Ashes to Dust

by Yrsa Sigurdardottir

  Thóra agreed to hold while the woman went to look up Alda, in case she couldn’t get through to her again. After a long wait the woman returned to the phone.

  ‘Well, you know what, there was no Alda Thórgeirsdóttir registered here during the winter of 1972-1973,’ said the woman, sounding apologetic. ‘Could she have gone by any other name? These are just paper records, in alphabetical order. We were supposed to have gone paperless a long time ago but never had the time to do it, which is why I’m afraid I need to have a full name.’

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ replied Thóra. ‘Could she be missing from the file because she started studying there after the new year? At the end of January, after the eruption in the Islands?’

  ‘That wouldn’t change anything,’ said the woman, still sounding regretful. ‘Of course it’s possible that someone here made a filing error, but I find that rather unlikely. The school’s public funding is based on the number of students, so we’ve always been careful with our records. Although many things are done differently now, that’s one thing that hasn’t changed.’

  Thóra thanked the woman and hung up. Had Alda gone there under another name, or did Jóhanna simply misremember which school her sister attended in the wake of the disaster? It must be the latter, since Jóhanna’s story didn’t fit in any way. Teenagers didn’t jump up a class and start a new educational level in the middle of term. Wondering who could help her unravel this mystery, Thóra concluded that she would have to speak to Alda’s mother. She would be sure to know the details of Alda’s schooling, and Thóra could use the opportunity to try to find out other information, too. In her notes she had Jóhanna’s mobile number, but when she rang to ask her to arrange a meeting with her mother, there was no answer. Jóhanna was probably at work, which meant Thóra had no choice but to try again later. She also wanted to tell Jóhanna that nothing in the diaries suggested anything out of the ordinary in Alda’s relationship with her father.

  She decided to ask Alda’s childhood girlfriends again about her whereabouts following the evacuation, in case by some chance they had remembered anything further. Only two of them picked up the phone, and it was clear from their tone that they feared her telephone calls would become daily occurrences now they’d made the mistake of humouring her the first time she rang. Both of them were noticeably less friendly this time, and neither of them could remember anything beyond what they’d already told her. Both stood firmly by their assertion that Alda had attended Reykjavik Junior College, though they didn’t know when she’d started there or whether she’d completed her studies. At the end of their conversation, the first woman muttered something about being late and said goodbye without giving Thóra a chance to ask any further questions, but the second wasn’t as crafty and Thóra managed to ask her about a number of things she’d been mulling over since reading the diary entries. ‘Could something have happened to Alda just before the eruption, and was she acting any differently from usual?’ asked Thóra.

  ‘God, it was such a long time ago,’ replied the woman, sounding as if she thought the phone call would never end. ‘If she was, I don’t remember it.’

  ‘No depression, irritability, nothing like that?’ urged Thóra.

  ‘I don’t remember anything,’ replied the woman, but then paused for a moment as if something had occurred to her. Actually, we had all ended up in a little bit of trouble the previous weekend - I’d completely forgotten about that.‘

  ‘What happened?’ asked Thóra anxiously.

  ‘Oh, just typical teenage stuff,’ said the woman. ‘We tried alcohol for the first time the Friday before the eruption. We got completely wasted, and things got a bit crazy. I was grounded because of it and wasn’t supposed to go out for two months, but that fell apart after the volcano, of course.

  If Alda was in a bad mood, it was probably because her parents were so angry with her.‘

  ‘Where were you drinking? At someone’s house?’ asked Thóra, thinking back to her own youth.

  ‘No, it was a school dance,’ replied the woman. ‘It was actually stopped and we were all sent home, even though not everyone had been drinking.’

