The Day Is Dark

Chapter 8

Arnar Jóhannesson bowed his head, and his neck cracked. He was starting to feel a bit better. The clearer the image had become in his mind, the worse he had felt. It suddenly occurred to him that he could put an end to this misery once and for all. It wasn’t the first time he’d had the idea, but it had become clear to him that he lacked the courage to do so, even though he knew that his reward would be eternal atonement. It was probably fear of failure that stopped him; the idea of waking up at the hospital paralysed or with brain damage was so unbearable that even the hell that was his life was better. He didn’t always feel this bad. He knew the discomfort would pass; the inevitable result of falling, of giving in to the temptation of alcohol that seduced him, promised to alleviate his suffering and dispel the unpleasant thoughts that plagued him. It wouldn’t really matter. The pain was still there, as well as the terrible thoughts, and now self-loathing had been added to the mix. He had given in like a miserable wretch, and for a while he had rejoiced in being a loser.

He stood up and pulled the belt of his bathrobe tighter. He had lost a lot of weight on this days-long binge and he felt like a weakling. All his effort in recent months, weightlifting and running, had come to nothing. Why wasn’t it as difficult to get out of shape as into it? He had put a lot of energy into looking good and being in good condition, and it was no walk in the park. That was probably the greatest indicator of the influence of this disease that he had inherited from his mother. When he drank, he became completely apathetic about the things that mattered to him; the only thing that mattered was the next drink – maintaining the high and ensuring that it never diminished. It had been incredibly easy for him to take the first step in the Twelve-Step Programme: ‘We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.’ The second step had proven much more difficult. He could thank his lucky stars for having been helped into treatment this time, before he did more damage to himself than excessive weight loss. Usually when he succumbed to temptation, more and more time would pass until he got back on the right track. It had actually been a good long time since he had last stumbled; he had been dry for four hundred and eighty-three days before letting himself be tempted again.

He vaguely recalled having rung the Alcoholics Anonymous emergency helpline, but he had no idea what had inspired him to do so. He had been a slave to alcohol since he took his first sip as a teenager, and could only ever recall flashes of what happened while he drank – and those scraps of memory generally caused him hellish torment. What little he remembered was always utterly humiliating. He tried to forget about why he might have called and content himself with being grateful that he had. Who knew where he would have been at this moment if he had never made the call – and he didn’t want to know. Every drink pushed him further and further into a dark corner of society, and the space between drinks had been reduced to almost nothing by the time he picked up the phone. He looked around the Spartan room. He had sworn never to have to visit such a room again, but that vow had been washed away with his first sip of beer, along with his self-respect. There was nothing else to do but renew the vow. One day at a time, go to the meetings, listen to the others and eventually open up. However, he would not, for the time being, speak up. Right now his self-esteem was too low for that. The last thing he wanted was to start bawling like a little girl in front of others who were in the same boat. That would be just ridiculous. He could not feel sorry for himself; he had managed to make a mess of things entirely unaided. He had held his life in his own two hands, but instead of nurturing it he’d decided to squeeze his fists and crush it. He would settle for listening to stories of families falling apart, missed opportunities and junkies’ hard-luck stories.

Arnar was dying for one sweet little drink. Just one glass. One fucking glass. This was costing him enough as it was and one glass now and then could hardly make a difference. What a fucking idiot he was, calling AA. If he’d skipped it, he’d be sinking a cool one right now. Detox and rehab were maybe not the way to go. There were probably other types of treatment, aimed at teaching compulsives like him how to get to grips with drinking less. It wasn’t the first glass that caused the problem, but the many more that inevitably followed. As this thought subsided, he recalled what had inspired him to pick up the phone. He had done something unforgivable. His business with the AA people had not been a cry for help, but rather a chance to talk to someone about the interpretation of Steps 8 and 9: ‘Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all… Made direct amends to such people whenever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.’ Too late. It was far too late for that. A chill crept through his heart and it seemed as if the blood in his veins had thickened. He waited until it was totally frozen and he felt like he had when he was in Greenland. Then he left his room to join the meeting, with its flickering promise of redemption.

Thóra had been at the computer for hours and felt no closer to discovering anything. Like any other IT system, it was characterized by numerous files that were impossible for strangers to figure out; it didn’t help that most of them existed in many different versions. So she had called on Eyjólfur to help get her going, and he had willingly granted her a little insight into how the system was arranged. It was broadly divided into four areas: photographs, journals – which everyone was required to keep – records related to the project, and finally employees’ personal documents.

