by Zena Shapter
I glean two things from this. First, the black sedan ‘watch’-ing The Himinn has left. Second, Anna believes someone is monitoring her phone. Why else would she be texting in code?
My heart pounds a little faster, heavier. There’s only one reason Gunnar Eyjólfsson would leave The Himinn—he knows I’m not there anymore. I rush down the length of the building, ducking under every window and treading as softly as I can on the grass to evade detection—by Jón, Gunnar, or anyone. I have to get to Mark before anyone else does.
Concealed by the faintness of twilight, it isn’t long before I’m sneaking around the back of the hospital to see a large dimly lit gap in the wall ahead. An access road disappears inside the gap, rising up a ramp. A grey roller door sits above it, making it look like a loading bay. A curtain of steam billows out from a nearby vent, sending a fishy aroma towards me. It sets off my hunger again. My body knows it hasn’t eaten since breakfast on the Austurleid and it’s not happy. Standing upright, now that there are no windows, I feel a familiar wooziness and reach for the wall as my sense of balance sways. I hate this light-headed feeling. Why can’t my body be more efficient with the calories it gets? I rub my eyes to bring my brain into focus, and hear Icelandic voices chattering somewhere, pots clanging. The hospital kitchen must be nearby.
Eager to get inside, I feel my way towards the gap. Thankfully, the loading bay lights are turned off and only a thin light stretches out from the building. Stealth would be a lot harder under stark fluorescent lighting.
After deviating around a thin greenhouse sheltering soily sacks and shelves of plastic pots, I reconnect with the wall and approach the bay. Listening and looking out for people or sudden movements, I don’t notice the wheelbarrow or the shears sticking out of it until I’m tripping over its wheel and my right thigh slices across its metal points. A spade clatters after me, clashing loud against the concrete as I trip to the ground.
Fuck!
I grip my thigh and clench my teeth and eyes tight against the sting of air invading my wound. The cut should only be slight, but its initial sharpness intensifies my wooziness and my head spins. I listen while I wait for it to settle. My collision hasn’t disrupted the rhythm of pot-clanging and people-chatting. Still I wait another minute before sitting up, shaking clumps of soil and plant fragments from my aching palms, then seeking out my injury.
My thigh throbs. My hands are sore but not bleeding. Instead there’s a long gash in my skirt, where lines of red weigh down the fabric. I wince as I peel back the skirt’s petticoats to see a shallow gash bleeding steadily and skin bruising purple already. I’ve been lucky though, my thick skirt has borne the brunt of the damage.
I push the sides of the cut together and hold it firm with a pinch while rummaging in my bag for a Band Aid. I have one, but it’s small. It won’t cover the entire wound. So I use it to keep the sides of skin together then tie my scarf over the top.
More haste, less speed, I think to myself with annoyance.
Once finished, I stand and hobble towards the bay. There’s still no one on the ramp so I step up into the shadows. Light spills from a double doorway up ahead. Through it, trays of crockery rattle, glasses clink, and food sizzles. I let my eyes grow accustomed to the light. I can see a long white corridor with orange wall guards. Periodic doorways. Signs hanging from the ceiling are all in Icelandic.
I creep towards what I assume is the kitchen door and peek through its hinges to see metal counters covered with food, stoves packed with bubbling pots and frantic white-uniformed cooks chopping and stirring. Heat from the cooking coats me, smothering any chill from my skin before passing and rising out the loading bay entrance. Everyone inside is busy with their work, apart from a man in a suit tasting something from a pot.
I take a breath then duck past, glancing inside on my way. Noticing the light brown colour of the man’s suit, I remember Anna saying that Jón might eat at the hospital. Is that him?
Something squeaks to one side of the kitchen doorway so I hobble quickly away, but don’t run—the sound of someone running would bring unwanted attention. Plus, my thigh is smarting with each hobble.
“It’s down some stairs past the kitchen and laundry,” Anna told me.
I pass a second doorway, closed and dark, then see two openings opposite one another—one corridor and one stairwell.
