Ashes to Dust (21 page)

Thóra could have kissed the woman, but
restrained herself. It was clear to her that she shouldn’t accept the
diaries, which could be used as evidence in the police investigation, but
equally she knew that if she turned them over she wouldn’t get to see
them again
any time
soon, and even then she’d
probably never get to read every word. However, as a lawyer she had an
obligation to do the right thing. ‘The most proper course of action would
be for these diaries to go to the police,’ she said, holding the bag out
to  Jóhanna
. ‘It’s possible that the
diaries contain information they have the right to receive.’

 Jóhanna’s expression
hardened and she stopped rubbing her jaw. ‘I won’t give these to
Gudni and his colleagues. It’s out of the question. These are my
sister’s private thoughts from her sensitive teenage years, and I
don’t want them being made public for strangers to rip them apart.’

‘Have you read them?’ asked
Thóra, still holding out the bag.

‘No,’
said
 Jóhanna
, shaking her head. ‘I can’t bring
myself to do it. At the time these diaries were the holiest things that Alda
owned and she wouldn’t let me near them, even before I could read. I
don’t want to know her secrets, no matter how trivial they might seem
today.’ She looked imploringly at Thóra. ‘I trust you,
although I don’t know you at all. You know how it is to be a young girl,
and besides, you will be able to judge whether there’s anything relevant
to the bodies and to Alda’s murder.’

‘It’s not definite that Alda was
murdered,’ said Thóra, mainly as a formality.  Jóhanna
had clearly fixed the idea in her head and right now nothing Thóra could
say or do would change that. ‘And even if the diaries shed some light on
the case, that doesn’t mean they’ll explain her death.’

‘I understand that,’
replied  Jóhanna
, although her expression
said otherwise. ‘Maybe there’s absolutely nothing there. But there
might be something. We’ll just have to see.’ She took
Thóra’s hand. ‘Could I ask you to read through them for me?
If there’s nothing in them of interest to the police, then I could have
them back and no one would need to know anything.’ She paused for a
moment. ‘If you do find something, then I suppose that particular
diary would go to the police, and that would be fine with me. I just
can’t disrespect my sister by handing these over to the police if
there’s no need for it.’

Thóra looked at the woman standing
before her. She was, as before, wearing the plain uniform of a bank clerk, and
the green blouse she’d chosen to go with her blue suit didn’t match
at all. There was a white spot of toothpaste at one corner of her mouth.
Fashion and grooming are naturally not uppermost in one’s mind during
times of grieving, and Thóra couldn’t help but feel sorry for her.
‘I’ll read these, but I’ll have to hand over everything that
I think pertains to the case.’ She looked at the bag. ‘It would, of
course, be best if you read them yourself.’

 Jóhanna shook her head briskly
and her hairstyle, if you could call it that, went completely askew. ‘No.
I don’t want to. You might think me silly or cowardly but it’s more
than loyalty to my sister that stops me reading what’s in them.’
She inhaled through her nose and exhaled slowly. ‘Something went wrong
between Alda and Father. I don’t remember them ever speaking, or meeting
up. I’m too scared to find out what caused it, in case Father did
something unforgivable to her. I want to remember them both as they were, and
it’s too late to change anything. They’re both dead.’

Thóra nodded. She got the picture.
Incest cases were reported far too often, so of
course
 Jóhanna
was afraid this was the case. She said: ‘I
understand. You can rest assured I won’t hand over anything that’s
not directly related to the case. And I’ll get in touch with you before I
give them anything.’

 Jóhanna smiled, relieved.
‘Good.’ She looked at the large clock hanging in reception.
‘God, I’ve got to get going. I’m really late.’

Thóra watched the woman walk out
through the hotel door and trudge off in the direction of her work, her eyes
following her until she disappeared around a corner. The bag hung heavily from
Thóra’s clenched fist, and she was itching to read the diaries.
She sincerely hoped there was nothing in them that might
cause
 Jóhanna
unnecessary pain, but she feared there would be.
Anything relevant was bound to be both negative and painful for the woman. What
Matthew had said about hatred echoed in her mind, and Thóra asked
herself if she really wanted to know how this tragic series of events had
started.

