Time was going by faster than Thóra would have liked. As usual she was worried that she wouldn’t make it home in time to prepare dinner. Her stress was exacerbated by the conviction that each passing minute increased the likelihood of Markus’s custody period being prolonged by police request. She was in her office waiting for a call from Detective Stefán, who would inform her of their decision about tomorrow’s hearing. She should have had the call by now. She hoped the decision had been delayed because the police were still scrutinizing the evidence that had come to light since Markus was locked up, and had found something that implicated others besides him. Of course, it could be exactly the opposite scenario; the police couldn’t call her because they were too busy putting together all the evidence against Markus. The uncertainty made her uncomfortable, and Thóra didn’t know how to occupy her time. She was reluctant to use the time for phone calls, in case Stefán called then didn’t have time to call back. She knew she was being silly, but she didn’t want to use her phone. So she sat restlessly at her computer. She knew she should be going over the countless details of the case, but she couldn’t concentrate on any of them. The minutes ticked by. To make matters worse, she hadn’t been able to make use of her time aboard the ferry from the Islands. Her mobile phone had cut out several miles from shore and didn’t regain a signal until just outside Thórlakshofn. So she had been unable to continue her quest to tie up this case’s innumerable loose ends. Instead, she’d been forced to listen to Bella talk about the guy she’d met the night before. If Thóra hadn’t known Matthew would soon be on his way to Iceland, she would have thrown herself overboard from the shame of Bella having a better sex life than hers.
The familiar opening notes of ‘Happy Birthday’ rang out from her mobile, and Thóra quickly answered. Sóley had changed the ring tone on her birthday, and although she found it a bit cheesy she couldn’t bring herself to change it, since Sóley was so pleased with it. Thóra didn’t recognize the number and she crossed her fingers that it would be Stefán. It turned out to be Markus’s son, eager for an update. She ran through recent developments for him, and promised to get in touch as soon as she knew more. The boy sounded nervous and mumbled something about his father probably having to stay in prison. Thóra repeated that she would have to let him know, and felt bad for disappointing the poor boy. Things weren’t going well for him, and she hoped for his sake that next time she called him it would be with good news.
Thóra went online to check whether anything was being reported on the news websites. You never knew, perhaps the media would get the news before her. This turned out not to be the case. The only report she found stated briefly that it was still unclear whether an extension of Markus Magnusson’s custody period would be requested before it expired tomorrow. Thóra gave up and decided to call Stefán, so that she could stop wondering when he would call her and get on with something else.
‘We’re going to request two more weeks of confinement based on his being party to the murders of the men in the basement,’ replied Stefán brusquely. ‘The decision will be made before two p.m. tomorrow.’
Thóra stifled a sigh, not wanting to betray her disappointment. ‘But is he no longer a suspect in Alda’s death?’ she asked hopefully. Even that would be some progress.
‘Given the estate agent’s statement and the evidence that backs him up, not to mention the information that has recently come to our attention, we no longer consider Markus to have had a hand in that.’
Stefán’s tone made it clear that he disagreed with this position. He was just as convinced of Markus’s guilt as before, but the police department’s lawyer had probably made the decision and informed him that there was no way to corroborate his suspicions. It seemed clear to Thóra that the new information Stefán had mentioned had come from the plastic surgeon, Dís. According to Bragi, after their meeting he and Dís had gone together to the police station, where the doctor had told the police some facts pertinent to the investigation.
‘What information was this?’
‘As your client is no longer a suspect in Alda’s case, that is none of your business,’ said Stefán.‘Now he’s only a suspect in the small matter of the bodies found on the Islands.’
‘Do you mean you’re going to overlook what I found out about them?’ snapped Thóra.
‘We don’t see that these details of yours make much of a difference,’ said Stefán.‘We’d already received information about some of them from Gudni, including the mysterious pool of blood. Even if Markus’s father was involved, that doesn’t preclude Markus playing his own part in it.’
‘I don’t understand your reasoning,’ said Thóra, feeling her spirits start to sink.‘There’s no indication that Markus isn’t telling the truth about the head in the box, and what little evidence has come to light seems to point to other people.’
‘Your man is involved in the case, whether you like it or not.’
‘Do you even know who the dead men were? Even if you’re in no hurry, it’s in my client’s interests that the case be resolved quickly.’
