“It must be the same fox that was tied to Eiríkur’s body,” said Matthew. “At least, I can’t see it anywhere here.” He and Thóra had followed the path that Birna and Robin had taken to Kreppa and were at the spot where they’d apparently found the fox. It was nowhere to be seen.
“It could have been eaten by another animal, but I’m sure you’re right,” said Thóra. “The only animals I’ve seen around here are sheep, and I doubt they eat foxes.” She looked skyward. “Birds, perhaps, but then the bones would still be here.”
“So the murderer would be someone who uses this path,” Matthew said, swiping at the tall grass beside the path with a branch he’d picked up while they were looking for the dead fox.
“Either that or he shot the fox and tracked it here after Birna and Robin had left,” Thóra said. “What I’d give to know why he did it.”
“Who knows, Wonderwoman Bella might find that out for us,” said Matthew. “Perhaps the fox was supposed to signify something.”
“Like a message?” said Thóra, unconvinced. “From an animal rights group or something?”
“No, from the murderer,” he replied. “It could be some psycho who’s trying to communicate something. Have we established that nothing like this was attached to Birna’s body?”
“Not as far as I know,” said Thóra. “They both had pins pushed into the soles of their feet, but no one’s said anything about a fox or any other animal in connection with her.”
They stopped on the gravel driveway in front of the farmhouse.
“Whose car is that?” Matthew asked, pointing to a newish Renault Mégane.
Thóra shrugged. “No idea,” she said. “No one’s supposed to be here.” She noticed a light in one of the windows. “Maybe Elín and her brother are clearing the place out. I hope so.” She got the key out and they went up to the door, which turned out to be unlocked. Thóra opened it and put her head inside. “Hello,” she called. “Anyone here?”
“Hello!” someone replied, and they heard approaching footsteps.
“Hi there,” said Thóra cheerfully when Elín’s daughter Berta appeared. She had tied back her hair with a bandana and was holding a filthy duster.
“You scared me to death!” Berta said. “Do come in. I’m packing away some old things for Mum and Uncle Börkur.” She brandished the cloth. “Everything’s really dusty, so I’m trying to clean every item before I pack it up, even though it’s taking me ages.”
Matthew smiled at her, delighted that someone had remembered he was a foreigner and was bothering to speak English. “Hello,” he said, offering her his hand to shake. “Nice to see you again.”
“You too,” said Berta. “I had the presence of mind to bring a thermos flask and I’ve just made coffee. Your timing’s perfect because Steini doesn’t want coffee and I made far too much.”
They followed her into the kitchen, where the young man sat in his wheelchair. As before, he had pulled a hood over his head to cover his face, and when they walked in, he glanced at them from under it but said nothing.
“Visitors, Steini,” said Berta, and he mumbled something unintelligible in reply. “Help yourselves,” she said, pointing to some china cups by the sink. “Don’t worry, I’ve washed them.” She grinned.
“Thank you,” said Thóra. “I hadn’t realized how much I needed a coffee.” She poured a cup for Matthew and one for herself. “Isn’t this an awful lot of work for you?” she asked, after taking a sip.
“Oh, yes,” Berta agreed vigorously. “I don’t know what I was thinking when I offered to do it.” Then she added, “Actually, it’s quite fun. It’s weird handling all these objects that my great-grandparents cared about so much.”
“I can imagine,” said Thóra. “We dropped in to take a look at the room Birna was working in. We understand she’d set up an office here, is that right?”
“Yes, upstairs,” Berta replied. “Shall I show you? There’s not much in there, only drawings and stuff—no computer. She used a laptop and never plugged it in here.” She gestured at the socket where the coffee maker was connected. “The plugs are so old that you need an adapter for them. Birna was afraid the electricity was unreliable and didn’t want to risk damaging her computer. She always charged it at the hotel before she came.”
“That doesn’t matter,” said Matthew. “We’re not necessarily looking for her computer. We just want to see what she was up to.”
Berta narrowed her eyes skeptically. “Do you think her murder was connected somehow with the building she was designing? Doesn’t it seem obvious to you that the murderer was some psycho who raped her?”
“No, it’s not at all obvious,” Thóra replied, deciding not to mention Jónas’s arrest just yet. That might make Berta think Thóra and Matthew were working for the murderer, and she might refuse to assist anyone connected with her friend’s death. “But it seems unlikely that her architectural designs had anything to do with the murder. We just want to see whether there’s something in there that could help explain it.”
