Alda’s decision to give up her part-time job had come out of the blue several months earlier. She had been volunteering in the local A &E several nights a week and on the weekends, and among other things had earned a good reputation for her support and assistance of rape victims. She had seemed to enjoy this work, and perhaps her decision to quit was the clue that Dís had been trying to remember. Who knew, maybe the horrors Alda occasionally witnessed there had finally been too much for her to handle. ‘Maybe it was someone else entirely,’ she said cautiously.
‘Like who?’ said Agúst in irritation. ‘Mickey, Goofy and Pluto?’
‘No. Like you, for example,’ said Dís calmly, pulling a little paper bag from the pocket of her scrubs.
Agúst stood up. He didn’t seem angry, just surprised. ‘Me?’
Dís went over and put the bag on the desk in front of him. ‘I took this from the table beside her bed. Judging by her body, her death wasn’t painless. Not at all what one would expect if sleeping pills had killed her.’
Agúst looked Dís in the eye, stubbornly. ‘And this makes you think that I killed her?’
‘Look in the bag,’ she said softly. ‘I haven’t completely lost my mind.’
Agúst looked down at the bag and grabbed it. He glanced quickly back up at Dís.
‘Be careful not to touch what’s inside,’ she said calmly. ‘This might have to go to the police.’ She saw Agúst’s expression harden and hurried to add, earnestly: ‘If you were connected to this in some way then it goes no further. If not, then I’ve got to turn this in somehow. I took it from her bedside table.’ She pointed at the bag. ‘But that’s a problem for later. First we’ve got to get this cleared up.’ He looked at her. ‘Don’t look at me like that until you’ve seen what it is. Take a look.’
Agúst pulled the plastic down carefully with his index finger. He didn’t need to open the bag the whole way, as he recognized the contents as soon as they appeared.‘Fucking hell,’ he said quietly, and his head drooped. ‘What do we do now?’
‘All I know is that no one raised a single objection against the excavation except for Markus,’ said Hjortur, walking over to a shelf that appeared about to break under the strain of folders and a tall stack of papers. The archaeologist placed the pages he was holding on the top of the stack and turned back to Thóra and Bella.‘Not his parents, and not his brother. And I can assure you that this Alda you mentioned never got in touch with me. She might have discussed things with someone else here in this office, but if she did no one has mentioned it.’
Thóra nodded dejectedly. ‘Would you be willing to ask? If she had, it could make a difference.’
Hjortur gave her a look that combined pity with irritation. ‘I will, but I doubt it’ll lead anywhere.’
Thóra sensed that she would have to tread lightly in her dealings with the archaeologist so that he wouldn’t block her out. He wasn’t obliged to answer her questions or assist her in any way. ‘Thank you very much,’ she said humbly. ‘I know the discovery of the bodies threw a large spanner in your works, and I expect you’re just as eager as I am for the case to be solved. One might say we share a common interest.’
Hjortur didn’t take the bait. ‘I certainly hope that the police conclude this as soon as possible, but I’m not in as much of a rush as you are. What’s waiting for me has been there for thirty-five years, so several days or weeks ahead or behind schedule isn’t going to change the overall picture. We’re not comrades.’ He crossed his arms. ‘If there’s nothing else I can help you with, I would really prefer to keep working. I’m using this down-time to finish several reports that have been hanging over my head. We’re not just sitting here twiddling our thumbs because the area is temporarily closed.’
Bella snorted, and Thóra hurried to say something before her secretary butted in. ‘I wanted to ask you a couple of questions, and I promise to be quick,’ she said.‘You’ll be rid of us before you know it.’ She smiled and hoped for the best, but Bella was staring stonily at the archaeologist.
Thóra wasn’t sure if it was her honey or her secretary’s vinegar that moved Hjortur, but he agreed to sit down with them for a few minutes. They followed him into a small conference room. ‘Has anything been found in the excavation that could possibly be connected to the discovery of the bodies?’ Thóra began.‘Something that might have had no particular significance when it was found, but might now, in the light of what was in the basement? I’m not confining my question to Markus’s parents’ house.’
‘No,’ replied Hjortur. ‘I don’t remember any such thing. Nor have I given it much thought.’
‘I expect you log and store everything that you find,’ said Thóra. ‘Is there any chance of us being allowed to have a look at those things?’
He shook his head. ‘No, I can’t imagine we’d allow you to do that. The plan is to let the owners of the houses go over the items with us in the later stages and try to reach an agreement on what happens to them,’ he said, pushing his empty coffee cup aside.‘The idea is to set up an exhibition of these items on the site of the excavations, and hopefully in the houses themselves. As you know, the Westmann Islands Municipality owns everything that comes out from under the ash, on the other hand we would certainly want to try to appease the original owners of these items. Something that might mean nothing to us could be invaluable to its former owner, for sentimental reasons.’Hjortur took a deep breath. ‘Many people have contacted us because of this, mainly looking for photo albums and such like, although there have been some enquiries about things like graduation caps, trophies and wristwatches. We do log everything that’s found, and it’s stored in such a way that it’s easy to trace which item came from each house. It would be a huge undertaking to go through all that, so we can’t allow it at this stage.’
‘Haven’t the police made a request to search through the items?’ asked Thóra. ‘One would think they would at least have some interest in whatever was found in Markus’s house.’
Hjdrtur shook his head. ‘Not yet, and hopefully they won’t want to. A lot of work has gone into our system and it would be a huge pain to have to tamper with the boxes.’
‘Do you have anything against my going through the item log?’ asked Thóra. ‘That might be of some help to me.’
Hjortur’s lips thinned.‘I’ll have to check,’ he said tightly.
Thóra decided to back off a little.‘Might someone have had access to the basement before Markus?’ she asked. ‘Was the door open or closed while the ground floor was cleaned?’
‘Are you asking whether the corpses were put there before or after the house was excavated?’ said Hjortur.
‘Yes, actually, I am,’ replied Thóra. ‘It would certainly increase the number of people who could have links to the case.’
‘I believe we shut the basement door as soon as we reached it, and you were quite satisfied with how we did it, as I recall,’ he said, stony faced. ‘It wasn’t more than a couple of hours from when we dug out the door until it was nailed shut. Everything was in accordance with our agreement. Of course anyone who wanted to go down there could have, but it’s out of the question that anyone took a corpse down into that basement since the excavation.’
‘But how can you be sure?’ asked Thóra. ‘Don’t get me wrong – I’m not suggesting that you or your people had anything to do with it.’
‘I went down there with the police after the corpses were found, and it didn’t take much archaeological expertise to realize that they’d been lying there for years or even decades, rather than several days.’