The Day Is Dark

Chapter 14

In the end they were unable to meet Igimaq. There was a snowmobile at the camp, as Thóra had expected, but it wasn’t in working order. Alvar spent the rest of the day trying to repair it, with no luck. They’d found it inside a storage unit behind the camp on a tip-off from Friðrikka and Eyjólfur, the latter of whom went with Matthew and Alvar to the unit, happy to stop working on the satellite dishes for a while. He had made no progress, and the dishes appeared to have suffered some rather unusual damage. The one on the roof of the office building was on its side, but the roof and the cables, which still connected it to strong fastenings, had prevented it from falling off. The banging they had heard during the storm had most likely come from the dish. Eyjólfur had fixed it back in its place but hadn’t got it to work properly, even though he considered it possible that the Internet connection could go on and off as it appeared to have done while the dish was swinging on the roof at the mercy of the wind. It was a different story with the dish on the roof of the cafeteria, to which the phones were connected. It was in a worse state, having presumably been subjected to more damage before it came loose, and in the end Eyjólfur came to the conclusion that its receiving equipment was so badly broken that phone calls were out of the question.

It was difficult to gauge the reasons why the dishes had suffered so much damage outside. Eyjólfur thought it doubtful that the weather was to blame, and tended towards the opinion that someone had hammered at the devices with a crowbar or other heavy object until they came loose. There could be no other explanation for the dents on them, he thought.

Eyjólfur must have still been thinking about the satellite dishes when he arrived at the storage unit, since the first thing that crossed his mind was that it had been broken into. The unit was unlocked and the paint was scraped away in several dented spots around the lock bracket. Inside was the snowmobile, surrounded by tyres of all shapes and sizes, spare car parts and various other supplies. Eyjólfur didn’t notice anything missing, so the team did not set much store by his conclusion that it was a case of breaking and entering. There could have been other reasons for the dents on the rusted bracket, and it was also possible that the hanging lock on the unit had disappeared long ago. Eyjólfur pointed out that he wasn’t particularly interested in cars or their maintenance and had only been in the unit once before, so he couldn’t say for sure what it had contained. However, he was certain that the unit’s door had always been securely locked. Friðrikka had never been in the unit either, but she remembered that she had once walked past it when its door stood open. She recalled nothing about what had been in it. Of course it was possible that someone had broken into it to damage the snowmobile, although on what impulse she had no idea. The only motive they could think of was that someone had intended to hinder the drillers’ movements, although no one could contribute anything when Matthew sought an explanation for the possible reasons for wanting to do this. It was clear that the damage – if there was actually any damage – was not of the kind suffered by the satellite dishes, since there were no marks or dents visible on the snowmobile.

As the discussion about possible vandalism reached its peak, Friðrikka pointed out that the drillers had also had the use of two cars, so damaging the snowmobile to immobilize the men would have been a fairly pointless exercise. The cars had been parked outside when they arrived and it hadn’t crossed anyone’s mind to check their condition. When they went to do so, they discovered that the cars wouldn’t start, and it looked very likely that one of the engines had burned out.

Now, Thóra was sitting at the computer in the office that Friðrikka said had been used by Oddný Hildur. She was planning to upload the photos that Eyjólfur had taken of the damage to the satellite dishes on the roof. Later, she would transfer the images to her laptop, but it was easier to view them on a good screen that wasn’t covered with the fingerprints of small children. Everything now suggested that the drillers’ disappearance, and consequently the cessation of the project, could be attributed to human intervention, and hence the photos could be useful to the bank in its dispute with the mining company. However, it was impossible to say who was behind this or why. Of course it was not out of the question that nature had been asserting itself, that a violent wind had blown over the satellite dishes, but Thóra doubted that a polar bear or other wild animal had been involved; the roof was too high for that. Nor did the damage to the dishes appear to have been caused by claws or teeth. The dents in the thick metal shield were huge, and there were no scratches or scrapes to be seen. The marks could hardly have been made by anything but a tool. After her conversation with the Greenlandic woman she found it not entirely absurd to suppose that one of the villagers might bear the responsibility for it. There was a thin line between denying assistance to those in need and causing them wilful damage through acts of vandalism. Perhaps the villagers had been offended when their warnings hadn’t been heeded and had taken action in this way, which then raised the question of whether they had also played a part in the disappearance and death of Oddný Hildur. Thóra had deliberately chosen to use the computer the missing woman had used, on the off-chance that something was hidden there that might shed light on her disappearance. So after uploading the photographs, Thóra focused on combing through the computer’s files, and quickly became lost in that jungle.