‘Yes,’ said Stefán, without appearing to register Thóra’s jibe. ‘They were the crew of a boat that disappeared off the coast of Iceland in January 1973. We sent X-rays of the teeth abroad and all the men have been identified.’
‘What?’ said Thóra.She recalled what she had read about two shipwrecks in Our Century, one with a crew of Icelanders and Faroese and the other a crew of four British men, one of whom had been found. She had ruled out both incidents, since they didn’t seem to fit. ‘Which boat was it, and when did it sink?’ she asked.
‘I see no harm in telling you that,’ said Stefán, and she heard him rustling some papers.‘It was a fishing smack named the Cuckoo, and it was seen last on the eighteenth of January 1973 off the south coast.’
Thóra sat silently, her mind reeling. Magnus had mentioned a cuckoo but she had not made the connection, the vessel’s name from the Our Century article forgotten. ‘I read an old news report about it,’ she said. ‘It said the body of one of the four-man crew had washed up on shore, along with some other wreckage. If the bodies in the basement are the rest of the crew, then this begs the question: who did the head belong to?’ Could it be that there was no connection between the three bodies and the head in the box after all?
‘There’s no doubt about who the fourth man in the basement was,’ said Stefán. ‘Body parts were washed ashore, among them a torso. Its head was missing, and it was thought at the time that it had been torn off by the force of the wreck. The body was in terrible condition and it was missing more than just the head: an arm was gone, and also the body part that was found along with the head.’He cleared his throat. ‘That is to say, in its mouth.’
Thóra knew which body part he meant. She was struggling to understand what this new information meant for Markus. The crew had vanished before the eruption, while he was still in the Islands. But she couldn’t see how Stefán and his colleagues would prove any link between them and Markus. This must have been the boat that stopped at the Islands on the night Markus was at the school dance, then at home in a drunken stupor. ‘Did these men have any connection to alcohol smuggling?’ she asked.
Stefán hesitated. ‘Yes…you could say smuggling plays a part in this story,’ he said. ‘How did you know?’ She told him about the alcohol smuggling case, and her suspicion that it was connected to the murders. She also mentioned that she’d already told Inspector Gudni Leifsson about it. Stefán, however, didn’t appear to think this significant. ‘No, it didn’t have anything to do with liquor smuggling,’ he said.‘These men were stealing birds, and searching for nesting sites before the spring.’
‘Bird smuggling?’ said Thóra. ‘Birds of prey, like falcons, maybe?’
‘Yes, falcons and eagles, and probably some other species I don’t know about,’ replied Stefán.‘I know it’s possible to get huge sums for them abroad. At the time, the police had been informed that these men were travelling through the country asking about nesting sites. It seems likely that they planned to return in the summer to steal eggs and hatchlings. If they hadn’t sailed away when they did, they would at least have been brought in for questioning. We think the scars on their hands were caused by raptors’ claws. They’d been doing it for years.’
‘Do you know if they had any falcons, or other birds, with them?’ asked Thóra, and told Stefán about Magnus’s repeated references to a falcon.
‘No, not as far as I know,’ he replied. ‘But you know you can’t take much of what Alzheimer’s patients say seriously.’
‘But it seems obvious from this that Magnus was involved,’ she said, furious at Stefán’s contrary attitude. ‘He also definitely mentioned a cuckoo, so he was probably talking about the boat.’
‘I’m not going to get into that. Of course we will investigate all potential leads, but your man isn’t getting out just because his father blurts out something so open to interpretation, which may or may not be linked to the case.’
‘So you’re not going to investigate Markus’s father, or Dadi? I know one of them is senile and the other dead, but there’s nothing preventing you from changing the focus of your enquiry.’
‘Of course we’re following every lead, as I said,’ replied Stefán. ‘Among other things, we’re examining the knife and the salmon priest you found in the basement, although it’s too early to know what they will tell us. So there’s no point making snide comments about our working methods. On the other hand, nothing has been discovered that proves your client is not involved. Far from it. He’s the only one behaving suspiciously. For example, he denies having put the head there.’
‘You know his explanation for that,’ fumed Thóra. ‘An explanation from which he has never deviated, despite countless interrogations and now solitary confinement.’