More squeaks. I check over my shoulder. A rectangular shadow appears in the kitchen doorway: a food trolley emerging into the corridor. I power ahead, reaching the stairwell as the food trolley’s front wheels crash over the doorway’s sill. The stairs are straight and short and I can see a basement corridor leading away from them.
I hurry down, holding onto the handrail like I do when I’m worried my starved muscles might give way. They shake as I descend into the darkness below, but I’m used to that.
A second set of wheels crashes into the corridor above and the trolley squeaks towards me. Individual food trays clatter on their runners. I hear voices too, deep and male. The door to the morgue is supposed to be near some service lift. Halfway down the corridor is a large silver glint. With one hand on the wall, I push towards it as a man’s deep voice hums a familiar tune, hopefully indicating a complete disinterest in my presence. As it gets louder I near the door, reach it, slam into it and am relieved to find it moving with me.
Just as I’m steadying it from banging shut, his trolley crosses the stairwell, followed by footsteps that fit the allegro tempo of his hum—the spring opening to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. His pace doesn’t falter, though a sharp scraping noise screeches across the floor of the main corridor as he turns the trolley, scratching its caster wheels across the polished concrete.
I exhale in relief. I don’t want anyone to find me here—not a member of the kitchen staff, not a receptionist, a hospital orderly, or someone ‘watching over’ me. All I want is to look at my brother in peace, alone, without having to convince anyone of my ‘positive’ reasons for hiding in the dark. I don’t even know how I’d explain that if I had to.
Back in Sydney, when I was a lawyer, I often had to talk my way out of difficult situations. Clients overcharged by incompetent accounts clerks would need sincere apologies. Unethical lawyers on the ‘other side’ would need to be pressured into relinquishing confidential documents my secretary sent them by mistake. Power-hungry court officers would need flattery before giving me last-minute access to court documents forgotten by an inefficient assistant. My greatest asset in such situations was my innocence.
Tonight there’s no one to blame for my sneaking around but me.
I search the darkness and notice tiny lights beaming steadily on the wall opposite me. Apart from them there’s nothing but black. I blink and push my eyes to see more. Only a blind fuzz stares back. I stretch a hand out to my right and take a step sideways, keeping my back to the wall. A high-pitched hum buzzes around the room and there’s a chemical pungency in the air that reminds me of…pickles.
Preservatives?
I take another step. My thigh slams into something, right on my cut. I muffle my cry by clenching my teeth. I need some light. I pull out my phone, turn on its display and shine its glow around the room.
Two long stainless steel counters run along the right-hand and far sides of the room—I collided with the edge of one. Hung over two sinks are retractable spotlights. There are no instruments anywhere, though plenty of cupboards and drawers under the counters. In the centre of the room is an empty mortuary slab and, on the wall opposite me, six mortuary cabinets.
Mark.
I grope my way towards the cabinets, keeping a hand on the wall to my left. After the doors, I expect to feel the room’s internal window, but my hand makes contact with a smooth reflective surface. I shine my phone over the expanse. The reflective surface isn’t glass—it’s a wall-mounted x-ray film viewer.
And if there’s no window…
Flashin
g my phone before me, I change direction and feel my way over to the spotlight furthest from the door. I switch it on, angle its beam against the back wall to send a ghostly glow around the room, then hurry back to the mortuary cabinets.
Each of the cabinet’s six doors has a tiny light indicating occupation. Only the bottom two glow. I tug on the handles. Neither of them move. I give them a yank. The cabinet doesn’t even quiver. Nothing in Höfkállur should be locked…
I search the cabinet’s frame. At the top is a small panel with a keypad.
Fuck!
I take a step back to survey the cabinets and think. Leaning against the mortuary slab behind me, I realise there must be a host of sharp instruments somewhere. I examine the door seals. If I can find a sharp, thin instrument I might be able to pry open the cabinet doors.
I head for the cupboards and am mid-stride when the morgue doors swing open. I jump so hard my heart pinches inside my chest. A figure glides into the room.
