Thóra’s mobile rang as she stood at the ship’s railing on board the Herjolfurferry. She had chosen to travel by sea to the Islands since the weather forecast was poor for the next day and she could only afford to be there for one night. She intended during that time to search for information about the Horseshoes, Valgerdur and Dadi, as well as to speak to Markus’s mother, and hopefully also his father, which was the main purpose of the trip. Bella had lain down in their cabin; she had been recruited to come along to support Thóra.
It was Matthew, calling from Germany. The ship was sailing swiftly away from all the transmitters on the mainland, and the connection was bad. ‘Where are you, anyway?’ he asked, sounding as if he were calling from inside a barrel.
‘I’m out at sea, so the connection could cut out any time,’ said Thóra. ‘I’m on my way to the Westmann Islands for this case I’m working on.’
‘Hopefully it’s not the bodies and the head in the basement?’ asked Matthew, but apparently some crackling on the line meant he couldn’t hear her reply, so he got straight to the point. ‘How would you like me to come for a visit next week?’ he asked.
‘That would be great,’ said Thóra, and she meant it. ‘Are you coming for work, or just dropping in?’ She tried not to show that she was itching to know whether he’d made his decision.
‘I’m going for an interview,’ he replied. ‘They want to show me round their offices and introduce me to the board. I’ll have to make my final decision after this, although I’ve pretty much made up my mind already.’
‘And?’ asked Thóra.‘What are you going to do?’
‘I… if… so…’The connection was cut off. Thóra thought about running to the stern of the ship to find a signal and hear what Matthew had decided, but she stopped herself. The ship would be out of phone contact again before she had a chance select his number. She sighed and stuck her mobile back into her pocket.
‘Could you confuse these two houses?’ asked Thóra. She was standing with her hands on her hips on the excavation site of Pompeü of the North, looking at Markus’s childhood home and the house where Valgerdur and Dadi had lived.
‘No,’ yawned Bella. ‘They’re completely different. That one’s actually in ruins.’ She pointed at the neighbours’ house. She wasn’t exaggerating: the roof had collapsed beneath the weight of the ash and one of the outer walls resembled the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
‘Try to imagine you’re in the middle of a volcanic eruption and the house hasn’t yet been destroyed,’ said Thóra. ‘Could you mix them up?’
Bella regarded her scornfully.‘Can’t you see that one of the houses has two floors and the other just one?’ she retorted. ‘It’s impossible to mix the two up.’ She pointed at the house on the other side of Markus’s home.‘No one could mix up that house and the house with the bodies either.’Then she turned to scan all the excavated houses. ‘The house with the bodies is the only one on the street that has two floors.’
Thóra looked up and down the street. Her secretary was right: the only house that stood out was Markus’s. It was clear that the bodies hadn’t been put there by mistake. ‘So at least we know that,’ said Thóra thoughtfully. ‘I really want to get in there,’ she said, and pointed at the house where the unpopular couple had lived, Dadi Horseshoe and Valgerdur Horseshoe Two. When she saw Bella’s expression she felt she had to explain herself better. ‘The people who lived there are connected to the case, but I still don’t know how.’
‘Huh,’ snorted Bella.‘I’m not going in there. It’s about to collapse.’ She walked closer to it and kicked at some tape that marked the area where visitors were prohibited from entering. ‘Haven’t they already taken everything out of it, anyway?’
‘Yes, they have,’ replied Thóra. ‘All the same, I want to have a look inside. You never know.’ She glanced around, though she knew they were the only ones in the area, and followed Bella’s example, stepping over the tape and walking up to the house. She peeked in through a crack in the crossed wooden boards that had been nailed over the window, but saw nothing in the darkness inside. She walked up to the door, which was leaning against the doorframe. Bella followed her.
‘Are you joking?’ said the secretary when Thóra started trying to heave the door out of the way.‘Are you going in? It must be off limits.’ She glanced back along the trench where the excavation had taken place, as though she expected a squad of policemen to come running down its black banks, which were covered with netting to prevent ash from being blown down into the new town.
‘This house isn’t marked like Markus’s house,’ huffed Thóra, out of breath. ‘I wasn’t supposed to go in there, but there’s no police notice on this house saying entry is forbidden.’