By the time she had more or less finished viewing everything that she considered to be of any worth, the rumbling in her belly was driving her crazy. She looked at the clock on the screen and saw that time had flown. She didn’t feel any better informed. Oddný Hildur appeared to have been rather reticent and did not leave any clues about herself on her computer. Her e-mails were incredibly unexciting and centred mostly on work; there were numerous short messages with attached reports about the progress of the project and strata that Thóra did not understand at all. Still, several messages to the owner of the company roused Thóra’s interest. In them Oddný Hildur appeared to be complaining about the atmosphere at the workplace and the harassment she said the engineer Arnar was suffering. Thóra searched for and found the man’s reply, in which he seemed to disregard all of Oddný Hildur’s concerns and make little of her request for him to intervene. His message contained rather feeble advice such as, ‘It sounds like it’s just good-natured teasing that shouldn’t be taken seriously,’ and ‘I’m sure it doesn’t matter to him, he has a thick skin,’ and Thóra could not help but admire the geologist’s determination not to give up. She had sent her final message on this subject two days before she disappeared. The message hadn’t been answered. In it she had said that it was now no longer possible to turn a blind eye to the matter; the man was having a bad time of it and the cruelty of his co-workers clearly ‘did matter to him’; the harassment was becoming more serious and was heading towards something that could not be taken back. Thóra recalled the tiff between Friðrikka and Eyjólfur over the homosexual engineer. Although she was unable to be completely certain, it all looked as if the poor man had been made an outsider by the prejudices of his co-workers. At least that’s what she had understood from the conversation, even though she also vaguely recalled Eyjólfur’s argument that it was the man’s alcoholism that had made him unpopular – or rather the fact that he had managed to gain control over the disease, which had made him boringly holier-than-thou. It wasn’t possible to determine, either from Oddný Hildur’s messages or from her boss’s reply, whether it was the man’s sexual preference or his sobriety that had provoked the harassment.

Besides this, Thóra found an exchange of emails between Oddný Hildur and Arnar himself. It wasn’t clear from these either what had caused the harassment or how Arnar felt about it. Thóra’s interpretation was that he had tried to tough it out, and didn’t feel comfortable complaining even though his co-workers’ behaviour hurt him. Of course it must have. If Oddný Hildur’s insinuations were anything to go by, it would have been bad enough to have had to endure it eight to ten hours a day, five days a week, but in this case workplace and home were merged into one for a huge portion of the year, with no refuge to be had anywhere. Thus, statements such as, ‘It doesn’t matter, I’m not going to let them affect me,’ and ‘Luckily I don’t care what others think of me,’ could not have been made with complete sincerity. Arnar had written them more to convince himself than Oddný Hildur; he had tried to build an invisible shield that protected him from all of it. However, one sentence clearly showed that if there were such a shield, it was not solid. Arnar had invited Oddný Hildur to coffee at his apartment one evening to discuss this and that; he had been thinking about quitting since ‘this isn’t working any more’. This message was the last that Thóra found from him to Oddný Hildur, and it had been sent two days before the geologist disappeared. If she had answered him, her message had been deleted. It was certainly possible that Oddný Hildur had accepted the invitation verbally; they worked in the same building and ate all their meals at the same table. It was actually strange that they should have e-mailed each other at all, although Thóra knew that she herself sent her colleagues e-mails when she didn’t feel like getting up and speaking to them face to face. It was often just quicker that way. In any case, she would have to speak to this Arnar when they returned to Iceland.

