Yrsa Sigurdardottir - Ashes To Dust

The report made for melancholy reading as a whole, but Thóra was pleased to read that the bodies had probably been put there after the eruption started. This was based on the discovery of traces of ash on the back of the men’s jackets – the corpses had been lying on their backs. The fine layer of ash that slipped in through the chinks in the house and covered all the surfaces in the basement could not have got in underneath the bodies after they’d been laid on the floor. In addition, there were tiny burn holes in the men’s clothing, which indicated that they’d either been alive and walking around during the eruption and been hit by the small embers that had rained from the sky during that time, or that the same had happened while the bodies were being carried to the house. No embers could have got into the basement, since its few windows had been boarded up, though fine ash had managed to slip in through all the cracks. In other words, the men had been on the move during the eruption, alive or dead. This meant, to Thóra’s great relief, that Markus could not have taken the corpses there.

When she started reading the section of the report that focused on the head, she was even more relieved. It began by describing the box Markus said had contained the head, and it concluded that the evidence indicated this had indeed been the case. Long-dried-out remains of blood and other biological matter at the bottom of the box indicated that the head had been inside. There were also no traces of ash in the hair, which was taken as an indication that the head had been enclosed in something and had not got dusty like everything else in the basement. This, too, strengthened Markus’s defence, and Thóra took a moment to mark this section in the margin. Unfortunately, analysis of the fingerprints on the box revealed nothing of significance except that only one set could be distinguished. The prints in question were recent, and at the time the autopsy report was written they had not been compared with Markus’s prints, which were not yet on file. Thóra knew that he would now be called in for fingerprinting, but was unconcerned as his prints on the box would fit perfectly with the sequence of events he had described. These were the only legible prints: any others that may have been on the box had not been deliberately erased, but rather had faded due to the unusual conditions and to the time that had passed before the box was discovered. This was unfortunate, since Alda’s finger prints on the box would have been particularly useful. These results were not considered conclusive, so the report stated that the box would be sent to a laboratory overseas that was better equipped to analyse such things. There were similar plans for the analysis of the men’s back molars. Thóra hurriedly scribbled a note to herself to remind her to phone and request that fingerprints be taken from Alda’s body if more prints were found on the box, although she imagined that would happen as a matter of course.

Then there was the head itself. Thóra still hadn’t come across anything to explain Gudni’s snide hints about Markus, so she steeled herself to find something here. The autopsy breakdown started quite innocently with notes on the age of the teeth, which indicated that the head belonged to a young man, probably around twenty years of age. Then the report turned to the cause of death, which was impossible to determine in the absence of the body. The evidence suggested the head had been removed post-mortem. This conclusion was drawn from the saw cuts, which were unnaturally even, suggesting that the man could not have been alive while they were made. Thóra looked up from her reading and wondered whether this meant that a living man, even unconscious, would have moved around while his head was being sawn off. As before, a surreal feeling came over her when she thought about the severed head. None of her law tutors at university could have thought to prepare their students for anything like this, and in fact Thóra doubted any level of tuition could have prepared her either. She kept reading. The head was thought to be male based on measurements of X-ray images of the jawbone, as well as other size ratios of the skull. In addition, stubble was still perceptible around the chin. There were no dental fillings, so no attempt could be made to determine the nationality or even the race of the head. This was bad, in Thóra’s opinion. If it had been another British man, that would suggest that the head belonged to someone from the same group of men, with whom Markus had no provable connection. Then she could easily have argued that Markus had become accidentally entangled in a serious matter of which he had no knowledge, and therefore had been ignorant of its significance when he put the box in the basement. As it was, this was not ideal.

She turned the page and read on. She hadn’t read more than two more lines when she clapped her hand over her mouth. This was what Gudni had meant. She looked up at the ceiling and drew a deep breath. The thing she had seen in the head’s mouth in the basement, and thought to be a tongue, was something very, very different.

Adolf reread the brief message he had typed before pushing send. He was lying on the sofa at home,with one eye on a golf tournament whose location and name he didn’t know He didn’t like golf, but was oddly fascinated by how boring it was on television. He stared as if hypnotized as one white ball after another was whipped into the air, vanished against the pale sky and then reappeared, bouncing and rolling along the manicured grass. Adolf wondered if he’d forgotten to turn his phone’s ringer back on when he left his lawyer’s office. But he hadn’t, and the message he’d just sent had definitely gone out.

He put down the phone, sat up on the sofa and reached for the newspaper. He had to find something to do this evening, since his friends weren’t answering his calls or texts. This didn’t really surprise him: people with jobs were usually busy on weekdays. He himself had been laid off after his arrest, and had made no effort to find himself another job. He had enough to deal with after the death of his mother. When all this trouble with the court case was over he would apply for a job somewhere else, but it wouldn’t really work right now, as it wouldn’t look good to start a new job and have to ask for time off to go to court. He opened the paper and turned to the cinema listings. If no one wanted to do anything tonight he would go and see a film. He couldn’t imagine sitting at home alone, fighting against his anxiety. Plan B was much more sensible: go to the gym and work out until he was exhausted, then go and take in one of the summer blockbusters that demanded nothing of him except that he stayawake. He wondered whether he should take his daughter along; it would do her good to get out of the house, and he would have someone to talk to during the trailers. Although he was well into his thirties he still felt uncomfortable going to the cinema alone, though it wasn’t quite as unthinkable as it had been when he was a teenager. He might have to reconsider his trip to the gym if he took Tinna along, though, since she hardly had the strength to lift her towel after a shower, much less any weights.

Fuck the gym, he could go there later. He called his daughter and she agreed to go and see a film with him that evening, her choice. There was neither interest nor uninterestin her voice, and he had the impression that she’d agreed to see him out of a sense of duty. It had always been hard for him to understand her. He had only been with her mother for one night and had never had a good relationship with her. So he didn’t know whether it was just he who had difficulty connecting to her emotionally or whether the same went for her other relatives. In truth, he suspected he wasn’t the only one. The poor girl had always had some sort of mental trouble, but it was only recently that she’d started acting so depressed that you couldn’t help but notice it. Thinking about it reminded Adolf that he still hadn’t told his lawyer about Tinna’s illness and this was probably a big mistake. Maybe he could gain the judge’s sympathy if she testified? He had always been pretty good to her, looked after her every other weekend since she was tiny -after the paternity test was performed, of course. Even though he’d more often than not left her with his parents, he’d heard that children benefited from being around their grandparents, and no harm had been done to her even though you’d be hard pushed to find another couple as boring as them.