Yrsa Sigurdardóttir - My Soul to Take

“These are the people from the photograph I told you about, the ones Magnús Baldvinsson knew.” Matthew didn’t need to speak Icelandic to understand the headstone, so he stooped to read it. Thóra continued, “According to Magnús, the farmer and his daughter died of TB, and his wife of blood poisoning years earlier.” She pointed to the dates on Adalheidur’s inscription. “A girl who works for Jónas claims that incest was committed at the farm. Presumably it involved Bjarni and his daughter, Gudný.”

“We can’t assume that’s true,” Matthew pointed out. “How would a girl her age know about incest that took place seventy years ago?”

“Her grandmother told her,” said Thóra. “As a rule I don’t think grandmothers tell lies.”

“Not all grandmothers are the same.” Matthew grinned. “I’d take a story like that with a pinch of salt, even if it was a sweet little old lady telling it.”

“I suppose so,” Thóra conceded. “And I hope for Gudný’s sake that it was nonsense.” Then she pointed out the name of the son who had died in his first year. “I noticed on the photographs that Adalheidur appeared to be pregnant, but there were no pictures of a baby. He must have only lived a few days.”

“Like most children around here,” Matthew said, indicating the other graves. “More than half of these seem to be children who didn’t survive infancy.”

“It does seem that people here had trouble raising their children to adulthood,” she said, looking around. “Unless infant mortality was this common all over Iceland.” She shuddered. “Thank God that’s all in the past,” she said, moving on to the next gravestone, which was more modest. “That’s strange.” It looked half empty. “Just two inscriptions: ‘His wife, Kristrún Valgeirsdóttir, b. 1894 d. 1940’ and below it ‘Edda Grímsdóttir b. 1921 d. 1924.’ ” Thóra looked at Matthew. “The husband’s name is missing, but it must be Grímur Thórólfsson, the elder brother. The woman has the same name as his wife, and the child as his daughter.”

“Is he likely to be the ‘dad’ who killed Kristín? Maybe a murderer would not have been buried with his loved ones,” he said. “Or could he still be alive? Either way, he’s not buried here.”

Thóra shook her head. “No, that can’t be right. Magnús said Grímur died a few years after moving to Reykjavík.”

“Where is he, then?” asked Matthew. “He’s supposed to be here. There’s plenty of room for his name. It feels weird, seeing it blank.”

Thóra turned and looked around the cemetery. “He can’t be buried here, since he’s not mentioned on this stone.” They strolled around the rest of the churchyard but found neither Grímur’s nor Kristín’s grave. “Maybe Kristín was just a cat after all,” Thóra said glumly, as they left through the squeaking gate.

“Then what about the missing page in the church records? I think our next move should be talking to the brother and sister who sold Jónas the land,” said Matthew. “You could use that ghost nonsense as a pretext to grill them about the history of the farm, and about Grímur and Kristín.”

Thóra nodded thoughtfully. That wasn’t a bad idea …

Elín Thórdardóttir kept her hand on the telephone after hanging up. She heaved a deep sigh, lifted it again and put it to her ear. She quickly dialed a number and waited impatiently for an answer. “Börkur,” she blurted, “guess what?”

“What is it, Elín? Now’s not a good time.” Börkur was always moody when his sister phoned him. “There’s a situation here.”

“What’s going on?” Elín asked, although she knew it must involve Svava, Börkur’s wife, who was a bag of nerves, always on the brink of a nervous breakdown over something minor.

“None of your business,” growled Börkur. “What do you want?”

Accustomed to his unfriendliness, Elín ignored it. In fact, she enjoyed winding him up. She had always been against selling the land but had given in to his constant nagging in the end. It was a pity their mother had not opposed the idea, because the place had still belonged to her even though the proceeds would go to her children. Börkur had managed to talk her into selling. Now Elín had the chance to take revenge on her brother for his bossiness. “A woman called Thóra phoned. She’s a lawyer for Jónas, who bought Kirkjustétt and Kreppa.” She paused deliberately, determined to force him to ask.

“And?” asked her brother, irritated but intrigued. “What did she want?”

“Turns out there’s a problem, dear brother,” Elín said smugly. “She wants to see us about a hidden defect she says Jónas has found in the property.”

“What horseshit! A hidden defect? On a plot of land? They need their heads examined. What the hell could it be? Is it soil contamination?”

Elín let him run on for a while before interrupting. “We didn’t go into details. She just wanted to arrange a meeting. On-site if possible.”

“On-site? Does she think I’ve got nothing better to do than trek over to Snæfellsnes?” Börkur was almost shouting now. “I’m up to my eyes in work! Drowning!”

“Oh, poor you,” said Elín, feigning sympathy. “Maybe I should just go by myself.”

Börkur thought for a moment. “No. I’ll come too. When do we have to meet her?”

“Tomorrow,” she replied. “Wouldn’t it be easier to pop over to Stykkishólmur tonight, so we don’t need to drive there early in the morning?”

“We’ll see. Call me later. I might, if I can sort some business out before this evening.”

“Börkur,” said Elín, “one more thing. I think ‘hidden defect’ might be something weird. The lawyer acted very strangely on the phone.”

“How do you mean, ‘strangely?’ ” asked Börkur.

“Just strangely,” she told him. “There’s something odd going on, that’s for sure, but I don’t know what.”

“Do you think it might have to do with the body that was on the news?” he asked, his voice suddenly shrill with panic.

“Oh. No, that hadn’t crossed my mind,” Elín said, surprised. Her brother didn’t sound like himself.

They hung up and Elín sat by the telephone, deep in thought. She tried to remember what she had heard about the body, and had an idea it had been found just before the weekend. She frowned. That was when Börkur had been out to Snæfellsnes on some fool’s errand. How odd.

This must be the place.” Thóra scanned the beach. “We won’t learn much from coming out here, really.” The rocks at her feet glistened. The tide was out, but the smooth rocks were still damp. Nothing in this dramatic landscape suggested that a body had been found here not long ago, and Thóra wondered what she’d expected to see. Yellow police tape, perhaps?

Matthew looked at his watch. “Except that it took us exactly thirtyfive minutes to walk here from the hotel.”

“But we weren’t hurrying,” she said. “What’s the quickest we could have got here?”

Matthew shrugged. “I don’t know. You might be able to get here in twenty-five minutes, not much less, unless you were running.”

“So somebody could have come down here from the hotel, murdered Birna, and got back within the hour,” mused Thóra.

Matthew smiled. “Well, that doesn’t give the murderer much lee way. He would have had to come here explicitly to murder the woman, as there wasn’t time for them to meet up and argue.”

“What an awful noise those birds make,” Thóra said, facing the cliffs. “Their poor chicks.” She watched the chaotic mass of birds for a moment, before turning back to Matthew. “No one would have heard her scream. Not through this din.”