The Day Is Dark

Chapter 23

Thóra found it incredibly cold in the office building but Friðrikka had told her that it took the electric heating system more time than the hot water supply to heat the buildings when the temperature dropped so abruptly outside. Thóra hoped that they would be gone before it grew warm inside, and now she wrapped a far-too-large fleece jacket more tightly around her. She had borrowed it from the back of a chair in one of the offices, first checking carefully to see whom it belonged to. She was disgusted at the thought of wearing any more clothing from people who were almost certainly dead. It wasn’t cold enough for that.

‘When are they coming, then?’ They were all gathered in the meeting room, where Friðrikka sat at a window, staring out. ‘It shouldn’t take them this long to get here from Angmagssalik in an emergency. You’d think they would have priority access to the helicopter.’ Like the others, Thóra was impatient for the police to arrive, but unlike the others, she made no attempt to disguise the fact. After Matthew had managed to contact a policeman who spoke decent English he had been ordered to go back to the camp and gather the team in the office building in order to ensure the minimum possible disturbance of the scene. They were to wait there. That had been more than three hours ago.

‘It takes them some time to prepare for departure.’ Matthew had grown tired of Friðrikka’s endless grumbling about how late it was and how the weather could change at any moment.

‘What will we eat if they don’t come today? All the food is over on the other side of the site,’ scowled Bella. ‘I’m not going to starve on top of everything else.’

‘Then I’ll go over and get us something to eat.’ Matthew sat at the meeting table and watched Finnbogi examine Usinna’s files, which Thóra had managed to prise from Oqqapia earlier in the day. At first he and Thóra had tried to go over the data themselves, but gave up quickly on the biology and asked the doctor to take over. Bella would photocopy the documents later, since Thóra had promised on her honour that they would be returned at the first opportunity. Oqqapia did not want Naruana to discover that she had let the files leave the house and the longer Thóra had the box, the more likely he was to notice that it was gone.

‘But we can’t go to the kitchen; the police have prohibited it. You said so yourself.’ Friðrikka’s voice was on the verge of cracking as she glanced back from the window to Matthew.

He sighed. ‘Everything’s going to be fine. They’ll be here before you know it.’ Friðrikka opened her mouth as if to object, but Thóra decided to pre-empt her. ‘Tell me, Friðrikka. How is it that you never mentioned that Arnar had acquaintances in the village? You insisted you hadn’t had any interaction with the villagers besides the kind of brief contact that we’ve experienced on this trip.’ She looked accusingly at Eyjólfur, who was absorbed in his laptop. ‘And that goes for you, too.’

Eyjólfur was first to reply. Friðrikka, looking ashamed, said nothing. ‘I knew nothing about it, so there’s no need to tell me off. I didn’t see him with anyone from the village, and I never heard him mention anyone. If he was meeting the natives, it didn’t happen while I was here.’ He stared at the back of Friðrikka’s neck; she had turned to the window again, her cheeks bright red. ‘She was here a lot more than I was.’

‘What do you have to say for yourself, Friðrikka? Why did you never mention this?’ Thóra was not about to drop it.

Friðrikka spun around. ‘I just didn’t realise it mattered. If I remember correctly you asked whether any Greenlanders had worked here, which they certainly did not.’ She sniffed loudly, and Thóra hoped another crying fit wasn’t on the way. ‘To my knowledge he went to the village several times, on Sundays, but he didn’t tell me much about it and he never mentioned that he had any particular friends there. I think he was trying to start an AA group. I never went with him and I don’t know any more about it.’ Then she brightened, as if a light had been switched on in her head. ‘Of course, you can ask him yourself when we return to Iceland.’

‘What about your friend, Oddný Hildur? Did she ever tell you that she’d gone with him down to the village?’

Friðrikka furrowed her brow. Her whole face had reddened and it almost looked as if she’d used red eye-shadow on her pale eyebrows. ‘What?’

Thóra repeated herself, but she was wondering whether there could possibly be another woman. If neither Oddný Hildur nor Friðrikka had gone with Arnar to visit Naruana, there weren’t any others to choose from as they were the only women listed on the staff organizational chart. ‘Could she have gone without you being aware of it?’

Friðrikka seemed uncertain. ‘Well, I sincerely doubt it, but I wasn’t with her every single Sunday. For example, I was ill for several days and she might very well have gone to the village. However, I clearly remember that she never said a single word about it to me.’

‘Isn’t that strange,’ said Thóra heatedly. ‘You would have thought new topics of conversation would have been welcome around here.’

Alvar cleared his throat to remind them of his presence. Reserved as he was, he tended to blend into the surroundings. ‘Is there anything to drink over here? I’m pretty thirsty.’

Finnbogi looked up from his reading. ‘You’re not drinking anything from here. Everything in the little refrigerator is old, and it would be too risky. You’ll just have to get yourself a handful of snow.’

It clearly wasn’t the oddest suggestion Alvar had ever heard, because he stood up without complaint and left the room. ‘Is there really nothing else available?’ asked Bella. ‘I’m dying of thirst too, but I didn’t realize until he started talking about it.’ She snorted. ‘I’m not about to eat a handful of snow, though.’

