Yrsa Sigurdardóttir - The Day Is Dark

‘I don’t remember exactly. It was written from wing to wing, “s”s and “n”s, some vowels. Business , sinner , something like that, but Greenlandic.’ Thóra put the notebook and pen down again. She didn’t need to write this down.

‘Did the necklace say “Usinna”?’

‘Yes, I guess so.’ Pétursson paused. ‘Do you think they’re dead? Bjarki and Dóri?’

Thóra had to answer honestly. Anything else would be unfair. ‘Yes, I’m pretty sure they are, unfortunately. We still haven’t found anything to contradict the theory that they died of exposure. Lost in a snowstorm, probably.’ She added this last bit so as not to kill any hope that the employees might be persuaded to return to work, without any litigation or wage docking.

‘In the middle of the night? Not likely.’

‘What do you mean? We don’t know for certain when they disappeared, but it could hardly have been at night.’

The man was silent for a moment. ‘You might not have heard this before, but several of us had missed phone calls from the work site one night when only Bjarki and Dóri were left there. The calls came in the middle of the night, which is why no one answered, and the phone number couldn’t be reached the next day. Nothing was heard from them after that, so you can maybe understand why we weren’t particularly excited about returning. Bjarki and Dóri were probably calling for help, not to inform us that they were going for a walk. I can’t help wondering if things might have turned out differently if one of us had answered.’

Thóra sat at the small bar at one end of the dining room and tried again to call Gylfi. Her son had answered a short time ago but had asked her to call back later, since he was driving. For some reason the sound of his voice made her feel rather sad; perhaps it was homesickness, perhaps it was seeing the lives of her children continue as if nothing had happened even though she was nowhere near them. But probably the main reason was that she felt death all around her in this place, pressing upon her as if it meant to trap her in a corner and then consume her. Now finally it had made its presence known when she discovered that the bones in the office building must be those of Usinna, the daughter of the strange hunter. It was too preposterous an idea that another woman had been buried with her necklace in precisely the same location where this young and apparently talented girl had her final resting place. However, this didn’t fit with the information that they had gathered in the village. She was supposed to have wandered to the notorious area and disappeared, not been buried. This didn’t necessarily mean she’d been murdered, but it was clear that someone had at least found her dead – if not worse. It was hard to tell who that might have been, or why that same person kept it secret – or whether the missing Icelanders rested in similar graves in the same area.

‘Gylfi! Hi, it’s Mum.’ Her words echoed down the phone. ‘Are you at home now?’ Her heart glowed as she pictured her offspring, Gylfi – with little Orri in his arms – and Sóley.

‘Yes. Listen, I was thinking…’ Not a word about when she was coming home or how the trip had gone. ‘Sigga and I are thinking about going to Spain this summer and a brochure from a travel agency came with Fréttablaðið this morning. Would you maybe want to lend us the money for the trip because we don’t have any and then we would pay you after we started working in the summer?’ He spoke so rapidly that Thóra had to try her hardest to figure out what he was saying.

‘Lend you money for a trip to Spain?’ Thóra was slightly bewildered. She connected Spain with sun cream, bikinis and beer, and nothing was further from her right now.

‘Yes, it’s not expensive at all or anything. If you pay right away you get a discount too.’ Gylfi paused expectantly.

‘But what about work? How do you plan on finding a job if you’re just going to leave straight away? Usually, temps have to be found to cover employees who go off on holiday, to Spain or anywhere else. Have you not thought about that at all?’

‘Maybe it was like that when you were young. No one expects people just to stay in Iceland in the summer any more.’ Thóra tried to look on the bright side. He hadn’t said all those years ago when you were young .

‘Can we talk about this when I get home?’ Thóra stared at herself in the large mirror embedded in the surface of the bar. In the second that passed between seeing this person and realizing who it was, she discovered how other people saw her. A blonde, attractive but worried-looking woman who should frown less and try to dress more appropriately. Her bright, low-cut silk blouse didn’t belong here.

‘Yeah, but this offer is only valid for a few days. And the best trips will probably sell out immediately.’ Gylfi didn’t explain which trips those were and what distinguished a good trip to Spain from a bad one.

‘Let me think about it, then we’ll take a look when I come home.’ Thóra heard the front door of the hotel open on the floor below. She could easily have craned her neck over the edge of the landing to see who had come in, but she didn’t feel like it. If they had to stay here much longer, she would definitely start taking a keen interest in people’s comings and goings, but things hadn’t got that bad yet. ‘You need to think about Orri, too. I doubt he’d enjoy that kind of trip, sweetheart. He’s far too little.’ She added silently to herself: And you’re too young to take care of a small child abroad .

‘Ah, but we’re not going to take him with us,’ said Gylfi proudly, convinced that he’d trumped her. ‘He’ll be staying with you. Just the two of us will go.’

Thóra opened her mouth to speak but closed it again immediately. Up the stairs towards her was walking the Greenlandic police officer who’d questioned her at the work site. ‘Gylfi, I’ll have to call you a bit later, when I know when I’ll be home.’ She hung up and stood up from her high bar stool. The man looked anything but pleased as he came towards her and greeted her with a terse nod.

‘Will you please gather your group and ask them to pack their things?’ Thóra was filled with an unreal hope that they were about to be sent home. ‘You need to come back with us to Kaanneq.’

It had been good to have something to think about other than suffocating darkness, isolation and the lack of a shower, but now those thoughts reappeared in a flash. Thóra looked at her loose three-quarter-length sleeves. If this blouse was inappropriate here at the hotel, it would be completely ridiculous at the camp. ‘Can I get changed first?’

‘I can’t be here. I have to get home.’ Just as she had before, Friðrikka was staring out of the meeting room window and mumbling to herself. The atmosphere in the group was tense and anxious. Outside it was dead calm, but worse weather was forecast. The pure white snow glittered in the gentle daylight, but as darkness began to descend the landscape displayed its true face: here the struggle for life was hard; the strongest survived and the weak were shown no mercy. ‘They can’t send me wherever they want. I’m an Icelander and I must be allowed to go home.’

Eyjólfur was sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall with his eyes closed. He was chewing gum energetically – apart from that one might have thought he was sleeping. Having to return to the work camp seemed to have hit him and Friðrikka the worst. The others hadn’t exactly celebrated, but had accepted the news silently and had uncomplainingly packed up to leave. It’s not like they’d had a choice. The police had informed them that a travel ban could be slapped on them at short notice if they looked likely to try to leave or to get a plane to come and pick them up. They would have the court order in their hands before any flight from Iceland could even touch down. The only sensible thing to do was comply with the police and try as best they could to answer the questions put to them. Thóra had spoken briefly to the group and emphasized that the most important thing to remember was that they had nothing to hide; they hadn’t been at the site when Usinna vanished or when her bones were found, nor had they been there when the drillers had disappeared. It would work in all their favours if Oddný Hildur’s fate were explained as soon as possible, and in that respect the police investigation was their best hope. They would simply have to accept this as a temporary inconvenience. When it was over they could go home proud that they had done all they could to try to determine the fate of these four individuals. Thóra’s speech was received as most speeches are: it convinced those who were in agreement already, but did little to inspire Eyjólfur and Friðrikka. Both of them were unhappy about having to go back out into the wilderness, he because he allegedly had other duties to attend to, and she because her nerves appeared unable to endure any more.