The doctor looked surprised, so it was obviously the first he’d heard of her. ‘Well, I don’t know about that. Who was she, and when did she disappear?’
‘She was here working for Berg Technology,’ said Thóra. ‘It’s thought that she wandered off, got lost and died in a storm. That was about six months ago, and since she was never found it just occurred to me that these bones might be hers.’ Thóra stared into the lifeless shadows of the eye sockets. ‘Of course, now I’m wondering how her skull made its way into one of her co-worker’s desk drawers.’
‘You don’t have to wonder about that,’ said the doctor confidently. ‘This skull can’t belong to someone who died of exposure six months ago. Under these conditions the bones wouldn’t have been stripped clean in such a short time, and the woman’s co-workers would hardly have gone to the trouble of cleaning the skull. That would be pretty cold. I also think the bones would be whiter if they were from someone who died recently.’
‘Where did the skull come from, then?’ asked Matthew. He was regarding the remains warily, and Thóra noticed that his lips were pursed.
‘Well, I think it could have come from a grave, or from open ground. The surface is covered with little scratches and impurities that couldn’t have occurred while the individual was alive. They could be marks made by the teeth or claws of small animals.’ The doctor shrugged. ‘I don’t know whether whoever left it here found the skull outside somewhere or simply bought it on the Internet. As unbelievable as it sounds, there’s a market for such things. The first theory is somewhat negated by the fact that the jawbone is here as well. If the corpse had been lying somewhere out in the wilderness, large animals would have got to it and scattered the bones. I would guess that the skull was either exhumed or purchased online.’
‘You mean they might have accidentally disturbed someone’s grave?’ asked Thóra sceptically. ‘I highly doubt there was a cemetery in this area, and if there was it would have been a very long way from the beaten path. There was nothing here before the project started, and the documents that I’ve looked at say nothing about the company doing anything in the vicinity of the village, where you’d expect there to be a graveyard. Who would want to be buried here, far from everything?’
‘In these parts people aren’t actually buried in the ground, even in the graveyards – there’s no soil.’ The doctor crossed his arms and nodded at the skull. ‘Here they bury their dead under cairns; I don’t know how they prepare the bodies, although I imagine they’re either wrapped in something or placed in coffins. If they’d been wrapped in cloth, the bones would show more damage, which means that this skull probably wasn’t directly beneath a pile of rocks. It’s possible that it was in a coffin.’
‘It also seems doubtful that Berg employees dug this up accidentally,’ said Matthew. ‘Cairns must stand out in this landscape.’
The doctor shrugged. ‘Maybe they needed to dig in the area where it was buried and didn’t realize what it was until after they’d started removing the stones.’
‘Could these bones date back to 1918?’ asked Thóra. Maybe the workers had found the remains of the people that disappeared from the original settlement.
‘No, I don’t think so.’ Finnbogi stroked the skull’s crown. ‘This doesn’t look that old.’ He looked at her in surprise. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘I read in a book over in the cafeteria that there was a settlement here, but that everyone died of famine and exposure. I thought this might be one of those poor sods.’
‘That wouldn’t fit at all.’ The doctor heaved a sigh. ‘Shame, because it would be an incredibly convenient explanation.’
‘What about the tag?’ Thóra asked, pointing to a scrap of paper that had been lying beneath the skull in the drawer. The code G-57 – nothing else – had been written on it with a broad black felt-tip pen.
‘Do you think it’s related?’ asked Matthew. ‘Maybe it was in the drawer before the skull was put there.’ He looked at the name-plate on the door of the office. ‘It’ll all come to light, because the person whose desk this was is one of the ones who refuses to come back here. Maybe Eyjólfur and Friðrikka also know something about this. Maybe the skull was even found when one of them was here.’ He turned to the doctor. ‘I know this is a ridiculous question, but is it possible to know whether this person died of natural causes?’
The doctor did not seem to find this ridiculous. ‘Well, she didn’t die from a head injury, that much is certain. The bones are whole and uncracked. The teeth suggest that she was a young person, so it wasn’t old age. The teeth are also in decent condition, so the individual took good care of them. However, it’s impossible to say whether she died through illness, injury or human intervention. Hopefully it’ll be explained when we know more about the origin of the skull. The fact that it’s here definitely points to her death occurring under unusual circumstances. In the normal way of things, the bones would have been interred in a graveyard, because they’re found in most, if not all of the settlements in this country, as they are elsewhere.’
Thóra heard familiar footsteps approaching in the corridor. Bella appeared in the doorway, an unfathomable look on her face. ‘There are bones in all of the desks except for five,’ she said, not appearing overly surprised. Matthew had assigned her the task of exploring the other rooms in the office building in the unlikely event that more skulls could be found, or the rest of the skeleton. None of them had thought that anything would come of it. ‘The drawers were all locked, but Friðrikka told me that they all had the same lock – she gave me a key that she found in one of the rooms and it worked for all of them. I didn’t want to touch the bones, so you’ll have to come with me if you want to see them for yourselves.’
‘It appears to be a complete skeleton.’ The doctor clearly had no idea how to deal with this new discovery. ‘It’s possible, of course, that it’s missing something, but all the main bones are certainly here. Closer examination will reveal whether they are all from the same individual, but I would consider it likely.’
‘It will have to wait,’ Matthew said firmly. ‘We’re not going to touch the bones, and we will leave this to the police.’ He shut the drawer of the last of the desks that Bella had pointed out. ‘Actually, we should have left the skull alone, but we can’t undo that now.’ He watched the doctor place it carefully back in the desk and close the drawer.