‘What about the sign saying that non-essential personnel are prohibited from entering the houses?’ asked Bella, clearly shocked. ‘I thought lawyers couldn’t break the law.’
‘These aren’t laws, they’re requests,’ said Thóra, as the door budged a bit further.‘And the nature of laws is that breaking them is illegal. Not just for lawyers, but for everyone. That’s why we have laws.’
Bella snorted and gave up questioning Thóra. Finally she relented and decided to help her, and by combining their efforts they managed to form a gap just large enough for Thóra to push her way in. ‘Just shout if something falls down on you,’called Bella through the gap, once Thóra was inside. ‘Then I’ll go and fetch help.’
Once inside, Thóra was seized by the same feeling that had oppressed her that fateful morning when Markus had discovered the bodies. The stink of the ash was overwhelming, growing stronger the further in she went. There was some light, since the boards over the windows weren’t lined up exactly. Light also came in from above, where in several places she could see up to the rafters of the house and the collapsed roof letting in daylight. She moved from the foyer through a narrow doorway leading to the other rooms, and decided to head towards what she assumed was the sitting room. There it was much darker, since the roof was intact, but that mattered little since the room was empty apart from a Coke can and a plastic sandwich wrapper, both of which must have been recently left. On the walls were remains of wallpaper that had mostly peeled off, revealing a spotted and filthy layer of plaster beneath. Two wall lamps still hung in their places, but upside down.
The other rooms were much the same. Everything loose had been removed. Dadi had probably saved most of the contents, and the archaeologist Hjortur had come and swept up the rest a little more than thirty years later. The house was small, and it was fairly clear from Thóra’s inspection that Dadi and Valgerdur hadn’t had much money. The bathroom, which was covered with broken tiles, was little more than a cupboard. The couple had lived alone in the house so they hadn’t needed more room to live comfortably. When she came to the room next to the master bedroom, Thóra’s eyes widened. This room had clearly been a child’s, since the peeling wallpaper there was covered with pictures of teddy bears. The broken ceiling light was in the shape of a hot air balloon. The couple had been childless, so Thóra found this most peculiar. In one corner of the room was a pile of rubbish that had been swept together,and sticking out of it was a doll’s plastic hand. When Thóra poked at the heap with her foot, the arm rolled out. She kicked lightly through the pile to see whether she could find anything else of interest, but without any results. The doll’s arm was by itself and thus had probably not caught the attention of the archaeologist.
Thóra breathed easier after coming back outside. ‘I have a job for you, Bella,’ she said as they caught their breath after dragging the door back into place. ‘You need to find out whether the people who lived here had a child that died, or whether they might have bought the house from people with children.’
‘How am I supposed to do that?’panted Bella.
‘You’ll work it out. Maybe the people at the archive can help you.’
‘I’m sure it’s closed,’ said Bella, and the relief in her voice was plain.‘It’s Saturday, remember,’ she added triumphantly.
‘The library is probably open, and it’s in the same building,’ Thóra replied, who didn’t want to let Bella off so easily. ‘I’m sure you can get someone to open it for you, especially if you mention that the checking you want to do is for Leifur. Just try to be pushy without being rude.’ From the secretary’s look of surprise, it was clear she had no qualms about being thought either pushy or rude; that it was, on the contrary, harder for her to be only one at a time. ‘You’ll work it out,’ repeated Thóra optimistically, although she knew it was unlikely.
It looked like Matthew wasn’t going to call back, and Thóra was tired of waiting. Twice she’d caught herself looking at the screen, to see if he’d called and to check if she had a signal. Maybe he had tried to phone unsuccessfully throughout the rest of the ferry trip earlier, and had decided to try again later. The easiest way to find out was of course to phone him, but Thóra feared that if she called him first she would seem too excited about hearing his decision, which could then be misread as eagerness for him to move to Iceland. It irritated her that she was thinking like this, because normally she got straight to the point. The problem was that she wasn’t entirely sure how she felt. She wanted him to come, but she also didn’t want any commitments. Her best friend had taken up with a foreigner and had quickly lost touch with her circle of friends, since the others didn’t like speaking English when they got together. Of course that had been many years ago, and Thóra reminded herself that she had very little contact with her old girlfriends now anyway. Most of them had their hands full, just like Thóra, with little time left over to meet for cups of coffee, much less glasses of wine.
