Yrsa Sigurdardóttir - The Day Is Dark

In the camp’s main office building computers whirred; desks bore signs that the workers had had no suspicion that they would never return. Half-empty coffee mugs were left here and there and fleece jackets hung on the backs of chairs. Everything was silent, except for the faint buzzing of the computers and the occasional beeping of the fire alarm system. When they looked at it, it seemed to be flagging up a fire in the smokers’ room, which they found near the main entrance with Friðrikka’s assistance. There was no fire there, but the window had been left ajar, which had let in enough snow to cover the floor. The men’s disappearance couldn’t be attributed to a fire. The geologist informed them that the security system was sensitive and could have been set off by the unexpected ingression of snow into the building. Likewise, the smoke detectors were very sensitive to cigar and pipe smoke. On the other hand, Friðrikka thought it strange that no one had shut off that intolerable beeping – resetting the system could not be that difficult. Most likely, the alarm had gone off after the two men disappeared from the camp. According to Friðrikka they both smoked, and thus could have left the window open after their final cigarettes in there. Bella was furious at the snow-filled room since it was now impossible to smoke inside the office building, but her anger was largely appeased when Friðrikka told her that there was another little lounge for smokers in the cafeteria and residential wing. However, Bella was prohibited from going there alone until everything had been checked out, which made her grumpy again. ‘Then I’ll just have to smoke outside on this fucking tundra,’ she muttered, putting on her coat to go out and do just that.

‘I don’t know how advisable it is for you to go out alone,’ said the doctor gravely. ‘We have no idea what occurred here, and there could well have been a polar bear outside that attacked the men.’ This warning seemed to give Bella no pause, and she continued wrapping herself up for her trip outside. ‘Not to mention how unhealthy smoking is,’ added the doctor, in the hope of a better reception.

Bella stiffened as she zipped up her coat. Her expression was not one of panic, but anger. She looked straight at the doctor, resentfully. ‘I can’t smoke in here?’ she asked. When she received no answer she bent down once more and pulled on her other boot. ‘I didn’t think so. Either I smoke in here or I go out.’ She finished getting ready as Thóra, Matthew, Friðrikka and the doctor watched in silence, and then stormed out after flinging them one last grumpy look.

‘I’m more worried about the polar bear, if they do cross paths,’ said Thóra as the door closed.

They continued inspecting the office building, and after looking into all the rooms Friðrikka declared that everything but the smokers’ room appeared normal. One thing struck Thóra as they rambled through the building – as far as she could see, the speckled linoleum was exactly like that visible in the video clip. She exchanged glances with Matthew and he nodded his head to indicate that he had also noticed this. On the other hand, there appeared to be no traces of blood in the rooms; although the group had only done a cursory inspection, it didn’t pay to arouse the suspicion of the geologist by inspecting the walls for signs of blood spatter. It could wait.

Although everything appeared normal in the office building, it was a different story in the employees’ quarters and the cafeteria. These were, respectively, little green buildings that most resembled container units and a larger building that had been put together from similar units. The larger building contained the staff’s communal facilities: kitchen, cafeteria, lounge, gym and laundry room. Attached to the large building was a long wing of rooms with simple sleeping accommodation. Friðrikka told them that the buildings with separate entrances were effectively apartments. Those who stayed here for longer periods lived in them; they had a bedroom, a bathroom with a shower, a little sitting room and a kitchenette. The rooms on the wing were more modest: a bed and a locker, with a shared shower and toilet at the end of the wing.

These rooms were occupied by those who stayed for shorter periods, and occasionally regular staff when storms raged and it was inadvisable to go outside, even to get from the cafeteria to the apartments. Thóra said nothing when she heard this, but was quite surprised, since the small apartments were only a few dozen metres away. If people couldn’t make it safely such a short distance in bad weather, she hoped that the impending storm would pass over quickly. She frowned when Friðrikka added that sometimes these storms could last for days. They decided to stay in the rooms on the wing, so as not to tamper with the apartments of the people who might conceivably return to work there. If they weren’t able to restore power to the sleeping wing they would set themselves up in the office building, since without power it was twenty degrees below inside as well as outside. The most probable explanation for the lack of heat in the employees’ quarters was that the generator supplying power was either broken or out of fuel, and Matthew, Dr Finnbogi and Alvar went to try to get it working again. Thóra, Friðrikka and Eyjólfur remained behind in the office, along with Bella, who had returned safely from her fag break.

The four of them stood in the little coffee room that had been set up in a nook in a corridor of the office building. The large coffeemaker was turned on and there was nothing preventing them from pressing a button and making coffee except that the doctor had explicitly prohibited them from doing so. He considered it unwise to consume anything in the camp while the fate of the two employees was still unclear. Thóra thought this unnecessarily dramatic; all of the rooms and living quarters had been inspected and had revealed no signs of the missing men. People did not simply evaporate from food poisoning or sickness, she thought privately; but she didn’t dare make herself a coffee, even though she was parched and knew that her hangover, which was finally decreasing in intensity, would disappear almost entirely if she had a coffee or something stronger.

‘The system was actually divided into two to ensure that the entire area would not lose power all at once,’ said Friðrikka, breaking the silence. ‘There is a separate generator for the office and another for the apartments and cafeteria. Everything here is heated with electric radiators, and even though the houses are well insulated, it gets cold quickly when the electricity goes off. But electrical failures don’t matter; we have a huge oil tank that is supposed to be enough to supply both generators through the winter, but if spring arrives late we have to shut one of them down until a ship can bring more supplies.’

‘Did that happen often while you were here?’ asked Thóra. ‘The electricity going off?’

‘No, no,’ replied Friðrikka. ‘At first there was some trouble with the exhaust pipe of one of the generators and the electricity went out when wind blew into the pipe, but that was repaired quickly. The system worked fine after that but I don’t know how things went after I quit. Maybe something was already going wrong then.’

‘No, I don’t think so,’ interjected Eyjólfur. ‘I was here two weeks ago and no one mentioned anything like that.’

‘Could the generator have run out of oil?’ asked Thóra, directing her question at Friðrikka. ‘And that’s why it shut down?’ She wanted to look outside, satisfy herself that the storm hadn’t hit yet.

‘No, that’s impossible,’ the other woman replied. ‘Spring’s still a long way off and there should be plenty of oil, unless someone badly miscalculated.’