Last Rituals Read online

  “I didn’t mean to offend you. Sorry,” Matthew said without looking at her.

  Not interested in discussing her appearance, Thóra ignored the remark. She took the scarf off her head with as much dignity as she could muster and put it in her lap. Then she reached over for a pile of tattered magazines that were lying on a little table between the chairs.

  “Who could ever be interested in reading this stuff?” she muttered as she flicked through the pile.

  “I don’t think people come here looking for something to read,” Matthew answered. He was sitting up straight, staring ahead.

  Thóra put down the magazines, irritated. “No, maybe not.” She looked at her watch and said impatiently, “Where is that man, anyway?”

  “He’ll be here,” came the curt reply. “Actually I’m starting to have second thoughts about this meeting.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked peevishly.

  “I think it may be too shocking for you,” he replied, turning to face her. “You don’t have any experience with this sort of thing and I’m not sure it’s a good idea. It would be best if I just tell you what he says.”

  Thóra glared at him. “I’ve given birth to two children, with all the accompanying pain, blood, placentas, cervical plugs, and God knows what else. I’ll survive.” She folded her arms and turned away from him. “So what do you know about gross stuff?”

  Matthew did not seem impressed by Thóra’s experience. “Lots of things. But I’ll spare you the details. Unlike you, I have no need to beat my chest.”

  Thóra rolled her eyes. This German wasn’t exactly a barrel of laughs. She decided to find out what The Watchtower had to say rather than try to sustain a conversation with him. She was halfway through an article on the bad influence of television on world youth when a man in a white coat came hurrying along the corridor toward them. He was around sixty, starting to gray at the temples, and very tan. His eyes were flanked by wrinkles from smiling, which led Thóra to conclude that he had had a good time in the sun. He stopped in front of them and Thóra and Matthew both stood up.

  “Hello,” the man said, offering his hand. “Thráinn Hafsteinsson.”

  Thóra and Matthew returned his greeting and introduced themselves.

  “Do come inside,” the doctor said in English so that Matthew would understand, and opened the door to his office. “Excuse me for being late,” he added in Icelandic, addressing his words to Thóra.

  “That’s fine,” she replied. “The literature out there is so fascinating, I wouldn’t have minded waiting a bit longer.” She smiled at him.

  The doctor looked at her in surprise. “Yes, quite.” They entered the office where there was little in the way of empty space. The walls were covered with bookshelves filled with scientific works and journals of all sizes and descriptions, with the occasional filing cabinet arranged between them. The doctor walked behind a large tidy desk and sat down, inviting them to do the same. “Well, then.” He put both hands on the edge of the desk as he said this, as if to emphasize that their meeting was formally beginning now. “I presume we’ll be doing this in English.”

  Thóra and Matthew both nodded.

  He went on: “That won’t be a problem, I did my doctorate in America. But I haven’t spoken a word of German since I walked out of my school oral exam as a teenager, so I’ll spare you that.”

  “As I told you on the phone, English is fine,” Matthew said. Thóra tried to suppress a smile at his German accent.

  “Good,” the doctor said, reaching out for a yellow plastic folder from the top of a pile of papers on his desk. He arranged it in front of himself, poised to open it. “I should start by apologizing for how long it took to get permission to show the autopsy documents in all their glory.” He gave them an apologetic smile. “There’s far too much bureaucracy surrounding this kind of case and it’s not always obvious how to respond when the circumstances are unusual, as in this situation.”

  “Unusual?” Thóra inquired.

  “Yes,” replied the doctor. “Unusual insofar as the family chose to appoint a representative to retrieve the autopsy results, and also because a foreign national is involved. For a while I was starting to think we’d need the signature of the deceased to squeeze permission out of the system.”

  Thóra smiled politely, but could see out of the corner of her eye that Matthew’s face was like a fossil.

