When she read the text she was so surprised that she dropped the phone into the sink with a thunk. Sóley looked at her inquisitively and even Orri tore his eyes from Spiderman for the first time since being put in his chair. Thóra reached for her mobile phone, which was lying between two coffee cups, thankfully dry and intact. The screen was still backlit and the black letters blared provocatively at her: Who raped Lísa? Whose child is it? Both very good questions, but the one uppermost in Thóra’s mind was: ‘Who sent this message?’
Matthew put down the phone, let himself fall back onto the pillow and yawned. ‘Is the shower free?’
‘The shower?’ Thóra grabbed the phone back. ‘Who cares about that? Don’t you think this is weird? It’s the third time I’ve got this kind of message; I received two the other day, but I ignored them because I thought they’d come to me by accident. One of them just said Pregnant, but the other was How did Helena get burned as a child? You have to admit it’s pretty strange. I have them here if you want to see; luckily I didn’t delete them.’
‘Okay, no, no need. It is very odd, I’ll certainly admit that.’ Matthew closed his eyes. ‘I’m just not really awake yet.’
‘No, obviously not.’ The light of the phone’s screen faded, although the text was still visible through the grey. ‘The thing is, not many people know that I’m investigating this case. In fact, I can only think of two: the lazybones lawyer, Ari, and the woman who used to run the centre, Glódís. I’m fairly certain Jakob’s mother didn’t know where I was going with the questions about Lísa, and Jakob had no clue. And besides, he doesn’t have access to either the Internet or a phone.’
‘But why would Ari or Glódís send a message like this?’ Matthew was starting to perk up, though he sneaked in a deep yawn. ‘What’s the purpose of these questions? To get you to dig around to find out who the father is? I wouldn’t have thought either of them would want to draw attention to that. He admitted how he only skimmed through the files, and she was very open about how little she thought of her clients.’
‘Well, I don’t know, maybe one of them was drunk and wanted to stir things up.’
Matthew pushed himself up onto one elbow. ‘Isn’t that a bit far-fetched?’ He cocked his head to listen, then smiled when he realized that the shower was free.
‘Yes.’ Thóra put her phone in her pocket. ‘But it simply couldn’t be anyone else. I can’t think of anyone, anyway.’
‘I don’t suppose the woman, Glódís, discussed it with someone at work, and they then took it personally? Maybe a former employee of the centre who was unhappy with the outcome of the case?’
‘Maybe.’ Thóra relaxed her forehead and her worry-lines disappeared. ‘I also had another idea. Sóley’s going to her friend’s birthday party where the kids are supposed to wear costumes, and it made me think of a possible explanation for the angel Jakob mentioned. The home burned down in October – the month of Halloween. It’s becoming more and more popular and there may have been a fancy dress party in the neighbourhood, even though the fire didn’t occur on the thirty-first.’
Matthew looked unconvinced. ‘I seriously doubt it.’
‘But it wouldn’t hurt to check.’
Matthew got up, put on a bathrobe and headed to the shower, and Thóra took out the centre’s employee list and sat down with it in front of the computer. First she attempted to find any reference to a fancy dress party somewhere in the vicinity of the residence on the night of the fire, but she found nothing, not even when she widened the search parameters to include the entire city. The idea was probably too far-fetched, as Matthew had said. Sóley and Orri were staring transfixed at a cartoon on TV, so she had total peace and quiet, for the moment at least. Disappointed at not having got anywhere with her idea about the costume party, she decided to investigate whether any of the people on the list still worked for the Regional Office. This proved easier than she’d hoped. The office maintained a website that listed the names of its employees, although it didn’t specify who did what, so she couldn’t determine whether a particular person worked with Glódís at the main office or in a community residence in town. The office managed a total of twenty-eight homes, but only their directors were named on the site. Thóra recognized only one name from the list of former employees: Elías Þráinsson, who had been promoted, which must have been painful for Glódís to witness. Thóra suspected that despite her bitching and moaning about her workload, Glódís had it pretty easy where she was; at least, her phone hadn’t rung once during her meeting with Thóra. Other phones in the office had hardly seemed to shut up. The fire must have been a blow to Glódís’s career, even if only for the revelation of Lísa’s pregnancy and the fact that the security system hadn’t been set up yet. Of course Glódís couldn’t be blamed for the fire, but someone had failed in their duties.
She saw that approximately half of those people on the list still worked in the Regional Office. Except for Elías, Thóra couldn’t find out what jobs they did, despite searching everywhere, and she wondered whether it actually mattered. Since the person sending the messages was in the habit of covering their tracks, they’d hardly be likely to admit sending the messages or say what was on their mind. It might be more useful to stop trying to track down this mysterious texter and focus instead on what the former employees of the centre had to say about its operations. In this regard, Thóra strongly suspected that those who no longer worked for the Regional Office would speak more openly. On the other hand, she had no idea how she would track down these particular employees, most of whom had rather ordinary names, because she didn’t have any other information about them except for what was stated on Glódís’s list. She couldn’t think of anything else but to turn to the Internet telephone directory. She was able to rule out a high proportion of the names from their job titles, which were listed in the directory.
She had just one name left when Matthew came up behind her and stroked her hair. She could smell his aftershave. She took hold of his hand and brought it to her lips, but as she turned to him she spied her mother, wearing a dressing gown that Thóra remembered from her childhood home. Even the belt, which was tied tightly around her waist, was showing signs of wear. In places the material had worn through to little more than threads, revealing a red, full-length velvet nightdress that looked as if it could melt icebergs. The effects of the aftershave instantly vanished.
‘How’s it going? Should I make us some coffee?’ Thóra’s mother smiled at them and walked purposefully into the kitchen without waiting for a reply. Shortly afterwards they heard her humming a tune that sounded familiar, but impossible to place. From the garage came the sound of Thóra’s father whistling the same melody.
This was going to be an interesting living arrangement; maybe now wasn’t a bad time for her to make an appointment for that bikini wax…
Margeir woke up miserable and thought at first that he was hungover. His mind struggled to orient itself. He felt as if he must have drunk an enormous quantity of something – a whole box of cheap white wine, maybe even two. But then his head cleared and he remembered that he hadn’t drunk a drop. His headache was caused by something else. He opened his eyes carefully and avoided lifting his head from the pillow. He lay like that for a few moments, staring at the bedroom window, which was shut tight. The air in the room was thick and heavy and even though he should have long been impervious to it, his nostrils burned with each inhalation, forcing him to breathe through his mouth. In order to do so, he had to push away the thought of the poisonous grey cloud slipping past his teeth and tongue before running along his soft palate and down into his lungs. He felt nauseous and tried to gather the strength to stand up and open the window. Why was it closed, anyway? Margeir always slept with it wide open, whatever the weather. If he could have, he’d have removed the outer wall during the night and allowed the clear, cold air to waft around him. He must have either forgotten to open the window or shut it sometime during the night.