“I see,” Berta said. “I haven’t been in there since the murder,” she added. “I expected the police to search the room, so I didn’t want to disturb anything. They haven’t come, though, so perhaps it doesn’t matter.” She looked at Thóra. “You’re a lawyer, aren’t you? For Jónas and the hotel?” she asked.
“I am,” Thóra said, praying the girl wouldn’t start asking about her client.
“Then I don’t see why you can’t go in there,” she said. “You’d hardly compromise the investigation, would you?”
“God, no,” Thóra lied fervently. “I’d never do that. We’re not going to take anything, just have a look around.” She sipped her coffee. “This is great coffee.” She smiled.
“Thanks,” said Berta. “Some people think I make it too strong.” She tilted her chin toward Steini.
“It is too strong,” said a voice from beneath the hood. “Much too strong.”
Matthew clearly didn’t feel as awkward as Thóra, because he answered Steini at once: “Put more milk in it. That’s the trick,” he said in a perfectly normal voice. “You ought to try it. Cream’s even better.”
“Maybe,” said Steini. “I prefer Coke.”
Berta smiled warmly at Matthew, and Thóra wished she could think of something to say to the young man. The girl’s affection for him was rather touching.
“Shall I show you, then?” Berta said suddenly. “Steini and I were about to call it a day anyway.” She went over to the hall door.
“Please do,” Thóra replied, putting down her cup. Matthew did the same. “You can leave if you want,” she said as they followed Berta. “We won’t take anything or do any damage.”
“That’s okay,” Berta said. “I have a few bits to finish off.”
The three marched in single file up the stairs and to the door to Birna’s room. It turned out to be the room that Thóra and Matthew hadn’t been able to get into when they first visited the house.
“I locked it as soon as I heard about the murder,” said Berta, rattling the key in the stiff lock. With a deft twist she finally managed to turn it and she opened the door. There was a bottle of fizzy drink on the desk, an ashtray stood on the windowsill, and various other trappings of modern life were scattered around the room. As in Birna’s hotel room, drawings were pinned to the wall, mostly sketches, but some printouts.
Thóra examined the drawings on the wall, showing the planned location of the annex and several cross sections. “What’s this?” she asked, pointing to a sketch of a building with pine trees behind it. Buses and pedestrians had been added to the picture. “Surely this wasn’t her idea for the annex to Jónas’s hotel?” The building was a mass of glass and she could hardly imagine hotel rooms with only windows for walls.
Berta walked over to the drawing as well. “God, no,” she said. “Birna showed me her plans for the building and they were nothing like this.” She stooped to examine one corner of the printout. “It’s dated a week ago,” she said, “and it wasn’t here last time Birna invited me in.”
“But it was here when you locked the room, wasn’t it?” Matthew asked. “It can’t have been hung up after she died, surely?”
The girl wrinkled her brow as she tried to remember. “I honestly don’t know,” she said. “I only put my head around the door before I locked the room and I simply can’t remember if this drawing was on the wall or not.” She looked embarrassed, almost guilty, as if she had been somehow negligent. “But no one’s been in here since I locked up. I’m sure of it.”
“When exactly was that?” asked Thóra.
“On Saturday,” Berta replied. “I don’t remember the time, but it was in the afternoon. Does that matter?” she asked anxiously. “Do you think the murderer came here?”
“No,” Thóra reassured her. “I doubt it very much. Not many people seem to have known about this hideaway of hers.”
She went over to the desk. More drawings were spread all over it, along with a few credit-card receipts. They told her nothing, except that Birna was a customer of Esso and the Hvalfjördur Tunnel. The desk drawers were warped shut, and it took all her strength to open them. Two were completely empty, while one contained a pencil, a sharpener, and a key on a metal fob stamped with a logo she didn’t recognize. She picked up the key. It was too small to fit a door, a car, or anything else Thóra could think of. “Do you know what this is for?” she asked.
Berta shook her head. “No idea,” she said, “but it’s certainly Birna’s because it wasn’t in the drawer when she moved in. I cleared the room out before that.”
Thóra put the key in her pocket. “I’m just borrowing it,” she told the girl. “Don’t worry about the police. I’ll hand it over if they want it.”
“I don’t care,” Berta said. “I just want the murderer to be found. I don’t mind who does it.”
“Are we done here?” Matthew said when they had searched the whole room. “Are there any more of her belongings in the house?”