‘Then you’ll just have to stay thirsty,’ said Finnbogi, without looking at her. He had re-immersed himself in his reading. Then he slammed the book shut and pushed his reading glasses up onto his head. They sat better there, since one of the arms was damaged, making them sit crookedly on his nose. He turned to Matthew. ‘Will you come and discuss something with me in the hallway? There’s more privacy there.’ Friðrikka and Bella had clearly started to get on other people’s nerves too, thought Thóra as she followed the men out of the room.

‘I don’t know how much to say in everyone’s earshot,’ said Finnbogi after shutting the door and leading them a way down the corridor. ‘But I feel it’s inadvisable to talk about anything out of the ordinary with Friðrikka. I think she may be losing it.’

‘Did you find anything in the files?’ Thóra hugged herself. It was even colder in the empty corridor than the meeting room.

‘I’m not completely finished but I think I’ve got most of it. Some of it is actually beyond my level, which I’m surprised by, so I’ve been poring over every detail. This Usinna wasn’t doing research for some secondary school or undergraduate programme. At least, it appears more theoretically demanding than that.’

‘Is it connected to this area somehow?’ Thóra was impatient and wanted to stop him before he started outlining the technical aspects of the study.

‘Yes and no. The research is based on the theory that particular manmade toxins in the diet affect the gender of foetuses. These toxins are persistent organic pollutants that do not degrade in nature, so they accumulate in the food chain and more often than not wind up in the sea. They are found in more plentiful quantities the higher they go in the sea’s food chain, so they occur in the greatest quantity at its surface. They include substances like the pesticide DDT; PCB, which is used in coolants; fire-retardant chemicals, and other chemicals that affect the endocrine system. It has long been known that seals and polar bears have a high level of these toxins in their systems – a million times higher than in plankton, for example. Their meat is the main subsistence food in the Inuit diet, therefore it’s not too surprising that the Inuits are the most impacted by this pollution.’

‘It’s pretty ironic, given that there can’t be people that pollute the environment less.’ Thóra had never read about any of what the doctor was telling them, since she was hardly a news addict – she made do with skimming the headlines.

The doctor appeared angered by her comment. ‘Yes, it is. It’s thought that if the toxins are present in excessive amounts during the first weeks of pregnancy they can be carried to the foetus through the mother’s blood. There they imitate the hormones controlling the child’s gender and prevent the creation of boys. Figures on the gender ratios of newborns in the Arctic support this theory. Among the Inuits in Russia and in northern Greenland it’s not uncommon for two girls to be born for every boy. In some villages no boys are born – as appears to be the case here in these parts.’ Matthew’s expression suggested that he found this rather disagreeable. ‘What do you mean about the hormones controlling gender? Is it like a sex change in the womb?’

‘No, not exactly. During the first weeks of development male and female foetuses are identical. The genitals, for example, are formed from the same cells, so this makes sense. Even without these pollutants, historically more girls are born than boys. The difference is very small, but it’s increasing throughout the world. I found an article there saying that since 1970, around 250,000 fewer boys than girls are being born each year in Japan and the US. No one has been able to explain this development, but these pollutants might be involved. Of course they cause much more damage to the natural environment than just these gender changes, but in a hunting culture in which the men provide the food it’s extremely serious.’

‘And elsewhere, too,’ added Thóra. ‘It’s hardly desirable to disrupt the ratio of men to women in any community.’

‘No, of course not,’ said the doctor. ‘But this is still just a theory, and this woman’s research was trying to demonstrate that it could be substantiated.’

‘Isn’t a whole village where only girls are born pretty compelling evidence?’ asked Matthew.

Finnbogi smiled patronizingly. ‘That alone proves nothing about the relationship between these substances and the gender ratios. They could be caused by something completely different. Demonstrating it properly would require, among other things, the collection of blood samples from the girls’ mothers, and that’s one thing this woman was doing.’

This seemed a likely explanation for Oddný Hildur’s entry about Usinna. Blood tests. ‘Was she able to prove anything? Did she get the blood?’ asked Thóra.

Finnbogi took a deep breath before continuing. ‘I found a list with the names of the mothers, I think, and she’d put ticks against all of them. She’d probably got her samples, even though there are no results recorded there. She’s hardly likely to have had the necessary equipment here to identify the substances in the blood. I don’t know if she made several trips here and stored the samples elsewhere in the meantime, or whether they were still here when she disappeared. It actually doesn’t matter. New samples can always be taken from the mothers.’

‘So none of this is useful to us, is that what you’re saying?’ Thóra was slightly disappointed. Although the theory was interesting, it didn’t look as if it would make a difference for the bank. ‘Why did she come up here? She can’t have thought she’d find any mothers.’

‘I wasn’t finished.’ The doctor bristled impatiently. ‘Usinna was going to try to find the bodies of the original inhabitants who died here at the beginning of last century, to demonstrate that the level of toxins in the blood of the locals had increased. The settlers were apparently interred in this area.’