The woman appeared to have had few friends to whom she sent e-mails, but that might not be the whole story. Thóra personally chose to keep her work e-mail separate from her personal e-mail, other than in exceptional circumstances. She used a different address for the personal mail and it was generally full to the brim with silly pictures, jokes and stories that one was supposed to forward to at least ten others, who doubtless cared as little for such rubbish as Thóra herself did. It could well be that Oddný Hildur had been drowning in e-mails from her friends and acquaintances but that that mailbox was located elsewhere in cyberspace. With things as they were, it would be of little use for Thóra to try to investigate the main e-mail applications in the hope that the geologist had let the computer save her password. It was fairly clear that Oddný Hildur’s friends and relatives were not connected with her disappearance, but it was conceivable that the woman had sent them more comprehensive descriptions of the situation in the camp.

Suddenly Thóra missed her family terribly. Never before had she been out of touch with her children for so long. She longed to know what they were doing, how Orri’s potty training was going and whether Sóley was practising her violin, which she had recently started learning at her father’s request. Thóra suspected that Hannes would be much less enthusiastic about the idea when the shrill notes started sounding through his house than he had been when he asked Thóra to encourage their daughter to practise. She hoped that everything was going well, and was especially concerned about Gylfi’s relationship with his father. They had probably ended up arguing a bit while Thóra was away. Her little family was fragile and without her it lacked the padding that generally absorbed the worst knocks of daily life. She had to hold on to her chair to prevent herself from running out to the car and rushing over to the house of the woman in the village to phone home. Her hunger must be starting to affect her brain function; it was high time she had something to eat.

Matthew walked in. ‘How’s it going? I’m absolutely famished, and Bella’s probably finished putting dinner together.’

‘Bella? Is she cooking?’ At that news Thóra’s hunger disappeared like dew under the sun. ‘What’s on the menu? Barbecued seal fins and cigarette pudding?’ She turned off the monitor in front of her.

‘She didn’t have anything to do so I thought it was the perfect assignment.’ Matthew smiled at her. ‘I would ask you out to eat but it’s probably not that easy to get a table at such short notice at the restaurants round here.’ He wrapped his arms around her shoulders. ‘We’re almost done here. The helicopter’s coming not tomorrow, not the day after, but the day after that, so we actually only have two days left.’

Thóra smiled back at him. ‘I’ll never talk to you again if the weather prevents it.’ She stood up and stretched. Her vertebrae cracked. ‘The worst thing is that I feel we’re making so little progress. I’m no closer to understanding what happened here, and every new piece of information we discover just complicates things.’

‘At least we know how things look now, and Friðrikka says that she’s advanced quite a long way with her assessment of the project. She can’t see anything that would prevent her from finishing before we leave.’ He pointed at a multicoloured organizational chart that had been taped to the wall. ‘You never know, we might just get to the bottom of this when we talk to the employees in Iceland.’

‘If they want to talk to us,’ said Thóra. ‘It’s entirely up to them.’ She pulled herself together and pushed aside her pessimism. ‘That would be interesting, actually. I found various things in Oddný Hildur’s e-mail to confirm the harassment that Friðrikka mentioned. Maybe it played some part in this.’

‘How?’ asked Matthew. ‘Did Oddný Hildur suffer because of it? Or the drillers?’ His expression was one giant question mark. ‘Do you think that all these people committed suicide?’ Before Thóra could reply he interrupted himself: ‘I wonder if that would be sufficient grounds to absolve Berg of responsibility for what’s happened with the project?’

‘No, probably not. It’s up to the contractor to ensure that the atmosphere at the workplace is not harmful to the workers, either mentally or physically. No, I didn’t mean that. These three don’t appear to have been affected by the bullying. Oddný Hildur was concerned about one of the engineers and didn’t mention the drillers in this context, though I think they were more perpetrators than victims.’

‘What do you base that on?’

‘Nothing special. I scrutinized their computers and got the feeling that they were funny guys, the class clowns. I’m not saying they were the main perpetrators, but I can well imagine that they didn’t hold back, although they might not have realized it was harassment.’ Thóra rubbed her face. ‘Actually, I don’t know what I’m talking about. This probably had nothing to do with harassment. I’m just trying to fit what I came across with what we’re investigating. This was probably an incredibly normal workplace, at least given the circumstances. It makes more sense to focus on the natives’ stories about this place. At least they might shed some light on the question of the insurance, although they hardly explain everything.’

