by Zena Shapter
I nod as if that’s okay then. But it’s too coincidental, that Director Úlfar is here taking action now, tonight, on the same day I almost drowned. And why is Doctor Emil examining my brother’s body when Gunnar already admitted his mistake? “Um, Doctor Emil, what prompted you to re-examine my brother today?”
Doctor Emil frowns, as if the answer is obvious. “Because of what you said to Director Úlfar.”
“Why though, after Gunnar admitted his mistake?” Blank looks. “He left a message on my phone, apologising for forgetting to include Mark’s head injury in his report.”
“So,” Director Úlfar tuts at me, “this is why you didn’t send me a photograph of your brother’s head? I was expecting it.”
“There was little point after Gunnar explained his mistake. He said he’d spoken to you about it.” I look to Doctor Emil for an explanation.
He shakes his head. “I never spoke to Gunnar.”
I go to pull out my phone and show them Gunnar’s message, but my hand slides down the towelling of my pocketless robe. No clothes; no phone. “He said you received my message and were going to take measures to ensure he never made a mistake like that again.”
Doctor Emil crosses his arms. “I didn’t get a message from either of you.”
“After you called me,” Director Úlfar says, pleased with himself, “I followed up, asked Emil for his revised report. He didn’t know what I was talking about, so I told him what you told me.”
I frown. “I definitely left a message on your phone. It said ‘welcome to the message bank of Doctor Emil’.”
“This is why I don’t trust VoiP,” Anna says, appearing by my side with two sets of light blue medical scrubs. She eyes my bathrobe. “If people can hack into banks, they can hack into computerised messaging services. Here, for you and Ari.”
I take a pair and pass a set to Ari. “But why bother deleting my message to Doctor Emil when I’d already spoken to Director Úlfar?”
“You used the morgue’s analogue phone to speak to Director Úlfar.” Anna reminds me. “They can’t monitor those, they’re not VoIP. They mustn’t have known about your call.”
Doctor Emil comes over to us, drying his hands as he walks. Director Úlfar asks him something in Icelandic. He shakes his head in reply. “Gunnar is a good assistant. I’ve never known him to make a mistake like this.” He turns to face me. “I am sorry, Miss Dales, I didn’t have time to check Gunnar’s report before you arrived yesterday. If I had, maybe this would not have happened.”
“Is that why you were reluctant to give it to me, because you hadn’t checked it?”
He nods. “I do not understand how Gunnar missed something this important.”
“Unless,” says Anna, “he missed it on purpose.”
I pick up on Doctor Emil’s use of words. “Why is Mark’s head injury important? Does it alter Mark’s cause of death?”
“Considerably.” Doctor Emil moves towards Mark’s body. “If you look at the injury its shape is angular and, if you look here,” he uses tweezers to lift a flap of Mark’s blood-stained scalp, “a metallic fragment is imbedded in the wound.”
Anna looks to where he’s pointing but I take his word for it. Glasses wouldn’t sit properly on my nose right now, and I don’t want another dizzy spell disrupting my concentration.
“I no longer believe the cause of death,” Doctor Emil continues, “was asphyxia due to drowning. Also, the body was found in the Skepnasá River on the afternoon of Sunday twenty-eighth of August but, according to my calculations, death occurred in the morning of Friday twenty-sixth of August. Gunnar got that wrong too.”
“In the morning?” I look at Anna. She’s staring at Doctor Emil as if he’s slapped her around the face with a wet fish. “Where was Jón,” I ask her, “and Gunnar, last Friday morning?”
She doesn’t reply, just continues staring at Doctor Emil as if she’ll find an answer in his face. I don’t expect her to know about Gunnar, but she said Jón couldn’t have travelled to Jötunnsjökull and back because he was with her last Friday night and then all weekend. What about Friday morning, where was he then?
A moment of acceptance sweeps across the room.
“Okay,” Director Úlfar says, commandeering everyone’s attention, “it is enough. We will go to the Litrúm-Hús now. This will be sorted quickly and quietly, tonight. Please, everyone…” He moves to the door and holds it open.