“There could be a glass downstairs,” Berta said. “Yes, and boots in the hallway. Do you want them?”
Thóra smiled. “No, no. But tell me one thing,” she said. “Birna was particularly interested in a hatch outside. Do you happen to know why?”
The girl shook her head slowly. “No, but it was presumably when she was considering an extension to this building,” she said. “That was almost two months before I first met her here.”
“No, this was after that, very recently,” Matthew said. “Do you know the hatch we’re talking about?”
“Yes,” she said. “I think so. There’s only one hatch outside. Do you want to take a look at it?”
Thóra looked at Matthew and gave a shrug. “Why not,” she said.
They followed Berta out of the room and stood by her side as she conscientiously locked it behind them. On the way out, Thóra grabbed the chance to ask her whether she had come across any old Nazi memorabilia while packing, or whether Birna had mentioned it at all.
Berta spun around on the front steps and looked at Thóra, baffled. “No, why do you ask?”
“I just wondered,” Thóra said. “There’s some in boxes in the hotel basement.”
“Really?” Berta said, not attempting to conceal her surprise. “That does seem strange. Could it belong to someone outside my family?”
“Maybe,” said Thóra, although she knew better. “And another thing,” she went on as they resumed walking, “do you recognize the name Kristín?”
“Kristín Sveinsdóttir?” Berta said without turning around. Thóra’s heart skipped a beat. “We were in school together for years. I haven’t seen her for ages, though.” Then she turned to Thóra. “Do you know her?”
Thóra tried to hide her disappointment. “No, I was thinking about another Kristín who might have lived here or locally a long time back.”
Berta shook her head. “No, I don’t recall anyone by that name. I’m not the right person to ask about the old folks. Mum might be able to help you on that.”
Fat chance, thought Thóra. “Is this the hatch?” she asked, pointing to a steel plate with a welded handle where Berta had stopped. They were about twenty meters behind the house.
“Yes,” said Berta. “There’s nothing remarkable about it. Do you want to open it?” she asked, signaling that Matthew should do so if he wanted.
He bent down and struggled to lift the heavy cover. The hinges creaked when he tugged, but he couldn’t open it. “What’s down there?” he asked.
“Nothing,” Berta said. “It was used for storage, as far as I remember. There’s an entrance from the basement. I think coal used to be kept here for heating the house in those days. It hasn’t been opened since God knows when. The house has had electrical heating for as long as I can recall.”
“Could we have a look in the basement?” asked Matthew, wiping his dirty hands on the grass.
Berta nodded, but warned him that there was nothing down there. She accompanied them down the steps, and after walking through a little door at the far end of the basement and along a short, almost tunnellike corridor, they reached a steel door, which she pushed open. Inside was nothing but darkness. In the tiny light from the basement they managed to see that the coal store was covered in black dust with occasional black lumps on the floor.
“It’s gross, really,” Berta said as she closed the door again. “Birna wouldn’t have been interested in this. I don’t remember her ever even coming into this basement.” She walked over to the stairs. “Of course, she was usually here by herself, so she may well have taken a look, but I can’t imagine why she would have.”
Back on the ground floor, Thóra and Matthew decided to call it a day. They said goodbye to Berta and thanked her for her help. Matthew sent his regards to Steini, while Thóra struggled to suppress the urge to ask what had happened to him. Suddenly the question slipped out. “Berta, I hope you don’t mind me asking, but what happened to your friend?” she said in a low enough voice to be inaudible in the kitchen.
Berta sighed heavily. “He was in a car crash. A car hit his and it caught fire. He was smoking,” she said, her voice as low as Thóra’s.
“Jesus,” said Thóra. “That’s awful. Is he paralyzed?”
“No,” replied the girl. “At least, there’s no spinal damage. His legs are just in such a bad state that he can’t walk properly. Some of the muscles were burned, and the skin transplant is still bothering him. Hopefully I’ll be able to get him to start physiotherapy again soon. It just takes time.” She took a quick peek around the corner to make sure Steini was out of earshot. “The worst part is that the man who drove into him was drunk. Steini was stone-cold sober.”
“And what happened to him?” Thóra asked. “Was he punished?”
Berta smiled coldly. “You could call it that. He died in the accident. His wife too.” She paused for a moment as if deciding whether to say more, then went ahead. “They were from a farm around here, actually. Their daughter is Rósa, Bergur’s wife.”
Well, I never, Thóra thought. All roads led to Bergur the farmer.