Yrsa Sigurdardóttir - The Day Is Dark

Finnbogi took a deep breath before continuing. ‘I found a list with the names of the mothers, I think, and she’d put ticks against all of them. She’d probably got her samples, even though there are no results recorded there. She’s hardly likely to have had the necessary equipment here to identify the substances in the blood. I don’t know if she made several trips here and stored the samples elsewhere in the meantime, or whether they were still here when she disappeared. It actually doesn’t matter. New samples can always be taken from the mothers.’

‘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.

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.