Yrsa Sigurdardóttir - My Soul to Take

“Hello. This is Thóra, the lawyer at the hotel. Sorry to bother you, but I was wondering who drove you back to the stables from the place where you fell off.”

“Oh, hello,” replied Teitur. “I was hoping you’d decided to invest. The market’s looking good right now.”

“No, not at the moment, thanks,” said Thóra. “For the moment I’d like to focus on your accident.”

“Okay,” said Teitur, slightly disappointed. “It was the girl. I thought I told you when you first asked me about the accident. She saved my bacon, pulled me away before the horse finished me off. It was crazy.”

“What girl was that?” asked Thóra evenly. “Did you get her name?”

“Yes,” he said, “but I don’t remember it. She just happened to be there. She was carrying some boxes into the old house at the end of the path. I’ve often wondered what might have happened if the dead fox had been a bit farther away, out of her view. She was kind enough to drive me to the stables and then back to the hotel.”

“Was her name Berta?” asked Thóra, her voice still calm although her insides were in turmoil.

“Yes,” said Teitur cheerfully. “That’s it. Berta.”

RER. BER. Thóra set her phone down on the table and stared into space. Matthew, Gylfi, and Sigga waited silently with their cutlery in their hands, keen to hear what she’d found out.

“It might not be Rósa after all,” said Thóra into the silence. “Berta knew about the fox.”

“Remember, she isn’t necessarily guilty, even if she knew about it,” said Matthew.

Gylfi and Sigga listened closely, understanding nothing.

“That’s not all,” said Thóra. “Firstly, she’s got the most to lose, apart from her mother, Elín, and her uncle Börkur. She was here, at the séance, and she believes in ghosts, so she could conceivably have pushed pins into the soles of the victims’ feet to stop their spirits walking.”

“But aren’t you forgetting that Berta wasn’t here when Eiríkur was killed?” asked Matthew. “She’d gone to Reykjavík. The records from the tunnel prove it. Do you think there are two different killers?”

“Not at all,” replied Thóra. “If you think about it, she probably never even went to Reykjavík.”

Matthew raised his eyebrows. “Do you think she lent someone her car?”

“No, I think she swapped cars with Steini,” said Thóra. “It’s far too much of a coincidence that the two of them should have been driving through in opposite directions. He wasn’t watching her drive away as we thought. He must have gone through, waited for Berta, and switched cars at the other end of the tunnel. Then she drove back here to kill Eiríkur. It was probably Berta’s car Thröstur the canoeist saw pull up as he was driving away after he had stopped to check on Steini. It gives her an alibi.”

“But what about Steini?” asked Matthew. “He’s really the one that comes out looking like the guilty one here.”

Thóra shook her head. “Who’d ever believe he could manhandle Eiríkur into the stall with the stallion? You saw him. He couldn’t do it. She’s as strong as an ox, however—she’s been pushing him all over the place in his wheelchair.” Thóra clasped her forehead. “Do you remember the picture of her dead relative, Gudný, in the frame on my bedside table?” Matthew nodded. “When you think about it, Berta looks a lot like Gudný, especially if you imagine her with a different hairstyle.”

Matthew smiled. “I don’t remember Gudný’s face clearly, let alone her hair. Does it matter?”

“That was the photo that upset Jónas,” said Thóra. “He said he’d seen a ghost that was just like the girl in the photo. He had last seen the ghost in his own apartment.” She closed her eyes and recalled the photo of Gudný’s pretty face. “I bet it was Berta, and I bet she stole the sleeping pills too. I don’t know what she was doing there. Maybe she was trying to find out Jónas’s plans for the annex. He must have come back unexpectedly. He was probably high as a kite and couldn’t tell whether he was seeing a real person or a ghost. Maybe she was planning to use the sleeping pills for Birna, then changed her mind after Jónas had spotted her. When she came to kill Eiríkur, she may have thought it was safe, or simply had no choice, if the sleeping pills were the only sedative she had available. She’s probably also the ghost they saw out in the fog behind the hotel. I bet she was out there with a shovel, searching for the hatch. Maybe she hoped to remove the bones before Kristín could be found.”

“What are you going to do about it?” asked Matthew. “I’m pretty sure that speculation alone isn’t enough. Why would she kill Eiríkur, for instance?”

Thóra puffed out her cheeks. “I don’t know. Maybe he was involved, or perhaps he saw her. She’s probably the only person who knows why she did it.”

“Shouldn’t we go to the police with this?” he said. “Thórólfur seems all right really, and he won’t be too offended if you send him off in a different direction, as long as the information is good. Remember, he’s talking to Rósa, who you were sure was guilty an hour ago.”

Thóra sighed and stood up. “I have to go there and tell him. The sooner the better.”

“Cat!” yelled the only person not captivated by the progress of the case. Sóley beamed at Matthew and then turned to her mother. “Tell him I speak English,” she said contentedly.

“That’s wonderful, sweetheart,” said Thóra, stroking her little fair head. “You can practice some more while I pop out. Matthew will stay with you.”

“Dog!” she heard Sóley proudly pronounce, as she headed out of the restaurant to her car.

Lár a made herself more comfortable on the hard chair, taking care not to crease the coat she held on her lap. The flowers she’d brought with her did not appear to have perked up when put in water and hung limply in a steel vase on the bedside table. In the bed lay Málfrídur Grímsdóttir.

Lára cleared her throat and took the old lady’s dry hand. “I haven’t been able to think of anything else lately. The memories have come flooding back since my granddaughter, Sóldís, started working at the hotel back west. You know the truth, and I’m hoping you’ll tell me everything now, before it’s too late.” She looked at the drawn features of the woman in the bed. Strange how people aged differently. Málfrídur was much younger than she was, yet here she lay, seemingly incapable of even holding her head up, while Lára sat straight-backed at her bedside. She hoped she would go quickly when her time came. She didn’t want to fade away like this.

A tear formed in the corner of the old woman’s eye. As she was lying down, it didn’t run down her cheek, but pooled by her eye. “I hope God will forgive me,” she said, and closed her eyes, sending the tear trickling down on to the pillow. “I was so young. I didn’t dare go against Dad, and then he got ill and I had other things on my mind.”

“I’m not accusing you of anything, Málfrídur my dear,” said Lára affectionately, and grasped the woman’s hand tighter. “I quite understand that you couldn’t talk to me about it back then, but now we’re running out of time, both of us, and I can’t bear to think of leaving this world without knowing where the child is. I owe that to Gudný.”

Tears now poured down Málfrídur’s cheeks as she lay with her eyes squeezed shut. “She’s dead,” she said in her cracked voice. “Dad made sure of that.” She started to sob and Lára patiently waited for her to calm down. “He shut her up in the coal bunker, and she died there during the night. I’d gone over to Kirkjustétt to fetch a doll of hers that she was missing, and I saw him out of the window. Oh, God,” said Málfrídur, struck dumb by the memory. She rallied and went on. “After he burned down the outhouses, because of the stench, he flung the remains of the animals down into the coal bunker and turfed over the hatch the following spring. He had closed off the entrance to the bunker from the basement, and later he walled it up so no one could even tell there was a door there.”