“You won’t be able to open them,” a voice hisses.
I back away from the figure, fumbling in my bag for anything I might use as a weapon. All I find is a pen.
“They have an automatic locking system.” The figure moves around the mortuary slab. “Looks like no one’s thought to disable it. Habit.” The figure reaches inside a pocket, retrieves their phone and shakes off the hood of a green and white jumper. I recognise her flowing white hair.
“Anna?” I press a hand against my breastbone to calm my heart. “What are you doing here?”
“Ólaf called, to see how you were. He’s thoughtful like that. He told me about the mortuary cabinets, said you’d find out soon enough anyway. I’m supposed to call him when I get here; he’s looking for the codes. We didn’t want you hurting yourself.”
“Hurting myself?”
“We figured you wouldn’t let a simple lock panel defeat you, not once you were here. He said he’d rather hack into someone’s computer than have you hacking through metal doors.” She presses the call button on her phone.
“But,” I don’t get it, “isn’t hacking into someone’s computer a negative thing to do?”
“Not if it’s for a good reason.” She winks at me, holds up a finger. “Já, halló, Ólaf.” She speaks a single Icelandic sentence before gesturing for me to go to the mortuary cabinets. “Zero, three, seven, nine. Hash. Then the number you want to open. Okay. Takk, Ólaf.” She hangs up.
“That was brief,” I say, typing the numbers into the keypad.
“I don’t like using mobile phones.”
“I noticed.” Hearing a clunk, I tug at one of the doors with a glowing occupation light. It opens to reveal a pair of chilled feet. Wrinkled with age spots, I don’t need to pull the inside tray out or check the toe tag. The feet are too old to be Mark’s. I type the numbers into the keypad again and pull open the second door—the only other cabinet occupied. These feet are longer, younger. I don’t have to check this toe tag either, but do anyway.
Mark Dales.
I give the tray a firm yank. Its rollers rattle. A small fluorescent tube flickers on inside the drawer, illuminating a cold body covered with a white sheet. I pull the sheet from my brother’s sleeping face, down to his waist.
“Oh Mark.”
Without any software to disguise the brutality of death, I see now how red and purple his nose is with bruising, the many cuts that slash his rubbery pale skin and, from the side, how deformed his jaw is from swelling.
Anna comes to stand beside me. “Oh love, I’m sorry. Ólaf said to take it easy.”
But this was never going to be easy.
The more I stare at Mark’s bashed body, the more details from his report come into focus—until I understand exactly how my brother died. I can even see it. A multitude of bruises cover his arms and torso: I see his body slamming against underwater boulders, him struggling against the current. Red patches show where his ribs fractured: I see him trapped under water, resisting the urge to breathe. A stained Y-incision touches his shoulders before flowing down his sternum like a red ribbon: someone has sawn through his chest to examine his waterlogged lungs. His body smells of raw chicken and ethanol, yet I still want to hold him close.
“Are you okay?” Anna asks.
I sense her moving away but can’t pry my eyes from my brother. My focus is so intense the room behind me begins to rotate. I blink to refocus, feel myself drifting forward and back, like I’m on a dive, suspended by water and weightless above dark depths. Perhaps it’s still yesterday and really I’m floating above the Cayman Trench, daydreaming while I dive. I look for the unfathomable abyss so deep beneath me that yesterday it made me feel as though I were falling.
“Plummets four miles into the heart of the Caribbean Sea,” my dive guide’s face looms large. “These islands are the tips of underwater mountains…”
I survey the darkness below my gliding fins. There’s nothing but blue merging into black. The vast emptiness comes crashing down on me like a collapsing black hole.
“Just in time,” Anna says.
Something taps against the insides of my knees as I fall backwards. Anna has dragged a chair behind me.
I crash into it.
“Take a minute.” She pats my shoulder, though it also feels more like she’s steadying herself. “It’s a very,” her voice trembles, “difficult thing to see.”
I cradle my head on my knees.
