‘I don’t need a scientific explanation for how it works, Hannes, I just need to know whether there’s anything in it.’ Thóra rolled her eyes, safe in the knowledge that her ex-husband couldn’t see her on the other end of the line. She’d turned to him in his capacity as a doctor for clarification as to whether it were possible to reduce the effects of intoxication and hangovers through oxygen inhalation and intravenous nourishment. She found it all rather dubious and didn’t want to include it in her report if Lena’s claims turned out to be complete nonsense.
‘It does work, yes.’ Hannes sounded disappointed at not being allowed to continue bestowing on her the gift of his great wisdom. ‘Medical students do it sometimes, and other people who work in places with access to oxygen tanks. I don’t recommend it, especially if people have no idea what they’re doing.’
‘You knew about this when you were at medical school?’ Thóra couldn’t conceal her shock. ‘And you never said anything?’ If she hadn’t already been divorced from Hannes, she would have started divorce proceedings immediately. In the early years of their marriage, when they were both at university, she’d spent countless mornings wishing her head could be wrapped in cotton wool to alleviate her terrible hangovers.
‘Of course not. It never crossed my mind to do it. I was hardly going to drag you to a hospital and hide you in a linen cupboard with an IV stuck in one of your veins, hooked up to an oxygen tank. Very few people actually do this, and then hopefully only in moderation. It’s much healthier for the body to wrestle with the effects of alcohol on its own, be it intoxication or a hangover.’
‘You forgot to say that the healthiest thing of all is to drink sensibly.’ Thóra stopped the discussion by thanking him for the information and then briefly asking him about what they would do with the children during the imminent winter holiday. Neither of them had anything planned, so the only conclusion they came to was that they’d both have a think about it and discuss it some more later.
Thóra was happy to have got her facts straight. It looked as if her report would be finished shortly and it would be so watertight that it would be difficult for the Supreme Court to reject the petition. But she was still going to wait until the results of the DNA test on Bjarki Emil, the man who had been found at Nauthólsvík Beach, were made available, since she was certain that they would show in black and white that he’d been the one who’d abused Lísa. Ragna’s testimony was strong, but it would have to be verified nonetheless. Thóra’s happiness was slightly diluted by this: even if she managed to prove Bjarki Emil’s crime, it was unclear whether it would have any influence on the outcome of Jakob’s case. The relationship between the rapes and the fire was unclear. In order to succeed she would need to be able to demonstrate that Bjarki Emil or someone else had set the residence on fire, and explain why. This was easier said than done, however. Even before she had to divine their possible motives for starting the fire, there were very few potential suspects. She’d gone over the main files in the case once more, weighed up which of the individuals she’d had contact with were most likely to be guilty, but the result was always the same: none of them had had the opportunity to start the fire, unless the various people providing each individual’s alibi for the night in question were all lying.
Einvarður and Fanndís had been at an annual ball in the countryside east of Reykjavík, along with a large crowd of fellow partygoers. Of course none of them had been questioned, but the idea that the couple could have lied about this had obviously been considered absurd. If it had transpired that nobody recalled seeing them during the relevant window of time, they could simply have claimed to have been in their hotel room. Could Einvarður’s peculiar behaviour be attributed to anxiety about concealing his part in the tragedy? For her part, Lena had been having a party at her place, and two stragglers – neither of whom had been named, but one male, one female – were both said to have been at Lena’s home when the police turned up later that night, and had verified the girl’s story.
The parents of the other residents had all been either asleep at home, away from the city, or at parties, and Thóra had no particular reason to doubt their stories. Glódís had also been home asleep, but shortly before the fire started an old school friend of hers had woken her by calling to ask whether she wanted to meet up with her downtown. She’d been rather abrupt when the police had called to inform her about the fire, because she’d thought it was her friend calling back to persuade her. Margeir, too, had been asleep and it had been verified that he’d taken a call from Friðleifur on his mobile shortly before the fire started, at which point the phone was located at his home address. Of course Margeir could have gone to the residence immediately and started the fire, but he would have had to move very quickly. Plus it was hard to imagine what might have prompted a seriously unwell man to suddenly jump into a car and go to set a fire that would burn five people to death. According to the case files there was no doubt that Margeir had been ill that night. Others Thóra had spoken to – Sveinn, the filmmaker; Linda, the friendly therapist; Ægir, Tryggvi’s therapist and Ari – were out of the question; it was simply absurd to think that any of these people would have had reason to want to kill either the residents or Friðleifur. Of course there was always a chance that Thóra had overlooked some possible motive in one of them, but it was an extremely slim one.
No, as far as Thóra was concerned there were only three possible scenarios: that Bjarki Emil had started the fire, to kill either Lísa, Friðleifur or both of them; that someone completely different who had not yet turned up in the investigation had done it in a moment of madness, probably a night-time visitor who’d come for the oxygen treatment; or that Tryggvi had attacked Friðleifur and set fire to the building for reasons that were impossible to determine. None of them could have known that the fire alarm system was disconnected, except possibly Tryggvi. Perhaps this was irrelevant to the case and the arsonist simply hadn’t noticed the nozzles on the ceiling, which under normal circumstances would have extinguished the fire before it could spread. Thóra was finding it impossible to work out which of these three possibilities was most likely, but she was leaning more towards the idea that Tryggvi had been involved, based on the reactions of his parents and sister. They had all tried to keep information from her and concealed the fact that he had caused fires at least twice before, once with serious consequences for his sister. It was out of the question for Lísa Finnbjörnsdóttir or Ragna Sölvadóttir to have started the fire, and the same went for deafblind Sigríður Herdís Logadóttir. And Natan Úlfheiðarson had been heavily medicated, as the autopsy confirmed.
After going carefully over the points that she had gathered in her latest perusal of the files, there was nothing that particularly struck Thóra or made her inclined to change her opinion. So she decided her next step would be to find out about the text messages from Jósteinn. She’d been so furious with him when she’d worked out it was him who was sending them that she hadn’t been able to bring herself to do it straight away. It irritated her immensely to be manipulated by him and his strange impulses like this. She also found the way he’d chosen to do it particularly unpleasant. Admittedly, most of the bastard’s messages had helped to propel the investigation forward. The one text that she couldn’t work out was the one that said 02 short hose. She suspected that 02 was supposed to be O2, the symbol for oxygen, but she hadn’t come across anything that helped to explain the reference to a short hose. The only message left to deal with was the one about Vesturlandsvegur Road. It was nearly 10 p.m. and it was tempting to put it off until the morning, but then Thóra remembered the flickering monitor at work that she’d forgotten to swap with Bella’s, and decided to try to figure out the message in the peace and quiet of home. She was also forced to admit that she was itching to know how it was connected to Jakob’s case: the place and time didn’t fit at all with the fire – the date was nearly a year before and the location was miles away.