‘We’ll try to find the hunter,’ said Matthew. ‘Hopefully the snowmobile can be repaired. If not, then maybe that woman can find someone to take us by dogsled.’

‘Or maybe we’ll just wake up with wings and fly there.’ Thóra went to the window and drew the curtain. She didn’t know why she chose to do so – there was nothing but darkness outside. ‘How’s it been going otherwise?’

Matthew and the doctor had gone through the apartments of all the full-time employees one by one, in the hope of spotting something that hadn’t come to light before. They had originally investigated with torches, before the electricity was restored. ‘We found two strange things,’ replied Matthew. ‘I’ll show them to you on the way over to the cafeteria if you can bear to wait a few minutes before tasting Bella’s delicacies.’

They put on their jackets and boots and went out into the darkness outside. The cold was refreshing and the air so still that their frozen breath did not rise into the air, but rather hung there before their faces for a moment before evaporating. The sky was bright with stars, so much more numerous and so much brighter than those Thóra was used to that it seemed like Greenland was closer to outer space than to any other earthly country. The Milky Way itself could be seen clearly as it lay in a dense, broad streak across the heavens. Thóra held on to Matthew and let him lead her so that she could stare into the sky. She hoped that if there were life on other planets, it was gentler than what Mother Nature had created on Earth. And not as cold.

‘Careful, there’s a platform ahead.’ Matthew slowed his pace and Thóra looked down. They had arrived at one of the green units containing the workers’ apartments. They were built in a straight line, in two sets of four. In front of each was a platform, and they stepped onto the one before them and stood there as Matthew took out a key and stuck it in the lock. He jiggled it for a moment, then opened the door. ‘This is the apartment of one of the drillers, Halldór Grétarsson,’ Matthew said. ‘Be careful not to touch anything.’

They walked into the tiny vestibule, where they found a small coat rack upon which hung a yellow work coverall with wide reflective stripes and a fleece jacket, side by side. There wasn’t a single down jacket to be seen. On the frame above it lay a helmet that was both scratched and dirty. Next to the vestibule was a small bathroom with a shower. A shelf above the sink held a little electric razor, inexpensive-looking aftershave lotion, a toothbrush, hairbrush, deodorant and several cotton buds. Dental floss trailed from a white plastic box onto the shelf and halfway down to the sink. The apartment had a small kitchen that opened onto a rather austere sitting room with a two-seater sofa that looked extremely uncomfortable, a modern chair, a coffee table with a half-full ashtray and a shelving unit with a television and DVD player.

There were several books on the shelf above the DVD player and they appeared to Thóra to be all foreign crime novels. On one kitchen chair hung a down jacket, so the chances that the man had somehow made it out of the area looked rather slim. Off the sitting room was the bedroom, which was what Matthew had wanted to show her. Everything in there was a mess. There were towels and dirty clothes on the floor, along with a bucket that had been placed at the side of the bed. ‘Well, now,’ said Thóra. ‘Not exactly the tidiest person.’ In the poor man’s defence, he probably hadn’t expected anyone else to come into his apartment.

‘But look here,’ said Matthew, pointing at the bed. ‘It looks to me like this might be blood.’

Thóra drew nearer. Matthew was right: on the pillow she could see what were clearly bloodstains. They weren’t terribly large, but they were obviously more than dots from the man’s last shave. There were four in total they seemed to form a kind of face: two eyes, a nose and a wide smirking mouth. ‘Do you think the man was hit on the head as he slept?’ Thóra bent down to take a better look at the marks. There was something about them that bothered her. ‘Was there something similar in the other man’s room?’

‘No,’ said Matthew. ‘There were several small stains on the floor, but nothing like this. Maybe we can get the police to come now.’ He shook his head. ‘It may well be that the other driller killed the man who lived here, got rid of the body and ran off. The blood in the other apartment might have dripped off him after he did the dirty deed.’

‘You know what?’ said Thóra, standing up straight. ‘I need to show you something that’s just as frightening as this is.’ She pointed at the bloody pillow. ‘Either I’ve finally gone completely crazy or these stains are exactly the same as those on one of the beds of the first residents of the area that I saw in those old photographs. One of the original inhabitants who was supposed to have died of hunger.’