t listen to him. He has no idea what snowmobiles look like.’ The same actually went for Sóley. ‘I’m going to buy you ice cream in honour of your win.’ She looked from the snowmobile to the other pictures. ‘Sóley. Yours is by far the most beautiful. Stands head and shoulders above the rest.’

‘No, it’s ugly,’ said the child. ‘I should have drawn a door, like I was going to at first.’

Thóra realized that she would have to explain to her daughter at a better time what the words household appliance meant. ‘There there,’ she said.‘You won and that was no accident.

You drew the most beautiful picture. Steam iron and snowmobile both start with the letter “s”.That’s why the woman got mixed up.‘ She kissed Sóley on the cheek and gave her son the evil eye, since he appeared to be on the verge of bursting into laughter again. ’Do me a favour and find me a book about the eruption in the Westmann Islands,‘ she said to him. This would get Gylfi thinking about something other than the snow-mobile-steam iron and she would benefit from reading up on the events of 1973, which she actually knew very little about. While he went to find the book Thóra used the opportunity to cheer up her daughter, although she didn’t actually smile until they were sitting down with huge glasses full of ice cream with whipped cream on top. Thóra’s mobile phone rang just as she was finishing her ice cream, but she decided not to answer for fear the world would crumble around her daughter. She changed her mind when she saw on the screen that it was Markus calling. His world truly was crumbling around him, and ice cream would do very little to improve his situation.