Yrsa Sigurdardottir - Ashes To Dust

‘Do you know what it is about him that looks familiar?’ asked Thóra hopefully.

Jóhanna scratched behind her ear. ‘I have a feeling he looks a little like my cousin, but that’s silly.’ She dropped her hand. ‘No, I’ve never seen this man.’

‘I can assure you that I would remember if my father-in-law Magnus had said anything about people’s heads getting cut off,’ said Maria, drawing herself up to her full height and trying to look down at Thóra. Thóra, however, was taller than her, and her chair had thicker cushions, which increased their height difference. The two of them sat in the front room in Maria and Leifur’s house, where Thóra had been invited after a drawn-out telephone negotiation with Leifur concerning the wisdom of telling the police about the pool of blood and his father’s possible involvement. In the end Leifur had agreed to meet up for the sake of his brother, as Thóra had repeatedly suggested, and had taken it upon himself to tell his mother Klara about the developments in the case. Thóra was enormously grateful not to have that job, since she could get nothing out of the old woman. She seemed determined to hide from Thóra anything that could be considered unfavourable to her husband. Thóra was also relieved that Leifur kept himself at a distance, since it was enough to deal with one irritated person at a time. Maria, however, had been no happier than Leifur with the suggestion that her father-in-law might have been linked to the case.

Now Thóra smiled icily at Maria.‘That may be,’ she said. ‘But you know,there’s a difference between remembering something and talking about it. None of you seems to have had much interest in informing me of some very salient facts.’

Maria had twisted her hair up into a bun, which didn’t suit her. ‘You understand why we have little interest in seeing an old man hounded by the police. It could finish him off. This is just an old story, no one knows what’s true or false.’

‘But what about Markus?’ asked Thóra. ‘You can’t expect him to take the blame to protect his father?’

‘Yes, actually, I can,’ said Maria, almost petulantly. ‘If it were up to me, Maggi would be kept out of it and Markus would be found not guilty. They’re not going to throw an innocent man into prison.’

‘It wouldn’t be the first time,’ said Thóra, but she resolved to avoid arguing with the woman over the situation between father and son. Maria was obviously fond of the old man, as anyone could see from the way she looked after him. ‘I don’t know if you realize that though this case may be connected to the blood on the pier, that’s not to say that Magnus killed them. If you help me, I might be able to prove that.’

Maria fidgeted for a moment in her seat while she appeared to digest this. She crossed her legs and then re-crossed them. The balls of Thóra’s feet began to ache in sympathy again,the woman’s stilettos were so high. ‘I can say with a clear conscience that Magnus has never mentioned a severed head,’ she said eventually. ‘What little he says now is all about the past, but he has never spoken about either a bodiless head or a headless body, let alone whole corpses. I believe that’s because he had nothing to do with this.’ Her head drooped sadly. ‘Whether you believe it or not, Magnus was a wonderful man. When I came here he was the only one who understood me, and very often supported me in my disagreements with Leifur and my mother-in-law. They always knew better than me about everything, be it child-rearing, cooking, politics, buying a car, or anything. Magnus took my side; he realized how lonely I was.’

‘I don’t doubt that Magnus is a fine man,’ said Thóra. ‘I came to you simply in the hope that he had said something that could help me in my search for the guilty or innocent parties. He wouldn’t need to have said it recently; he could have said something a long time ago that was strange or indecipherable.’Thóra looked imploringly at Maria. ‘If you could just try to remember anything like that.’

Maria smiled. ‘Strange or indecipherable,’ she echoed. ‘It would be easier to remember the sensible and coherent things Magnus has said since the start of his illness.’ She shook her head. ‘Naturally his condition has worsened a great deal in recent years, but even before that he wasn’t making much sense. Of course he talked more back then, and understood more; but still, what he said had very little to do with what was happening around him. I could be talking about the weather and he would be on about fishing equipment, or something just as unrelated.’

‘Do you remember if he ever said anything before like what he was trying to say to me?’ asked Thóra. ‘About Alda, or a falcon?’

‘Yes, actually he did,’ said Maria. ‘I don’t see how it relates to this, but he’s often mentioned birds. Especially falcons.

He used to sit at the window – actually he still does – for hours at a time, looking out. If a large bird flies by, he often asks me if it’s the falcon. I always say yes, because I think that’s the answer he’s hoping for.‘Maria glanced at the window of the front room where they were sitting. A handsome seagull flew past, as if to order. She cleared her throat delicately and continued. ’He hasn’t mentioned Alda very often, and there wasn’t any way for me to understand what he meant when he did, since I didn’t know who she was until recently. I thought he was talking about a relative, or even a childhood sweetheart of his.‘

‘What did he say about her?’asked Thóra. ‘It might make more sense in the light of everything that’s happened.’ She decided not to ask more about the falcons; any ties this bird had to the case were tenuous at best, and it was more important to hear what Maria had to say about Alda. ‘Has he ever said anything clearer about “the poor child”? Anything clearer about difficulties in her youth, stuff like that?’

Maria shook her head. ‘It’s been quite a while since he’s mentioned Alda, so of course I don’t remember it word for word. When he mentioned her name it was always in connection with some sorrow or drama that he never explained properly.’ Maria squinted thoughtfully. ‘Something about making a sacrifice, and how such a thing was sometimes justified. Once or twice I tried to ask him more about it, since it sounded more interesting than his endless stories about sailing and the fishing company, but he always went back into his shell immediately and clammed up. It was actually as if he hadn’t realized he’d been speaking out loud until I responded.’

‘And it never came out what sort of sacrifice he was talking about?’ asked Thóra. She couldn’t ask if the sacrifice had something to do with the head, since Maria had been so adamant that Magnus had never mentioned it.

Maria shook her head. ‘No, never. Whoever she was, she’s stayed longer in his mind than a lot of other things in his life. Actually, he mentioned spirits – I mean alcohol – once or twice in direct connection with the sacrifice. I doubt that this Alda ever had anything to do with liquor, so it’s probably not related to the sacrifice, if there ever was any sacrifice.’

‘Spirits?’ asked Thóra. Hadn’t the friendship between Kjartan the harbour-master and Gudni fallen apart because of something to do with alcohol? ‘What did he say about spirits?’

‘If I remember correctly it was something along the lines of the spirits making it even, and did I agree? Of course I just said yes, told him they definitely balanced it out. That seemed to cheer him up,’ said Maria, shrugging. ‘But as far as the“sacrifice” is concerned, I should probably mention that when I realized who this Alda was it occurred to me that she had sacrificed her relationship with Markus, but I’ve never been able to think of anything that might require such a sacrifice.’