  Thóra pressed her for more information but got little for her trouble. The kids had made plans to steal alcohol from their parents; each of them had filled a Coke bottle with whatever they could get their hands on, and most had taken small amounts of many different spirits so as not to arouse suspicion. Some strange cocktails had resulted and everything got out of control, as might be expected. The woman Thóra was talking to had got sick herself, which meant that she was one of those whose parents were called and asked to come and pick them up, vomiting and crying. Thus she had no idea if Alda had managed to get herself home, or whether she had also had to be collected. She couldn’t remember anything from the latter part of the night, because of her drunkenness. Thóra decided not to press her any further about this, but to take it up with Markus in good time. Hopefully he hadn’t been as badly affected and could remember more details.

  ‘There’s just one more thing and then I promise to let you go,’ she said. ‘Do you know why Alda was unhappy about her hair?’ Thóra expected the woman to be baffled, but she wasn’t.

  ‘Oh, that,’ she said sadly. ‘That was horrendous.’

  ‘Did something happen to her hair?’ Thóra’s mind spun with all the horror stories she’d heard over the years about hairdressers who accidentally burned the hair off their clients with perming solution or hair bleach that was too strong.

  ‘It was all cut off,’ replied the woman. ‘Our class stayed over in the gym one night after our exams, before Christmas. When Alda woke up in the morning someone had hacked off her hair, presumably while she slept. They never found out who did it.’

  Thóra frowned. ‘Who was there, or had access to the gym?’

  ‘The whole class was there, as far as I can remember. Of course there were a couple who either didn’t want to come or were off sick, but most of the kids came. There were also two teachers there, and the teaching assistant. There might have been other adults, but I don’t remember who. I would probably have forgotten it if it hadn’t been Alda’s hair. Naturally, she was hysterical, because she had particularly beautiful hair, long and blonde. It had been hacked off with scissors and it was such a mess afterwards. Of course what was left was tidied up at the hairdresser’s immediately, but it still looked pretty ridiculous. Far too short, like a boy’s.’

  Thóra thanked her and hung up. She was dumbfounded, since she well remembered how sensitive adolescents could be about their hair. She doubted this ugly event could be connected to the case in any way, but you never knew. Yet another detail to ask Markus about, along with what the woman had said about the teenagers’ drunkenness the weekend before the eruption - the night before the blood was found at the pier.

  Thóra turned her attention to the doctor’s office where Alda had worked. An Internet search revealed that it was run by two plastic surgeons, Dís Haflidadottir and Agúst Agústsson. Thóra thought she recognized Agúst’s name, having heard it mentioned in her sewing circle when they’d discussed beauty treatments. Those of her friends who thought they were in the know said he was the best breast man in town. There were even unconfirmed stories about people who’d travelled all the way from Hollywood to go under his knife, but Thóra remembered thinking that sounded ludicrous. If you couldn’t find decent breasts in Hollywood you were hardly going to get them in Reykjavik. Surely practice made perfect? Dís hadn’t been mentioned, though; if people flocked to her from the other side of the world for operations, no one in Thóra’s sewing circle knew about it.

  The answering machine informed Thóra that appointments could be made before noon on weekdays. Those who needed to speak to the doctors about operations that had already taken place could call the phone number printed in their aftercare pack; this emergency number was clearly not up for grabs. Thóra left a message.

  That left only the A&E, whose number Thóra knew off by h
eart thanks to a long marriage to a doctor who often worked past the end of his shifts. Those nights had always seemed to drag on and on. She recognized the voice of the woman who answered, even though she and Hannes had been divorced for around five years. The woman on the other end clearly had no such recollection: Thóra’s voice appeared to ring no bells with her, nor did her name awaken any friendliness. Thóra tried to console herself with the fact that the staff was large and her name was quite common. After asking to speak to Alda Thórgeirsdóttir’s supervisor, Thóra was informed sullenly that the phone call would be transferred to the head nurse on call. She tried to thank the woman, but before she could do so the call was transferred and Thóra’s eardrums were assailed by a frightful, tinny tune that sounded like nothing she had ever heard.

  Several minutes later a chilly female voice announced itself as belonging to Elin, who sounded as if she had no overwhelming inclination to relieve the suffering of the sick and wounded.