  The doctor looked away and continued. “Anyway, the bureaucracy surrounding it wasn’t the only thing that made this case special, as I think you should realize before we begin.” The doctor smiled again. “This was the strangest and most extraordinary autopsy I’ve ever performed, and I saw a thing or two when I was a student abroad.”

  Thóra and Matthew said nothing and waited for him to continue. Thóra was noticeably more excited than Matthew, who might as well have been a statue.

  Clearing his throat, the doctor opened the folder. “Nonetheless, let us begin with what can be called the fairly normal aspects.”

  “By all means,” grunted Matthew, and Thóra tried to conceal her disappointment. She wanted to hear the strange parts.

  “Well, the cause of death was asphyxiation by strangulation,” the doctor said as he tapped the folder. “When we’ve finished I’ll let you have a copy of the autopsy report and you can read the results in more detail if you want. As far as the cause of death is concerned, the main point is how the deceased was strangled. We think a belt was used, made of some material other than leather. Whoever did it used a lot of force when he or she tightened it; there are pronounced marks on the neck. And it’s not unlikely that the pressure was maintained for far longer than was needed to kill him for some reason—presumably in a mad fit of brutality or rage.”

  “How do you know that?” asked Thóra.

  The doctor rummaged through the folder and produced two photographs. He put them on the desk and turned them to face Thóra and Matthew. They showed Harald’s badly damaged neck. “You see that at the edge of the strangulation marks the skin was punctured in some places and burned by the friction. That suggests that the surface of the belt was slightly uneven. And notice, too, that whatever it was does not appear to have been regular in shape—it varied in width, judging by the differences in the breadth of the wound.” The doctor paused while he pointed to one of the two photographs. “Another interesting thing is that down here at the base of the neck are signs of earlier wounds, not as serious but interesting all the same.” He looked at them. “Do you know anything about this?”

  Matthew spoke first. “No, nothing.” Thóra restrained herself, but she suspected the cause. “I’m sure they have nothing to do with the murder. But you never know.” The doctor seemed satisfied with Matthew’s answer; he did not press them further at least. He pointed to the other photograph, which was also of Harald’s neck, but enlarged. “This is a close-up, and it shows how a piece of metal, the carved buckle of a belt or some other unknown object on the strap that was used, dug into the deceased’s neck. If you look closely you can see it resembles a little dagger—but it could be something quite different. Of course, this is no plaster cast.”

  Thóra and Matthew stretched over for a better look at the photograph. The doctor was right. A mark left by an indeterminate object was clearly visible on his neck. A scale at the bottom of the photograph showed that the object was eight to ten centimeters long and the outlines up the neck bore a fairly close resemblance to a small dagger or cross. “What’s that?” Matthew asked, pointing to abrasions on either side of the mark.

  “Something with sharp edges appears to have been behind the small object. These punctured the skin when the strap was tightened. That’s the closest I’ve got.”

  “What happened to the belt or whatever it was?” Matthew asked. “Was it ever found?”

  “No,” the doctor replied. “The attacker got rid of it. He doubtless thought that we could have obtained a DNA sample from it.”

  “Could you?” asked Thóra.r />
  The doctor shrugged. “Who knows? But if it were found now, so long after the incident, the samples wouldn’t be reliable.” He cleared his throat. “Then there’s the estimated time of death. That’s a much more technical issue.” The doctor flicked through the documents and removed several pages. “I don’t know how familiar you are with such procedures, in terms of how we determine it?” He looked at Thóra and Matthew.

  “I have no idea,” Thóra said quickly. She saw that this annoyed Matthew, who did not say a word, but that didn’t bother her.

  “I suppose I should explain briefly what it entails so that you realize the results are neither some kind of magic nor irrefutable fact. They only express probability because the accuracy of the result depends on the accuracy of various information or clues that need to be collected.”

  “Collected?” repeated Thóra.

  “Yes, to make such an estimate we need to collect clues that can be found on or near the body itself and in its surroundings. We also make use of clues from the life of the deceased, for example, the last time he was seen before his death, when he last ate, his habits, and the like. This is especially important in the case of violent deaths like this one.”

