Yrsa Sigurdardottir - Last Rituals

A series of witness statements followed, interviews with teachers from the history department. These mostly involved how well they knew Harald, and they all said the samethey did not know him outside the university and had little to say about him. There was another question mark over a meeting at the faculty building the night Harald was murdered. It was held to celebrate a cooperative project with a Norwegian university involving a large Erasmus grant. Reading between the lines, Thora inferred that this "meeting" was more of a cocktail party that lasted well into the evening. The last guests left around midnight. None of the names were familiar to her apart from Gunnar Gestvik, the head of department, and Thorbjorn Olafsson, the professor supervising Harald's dissertation.

The final statements were taken from a barman at Kaffibrennslan and the bus driver who drove Halldor from the hospital into town.

The waiter, whose name was Bjorn Jonsson, said he had first served Halldor around one o'clock that night, then several times again within the hour and finally around two when his friends had joined him. He said he remembered Halldor well because of how fast and furiously he drank that night.

The bus driver also remembered Halldor as a passenger on his last journey. There were very few people on the bus and the two of them had struck up a conversation, discussing the state of the health system and how poorly old people were treated. As far as Thora could see, Halldor had a fairly watertight alibi. As did all Harald's friends, except Hugi.

The reports were followed by several pages of photocopied photographs taken at the scene of the murder. Although blurred and in black-and-white, they were clear enough to give a good idea of the horrific scene. Now Thora understood even better the shock of the man who found the body, and she doubted he would ever recover.

The alarm on Thora's mobile reminded her that it was a quarter to five. She hurriedly flipped through to the final section, on the autopsy. How strange, she thought, and stood up. There was nothing behind the seventh divider. The section was empty.

Thora reached the day care on time. She met the mother of one of her daughter's classmates outside in the parking lot. The woman looked at the car with its garage logo and smiled, clearly convinced that Thora had started going out with some grease monkey. Thora itched to chase after her and explain that her relationship with the mechanic was strictly business, but instead she walked straight across the school grounds. Soley went to Myrarhusaskoli in Seltjarnarnes, which was not far from where Thora worked on Skolavordustigurless than ten minutes' drive. When she divorced Hannes just over two years before, Thora had made a firm stand about keeping their house in Seltjarnarnes, even though she had had great difficulty paying for his half.

Seltjarnarnes was a small town on a peninsula off Reykjavik's western coast. The surrounding sea was the town's most distinctive feature and somehow managed to make the residents feel they were surrounded by nature, despite the closeness of downtown. It was perfect for families with children, so property there was in high demand. Thora was thankful that their house had been appraised before the surge in real estate prices started. Were she getting divorced now, she would not have had a prayer of keeping the house. Of course, this was unspeakably irritating to Hannes, who had nightmares about how much she must have made on the deal. Although she regarded the house as a home rather than an investment, Thora was pleased about the profit she made on it, really only because of how much it annoyed her ex. The divorce had not exactly been on good terms, although they tried to keep their relationship polite for the children's sake. A geographical analogy would be India and Pakistantrouble was always brewing, although it rarely boiled over.

Thora went inside and looked around the hall. Most of the children had already gone home. This did not really surprise her, and she had the guilty thought that she was not a good mother. She had followed the Icelandic traditionhave your baby, take six months off, and then reenter the rat race. Nobody stayed at home after having kids, so Thora knew that she was no better or worse than other mothers. This did not stop her from feeling bad from time to time, though. Mother, woman, maiden: the line from the old poem ran through her mind before she realized that the word "woman" hardly suited her. She had not made a single male acquaintance in the two years since her divorce. Suddenly she was seized by a great yearning to make love to a man. She gave herself a gentle shake; it was difficult to imagine a less appropriate place to think about sex. What was wrong with her?

"Soley!" the supervisor called out, noticing Thora. "Your mother's here."

The little girl, sitting with her back to her mother, looked up from the beads she was putting together. She gave a tired smile and swept a blond lock out of her eyes. "Hi, Mum. Look, I've made a heart out of beads." Thora felt a pang in her own heart and promised herself that she would pick her daughter up earlier tomorrow.

After a quick stop at the supermarket Thora and Soley finally reached home. Gylfi, her son, was already there. His sneakers had been tossed carelessly in the middle of the hallway, and his coat had been hung up on a peg beside the door so hurriedly that it had slid to the floor.

"Gylfi!" yelled Thora, bending down to put the shoes on the rack and hang the coat up securely. "How often do I have to tell you to take your shoes and coat off in an orderly fashion?"

"Can't hear you," a voice called from inside the house.

Thora rolled her eyes. He could not be expected to hear; the sounds from a computer game were overwhelming. "Turn it down, then!" she yelled back. "You'll make yourself deaf!"

"Come here! I can't hear you!" came the shouted reply.

"Oh, God," Thora muttered as she hung up her coat. Her daughter neatly arranged her own shoes and coat and Thora was dumbfounded for the hundredth time at how different her children were. Her daughter was a model of tidiness, hardly even dribbled as a baby, while her son would have preferred to live in a heap of clothes where he could throw himself down contentedly at night. But they did have one thing in common: they were both extraordinarily focused when it came to school and homework. Somehow it suited Soley's character, but Thora always found it rather funny when Gylfi, with his long, unkempt hair and clothes with skeletons on them, turned almost hysterical about something like leaving his spelling exercise at school.

Thora stepped into the doorway of her son's room. Gylfi was sitting glued to the screen of his computer, clicking furiously with the mouse. "For God's sake turn that down, Gylfi," she said, having to raise her voice even though she was standing right beside her son. "I can't hear myself think."

Without even glancing away from the screen or slowing down his clicking of the mouse, her son stretched out his left hand for a knob on the loudspeakers and turned them down. "Better?" he said, still without looking up.

"Yes, that's better," replied Thora. "Now switch this off and come and have dinner. I bought some pasta; it only takes a minute to fix."

"Just let me finish this level," the answer came. "Takes two minutes."

"Just two," she said, and turned round. "Let me remind you that it goes like this: one. Then two. Not one, two, three, four, five, six, two."

"Okay, okay," her son replied irritably, carrying on with his game.

When the food was served fifteen minutes later Gylfi appeared and slammed himself down in his usual chair. Soley was already seated and yawning in front of her plate. Thora could not be bothered to start the meal by nagging Gylfi for taking more than two minutes to finish "the level." She was about to remind him of the importance of this occasion for the family when her mobile started ringing. She stood up to answer it. "You two start eating, and don't argue. You're both much more likable when you're friends." She reached out for the mobile on the kitchen sideboard and looked at the caller ID, but there was none. She pressed the talk button as she left the kitchen. "Thora."