The Day is Dark Read online

  ‘You’ve got to find Igimaq and ask him something for me. I suspect he has information that could help Naruana avoid a longer prison sentence than he deserves.’ She was met only with silence. ‘Oqqapia, this is extremely important. I’m not sure that Igimaq will tell the police anything – if they even find him. He’s much more likely to talk to you, and if you explain things to him then maybe he can be persuaded to speak to them later.’

  Oqqapia spoke up hesitantly. ‘He doesn’t want to talk to me. I’ve never met him but I’m quite sure he isn’t happy with me as a daughter-in-law.’

  ‘You’re not unworthy of him, not at all. Igimaq realizes that, unless he’s very stupid. But that’s irrelevant. You simply need to make it clear to him that he can help his son. Him – and no one else.’ Thóra refrained from adding that it was possible even Igimaq couldn’t help. She continued while the going was good; Oqqapia hadn’t refused her request. ‘You’ve got to go to him and ask how he knew where the woman’s body could be found. Where was it lying? Did he see the person who killed her or does he know something that could explain who the murderer is?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. How can I reach him? I can’t go anywhere.’

  ‘You must be able to sneak away – borrow a snowmobile from your neighbours, if you have to. You’ve only been asked to stay there so you don’t infect anyone else – if you’ve even been infected. Be careful not to cough or touch Igimaq. I actually think he’s already come into contact with this disease and survived it, so he would be immune.’ He must have touched the body of his daughter when he buried her under the cairn. Usinna had more than likely died of the same thing as the drillers, whether it was the Spanish Flu or something else.

  In the end Oqqapia agreed to make an effort to find the old hunter and promised to call Thóra immediately when she returned home.

  Four hours later, Thóra’s phone rang. Since Thóra’s first conversation with Oqqapia, Sóley had called twice; she had started really missing her mother. Thóra decided not to mention the disease, so as not to worry Sóley unduly. She spoke to her daughter about the cold in Greenland and the heaps and heaps of snow. Sóley immediately asked her mother to convert the amount of snow into snowmen and Thóra guessed it would make one million and fourteen of them – just from the snow that she could see out of the window. The conversation she was having now with Oqqapia had a much more serious tone. She had made it out of the village on a snowmobile, as Thóra had suggested, without being followed.

  ‘I found him. He was in his tent. The dogs didn’t want to let me near the tent door and I’m sure they would have torn me to pieces and eaten me if they hadn’t been tethered.’

  ‘But he spoke to you, didn’t he? How did he respond?’

  ‘He found the woman’s body where it was hidden beneath one of the buildings at the camp. He took it to a place where foxes couldn’t get at it.’

  ‘Beneath a building? Was it buried?’

  ‘No, he said it was possible to crawl under all of the buildings and that the body had been shoved down there. All you needed to do to cover it was to shovel snow over it. At least until spring.’

  ‘How did he know about it, then?’

  ‘He saw the body when it was moved there. He’d been at the camp earlier in the evening in the hope of preventing the mining operation from expanding into the forbidden area. He tried some ancient magic, put on a mask and called upon the spirits of his ancestors with blood from a seal flipper to help him, but it didn’t work. He waited there in the hope that something would change, but he didn’t get his wish. However, he saw someone from the camp sitting in a car outside the office building, keeping a low profile. Igimaq wanted to know what was going on so he stopped and waited there. When the woman came out of the office the car door opened, the person ran after her and hit her on the neck with a blunt instrument. A hammer or something like that. The wind had been blowing quite a bit and there was a storm, so Igimaq didn’t have a clear view. He did insist, however, that it wasn’t an accident.’

  Thóra swallowed. ‘Did he see the attacker well enough to be able to give a description?’

  ‘Yes. The murderer stopped for a long time after turning the woman over, and then had a good look at her face. Igimaq thought that the woman would die of exposure there, but she suddenly seemed to pull herself together and started dragging the body towards the buildings; then she pushed it under one of them.’

  ‘Did you say the woman? Do you mean the woman who was killed or the murderer?’

  ‘The murderer. Igimaq said it was a woman.’

  Thóra wasn’t sure how to end their conversation. She glanced over at the subdued group gathered around the television. No one paid any attention to her. Except for Friðrikka. She stared into Thóra’s eyes and had seemed to have taken in every word. Thóra thanked Oqqapia warmly and said the police would doubtless be getting in touch with her soon. She hung up without taking her eyes off Friðrikka, without so much as blinking. Apart from Oddný Hildur, there had only been one woman at the camp.

  Friðrikka was a strange character. While they were at the camp she had been like a fragile little flower, unable to cope with anything, but in the end she appeared strong and serene. Of course the tears flowed as before, yet she showed no sign at all of breaking down. Thóra had offered to assist her in the police interrogation, until another lawyer could be found. The search for one was already under way, so Thóra was only present when Friðrikka was first questioned.

