‘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.