Anna takes a step back and leans against the mortuary slab, taking long slow breaths herself. For a moment we’re both silent. Then she moves close again. “What happened?” She’s pointing at the blood on my skirt.
“I had a misunderstanding with a wheelbarrow. I’m fine.” I sit upright, then instantly reel backwards.
“Concentrate on breathing.” She opens and shuts drawers until she finds a first-aid kit. Minutes later, there’s a line of Leukostrips across my gash and Anna’s stuffing my scarf into her bag. The purple bruising on my leg has blackened and spread. It doesn’t matter. My eyes wander back to my brother to examine individual wounds on his body. I ease Doctor Emil’s report from my bag and squint at the anatomic summary in the dim light. I forgot to bring my reading glasses.
“Mark was long-sighted too. Want me to read it?” Anna suggests, pressing an adhesive dressing over the Leukostrips.
I hand over the report then stare at my brother’s body.
“Lung pathology,” Anna begins, clearing her throat. “The lining of the aorta was stained; lungs waterlogged with freshwater and heavy with oedema. The conclusion says such findings are consistent with asphyxia due to drowning.” She pauses to check on me.
“Go on.”
“Brain pathology. No gross or microscopic evidence of head trauma, intracranial injury, cerebral oedema, cervical cord injury, retinal haemorrhage, or mechanical asphyxia. Evidence was found of transient unconsciousness prior to death but it says that such findings are also consistent with asphyxia due to drowning. Trauma to torso. Multiple abrasions and contusions on torso, multiple rib fractures and a fracture of the right scapula and clavicle. It also concludes that such injuries are consistent with river drowning among sunken boulders.”
As far as I can tell from the front of Mark’s body, the report is accurate. What about his back? I lean on the body tray and peer underneath.
“What are you doing?”
“I want to see if there are any injuries to his back.”
Anna tucks the report under her arm and, after hesitating to touch him, places her hands on Mark’s hip to roll him towards her. “Anything?”
“Not really.” His back is crisscrossed with abrasions and contusions. “It’s the same as his front.”
“Okay,” she lets Mark rest again and returns to the report, “so the final section is facial trauma. Nasal and jaw fractures, multiple abrasions and contusions on forehead, cheeks and chin, a
ll sustained while submerged under the Skepnasá River by colliding with one or more large sunken boulders.”
I tilt my head back and stare at the ceiling. Everything in the report is evident on his body. Yet there has to be more to this. I search his face for answers; reach forward to brush aside his hair. Mark was always very particular about his hair but rolling his body has disturbed a matted patch on the side of his head. I untangle it. Grainy black flakes fall as I ease the strands apart. They look like…dried blood?
“What’s this?” I stand and part his hair to reveal a gaping flesh wound. “Correct me if I’m wrong, Anna, but isn’t this head trauma?” I take Mark’s autopsy report from her.
No gross or microscopic evidence of head trauma, it reads.
“Looks like head trauma to me,” Anna says.
“Then I think we’ve found what we weren’t supposed to find.” I double-check the report. “If we’re seeing a head trauma, why isn’t it listed here?”
Chapter 9
Anna points to her watch as I go against her advice and call Doctor Emil from my phone. I have to speak to him, right away. This isn’t something I can hold in. I have taken photographs; they’re concrete proof. Time to find out who’s to blame and for what.
The line rings then goes to his message bank.
“Doctor Emil,” I mutter, unable to stop my voice shaking. “I am…livid. I am staring at my brother’s head and looking at a head injury, a head injury not listed in your autopsy report. Why? You said your performance reviews are ‘outstanding’ every year, that you’ve never had an autopsy report questioned? Well, I don’t know what the opposite of ‘outstanding’ is in your industry, but unless you look into this injury first thing tomorrow morning, I’ll make sure your next performance reviews are the worst in the history of Icelandic pathology. I’ve taken photographs and they’ve already uploaded to my cloud, time-stamped, so you’d best get onto this fast. Why isn’t this head injury in your report?”