She had been disconcerted to discover that the log was written by hand; it felt somehow macabre to be puzzling over the handwriting of a man who was missing, presumed dead; to read his comments from the beginning of the voyage on the satisfactory condition of the engines and the yacht in general; his reflections on the weather forecast and his list of the crew and passengers – people who had believed they had five days’ pleasant cruising ahead of them. Nothing in the first entry gave any indication that their fates had been decided in advance; on the contrary, everything seemed to have been in good order. To be fair, the captain did mention that the seal placed on the door by order of the resolution committee had been broken, but he did not seem overly concerned by this, noting that there was no sign of a break-in or sabotage. However, since neither the captain nor the other crew members had any experience of forensic investigations, they might well have failed to notice important evidence. For example, it apparently hadn’t occurred to the captain that the person who broke the seal might have had a key. After all, why break in if you could simply unlock the door?
Next came a brief explanation of the passengers’ presence on board, accompanied by a few words of concern about the necessity of ensuring the two girls’ safety during the trip. Although the captain did not actually curse Snævar for his accident, his displeasure was easy to read between the lines. He was far from happy about allowing Ægir to step into the breach, but had been constrained to fulfil the conditions of the minimum safe manning document and to keep to schedule. These initial entries were excellent news for Thóra’s case. It was plain not only that Ægir had been enlisted by complete coincidence but that it had been at the captain’s behest rather than his own. Indeed, it was hard to see how Ægir could have planned a life insurance scam that would have required a complete stranger to propose that he sailed with the Lady K. There could be no arguing with that.
Neither did the final entry in the logbook presage any abnormal turn of events, though presumably the situation must have changed shortly afterwards since all the subsequent pages had been ripped out. The captain had recorded that the communications systems were malfunctioning and that the crew were working to fix them. At that point the yacht had still been able to make contact to a limited extent by radiotelephone. But apart from the captain’s barely intelligible conversation with the British trawler a day later, no one was aware of having heard from the yacht. If things had gone to hell at the point where the pages ran out, one would have thought the crew would at least have tried to transmit a distress signal or report the problem. But they had not, and it was disturbing to think that one person may have remained alive; the one who had sailed the yacht close to Grótta and from there to Reykjavík harbour with that strange detour out into Faxaflói bay. It was possible that the boat had taken this extraordinary route because the person who set its course had not known how to program the autopilot or GPS. And that did not look good for Thóra’s case; the only people on board with little experience of boats were Ægir and Lára – and the twins, of course, though she had to assume they couldn’t possibly count.
Thóra’s eyes ached from poring over the entries in the hope of spotting something that was missing, or of gaining a deeper insight into what had happened. She gathered the pages together, feeling frustrated yet again by the absent entries. What she wouldn’t give to know what they had contained, to learn from the captain’s illegible, old-fashioned script the answer to the flood of questions that plagued her; the explanation for the body he had reported over the faulty radio, and a description of the events leading up to the passengers’ disappearance – if that is how the situation had unfolded. Perhaps catastrophe had struck without warning, but if so it was hard to understand why the pages had been torn out. Unless it had been done for another reason – to plug a hole, for instance, or even to use for drawing pictures on. Neither explanation seemed plausible but there was little point wasting time on wondering; the missing pages would be floating somewhere in the sea by now or lying on the ocean floor where the fish would try in vain to interpret their secrets. The remnants of the ship’s log, the certificates of seaworthiness and other relevant documents would have to suffice for her report. Whether this would satisfy the insurance company’s queries remained to be seen.
After adjusting the report to include this new information, Thóra read it over for what seemed like the hundredth time before sending it to the printer in Bragi’s office, feeling dispirited. Its contents were so over-familiar by now that she could no longer determine how well she had succeeded in her task. It was time to take a break and clear her head with a cup of coffee. After that she would decide whether to send it to Ægir’s parents in its current form.
‘Fucking weather,’ growled Bella from reception. Melting snow dripped from the shoulders of her anorak and flakes glittered in her hair.
Thóra dodged to avoid a shower as the secretary shook herself like a dog. ‘Where have you been?’
‘I had to run out to the district court with some stuff for Bragi.’ Bella stamped her feet to dislodge the compacted ice from under her shoes. Two dark footprints showed for an instant on the light-coloured parquet but quickly lost their shape on the warm wood. ‘I had to park bloody miles away, so I happened to drive past Faxagardur on my way back. It looked as if the police were sniffing around that yacht of yours.’
‘Really?’ Thóra didn’t know why she was surprised. The investigation might have uncovered a new detail or perhaps they were repeating their tests or subjecting a larger area to detailed forensic analysis. ‘Could you see what they were up to?’
‘No, I just noticed two police cars parked right beside the boat and a cop wandering around on deck. Maybe they were having a go in the Jacuzzi.’
Ignoring this, Thóra decided it was time for some fresh air.
The coffee provided by the resolution committee was far superior to the law firm brew and Thóra felt her dissatisfaction receding, despite having had a wasted journey so far. Ægir’s parents had been out when she called and only with considerable difficulty had she been able to cram the report into their letterbox. Papers and envelopes projected from the opening at all angles, like a failed flower arrangement. It was not hard to understand why: what could possibly come in the post that would matter to them now? In the end she had been forced to weed out some of the contents – junk mail and other unimportant-looking items – to make room. To ensure they received the report, she would have to ring them and let them know it was there. It would not do for the envelope to languish unnoticed among the yellowing newspapers for the duration. In addition, she needed to pass on the information that Ægir’s salary would be paid as usual, and that her conversation with social services about guaranteeing access had proved encouraging. It made a change to be the bearer of good news.
‘Are you making any progress?’ Fannar asked. ‘We’re doing our nuts here over the lack of information. The police keep giving us the brush-off.’ He was sitting facing her in a small meeting room, smartly dressed as usual, looking for all the world like one of the young bankers who used to swagger around the city streets and bars in the days before the crash. ‘Have they managed to clarify things at all?’
Thóra took another sip of coffee and shook her head. She was no better than Bella, inadvertently spraying the room with drops of water. Some landed on the gleaming table and she put down her cup to wipe them away, not wanting to be reminded of her insufferable secretary. ‘No, sadly. The only fact that seems incontrovertible is that Ægir and his family are dead. Nobody’s holding out any more hope that they could have survived.’