Thóra sat and thought for a minute.‘Has he said anything about the eruption?’ she asked. Maria was right, the testimony of such a sick man could not be taken seriously unless it could be confirmed by some other means. There may have been no sacrifice, or if there had been, maybe it hadn’t been Alda who was involved, meaning the incident had no relation to this case.
‘Of course he has,’ sighed Maria.‘Everyone who wasn’t an infant at the time of the disaster has plenty to say about it. For a while I feared that I would never be accepted into the community because I hadn’t ever breathed in a decent amount of ash.’ She looked at Thóra sadly. ‘That fear turned out not to be unfounded. I’ve never properly adapted to the community here, though I don’t think it’s entirely because of the eruption.’
Thóra sympathized with the woman and her isolation. ‘What has he said about the eruption?’
‘He’s mentioned it now and again.Asked sometimes whether 1 heard a booming noise, as if he were reliving that night. I can almost recite the whole story, he’s told me so often. He was one of the first to become aware of the eruption, since he was awake. I understand it was late on a Monday night-’
Thóra cut her off. ‘I’m not looking for information about what time the eruption began, so much as anything he may have told you about the rescue operation.’ Thóra could see from the woman’s face that she didn’t really understand, so she continued, ‘The bodies showed signs of having been outside after the eruption started, later than the first night. So I wondered whether someone else could have brought the bodies to the basement without Magnus knowing. Maybe someone who helped him clear out the house, and therefore knew when it was safe to bring them in.’
‘I see,’ said Maria. ‘He mostly talked about how he evacuated residents to the mainland on his ship. I don’t remember how long he said he’d been awake at one point, but he talked a lot about it.’ She smiled. ‘Fifty, sixty hours, something like that. He was very proud of it. But that may have been a slight exaggeration on his part.’ She patted her hair before continuing.‘He didn’t say much about anything that happened while he was trying to salvage the household; he said he’d got out most of what mattered but was still worried about things that he’d forgotten to take: old books he’d inherited from his father, a compass, some coins and other things that it’s hard to imagine him missing. He could grumble to himself about this for hours at a time, but those things had been in a storeroom, and so they were lost.’
‘Was the storeroom in the basement?’ asked Thóra. If Magnus never went down to the basement, someone could have put the bodies there at any point after the eruption.‘One would have expected him to have taken these things from there, since they were dear to him.’
Maria shrugged. ‘I have no idea where the storeroom is,’ she said. ‘It could be in the basement, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Maggi still might have gone down there, even if he didn’t manage to find everything. It would be impossible for me to remember what was in our storeroom if I had to remove the things I cared about most. None of the objects he mentioned was particularly large, so he could easily have gone down there without finding them.’
‘But he’s never spoken about the basement anxiously, or in any way other than his usual tone?’ asked Thóra.
Maria snapped her fingers. ‘Yes, now I remember,’ she said triumphantly. ‘He did mention the basement in connection with the eruption, but not in the way you described. It was before he got ill so it wasn’t that bizarre, but if it’s true then he certainly went down there.’ Maria drummed her high heels on the floor as she thought back. ‘Let’s see… he said he was glad he hadn’t taken all the family’s possessions down into the basement as he’d first planned, and had even started to do. He was smiling when he said it, because he was laughing at himself for having thought the basement would be safe. So he did go down there – is that bad?’
‘No, not really,’ said Thóra, who didn’t know whether this meant anything. So Magnus had gone down but probably only briefly, as he had missed things he wanted to salvage. Was that because he knew about the bodies and couldn’t bear to stay there very long, or because he thought there was nothing of interest down there? ‘Do you think it would make him happy to get his hands on those items he was looking for?’ asked Thóra.
‘Yes, if it could happen soon,’replied Maria. ‘And if we managed to give them to him when he was in a good mood.’ Her eyes clouded and she let her hands fall into her lap. ‘Otherwise, I don’t know.’
Thóra said nothing, thinking things over. The basement of the house hadn’t been emptied yet. If she and Bella went there and found these items, it was entirely possible they would help clear the old man’s head when he held them in his hands. Since he seemed to connect them to the eruption, there was a faint chance he would tell Thóra something useful as a result. If they got on the case that evening, they could drop by again in the morning, before catching the boat home. Thóra adjusted her little notebook on her knees and readied her pen. ‘What was it again that he was looking for?’ She wrote the things down and stood up to leave.
‘I have some papers for you, from Leifur,’ said Maria as they left the room. ‘I’m to tell you that he got them from the archaeologist.’ She grabbed a large pile of documents and handed them to Thóra. ‘I’m also supposed to tell you that no one from the excavation team was aware of Alda having contacted them to try to prevent the house from being dug up.’Thóra took the stack and saw that it was the log of everything found in the houses. It would take a while to go through it.
When Thóra left Maria she realized that she hadn’t learned much of interest except that Magnus had sailed overnight to the mainland with refugees, returned immediately the next day and started to salvage what he could. First he had focused on his own house. In doing so he had had the help of several neighbours, who he helped in return, but unfortunately Maria hadn’t known whether this included Dadi from next door. Then Magnus had joined a group of men who went all over Heimaey performing salvage operations, but Maria didn’t know any of their names. After a month or so Magnus had started fishing again, by which time his house was completely buried. Over the following months he’d worked as hard as he could to keep his ship.
Thóra’s phone rang, and she answered eagerly when she saw the number of the estate agent Markus said he’d spoken to on his way east. She had talked to him briefly before she’d visited Maria, but he’d been busy and had promised to ring as soon as his work day was finished, which was usually early on Saturdays. That was clearly not the case today, since it was nearly six o’clock. Thóra got straight to the point after saying hello.
‘Okay,’ said the youngish voice at the other end of the phone, when she had finished explaining what she needed to know. ‘I understand.’