  Arnar Jóhannesson had poisoned Friðrikka’s life so much that she was no longer in control of her own actions. She had difficulty explaining what had prompted the actual assault, whether she had intended to kill the man or just injure him. Thóra was quite sure that Friðrikka herself didn’t know the answer. Her hatred had simply overwhelmed her. She blamed Arnar for her divorce and had done so for a long time. He had come to her and wanted to confess, since it was one of the steps in his twelve-step treatment programme. He told her that he’d had a relationship with her husband around the time that the man came out of the closet. They had met at Berg’s Annual Ball, and Arnar had seen immediately that the man was pretending to be something he wasn’t. He had been drunk, and hadn’t had too many qualms about seducing the husband of his co-worker.

  But after taking account of his life, it was clear to Arnar that he had betrayed a trust that under normal circumstances should have been worth more to him than one night’s fun. Nothing had come of the relationship; nevertheless, after listening to Arnar ask for forgiveness, Friðrikka blamed him for the end of her marriage. Arnar hadn’t been the first man in her husband’s life, but when someone is hurting it is so tempting to find a scapegoat for all the sorrow, disappointment and anger. Hence Friðrikka felt nothing but hatred towards Arnar, and when it appeared that her friendship with Oddný Hildur would be ruined because of him, it was the last straw.

  They had argued bitterly over the harassment that Arnar was suffering. Oddný Hildur felt her friend simply turned a blind eye to the bullying, lacking the courage to condemn it. She just looked the other way and smiled at those who treated him the worst. Friðrikka hadn’t entrusted anyone with the truth about what Arnar had done to her, so she was unable to defend herself against her friend’s accusations. Her feeble objections did little more than pour oil on the fire. When she went to the office building she was thinking of taking revenge once and for all against the man who had destroyed her life twice. Arnar had said that he was going to work after supper, but Oddný Hildur hadn’t told anyone that she was planning to do the same. Friðrikka stewed over her plans in her apartment but at some point, which she could not properly recall, she stood up, dressed, went to sit in the car outside the office building and waited for Arnar. She said that while waiting she’d felt as if she were in a trance; her mind had been completely empty. The die had been cast. She recalled seeing a sled dog sitting near the car, staring at her, but she’d been too upset to wonder why it was looking at her like that. She had seen the do
g walk calmly round behind the building, and some time later the light had gone off in Arnar’s office. Suddenly the entire workplace went dark. The front door opened. Friðrikka climbed out of the car and shut the door quietly behind her. She saw Arnar bend his head down against the wind. He turned his face from the car, and so had no idea she was there. Until it was too late.

  Friðrikka swung her rock hammer at the back of Arnar’s neck. She didn’t feel anything. Neither satisfaction nor fear. She felt nothing at the first blow. And she felt nothing at the second blow. Then she rolled Arnar over at her feet and discovered her mistake. Finally her emotions overwhelmed her. She fell to her knees and tried to shake her friend awake. She described in a low voice how it became clear to her that Oddný Hildur was dead and the tears that streamed from the glazed, staring eyes of her friend were merely melted snowflakes. Despair seized her. She decided to hide the body underneath her apartment building. That would give her a chance to assess the situation and decide what to do next. She shovelled away the snow, pushed the body beneath the building and pushed the snow back over it. The wind and snowfall would cover her tracks.

  Circumstances allowed her to avoid having to cover up what she’d done, as everyone at the camp was convinced that Oddný Hildur had been lost in the storm. Search parties were sent out. Friðrikka’s strange behaviour was ascribed to her concern for her lost friend. No one suspected that she had anything to do with it. The blood on the side of the building where the women’s apartment was located had come from when she had leaned against the building as she struggled to dig away the snow, but even that evidence was not seriously examined. Nor did anyone comment on how she offered to search the camp area. She said that she had experienced her first major shock when she saw that the body was gone. Then she’d started wondering whether she had maybe dreamt the whole thing; Oddný Hildur had actually gone missing and hadn’t died of head injuries inflicted in a blind rage. She understood none of it and was constantly on the verge of a nervous breakdown. She decided to leave her job and again no one made any comments. Everyone just thought that she was feeling unwell after losing her best friend.

  In fact, Friðrikka still seemed to be in two minds as to what had actually happened. She asked whether it were possible that the man who now claimed to have moved the body might even have killed Oddný Hildur. Her connection with reality was tenuous at best. She had even slunk out into the night once, to check one more time beneath the house to see if Oddný Hildur was perhaps still there. Doubt about what precisely had happened had gnawed at her ever since, and still did. She had reactivated the floodlight system when she was terrified that the person who had removed the body might return and attack her.

  When the interrogation was finished and Thóra was hoping to rejoin the others, Friðrikka grabbed her arm frantically and asked what had become of her cat. The neighbours who had been looking after it hadn’t been happy about having to carry on doing so and probably wouldn’t take it. When Thóra reassured her that there was no shortage of good homes for a beautiful cat, Friðrikka gave her an imploring stare. Before Thóra sat a woman who had effectively banished herself from civilized society, and she doubted Friðrikka would now ever obtain what she desired so much, the friendship and love of another individual. Thóra would not return home with a polar bear cub, but a cat would do just as well. ‘I’ll take your cat. My daughter will take good care of her.’

