Last Rituals (22 page)

A.
Agatha or Angelina. Amelia—her name was Amelia Guntlieb. Thóra tried that. Nothing happened. With a sigh she decided to enter it without the capital:
amelia.

 

 

Bingo! The computer emitted the familiar Windows jingle:
dum-deedum-dee,
and Thóra was in. She wondered how long the police had spent trying to find the password, but realized they must have a computer expert who could get in by the back door. They would hardly spend hours on trial and error.

 

 

It took a while before it dawned on Thóra what the picture was on the unusual desktop wallpaper. It wasn't every day that she saw the inside of a mouth on a seventeen-inch screen, let alone a mouth with the tongue pinned on either side with two stainless steel tongs and a fiery red slit along it from the tip—or rather, tips. Although she was not well versed in the practice, the photograph had obviously been taken when a tongue was being split down the middle. The operation was either still in progress or just completed. Thóra would have bet money on the identity of the tongue's owner. It must be Harald himself. She shook herself to stave off nausea and opened Explorer, which immediately filled the screen, removing the wretched image from her sight.

 

 

A quick search showed that there were almost four hundred Word documents on the computer. She arranged them by date with the most recent at the top. Their names were self-explanatory. A common feature of the file names at the top was that they all contained the word
hexe
somewhere. Since it was so late, Thóra reached over to her handbag and took out a flash memory stick. She copied all the witchcraft files to examine at her leisure at home that evening—if Matthew would reveal what the Guntliebs had been keeping from her. If he didn't, she intended to spend the evening working out whether she could afford to tell them to get lost. She had absolutely no interest in working as some kind of luxury interpreter.

 

 

There was still no sign of Matthew, so Thóra decided to search for scanned files. She asked the search function to find all the. pdf extensions and was rewarded with sixty names. She arranged them by date and copied the most recent ones to the memory stick. She had plenty to keep her busy that evening, that was certain. Then it occurred to her to search for Jpegs, and she called them up too. Harald had clearly owned a digital camera, which he had used prolifically. Hundreds of file names appeared, but they told her nothing because they were labeled by a series of numbers automatically generated when the pictures were downloaded from the camera. Harald had not bothered to rename them. Thóra selected "thumb-nail view" to see the content immediately. Once again she arranged them by date. She noticed that the most recent ones had been taken inside the flat. The subjects were odd—some showed nothing in particular, most of them taken in the kitchen during preparations for a meal that was photographed in detail. No people were shown but hands could be seen in two of them, which Thóra copied to her memory stick in case they belonged to the murderer.
You never know,
she thought. The other photographs were of a gigantic pasta meal at various stages—these she left alone.

 

 

Scrolling down, Thóra noticed that many of the photographs were quite embarrassing for the subjects, taken during an assortment of sex acts. She blushed for the participants as they rolled past in succession on the screen. Much as she would have liked to, she did not feel happy about enlarging them for fear that Matthew would walk in and find her prying. She also came across myriad photographs from the tongue operation, including the one Harald had chosen for his desktop wallpaper. It was impossible to see who was present, but some torsos were visible and Thóra copied those too. Other files contained all manner of scenes from what seemed to be action-packed parties, interspersed with—and these seemed completely out of place—Icelandic landscapes and journeys through them. Several were very dark and featured little more than gray rock faces—Thóra thought she could make out a cross carved on one of them when she enlarged it. A whole series had been taken in a small village that Thóra did not recognize, many of them in a museum where what looked like manuscripts were on exhibit along with a slab of basalt in a showcase. One shot showed a sign that Thóra enlarged to see if she could identify the museum, only to be disappointed—it simply said: No Photographs. Thóra gave up on the pictures for the time being; by now she was down to fairly old ones that could hardly be linked with the case. She opened Harald's e-mail to see what it contained. In the in-box were seven unread messages. More had presumably arrived since Harald was murdered, but the police must have checked them.

 

 

Matthew walked in and Thóra looked up from the e-mail. He sat down in his chair again with a twisted smile on his face. "Well?" she said impatiently, wanting to hear what he had to say.

 

 

"Well," Matthew echoed, leaning forward in his chair. He rested his elbows on his knees and clenched his hands as if about to pray. "Before I tell you what you think you have to know," he said, emphasizing the word "think," "you must promise me one thing."

 

 

"What?" Thóra was quite sure of his reply.

 

 

"What I am about to tell you is in absolute confidence and must not go any further. Before I tell you I need confirmation that you'll keep this secret. Understand?"

 

 

"How am I supposed to know if I can keep a secret when I don't have a clue what it is?"

 

 

Matthew shrugged. "It's a risk you'll just have to take. I can honestly say to you that you will want to tell someone—just so you know I'm not leading you into a trap."

 

 

"Who will I want to tell?" asked Thóra. "That seems important to me."

 

 

"The police," Matthew replied, without hesitation.

 

 

"You, or Harald's family, have information that could be important to the case, but you've decided to keep it secret? Do I understand that correctly?"

 

 

"Yep," said Matthew.

 

 

"Well, well," said Thóra. She thought about it. Presumably a code of ethics obliged her to inform the authorities of information that could relate to a public prosecution, so she ought to turn down the offer and notify the police that Matthew was concealing evidence connected with the murder. On the other hand, she was well aware that he would deny the allegation and her part in the investigation would then be over. That served no one's interests. So with a rather elastic ethical interpretation she could conclude that she was obliged to swear to keep her mouth shut and, armed with this new information, do her utmost to solve the mystery confronting them. Everyone happy. Thóra mulled all this over in silence. A fairly dubious conclusion, but the best of a bad job—the code of ethics must allow for extenuating circumstances when the end justifies the means. If not, then it was time to change it.