Thóra decided to start with the journals, which were most likely to contain decipherable information. She thought it best to wait with the project and work files, as well as the personal documents. Eyjólfur had told her the latter category had caused system problems, since the music and video files the staff liked to download took up so much disk space. Out of curiosity Thóra opened one folder entitled ‘Doddi’ and in return got a dauntingly long list of files of various kinds. Before he left her, Eyjólfur informed her that the staff had been discouraged from saving non-essential files onto the hard drives of their computers. They wouldn’t make a backup of all the files from each machine – only from the central server.

Thóra pored over the files, promptly copied what she considered important and sent it to the printer that Eyjólfur said was located in the corridor. He promised to make sure that no one took the pages, and even regularly brought her the printouts. After rushing through the journals, she nosed around a bit in the other categories and found a file or two that also appeared meaningful, so she would have something to show Matthew when he came back. He had gone to inspect the offices for traces of blood, leaving her alone in the drillers’ room. ‘I found one office that I’m almost sure is the one in the video. When you look at it closely you can tell someone has tried to clean up after an absolute bloodbath. There are splotches on the folders and signs that the walls and floor have been wiped down with a rag or something. Obviously I don’t have any ultraviolet equipment to illuminate biological material, but I don’t think there’s any doubt what the stains are. There’s a video camera on the desk, still connected to the computer. I didn’t dare mess with the camera, but it’s fairly obvious that it’s the one that took the video.’

‘What does this mean?’ Thóra stretched her back out. She’d been sitting bent over for too long.

‘I don’t quite understand it, but I’ve locked the room and we’ll simply leave it to the police to investigate as they see fit. We are neither equipped to conduct a police investigation, nor is it our responsibility. They’ve simply got to come out here. We can’t solve a case like this, so we should simply focus on the aspects of it that affect the progress and survival of the project. As soon as we get in touch with the police I’ll demand that they send a team here.’ Matthew looked at the screen in front of Thóra. ‘But how’s it been going for you?’

‘I don’t quite get all of this but I think I’ve found some documents that could make a difference,’ said Thóra, proudly tapping the small stack of papers on the table. ‘To go over all the files with a magnifying glass would take much longer than we have. I didn’t really look at anything in detail apart from the journals and part of the drillers’ files, and even that was rather haphazard. Of course I also checked some of the files belonging to Gísli Pálsson, who was responsible for security on site. I found his name on an organization chart in a folder of general files.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Matthew, ‘Eyjólfur is copying all the files for us, so it doesn’t matter if we overlook something now.’ Thóra was rather relieved to hear this. ‘Fine. I haven’t quite got my bearings but I decided to focus on the disappearance of the three employees while I’m learning the system. I didn’t actually find anything out yet, but I’m a little bit closer.’ She handed him a printout from the driller Bjarki’s journal. ‘Eyjólfur told me the geologist disappeared on the 31st of October last year, so I looked carefully at that month and November. I also went carefully over the preceding two months in the hope of discovering something that could explain the disappearance of the two men, but I didn’t find much. I also looked over the security guard’s journals for the same period because I thought it was odd that there wasn’t much in the drillers’ journals about the woman going missing. I don’t know whether her disappearance is at all related to theirs, but if it’s one of the reasons that the staff can’t be persuaded to return, it would be well worth spending some time exploring what actually happened to her. Who knows, maybe the staff can be convinced to return if we can find an explanation. Then the bank would be saved.’ She looked at Matthew. ‘The woman who disappeared was named Oddný Hildur.’

He looked up from the journal. ‘What else did you find out about her?’ He put down the papers. ‘This is all so complicated.’

‘Not much. The drillers only noted down the number of hours spent searching for her. Judging from what I read, they didn’t take part in the search out of the kindness of their hearts, but because the security guard ordered them to. One of them, this Bjarki, wrote something suggesting that they called a halt to the search after a week – the weather had deteriorated so sharply that it had become hopeless. Then I tried looking at the same month in Gísli, the security guard’s journal.’

‘And?’ asked Matthew. ‘Did it reveal anything?’

‘His account is more detailed, at least. He says that the woman was last seen at supper on the evening of October 31st, and no one knew her movements after she left the cafeteria. No one saw where she went, and she didn’t let anyone know her plans. According to him, the documents she was working on were last modified just before midnight that evening, so she was most likely in her office.’

‘Almost certainly, surely, if her computer record said so?’ said Matthew. ‘Could someone else have worked on the documents?’

‘No,’ she replied. ‘The text notes that she could also have been in her apartment, since there’s a wireless connection set up to enable the staff to work if they’re trapped in the residential wing by the weather. Eyjólfur confirmed that that could have been the case, although he can’t tell from the file whether she was connected remotely, or if she was actually in the office. He also said that he should have been able to see whether she’d been working at the desktop or her laptop, but unfortunately the security guard saved the files after opening them and in doing so deleted the information about their previous use.’

‘Damn, that was stupid,’ muttered Matthew.

