Ashes to Dust Read online

  Ashes To Dust

  Yrsa Sigurdardottir

  First published in Great Britain in 2010 by Hodder & Stoughton An

  Hachette UK company

  Copyright © Yrsa Sigurdardottir 2010

  English translation © Philip Roughton 2.010

  The right of Yrsa Sigurdardottir to be identified as the author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978 I 444 70006 O

  I wish to thank all the residents of the Westmann Islands, who assisted me as I wrote this book. Foremost among them is Kristin Johannsdottir, who could not have been more helpful. Sigmundur Gisli Einarsson, Olafur M. Kristinsson and Arni Johnsen also receive thanks for their helpfulness, as well as the expatriate Westmann Islander Gisli Baldvinsson. None of these individuals is a model for any character in the book.

  I dedicate this book to my publisher, Petur Mar Olafsson, with heartfelt appreciation for his outstanding cooperation and boundless patience.

  -Yrsa

  Table of Contents

  Introduction

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Introduction

  She had often considered death to be a desirable option. Today, however, she hadn’t been feeling that way, which was rather unfortunate in light of the circumstances. When her father had died after a difficult struggle with cancer, she’d wondered what the point of everything was. How short and insignificant a life is when all is said and done, she had thought. Her father had been the lynchpin of their little family, but months later she had trouble recalling how he looked without the aid of a photograph. And she had supposedly been one of the closest to him - how quickly were others forgetting him? Once her mother had passed away, as well as herself and her sister, no one would remember him, and it would be as if he had never set foot on this earth. The thought filled her with despair. Now, as she stared her own fate in the face, she realized that her story would never be told. She would never be able to make a clean breast of it as she had intended. No one else could make sense of all this, much less explain the events that had recently overtaken her. Everything was going black, but she managed to snap herself out of it. She knew that when it happened next she might not be able to resist.

  If she weren’t so weak and confused, she could at least try to defend herself instead of lying here, letting it happen. She must have been given drugs of some sort; this kind of drowsiness didn’t occur naturally. On the bedside table stood a bottle of pills that she didn’t recall placing there, but by squinting she could see that it contained the powerful painkillers she’d come home with after her last operation. The bottle had sat untouched in her medicine cabinet for months and it was unthinkable that she’d fetched it herself, let alone taken the pills in any large dosage. She had no memory of swallowing them, so it seemed highly likely that they’d been put in her food earlier. She remembered the taste of the pills only too well, and there was no way the wine she’d drunk would have masked it. The foul taste of the vomit in her mouth was not from the pills - but that in itself meant nothing. She retched again and closed her eyes, even though she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to open them again. This fear proved unfounded, because they flew open reflexively when a heavy weight descended on her, expelling the breath from her lungs. Her eyes were covered by an ice- cold hand, shutting out the light.

  Her racing heart beat faster still when another hand prised open her mouth and groping fingers pushed their way in. Her feet kicked in impotent protest. Her tongue was yanked out of her mouth and after a moment she felt an agonizing sting. A painful heat spread slowly from the puncture wound, over and through her tongue, and she realized that something was being injected into the soft tissue. When her tongue was released, the hand gripped her nose.

  Her thoughts became less distinct, foggier. Was she maybe in hospital, under the hands of a doctor? She couldn’t open her eyes and could smell nothing through her nose, which was held shut, but she hoped that this was the case. A low whisper in her ear: It’s almost over — relax. Was this a doctor or a nurse? She tried unsuccessfully to recall who had been with her before she became dizzy and started vomiting. She was sure she knew, but found it impossible to recall her visitor’s name or face. Abruptly, the thought came to her that she still had to buy a birthday present for her sister. What should she give her? A jumper maybe? There were so many beautiful jumpers to choose from. But then she realized that this was neither the time nor the place to think about such a thing. Which reminded her, she not only didn’t know where she was, but also what time it was. Was it night or day? How long had it been since the injection in her tongue - if that had even happened? The hold on her nose was released, her mouth was re-opened and the fingers crept back in. She recognized them by their soapy taste. They prodded her tongue, and she could feel that something was wrong. She tried to move her tongue, without success. Maybe she was having a stroke? A stroke could actually manifest such symptoms. What else could it be? She couldn’t think. Suddenly the fingers were pressed firmly against her tongue, rolling it and forcing it back into her throat. It made no difference how she fought to free her tongue from this deadly grip - it wouldn’t let up. The knees of the person sitting on top of her had trapped her hands at her sides. In despair she tried to remember everything that she knew about strokes, but she could not recall whether paralysis of the tongue was a symptom.