 

 

"Okay," Thóra said eventually. "I promise to tell no one—not even the police—whatever it is you are about to tell me." Matthew smiled, pleased, but before he could begin his revelation she added hastily: "But in return you must promise me that if this secret of yours proves Hugi's innocence, and if we can't demonstrate that in any other way, we will pass on the information to the authorities before the trial starts." Matthew opened his mouth, but Thóra hadn't finished: "And the authorities won't be told that I knew. And—"

 

 

Matthew cut her short. "No more 'ands'—please." Now it was his turn to think things over. He regarded Thóra steadily. "Agreed. You say nothing and I'll let the police know about the letter if we can't prove Hugi innocent in good time before the trial."

 

 

The letter? Yet another letter? Thóra was beginning to think this was one huge farce, but then she remembered the autopsy photographs, which were still vivid in her mind. "What letter are you referring to?" she asked. "I still stand by my promise."

 

 

"Harald's mother received a letter shortly after the murder," Matthew replied. "The letter convinced her and her husband that the suspect could not be guilty. It was sent after Hugi had been taken into custody and therefore unable to send things through the post office. I doubt that the police would have done him the favor of posting it for him—especially because I presume they would first have read what it said."

 

 

"Which was?" Thóra asked impatiently.

 

 

"What it said was nothing special—except that it was quite unpleasant about Harald's mother. But it was written in blood—Harald's blood."

 

 

"Yuck!" Thóra said, before she could stop herself. She tried to imagine how it might feel to receive a letter written with her dead son's blood, but could not do it. It was too bizarre. "Who was the letter from—did it say? And how did you know it was Harald's blood?"

 

 

"The letter was in Icelandic and signed with Harald's name, but a handwriting expert ruled that it wasn't his hand. He couldn't absolutely confirm this because it was written with a rough instrument. This complicated a comparison with Harald's normal hand, so it was sent for tests, including whether the blood was his. It turned out to be—unquestionably. In fact they also found traces of blood from a passerine bird that had apparently been mixed with Harald's blood."

 

 

Thóra's eyes widened. Bird's blood? That repulsed her even more than human blood. "What did the letter say?" Thóra asked. "Do you have it with you?"

 

 

"I don't have the original, if that's what you mean," Matthew answered. "His mother wouldn't hand it over, nor a copy of it. She may well have destroyed it. It was quite disgusting."

 

 

Thóra looked disappointed. "So what? I have to know what it said. Did you get someone to translate it?"

 

 

"Yes, we did. It was a love poem that began sweetly but soon turned rather nasty." He smiled at Thóra. "You're lucky that I managed to copy it out—you see, I was given the job of translating it, with the help of an Icelandic-German dictionary. I probably wouldn't win a prize for the translation but the meaning was obvious." While he spoke, Matthew produced a folded sheet of paper from his jacket pocket. He handed it to Thóra. "I might not have written some of the letters down properly—I didn't recognize all of them, but it ought to be fairly close."

 

 

Thóra read the poem. It was long, considering it had been written in blood. She could not imagine how much blood it would have taken to write all those letters. Matthew had written it out in capitals—presumably to match the original. On the sheet of paper was written:

 

 

I look at you,

 

but you bestow on me

 

love and dearness

 

with your whole heart.

 

Sit nowhere,

 

stay nowhere,

 

unless you love me.

 

I ask of Odin

 

and all those

 

who can decipher

 

women's runes

 

that in this world

 

you will nowhere rest

 

or thrive

 

unless you love me

 

with all your heart.

 

 

Then in your bones

 

you will burn all over

 

and in your flesh

 

half as bad again.

 

May misfortune befall you

 

unless you love me,

 

your legs shall freeze,

 

may you never earn honor

 

or happiness.

 

Sit burning,

 

may your hair rot,

 

may your clothes rip,

 

unless willingly

 

you wish me yours.

 

 

Thóra felt odd reading it—the poem was quite macabre. She looked up at Matthew. "I don't recognize it, unfortunately. Who does that sort of thing?"

 

 

"I don't have the faintest idea," Matthew replied. "The original was even more repulsive, it was written on skin—calfskin. It takes a sick man to do something like that to a dead man's mother."

 

 

"Why his mother? Wasn't it sent to his father too?"

 

 

"There was more with it, in German. I didn't write it down but I more or less remember what it said."

 

 

"And what was that?" Thóra asked.

 

 

"It was a short text—something along the lines of: 'Mother—I hope you like the poem and the present—your son Harry.' And the word 'son' was double-underlined."

 

 

Thóra looked up from the page at Matthew. "What present? Was there a present with the letter?"

 

 

"No, not according to his parents, and I believe them. They were out of their minds after it arrived and in no state to lie convincingly."

 

 

"Why is it signed 'Harry'? Was the person who wrote it running out of blood?"

 

 

"No, his elder brother called him 'Harry' when they were small. Only a handful of people know that nickname—which is one reason why the letter had such an effect on his mother."

 

 

Thóra looked at Matthew. "Did she treat him badly? Is that true?" She thought back to that photograph of the lonely little boy.

 

 

Matthew did not answer immediately. When he finally spoke he chose his words carefully; it was evidently important to him to express himself properly about the private affairs of employers whom he seemed to respect highly. "I swear that I don't know. It was more as if she avoided him. But I do know that if their relationship had been normal, she would have sent the letter to the Icelandic police. It clearly struck a nerve." He paused for a moment, watching Thóra thoughtfully before continuing. "She asked to talk to you. Mother-to-mother."