Matthew and Thóra stared at the doctor. Matthew was the first to speak. ‘Blood? Aren’t those people just skeletons after all these years?’ The doctor shrugged, causing his glasses to slip back down his forehead. He grabbed them and returned them to their place. ‘I found a printout of e-mails sent between Usinna and her university supervisor, in which she says she had reason to believe that they hadn’t managed to inter some of the original inhabitants of the village; they’d died in the middle of winter and had had to be buried in snowdrifts. Judging by the e-mails, Usinna seems to have known where these temporary graves were, without providing any further information on their location. I take this to mean that these bodies had been put on ice, so to speak, with the intention of finding them permanent resting places in the spring. Usinna seems to have been of the view that these unfortunate settlers were never actually buried.’

‘Spring never came.’ Thóra recalled the story from the book in the cafeteria. ‘At least, not for those who were supposed to take care of the burials, because they died too. According to the article part of the group was missing, among them an infant and its mother. Maybe Usinna hoped to find them.’

‘There’s one thing I don’t understand.’ Matthew had been listening carefully to the conversation. ‘How could Usinna have thought she knew where they were buried, since everyone died? You told me, Thóra, that nothing more was heard from the settlers after that winter. I don’t see how she can have had any idea that some of the bodies were buried in snow and ice in the first place, let alone known exactly where they were.’

Thóra did not know how to reply, nor did the doctor have any explanation for where Usinna might have got this information. ‘In any case, I think we have an explanation for the bones that we found here in the office building,’ said Finnbogi.

‘That these are bones from the people who died here a hundred years ago?’ This seemed more than likely to Thóra. ‘They couldn’t have yielded much blood.’

‘No, but they seem to be from one individual. The snow cover has been diminishing over the last decade. What once lay deep in the ice is maybe coming to the surface now, or almost. That’s why the bones appear to be younger than I thought. So the ice could easily be hiding other bodies that simply haven’t surfaced yet. The photos you had of the hand might actually show another body that has lain all this time at a greater depth, and is therefore still frozen.’

‘What does this mean?’ Thóra suddenly sensed a headache that immediately started to intensify. Before long she would have to take painkillers, and would wash them down with a handful of snow if she had to. ‘If this whole place is crawling with the corpses of the original settlers, you can hardly justify allowing construction work to go ahead while they’re being dug up.’

Matthew’s face brightened. ‘Of course. Aren’t they counted as antiquities?’

Thóra wasn’t quite sure, but thought they probably were. ‘Hopefully. I think this provides us with good grounds for negotiating for a postponement with Arctic Mining.’ She was relieved, but had to remind herself that this proposition was far from certain. ‘We just have to hope that if the area is gone over with a fine-tooth comb, Oddný Hildur and the two drillers will be found. I doubt the employees of Berg Technology will return unless that happens. If they refuse to return, all the postponements in the world won’t help. The project will never be completed if there’s no one to work on it.’

‘I would be most intrigued to be allowed to examine the man in the freezer again,’ said Finnbogi. ‘I only caught a fleeting glimpse of him. After the police come we’ll have no further opportunity and it’s uncertain whether we’ll gain the information that you need for your case.’

‘Information?’ Matthew looked wary, and Thóra didn’t blame him. Was the doctor manipulating the situation for his own needs, masking his medical curiosity with concern for the interests of the bank and the project? ‘What information could we need about this body that we can’t get from the police?’

The doctor must have sensed their suspicion. ‘There was more in Usinna’s files than what I’ve just described. For example, there were instructions on how to protect against bird flu.’ The doctor paused and gave them a meaningful look. ‘I don’t want to overinterpret this, but it did cross my mind that perhaps the two drillers had contracted it. To my knowledge no cases have been diagnosed this far north, but it could still have happened. Maybe the man in the freezer also died of bird flu. I just want to look at him and see whether I can find anything pointing to the cause of his death. Greenland has a peculiar history when it comes to epidemics, because all the settlements are so isolated. As recently as 1962 a third of the population was badly infected by measles, which had never before reached the largest portion of the country. So there could be a common disease that’s showing up in this area for the first time. I don’t actually know which disease it could be, but bird flu would wreak havoc on the population here. You only have to remember the Spanish Flu, which some even believe was bird flu: it killed 100 million people throughout the world at the end of the First World War. As it happens, it didn’t reach here, but I can imagine the consequences if it had.’

‘That may well be, but bird flu didn’t kill the drillers,’ said Thóra resolutely. ‘Firstly, where are their bodies, if they died of a disease? And secondly, there are no birds here. At least, none that I’ve seen.’

‘They could have eaten infected poultry.’ The doctor turned to Matthew. ‘Let’s go and take a look. It doesn’t matter, we’ve already been in there, so we can hardly do any more damage than has been caused already.’

Matthew gave in. But when the plastic cover was pulled from the body in the freezer, it was clear that bird flu wasn’t the cause of death. He had such a large hole in his chest that they could see right through it to the blue-tiled floor.