‘Yes, I understand that,’Thóra said. ‘But maybe she hadn’t actually ever realized it.’ She put down the report. ‘I’m going to ask the police department if they have any information about whether Alda had visitors that night. Maybe we’ll be lucky.’ She looked at Markus. ‘Of course the fact remains that you say you didn’t know about the corpses down there. What are we supposed to do about that?’ She leaned back in her chair. ‘The only person who objected when they were going to excavate the house was you. One would assume that whoever put the bodies there would have tried to prevent the excavation in one way or another.’ She thought carefully about how to phrase what came next. ‘It’s my understanding that your parents are still alive. Could one of them have encouraged you in your efforts to block the excavation?’
Markus stared silently at Thóra for a moment. ‘If you’re suggesting that they had something to do with this, you’re out of your mind.’
‘You didn’t answer my question,’ Thóra said calmly. ‘Did they encourage you or not?’
Markus smiled bitterly. ‘My father has Alzheimer’s. He’s in no shape either to encourage or discourage anyone. Mum, on the other hand, has all her spark-plugs firing, and her feelings about the excavation were the opposite of mine. She was even really excited about it. She was hoping to recover some fine dinnerware from the house. Even though Dad had managed to get most of what we owned out of the house before it disappeared, he still left quite a few things behind. He hadn’t given much thought to the dinnerware.’
Thóra nodded. The man had no doubt put a lot of effort into saving the home’s stereo system and such like. Of course, Markus’ mother’s excitement about the excavation did not rule out her husband as a suspect; he could very well have put the bodies there without his wife knowing. ‘Someone put the bodies there, that much is certain. Does anyone come to mind?’
Markus shook his head. ‘I don’t actually remember every single person who lived on the Islands at that time, but it’s completely ridiculous to think that any of the people I do remember could have killed those three. Everyone here was normal; just your typical Icelandic fishermen’s families.’Markus started running his hands through his hair again. ‘My best memories are of my friends, and naturally they were all just dumb kids like me.’
‘Are you absolutely certain your father couldn’t have had something to do with this?’ asked Thóra.‘It was at your home, and I find it unlikely that someone would have broken in there to hide bodies.’
‘Broken in?’ echoed Markus.‘They wouldn’t have needed to break in. It was all unlocked. People were asked to leave their houses open so that the rescue crews could go in and out of them as they needed.’ He brightened. ‘Naturally, the place filled up with people arriving from the mainland after the night of the eruption. I don’t know any figures, but the rescue crews needed a lot of manpower and the majority of those who lent a hand weren’t from the Islands. Our house wasn’t buried immediately.’
Thóra considered this for a moment.‘So you think it more likely that one of those people put the bodies there?’
Markus shrugged. ‘What do I know? The only thing that’s completely clear to me is that I had nothing to do with it.’
Thóra hoped that this was indeed the case. It was always more comfortable to fight for a just cause. ‘We might be getting ahead of ourselves with this kind of speculation. We should wait for the results of the forensic autopsy on the bodies and head.’ She smiled weakly at Markus. How was an autopsy performed on a head? ‘Who knows, maybe these people simply died of natural causes or suffocated in the basement. Wasn’t that what happened in the only death to occur during the eruption?’
‘No one died in the eruption,’said Markus angrily, almost as if he were defending the eruption’s good name.
‘Really?’ said Thóra.‘I always thought that one person died. And in a basement, no less.’
‘Oh, him,’ said Markus.‘That doesn’t count. He was an alcoholic.’
The confused look on Thóra’s face forced him to explain this a little better.‘He went down into the pharmacy basement looking for spirits. The eruption had nothing to do with it.’
Except that the poison gases which killed him came from the eruption – but Thóra had no desire to waste time explaining this. She picked up the report again and leafed through it.‘This is odd. Am I right in thinking that you’ve never been asked whether you thought you’d seen any of the dead people before?’
Markus jerked his head to one side in surprise. ‘They didn’t ask me that because the bodies are hardly in a condition for anyone to be able to identify them. And I couldn’t really see very clearly there in the basement.’
In other words, you think you’ve never seen them before?‘ If it were possible to identify these people, it would be easier to determine what happened to them.
Markus shook his head slowly. ‘No, I’m almost sure I haven’t,’ he said. ‘But as I said, it’s possible that they’re people I knew. I would have to be able to see them again under better conditions, although I doubt that would make any difference.’
Thóra thought of the dried-out, dusty corpses and knew that it would be difficult to identify them except in the lab of a forensic pathologist.
‘They must be foreigners. Even though there are cases of Icelanders vanishing without a trace, it’s out of the question that three people disappeared at the same time without attracting attention.’ She hurriedly corrected herself: ‘Four, I mean.’The head was still so unreal to her that she kept forgetting to count it along with the bodies. She thought for a moment. ‘Maybe they were sailors?’ she asked. ‘They could have belonged to the crew of a wrecked ship.’
‘And how would that crew have ended up in our basement?’ asked Markus, puzzled.
‘Well, that’s another question,’ said Thóra, and smiled at him. ‘We should wait for the autopsy. I suppose the police will call you in again for questioning after that, and after they’ve gone over the medical examiner’s report. Until then I’ll try to find some witnesses or anything else that could possibly support your statement about Alda and the box.’
Markus stood up and snorted. ‘Like that’s going to happen,’ he said sulkily as he left. ‘She was the only one who could possibly have backed me up.’
Thóra tried unsuccessfully to look encouraging. This looked bad; the only hope of Markus getting off scot-free now was if it turned out that the people in the basement had suffocated. Again she had forgotten the head. How in the hell was it possible to explain that?
Stefán put down the phone, closed his eyes and counted to ten. He shook himself. ‘That was the medical examiner,’ he said to the policeman sitting across from him, and pinched himself to keep calm. ‘He doubts that Alda committed suicide. The autopsy revealed several details that need further explanation.’ He paused for a moment. ‘How could you possibly not have investigated anywhere but the bedroom? Are you completely useless when I’m not there?’ He tapped the stack of papers on the table with his index finger for emphasis. The young officer reddened and Stefán wondered whether it was from shame or anger. He continued: ‘How did you leave the scene? Is the house marked in any way that would let the relatives of the deceased know they can’t go roaming about in there, or did you just shut the door and drive away?’
‘Uh,’ said the young police officer, his cheeks even redder.
‘Uh,’ parroted Stefán.‘What does “uh” mean?’
‘We didn’t mark the house in any particular way,’ replied the young man. ‘It looked like suicide. I’ve seen several of them,’ he added, in a slightly more confident tone.