She e-mailed Harald's mysterious friend Mal with a brief account of Harald's death and how she and Matthew were involved in the case on the Guntliebs' behalf. She ended her message with a polite request for Mal to contact her, since he might have crucial information. When Bella phoned to announce Matthew's arrival, Thóra said she needed five minutes to finish and asked the girl to tell him to take a seat and wait in the reception area. She was determined to clear her desk so that she would not have to return to the office in the afternoon. She managed to finish in just over five minutes and switched off her computer, pleased with her morning's achievements. She wondered if she should start coming in earlier. Although it would be tough at home, this hour was exceptionally productive, free from the harassment of the telephone before normal office opening hours.
She took a small tape recorder from one of her desk drawers to record their interview with Hugi. While she was checking if the batteries worked her thoughts returned to her son, who had been terribly down in the dumps that morning. Whatever the problem was, it had not gone away overnight as Thóra had hoped. The boy had sat there vacantly with no appetite and she managed to drag only a few words out of him. Sóley, on the other hand, talked nonstop as she always did in the mornings, so Thóra had no time alone with her son. She decided to probe the matter calmly that evening after Sóley had gone to bed. Then she drove these thoughts out of her mind, put the recorder in her handbag, and left the office.
Thóra was taken aback when she entered reception. Matthew was sitting on the edge of Bella's desk talking excitedly to the secretary, who glowed like the midday sun. They did not even notice Thóra's presence and she had to clear her throat to get their attention.
Matthew looked around. "Oh, you, I was hoping you'd be busy a bit longer." He smiled at Thóra and gave her a wink.
Thóra could hardly take her eyes off Bella's face, which had been transformed by simply smiling. She looked almost pretty. "Well, shouldn't we get a move on?" Thóra said, fetching her coat. "Nice to see you so cheerful, Bella," she added, beaming at the secretary.
Bella's smile vanished instantly. Matthew's charm offensive clearly benefited him alone. "When are you coming back?" she asked grumpily.
Thóra tried not to sound disappointed at being cut out. "I don't expect to be back today but I'll phone if anything changes."
"Right, whatever," Bella said huffily, her tone implying that Thóra made a habit of not letting people know her whereabouts, which was absurd.
"You heard what I said." Thóra could not let it pass without comment although she immediately regretted it. "Come on, Matthew."
"Yes, madam," Matthew said with a smile at Bella. Much to Thóra's chagrin, it was reciprocated.
When they got into the car Thóra fastened her belt and turned to Matthew. "Do you know how to drive on icy roads?"
"We'll find out," said Matthew as they left the parking spot. Seeing Thóra's expression he added: "Don't worry, I'm a good driver."
"Just don't slam on the brakes if the car goes into a skid," Thóra said, by no means convinced that Matthew was aware of this.
"Do you want to drive?"
"No, thanks," she answered. "I can't handle that no-brakes rule, if I start to skid I instinctively put my foot downagainst my better judgment. I'm very limited when it comes to driving."
They headed straight out of the city and were up on the moor when Thóra's curiosity about Matthew's conversation with Bella finally got the best of her. "What were you two talking about?"
"Us two?" Matthew repeated, all innocence.
"Yes, you and Bella, my secretary. She's normally such a sourpuss."
"Oh, her. We were talking about horses. I'd like to try horse riding while I'm here; you hear so much about Icelandic horses. She was giving me some tips."
"What does she know about horses?" Thóra was flabbergasted.
"She's a horse lover, didn't you know?"
"No, actually I didn't." She could only pity the horse that had to bear Bella's weight. "What kind of horses does she have? Cart horses?"
Matthew took his eyes off the road and looked at Thóra. "Are you jealous?" he asked, smirking.
"Are you drunk?" she fired back.
They drove in silence across the lava field toward the mountain pass. Thóra admired the landscape through the car windowperhaps few people would agree with her, but she thought this was one of the most beautiful places in Iceland, especially in summer when the moss blazed green, its soft outlines in total contrast with the rough and jagged lava. Now the land was covered with snow and seemed two-dimensional. It lacked the majesty of summer. Still, a calmness reigned that appealed to Thóra. She broke the silence. "Don't you think the scenery's beautiful?"
Matthew flicked his eyes off the road to admire the surroundings. There was hardly any traffic. "Well." He smiled at her as if declaring a truce. "It is different, I'll give it that much, but 'bleak' is the word that springs to mind." He pointed at two thick pillars of smoke that stretched up into the sky ahead of them. "What's that?" he asked. "An eruption?"
"Oh, that's steam from boreholes," Thóra replied. "Up ahead there's a geothermal power plant, which produces electricity from steam piped from underground. It also supplies hot water to heat houses in Reykjavík."
Matthew nodded, impressed. "Lucky you, no pollution."
"Yup," said Thóra. "Clean air, clean water. Not bad."
"Your offices could actually be cleaner, as long as we're on the subject of hygiene," said Matthew.
"Oh, please," snapped Thóra. "They're clean enough. We're lawyers, not surgeons." She turned to look at Matthew. "We don't exactly make a good team," she said, referring to their repeated skirmishes. "Maybe we should change tactics."
He smiled at her again. "You think so? I'm delighted. You're much more fun than my normal company at work. All the old men and the few women I deal with are so poker-faced they'd fall apart if they took off their frowns."
Now it was Thóra's turn to smile. "Actually, you're not half as bad as Bella. I'll give you that." She paused for a while. "Tell me one thing. In the folder was a German newspaper clipping about a young man who died performing that erotic asphyxiation stuff. What was that included for?"
