Арнальдур Индридасон - The Darkness Knows

He parked in front of the mortuary, which was based in an unassuming house in the hospital complex, and locked the car. Svanhildur was waiting for him by the entrance. She opened the door for him and led him inside in silence, her face solemn. She was wearing her lab coat, a white apron, and some sort of head covering made of netting and cardboard that reminded him of a sales assistant in a bakery.

‘They carved out a big block of ice around him and transported the whole lot here,’ Svanhildur explained, going over to one of the tables.

The block of ice stretching the length of the table was melting fast. Protruding from it was a body so well preserved that the man could have died that day, were it not for the oddly hard, glazed texture of his white skin. His arms lay by his sides and his chin had sunk down onto his chest. Meltwater had pooled on the floor, where it was trickling into the drain under the table.

‘Will you be doing the post-mortem?’ Konrád asked.

‘Yes,’ Svanhildur replied. ‘I’ve been asked to examine him once the surrounding ice has melted and the body’s thawed out. I won’t be able to open him up until then. I expect his internal organs will be as well preserved as he is on the outside.’ She paused. ‘It must be a strange feeling for you to see him like this.’

‘Did they fetch him down by helicopter?’

‘No, they brought him in by road. They’ve been searching the area where he was found and I gather that’ll continue for the next few days. Has no one from the police been in touch with you?’

‘Not yet. I’m sure they will be tomorrow, though. Thanks for giving me a bell.’

‘He’s your man,’ Svanhildur said. ‘Beyond any doubt.’

‘Yes, it’s Sigurvin. It’s weird seeing him like this after all these years, as if time had stood still.’

‘While we’ve got older,’ Svanhildur remarked, ‘it’s like he’s got younger by the day.’

‘It’s a hell of a thing,’ Konrád said quietly, as if to himself. ‘Have you any idea how he died?’

‘From what I could see as they were bringing him in, it looks like a possible blow to the head,’ Svanhildur said, pointing. The man’s head was largely free of the ice now and if one bent down, it was just possible to see what appeared to be wounds on the back of his skull.

‘Was he killed on the glacier?’

‘Hopefully that’s one of the things we’ll be able to work out.’

‘Was he lying on his back like that when he was found?’

‘Yes.’

‘Isn’t that a bit odd?’

‘Every aspect of this case is odd,’ Svanhildur said. ‘As you should know better than anyone.’

‘He doesn’t seem to be dressed for a glacier trip.’

‘No. What are you intending to do?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Are you going to make yourself available to the investigation team or are you going to stay out of it?’

‘They can take care of it,’ Konrád said. ‘I’ve retired. You should too.’

‘I’d get bored,’ Svanhildur said. She was divorced and said she sometimes dreaded the prospect of having to give up work. ‘How are you, by the way?’

‘Oh, you know. All right. If only I could sleep.’

They stood there in silence, watching the ice dripping from the body.

‘Have you ever heard of the Franklin expedition?’ Svanhildur asked suddenly, apropos of nothing.

‘Franklin...?’

‘In the nineteenth century, the British sent out a lot of unsuccessful expeditions to look for the Northwest Passage through the sea ice north of Canada. The most famous of them was the Franklin expedition. Have you really never heard of it?’

‘No.’

Svanhildur seemed pleased at this chance to relate the story. ‘Franklin was a captain in the British navy,’ she said. ‘He undertook the expedition with two ships but they became trapped in the ice and vanished along with everyone onboard. But, earlier in the voyage, three crew members had died and the expedition had stopped at an island to bury them in the permafrost before continuing on its way. About thirty years ago the graves of the three men were exhumed, and their bodies turned out to be so well preserved that they were able to provide rare evidence of conditions at sea in the nineteenth century. Analysis of the three men’s remains confirmed one of the theories about the main problem affecting long voyages like the Franklin expedition, which often lasted at least two or three years. It was known that sailors on these voyages would often become weak and confused, then lie down and die for no apparent reason. There are countless painstakingly recorded instances of this phenomenon but scholars have disagreed about the reasons for the men’s strange lethargy. One of the many theories is that it might have been caused by lead poisoning, and the bodies found in the permafrost supported this. When they were examined, they revealed elevated levels of lead, consistent with the method of preserving food that was pioneered during the nineteenth century: in other words, tinned food.’

Having finished her account, Svanhildur glanced down at the body again.

‘It’s just one of those fascinating anecdotes from the world of pathology,’ she said. ‘The ships carried extensive supplies of tinned food that were contaminated by the lead that leached into the contents from the seams round the lids.’

‘Why are you telling me all this?’ Konrád asked.

‘Oh, just because I immediately thought of the Franklin expedition when they brought Sigurvin down from the glacier. He reminded me of the sailors found in the permafrost. It’s like he died yesterday.’

Konrád stepped closer to the body and stared down at it for a long while, marvelling at the preservative powers of the ice.

‘Maybe we should start burying people in glaciers,’ Svanhildur said. ‘Move our cemeteries there if we can’t face the idea of worm-eaten corpses.’

‘I thought the glaciers were disappearing?’

‘Yes, sadly,’ Svanhildur said. As if to illustrate her words, a large chunk of ice broke off and fell to the floor, smashing into a thousand pieces.

Konrád drove home through the unrelieved darkness and got back into bed, exhausted, but sleep still refused to have mercy on him. As he lay there, the memory of the inquiry descended on him like a heavy weight. The thought of Sigurvin in the ice was almost more than he could bear. He couldn’t shake off the image of the man’s frozen face.

He shuddered.

He could have sworn that there had been a strange grin playing on Sigurvin’s mouth as he lay there on the mortuary slab. His lips were peeled back like cracked leather to reveal his teeth, as though he were laughing in Konrád’s face as a reminder of Konrád’s miserable failure to solve the mystery of his disappearance all those years ago.

Two days later, the phone rang late in the evening. Normally Konrád would have been startled, as he’d largely stopped receiving phone calls at night and early in the morning since retiring. It was the biggest change he’d noticed, apart from the silence. But now the phone wouldn’t stop ringing. This time it was a friend who used to work with him in the police. Konrád had been hoping to hear from her.

‘He wants to talk to you,’ the woman said. Her name was Marta and she was chief inspector at Reykjavík CID.

‘He’s not going to confess, is he?’ Konrád had read online that a man had been arrested following the discovery of the body on the glacier. It didn’t surprise him that it should have been Hjaltalín. The whole circus was starting up again. This time, though, Konrád was determined to stay out of it. Reporters had been pestering him for a quote about the discovery but he’d told them he had nothing to say on the subject. He’d left the police: others had taken over the case.