  Thóra introduced herself and explained her business. She said she was seeking information about Alda Thórgeirsdóttir, and asked whether she might stop by and speak to her former colleagues about a case concerning a childhood friend of the recently deceased nurse. ‘I’m familiar with the workings of your busy department, and I promise to trouble you as little as possible,’ she concluded hopefully. These people had enough to do, and no one knew this better than Thóra. She fully expected to have to interview the hospital staff over open wounds.

  ‘Alda Thórgeirsdóttir was no longer working here when she died,’ said the head nurse. ‘She was never actually a full- time employee; she just took shifts on weekends and the occasional evening. She worked at a clinic in town, so perhaps you should try them.’

  How helpful, telling Thóra something she already knew. ‘Of course I’ll be doing that,’ she replied, echoing the woman’s frosty tone. ‘But I would also like to speak to your staff.’

  ‘I can’t see how that would help,’ came the reply. ‘Firstly because there is nothing to tell, secondly because I’m not sure such a thing would be proper, and thirdly because we simply have no obligation to speak to some lawyer who appears from out of the blue. We value propriety very highly here.’

  Propriety? How old was this woman - a hundred? A hundred and fifty? ‘Naturally you’re not obliged to speak to me,’ Thóra replied, ‘unless of course I were injured. If you prefer, I could always have you subpoenaed to find out whether you have any information that might count. Might that be the best solution, do you think?’

  ‘Subpoenaed?’ exclaimed the woman, sounding noticeably less assured than before. ‘That’s completely unnecessary. I told you she wasn’t working here any more.’ She hesitated. ‘What is this about, may I ask? Alda’s death?’

  ‘It’s a case I’m working on for a man who knew Alda,’ replied Thóra, enjoying holding the cards.

  ‘Is this about the rape case?’ asked the woman, her voice now full of suspicion. ‘We have no comment. We’re not protecting anyone, and you’ll find nothing out by snooping around under false pretences. The case is on its way to court, where guilt or innocence will be determined and our part will be finished. We follow the rules for such cases, and there’s no leeway for letting a lawyer in off the street to chat about God knows what.’

  Now it was Thóra’s turn to hesitate. Rape? She had to be careful not to get involved with something unconnected to Markus’s case. Actually, the nurse had been quite correct; the hospital had no obligation to her or to Markus, and the interests of those who came to them for assistance naturally took precedence. ‘No, this has nothing to do with a rape. That I can promise you,’ said Thóra earnestly. ‘Unfortunately it seems as though this can’t happen, so we’ll have to leave it. You have enough to worry about.’

  Thóra hung up. She hadn’t given up her efforts to speak to the staff of the A&E out of respect for the hospital or the Hippocratic Oath. She simply planned to make her way in through the back door. Swallowing her pride, she dialled her ex-husband’s number.

  As Dís listened to the message on the answering machine the smile she usually wore after a successful operation vanished. Now what? A lawyer who wanted to speak to them about Alda? Not the police, as she had feared, but the lawyer of some childhood friend of Alda, someone Dís had never heard of before. She listened to the message again and tried to read more into it, but without success. The voice was soft and courteous, seeming to suggest neither that the speaker felt Dís and Agúst were hiding something nor that this was a formality unrelated to who they were. Dís wondered whether she should fetch Agúst, who was finishing up a consultation with the last patient of the day: yet another young man who wanted to have a scar from a fight removed. She decided not to. Agúst tended towards the melodramatic, and she had no desire to nourish her own anxiety with his paranoia. She felt sick thinking of the one court case their work had involved them in. Agúst had rendered himself almost incapable of working with the stress of the case and his wild flights of fancy about what might happen. By the time a settlement was finally reached, Dís was on the verge of offering up her soul along with the damages they were ordered to pay. It would be a small price to pay for peace of mind at work.