‘That may be because he knows no one can confirm or deny it,’ said Stefán. ‘And it may be that he himself orchestrated that convenient state of affairs.’
Thóra didn’t feel like responding to these insinuations. Markus had an alibi for Alda’s murder, and besides, Dís’s information directed the spotlight away from him. It didn’t actually matter how convinced Stefán was of his guilt: no judge would be persuaded that Markus had murdered her.‘Obviously I will object vigorously to your request for an extension of custody,’ she snapped. ‘For your sake, I hope you have more than just your opinion to bring to the table tomorrow.’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Stefán.‘Whatever you say. See you tomorrow, bright and early.’
Thóra did not respond to this asinine comment, taking her leave and hanging up. She had allowed her anger to show in her voice, and felt a little bit better. This was not shaping up to be the cosy TV evening with her daughter she’d hoped for. It also looked as though she wouldn’t be finished with the case before Matthew arrived. Thóra stood up and started to scrape together the files that she needed to go over to prepare herself. Hopefully she could work on the case at home without upsetting Sóley. If not, she would wait until her daughter had gone to bed and work on it late into the night. Lately her relationship with her daughter had been characterized by too many broken promises. She was torn from her thoughts about Sóley by the realization that she was supposed to call Markus’s son, Hjalti. He simply moaned ‘No’ when Thóra told him about the police’s decision, then she could hear his rapid breathing. ‘I should remind you that even though the police are still pursuing this, there’s nothing to say that the ruling will go their way,’ she tried to assure him.
‘Yes, there is,’ said Hjalti, sounding petulant – more like a small child than a young man.‘They’re going to torture him into confessing.’
‘Let’s not start accusing the police of torture,’ said Thóra evenly. She knew how to handle children by now, since she had all sizes and shapes of them at home. The boy needed to hear an adult tell him that everything would be all right; that his father would be released from prison, come home shortly, and buy Hjalti an apartment in the Islands, as he had planned. ‘These cases are very tough while they’re going on, and often those who least deserve it end up caught in the slipstream. I have no doubt that your father is one of those. If he didn’t murder any of those people, he won’t be convicted. I’ll make sure of it.’ She was going to add something about the truth always coming out, but the boy interrupted her.
‘But what if someone didn’t commit a murder himself, just helped the murderer? What then?’ he asked frantically.
Thóra knew that this‘someone’ was the boy’s father, and that Hjalti had realized that Markus might be tied to the murderer or murderers. He was, in other words, not completely clueless, poor boy, although he was deeply troubled.‘In my opinion there’s nothing to suggest that your father did anything that makes him an accomplice. He might have helped the murderer unknowingly, but that’s not a crime.’ She hoped he wouldn’t start asking what she meant, since she didn’t want to talk to the boy about the severed head in the box.
‘Okay,’ said Hjalti, his voice still tinged with nervousness. ‘Maybe I’ll come tomorrow at two o’clock. Is that all right?’
‘I don’t think you’ll get to see your father, if that’s what you’re hoping,’ said Thóra. ‘But you can always come and wait outside, if you want. Then I could meet you afterwards and tell you how it went, which might make you feel better.’ The boy agreed to this, although she wished he hadn’t. They said goodbye.
The phone rang again, and this time it was Bella. ‘I’ve found the tattoo,’ she said. ‘You’d better come and see this.’
The recent smoking ban hadn’t reached the tattoo parlour; Bella blew a thick cloud of smoke in Thóra’s direction. The multicoloured man who owned the parlour also had a burning cigarette between his lips, so Thóra couldn’t scold Bella. She settled for a glare, wondering what she was actually doing here: Markus was pretty much absolved of all suspicion in Alda’s murder, and the Love Sex tattoo wasn’t linked to the bodies in the basement. However, she didn’t want to make light of Bella’s investigation of the tattoo’s origin, so she acted as though nothing were out of the ordinary. ‘So you think it’s unlikely that this tattoo was put on anyone else?’ asked Thóra.
‘That would be a pretty fucking huge coincidence,’ said the man, without removing the cigarette from the corner of his mouth. He took a puff and blew out the smoke, still without touching the cigarette. In the light of Bella’s prowess with the men in the Islands, Thóra wondered for a moment whether they’d just been up to something. ‘A girl made it up from two tattoos I’ve got in this folder.’ He lifted his foot and kicked at a tired old folder on the couch in front of Thóra. His black army boot shoved it across to her.
