Yrsa Sigurdardóttir - The Day Is Dark

He looked up from the journal. ‘What else did you find out about her?’ He put down the papers. ‘This is all so complicated.’

‘Not much. The drillers only noted down the number of hours spent searching for her. Judging from what I read, they didn’t take part in the search out of the kindness of their hearts, but because the security guard ordered them to. One of them, this Bjarki, wrote something suggesting that they called a halt to the search after a week – the weather had deteriorated so sharply that it had become hopeless. Then I tried looking at the same month in Gísli, the security guard’s journal.’

‘And?’ asked Matthew. ‘Did it reveal anything?’

‘His account is more detailed, at least. He says that the woman was last seen at supper on the evening of October 31st, and no one knew her movements after she left the cafeteria. No one saw where she went, and she didn’t let anyone know her plans. According to him, the documents she was working on were last modified just before midnight that evening, so she was most likely in her office.’

‘Almost certainly, surely, if her computer record said so?’ said Matthew. ‘Could someone else have worked on the documents?’

‘No,’ she replied. ‘The text notes that she could also have been in her apartment, since there’s a wireless connection set up to enable the staff to work if they’re trapped in the residential wing by the weather. Eyjólfur confirmed that that could have been the case, although he can’t tell from the file whether she was connected remotely, or if she was actually in the office. He also said that he should have been able to see whether she’d been working at the desktop or her laptop, but unfortunately the security guard saved the files after opening them and in doing so deleted the information about their previous use.’

‘Damn, that was stupid,’ muttered Matthew.

‘From what I read in Gísli’s journal,’ continued Thóra, ‘she didn’t seem very outdoorsy, but she was accustomed enough to the area not to rush outside without good reason.’

‘Is he suggesting that she intended to die of exposure?’

‘No, that’s not how I understood it,’ she replied. ‘Quite the reverse; he mentions that this Oddný Hildur had been looking forward to going home to her husband and hadn’t been behaving at all unusually. He thought it more likely that there had been an accident. He writes that the measurements from the weather monitor showed that the weather had been quite bad that night, and if the woman had gone out after it worsened she could easily have lost her way among the buildings and wandered farther and farther out into the wilderness.’ Thóra couldn’t help but glance towards the window to check on the weather. ‘He had the other staff members search the area in groups of four, without any luck. After a week the search was called off entirely for fear that other people would get lost in the storm, which had got even worse.’

‘And there was no mention of bones or anything like that?’ asked Matthew. ‘I was wondering whether they might have come across any other human remains during their search.’

‘Not a word. This Gísli would have recorded it in his diary – he appears to have been very thorough in his entries and in his responses to situations. Among other things, he went to Kaanneq to see if the woman might have wandered down there, and he also phoned to request the assistance of the authorities, although understandably they couldn’t do much apart from take down the information.’

‘So there’s nothing more to learn from this?’ Matthew said. ‘Actually, this is just a slightly more detailed description of everything we already knew. The geologist vanished from the camp and no one knows what became of her.’

‘Well, actually there’s a little bit more that could possibly make a difference,’ she corrected him. ‘On 1st November the security guard claims to have found a patch of blood or some other substance on one of the outside walls of the residential wing, where Oddný Hildur’s apartment was. He writes that he has no idea whether it was blood from a person or an animal, or how long the stain had been there, but he does say that he took a sample and was planning to bring it with him to Reykjavík for a DNA test. After that, he forbade the staff from going outside alone – he was afraid a polar bear might be in the area, and that Oddný Hildur had fallen prey to it.’

‘Did he tell the others about this?’ asked Matthew. ‘That’s the first I’ve heard of it.’

‘No. He considered the group’s situation to be so bad that he didn’t want to cause any more unnecessary trouble and risk things boiling over.’

‘He was worried that people would start panicking?’

‘No, he doesn’t say that. His wording is rather odd. I don’t understand why he talks about “causing any more trouble” or things “boiling over” in a group that was out searching for a lost colleague. At least, I would have worded it differently. It’s as if he’s referring to a situation that existed before the woman went missing.’ Thóra clicked on the mouse to bring the screen back up. ‘I searched for the word “DNA” in the months that passed from the woman’s disappearance until the day the group returned home for the last time, and I found one entry in which Gísli calls the results of the test “disappointing”. The sample appears to have been contaminated during transport and no conclusion could be reached other than that it was blood – whether that of an animal or a human being isn’t known. I also searched for the words “polar bear” without result. If it was a polar bear attack, it must have been extremely unlucky, since the security guard’s journal never mentions that such a beast had been seen around here, and surely he would have recorded it if it had.’

‘Hopefully we’ll have a chance to speak to this Gísli when we get back to Iceland. He may very well have information that didn’t make it into that journal.’ Matthew picked up the papers again and thumbed through them. ‘What else did you find?’

‘The drillers’ last entries were rather curt.’ She took the stack of papers from Matthew and flipped through them. ‘Here’s a normal day, with the entries filling two whole pages and containing reports on geology, the weather, the equipment, etc. Here we have the days just before everyone left, with only three sentences: Weather good. Drilling rig on the south slope, L-3. No progress, need advice on an unusual find . Other entries up until the date they stopped filling in the journals are similar. No output, worked on the find .’ Thóra looked at Matthew. ‘It isn’t clear whether this find was geological or something entirely different.’

‘Such as?’ Matthew read over the journal entry.

‘Maybe the body of Oddný Hildur?’ replied Thóra calmly.

‘Isn’t that stretching things a bit?’ He gave her a sceptical look.

‘Yes, if I’d only had these daily reports to go on,’ she said. ‘However, I found something else that supports this theory.’ She didn’t waste any time describing what she meant, but instead turned to the screen and brought up an image file labelled D & G . Eyjólfur had assured her that it did not stand for Dolce & Gabbana, but Drilling and Grouting. She pointed out one of the images to Matthew. At first it looked like nothing but ice on the screen, but if you looked closer you could see clenched fingers in a block of ice. Before he could say anything Thóra hurriedly brought up the list of file names for the photographs taken that day. ‘Look here. Based on the file numbers, it seems as though the next twenty images have been erased.’ She looked at Matthew. ‘I don’t have a clue who would have done that or why, but one thing is certain – it’s a human hand, and whoever it belonged to is not alive.’