The Day is Dark Read online

  THE DAY IS DARK

  Yrsa Sigurdardóttir

  Translated from the Icelandic by Philip Roughton

  www.hodder.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain in 2011 by Hodder & Stoughton

  An Hachette UK company

  Copyright © Yrsa Sigurdardóttir 2011

  The right of Yrsa Sigurdardóttir to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  Epub ISBN: 9781848945760

  Book ISBN: 9781444700091

  Hodder and Stoughton Ltd

  338 Euston Road

  London NW1 3BH

  www.hodder.co.uk

  This book is dedicated to my sister, Laufey Ýr Sigurdardóttir.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue: 31 October 2007

  Chapter 1. 18 March 2008

  Chapter 2. 18 March 2008

  Chapter 3. 19 March 2008

  Chapter 4. 19 March 2008

  Chapter 5. 19 March 2008

  Chapter 6. 20 March 2008

  Chapter 7. 20 March 2008

  Chapter 8. 20 March 2008

  Chapter 9. 20 March 2008

  Chapter 10. 21 March 2008

  Chapter 11. 21 March 2008

  Chapter 12. 21 March 2008

  Chapter 13. 21 March 2008

  Chapter 14. 21 March 2008

  Chapter 15. 21 March 2008

  Chapter 16. 21 March 2008

  Chapter 17. 21 March 2008

  Chapter 18. 21 March 2008

  Chapter 19. 21 March 2008

  Chapter 20. 22 March 2008

  Chapter 21. 22 March 2008

  Chapter 22. 22 March 2008

  Chapter 23. 22 March 2008

  Chapter 24. 22 March 2008

  Chapter 25. 22 March 2008

  Chapter 26. 22 March 2008

  Chapter 27. 23 March 2008

  Chapter 28. 23 March 2008

  Chapter 29. 23 March 2008

  Chapter 30. 23 March 2008

  Chapter 31. 23 March 2008

  Chapter 32. 24 March 2008

  Chapter 33. 24 March 2008

  Chapter 34. 24 March 2008

  Epilogue: 30 May 2008

  Also by Yrsa Sigurdardóttir

  About the author

  About the translator

  Acknowledgements

  Many people assisted in the writing of this book, but special thanks go to Jenný Einarsdóttir of Ístak, Jóhann Kröyer and Arnbjörg Jóhannsdóttir, and Arvid Thastum, a resident of Kulusuk.

  It should be mentioned that although some of the characters in the book have the same names as some of my friends and family members, their names are the only thing they have in common.

  —Yrsa

  Prologue

  31 October 2007

  Oddný Hildur looked away from the computer screen, took the headphones from her ears and listened. The wind moaned outside; the wooden walls creaked in the strongest gusts, but otherwise she couldn’t hear anything. Strange. She’d had the feeling that there was someone else in the building. She relaxed her shoulders slightly and looked at the clock. A few minutes to midnight. Was it really so late? It was highly unlikely that anyone had come over; most of the others were either asleep or well on their way to dreamland. It must have been her imagination. Who could be up and about so late? Oddný Hildur sighed. She had been working non-stop since coming over to her office after supper. The weather had done a complete about-face, the beautiful, ice-cold calm turning into a noisy gale that whipped up the snow from the morning. The changeable weather here no longer surprised her, although she would never get used to it. Now she regretted not having followed the safety regulations and given notice of her plans; she had avoided doing so out of fear that someone would want to join her. Arnar had talked about doing some more work, but luckily he hadn’t shown up. She had very much wanted to be alone with the work she’d been putting off, work that now really needed to be done. There was never any peace and quiet when the others were there too, especially in the evenings after a long day at work.

  Suddenly she regretted having slunk over here on her own. Instead of feeling good about her solitude, she was overwhelmed by an odd sensation of discomfort. It was unlike her; she was known to have anything but a fertile imagination, and usually stared blankly at whoever had told the joke while others roared with laughter. It’s not like there was even a chance that she would get the joke later; generally speaking, anything other than pure fact went over her head. This had worked to her advantage in geology, but it was a hindrance when it came to human interaction.

  She yawned and shook off her uneasiness. Before shutting her laptop she checked whether her husband Stebbi was on MSN chat, but of course he’d long since gone to bed. The time difference made it midnight for him, and he was supposed to start work at Ártúnshofði at 8 a.m. The morning traffic meant he had to give himself plenty of time to make it all the way from Hafnarfjörður, where they’d bought their first apartment. It was this investment in real estate that had forced her to accept this difficult job, which paid much better than comparable positions in town – partly thanks to the extra allowance included to offset the long absences from her family. They had waited too long to buy, deciding to do so only after the prices had been driven sky-high, and now they had their hands full trying to pay it off. Fortunately they hadn’t taken a loan in foreign currency for the purchase, as so many who now bore the consequences of the falling rate of the Icelandic króna had done, but the payments had increased nevertheless and they were eating into their income. When Oddný Hildur saw the advertisement for the Berg Technology job on the east coast of Greenland, common sense had told her to apply. Her husband was not as keen, since it meant she would be away for four weeks at a time. Why live together if we sleep in different countries? he’d argued. She tried to look on the bright side, however: high wages and two weeks off work in between tours. Afterwards they would be able to think about having children, which they’d put off doing due to their financial struggles. But until that day came, Oddný Hildur had to make the best of hanging around in a work camp in a godforsaken place far from civilization.

