Yrsa Sigurdardottir - Ashes To Dust

Thóra raised her eyebrows;‘murdered’ was a bit extreme for a medical error. ‘I do know about that, yes.’

‘You’ll remember that his mother died when she was given a large dose of penicillin, even though she was allergic to it,’ interjected Svala. ‘I’m about to reach a settlement with the hospital, compensating Adolf for their mistake.’

Thóra was already aware of all this.‘I understand that you brought a lawsuit against the hospital,’ she said patiently, ‘but why don’t you carry on telling me about Alda?’

‘The thing is, I didn’t want anything to get in the way of me getting the compensation, so that’s why I wasn’t pleased about Alda harassing me,’ said Adolf. ‘After the first phone call she seemed to give up, so I just stopped worrying about it. But then she started calling me again a few months later, and even though she didn’t sound quite as crazy this time she was basically spouting the same old rubbish underneath it all. I didn’t want to hear it, which is why I hung up on her. I stopped answering the phone even after she said she had information that could help me, and kept apologizing over and over for having wrongly accused me.’ He closed his eyes. ‘Once I humoured her and said I’d meet her at a cafe, but then I changed my mind. I have no idea if she showed up or not.’

‘Was that shortly before she was murdered?’ asked Thóra.

‘Yes. Something like that,’replied Adolf mysteriously. ‘I actually saw her several days before she died. She came to my house all smiles and apologies, like I said. I let her talk, then gave up and threw her out. She never called again, and I thought she had finally got the message that I didn’t want anything to do with her. Then I saw the obituary in the papers a few days later.’ He smiled nastily. ‘The phone calls stopped automatically, in other words.’

‘Have you ever been to Alda’s house?’ asked Svala anxiously. Then she added: ‘Don’tsay anything if you have.’

‘No, I’ve never been to her house and I have no idea where she lives,’ replied Adolf.

‘Lived,’ Thóra corrected him. ‘She’s dead, as we know.’ She took a deep breath before continuing. Hopefully this would lead to something useful rather than just ending up as a lesson in the psychology of self-obsessed individuals.‘Why was Alda so interested in you and this case?’ she asked again.‘Was it because of your parents?’

Adolf grinned at her. It was as if he suddenly realized that he alone had information that Thóra needed. He seemed determined to make the most of it. ‘You’re in luck,’he said, staring at her. ‘I wouldn’t be telling you this if Alda had died penniless.’

‘In that case, it’s certainly lucky that she didn’t,’ said Thóra, unsmiling. ‘And are you ever going to get round to telling me, or not?’ She wasn’t going to jump through hoops for him. The police would squeeze it out of him if necessary.

The corners of Adolf’s mouth drooped.‘Of course I’ve only got her word for it,’ he muttered.‘It might be bullshit.’

‘We’ll let others be the judge of that,’ said Svala. ‘Tell her what Alda said.’

‘Okay,’ said Adolf, shifting in his chair to face Thóra. ‘She said she was my mother.’ He looked away again. ‘I’m not the person I thought I was.’ Then he added nonchalantly: ‘If it is true then I’m her natural heir, of course, so I don’t care which of them was my mother. I can inherit from both of them.’ He shot a sideways glance at Svala.‘It’s a win-win situation,’ he said with a grin.

Thóra stared at his swarthy features and pictured Alda, blonde and fair-skinned. Two less similar people were hardly possible to imagine. Had Alda been out of her mind? She didn’t have any children: the autopsy report had even stated clearly that she’d never given birth. Thóra’s mind was racing, there were so many questions. Could Alda have donated her eggs to Valgerdur, making Adolf a test-tube baby? She couldn’t remember when such technology had first made it to Iceland, but it seemed doubtful that it had been available in the 1970s. If Alda were this man’s mother, who could the father be? Markus? Did this mean Valgerdur Bjolfsdottir did not raise Adolf? And if not, where was the son she raised?

Adolf was born on 27 October 1973, so it wasn’t hard to estimate his conception at some time around the eruption in January. Could Alda be his mother? After the meeting with Svala and Adolf, Thóra immediately called Litla-Hraun Prison in the hope that Markus would shed some light on Adolf’s assertion. She had no idea what Markus was thinking as she told him the story; he hotly denied that it was possible, but then had to admit that Alda had dropped off his radar for precisely the same period as the alleged pregnancy, and actually rather longer, since she wasn’t seen for almost a year. He repeatedly expressed his shock at‘this bullshit’ and wondered aloud who could possibly believe that Alda would have kept this a secret from him. Thóra wasn’t as convinced as him, and knew that at least one other person knew the truth of the matter: Alda’s mother. She hurried to finish her conversation with Markus but was careful to promise him that they would meet before the district court made its decision on the custody extension. She reassured him that everything pointed towards that decision going his way. Markus was obviously nervous and reluctant to end the conversation, but Thóra finally managed to calm him down and hang up.

Before she tried to talk to Alda’s mother, she had to clear up one thing. Was it possible that Alda had actually had a child, even though the autopsy report stated that she’d never given birth? Thóra called Hannes. As she scrolled down to his number she smiled to herself. Since the divorce, this was the second phone call in a row which was not about the children. It was a record. ‘Hi, Hannes,’ she said when he finally answered. ‘I know you’re at work so I’ll keep this short. Is there any way a woman could have delivered a child, even though her autopsy report says she never gave birth?’

After a drawn-out explanation Hannes finally answered Thóra in layman’s terms. The autopsy clarified whether a child had exited through the birth canal; a woman’s vagina and other reproductive organs were inspected, especially if death hadn’t occurred naturally. A woman could have a child without there being any sign of it in the vagina, if she had a Caesarean section, but that would also be evident in an autopsy, from scarring in the stomach and uterus.

‘The report didn’t mention scars from a Caesarean section,’ said Thóra. ‘Although she had had breast enhancements. Could surgery like that erase traces of a birth?’

Hannes said that he was no specialist, either in plastic surgery or forensic pathology, but thought that such scars could be removed as part of a plastic surgery procedure. But that didn’t explain why there had been no scars on the uterus wall.

‘Is it possible that the doctor simply overlooked it?’ asked Thóra. ‘The autopsy wasn’t primarily concerned with whether she’d had a child.’

Hannes wouldn’t comment on that, no matter how hard Thóra pressed him. She said goodbye, feeling no closer to the truth. However, it clearly wasn’t out of the question that Alda had given birth, so Thóra decided to go ahead and try to arrange another meeting with Alda’s mother. If Adolf were Alda’s son, it would explain a lot: her reaction when he was accused of rape, and the picture of him in her desk.

Thóra’s only hope of getting to Alda’s mother was to go through Jóhannaagain. The woman would have no more desire than before to meet someone representing the suspect in her daughter’s murder. However, Thóra had to hurry; she needed to be finished before Markus’s custody hearing at two that afternoon.