  “Of course,” said Thóra, smiling at the doctor.

  “The information or clues are then applied in various ways to produce the best estimate of the time of death.”

  “How?” Thóra asked.

  The doctor leaned back in his chair, clearly pleased at the interest she was taking. “There are two methods. The first is based on measuring changes in the body that take place at a known rate, such as rigor mortis, body temperature, and decay. The other method involves comparing information with known times: when the deceased ate the food that is in his stomach, how it has been digested, and so on and so forth.”

  “When did he die?” Matthew got straight to the point.

  “That’s the big question.” The doctor smiled. “To pick up where I left off, I should tell you first about the information that we used to estimate the time of death. I don’t remember whether I mentioned it, but the sooner the body is found after death, the more reliable the clues are. In this case the interval was a day and a half, which is not so bad. And because the body was indoors, the ambient temperature is a known value.” He opened the yellow folder and glanced at the text on one of the pages. “According to the police investigation, Harald was last seen alive by an impartial witness at 23:42 on the Saturday night when he allegedly paid for and got out of a taxi on Hringbraut. You can call that the terminus a quo for the possible time of death. The terminus ad quem is of course when the body was found, at 7:20 on the morning of Monday, October thirty-first.”

  He paused and looked at them both. Thóra nodded to show that she followed and he should continue. Matthew was statuelike, as ever.

  “When the police arrived on the scene following the discovery of the corpse, the body temperature was measured immediately and it turned out to be the same as the ambient temperature. That indicated that some time had elapsed since his death. The exact rate depends on various factors; for example, it happens faster for a thin person than a fat person who has a proportionally larger surface area of thermal emission.” The doctor gesticulated. “It also depends on the clothing and state of the body, its position, and the air currents, humidity, and various other factors. Information about all of these things adds to the clues I mentioned.”

  “And what came out of all this?” Matthew asked.

  “Nothing really. It merely enabled us to narrow down the time frame a little. This method can obviously only provide us with information about the time of death if the body temperature differs from the ambient temperature.” He sighed. “After the body temperature has reached the ambient temperature it remains there, understandably. But we can calculate how long it takes the body to reach that temperature, and infer that as the minimum time since death occurred.” He looked down the page. “Here it is. In this case the analysis narrowed down the terminus ad quem to more than twenty hours from the time of death.”

  “This is all very interesting, no question of that,” Matthew said. “But I would like to know when Harald is thought to have died and how it happened.” He did not look at Thóra.

  “Yes, of course, sorry,” the doctor said. “Rigor mortis indicated that the death occurred at least twenty-four hours before the body was found, which narrows the time frame even further.” He looked at Matthew and Thóra in turn. “Do you want me to go into detail about rigor mortis? I can give a brief explanation if you want.”

  “Please do,” said Thóra, at exactly the same time as Matthew said: “No, there’s no need for that.”

  “Isn’t it etiquette to allow the lady to decide?” The doctor smiled at Thóra. She beamed back at him. Matthew gave her a sideways glance, quite a grumpy one as far as Thóra could see. She ignored it.

  “As its name suggests, rigor mortis is the stiffening of the body after death. The condition is caused by chemical changes in muscular protein following a reduction in the acidity of muscle cells after death. No oxygen, no glucose, and the pH of the cells drops. Then when the volume of ATP nucleotide falls below a critical threshold, rigor mortis sets in, because ATP prevents the actin and myosin from bonding.”

  Thóra was about to ask more about this interesting actin and myosin but quickly restrained herself when Matthew deliberately stepped on her foot. Instead, she simply said, “I understand,” which of course could not have been further from the truth. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Matthew the statue smile for the first time that morning.

