Yrsa Sigurdardóttir - My Soul to Take

Matthew appeared in the doorway with a towel and dried his hands. “But who would want her dead because of it? Elín and Börkur?”

“Unlikely,” said Thóra. “They would scarcely have sold the property if they’d been desperate to keep the secret.”

“Maybe they knew nothing about it,” said Matthew, putting the towel back in the bathroom. “Birna may have told them about it and tried to blackmail them. She seems to have already tried to blackmail Magnús and Baldvin, so we know she was capable of it.”

“Maybe,” said Thóra, “but I have a feeling she didn’t know. From her diary I’d say she suspected something odd had been going on in the house, but there’s no indication she was on the right track.” She fetched the journal and slowly turned the pages. “Do you remember where the annex was located in the plans on the walls at Kreppa?” she asked. “Did it include the area of the rock and the hatch?”

Matthew tried to visualize the sketch. “I think it did,” he said. “Why do you ask?”

“Could Birna have been killed to stop the design of the annex to the hotel?’ Thóra speculated. “As soon as construction work began, the hidden part of the basement would have been excavated. Perhaps it was preventive action. Someone had been digging here and there in the field, remember. Maybe they were trying to find the hatch, and the child’s remains, before construction began, but they couldn’t find them and resorted to the desperate measure of killing Birna.”

“Which brings us back to the question of who would want to keep it a secret,” said Matthew. “The last thing Elín and Börkur would want was for the truth to come out. Nobody wants unnecessary attention drawn to the fact that their grandfather was a child killer, but it’d hardly be normal to commit murder to conceal it.”

“If they’d wanted to keep it secret, though, they’d never have sold the land,” Thóra reminded him. “And I quite agree: it’s a bit extreme to kill someone just to avoid a scandal.” She closed her eyes. “I’m missing something. It’s something really obvious, but I can’t put my finger on it.” She reached for the police file and flicked through it. “I don’t even know what I’m looking for.” She sighed.

Matthew came up to the bedside table and picked up the list of cars that had driven through the Hvalfjördur Tunnel. “What if the killer isn’t directly involved? What if it’s someone who wants to protect the family?”

Thóra looked up from the file and tilted her head curiously. “Who do you mean?”

Matthew handed her the list and pointed out one of the registration numbers. “While you were out this morning, I asked Sóldís if she knew Steini’s full name. Since he can drive, it occurred to me to check whether he was on the list, and he was.” He pointed out the entry that a car had been driven through the tunnel from the Reykjavík direction: owner Thorsteinn Kjartansson. “You remember he said he couldn’t give Sóldís a lift because he wasn’t going to Reykjavík,” Matthew added, “but he did go, and he appears to have driven back here via the tunnel about an hour before Birna was murdered.”

“What, you think he killed her so that Berta wouldn’t be traumatized by the scandal?” asked Thóra. “That’s ridiculous. And he’s disabled. Would he have been capable of that?”

“I feel like we keep on hearing things that prove he’s less handicapped than we thought,” said Matthew. “If you look at the other list, the vehicles driving through the tunnel from here toward Reykjavík, you’ll see that Berta’s car left here at about the same time. Maybe Steini wanted to ensure she wouldn’t be a suspect, which is why he carried out the murder in her absence. There wouldn’t be much point in killing Birna and Eiríkur, and getting Berta into even more trouble than he was trying to prevent.”

Thóra frowned. “Even if he’s less disabled than we realized, I somehow can’t see him manhandling someone into a stall with a wild horse.”

“What if Eiríkur wasn’t quite unconscious?” said Matthew. “Maybe the drugs just made him confused—confused enough to do as Steini said. Perhaps he was taking his revenge for the accident by planting Eiríkur in Bergur and Rósa’s stables—revenge for her father causing the accident. He may have assumed Bergur or his wife would be suspects. He needn’t have been motivated only by wanting to protect Berta.”

Thóra nodded, deep in thought. “But what about the rape?” she asked. “Steini would also have had to rape Birna, and she wasn’t drugged.” She looked up the autopsy report. “The theory is that she was attacked from behind and hit on the head with a rock.” She read a little further. “You don’t happen to know what A. barbadensis Mill, A. vulgaris Lam is?” she asked when she came across the reference to the substance found in Birna’s vagina.

“I can’t say I do.” Matthew smiled ruefully. “I think ‘vulgaris’ means ‘common,’ but that’s not much help. Can’t you find it on the Internet?”

“Yes, I’m sure I can,” said Thóra. “I just haven’t had time. Perhaps I’ll ask Gylfi to look it up for me. It’ll do him good to think about something else, after the shock of finding the bones.” She phoned Gylfi’s room and asked him to look it up on the guests’ computer in reception. “He says he’ll do it in a minute,” said Thóra, hanging up. She looked over at Matthew and smiled. “When children reach the age of twelve, they stop being able to do things when they’re asked. It always has to be in a minute. My dad says I was just the same, and that Grandpa said the same about him. Maybe it’s genetic.”

“Shall we try to get hold of Steini, or even Berta?” asked Matthew. “She might be able to tell us something to corroborate my theory. Although she’s his friend, I’m not sure she’d cover for him under these circumstances.”

“You may be right,” said Thóra, and went to stand up. “Let’s do it. You broke down a wall for me. The least I can do is repay you by investigating your crazy theory as well as mine.”

“You could always find another way to repay me,” said Matthew with a smile.

Thóra didn’t answer. She stood with the book of folktales open in her hands. “Hang on,” she said excitedly. “What’s this?”

Thóra stabbed her finger at the page. Matthew looked at it, understanding nothing. “Right here, on the page before the story of the abandoned infant at the wedding, it says that if you want to stop someone’s spirit walking, you must drive needles into the soles of his feet.” She slammed the book shut. “The murderer must have wanted to ensure that his victims’ ghosts wouldn’t go wandering.”

Matthew looked skeptical. “What on earth for?”

“We might not get it, but presumably he believes in ghosts,” said Thóra, blushing slightly as she recalled the wailing she had heard, like an infant left to die. She had stuck to her resolution not to mention it to anyone, least of all Matthew.

“Why are you blushing?” he asked. “Starting to believe in ghosts in your old age?” He prodded her arm. “Did you hear it too?”

Thóra was no good at lying to people she cared about, so she decided to confess. “Yes, I heard something,” she conceded. “Of course, it wasn’t the ghost of an abandoned infant, but I did hear crying and it sounded like a baby.”

“That’s great!” said Matthew, pleased. “Now, you have been careful about letting the baby go around you three times, haven’t you? You don’t seem any more insane than usual, anyway.”

Thóra stuck her tongue out at him. “Come on,” she said, “we’ve got more important things to do than talk about ghosts. Let’s go and find Berta or Steini.”