Ari immediately joins Director Úlfar at the door. Anna follows, using the stainless steel counter to hobble around the room. I’m the last to move. I’m still watching Doctor Emil. He covers Mark with a white sheet and slides the body tray back inside its drawer. As it clicks into place, I watch the tiny light above Mark’s drawer turn back on, rejoining the other two lights flickering on the mortuary cabinet. Mark is sleeping again.
With a sigh I move towards the door. I’m about to pass Director Úlfar when I turn and recount the tiny drawer lights. There are three.
Three?
“Doctor Emil, has anyone died since yesterday?”
“Not that I know.”
“Only two drawers were occupied when I was here last night.”
Doctor Emil scratches his beard. He pulls at the drawer next to Mark’s, looks at the toe tag, closes it, then peers at the temperature gauge on the drawer directly above it. “Hm, this one’s not set correctly.” He tugs it open.
The instant the drawer opens, a rancid tang fills the room. There’s no toe tag on the body inside, no toe to even tie a tag onto, just a pair of shoes at the end of trousered legs. Doctor Emil yanks the tray fully out, recognises the bloodied face atop the fully clothed body and reels back against the mortuary slab.
I cover my nose and mouth. “Who is it?” I stutter.
Ari moves around Anna to get a better look at the skinny pale blond splattered with blood. “Gunnar,” he mumbles.
The mortuary cabinets purr in the silence that follows. There’s a gun in Gunnar’s right hand. It’s obvious from the gaping wound on his head what he’s done. His blood has dried in the dark cavity of the drawer into a deep burgundy that sits in large globular splatters over the tray and stains his skin. He must have pulled himself into the drawer before squeezing the trigger.
I feel a swell of sympathy and pity. Gunnar is one of the unlucky ones. No one was here to help him. No one came to save him. He was all alone.
A memory swallows my heart.
But Doctor Emil has already recovered from the shock and is leaning over Gunnar’s body, pressing the sleeve of his white lab coat over his nose. I follow his stare. He’s looking at the expression fixed on Gunnar’s face, whose eyes and mouth are wider than I would have expected for someone in the depths of despair. Then the doctor is on his hands and knees, looking under the tray to examine its rollers. I bend my head to see what’s interesting him.
“There’s blood all over the front rollers,” he says.
I’m about to point out that there’s blood all over the inside of the drawer, and that he just pulled the body out over the blood, when he begins an analysis I don’t want to interrupt.
“Blood would have dripped under the tray, run under the rollers and dried,” he says. “But, if the tray was stationary, how did blood get onto the tops of the rollers at the front? There’s no blood on the tray by his legs and blood can’t drip upwards.” He looks at Director Úlfar. “The tray must have been rolled out while the blood was still fresh, then rolled back in.”
“Someone knows he’s here,” Anna murmurs.
“Nei.” Doctor Emil shakes his head. “You don’t understand. Gunnar was a good assistant. We were friends. Friends enough to know he was left-handed.”
I look at the gun. It’s in Gunnar’s right hand.
“Why is this important?” Ari says, cringing as he realises the answer.
Doctor Emil closes his
assistant’s eyes before answering, then closes his own before speaking. “Gunnar did not pull that trigger.”
Chapter 24
Everyone stares at the gun in Gunnar’s blood-splattered hand, but my attention is drawn to Ari, who leans closer than the others to examine it. Director Úlfar mirrors his action and they exchange a knowing look.
“What?” I want to know. “What is it? Ari?”
“The gun,” Ari says, “I’ve seen it before.”
Anna clears her throat and faces me, rolling her eyes. “It’s a double action nine millimetre semiautomatic—MUR standard issue.” She makes eye contact with Ari. “That doesn’t make it Jón’s.”
“Somebody was in there with him,” Doctor Emil moves his eyes between Ari and Anna, “pulling the trigger. They had to push themselves back out before closing Gunnar inside.”