  She gazed disconsolately at the MSN chat window on her laptop. Occasionally when Stebbi was unable to sleep he signed in on the off-chance, but that was not the case tonight. The unpleasant sensation crept over her again. Now she had a strong feeling that someone was staring at the back of her neck. Of course she knew that was impossible, but she still needed to gather the courage to turn around to make sure. She only had two more days left on this tour and knew she was suffering from fatigue. To make matters worse, the weather forecast was bad and she had been worrying about having to travel home in bad weather, or getting stuck here. Some harsh words she’d used during an argument earlier were also niggling at her, and she regretted having reacted so brusquely.

  She stiffened.

  Either she was going mad or someone was watching her. Could somebody be outside the window? Whoever it was would have a clear view of her in
the brightly lit office. She turned in her chair very slowly and peered out into the black night, but saw only her own reflection in the window. Her face seemed to belong to someone much younger than herself; her wide, fearful eyes gave her a childish look she hadn’t seen for many years. What was wrong with her, anyway? She was alone in the office, because Arnar would certainly have looked in on her if he’d come as planned. And of course there was nobody outside. Her co-workers would hardly be spying on her in this perilous weather, nor was she irresistible enough for any man to go to such trouble. But what about the residents of the village? Was one of the locals out there? She cursed herself again for having failed to lock the door. What was wrong with her? Of course no one had struggled against the gale all the way from the village; the only ones who would even have considered such a thing were the alcoholics, and she knew they’d all have fallen into bed long ago, dead drunk. The fact that it was Tuesday changed nothing; to those poor wretches, every day was the same. It was out of the question that any of them was up and about so late in the evening, and no one else was likely to hang around outside the window. Although the locals took a dim view of Berg Technology, she thought it unlikely that their antipathy ran so deep that they would seek revenge.

  Contrary to all logic, her apprehension would not leave her. She rolled her chair towards the wall and turned off the light, but was in no rush to go back to the window and look out. Finally she plucked up the courage.

  A strong gust of wind shook the building, then died down. Oddný Hildur gasped when she saw what was outside. A large, bedraggled husky sat in the parking area, staring at her. Its ears moved in the wind, but otherwise it was like a statue. Their eyes met and the dog stared at her without blinking. She gazed back as if hypnotized, her heart hammering in her chest. One of the first things she’d been told was not to approach the huskies, neither to pet them nor to feed them. They were working dogs, and did not associate with people in the same way that pets did back home. She had learned this second-hand when travelling on an emergency medical flight to Reykjavík, shortly after starting work in Greenland. It was the first and last time she would take such a flight. A little girl had wandered into a group of huskies, and her face had been mauled. The sound of her crying, which hadn’t stopped all the way to Iceland, still echoed in Oddný Hildur’s ears, as did the desperate attempts of the girl’s mother to soothe the child. Oddný Hildur’s stomach tightened as she recalled how the girl had looked when she saw her several months later, on one of her few trips into the village, playing with an old doll by the side of the road. It was entirely possible that the dog outside was one of those that had attacked the girl. None of them had been put to sleep. She wondered whether she should swallow her pride and call Gísli, who was in charge of security for the area. He would accompany her to her apartment without a grumble, even though he was probably already asleep. He took his job very seriously, performed it devotedly and was incredibly obliging. On the other hand, she didn’t want to have to endure the ribbing of her co-workers for dragging people out of bed in the middle of the night to walk her the short distance home. She was unpopular enough at the moment. No, she would be fine by herself.

  She had heard that dogs did not attack people unprovoked; there was no risk if they were left in peace. She would walk the short distance home briskly, and the dog would stay where it was and then disappear into the night. Before she knew it she would be in bed. Oddný Hildur turned off her computer and prepared to leave. Before she went into the corridor she looked once more through the window and saw the dog still staring at her. Suddenly it tilted its head, as if it were wondering why she had stood up. She regretted having given in to curiosity; now the dog knew that she was on her way out and would lie in wait for her at the door. However, it did not appear to be that cunning – it just sat there, still as stone. Oddný Hildur tugged at the curtain intending to block the dog’s view, but when it emitted a howl she was so shaken that she dropped it. Then she heard a muffled bark, but what startled her most was the creature’s sudden movement. She left the curtain as it was and hurried out. This was getting ridiculous. She turned off the light in Arnar’s office on the way out, but most of the other rooms were already dark. Their electricity came from a diesel-powered generator and she’d had to get accustomed to using it sparingly, which to her was a completely alien idea.