  Dís scribbled down the lawyer’s number then erased the message, resolving to phone and arrange to meet her tomorrow, when Agúst would not be at the office. This was undoubtedly something unimportant, probably concerning her estate; whether Alda had had life insurance from the office, or some such. Dís could take care of this herself, and in the unlikely event it was about something else, she would get Agúst involved — but not until she had to.

  She went over to Alda’s tidy desk, which was conveniently located behind a partition separating it from the waiting room. Alda hadn’t had an office of her own like Dís and Agúst, since she mainly assisted them in the operating room and only a tiny bit with paperwork. Dís looked over the well-ordered workspace, which in that sense resembled Agúst’s office. However Alda, unlike Agúst, had given her little area a tiny bit of personality: on the table was a framed photograph of a woman whom Dís recalled was Alda’s younger and only sister, and there was also a little daintily painted flowerpot containing a cactus which seemed to be thriving. Poor little thing, thought Dis. Neither she nor Agúst had the ability to keep so much as a weed alive, and it would take a lot for the receptionist to tear herself away from Facebook to look after a plant. Dís was about to throw the plant into the rubbish bin to avoid having to watch it wither away, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it, for Alda’s sake. She would try to remember the plant and nurse it as best she could. At least she would have tried, even if the cactus died. Out of respect for Alda, she didn’t want to throw out something she had cared about.

  Pleased with her noble thoughts, Dís sat down and started to scrutinize Alda’s desk and computer. It didn’t occur to her that such a thing was inappropriate. She owned the company that owned the computer, like everything else in the office, and if Alda kept any secrets that she wouldn’t have wanted to come out at work, then it was best if it were Dís who uncovered them. Agúst was a gossip and the receptionist, at best, a simpleton. Both of them lacked the maturity to respect others’ privacy.

  As the computer was firing up, Dís looked through Alda’s desk drawers. In the top drawer the stationery had been so tidily arranged that Dís wouldn’t have been able to recreate the layout if her life depended on it. In Dís’s top drawer everything was a jumble: pens, paperclips, stamps and anything else that ended up there for want of its own particular place.

  The other two drawers had little in them, although there were some files that Dís had trouble understanding. Among them was the autopsy report of an older woman who had died in the hospital in Isafjördur. She skimmed through it and could see nothing in it connected to Alda or to her work in the office. She didn’t recognize the woman’s name, and when the computer was ready she tried running it through their database. The woman hadn’t been one of her or Agúst’s patients. She
shrugged, assuming the woman was a relative or friend of Alda’s, although the age difference between them did not suggest the latter. Dís put the report on the table so it wouldn’t end up in a box with other things for disposal or storage. Maybe she could find an explanation for this somehow. The death had occurred quite recently, so perhaps it would help explain why Alda had killed herself. Dís suppressed a shudder at the thought that the cause of death might be something other than suicide. Although suicide was awful, there were many things worse, and Dís wouldn’t hesitate to share any information that supported Alda’s having died by her own hand.

  The drawer also contained a photograph of a young man Dís did not recognize. The photo was very artistic, and the subject clearly wasn’t aware of the photographer. He sat slouched on a chair, looking out into space, solemn but not scowling. He had the look of someone who wasn’t scared of anything. Dís couldn’t tell where the photograph had been taken, as all you could see was the man, a yellow wall and the chair, but something made him look very distinguished. Before Dís put the photo down she frowned and tried to figure out what it was she found so attractive about him. She couldn’t, but wondered whether Alda had kept this photo because she felt the same.

  She shut the drawer and turned to the computer, smiling when she saw what Alda had chosen as her desktop wallpaper. It was a kitten that had been photoshopped and now smiled idiotically at her with a set of human teeth. Dís thought she’d have nothing against owning a kitten if it were possible to make it look like that, and idly wondered whether she could use her expertise to do the work. She was obviously tired after a long day.

  She quickly gave up reading through the files on the computer, which were countless. After opening several at random she found nothing that drew her attention, so she went online and out of curiosity checked which pages Alda had bookmarked as favourites. As she read the list her mouth dropped open in amazement.