  The doctor continued. “Rigor mortis begins in the muscles that are used most and gradually spreads to the rest. When it reaches a peak the body becomes stiff, remaining in the position it was in when the rigor mortis became dominant. That stage does not last long because rigor mortis wears off and the body relaxes again. Under normal conditions rigor mortis is complete twelve hours after death, then begins to wear off after thirty-six to forty-eight hours. However, in a case like Harald’s, where the cause of death is asphyxiation, the process begins somewhat later.” The doctor looked through the papers, took out a photograph and showed them. “As you can see, Harald’s body was totally stiff when it was found.”

  Matthew beat Thóra to the photograph. He looked at it without a flicker of emotion, then handed it to her. “It’s quite disgusting,” he said as she took it.

  “Disgusting” was not a strong enough word to describe what Thóra saw. The picture showed the young man whom Thóra knew from family photographs as Harald Guntlieb lying on the floor in a peculiar position she recognized from the photographs in the case file. But those had been so grainy and badly reproduced that they were almost fit to show on children’s television compared with what greeted her eyes now. One of Harald’s arms stood straight up from the elbow, as if pointing at the ceiling. There was nothing to keep the arm in that position or support it. Nonetheless, it was evident from the photograph that Harald Gottlieb was dead. His face was swollen, bloated, and strangely colored, which Thóra knew was not because the photograph had been poorly developed. Yet what disturbed her most was the eyes; or, more precisely, the eye sockets. She hurriedly returned the photographs to Matthew.

  “As you can see, the body was probably resting against something and the hand became stuck in that position. You doubtless know that the murder was not committed in the corridor. He fell out of an alcove when one of the lecturers opened the door that Monday morning. Judging from his account, the body had been hidden there and either fell against the door or was arranged to fall when the door was opened. As the photo shows, the alcove door opens out into the corridor.”

  Matthew scrutinized the photograph, then nodded without saying a word. Thóra made do with that; she had no desire to see it again. “But you haven’t told us when you think he died,” Matthew said, handing him back the photograph.

  “Yes, sorry,” the doctor said, leafing through the papers. He straightene
d up when he found what he was looking for. “Taking into account the contents of the stomach and the absorption of amphetamine in the blood, the time of death is estimated to have been somewhere between one and one-thirty A.M.” He looked up to explain in more detail. “The time of intake of both the pizza and the amphetamine was known. He had eaten a pizza around nine that evening and snorted amphetamine just before leaving the party at around eleven-thirty.” He selected another photograph from the stack and handed it to Matthew. “Digestion of pizza is relatively well known and documented.”

  Matthew looked at the photograph, his face impassive. Then he looked up and handed it to Thóra. He smiled for the second time that morning. “Fancy a pizza?”

  Thóra took the photograph, which showed the contents of Harald’s stomach. It would be a while before she ordered another pizza. Trying to keep her composure, she returned the photograph to Matthew.

  “The amphetamine analysis was made by the Pharmacological Institute. You will receive a copy of their report along with the autopsy results. An ecstasy tablet was also found in his stomach, half-digested. But we don’t know when it was taken so it was of no use in determining the time of death.”

  “Fine,” said Matthew.

  The doctor continued. “It should be mentioned that the autopsy revealed that the body had been moved after death, a few hours later. We can determine that from bruising that forms in the lowest points of the body as soon as the blood supply stops. When that happens, blood begins to accumulate like puddles due to the force of gravity. We noticed bruising in places that were incompatible, namely, on the back, buttocks, and calves, but also on the soles of the feet, fingers, and chin. The former areas were less pronounced, which might indicate that the body was on its back to begin with, then placed upright some time later. Also, his shoes show signs that the body was dragged some distance; presumably the perpetrator held Harald under the armpits and his feet dragged along. Why this was done, we are not sure. In my view the most likely explanation is that the murderer killed Harald in his own home but was unable to dispose of the body immediately, perhaps due to intoxication. Why he chose to take the body to the faculty building is another mystery. It’s not exactly the first place anyone facing this problem would think of.”