Yrsa Sigurdardóttir - The Day Is Dark

Thóra explained her position and the situation. She was in Kulusuk, on her way home after a trip to Greenland to work on finding a solution to the bank’s problems with Berg Technology. She deliberately gave nothing away about how the case was going. It was unwise to blurt out everything immediately, because then the man would have no reason to keep the conversation going. ‘I wanted to speak to you because I was hoping you could help me with some questions that still haven’t been answered. The case has been going well over the last few days, since the police arrived on the scene, but I’ve still got a few loose ends to tie up.’

‘What are the police saying?’ He didn’t expand on this question or specify what aspect of the situation he was asking about.

‘Naturally, the police aren’t telling us much.’ Thóra wanted to avoid upsetting Arnar for fear that he would hang up on her. ‘They’re in the middle of their investigation, and although it looks to me as if everything is going well for them, we don’t know exactly what’s happening.’ It surprised her that the man hadn’t begun by asking if they knew what had befallen his colleagues.

‘Has someone been arrested?’ Arnar spoke as ponderously as before, although now his voice seemed tinged with worry. She found this puzzling, since she’d expect him to be concerned by the idea that a culprit had not been identified. But perhaps she had simply misunderstood the tone of his question.

‘Yes, it seems so. One of the villagers. Naruana, whom I understand you know. He appears to be partly, if not fully, responsible for what happened.’

‘He hasn’t hurt anyone.’ Arnar paused. ‘The police do realize that, don’t they?’ Now the man’s voice had become childish, hopeful, reminding Thóra of Sóley when she asked her mother about something obvious, searching for reassurance. Mummy, the people in the plane crash will be all right, won’t they?

‘Forgive me, but I have to ask. How much do you know about what happened here? You say he hasn’t hurt anyone, but you haven’t asked yet whether anyone was hurt in the first place.’

‘I know a few things,’ replied Arnar, apparently not as offended by the question as Thóra had feared. ‘I called Naruana yesterday and he told me that the police were on the scene; that they’d come to his house to ask him and the woman living with him, Oqqapia, about various things. He told me everything that he gleaned from their questions, so I do know something about it.’

‘So you’re aware that Oddný Hildur, Bjarki and Dóri were found dead, and that she at least was murdered?’

Arnar said nothing, but then spoke up again. ‘I didn’t know that Oddný Hildur had been found or that there was any suspicion she’d been murdered. However, Naruana told me that the drillers had come up during the police questioning and that they were dead.’ He was breathing rapidly.

‘When exactly did you speak to him yesterday?’ Thóra guessed that Oddný Hildur’s body hadn’t been found at the time. Naruana wouldn’t have had any reason to keep that a secret from Arnar.

‘It was after dinner, around eight thirty or nine.’ Thóra subtracted the time difference between the two countries and saw that that fitted; Oddný Hildur’s body hadn’t been found until over an hour later. The police had then set off again to question Naruana and brought him back in handcuffs during the night.

‘Then was Naruana arrested for the murder of Oddný Hildur? That’s bollocks; he didn’t kill anyone. How the hell could they have thought that?’ Arnar seemed agitated, desperate to convince Thóra of his friend’s innocence, as Naruana himself had tried to do not long before.

‘I know nothing about that, unfortunately. I’m unaware of what might have happened.’ She slowed her breathing down to ensure she didn’t lose control of the conversation. ‘There’s more. A body was found in the camp’s walk-in freezer and bones were found in the office building; the bones seem to belong to Usinna, Naruana’s sister. Maybe his arrest has more to do with them. Of course the body was very old, so maybe he had nothing to do with that. However, I understand that it’s not known how his sister died, but that she was interred far from the settlement.’

‘He hasn’t killed anyone, and the police can’t say he did. He’s very sensitive and I doubt he’s capable of defending himself properly. He could easily end up being convicted even though he’s innocent.’

‘Well, I don’t know the man but I certainly agree that he’s taking this badly. He travelled with us in the helicopter and it was difficult to see him in that state. He’ll probably get help now that he’s been brought to a larger community. I don’t know if he’s on his way to Angmagssalik or Nuuk, but they’re hardly going to question him at the airport or in the hotel.’

‘This is a total misunderstanding and it would probably be best if you were to tell the police that. For fuck’s sake, Naruana is an alcoholic, he could never kill another person, let alone more than one. He already has enough of his own problems to deal with, without looking for new ones.’ Arnar’s words came out in a torrent, as if he were recounting everything he could think of that might help to defend his friend. ‘He took his sister’s death very badly and it’s absolutely clear that he holds no responsibility for it. He had no say at all in where she was buried; that was up to his father, he chose the place. I know Naruana quite well, I was trying to help him overcome his addiction and he would be incapable of murder. He even had to stop hunting because it affected him so badly, and he had trouble staying on the wagon. And it’s considerably more difficult to kill a man than it is to kill an animal for food.’

‘I agree with you completely, but the police will need something a bit more concrete if your friend is to be saved. Hopefully he’s perfectly innocent and is hoping that the truth will come out, even though he might have trouble defending himself.’

‘But what if the truth doesn’t come out?’

‘I’m not familiar with the penal system here in Greenland but it seems likely that he’d receive a prison sentence. I couldn’t say how long that would be. I suppose it would be something similar to the sentence in Iceland. Sixteen years or so.’ Now it was time to turn the tables. Thóra had done too much answering and wanted to do more questioning. ‘Why were Usinna’s bones scattered around the offices and not kept in one spot? I’ve already heard one explanation for this, but I wasn’t convinced.’

‘That just shows you what things were like there,’ replied Arnar. He seemed pleased that for the moment, attention was being directed away from Naruana’s troubles. ‘Nobody could work out what to do with the bones after the villagers refused to speak to the people who went down there.’

‘Why didn’t you go and talk to Naruana or Oqqapia, since you knew them?’

‘I didn’t want the others in the camp to know that I was going down to the village on my days off. It wasn’t any of their business. I also didn’t know until I spoke to Naruana on the phone yesterday that they were his sister’s bones. I didn’t pay particular attention to them at the time and I wasn’t involved in what happened to them, any more than I was with anything else there. I just assumed they were the bones of a man who had died long ago and that the villagers knew nothing about them. So I didn’t waste much time thinking about them.’

‘Then you don’t know how the bones ended up in the drawers?’

‘Yes, I do know, although I’d really rather forget it.’ Arnar fell silent, but then continued when Thóra said nothing. ‘I couldn’t help noticing that most of the people in the office building had their eye on the skull and were bickering about who should be allowed to keep it. Should it be the man who first found the cairn, or the one who opened it, or the one who noticed the bag, and so on. It was disgusting to listen to, like most things that went on in that office. I was the only one who laid no claim to the bones, since I didn’t want them. I found it all to be in extremely poor taste.’