The Day is Dark (30 page)

‘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.

Chapter 24

22 March 2008

The hotel in Kulusuk would never be listed among the finest in the world, but it was clean and tidy and, most importantly, it had a shower. Thóra hoped the hot water wasn’t too expensive, because it was impossible for her to drag herself away from the jet. The soap foamed on the enamelled shower floor as Thóra tried to scrub off the imaginary film that had seemed to cover her entire body. To her it felt as though the revulsion she’d experienced at the work site had clung to her and refused to leave. If she could just wash it off, she could also wipe away the memory of the hole in the body of that poor man, lying in a freezer at the ends of the earth. She knew it was just an illusion caused by fatigue and hunger but that didn’t stop her from scouring her body over and over again. Finally she had no energy for more; she put down the soap and stood with her eyes closed, letting the water play over her. However, she couldn’t stay there under the shower until they were permitted to leave the country, so in the end Thóra composed herself and turned off the water. She wrapped herself in a large towel, her body steaming wherever her bare flesh showed. She quickly got goosebumps from the cool air flowing in through the bathroom window, which thankfully she had left open, otherwise she would be in a sauna now. As she rubbed most of the water from her hair she looked into the bedroom and saw Matthew lying asleep on the turned-down bed. So that was the reason he hadn’t come to see what was taking her so long in the shower. It was late in the evening and the hour they had been given to rest before coming down to the dining room for supper was long past. Not that supper was really the right word – midnight snack was more like it. The day seemed as if it would never end, and they had either forgotten or not had time to eat in the afternoon. Since returning to the office building from the freezer so much had happened that details like food were neglected.

The police had turned up about an hour after Thóra, Matthew and Finnbogi returned from their scientific expedition to the freezer. Thóra had been so shocked to see what was beneath the plastic that she’d had to lie down in the meeting room when they got there. Now she regretted not having waited outside as Matthew had advised her to do while they inspected the corpse. The hole through the body had been so surreal that it took her a long time to accept what she saw over Matthew and Finnbogi’s shoulders. The wound was relatively clean and the edges not all ragged as she would have thought would be the case with such an injury. Strangely, it was the fact that the hole was so clean that made it so horrendous; the man was like a cartoon character who had been shot through with a cannonball, except that there was nothing funny about it. Thóra wasn’t alone in finding it all rather unpleasant; not a trace of a smile appeared on the lips of the policemen who came from Angmagssalik.

As Thóra dressed in a skirt and elegant blouse, which she hoped would be all right since they were in a hotel, she recalled how the policemen had questioned them. Five of them came on the same helicopter that had transported the group to the area, and the helicopter was made to wait. Two of them were pilots, the others police officers: two Greenlanders and the third a Dane. One of the Greenlanders questioned Thóra and although he had been extremely courteous, Thóra could have done without going through this particular experience. She’d been present at interrogations several times before, but always in the role of duty solicitor. Actually it was interesting to be interrogated, although she probably would not appreciate it until some time had passed. She had behaved precisely like most of her clients, getting over-excited and trying too eagerly to assist them and prove that she’d done nothing wrong. Throughout the questioning she was wholly convinced that the police officer suspected her of having murdered the man in the freezer, and of being responsible for both the bones in the office and the disappearance of the three Icelanders. All because she felt guilty for having re-entered the freezer against their instructions. Thóra had trusted herself completely to avoid answering if asked what they’d done after phoning the police, but she was worried about Finnbogi. Matthew would never admit their minor transgression, but she knew the doctor well enough to guess how he would react under such pressure.

In the end Thóra had recalled her own advice to those whom she assisted in such circumstances – answer only what is asked. Moreover, she had added nothing, and simply stared at the desk between her and the officer after replying to his questions. On the table lay several of the objects that they had found on the drilling rig, which Matthew had handed over as soon as the police appeared. Thóra had asked the policeman if he had any idea whether they were connected to the case, and the man had shrugged and told her that they were obviously old relics and it was unlikely to be relevant. For example, he told her, pointing to the bone with the two drilled holes and the leather strap, these were the goggles hunters used to wear to protect their eyes against snowblindness. No one used them now, as they were much clumsier than modern snow goggles. Thóra could understand that; she would have to have been blinded in both eyes by the snow before she wore a contraption like that. After the questioning she felt greatly relieved as she returned to the meeting room, where they had been told to wait. She had neither been questioned about what they had done while waiting for the police nor about how many times they had gone into the freezer. The questions mainly concerned what business they had there, what they had learned and why they hadn’t made contact with the police until that morning.

Thóra had explained that the telephone connection had been out and that the Greenlandic police had been informed about the situation before she and her colleagues set off on their trip, but had not seen fit to come to the work camp, to which the man replied that they had more important things to deal with than searching for missing persons in the mountains; these cases were not usually their business, though they did officially register them. Thóra and her colleagues, however, should have got in touch with them when they found the human bones in the office. Then it would have been clear to everyone that this case was about more than a few Icelanders getting lost in a snowstorm. Thóra had justified their decision by saying that the bones hadn’t seemed that significant, since everyone could see that they were ancient. They had thus thought it sufficient to notify the police about them after making phone contact, and that is what they had done. Moreover, she had said triumphantly, they had left the bones more or less undisturbed so as not to spoil the police investigation. The Greenlander had then looked at Thóra as if she were an idiot and told her that the bones were far from ancient. Although they still needed to be examined by a specialist, it was clear that the individual to whom they belonged was from this generation. Thóra had been flabbergasted and asked why he thought this; the police officer informed her that there were two dental implants in the woman’s lower jaw. So it was out of the question that this skull was from a past generation. Thóra’s only response to this information was: ‘Oh.’ Dr Finnbogi was apparently not quite as smart as he pretended to be. Or in any case, he had completely missed the false teeth.

Thinking back on it, she recalled that Finnbogi had focused on the skull itself and for the most part neglected the lower jaw. His determination of the gender of the individual had mattered more than its teeth. If what the policeman said was true, it was still possible that the bones belonged to Oddný Hildur. Maybe the doctor had simply been wrong about their age. Thóra recalled that he had based his opinion on how clean the bones were, but it was conceivable that external factors had caused the corpse to decompose faster than usual. She doubted this, however. Oddný Hildur had disappeared earlier that winter and it was unlikely that the temperature had ever climbed above freezing since then. Maybe wild animals had picked clean the bones, but then the jawbone would likely not have been found with the skull, as Dr Finnbogi had said. In any case, one thing was certain: if these were the bones of Oddný Hildur, the employees of Berg Technology were a bunch of weirdos. Thóra had decided not to ask Friðrikka whether her friend had had any crowns, fearing that the question would cause the woman to break down completely. It was a miracle that Friðrikka had pretty much held it together while the police performed their duties; Thóra had doubted she’d bear up under interrogation. And when it came to it she’d actually felt the same about Eyjólfur; the young man had paced the floor of the meeting room while waiting his turn, muttering that he knew nothing about this and shouldn’t have come. Throughout all this, the fluorescent light kept on flickering. None of it, however, seemed to disturb Bella. She even appeared to be rather looking forward to her turn. Thóra was thankful that they had told the others they were only going to fetch water from the cafeteria, since she could rely on Bella to tell the police everything just to get her boss into trouble.