  Garbled curses, sounding like they came from inside a barrel or the end of a long tunnel, echoed in her mind. She couldn’t tell if she was imagining them, or if they came from whoever was so mistreating her mouth. She tried to say something, expecting her voice to sound the way it did when she attempted to speak at the dentist’s - which reminded her, she needed to make an appointment - but all that came out was a moan that seemed to originate in her abdomen. Her tongue still would not move despite repeated messages from her brain, making it impossible for her to change sounds into words. Suddenly the fingers were pressing even harder against it. She cou
ld feel her tongue perfectly even though she couldn’t move it, and she gagged as it was pushed back into her throat. Her eyes opened wide and she stared at the familiar ceiling panels.

  The fingers released her tongue and the weight was lifted from her stomach and hands, but this did not relieve her at all. She tried desperately to catch her breath. Mad with fear, she attempted to think clearly, but could not. Her tongue was stuck fast in her gullet. Her feet kicked, drumming on the mattress in furious convulsions. Her hands clawed at the soft skin of her neck and jaw — maybe she could make a hole for air to come in?

  Then everything went black and she was gone, like her father. He had been happy to say farewell to his life, unlike her. The terrible sounds that had emerged from her as she fought for breath had ceased. Her head sunk slowly to one side and she lay in a pool of blood, her eyes full of anguish. Everything was quiet for a moment, then a CD player on the other bedside table was switched on and music started to play.

  Shortly afterwards the woman’s visitor gently closed the bedroom door, showing far more courtesy than he had previously displayed.

  Chapter One

  Monday 9 July2007

  ‘You’re trying to tell me Markus is just tidying the basement? You can’t possibly believe that a pile of rubbish is the reason that he didn’t want anyone to go down there before him?’

  The lawyer Thóra Gudmundsdóttir smiled politely at the man addressing her, an archaeologist called Hjortur Fridriksson, but did not answer his question. This was getting out of hand. She was very uncomfortable; the smell of smoke and the ash hanging in the air was irritating her eyes and nose, and she was scared that the roof was going to collapse at any moment. On their way through the house to the basement door the three of them had had to make their way around a huge pile of ashy debris where the roof had collapsed onto the intricately patterned carpet, at which point Thóra had adjusted her helmet’s elastic chin-strap to ensure that it was fastened tightly. She shuffled her feet and looked embarrassedly at the clock. They heard a dull thud from the basement. What exactly was the man up to? Markus had said that he needed a little time, but neither she nor the archaeologist could guess what his definition of ‘a little’ was. ‘I’m sure he’ll reappear soon,’ she said, without much conviction, and stared at the crooked door in the hope that it would be pushed open and this business concluded. She glanced instinctively at the ceiling, ready to jump away if it appeared likely to crash down on them.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Hjortur, pointing upwards. ‘If the roof was going to split apart it would have done so a long time ago.’ He heaved a sigh and stroked his unshaven chin. ‘Do you know what he’s doing down there?’

  Thóra shook her head, unwilling to discuss her client’s plans with someone unconnected to the case.

  ‘He must have at least hinted,’ said Hjortur. ‘We’ve been dying to find out about this.’ He looked at Thóra. ‘I’ll bet this has something to do with pornography. The others think so, too.’

  She shrugged. That thought had certainly occurred to her as well, but she did not have a sufficiently fertile imagination to guess what kind of thing would be too embarrassing or disgusting to show to a stranger. A film of the homeowner’s sexual adventures? Unlikely. Few people had video cameras in the 1970s, and she doubted that the type of film used back then would have survived the destruction that had rained down on the Islands. Besides, Markus Magnusson, who was down in the basement, had been only fifteen when the house had disappeared beneath lava and ash, so he probably hadn’t been ready for much in that area. Nevertheless, there was something down in the basement that he’d been desperate to get to before them. Thóra sighed. How did she keep ending up with these characters? She didn’t know any other lawyer who attracted such strange cases, and such peculiar clients. She resolved to ask Markus what had inspired him to call her little legal firm instead of one of the larger ones when he decided to demand that the excavation be legally blocked. If he ever returned from the basement. She pulled the neck of her jumper up over her mouth and nose and tried breathing through it. That was a little better. Hjortur smiled at her.

  ‘You get used to it, I promise,’ he said. ‘Hopefully you won’t have to, though - it takes several days.’

