Yrsa Sigurdardóttir - The Day Is Dark

On the way to the car Friðrikka opened the door to the drilling rig’s cab. They could see through the window that no one was inside it, either alive or dead. Nevertheless, she wanted to have a look inside in case the drillers had left behind a notebook or any other clues that could explain what they were doing. She said that they’d all been careful to record things as they went along, because it was difficult to rely on memory alone when it came to writing it all up in their journals in the evenings. Matthew followed Friðrikka and Thóra saw him climb into the cab after they seemed to have spotted something.

‘Did you find anything?’ called out Thóra to Friðrikka, who was still standing outside the cab.

‘Yes,’ replied the geologist. ‘Now I’m completely at a loss.’

The therapist was too experienced to have much sympathy for Arnar’s story, which perhaps was not strange, considering how short this binge had been. He simply had little to say. The man appeared almost disappointed, as though he had expected something more exciting. It occurred to Arnar to indulge his need for ingratiating himself with others and come up with something to ignite a spark in the therapist’s eyes. He had enough to draw on from the past few years and it would be no problem to recount something juicy. But that’s not what he did. In the self-examination that he’d undergone during his last treatment he had discovered that life was much simpler when you realized that you couldn’t please everyone – and that there was no reason to do so. His own well-being was just as important as anyone else’s. He needed to keep that firmly in mind until the day dawned when his first thought was not how good it would feel to have a drink.

‘I know you’re aware that every time you lapse, you pick up where you left off last time. The past few weeks have shown you that in black and white.’ The therapist held Arnar’s gaze as if to emphasize the importance of what he was saying. The effect was lessened somewhat by the way his eyes kept flickering up to the clock. It was never good to hold a session just before lunch.

The therapist’s eyes were slightly protruding and Arnar had the discomfiting thought that all the tales of sorrow and misfortune he’d had to listen to had filled his entire skull and now pressed against the backs of his eyes. After a few years his tongue and ears might also pop out. Arnar wondered whether he was experiencing delirium tremens, so vivid was this mental image. He shook himself slightly to get rid of it. ‘I know,’ he said, unsure what else to say. ‘This is pathetic.’ He could not concentrate and it was the best he could come up with.

‘Yes, it’s pathetic,’ echoed the therapist, equally uninspired. ‘You’ll have to start from scratch, and now it’s clear that you’ll have to be more diligent about attending meetings than you have been in the past few years.’ He rubbed his forehead, trying to appear serious and intelligent and concerned about Arnar’s recovery. But he just looked like a hungry man with bulging eyes.

‘It was hard to find a meeting in the middle of a glacier.’ Arnar had investigated whether there were any AA meetings anywhere near the work site but the nearest had been in Angmagssalik, and it was far too much trouble to go there. So he had used CD recordings of American meetings, which had helped considerably, even though it wasn’t the same as attending a meeting with other addicts. Defeated people had more powers of dissuasion than mere words – as did the joy in the eyes of those who had overcome their problems, at least for the time being.

‘A glacier?’ The therapist had apparently forgotten Arnar’s story, or had not heard a single word of it. Perhaps the overcrowding in his skull made it impossible for him to absorb new information.

‘I was working in Greenland.’ Arnar couldn’t care less about the therapist’s lack of interest, which made this even more awkward. ‘But I didn’t fall off the wagon there.’

‘No, that’s right.’ The therapist’s expression was completely blank. ‘Are you aware of what it was that led you back to the bottle?’

‘Yes.’ Arnar did not want to share that story with the man. He had had enough and was starting to look forward to lunch himself. He didn’t know if it was his imagination, but it seemed as though the smell of food was being carried all the way to them from the cafeteria. ‘But I don’t care to discuss it.’ No doubt the therapist would quickly lose his appetite if Arnar started to describe the events leading to his fall. Terrible, mindless vengeance and violence – and not from someone who kills for survival but from him, a supposedly civilized human being. And towards his colleagues, too… He felt sick when he recalled the reasons behind his actions. But though the others’ behaviour towards him had been disgraceful, he alone was responsible for what had happened. And for that, he couldn’t blame alcohol. Drunkenness did not get the ball rolling; that happened when in his ignorance he let himself be overwhelmed by hatred and ignore everything but his own lust for revenge.

Bella was the only one who was not impressed by Thóra’s expedition with the others. She curled her lip so that no one could doubt how boring she found their story. But Thóra could sense something else behind Bella’s contempt: she envied their little field trip. She had been left behind with Eyjólfur to make a list of all the computers and other technical equipment at the camp, which was the first step in trying to determine the monetary value of it all. The two of them had gone from room to room; he had announced what was there and she had written it down, no doubt with a face like thunder. The doctor had continued to make his sample collection, which he alone controlled and understood fully.

‘So you think that the corpse of the geologist who disappeared had been where they were planning to drill?’ asked the doctor in a rather sceptical tone. ‘That would mean this photo could be of a work glove.’ He put down the poor-quality printout of the photo: the colours were odd and the image itself grainy.

Eyjólfur snorted. ‘Yes, precisely. I think that you should look at the image on the screen; this printout is shitty. Onscreen you can see the nails in better resolution – albeit vaguely, but still.’

‘Yes, no doubt,’ said the doctor, although his tone didn’t suggest that he believed it. ‘This is all just too incredible. What are the chances of boring one little hole in that place and hitting exactly upon the spot where the woman died of exposure?’

‘Little to none.’ Friðrikka still looked worn out from the trip. ‘Actually, they drilled more than one hole, and in more than one place. But it would certainly be a huge coincidence.’

‘Could your friend, Oddný Hildur, have got lost in the storm but then realized she was in the vicinity of the shed? Could she have been searching for it to use as shelter?’ Thóra knew as soon as she said this that such a scenario was beyond absurd. The distance was far too great for one person to make it safe and sound through a storm.

Friðrikka shook her head. Her red hair was dirty – as was all their hair, in fact. ‘No. When Oddný Hildur disappeared the shed was located elsewhere. It gets moved after every drilling. I’m not sure when it was put where it is now but it was after I quit. When I left the drilling rig the shed had been a bit further north for several months, in a place where drilling was coming to an end.’

‘Then couldn’t she have been heading there?’ asked Matthew. ‘And simply given up at the point where the shed is now?’

‘If so, then she strayed a long way from the camp,’ exclaimed Eyjólfur. ‘That’s too far to go on foot. I can’t imagine how she could have made it that far; the weather was absolutely abominable.’