"Ahhh." Matthew drew out the exclamation. "That bloody thing. One of the people in the article was a good friend of Harald's. They met at university in Munich and must have been the same kind of searching souls, so they made a good pair in all the outrageous stunts they got up to. I don't know which of them introduced the other to that peculiar practice but Harald swore it was his friend who started. Harald was present when the man died, so he ended up being interrogated and got into a nasty mess. It's a shameful thing to say, but I think he bought his way out of the situationyou noticed the large bank withdrawal I marked from then?" Thóra said she had. "I included it because Harald was strangled. It may be important. Who knowspossibly he met the same death as his friend, although it seems very doubtful."
They parked in the lot outside the fence of Litla-Hraun prison and walked over to the visitors' gate. A warden showed them into a small lounge on the second floor. "We thought you could stay in here; you should be quite comfortable, it's much nicer than the interrogation room," he said. "Hugi's calm and shouldn't cause any trouble. He'll be here any minute."
"Thank you, that's fine," Thóra said, and walked inside. She perched herself on the edge of a brown sofa and Matthew sat down close by her side. She was surprised by his choice of seat, because there were plenty of chairs.
He looked at her. "If Hugi sits facing us it's better for us to sit like this. I want to look him straight in the face." He raised his eyebrows quickly, twice. "And it's so terribly nice to sit close to you."
Before Thóra could answer, the door opened again and Hugi Thórisson appeared accompanied by a guard, whose hand was on his shoulder. The young man's head was bowed as he was steered through the door. Hugi was handcuffed but he looked so helpless that Thóra couldn't believe it was necessary. When the guard spoke his name he looked up. He swept his waxy hair out of his eyes with both hands and Thóra saw that he was very handsome, completely different from what she had imagined. She found it hard to believe that he was twenty-fiveseventeen would have seemed a closer guess. He had dark brows and big eyes, but his most prominent feature was his bony cheeks, probably caused by his thinness. If he did murder Harald, it must have taken every ounce of his strength. He did not look capable of lugging a one-hundred-ninety-pound corpse very far.
"You going to behave yourself, pal?" the guard asked Hugi in a friendly tone. When Hugi nodded, the guard lifted his arms and took off the cuffs. Then he put his hand back on Hugi's shoulder and guided him over to the chair directly opposite Thóra and Matthew. The young man sat down, or rather slumped, into the chair. He avoided looking Thóra and Matthew straight in the eye, turned his face away from them and gaped down at the floor beside the chair where he sat sprawled.
"We're in the room next door if you need us. He shouldn't cause any trouble." The guard addressed his words to Thóra.
"Fine," Thóra said. "We won't keep him any longer than necessary." She looked at her watch. "We should be done by noon."
The guard left and when he had closed the door the only sound in the room came from Hugi as he rhythmically scratched at the knee of his camouflage trousers. He had not looked at the visitors yet.
Prisoners were clearly allowed to wear their own clothesunlike in the American jails Thóra knew from television and films, whose inmates pranced around in jumpsuits that seemed to be made from orange peel.
"Hugi," said Thóra in the gentlest voice she could muster. She went on in Icelandic, thinking it was silly to begin the interview in English. They would find out later whether that was possible. They couldn't afford to get bogged down in language difficulties; if he didn't speak reasonable English she would have to handle this alone. "Presumably you know who we are. My name's Thóra Gudmundsdóttir and I'm a lawyer, and this is Matthew Reich from Germany. We're here in connection with the murder of Harald Guntlieb, which we're investigating independently from the police."
No reaction. Thóra continued. "We wanted to see you because we're not convinced you had any part in the murder." She took a deep breath to emphasize what she was about to say. "We're looking for Harald's murderer and we think it's quite conceivable that it wasn't you. Our aim is to find the person who killed Harald and if it wasn't you, then it's in your interests to help us." Hugi looked up at Thóra. When he did not open his mouth or show any other desire to express himself, she continued. "You presumably understand that if we manage to prove that someone other than you killed Harald, then you're more or less off the hook."
"I didn't kill him," Hugi said in a weak voice. "Nobody believes me, but I didn't kill him."
Thóra went on. "Hugi, Matthew here is from Germany. He knows all about investigations but he doesn't speak Icelandic. Do you feel up to speaking English with us so that he can understand? If not, that's fine. We want you to understand our questions and be able to answer them without any language problems."
"I can speak English," came the reply, half muttered.
"Good," said Thóra. "If you don't understand anything we say or have trouble answering, we can simply switch back to Icelandic."
Thóra turned to Matthew and told him they could continue in English. Without a moment's hesitation he leaned forward and spoke. "Hugi, you can start by sitting up straight and facing us. Get rid of that whining voice and act like a man, if only for the short while that we're here."
Thóra sighed: what macho bullshit! She almost expected the young man to stand up, burst into tears, and demand to leave, which they would have to accept, since he was here of his own free will. But she had no chance to interrupt because Matthew marched straight on. "You're in big trouble, I don't need to rub your nose in that. You're sitting in front of your only hope of getting out of that trouble, so you should do all you can to help us and answer honestly. Self-pity's easy in your position so it's vital to act like a grown-up, not a kid. Do as I say, sit up straight, look me in the face, and give a conscientious answer to all our questions. You'll feel better if you act like a man. Just try it."
Thóra watched in surprise as Hugi obeyed Matthew's words. He shifted out of his fetal position and did his best to put on a manly show. His teenage looks made it hard for him, but there was some transformation. When he spoke his voice was clearer and more mature. "It's hard for me to look you in the eye all the time. I'm on some medication that makes me confused." Thóra could tell from his eyes; they fluttered and had a dull look most likely produced by tranquilizers. "But I'll try to answer your questions."
"How did you and Harald meet?" Thóra asked.
"I met him partying in town. Talked to him and he turned out to be a fun guy. I introduced him to Dóri just after that."