Yrsa Sigurdardottir - Last Rituals

Bella's smile vanished instantly. Matthew's charm offensive clearly benefited him alone. "When are you coming back?" she asked grumpily.

Thora tried not to sound disappointed at being cut out. "I don't expect to be back today but I'll phone if anything changes."

"Right, whatever," Bella said huffily, her tone implying that Thora made a habit of not letting people know her whereabouts, which was absurd.

"You heard what I said." Thora could not let it pass without comment although she immediately regretted it. "Come on, Matthew."

"Yes, madam," Matthew said with a smile at Bella. Much to Thora's chagrin, it was reciprocated.

When they got into the car Thora fastened her belt and turned to Matthew. "Do you know how to drive on icy roads?"

"We'll find out," said Matthew as they left the parking spot. Seeing Thora's expression he added: "Don't worry, I'm a good driver."

"Just don't slam on the brakes if the car goes into a skid," Thora said, by no means convinced that Matthew was aware of this.

"Do you want to drive?"

"No, thanks," she answered. "I can't handle that no-brakes rule, if I start to skid I instinctively put my foot downagainst my better judgment. I'm very limited when it comes to driving."

They headed straight out of the city and were up on the moor when Thora's curiosity about Matthew's conversation with Bella finally got the best of her. "What were you two talking about?"

"Us two?" Matthew repeated, all innocence.

"Yes, you and Bella, my secretary. She's normally such a sourpuss."

"Oh, her. We were talking about horses. I'd like to try horse riding while I'm here; you hear so much about Icelandic horses. She was giving me some tips."

"What does she know about horses?" Thora was flabbergasted.

"She's a horse lover, didn't you know?"

"No, actually I didn't." She could only pity the horse that had to bear Bella's weight. "What kind of horses does she have? Cart horses?"

Matthew took his eyes off the road and looked at Thora. "Are you jealous?" he asked, smirking.

"Are you drunk?" she fired back.

They drove in silence across the lava field toward the mountain pass. Thora admired the landscape through the car windowperhaps few people would agree with her, but she thought this was one of the most beautiful places in Iceland, especially in summer when the moss blazed green, its soft outlines in total contrast with the rough and jagged lava. Now the land was covered with snow and seemed two-dimensional. It lacked the majesty of summer. Still, a calmness reigned that appealed to Thora. She broke the silence. "Don't you think the scenery's beautiful?"

Matthew flicked his eyes off the road to admire the surroundings. There was hardly any traffic. "Well." He smiled at her as if declaring a truce. "It is different, I'll give it that much, but 'bleak' is the word that springs to mind." He pointed at two thick pillars of smoke that stretched up into the sky ahead of them. "What's that?" he asked. "An eruption?"

"Oh, that's steam from boreholes," Thora replied. "Up ahead there's a geothermal power plant, which produces electricity from steam piped from underground. It also supplies hot water to heat houses in Reykjavik."

Matthew nodded, impressed. "Lucky you, no pollution."

"Yup," said Thora. "Clean air, clean water. Not bad."

"Your offices could actually be cleaner, as long as we're on the subject of hygiene," said Matthew.

"Oh, please," snapped Thora. "They're clean enough. We're lawyers, not surgeons." She turned to look at Matthew. "We don't exactly make a good team," she said, referring to their repeated skirmishes. "Maybe we should change tactics."

He smiled at her again. "You think so? I'm delighted. You're much more fun than my normal company at work. All the old men and the few women I deal with are so poker-faced they'd fall apart if they took off their frowns."

Now it was Thora's turn to smile. "Actually, you're not half as bad as Bella. I'll give you that." She paused for a while. "Tell me one thing. In the folder was a German newspaper clipping about a young man who died performing that erotic asphyxiation stuff. What was that included for?"

"Ahhh." Matthew drew out the exclamation. "That bloody thing. One of the people in the article was a good friend of Harald's. They met at university in Munich and must have been the same kind of searching souls, so they made a good pair in all the outrageous stunts they got up to. I don't know which of them introduced the other to that peculiar practice but Harald swore it was his friend who started. Harald was present when the man died, so he ended up being interrogated and got into a nasty mess. It's a shameful thing to say, but I think he bought his way out of the situationyou noticed the large bank withdrawal I marked from then?" Thora said she had. "I included it because Harald was strangled. It may be important. Who knowspossibly he met the same death as his friend, although it seems very doubtful."

They parked in the lot outside the fence of Litla-Hraun prison and walked over to the visitors' gate. A warden showed them into a small lounge on the second floor. "We thought you could stay in here; you should be quite comfortable, it's much nicer than the interrogation room," he said. "Hugi's calm and shouldn't cause any trouble. He'll be here any minute."

"Thank you, that's fine," Thora said, and walked inside. She perched herself on the edge of a brown sofa and Matthew sat down close by her side. She was surprised by his choice of seat, because there were plenty of chairs.

He looked at her. "If Hugi sits facing us it's better for us to sit like this. I want to look him straight in the face." He raised his eyebrows quickly, twice. "And it's so terribly nice to sit close to you."

Before Thora could answer, the door opened again and Hugi Thorisson appeared accompanied by a guard, whose hand was on his shoulder. The young man's head was bowed as he was steered through the door. Hugi was handcuffed but he looked so helpless that Thora couldn't believe it was necessary. When the guard spoke his name he looked up. He swept his waxy hair out of his eyes with both hands and Thora saw that he was very handsome, completely different from what she had imagined. She found it hard to believe that he was twenty-fiveseventeen would have seemed a closer guess. He had dark brows and big eyes, but his most prominent feature was his bony cheeks, probably caused by his thinness. If he did murder Harald, it must have taken every ounce of his strength. He did not look capable of lugging a one-hundred-ninety-pound corpse very far.

"You going to behave yourself, pal?" the guard asked Hugi in a friendly tone. When Hugi nodded, the guard lifted his arms and took off the cuffs. Then he put his hand back on Hugi's shoulder and guided him over to the chair directly opposite Thora and Matthew. The young man sat down, or rather slumped, into the chair. He avoided looking Thora and Matthew straight in the eye, turned his face away from them and gaped down at the floor beside the chair where he sat sprawled.

"We're in the room next door if you need us. He shouldn't cause any trouble." The guard addressed his words to Thora.

"Fine," Thora said. "We won't keep him any longer than necessary." She looked at her watch. "We should be done by noon."

The guard left and when he had closed the door the only sound in the room came from Hugi as he rhythmically scratched at the knee of his camouflage trousers. He had not looked at the visitors yet.

Prisoners were clearly allowed to wear their own clothesunlike in the American jails Thora knew from television and films, whose inmates pranced around in jumpsuits that seemed to be made from orange peel.

"Hugi," said Thora in the gentlest voice she could muster. She went on in Icelandic, thinking it was silly to begin the interview in English. They would find out later whether that was possible. They couldn't afford to get bogged down in language difficulties; if he didn't speak reasonable English she would have to handle this alone. "Presumably you know who we are. My name's Thora Gudmundsdottir and I'm a lawyer, and this is Matthew Reich from Germany. We're here in connection with the murder of Harald Guntlieb, which we're investigating independently from the police."