Bella plonked herself down next to
Thóra at a table in the airport. She jerked her thumb over her shoulder,
in the direction of the refreshment kiosk. ‘Load of rubbish. They
don’t even stock it.’ She twisted round in her seat, and it looked
to Thóra as if she were giving the cashier the evil eye. ‘And they
call this an airport.’

‘The flight takes twenty minutes,
Bella,’ said Thóra irritably. ‘I’m sure you can
survive without nicotine gum.’ Now the evil eye fell on her so she looked
away, in the direction of the boarding gate. ‘They’ll probably
announce the flight soon,’ she said, just to have something to say. It
wasn’t just Bella’s nonsense that made her impatient to get going,
but the fact that she was waiting anxiously to dive into the diaries. She was
in a hurry to read them, not just from excitement over what they might reveal, but
also because if she had to hand them over to the police, it would obviously
look better if she did so quickly. The police would be annoyed with her no
matter how promptly she gave them the books, but it would reduce the damage if
she did it as soon as possible after getting hold of them. If she could read
through them today, it would be possible to make photocopies of them and return
the diaries tomorrow.

‘They’re in no hurry,’
muttered Bella. ‘We’ve paid for our tickets and they can’t
leave without us.’ She stood up. ‘I’m going out for a
smoke.’ Thóra felt relieved to be left alone again, and her relief
grew when she heard the call to board their flight to Reykjavik. She went to
fetch Bella from the airport entrance, where she was leaning up against a statue
honouring the visit to Iceland of Gorbachev and Reagan and blowing out one
stream of smoke after another. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I
don’t want to miss our plane.’

‘It’s not going anywhere,’
said Bella confidently, but nevertheless took one last drag and stubbed
out the cigarette. She pointed at the inscription on the statue’s base.
‘Who are these guys?’

‘Come on,’ said Thóra, not
caring to tell the girl the story behind the world leaders.
‘They’re just some former big- shots who don’t matter
any more
.’ She hurried inside, even holding the door
open for her secretary to chivvy her along, but they were still the last to
board the plane and take their seats. As soon as she had fastened her seatbelt,
Thóra took out the diaries.

‘What are those?’ asked Bella in
surprise when she saw the
multicoloured
, slightly
battered books in Thóra’s lap. She raised her pencilled eyebrows.
‘Diaries?
I had some like that when I was a kid. Whose
are they?’

The tracks of Reagan and Gorbachev might have
been covered over by time, but some things survived from generation to
generation. Thóra had kept diaries herself, not unlike those lying at
the top of the stack. ‘Oh, this is something that I need to go
over,’ replied Thóra, not saying anything about
who
the diaries belonged to. ‘I don’t think they’re anything
important.’ Thóra had hit the nail on the head, judging by the
first diary. It was from 1970, and at first glance nothing in it appeared
relevant to the investigation. Alda’s handwriting was typical for an
adolescent girl: big rounded letters, the letter ‘i’ sometimes
dotted with a heart. There was often a whole week between entries, which was
perhaps the reason Alda had been able to keep her diaries going for years.
Thóra had given up keeping a diary after six months, when the entries
started to show her in black and white just how little happened in the life of
an eleven-year-old, and she decided it would be better just to note down
special events. She would have given a lot now to have the chance to peek into
the mental world of her own childhood, which was now almost entirely lost to
her.

Thóra closed the first book and put it
at the bottom of the pile. She found the diary from 1973, which stood out as it
was the most tattered of all, and the spine cracked as she opened it. She
turned to the first page and read the entry for New Year’s Day, in which
Alda welcomed the
new year
and listed, with numbers,
what she wanted to accomplish in the next twelve months. Thóra smiled as
she read the girl’s resolutions:

1. Go to a foreign country

2. Do homework

3. Get a record player

4. Get a boyfriend

5. Stop thinking about my hair — it
will grow

Although she didn’t understand the last
item, the rest perfectly suited a fifteen-year-old girl taking her first steps
into the adult world. Today this might seem more like a thirteen-year-
old’s
voice, but in 1973 things clearly moved a bit
slower in a teenager’s life. Thóra went on to read about what a
drag Alda’s parents had been after the party the night before, and how
her little sister  Jóhanna still hadn’t got over her fear of
the fireworks, which had been even more beautiful than last year. This was
followed by a short paragraph in which Alda talked of her concern about
fireworks in the Islands, clearly torn between her delight in them and their
negative effect on animals. The entry ended with a promise to be sure to make
each day exciting enough to deserve a write-up in her new diary.