Thóra smiled politely and reached for it. ‘Why do you remember this so well?’ she asked, looking around. Every wall was hung with drawings or photos of tattoos. ‘It looks like you do a lot of these. You can hardly be expected to remember each and every one.’ Unless he was a modern version of the old farmers who were said to be able to recognize every sheep marking in the country, she thought.
‘Nah,’ said the man, crossing his muscular arms. When Thóra had first walked into the tiny, dilapidated tattoo parlour she had thought he was wearing a garish fitted T-shirt beneath his leather waistcoat. She was wrong. His arms were covered with colourful pictures from the backs of his hands up: tigers and rainforest foliage that rippled as though in the wind when he flexed or contracted his muscles.‘I actually remember a lot of them. Usually the most beautiful ones, but also the really lame ones.’
Thóra cleared her throat. ‘And which group does this belong to?’ she asked, pointing at the photocopy of the Love Sex tattoo Bella had brought with her.
The man looked at Thóra with disdain.‘That’s fucked up, Grandma. Absolutely fucked up.’
Thóra wanted to keep the man in a good mood, so she didn’t waste any time objecting to being called grandma- after all, she was one, albeit prematurely. ‘And you remember this, even though it’s been six months since you… did it?’she asked, uncertain which verb one used for tattooing. ‘I don’t see a picture of it anywhere on your wall,’ she added, though it was impossible to rule out a picture of this particular tattoo being hidden there somewhere.
‘I’m not about to hang that on my wall, any more than I would the hundreds of butterflies I’ve put on girls’ ankles over the years,’ said the man, and he curled his lip in disgust. ‘If I had to say which I hate most, the butterflies or this disaster, then I would actually say this one. It’s one of the saddest ones I’ve ever done – that girl was an absolute nutter, away with the fairies.’
Thóra smiled to herself, thinking she had made a similarly hasty judgement of him just a few seconds earlier.‘Did she explain what this was supposed to mean?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I didn’t ask, either. I tried to talk her out of it, but she wouldn’t listen. I even spent some time showing her other, much cooler illustrations, but it was like throwing pearls at swine.’
Thóra thought about pointing out that one cast pearls before swine and not at them, but changed her mind. Instead she asked: ‘Did a woman by the name of Alda Thórgeirsdóttir ever ask you for information about this same tattoo? She was a nurse.’
The man nodded his head. ‘Like I told her…’ he pointed at Bella. ‘It’s mental that more than one person has contacted me to ask about this horrible thing. I’ve never had the same reaction to any of the tattoos I’m actually proud of. If you want me to put the same one on you, the answer is no.’
‘Did Alda want to get the same tattoo?’ asked Thóra.
‘No,’ he replied, and smiled to reveal large teeth, stained brown by tobacco. ‘She wanted to know whether the tattoo had been done here, and when I said yes she wanted to know when.’
‘And could you answer her?’
‘Yeah, yeah, I keep records of my tattoos so I just looked it up. The woman was so incredibly excited about it, I’d never seen anything like it. She said she was working on an investigation for the A &E, and this tattoo had turned up.’ The man stubbed out his cigarette, which had burned all the way down to the filter. ‘She pointed out that the investigation wasn’t connected to me or my working methods in any way, not that I thought it would be, since I’m really careful with hygiene here.’
‘I’m sure you are,’ said Thóra, avoiding looking at a dirty spot on his black leather waistcoat.‘Was it long ago that she called?’
‘No, not really,’ replied the man. ‘Several weeks, two months at most. She said she’d been searching for the origin of the tattoo before but hadn’t known about my parlour, since it wasn’t in the phone book. She’d recently heard about me from a boy who wanted to get rid of a tattoo that I did.’ Again the man snarled in disgust. ‘The little tosser.’
‘Could we have that same information?’ asked Thóra. ‘We won’t use it against you, any more than the other woman did.’
‘As long as you don’t let it get around where this crappy tattoo was done,’ grinnedthe man. ‘Apart from that it’s no skin off my nose, provided I can find it quickly. I’m closed now, and I’d rather be on my way home.’
The same went for Thóra.