‘From what I read in Gísli’s journal,’ continued Thóra, ‘she didn’t seem very outdoorsy, but she was accustomed enough to the area not to rush outside without good reason.’

‘Is he suggesting that she intended to die of exposure?’

‘No, that’s not how I understood it,’ she replied. ‘Quite the reverse; he mentions that this Oddný Hildur had been looking forward to going home to her husband and hadn’t been behaving at all unusually. He thought it more likely that there had been an accident. He writes that the measurements from the weather monitor showed that the weather had been quite bad that night, and if the woman had gone out after it worsened she could easily have lost her way among the buildings and wandered farther and farther out into the wilderness.’ Thóra couldn’t help but glance towards the window to check on the weather. ‘He had the other staff members search the area in groups of four, without any luck. After a week the search was called off entirely for fear that other people would get lost in the storm, which had got even worse.’

‘And there was no mention of bones or anything like that?’ asked Matthew. ‘I was wondering whether they might have come across any other human remains during their search.’

‘Not a word. This Gísli would have recorded it in his diary – he appears to have been very thorough in his entries and in his responses to situations. Among other things, he went to Kaanneq to see if the woman might have wandered down there, and he also phoned to request the assistance of the authorities, although understandably they couldn’t do much apart from take down the information.’

‘So there’s nothing more to learn from this?’ Matthew said. ‘Actually, this is just a slightly more detailed description of everything we already knew. The geologist vanished from the camp and no one knows what became of her.’

‘Well, actually there’s a little bit more that could possibly make a difference,’ she corrected him. ‘On 1st November the security guard claims to have found a patch of blood or some other substance on one of the outside walls of the residential wing, where Oddný Hildur’s apartment was. He writes that he has no idea whether it was blood from a person or an animal, or how long the stain had been there, but he does say that he took a sample and was planning to bring it with him to Reykjavík for a DNA test. After that, he forbade the staff from going outside alone – he was afraid a polar bear might be in the area, and that Oddný Hildur had fallen prey to it.’

‘Did he tell the others about this?’ asked Matthew. ‘That’s the first I’ve heard of it.’

‘No. He considered the group’s situation to be so bad that he didn’t want to cause any more unnecessary trouble and risk things boiling over.’

‘He was worried that people would start panicking?’

‘No, he doesn’t say that. His wording is rather odd. I don’t understand why he talks about “causing any more trouble” or things “boiling over” in a group that was out searching for a lost colleague. At least, I would have worded it differently. It’s as if he’s referring to a situation that existed before the woman went missing.’ Thóra clicked on the mouse to bring the screen back up. ‘I searched for the word “DNA” in the months that passed from the woman’s disappearance until the day the group returned home for the last time, and I found one entry in which Gísli calls the results of the test “disappointing”. The sample appears to have been contaminated during transport and no conclusion could be reached other than that it was blood – whether that of an animal or a human being isn’t known. I also searched for the words “polar bear” without result. If it was a polar bear attack, it must have been extremely unlucky, since the security guard’s journal never mentions that such a beast had been seen around here, and surely he would have recorded it if it had.’

‘Hopefully we’ll have a chance to speak to this Gísli when we get back to Iceland. He may very well have information that didn’t make it into that journal.’ Matthew picked up the papers again and thumbed through them. ‘What else did you find?’

‘The drillers’ last entries were rather curt.’ She took the stack of papers from Matthew and flipped through them. ‘Here’s a normal day, with the entries filling two whole pages and containing reports on geology, the weather, the equipment, etc. Here we have the days just before everyone left, with only three sentences: Weather good. Drilling rig on the south slope, L-3. No progress, need advice on an unusual find. Other entries up until the date they stopped filling in the journals are similar. No output, worked on the find.’ Thóra looked at Matthew. ‘It isn’t clear whether this find was geological or something entirely different.’

‘Such as?’ Matthew read over the journal entry.

‘Maybe the body of Oddný Hildur?’ replied Thóra calmly.

‘Isn’t that stretching things a bit?’ He gave her a sceptical look.

‘Yes, if I’d only had these daily reports to go on,’ she said. ‘However, I found something else that supports this theory.’ She didn’t waste any time describing what she meant, but instead turned to the screen and brought up an image file labelled D & G. Eyjólfur had assured her that it did not stand for Dolce & Gabbana, but Drilling and Grouting. She pointed out one of the images to Matthew. At first it looked like nothing but ice on the screen, but if you looked closer you could see clenched fingers in a block of ice. Before he could say anything Thóra hurriedly brought up the list of file names for the photographs taken that day. ‘Look here. Based on the file numbers, it seems as though the next twenty images have been erased.’ She looked at Matthew. ‘I don’t have a clue who would have done that or why, but one thing is certain – it’s a human hand, and whoever it belonged to is not alive.’