Yrsa Sigurdardottir - Ashes To Dust

Alda to the case. The main body of the article was a review of everything that was already known about the case of the discovery of the bodies, but with the addition of Markus’s involvement and the case becoming a murder investigation. Surely the media would soon make the connection and drag Alda’s name into it.

Thóra felt it was important to thoroughly investigate the nurse’s role in all of this, but as soon as the media became interested in Alda, lots of doors would close. She thumbed through her notes and went over the little she’d written about Alda. She decided she ought to contact Isafjördur Junior College in the hope of tracking down her schoolfriends, speak to the plastic surgeon’s office where Alda had worked, then interview the employees of the A &E department where she’d taken evening and weekend shifts. Thóra wondered whether she should speak to a doctor there whom she knew quite well – her ex-husband – but decided not to so that she wouldn’t owe him a favour. Experience had taught her that the saying ‘an eye for an eye’ fit their relationship well.

She looked up the number of the college and crossed her fingers, hoping someone would answer. It was midsummer, so she couldn’t be sure anyone would be there. Luckily, the school’s office was open and she spoke to the secretary, who was extremely obliging.

Thóra agreed to hold while the woman went to look up Alda, in case she couldn’t get through to her again. After a long wait the woman returned to the phone.

‘Well, you know what, there was no Alda Thórgeirsdóttir registered here during the winter of 1972-1973,’ said the woman, sounding apologetic. ‘Could she have gone by any other name? These are just paper records, in alphabetical order. We were supposed to have gone paperless a long time ago but never had the time to do it, which is why I’m afraid I need to have a full name.’

‘No, I don’t think so,’replied Thóra. ‘Could she be missing from the file because she started studying there after the new year? At the end of January, after the eruption in the Islands?’

‘That wouldn’t change anything,’ said the woman, still sounding regretful. ‘Of course it’s possible that someone here made a filing error, but I find that rather unlikely. The school’s public funding is based on the number of students, so we’ve always been careful with our records. Although many things are done differently now, that’s one thing that hasn’t changed.’

Thóra thanked the woman and hung up. Had Alda gone there under another name, or did Jóhanna simply misremember which school her sister attended in the wake of the disaster? It must be the latter, since Jóhanna’s story didn’t fit in any way. Teenagers didn’t jump up a class and start a new educational level in the middle of term. Wondering who could help her unravel this mystery, Thóra concluded that she would have to speak to Alda’s mother. She would be sure to know the details of Alda’s schooling, and Thóra could use the opportunity to try to find out other information, too. In her notes she had Jóhanna’s mobile number, but when she rang to ask her to arrange a meeting with her mother, there was no answer. Jóhanna was probably at work, which meant Thóra had no choice but to try again later. She also wanted to tell Jóhanna that nothing in the diaries suggested anything out of the ordinary in Alda’s relationship with her father.

She decided to ask Alda’s childhood girlfriends again about her whereabouts following the evacuation, in case by some chance they had remembered anything further. Only two of them picked up the phone, and it was clear from their tone that they feared her telephone calls would become daily occurrences now they’d made the mistake of humouring her the first time she rang. Both of them were noticeably less friendly this time, and neither of them could remember anything beyond what they’d already told her. Both stood firmly by their assertion that Alda had attended Reykjavik Junior College, though they didn’t know when she’d started there or whether she’d completed her studies. At the end of their conversation, the first woman muttered something about being late and said goodbye without giving Thóra a chance to ask any further questions, but the second wasn’t as crafty and Thóra managed to ask her about a number of things she’d been mulling over since reading the diary entries.‘Could something have happened to Alda just before the eruption, and was she acting any differently from usual?’ asked Thóra.

‘God, it was such a long time ago,’ replied the woman, sounding as if she thought the phone call would never end. ‘If she was, I don’t remember it.’

‘No depression, irritability, nothing like that?’ urged Thóra.

‘I don’t remember anything,’ replied the woman, but then paused for a moment as if something had occurred to her. Actually, we had all ended up in a little bit of trouble the previous weekend – I’d completely forgotten about that.‘

‘What happened?’ asked Thóra anxiously.

‘Oh, just typical teenage stuff,’said the woman. ‘We tried alcohol for the first time the Friday before the eruption. We got completely wasted, and things got a bit crazy. I was grounded because of it and wasn’t supposed to go out for two months, but that fell apart after the volcano, of course.

If Alda was in a bad mood, it was probably because her parents were so angry with her.‘

‘Where were you drinking? At someone’s house?’ asked Thóra, thinking back to her own youth.

‘No, it was a school dance,’replied the woman. ‘It was actually stopped and we were all sent home, even though not everyone had been drinking.’

Thóra pressed her for more information but got little for her trouble. The kids had made plans to steal alcohol from their parents; each of them had filled a Coke bottle with whatever they could get their hands on, and most had taken small amounts of many different spirits so as not to arouse suspicion. Some strange cocktails had resulted and everything got out of control, as might be expected. The woman Thóra was talking to had got sick herself, which meant that she was one of those whose parents were called and asked to come and pick them up, vomiting and crying. Thus she had no idea if Alda had managed to get herself home, or whether she had also had to be collected. She couldn’t remember anything from the latter part of the night, because of her drunkenness. Thóra decided not to press her any further about this, but to take it up with Markus in good time. Hopefully he hadn’t been as badly affected and could remember more details.

‘There’s just one more thing and then I promise to let you go,’ she said. ‘Do you know why Alda was unhappy about her hair?’ Thóra expected the woman to be baffled, but she wasn’t.

‘Oh, that,’ she said sadly.‘That was horrendous.’

‘Did something happen to her hair?’ Thóra’s mind spun with all the horror stories she’d heard over the years about hairdressers who accidentally burned the hair off their clients with perming solution or hair bleach that was too strong.

‘It was all cut off,’ replied the woman. ‘Our class stayed over in the gym one night after our exams, before Christmas. When Alda woke up in the morning someone had hacked off her hair, presumably while she slept. They never found out who did it.’

Thóra frowned. ‘Who was there, or had access to the gym?’

‘The whole class was there, as far as I can remember. Of course there were a couple who either didn’t want to come or were off sick, but most of the kids came. There were also two teachers there, and the teaching assistant. There might have been other adults, but I don’t remember who. I would probably have forgotten it if it hadn’t been Alda’s hair. Naturally, she was hysterical, because she had particularly beautiful hair, long and blonde. It had been hacked off with scissors and it was such a mess afterwards. Of course what was left was tidied up at the hairdresser’s immediately, but it still looked pretty ridiculous. Far too short, like a boy’s.’