Yrsa Sigurdardottir - Last Rituals

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Last Rituals: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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"Dark, deep and icy as an Icelandic fjord; this is a rich and rewarding debut novel of ancient mysteries and very modern murder." – Mark Billingham
The spellbinding debut and international sensation being published in thirty countries featuring Thóra Gudmundsdóttir, a smart, sexy lawyer and investigator whose hunt for a modern murderer points to a very odd-and evil-chapter in Iceland's past.
After the body of a young German student-with his eyes cut out and strange symbols carved into his chest-is discovered at a university in Reykjavík, the police waste no time in making an arrest. The victim's family isn't convinced they have the right man, however, so they ask Thóra Gudmundsdóttir, attorney and single mother of two, to investigate. The fee is considerable-more than enough to make things a bit easier for the struggling lawyer and her children.
It's not long before Thóra and Matthew Reich, her new associate, discover something unusual about the deceased student: He had been obsessed with the country's grisly history of torture, execution, and witch hunts-a topic made all the more peculiar by the fact that unlike witch hunts in other countries, those in Iceland had targeted men… not women.
As Thóra and Matthew dig deeper, they make the connection between long-bygone customs and the student's murder. But the shadow of dark traditions conceals secrets in both the past and the present, and the investigators soon realize that nothing is as it seems… and that no one can be trusted.

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"Who was he writing to?" Thora asked.

"All the letters are addressed to the Bishop of Brixen, George II. Gosler. The same bishop who had Kramer expelled from the city. I have a feeling the letters played some part."

"How did Harald's grandfather get hold of them?"

Matthew shrugged. "Lots of things went up for sale in Germany at the end of the war. The Guntliebs invested their assets to hedge the bank against the devaluation of the mark that left most people penniless after the war. It's not a conventional bankordinary depositors don't put their money in it and never have. In many ways, it was thanks to Harald's grandfather that his clients didn't lose everything. He was quick to see where things were heading and was able to exchange funds and invest without drawing a lot of attention to himself. So he was in a good position to snap up various things when the economy took a dive."

"So who owned the letters and sold them to him? Letters from the fifteenth century aren't something people keep safe for a rainy day."

Matthew looked puzzled. "I have no idea. These letters aren't in any records or referencesthey could be forgeries, for that matter. Very good forgeries, though, if that's the case. Harald's grandfather wouldn't go into detail about the purchase. The initials on the wallet are hisNiklas Harald Guntliebso they don't give a clue as to the previous owner. I suspect that they were stolen from the Church at some stage." Matthew drove along Snorrabraut and flicked his blinker to change lanes. They had agreed it was best to keep the computer at Bergstadastraeti and were heading there. Soon they would need to make a right turn, and they were in the left lane now. But no one would let Matthew mergeif anything, the other drivers seemed determined to prevent him and force him over the bridge to Fossvogur. "What's wrong with you?" Matthew muttered at them.

"Just change lanes," advised Thora, accustomed to such behavior. "They're more worried about their own cars than controlling your route."

Matthew took the plunge and slipped into the other lane with no harm done apart from a loud beep from the car he had to squeeze in front of. "I'll never get used to driving in this country," he said in astonishment.

Thora just smiled. "What do the letters saywhat happened to the woman?"

"She was tortured," Matthew replied. "Brutally."

"I didn't suppose you could torture people any other way," Thora said, hoping for a more detailed description. "What did they do to her?"

"The scribe talked about paralyzed arms and a leg crushed by an iron boot. And both her ears were cut off. There was bound to have been more that wasn't worth putting on paper. Cuts and the like." Matthew glanced away from the road at Thora. "As far as I remember one of the last letters ended something like this: 'If you are looking for evil, it is not to be found in what is left of my beloved young and innocent wife. It lies in her accuser.'"

"My God," Thora said, shuddering. "You really remember that well."

