Thóra took a closer look at the photo. It wasn’t very clear on the little screen but she recognized the subject nevertheless. A similar photo had been included in the police records found in one of Ari’s files, but not in the documents Jakob’s mother had given her. The photo was one of several taken at the scene before the bodies of the dead were removed. They had all caused Thóra’s hair to stand on end and each and every one of them had imprinted itself so strongly onto her mind that she didn’t need to see them clearly in order to recognize them again. She called Matthew.
‘How can I enlarge a photo that I received in a text message?’
‘Oh, hi, Matthew. How are you, Matthew?’
‘You’ll get a hi later, when I come home. I seriously need to find out how I can view a photo from my mobile in an ordinary size. Do you know how?’
‘Umm…’ Matthew clearly didn’t relish admitting that this was beyond his knowledge, even though he was rather more technologically minded than Thóra. ‘I don’t know how you would do it on your phone but it must be possible to find out.’
‘So you know how to do it on your phone?’ Perhaps Thóra could forward the message to him.
‘Umm…’ Matthew sucked his teeth. ‘No, not exactly.’ Before Thóra could say anything he added hastily: ‘If you still have the cables that came with it, you should be able to upload the photo to your computer. If you’ve lost them, I’m sure Gylfi could help you with it.’
‘Do we know anyone who keeps those cables somewhere they can actually remember?’ As soon as she said this she remembered that they did: Matthew himself. She added hurriedly: ‘Anyway, see you in ten minutes.’
Before Thóra left her office she looked up photos of the scene in order to confirm to herself that the little photo was of Friðleifur’s body. Luckily it was among the first that she pulled out, so she was spared from having to trawl through the entire mess once more. It was quite clear that the subject of the photo was the same, and in fact it looked like exactly the same photo. Who the hell had access to the police photograph database, and why had they sent it to her?
‘It’s the murderer, and he’s trying to frighten you.’ Thóra’s mother’s face was creased with worry. ‘You need to stop the investigation before he comes and sets us on fire.’
Thóra rolled her eyes. ‘How about if we drop this subject while we’re eating?’ She smiled at Sóley and little Orri, who were gazing wide-eyed at her. Unfortunately, her mother had walked in on Matthew and Gylfi as Gylfi was working on uploading the photograph to her laptop – at the exact moment that the photo had appeared in all its glory on the screen. She wouldn’t stop going on about it until Thóra had explained the situation, and was still fretting now.
‘Is the murderer coming to kill us?’ Sóley put her fork down. ‘Wow, that’s so cool.’ Then she realized what she’d said and added: ‘Isn’t it?’
‘Murrr-err.’ Orri was still too young to understand what the word meant but was sensible enough to realize that it was something terrible, and therefore belonged in the same cat-egory as exciting things like dinosaurs and crocodiles.
‘Of course not. Grandma’s just joking.’ She saw that Sóley didn’t believe her one bit and added: ‘Don’t worry, there’s no murderer on the way. Just finish your food, darling.’ Thóra glared at her mother.
By the time the meal was over Sóley was her usual happy self again, since the adults had all started talking with false cheer about something entirely different. Thóra waited until her daughter had gone to bed and her parents were sitting in front of the television before returning to the computer to take a better look at the photo. Matthew sat down next to her at the kitchen table and shook his head after peering silently at the screen for a few moments. ‘It’s very strange, I have to say. Could it be that the person who sent you this didn’t realize that you have all the case files?’
‘Good question. I can’t think of anyone who could possibly be behind it. I mean, why would anyone send me this?’
‘As I said, maybe the person who sent it doesn’t know you already have the photos.’ Matthew leaned back from the screen. ‘But still, I don’t understand their motivation. Maybe the aim is to frighten you, as your mother so helpfully suggested at the table earlier. Perhaps the first step is to try and figure out who has access to the photo. The quality suggests it may not have come straight from the camera, so it might have been scanned.’
‘There are quite a few other possibilities. Apart from the policemen who worked on the investigation, the different parties involved in the case all received copies of the files: the judges, the public prosecutor’s office and Jakob’s lawyer, Ari. He let Jakob’s mother have a copy of some of the material, but that didn’t include the photo. I can’t quite see why Ari would want to send it to me again like this. He could have drawn my attention to it by sticking a Post-it on it, or just pointed it out to me when I visited him.’
‘Could someone in the justice system, the police or the prosecutor’s office, have done it?’
‘That’s possible, but why should anyone there want to bother me with something like this? They’d be in serious trouble if it came out, and I can’t see why anyone would take the risk. And whether the intention was to scare me or to help me, it seems like a weird way to send me a message. The police and the public prosecutor could easily summon me to a meeting if anyone there were interested in my investigation.’
‘What about the victims’ relatives? Were they given the files?’
Thóra shook her head slowly. ‘I wouldn’t have thought so. Usually, every attempt is made to protect the relatives from the unnecessary distress of seeing an image like this. In order to be given a copy, you’d need to have an extremely good reason. I can’t imagine what grounds there might have been to turn over this photo to the parents or other relatives.’
‘What about the people who ran the centre? Do you think they’d have been able to follow the investigation?’
‘No doubt they would have, but not in any detail – and certainly not this kind of detail. This is just totally incomprehensible. The only thing I can think of is that someone within the system – someone who knows about my involvement and has access to this image – is losing their marbles.’
‘Or had already lost them.’ Matthew looked Thóra in the eye. ‘If Jakob is innocent, the criminal is probably on the loose. Maybe your mother was right. This photo is certainly enough to frighten someone off, but the message could have been clearer. I’d hazard a guess at ‘mind your own business’ or something along those lines, though.’
‘But if that’s the case, the real murderer would have to be a policeman, a lawyer or a judge. Or Jakob’s mother. None of whom seem very likely.’ Thóra lifted her phone. ‘Speaking of the message, what could 02 short hose mean?’