Bjargey shook her head. ‘No, I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘She was simply reminiscing about what the festival was like for the residents of the island. Told me about the Islanders’ white tents, and things like that. I don’t remember her saying she rarely went there.’ Bjargey seemed to be on the verge of standing up when she suddenly stopped. ‘Actually,’ she said,‘I asked her whether she wanted to go, since I could easily have found another nurse to fill in for her.’
‘And?’ asked Thóra.‘What was her reply?’
Bjargey’s brow furrowed. ‘I remember I found her reply and the tone of her voice quite peculiar and very unlike her,’ she answered. ‘She said her heart wouldn’t let her go even if her head wanted her to.’ The nurse looked at Thóra.‘Then she laughed as if it were some hilarious joke.’ She stood up.‘I didn’t get what was so funny.’
Stefán found the song on the radio quite inappropriate, so he turned it off. He was sitting in his office, but should have been on his way home. One more day in which he didn’t make it home on time. He sighed deeply. Tomorrow it would happen again. His promotion within the police department demanded more of his time than he had originally expected, and it was starting to take its toll. His wife thought he was messing around in his office all evening, and was in a bad mood every night. Stefán was getting very tired of the situation at home, particularly the fact that it seemed to take at least an hour to get his wife going in bed on the occasions when he was in the mood. Tomorrow he would be home by five at the very latest. Definitely. Yet it seemed that whenever he entertained thoughts like this he would suddenly be hit with a flurry of urgent business. Where were all these people with all their burning issues between nine and five? Just earlier, for instance, the forensic pathologist had phoned at five sharp with the results from the second drug test on the dead nurse. He had asked Stefán to wait a little while he took care of something in the autopsy lab, but promised that he would phone again when he was back up in his office, where he had left the report. So Stefán had waited, but as experience advised he had phoned home and explained why he would be late. His explanation fell on deaf ears. He did not expect to be welcomed home joyfully tonight. It was six thirty when the doctor finally rang and Stefán noticed that the same cold tone had crept into his own voice as he had heard in his wife’s.
‘Keep it short,’ he said.‘It’s getting late.’
‘You don’t need to tell me that,’ replied the doctor, just as irritated. He paused and there was a brief riffling of papers on the other end of the line before he got straight to the point. ‘As you recall, the first test revealed nothing to indicate the cause of death so another test was performed. I don’t know how familiar you are with these cases, but the lab first tests only for the things that are specifically requested. Of course we asked them to test for the active ingredients in the tablets found on the bedside table, thenwe also had them look for several common substances, but with no result. However, for the current test we widened the scope. I also took several tissue samples and had them tested.’
‘Which tissues?’ asked Stefán. What he knew about forensic pathology could fit on the back of a stamp, but he didn’t want the doctor to realize this. He hoped it wasn’t too stupid a question.
‘I mainly took samples from the usual areas, but I was most eager to see the results from the woman’s tongue,’ replied the doctor, who Stefán could hear was still flipping through his papers. ‘I’ve never seen a corpse with a tongue like that and I suspected something unnatural was going on.’
‘And?’ asked Stefán impatiently. The tone of the doctor’s voice told him that he was going to say something important and he wanted to relish the moment. Stefán had no time for games.
‘And, I was right,’ said the doctor triumphantly. ‘This woman was murdered and the proof is in her tongue.’ The rustling stopped suddenly. ‘Very unusual. Very.’
Stefán took a deep breath and counted to three in his head. He couldn’t spare the time to count up to ten.‘Might you consider telling me about this amazing discovery, or do I have to guess?’ he asked calmly.
‘Guess?’ repeated the doctor, laughing. ‘You could never guess this, my friend. The woman’s tongue was injected with Botox and then shoved down her throat.’ When Stefán said nothing he added, ‘Tasteful, don’t you think?’
Stefán spoke up again: ‘Botox, isn’t that anti-wrinkle medicine?’He wasn’t particularly interested in plastic surgery, but his wife ruined all the television shows they watched with a running commentary about this or that actress having surely had Botox injections.‘Paralyzes the skin or something like that?’
‘It actually paralyzes the muscles,’ the doctor replied. ‘This drug, if you can call it a drug, is closely related to botulism, or food poisoning, but it can also cause lethal paralysis. Botox prevents messages being sent from the nerve ends of muscles to the upper part of the face, thus inhibiting it from contracting. The muscles in question are technically paralyzed, so they can’t form wrinkles in the skin. It only lasts for a few months at a time, so people need to repeat the injections if they want to maintain their youthful appearance. It’s an ingenious substance, although in this instance it has been used in a very unpleasant and unconventional manner.’
‘So her tongue was paralyzed?’asked Stefán, even though the answer was obvious. ‘It fell back into her throat and choked her, did it?’
‘That was the idea, I imagine,’said the doctor. ‘However, the problem is that it takes Botox several hours to work perfectly, even up to a few days, although muscle movement is restricted almost immediately. I think the murderer got tired of her struggling, so he shoved her tongue down her throat. She wasn’t able to pull it back up again because the tongue’s muscular actions were impeded. She had a faint bruise on her upper arm that could suggest she’d been held down.’ The doctor stopped. ‘I need to go over everything again in the light of this new information. It may well be that I’ll find other evidence that can be used to get a good picture of what happened.’
‘But you’re convinced that this was murder?’ Stefán asked. ‘She was a nurse, and could have done this to herself. People do strange things when they’re unbalanced.’
‘It’s out of the question that she could have done this herself,’ said the doctor stubbornly. ‘The marks on her arms don’t suggest that she intended this conclusion for herself. I have the feeling that someone wanted to make this look like suicide, but panicked and wasn’t careful enough. The drugs themselves might have been enough, but the vomit found in the room suggests that her stomach couldn’t bear them and tried to expel the poison.’
‘And then it just happened that the murderer had Botox in his pocket,’ said Stefán. His head was spinning.
‘As you say, she was a nurse and no stranger to plastic surgery, judging by her body,’ replied the doctor.‘Maybe she had the Botox at home, which the murderer used to his own advantage. Maybe the idea was to prevent the vomiting by blocking its way out.’
‘I don’t know whether you realize, but she worked at a plastic surgeon’s office,’ said Stefán. ‘Maybe she got the Botox from them, to keep in her first-aid kit if wrinkles suddenly appeared.’
‘Maybe,’ said the doctor thoughtfully. ‘I think it’s rather doubtful that she got her own supplies from them, though. This isn’t a substance to be used at home. On the other hand you never know, maybe the plastic surgeon she worked for dropped by?’ He snorted. ‘Now is not the right time, nor is it my job, to ponder who may have done this. My task is to uncover the cause of death, and I now think I know what that is. Premeditated murder by a most unorthodox form of choking. My report will be on your desk by noon tomorrow. I’d better get to work on it.’