  In the vestibule she put on a thick eiderdown jacket that had proven invaluable in this stormy place, and with the damaged face of the little girl in mind she took a scarf from one of the hooks and wound it tightly around her head, leaving only her eyes uncovered. Finally she put on mittens and pulled on the warmest boots she could find. Her shoes were wet, since she had once again forgotten to turn them upside down. The snow on them had melted as she worked, and made them soggy and cold. The same went for her hat, which had fallen off its hook onto the wet floor, so she also grabbed a fur hat to keep the wind and cold out of her ears. No one would miss it, or the scarf and boots, if she came to work early enough the next day. She pushed her trouser bottoms into the boots and stood up stiffly. She was so warmly dressed that she could barely move, and it would be no easier when she got outside, with the wind in her face. She drew a deep breath and opened the front door. Suddenly it struck her that perhaps the dog had been warning her, not menacing her – was there something else she should be afraid of?

  The cold invigorated her and she pushed this thought aside. Her unease was probably all due to the video recording she’d just been puzzling over. Just before supper a clip had been e-mailed to her and her co-workers, showing Bjarki and Dóri, the two drillers, mucking around in the smokers’ room. Oddný Hildur didn’t know who had shot the video; maybe they’d set up the camera themselves, since there were few others besides the two of them who could bear the little smoke-saturated room for any length of time. However, what had caught her attention was not their stupid antics, but something that shot past the window behind them without their realizing it. Since she had little interest in this kind of foolishness she hadn’t opened the e-mail before supper, when she could have asked her colleagues about it. Maybe the apparition behind them was part of the joke? She had tried unsuccessfully to pause the clip and get a better view of it, but the movement was so swift that she never managed to stop it in the right place.

  It looked to her like a person wearing some kind of mask or strange headdress, and after it disappeared a red streak was left behind on the windowpane. The person – or whatever it was – had been holding something red, which must have bumped into the window or been dragged across it on purpose. But what was it? The rapid movement and dark red, irregular streak formed something of a gruesome backdrop to the drillers’ pranks, and her failure to figure it out unsettled her. Maybe she would laugh it off in the morning, but right now she wished she had an explanation. For some reason she couldn’t imagine stopping by the smokers’ room to see if any marks were still there. Deep inside she knew that it was out of fear that the dark red streak was blood.

  Oddný Hildur exhaled in the doorway and put her hands in her pockets. The dog was nowhere to be seen. She walked out into the drifting snow and darkness for the last time.

  Chapter 1

  18 March 2008

  Thóra Gudmundsdóttir put down the overview of her last month’s work schedule at the legal firm. It was hardly what she would call encouraging reading: the cases taken by her and Bragi, her business partner, along with two paralegals, were numerous, but mostly small-scale and quickly processed. That was certainly good for the firm’s clients, but it didn’t put much in the till. Nor was it all about the money. The most exciting cases demanded a great deal of work and were more complex than the smaller ones, which were usually run-of-the-mill and monotonous. Thóra groaned inwardly. She didn’t dare groan audibly for fear that one of the young lawyers would hear her. If he sensed that she were worried about the firm’s workload, he might start thinking of moving on, and they could not afford that. She and Bragi could never run the fi
rm and everything belonging to it – not least their dreadful secretary, Bella – alone. Although it would be difficult to imagine how it could be possible to do her job any worse than Bella herself did it, Thóra had no interest in stepping in for the girl, and Bragi would do whatever was necessary to avoid having to sit and take phone calls. So they would just have to accept this arrangement: these two young lawyers who appeared more interested in YouTube than Supreme Court judgements, and Bella, who also spent more time than was healthy on the Internet.

  Thóra turned back to the list of clients and cases. Divorces, bankruptcies and other financial entanglements were the most prominent types of case by far. There were some involving inheritances, paternity suits and sporadic minor cases. It was probably not appropriate to think so, but Thóra longed for more criminal cases. They were much more demanding than divorces, which Bragi had been specializing in recently. He had built up a good reputation in this area, which meant that more and more people turned to the firm for help when their marriages were on the rocks.

  Such cases, however, could often be quite colourful. One of her current clients was a man named Trausti, who wanted to change his name following his divorce since his wife had left him for another man with the same name. Of course it was no trouble to obtain permission to name oneself something other than what was recorded on the church register. But things became complicated when this was not enough for Trausti; he also insisted that their children’s patronymics be changed accordingly. He wanted to make it clear to everyone that he and not his wife’s new partner was the father of his children. Although the laws on namegiving allowed for changes in children’s surnames under special circumstances, the legislation had not foreseen this possibility, thus there was no easy resolution to the case. Thóra thought it highly unlikely that a Trausti who did not want to be named Trausti would be permitted to change his children’s surname, especially in light of the children’s mother being totally opposed to the change. Her protestations only made her husband more determined to have his way, and in the end Thóra gave in and sent a letter describing the matter to the Minister of Justice. By then Thóra would actually have been completely willing to change her own name rather than sign such an unprecedented letter. Over a month had passed since she had sent it, and still no word had been received. She took that to mean that the authorities were wondering if this were some sort of joke.