Yrsa Sigurdardóttir - My Soul to Take

Thóra turned to him. “How on earth do they know each other?”

“I know it’s almost time for you to leave the office, Bella,” Thóra said wearily. “I’m not asking you to do it tonight. You can check it out in the morning.” She shook her head at Matthew as her secretary complained at the other end of the line. “Bella, I just thought it was an ideal job for you since you’re so fond of horses.” As ever, Thóra wondered how the gargantuan Bella would ever manage to mount a horse. “All you have to do is to find out whether there is any connection between horses and foxes, or between foxes and death.” She sighed and closed her eyes when Bella interrupted with another question. “Bella, I don’t know what you’re supposed to look for. Just try and find out whether foxes and horses, especially stallions, have anything in common.” Thóra realized she’d have to explain herself better. “The point is that a man was found in the stables, trampled to death by a stallion. A dead fox was tied to the body. There must be a reason.”

Matthew winked and smiled at Thóra. He was well aware of the friction between her and her secretary, and enjoyed listening in even when he didn’t understand a word. “Say hello from me,” he whispered.

Thóra pulled a face at him. “Yes, yes, Bella. You’ll find something. You did a great job in the cemetery and I’m sure you will now. And Matthew sends his regards.” She smiled sweetly at him as she spoke. “He really wants to go to the stables with you when we get back. We went to one earlier today and he was absolutely enchanted. Now he can’t wait to try mucking out and feeding the horses. The Germans love Icelandic horses.” She said goodbye and turned to Matthew. “Bella has invited you to go with her to the stables when we get back to town,” she said. “She sends her love.”

“Ha, ha,” Matthew said. “Hilarious. I hope you told her about the great welcome you received when we visited the stables. You managed to say—what?—three whole words before Rósa went berserk.”

“You must admit that she reacted very oddly,” said Thóra, “no matter how inappropriate the question. I have to find out what her relationship is with Jökull.”

“She did overreact a little bit,” he admitted, “but I did warn you not to go poking your nose in.”

“The funny thing is that I was trying to be polite because I thought Bergur was so nasty to her,” said Thóra. “Asking about the boy in the wheelchair was all I could think of.”

“More’s the pity,” said Matthew. “Can’t you find anything about it on the Internet? His injuries clearly aren’t congenital; they look like they were sustained in a fire—and fires are generally newsworthy. Especially if someone gets hurt. You must be able to access old stories on newspaper Web sites.”

“Yes, I’m sure I could try,” Thóra said. “It would just be so much easier if I found someone from here who could tell me. I don’t know what I’m looking for; I don’t even know whether it happened a decade or a month ago. The papers seldom report injuries—they tend to say the victim is in critical condition, badly injured, doing as well as can be expected, et cetera. Besides, I don’t even know if it was a house fire or if the lad simply fell into a hot spring.” She sighed. “And I really ought to concentrate on trying to help poor Jónas.”

Matthew grunted. “If you can,” he said. “You have to admit he might be guilty.”

“Yes, unfortunately I do,” she conceded. “But I’m fairly sure that he didn’t commit those murders.”

“Who did, then?” asked Matthew. “Things would look a lot better if there was another suspect.”

Thóra thought about it. “Bergur would be the obvious candidate, but I have no idea why he’d kill Eiríkur.” She bit her lip. They were leaning against Matthew’s rental car in the hotel car park, where Thóra had gone to call Bella. “We can rule out everyone who was at the séance, surely?” mused Thóra. “It was going on at the time Birna was murdered, according to the police.”

“Do we know the exact time of death yet?” asked Matthew.

“Thórólfur said it was between nine and ten last Thursday,” she replied. “He must have based that on the autopsy. That also fits with the text message asking her to turn up at nine.” She sighed. “The séance began at eight o’clock. It took us about half an hour from the beach, so if the murderer left the séance on foot, he would never have got back before the interval at half past nine. The drive to the hotel had been dug up, so no one could have got there by car, and it would have taken too long to walk up to the main road.”

“Do you know who was at the séance?” said Matthew. “There’s not much point trying to rule out a whole group of people if you don’t know their names.”

“No, but I’m sure Vigdís knows who was due to attend. She was in charge of selling tickets,” said Thóra. “And a lot of people would have paid by credit card, so we could find out some of the names.”

“Shouldn’t you be concentrating on the people who might be suspects rather than those who definitely aren’t?” he suggested.

“Yes, but this way I can eliminate a lot of people. Also, it would give me a list of people who may have seen Jónas hanging around in the interval and could give him an alibi,” Thóra said. She watched as a seagull flew above them. “Unless the murderer flew,” she said idly, then suddenly straightened up. “What about by sea?” she said. “Could he have had a motorboat and sailed into the bay?”

Matthew was unconvinced. “Isn’t that a bit tenuous?” he said. “I’ve been to the bay and I don’t much fancy trying to land on the beach. It would take the bottom of the boat out.” But then a thought occurred to him, and he added thoughtfully, “Actually, there was a concrete jetty not far from there. That might be a possibility.” He paused, still thinking. “In that case, the boat would have been tied up at the hotel jetty before the séance and someone might remember it. Let’s go and check it out.”

They walked down past the hotel to the jetty, which lay in a small cove east of the main hotel building. When they reached the end of it, Matthew turned around and looked back at the hotel. “We’re not very visible here,” he said, pointing. They could see the roof of the hotel from where they stood, but no windows or doors. “You could do pretty much anything here without being disturbed. I guess someone could have left the building and sailed from here out to the cove where Birna was murdered. It’s probably not that far by sea.” He looked around. “But I don’t see any evidence that the jetty gets much use. There aren’t even any ropes or mooring posts.”

Thóra leaned over the side of the jetty but saw no rubber tires padding the edge, or any other sign that the jetty was in regular use. “I agree,” she said, “but I’m still going to ask Vigdís if she remembers seeing a boat that evening.” The wind changed, and the stench from the beached whale engulfed them. “Jesus!” exclaimed Thóra, staring along the beach. “There’s the whale’s carcass, look!” She pointed at a huge black mound, some distance away.

Matthew put his hand over his nose and mouth, but squinted in the direction Thóra had pointed. “What on earth is that? This must be the worst smell in the world.”

“Should we take a look?” Thóra said. “If we just follow this cove around, it won’t take us a minute.”

Matthew looked at Thóra in disbelief. “Honestly? You’re serious. You want to go and look at a disgusting pile of rotting blubber.”

“Yes, of course I do. It’s right there,” said Thóra, but then her mobile phone rang. She groaned when she saw the number. Why couldn’t they have been farther along the beach where there was no reception? “Hello,” she said.