Yrsa Sigurdardóttir - The Day Is Dark

‘I don’t understand half of what they’re saying but it seems fairly innocent.’ Matthew yawned. ‘Shouldn’t we just go to bed? We might very well have to wake up early tomorrow morning if the police have got anywhere in their investigation.’ Thóra stopped the video. ‘I doubt they’ve found anything. We were there for days and we didn’t make much progress.’

‘They have better equipment than us. They can detect blood and handle everything that we didn’t want to touch. And you never know, they might have sent additional personnel from the crime lab, and even sniffer dogs. I know that’s what I would do if I were conducting the investigation on behalf of the police.’

Thóra sighed. ‘Let me cling on to the hope that I’ll get to sleep in tomorrow. Please.’

Matthew bent closer to the computer. ‘What is this?’ He pointed at the clip that had been stopped on the screen. ‘Is this a part of the joke?’

Thóra also moved closer to see what he meant. The two men were frozen in strange positions, one with his eyes closed and his cigar raised, the other reaching for the ashtray, revealing dark sweat stains in his armpits. However, it wasn’t either of the men that had drawn Matthew’s attention, but something in the dark window behind them. ‘Is it possible to enlarge this?’ Matthew had got as close as he could without blocking the screen in front of Thóra. ‘That looks like some kind of weird figure outside the window.’

Thóra peered at the image. ‘Oh? I don’t see anything.’ She squinted to try to get a better look. ‘Oh yes. Is that a mask or a helmet?’

‘Maybe a snowmobile helmet.’ Matthew pointed at the area directly above the vague figure. ‘There’s something else. He seems to be dragging something along the window.’ He looked at Thóra and hurriedly added: ‘Or she. There’s no way to tell.’

Thóra tilted her head back a little and looked at the date of the clip. ‘This was made on the same day that Oddný Hildur disappeared.’ She set the clip in motion again and they watched the strange being move quickly past the window and out of sight. Whatever it had been dragging behind it left an irregular dark streak on the windowpane. ‘Could this be related to her disappearance? If it’s not an employee, then it’s possible that it might have been someone who wished to do them harm.’

‘Isn’t that rather far-fetched?’ Matthew straightened up as the clip finished. ‘It’s probably something related to the joke, or an employee of Berg.’

‘We can find out.’ Thóra stood up. ‘It would be best to have Friðrikka and Eyjólfur look at it. Since it was uploaded on the same day that Oddný Hildur disappeared, they would both have been on site, and I’m guessing that everyone followed this blog.’

‘Everyone but Arnar,’ said Matthew. ‘He would hardly have been waiting with bated breath for the next entry.’

‘No, hardly. We have to speak to him. It seems to me that if he tells us what could get him to return to work, it would be child’s play to persuade the other workers to do the same.’

Friðrikka and Eyjólfur watched the video without a word until the very end, when the figure appeared outside the window. ‘What was that?’ said Eyjólfur.

‘We were hoping you could tell us,’ said Thóra. They were all grouped together in front of the computer. Alvar and Bella were standing at the back but tried to peek over the others’ shoulders. ‘Haven’t you seen the video before? It looks as if it was made the day that Oddný Hildur disappeared.’

‘I vaguely remember it but I don’t think I watched it all the way to the end.’ Eyjólfur rubbed his forehead as if to reactivate his memory. ‘If I remember correctly this came in an e-mail from either Bjarki or Dóri, but it was sent just before supper so I didn’t open it until the next day. There was so much going on because of Oddný Hildur’s disappearance that I only looked at it for a second. At least, if I did watch the whole video I didn’t notice that thing in the window. And I didn’t feel inclined to watch the clip on their blog because I don’t look at every single post.’

‘How about you?’ Matthew turned to Friðrikka. ‘Do you recognize this?’

‘No. Like Eyjólfur said, I had other things to think about when I got the e-mail. And I didn’t even open it when I saw it was just more of their nonsense. They were always putting up some rubbish or other and I was in no mood for their childish humour. I certainly remember receiving the e-mail, because it struck me how inappropriate their jokes could be at times.’

‘Well, obviously they didn’t know what was around the corner when they sent this out,’ said Eyjólfur sharply. ‘It would have been different if they had sent it out the next day, when we’d discovered that Oddný Hildur was gone.’

Thóra interrupted in order to prevent yet another argument between Eyjólfur and Friðrikka. ‘But do you have any idea of what this is in the window? Is it one of you who worked there, or an outsider?’ She added quickly: ‘What I mean is, do you remember the video being discussed the day after it was sent; maybe someone mentioned having taken part in the joke?’

They both shook their heads. ‘We didn’t talk about it,’ said Friðrikka, ‘and I sincerely doubt that any others were in on it. It was always just the two of them.’

Eyjólfur seemed put out that Friðrikka was doing the talking. ‘None of us was at the window and the smokers’ room was a long way from any paths. You’d only be approaching that window if you specifically wanted to look in, for some reason. Actually, you can’t see the person very clearly but I would be very surprised if it was one of us. We appreciated the heat indoors too much to be messing around outside in the cold. Also, it looks as if this person has something weird on his head and covering his face and that doesn’t fit either. I mean, why would any of us do that?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe to scare the men?’ Thóra rewound the video slightly and stopped it at the point where the figure had gone and the streak was left behind on the windowpane. ‘Do you remember maybe seeing this streak on the window?’

Both Friðrikka and Eyjólfur moved closer. ‘No, not when Oddný Hildur disappeared.’ Eyjólfur straightened up. ‘Bjarki said he’d found dried blood on the window, but that was a bit later. Of course we would have wanted to take a look at it if it had been connected with her disappearance. He noticed it when he went into the room to smoke and thought it had been made by a bird that had flown into the window. He was asking us whether we’d heard some sort of thud. I can’t remember exactly when that happened but it wasn’t while we were searching. That was when we spent the least amount of time in the office building.’

‘So that streak could well be the same one that appeared in the video,’ said Matthew. ‘If you weren’t in the office building much, the smokers’ room would have been empty. And if the window is far from the paths between the buildings, as you were saying, then the streak couldn’t have been seen except from inside.’

Friðrikka paled. ‘Do you think that it’s blood from Oddný Hildur?’

‘Hardly, if the e-mail was sent before supper. Wasn’t she with you at supper?’ As far as Thóra could recall, Oddný Hildur had last been observed when she ate with the others. After that she’d either gone to her apartment or over to the office building and never been seen again.

‘Yes, but I couldn’t say whether the e-mail had come by then. It could just as well have gone out later in the evening. Sometimes people went over to the office building to work or surf the Internet in the evenings.’ Eyjólfur sat down at the computer and brought up some information about the video, including when it was created. ‘If you want, I can ask someone at my company to look at this and check whether the image can be sharpened. Then maybe we can see better what it is.’