“Ari,” says Director Úlfar, touching his forearm, “take Anna home and pick up her evidence. Doctor Emil, please examine Gunnar quickly. I want a report in the next half hour. I will go to the Litrúm-Hús, download Jón’s Litrúm Maps, and,” he points to Anna, Ari and I, “meet you three in the Dómstólls.”
I remember what Ari told me about the Litrúm Maps scanning a person’s state of mind for certain results. “What are you expecting Jón’s Litrúm Maps to show? He wouldn’t have been so stupid as to leave them lying around, surely?”
“Precisely.” Director Úlfar moves to hold the door open for everyone except Doctor Emil. “I do not expect to find any. I expect him to have deleted them. This I will use to question him.”
“Do not question him alone, Director,” Ari says.
“It’s okay,” Director Úlfar taps his side as the four of us leave the morgue, “I have my gun.”
The thought makes me shudder.
Once we’re in the corridor, Ari insists on helping Anna hobble up the stairs and across the car park. On the way, Director Úlfar signals for us to be quiet while he makes a call, muttering in hushed Icelandic to someone who answers succinctly to three questions. After he hangs up, Anna tells me he was speaking to the man sent to watch Jón, who’s confirmed that Jón is still inside the Litrúm-Hús.
Director Úlfar then re-dials, speaking loudly and jovially in Icelandic. I hear the names ‘Jón’ and ‘Gunnar’. Again Anna translates the call. That was Jón. He’s confirmed Gunnar still hasn’t showed up at the Litrúm-Hús. Director Úlfar has asked Jón to wait there until he arrives, in about fifteen minutes.
Hell—in fifteen minutes Jón is going to get the shock of his life. He thinks Ari and I are dead.
Director Úlfar runs a fingertip over his eyebrows, waves farewell and breaks off to go to his own car. It would be better for us to stay together until we’re at the Litrúm-Hús, but Director Úlfar also has a gun with him and I don’t want it anywhere near me. Yet.
So Ari drives us to The Himinn and within minutes we’re parked in Anna’s driveway. Anna tells him where to find her evidence and gives him the password for her computer. He’ll be quicker on his feet than either of us.
“It’s in the folder called ‘grænt nótt’,” she tells him.
Ari darts into the house with his daypack and a USB drive from his glove box. We see his shadow yanking open the flip-down keyboard of Anna’s hallway laptop. Moments later, he’s scaling the staircase like a monkey up a tree. Anna has a shoebox of evidence in her wardrobe.
“Maybe I should help him,” Anna opens her door, winces as she puts weight on her ankle.
I reach over my seat and rest my hand on her shoulder. “Ari will find it. If he can’t, he’ll shout down for help.”
Anna nods and sits back. The hum of the Eroder’s expectant engine fills the silence.
“Don’t be nervous,” I say, although it’s a ridiculous request. She’s been building up to this moment for years. In fact, I doubt she’s even heard me, her eyes are so fixed on The Himinn. She’s desperate to go inside. She’s worried about her evidence. Her hands rest on her lap, gripped into fists.
I bite my bottom lip, unsure how to reassure her. I can barely think how to reassure myself. Until we saw Gunnar’s corpse my theories were still just that, theories. Now they’ve become something else. They’ve become real.
I take a deep breath, detect a faint fragrance in the air and identify it as cinnamon, dancing in a baking aroma that drifts towards us from a neighbouring house. The detail helps ground me and that’s where I am when Anna speaks, low and firm.
“Do you know what, Becky,” she says without shifting her gaze, “I think you should stay here, at The Himinn. There’s no need for you to be at the Litrúm-Hús tonight.”
“No way. I’m coming.”
“It could be dangerous.”
“I didn’t come to Höfkállur to play it safe.” Not that I came expecting danger.
“I don’t want anyone else getting hurt. Jón is my business now.”
“And Mark is mine.”
“You don’t need to be there.”
“Need?” I lean into her peripheral vision. “Anna, there’s a man at that Litrúm-Hús who can tell me how and why my brother died last Friday morning. I’m going.” I send her a look of determination. She goes to argue but I get in first. “Besides, do you really want to be sitting there alone when Jón starts saying awful things to you?” I close a hand around one of hers. “Because you must know he will. You’re about to betray him.”