She picked up her mobile and called him. She would just have to look desperate. She hung up, irritated, when a female German voice told her that the phone was out of range or turned off. Perhaps Matthew himself was out at sea, or had switched off his mobile because of work. He wasn’t the type who spent his work time chatting on the phone to friends and family, unlike Thóra, who took at least ten such calls per day, mostly from her children. As she was thinking this, the phone rang. She grinned.
‘Hi, Mum,’ said Gylfi. ‘Did you find us an apartment for the festival?’
Thóra rolled her eyes. You couldn’t accuse him of giving up easily. ‘No, sweetheart. I have other things to take care of at the moment.’
‘Oh.’ His disappointment was loud and clear. ‘Sigga and I were starting to really look forward to it.’
‘All is not lost yet, darling,’said Thóra. ‘I haven’t had any “no”sso far.’ Of course this was because she hadn’t made any more enquiries since it had first come up.
‘Keep trying,’ Gylfi said.‘It’ll be great fun. All the guys are going, you know.’
‘Are they going to camp?’ asked Thóra, who couldn’t imagine Gylfi’s friends setting up tents without trouble.
‘Naw,’Gylfi replied. ‘They’re renting people’s garages. Maybe you can get us one of those? That’d be fun.’
Sure, thought Thóra. To her mind, the word ‘fun’ didn’t apply to a weekend spent huddled among spare tyres and junk. ‘No thanks,’ she said. ‘You have a small child who could hurt himself, and you’ll be dragging around your poor old mother, who needs a shower and a coffee maker, not a garden hose and a power drill.’
She said goodbye after asking how little Orri was doing; his upper teeth didn’t want to come out. He was turning out to resemble his father in this as in other things; Thóra had actually considered asking Hannes to cut the little boy’s gums open when Gylfi had gone through the same thing. It was getting late, so the phone call to Sóley would have to wait until after she had spoken to Markus’s mother. She was supposed to be there at four o’clock sharp, and although the streets in the Westmann Islands weren’t numerous, she and Bella had managed to get hopelessly lost just looking for the excavation site, even though it was at the foot of the volcano.
After driving in circles for ten minutes, Thóra finally managed to find the street and the house. It had proven to be even more complicated than the search for the Pompeüof the North site, because this time Bella wasn’t there to help her, having gone to the library to try and wheedle her way into the archive and dig around for information on Valgerdur and Dadi. Thóra was therefore slightly late when she parked the car in front of the old woman’s house. She carefully smoothed out her trousers and fixed the barely visible crease in the front of them, then smoothed her blouse and headed for the front door. She wanted to make a good impression: people of Markus’s parents’ age wanted to see respectable individuals working as lawyers, and no doubt preferred them to be men. It was important that the old woman not be shocked by Thóra’s appearance when they met for the first time. To that end, Thóra was wearing the best, smart-but- not-fancy outfit in her closet.
Thóra rang the bell and stood stiffly waiting for someone to come to the door. It was Leifur’s wife Maria who opened it. A faint smell of alcohol drifted from her but she didn’t appear tipsy at all as she stood there in the doorway, dressed elegantly in a Burberry shirt and skirt. Thóra knew this woman would immediately notice her inexpensive clothing.
‘You’re late,’ said Maria angrily.
‘Oh,’ said Thóra, off guard. ‘I didn’t realize.’ She looked at the clock on the wall and then her watch and noticed that the latter was off by six minutes.‘I got lost.’
‘Got lost?’ said the woman scathingly. ‘In the Westmann Islands?’ She didn’t wait for a reply but instead waved Thóra in. ‘Klara is waiting,’ she said, and walked into the house.
Thóra followed her sheepishly, and could only think that she hoped her bottom would look that good when she was fifty. Her only physical workout these days was caring for her grandchild, which had given her impressive biceps. She cheered up at the thought that she could at least beat this elegant woman at arm-wrestling.
Leifur’s wife stopped at a sliding double-door that opened into an old-fashioned but splendid front room. ‘In you go. She’s got so much to tell you.’ She walked away, adding sarcastically: ‘As long as you know what to ask.’