Yrsa Sigurdardottir - Ashes To Dust

Pleased with her noble thoughts, Dís sat down and started to scrutinize Alda’s desk and computer. It didn’t occur to her that such a thing was inappropriate. She owned the company that owned the computer, like everything else in the office, and if Alda kept any secrets that she wouldn’t have wanted to come out at work, then it was best if it were Dís who uncovered them. Agúst was a gossip and the receptionist, at best, a simpleton. Both of them lacked the maturity to respect others’ privacy.

As the computer was firing up, Dís looked through Alda’s desk drawers. In the top drawer the stationery had been so tidily arranged that Dís wouldn’t have been able to recreate the layout if her life depended on it. In Dís’s top drawer everything was a jumble: pens, paperclips, stamps and anything else that ended up there for want of its own particular place.

The other two drawers had little in them, although there were some files that Dís had trouble understanding. Among them was the autopsy report of an older woman who had died in the hospital in Isafjördur. She skimmed through it and could see nothing in it connected to Alda or to her work in the office. She didn’t recognize the woman’s name, and when the computer was ready she tried running it through their database. The woman hadn’t been one of her or Agúst’s patients. She shrugged, assuming the woman was a relative or friend of Alda’s, although the age difference between them did not suggest the latter. Dís put the report on the table so it wouldn’t end up in a box with other things for disposal or storage. Maybe she could find an explanation for this somehow. The death had occurred quite recently, so perhaps it would help explain why Alda had killed herself. Dís suppressed a shudder at the thought that the cause of death might be something other than suicide. Although suicide was awful, there were many things worse, and Dís wouldn’t hesitate to share any information that supported Alda’s having died by her own hand.

The drawer also contained a photograph of a young man Dís did not recognize. The photo was very artistic, and the subject clearly wasn’t aware of the photographer. He sat slouched on a chair, looking out into space, solemn but not scowling. He had the look of someone who wasn’t scared of anything. Dís couldn’t tell where the photograph had been taken, as all you could see was the man, a yellow wall and the chair, but something made him look very distinguished. Before Dís put the photo down she frowned and tried to figure out what it was she found so attractive about him. She couldn’t, but wondered whether Alda had kept this photo because she felt the same.

She shut the drawer and turned to the computer, smiling when she saw what Alda had chosen as her desktop wallpaper. It was a kitten that had been photoshopped and now smiled idiotically at her with a set of human teeth. Dís thought she’d have nothing against owning a kitten if it were possible to make it look like that, and idly wondered whether she could use her expertise to do the work. She was obviously tired after a long day.

She quickly gave up reading through the files on the computer, which were countless. After opening several at random she found nothing that drew her attention, so she went online and out of curiosity checked which pages Alda had bookmarked as favourites. As she read the list her mouth dropped open in amazement.

She clicked on one link after another in the hope that they wouldn’t be what their names suggested, but unfortunately they were. A succession of pornographic sites popped up. Dís gaped. Alda had been a completely different person than she appeared. Could this be connected to her work at the A &E, and the rape cases that they sometimes had to deal with? The more Dís saw, the clearer it became that this explanation didn’t hold up. Here she saw the entire spectrum of sexual relations: sado-masochism, homosexuality, conventional sex between a man and woman, and numerous other variations. Dís breathed easier when she had ascertained that children were not included. What had Alda got herself into? Was this the reason she wasn’t in a steady relationship: that she didn’t know what she wanted?

She logged off the Internet and felt almost abused herself, although it had been her choice to look at the material and she had known what she was getting into. It wasn’t the contents of the pages that upset her so much as the fact that she’d looked through a door into a part of Alda’s world that she hadn’t known existed. Ugh, it would be very difficult to write the obituary now, and Dís cursed herself for not having even started it. She exhaled and considered whether she should just leave well enough alone and turn off the computer. But curiosity overruled her better judgement, and she went into Alda’s email. She vowed to herself she wouldn’t open any message that could possibly be connected to Alda’s sex life, but she allowed herself to arrange the messages according to the senders and recipients in order to see what had gone on between Alda and the people she knew.

Messages from Agúst were at the top of the list, and Dís only had to open a few of them to realize what had been going on. She leaned back in her chair. The websites were nothing compared to this. She fervently hoped that whatever this Thóra Gudmundsdóttir wanted, it didn’t have anything to do with this.

The booklet about rape was certainly informative, but it did not hold Thóra’s interest for long. There was no other reading material in sight, and after rearranging everything in her handbag there was nothing else for Thóra to do. She was sitting with her legs crossed in an uncomfortable chair in an empty hallway in the old City Hospital, and had started to swing her feet to and fro in boredom. She couldn’t read the booklet a third time. Hannes had arranged for her to meet a nurse who had known Alda, but the problem was that the woman wasn’t certain when she could get a break and had suggested that Thóra come and take her chances.

Thóra was about to give up when she heard footsteps approaching. A middle-aged woman in a white gown and matching trousers came around the corner. She held a stack of papers tightly to her chest. The woman slowed down as she approached Thóra.

Are you Thóra Gudmundsdóttir? I’m Bjargey. Sorry to make you wait,‘ she said, extending her hand. She wore no rings and her nails were clipped tidily short. ’I was in a meeting that I thought would never end.‘ She pointed with her chin towards the door next to Thóra. ’We can sit down in there. It’s in a terrible mess but at least it’s quiet.‘

Thóra had certainly had no shortage of quiet in the last forty minutes, but she smiled and stood up.‘Fine,’ she replied. ‘I won’t take too much of your time.’

They walked into a little office and the nurse turned on the light with her elbow. ‘It’s my understanding that you worked with Alda Thórgeirsdóttir and might be able to help me,’ said Thóra after they’d sat down.

‘Yes, I can try,’ replied the woman calmly. ‘There are of course limits to what I’m allowed to talk about, but since I don’t entirely know what this is regarding, we’ll just have to see whether I can help you or not. I should probably point out that I’m meeting you as a favour to Hannes. We work together a lot.’

‘I fully understand, and I’m very grateful to both of you,’ replied Thóra. ‘I’m not fishing for information about patients or anything else here in the hospital, but I’m looking for someone with whom Alda might possibly have discussed personal things.’ She levelled her gaze at the woman. ‘Alda left behind secrets that can’t be bottled up any longer. My hope is that she trusted someone with them, possibly a colleague of hers.’