Thóra read on, through a description
of how that long- ago January had been spent. School started again after the
Christmas break and Alda appeared not to be disappointed at all, even seeming
to look forward to it, according to the diary. She had a crush on someone
called
Stebbi
and had started to think it was mutual,
but seemed not to have any interest in Markus except as a friend. It
wasn’t clear to Thóra whether the girl had realized how much of a
crush he had on her, but all the entries mentioning him were positive and
appeared to be written with platonic affection. The fifteenth of January turned
out to be a huge watershed, because Alda had kissed
Stebbi
outside the shop; this page was scribbled all over with hearts and flowers. The
next day was less enjoyable because the family kitten went missing, an
incident that escalated in drama over the next few days until it was finally
found after an extensive search. Thóra wondered if the kitten had been
one of the numerous cats left behind in the Islands, their numbers dwindling
little by little as the eruption continued. From time to time there were also
further reflections on hair that made no more sense to Thóra than
the reference at the start of the year. The best that Thóra could come
up with was that Alda had cut her hair short and been unhappy with the outcome,
but she didn’t completely grasp why this seemed to be of such great
concern to her.

At the start of the third week of the month
Alda appeared to be very excited about a school dance that was in the offing.
It was clearly a big deal, and although Alda didn’t describe it in any
great detail she appeared to be looking forward to it and dreading it in equal
measure. There was a reference to something all the kids in her class were
going to do, but Thóra couldn’t fathom what it was. When it came
to the nineteenth of January Thóra was slightly startled. The date had
been written at the top, but beneath it the page had been crossed over so
heavily and repeatedly with a ballpoint pen that in some places there were
holes in the paper. The facing page had been subjected to the same violent treatment.
Something had happened, and no matter how Thóra scrutinized the
scribbles she couldn’t make out what was written underneath. Perhaps
Stebbi
, the boy Alda had liked, had jilted her. However,
the marks had been made so forcefully that Thóra found this explanation
unlikely, even though the writer had been a teenager with raging hormones. She
put the diary on her lap.

‘What’s this mess?’ said
Bella, pointing at the scrawls. ‘Did a little kid get into the
diary?’

That hadn’t crossed
Thóra’s mind. It was possible
that
 Jóhanna
had scrubbed these lines out in her sister’s
book in a fit of pique or a tantrum. ‘I don’t know,’ she
replied truthfully. ‘Up until now it has all been rather tidy.’
Bella snorted disbelievingly.
‘Yeah, right.’
She stared at the scribbled-out pages and Thóra couldn’t help but
do the same. The flight
attendant announced over the
tannoy
that they were commencing their descent into
Reykjavik and that they should return their seats to the upright position and
fasten
their seatbelts. ‘Have you ever read about a plane crash in
which the only ones who survived were those who put up their tray tables or had
the backs of their seats in the upright position?’ asked Bella, loud
enough for others to hear. ‘I think they’re just trying to protect
the trays and seats if we crash. It’s bullshit.’ The passenger
sitting across the aisle gave Bella an affronted look and fastened his table
against the seat-back in front of him. Thóra busied herself looking
straight ahead and acting nonchalantly. She turned to the next page, which
turned out to be empty. There were no entries for the twentieth of January or
the twenty-first. ‘Damn,’ she thought; up until now there had not
been a single word that might relate to the head and box. The diary had been
left behind during the evacuation, so Markus’s only hope was that Alda
had written something significant in the entry for the twenty-second, the night
the eruption started. Hopefully that page wasn’t empty. Thóra drew
a deep breath and crossed her fingers before turning the page.