‘But did this guy know anything about Jósteinn’s relationship with his lawyer; whether they had any conflicts or disputes while the case was being prosecuted?’
‘He said it was impossible to tell. Jósteinn showed no reaction in court; he always stared at his lap and said little or nothing. In fact, he said that he noticed that they never appeared to communicate.’
Thóra thanked him, but sat there thinking for some time after he left, announcing that he could no longer bear the lack of caffeine and had to pop out for a coffee. Maybe Jósteinn’s support of Jakob was nothing more than an act of decency. Nonetheless, she couldn’t shake her conviction that all was not as it seemed when it came to his role in this whole affair. She stood up and walked over to the window in the hope that some fresh air would revive her. The traffic below the window passed by slowly. There seemed to have been an accident; two cars had stopped in one lane and the drivers were bent over their bumpers, apparently in search of dents. One of the drivers looked like he was at the end of his tether. The incessant honking of horns reminded Thóra of modern music: first there was some kind of melody, but then it became increasingly discordant until the noise became the continuous rumble of a cacophonous symphony. Thóra almost didn’t hear her phone ring over the noise coming from the street.
‘Hello,’ she said, after reaching across the table in her haste to answer it before it stopped.
‘Hi,’ said Matthew, sounding unusually tense. ‘Have you looked at the news online?’
‘No, not since this morning. What’s up?’
‘They’ve identified the man found in Nauthólsvík. The one with Margeir’s phone.’
Thóra pressed the receiver closer to her ear. ‘And it’s definitely Margeir?’ She inched round the desk to her chair with some difficulty as the short phone cord inhibited her movement.
‘No.’ Matthew hesitated slightly, probably looking for the name on the screen. ‘He was called Bjarki – Bjarki Emil Jónasson.’
‘Bjarki?’ Thóra sat down and logged onto the Internet. ‘Are you kidding?’
‘No. Of course not. What kind of a joke would that be?’
Thóra didn’t reply, but continued to search for the news. Then she said, ‘It must be the same Bjarki that Ragna identified. It can’t be a coincidence.’
‘That’s why I called.’
Thóra thanked him somewhat distractedly as she read the article. There was little more to learn from it; it stated only that the deceased had been identified and along with his name it gave his age, and the information that he had been unmarried and childless.
The phone rang again and Thóra lifted the receiver without taking her eyes off the screen. ‘What?’ She thought it was Matthew, calling to add something.
‘Er… hello, my name is Lárus and I’m calling from Telecom. Is this Thóra Guðmundsdóttir?’
‘I’m sorry, I was expecting someone else. Yes, this is Thóra.’
‘I’m calling about a request to find the IP address for some text messages sent through our network.’
‘Of course, I’d forgotten about that. Did you find it?’ She looked at the screen and focused on the call. Was she really about to learn who had been sending all the messages? She didn’t expect the information to tell her much; the sender had probably used an Internet café, or the library, or somewhere like that .
‘Yes, we found it, and I was wondering whether I could send you the number by e-mail. It’s easier that way.’
‘Absolutely.’ Thóra gave him her address. ‘Then how do I find out where this IP address is located?’
‘I was going to put that in my message, but in fact the computer’s registered in the public sector.’
‘What?’ The first thing that crossed Thóra’s mind was the same thought she’d had initially – that someone in the police department or the prosecutor’s office was behind all this. ‘Can you be a little more specific?’
‘Yes, sorry – the computer is registered with the Ministry of Justice.’
CHAPTER 32
Wednesday, 20 January 2010
Thóra jumped into the car and shut the door behind her. Matthew had had to stop in the middle of the street to pick her up and she definitely didn’t want to cause another traffic jam on Skólavörðustígur Street. ‘Where am I going?’ Matthew continued driving up the road.
‘The Ministry of Justice.’ She told him how to get there, then said, ‘I’m going to speak to Einvarður, Tryggvi’s father. I don’t know what he’s up to, but he must be responsible for those weird text messages. There can’t be any other employees of the ministry connected to the case, and it’s highly unlikely that a stranger’s behind them, even if they did possess the information.’
‘How do you think he’ll react?’
‘I don’t know but I’m sure it’ll be interesting. I’m beginning to wonder whether he just lost it when his son died. It’s pretty hard to figure out what he’s up to; if he was anxious to point me in a certain direction with regard to the investigation then it would have been much easier to just speak to me directly.’ She gestured at Matthew to turn. The traffic was getting denser and they were making slow progress. ‘But as I say, it’s unlikely that anyone else within the ministry is connected to the case, unless one of his colleagues is trying to land him in the shit for some entirely unrelated reason. And where that person would have got hold of this information is a whole other mystery – to add to all the others…’
They sat in silence for the remainder of the journey, with Matthew focusing on navigating the area’s one-way streets, which were becoming increasingly difficult to negotiate in the heavy snow. Pedestrians picked up speed and no one seemed to want to waste time looking in the shop windows, except for a woman of indeterminate age in a lambskin coat with her hair hanging loose, who had stopped to scrutinize some winter boots in a shoe shop while her dog sniffed eagerly at the corner of the building. On Skuggasund Street it was as if the nation had united in protest against the weather and gone inside out of the storm. It was absolutely deserted, and there were even plenty of parking spaces at the ministry. The empty streets filled Thóra with a sudden melancholy; it didn’t take much, these days. When you’ve always believed that society is built on trustworthy foundations, it’s very hard to accept the fact that this isn’t actually the case. To make matters worse, it seemed that the country hadn’t just stumbled on level ground, but had actually fallen off a cliff. The dark National Theatre building only magnified this impression. ‘Why don’t we ever go to the theatre?’
‘What?’ Matthew looked at her in surprise as he turned off the engine. ‘I didn’t know you wanted to. I’d be up for that.’
Thóra immediately regretted saying this. She didn’t want to go to the theatre at all, any more than she wanted the raisin doughnuts that often found their way into her shopping basket. They ended up there simply because she was upset about the bank crash, and everything Icelandic seemed so pitiable that she felt compelled to buy them. ‘I guess I should have a look at the programme, then.’ There were lots of things that were impossible to explain to Matthew; for instance, the other morning he had tried to pour out precisely ten drops of coffee for her mother, as she had asked. Ten drops simply meant a small cupful. He understood most Icelandic words, but combining them often modified the meaning. Daily life was yet another aspect of this endless transition; plenty of things that she thought were obvious escaped him completely. She scraped the snow off part of the windscreen at eye level, but Matthew dutifully removed it from the windows, the roof, the bonnet, the lights, the boot – even the tyres – before he so much as reversed out of the driveway. When he’d been employed at the bank and they’d gone to work at the same time, he had scoffed at her methods and asked whether she didn’t just want to make two little holes in the frost on the windscreen, one for each eye.