“For his own good,” she says like she’s trying to convince herself. “He’ll understand, eventually. What he’s doing now, stealing all that money, it’s no good for his energy.”
“Not to mention murdering Gunnar.” Possibly Mark too.
“That’s not proven yet.”
“Either way, he’s still going to make you cry.”
She shrugs, weary, and speaks with a sigh. “Putting on a show is second nature for me now. If I need someone, Ólaf will be there.”
“I’m counting on that.” Ari would only ever call Ólaf to help with an examination this significant.
“I’d still rather you were safe. Mark wouldn’t want me putting his sister in unnecessary danger.”
“He’d also want me to be there for you. I was hoping we’d stay in touch after this is over.” As I say the words, I realise how true they are. I’ve already forgiven Anna for not telling me about the corruption, or Jón. She was only doing what she thought was best. She still is. “There’s so much you haven’t told me about Mark yet, about his postscript and what he was researching. He said Höfkállur had the best coffee in the world too, some little shop by the harbour? I was hoping you’d take me there and tell me everything. We could go tomorrow morning?”
She brings a hand on top of mine, squeezing it as if it’s a lifeline thrown amidst stormy seas. “I’d like that. You still shouldn’t come tonight.”
“Nothing will happen to us, Anna, not as long as Ari’s there. And he will be.”
She stifles a laugh.
“What?” I ask.
She returns her gaze to The Himinn as a shadow descends the stairs and jogs out the front door. “I don’t doubt you once made an excellent lawyer, Becky. You…you’re very determined. Too determined for your own good sometimes.”
“Yes,” I smile to myself as I face front again, “some people call it stubborn.”
Ari slams himself into the driver’s seat. He’s changed into some spare clothes he must have had in his daypack. “Okay?” He shows Anna a shoebox.
“Yes,” she tells him, “that’s everything.”
“Gott, we have to go. Director Úlfar phoned me. Jón is asking to go home already. Becky, do you want some clothes?”
“It’s okay.” I pat my set of scrubs. “I’ll change into these on the way.”
Ari shifts the Eroder’s gears into reverse, turns and accelerates. As we drive, I feel my own gears shif
ting too. This is it. We have the evidence we need. We have Jón. All we need now is the Sannlitró-Völva. Even the pinching of my ribs and the tenderness in my limbs as I slide my thin blue scrub pants under my robe and pull the top over my head doesn’t bother me as much as it should. All I want is to get there now.
I go over my notes in my mind, thinking how best to get the information I want from Jón once he’s in front of the machine, and how best to achieve the moment I need. I think about the responses he’s likely to give to certain prompters, and about the responses he’s not likely to want to give too. I wish I had some concrete evidence of my own, to back up my theory and settle my unease, but I don’t and I hate feeling so out of control.
Control is not everything, Ari said earlier.
It didn’t help me in the river.
Still, I need to do something.
“Ari, can I borrow your phone again?” Writing down questions will at least help me plan. Ari slings me his phone and I jam what I can into my notes app. I’ve barely had time to get down the essentials when Anna leans to peer over my shoulder.
“What are you writing?” She stares at my file, though its individual words will be indecipherable from where she’s sitting. Thankfully.
“Notes on what I’ve learnt about the Heimspeki over the last forty-eight hours. I want to actually understand Mark’s thesis when I read it. So I’ve been writing down what everyone’s said to me since coming to Iceland, where things conflict. Facts. Theories. That sort of thing.”
“You’ve made notes on what everyone’s said?”
“Everyone.”
Ari glances at me as we pull into the Litrúm-Hús car park. “I am in there?”
“I did say everyone. In the interests of figuring out who Jón’s partner might be, of course.”
Ari raises an eyebrow.
“Who’s at the top of your list?” Anna wants to know.
“Um,” I pretend to review my notes, “Director Úlfar.”
Ari throws me a look of disbelief as he parks the car and switches off the engine. “Director Úlfar, as in the Press Secretary and Director of the MUR, who we just left at the morgue?”