"It's not so easy to forget what the letters say," Matthew replied dryly. "Of course it's not all he wrote about. There were endless attempts to have her released, from legal arguments to what you could call outright threats. The man was at his wit's end. He loved his wife with all his heart; she was the most beautiful of maidens, if his words are to be believed. They hadn't been married for long."

"Was he allowed to visit her in prison? Weren't the letters written while she was still detained?"

"Yes and no," Matthew said. "He wasn't allowed to see her, but one of the guards took pity on her and passed on messages which became more and more hopeless and sad, the scribe says. And as regards your second question, all the letters except one were written while she was in prison and the husband was working on her release. That was written after she was let out. It describes a fate that's worth bearing in mind when we complain about our own troubles."

"In what way?" asked Thora, without really wanting to hear the answer.

"You have to remember that in those days, medicine wasn't anything like what we know today, just nonsense really. You can't begin to imagine how much pain the sick and injured went through, let alone the mental state of a pretty girl who had been much admired for her looks. When she was released, one of her feet and all her fingers were crushed to powder. No ears. Her body covered in knife marks from searching for spots on her that would not bleed. And other things that are only hinted at and not described. What would you do under such circumstances?" Matthew looked at Thora again.

"Did she have children?" Thora asked. Instinctively her hand moved up to her earshe had never thought about how indispensable a part of someone's appearance they were.

"No," said Matthew.

"So she committed suicide," said Thora, without pausing to think. "You can put up with endless suffering and pain for your children, but not for much else."

"Bingo," Matthew said. "They lived on an estate by a brook and she hobbled over there the night she got home and threw herself in. If she'd been in better shape she could have swum to safety, but wearing a heavy dress, which was the fashion then, with a useless leg and hands, she wasn't capable of much."

"What did he dois that mentioned in the letter?" asked Thora, trying to keep the thought of the young woman out of her mind.

"Yes, it is. In the last letter he says he has taken away the most precious thing in Inquisitor Kramer's life, just as Kramer had taken the most precious thing in his lifeand now it's on the long path to hell," Matthew said. "It doesn't say who or where the victim of his vengeance was, nor how hell came into the picture. Contemporary records give no further hints. Then he tells the bishop to sleep wellaccuses him of failing to answer his appeals in time and says that is a matter for God's servant to answer to his master. Then he quotes from the Old Testament, which as you know is about something quite different from forgiveness. I can't explain it exactly but his last words are some kind of veiled threat, which I don't know whether he carried outthe bishop died a few years later. He may well have got rid of the documents, not wanting them to be preserved in the Church archive."

"That sounds dubious," said Thora. "If he wanted to get rid of them, why didn't he burn them? They weren't exactly short of fires."

Matthew concentrated on steering into a parking spot near Harald's apartment. The ones directly outside it were full. "I don't knowmaybe he visualized Saint Peter and God and didn't want to draw attention to the content of the letters by burning them. Smoke rises up to heaven, after all."

"So you think the letters aren't forgeries?" Thora asked.

"No, I didn't say that. There are certain points in them that don't fit."

"Such as?"

"Mainly allusions to that awful book of Kramer's. The scribe calls it a flowery account that does little to conceal the diabolical origin of its contents."

"Couldn't he mean The Witches' Hammer ? After he wrote it, Kramer must have used it in his investigations of these so-called witches. I would assume he practiced what he preached."

"That doesn't fit," Matthew said. "That extraordinary piece of literature is said to have been published in 1486."

"Have the paper and ink from these letters been dated?" Thora asked.

"Yes, they more or less fit but that's not crucial. Forgers have used old paper and old ink or paint to deceive owners who can afford to have such tests done."

"Old ink?" repeated Thora doubtfully.

"Yes, or something resembling it. They make ink from old substances or dissolve it from old documents that aren't likely to fetch a high price. It produces the same result."

"What a lot of bother to go to," Thora said, relieved that she had never decided to become a forger.

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