  Thóra rolled her eyes. ‘Damn it, it’s not like he’s going to move in down there,’ she muttered through her jumper. Then she pulled it down to smile at Hjortur. It was thanks to him that things had gone so well until now, in that they’d been able to get by without demanding the injunction. In any case, that would only have been a temporary measure since Markus and his family no longer had any claim on the house. The Westmann Islands owned it along with all its contents, and there was little point in fighting this fact even though Markus had made a concerted attempt to do so. He had focused particularly on Hjortur Fridriksson, the man now standing next to Thóra; Hjortur was the director of a project entitled Pompeü of the North, whose task it was to excavate a number of houses that had been buried by ash in the eruption on Heimaey Island in 1973. Thóra had had considerable contact with him by telephone and email since the case had begun, and liked the man well enough. He was inclined to be long-winded, but seemed reasonable and was not easily provoked. Hjortur had been seriously tested, since Markus so often acted like a total ass. He had refused to give even the slightest clue as to why he was opposed to his parents’ house being excavated, had gone on and on about invasions of privacy, and had generally complicated the matter for Thóra in every conceivable way. After trying to reach an agreement but getting nowhere due to Markus’s pigheadedness, in defeat she had asked Hjortur whether he couldn’t just dig up some other house instead. There were certainly enough to choose from. But that was out of the question, since Markus’s childhood home was one of the few houses in the area built of concrete, and thus was more likely than the others to have withstood the cataclysm in any significant way. The purpose of the excavation was not to dig down to a house that was now simply rubble.

  Thóra had already started reading up on how she might best obtain an injunction against the excavation when it transpired that Markus was only concerned about the basement of the house. Finally they could discuss solutions sensibly, and Hjortur had proposed this arrangement: the house would first be dug up and aired out, and then Markus would be the first person allowed down into the basement, where he could remove anything that he wanted. After some consideration he agreed to this compromise and Thóra breathed easier. Markus had no trouble at all bearing the cost of endless litigation, since he was anything but badly off financially. His family owned one of the largest fishing companies in the Westmann Islands, and even though Thóra would never complain about being paid well for her work, she was upset about working against her better judgement, and towards a goal that would never be reached. She was immensely relieved when Markus agreed to Hjortur’s proposal; now she could start putting the final touches to the fine details of the agreement over how Markus’s visit to the basement would be conducted, how they could guarantee that others would not be allowed to sneak in before him, and so on. The agreement was then signed, and they only had to wait for the end of the excavation.

  So there they stood, archaeologist and lawyer, staring at a crooked basement door while a man who had still been a teenager in 1973 wrestled with a terrible secret beneath their feet.

  ‘Hallelujah,’ said Thóra when they heard footsteps on the basement stairs.

  ‘I do hope he found whatever he was looking for,’ said Hjortur gloomily. ‘We didn’t think about the possibility of him coming up empty-handed.’

  Thóra crossed her fingers and stared at the door.

  They watched anxiously as the doorknob turned, then incredulously as the door was cracked open only a tiny bit. They exchanged a glance, then Thóra leaned forward and spoke into the gap. ‘Markus,’ she said calmly, ‘is something wrong?’

  ‘You’ve got to come down here,’ came the reply. His voice sounded peculiar, but it was impossible to tell whether he w
as excited, disappointed or sad. The glow from his torch shone through the chink and illuminated Thóra’s feet.

  ‘Me?’ Thóra asked, flabbergasted. ‘Down there?’ She looked back at Hjortur, who raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Yes,’ said Markus, in the same enigmatic tone. ‘I need to get your opinion on something.’

  ‘My opinion?’ she echoed. When she found herself speechless she had a habit of repeating whatever was said to her, giving herself time to ponder her response.

  ‘Yes, your legal opinion,’ said the voice behind the door.

  Thóra straightened up. ‘I’ll give you all the opinions you want, Markus,’ she said. ‘However, this is how it is with us lawyers: we have no need to experience for ourselves whatever it is we’re dealing with. So there’s no reason for me to clamber down there with you. Tell me what this is about and I’ll put together an opinion for you back at my office in Reykjavik.’

  ‘You’ve got to come down here,’ said Markus. ‘I don’t need a written opinion. A verbal one’ll do.’ He paused. ‘I’m begging you. Just come down here.’ Thóra had never heard Markus sound so humble. She’d only heard him being haughty and opinionated.

  Hjortur scowled at Thóra, unamused. ‘Why don’t you just get it over with? It’s completely safe, and I’m keen to finish up here.’

  She hesitated. What in the blazes could be down there? She absolutely did not want to go down into even darker and fouler air. On the other hand, she agreed with Hjortur that they had to settle this here and now. She roused herself. ‘All right then,’ she conceded, grabbing Hjortur’s torch. ‘I’m coming.’ She opened the door wide enough to step through and saw Markus on the stairs, looking pale as a corpse. His face nearly matched the white helmet that he wore on his head. Thóra tried not to read too much into it, since the only light was coming from their torches, giving everything an otherworldly glow. She gulped. The air there was even more stagnant, dustier. ‘What do you want to show me?’ she asked. ‘Let’s get this over with.’