Yrsa Sigurdardóttir - The Day Is Dark

He vaguely recalled having rung the Alcoholics Anonymous emergency helpline, but he had no idea what had inspired him to do so. He had been a slave to alcohol since he took his first sip as a teenager, and could only ever recall flashes of what happened while he drank – and those scraps of memory generally caused him hellish torment. What little he remembered was always utterly humiliating. He tried to forget about why he might have called and content himself with being grateful that he had. Who knew where he would have been at this moment if he had never made the call – and he didn’t want to know. Every drink pushed him further and further into a dark corner of society, and the space between drinks had been reduced to almost nothing by the time he picked up the phone. He looked around the Spartan room. He had sworn never to have to visit such a room again, but that vow had been washed away with his first sip of beer, along with his self-respect. There was nothing else to do but renew the vow. One day at a time, go to the meetings, listen to the others and eventually open up. However, he would not, for the time being, speak up. Right now his self-esteem was too low for that. The last thing he wanted was to start bawling like a little girl in front of others who were in the same boat. That would be just ridiculous. He could not feel sorry for himself; he had managed to make a mess of things entirely unaided. He had held his life in his own two hands, but instead of nurturing it he’d decided to squeeze his fists and crush it. He would settle for listening to stories of families falling apart, missed opportunities and junkies’ hard-luck stories.

Arnar was dying for one sweet little drink. Just one glass. One fucking glass. This was costing him enough as it was and one glass now and then could hardly make a difference. What a fucking idiot he was, calling AA. If he’d skipped it, he’d be sinking a cool one right now. Detox and rehab were maybe not the way to go. There were probably other types of treatment, aimed at teaching compulsives like him how to get to grips with drinking less. It wasn’t the first glass that caused the problem, but the many more that inevitably followed. As this thought subsided, he recalled what had inspired him to pick up the phone. He had done something unforgivable. His business with the AA people had not been a cry for help, but rather a chance to talk to someone about the interpretation of Steps 8 and 9: ‘ Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all… Made direct amends to such people whenever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others .’ Too late. It was far too late for that. A chill crept through his heart and it seemed as if the blood in his veins had thickened. He waited until it was totally frozen and he felt like he had when he was in Greenland. Then he left his room to join the meeting, with its flickering promise of redemption.

Thóra had been at the computer for hours and felt no closer to discovering anything. Like any other IT system, it was characterized by numerous files that were impossible for strangers to figure out; it didn’t help that most of them existed in many different versions. So she had called on Eyjólfur to help get her going, and he had willingly granted her a little insight into how the system was arranged. It was broadly divided into four areas: photographs, journals – which everyone was required to keep – records related to the project, and finally employees’ personal documents.

Thóra decided to start with the journals, which were most likely to contain decipherable information. She thought it best to wait with the project and work files, as well as the personal documents. Eyjólfur had told her the latter category had caused system problems, since the music and video files the staff liked to download took up so much disk space. Out of curiosity Thóra opened one folder entitled ‘Doddi’ and in return got a dauntingly long list of files of various kinds. Before he left her, Eyjólfur informed her that the staff had been discouraged from saving non-essential files onto the hard drives of their computers. They wouldn’t make a backup of all the files from each machine – only from the central server.

Thóra pored over the files, promptly copied what she considered important and sent it to the printer that Eyjólfur said was located in the corridor. He promised to make sure that no one took the pages, and even regularly brought her the printouts. After rushing through the journals, she nosed around a bit in the other categories and found a file or two that also appeared meaningful, so she would have something to show Matthew when he came back. He had gone to inspect the offices for traces of blood, leaving her alone in the drillers’ room. ‘I found one office that I’m almost sure is the one in the video. When you look at it closely you can tell someone has tried to clean up after an absolute bloodbath. There are splotches on the folders and signs that the walls and floor have been wiped down with a rag or something. Obviously I don’t have any ultraviolet equipment to illuminate biological material, but I don’t think there’s any doubt what the stains are. There’s a video camera on the desk, still connected to the computer. I didn’t dare mess with the camera, but it’s fairly obvious that it’s the one that took the video.’

‘What does this mean?’ Thóra stretched her back out. She’d been sitting bent over for too long.

‘I don’t quite understand it, but I’ve locked the room and we’ll simply leave it to the police to investigate as they see fit. We are neither equipped to conduct a police investigation, nor is it our responsibility. They’ve simply got to come out here. We can’t solve a case like this, so we should simply focus on the aspects of it that affect the progress and survival of the project. As soon as we get in touch with the police I’ll demand that they send a team here.’ Matthew looked at the screen in front of Thóra. ‘But how’s it been going for you?’

‘I don’t quite get all of this but I think I’ve found some documents that could make a difference,’ said Thóra, proudly tapping the small stack of papers on the table. ‘To go over all the files with a magnifying glass would take much longer than we have. I didn’t really look at anything in detail apart from the journals and part of the drillers’ files, and even that was rather haphazard. Of course I also checked some of the files belonging to Gísli Pálsson, who was responsible for security on site. I found his name on an organization chart in a folder of general files.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Matthew, ‘Eyjólfur is copying all the files for us, so it doesn’t matter if we overlook something now.’ Thóra was rather relieved to hear this. ‘Fine. I haven’t quite got my bearings but I decided to focus on the disappearance of the three employees while I’m learning the system. I didn’t actually find anything out yet, but I’m a little bit closer.’ She handed him a printout from the driller Bjarki’s journal. ‘Eyjólfur told me the geologist disappeared on the 31st of October last year, so I looked carefully at that month and November. I also went carefully over the preceding two months in the hope of discovering something that could explain the disappearance of the two men, but I didn’t find much. I also looked over the security guard’s journals for the same period because I thought it was odd that there wasn’t much in the drillers’ journals about the woman going missing. I don’t know whether her disappearance is at all related to theirs, but if it’s one of the reasons that the staff can’t be persuaded to return, it would be well worth spending some time exploring what actually happened to her. Who knows, maybe the staff can be convinced to return if we can find an explanation. Then the bank would be saved.’ She looked at Matthew. ‘The woman who disappeared was named Oddný Hildur.’