The wind blew something against the side of the building and its foundations creaked. Thóra shuddered; the storm was about to hit – that was certain. The windows on the side of the office building facing into the wind shuddered at regular intervals, and each time Thóra was convinced that a shower of glass would rain over them. She realized she was, discreetly, keeping as far away from the windows as possible. Accompanying the whine of the wind was a regular knocking sound from the roof, which the doctor had thought was probably a loose piece of roofing. Thóra found the sound unpleasant and its regularity and pitch grated more and more on her nerves. She would rather the piece flew off and let a little snow in than have this sound constantly in her ears.
Friðrikka and Eyjólfur had come over to the office building while Finnbogi was in the middle of examining the bones, but both of them denied knowing anything about them. They both seemed convincing and sincere in their amazement as they stood in the little vestibule and brushed most of the snow from their clothing. When Matthew had quizzed them about the discovery without finding out anything new, and they had been allowed to see the remains for themselves, it was decided that Eyjólfur should inspect the computer system and try to establish contact with the outside world. Friðrikka, in the meantime, would assess the status of the project. The bones’ discovery did not change the purpose of the trip.
‘Does anyone know how long the storm is supposed to last?’ asked Thóra, looking out into the heavy blizzard. It was starting to grow light, although visibility was still poor because of the snow. ‘We can’t investigate the area much if it keeps coming down like this.’ Just that moment another gust struck the window, making it wobble.
‘I think it’s supposed to subside tonight,’ said Matthew. ‘It can hardly continue much longer than that.’
The doctor snorted loudly. ‘Storms here can last much longer than half a day. You might as well resign yourselves to this one lasting for days. Hopefully it won’t – but you never know.’
Thóra scowled. ‘Oh, that’s just
great
.’ She put down her camera. Data collection had begun, and although it wasn’t entirely clear to her how photos of the bones in the drawers could help the bank and Berg Technology in their negotiations with Arctic Mining, it might. Admittedly, it could affect the status of the negotiations if the employees of the Icelandic company appeared at worst to be connected to a possible crime, and at best guilty of unseemly conduct with a corpse. ‘I think I’ll go through the office of one of the missing drillers,’ said Thóra to Matthew. ‘Shouldn’t we start with them, just in case there’s something there that could possibly help us find them? You can take the other one.’
They both looked at the doctor. What should he do? Each of them was clearly reluctant to trust a stranger with their own project. The doctor, seeming to sense this, straightened up ceremoniously. ‘Well, I need to collect samples from the taps and elsewhere. We may very well find
Legionella pneumophila
in the pipes.’ Thóra and Matthew stared at him blankly. ‘Legionnaires’ disease,’ he explained. ‘The bacteria thrives well in little-used plumbing systems and may even have infected the men. The conditions here are ideal for it.’
‘And then they evaporated as a result?’ asked Thóra.
‘No, but they might have tried to seek help and then become too exhausted to reach their destination. Legionnaires’ is a dangerous disease and can even be fatal if left untreated. Or perhaps they made it to a hospital somewhere and couldn’t get in touch with anyone due to their illness.’
Thóra didn’t fancy coffee any more, even if the water came from melted snow rather than the camp’s plumbing system. She and Matthew went to search the offices of the two drillers and discovered quickly that they had shared one room. On the way they passed Eyjólfur, who was sitting in the corridor in a kind of makeshift computer lab. On the screen before him was an indecipherable menu and the young man’s fingers flew over the keyboard. ‘Is everything all right with the system?’ asked Thóra. ‘We’re going to have a look at some of the employees’ computers and we don’t want to damage anything.’
The young man looked up from the screen and smiled at her. ‘You can’t do any harm,’ he said. ‘The system is all right, except that there’s no Internet connection. The servers were turned off, but they’re undamaged and working properly. You can get into them just fine and that’s where all the data relating to the project should be saved.’ He reached for a pen and paper lying next to the keyboard. Something was scrawled on the paper but he tore off a blank strip. ‘Which computers are you thinking of looking at?’
‘The drillers’, to start with,’ she replied. ‘We’ll probably end up looking at all of them but we want to start there.’
‘Then you need passwords.’ He clicked on the mouse to bring up another menu with the names of the system’s users. ‘I have no idea what passwords everyone had but I’ll change them all to the same one.’ He wrote 1234 on the piece of paper and handed it to Thóra. ‘Just use this; the username should pop up after you boot the computer but give me a shout if that doesn’t happen. This should get you into everything. Except the Internet, which is totally down. I’m starting to think the dish has malfunctioned.’
‘The dish?’ Thóra wasn’t particularly familiar with computer systems.
‘We connect to the Internet via satellite dish, but everything suggests it’s kaput. It’s up on the roof, but no one’s going up there in this weather. Hopefully there’s not much wrong with it, then I should be able to fix this. The phones are dead as well, which means the dish they’re connected to is probably also buggered. Bad weather might have damaged both of them, even though they were probably set up to withstand quite a lot.’
The door of the drillers’ office was decorated with a printed-out photo of a fiery red Formula One car. One corner of it was torn and the paper was starting to turn yellow. Two dark stains had appeared on it from the Blu-Tack used to stick it up. Above it was a plate with the names of the two men, Halldór Grétarsson and Bjarki Elíasson. There was something strange about seeing their names there and knowing that things had probably ended badly for them. Thóra and Matthew went into the office, which was quite large and held two desks. The walls were covered with printed-out jokes and photographs of the two drillers grinning at the camera. As Thóra sat down at one of the computers the thought crept into her mind that the men weren’t laughing now, wherever they were. She booted up the computer.
Chapter 8
20 March 2008
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.