  Epilogue

  30 May 2008

  Thóra hung up the phone and stared at the divorce papers that were waiting to be signed. A young couple had discovered too late that they didn’t get on well enough, and like so many others in their shoes they now had nothing in common but debts. And as strange as it seemed, people were much more nitpicking about dividing their debts than their assets. But when all was said and done, couples applied for divorce because they couldn’t imagine being in each other’s presence any longer, so in the end, they came to an agreement. In the end, freedom from one’s spouse was always a stronger impulse than anything else.

  The trip to Greenland hadn’t yielded the legal firm any other projects from the bank. Nevertheless an agreement had been reached with the mining company; Berg Technology was allowed to continue the project and the insurance money was left untouched. Thóra hoped that her report had played some part in the matter, but it was just as likely that things had been resolved at a political level, or that the temporary closure of the area for archaeological research at the cave had been the decisive factor. In any case, the mining company, contractors and the bank had reached agreements while individual employees were left with no idea what was going on, except that they had lost their co-workers under tragic circumstances. It was a great loss for such a small workplace: three dead and two incapacitated, though one of them had of course already left the company. Fortunately there was no plan to start work again until the summer, so the employees were given time and space to recover in the company of family and friends. Hopefully the deepest wounds would be healed by the time work began again.

  Thóra had experienced some minor inconveniences herself. The health authorities in Greenland had confiscated her large green suitcase and had it destroyed, along with everything in it, due to risk of infection. Of course this risk was small, but apparently they didn’t want to take any chances. Her companions had had the same treatment. However, they, unlike her, had packed their bags while sober, which meant they lost mainly underwear, fleece jackets and the like. Now Thóra rued her many years of choosing classic work clothing that was likely to survive the whims of fashion. Like the others, the bank had paid her compensation, but Thóra hadn’t been able to inform them that the contents of her luggage had been worth much more than that of her colleagues and had also had much more emotional value. Now that it was clear the bank would not be the source of further work, she regretted this deeply.

  Friðrikka had been on the phone. Her voice sounded completely different to before and Thóra suspected that the woman was on drugs. She wanted to ask Thóra to help her ensure that she would be moved to Iceland when she was sentenced, so that she could serve her time in her home country. Friðrikka said that otherwise she would die; she couldn’t stay in Greenland. She also asked about the cat, which Thóra assured her was being spoiled rotten. This at least seemed to make Friðrikka feel a bit better. However, Thóra said she needed to think over Friðrikka’s request to defend her, though she would certainly lend her a helping hand. They had little else to talk about. Naturally, Friðrikka asked about Arnar’s fate and Thóra was able to inform her that the engineer had officially confessed to everything that he had told her on the phone. A verdict was hanging over his head but it was impossible to say whether it would be suspended. Although Thóra did not mention it to Friðrikka, she had kept her eye on the obituaries recently and none had yet appeared suggesting that Arnar had killed himself. It could well be that he intended to wait until a verdict came from both courts in order to ensure that Naruana came out of it as well as he could, but the other possibility was that he had changed his mind or lost his courage. Thóra hoped that this was the case, but the determination in his voice when he’d told her of his plans had been so strong that in the end she doubted it.

  Thóra knew less about the others; she hadn’t heard from Alvar, Eyjólfur or Finnbogi since they’d parted ways at the airport in Reykjavík. Actually, she had gone to see the doctor about her final report, but that was all. When asked, she told Friðrikka that yes, Bella was fine, still working in reception at the legal firm, on top form and still intimidating clients and employees alike as only she could.

  Thóra had only once given in to temptation and phoned Oqqapia. She didn’t want to be connected to the woman any more than to everything else that had happened; all the signs indicated that the poor woman’s life would continue to be defined by sorrow, drinking and boredom. Thóra had enough disappointments in her own country without having to hunt them down across the borders. However, the telephone call had been surprisingly plea
sant. Oqqapia had stuck to her word and got her life in order. She said it was difficult, but not counting a couple of small slip-ups she’d kept herself sober since the case had come to a head. She said that Naruana’s difficulties had strengthened her, which had surprised her, but someone had to be ready to help him and his parents were in no position to do so. Like her, he had also put the cork in the bottle in the hope that this sign of progress would be taken into account when he was sentenced. Now they awaited the results together. The department of social services had sent alcohol counsellors to the village. It turned out that Naruana was also a teacher at the primary school, which had proved to be of priceless assistance to the couple in their struggle. Oqqapia stated with pride that Naruana had started hunting again, albeit only on a boat with others, but it was still a great improvement. At the end of their conversation Oqqapia had remembered to tell Thóra that Igimaq had now received his daughter’s bones and that he was intending to lay them to rest once and for all. Examination of the remains had not revealed the cause of her death, but everything suggested that she had died of that disease everyone’s talking about, as Oqqapia put it.

  Before the phone call ended Thóra had asked the woman carefully whether Naruana had been able to give an explanation for why he’d taken the young girl with him to the camp when he went to remove the bodies. Oqqapia answered in the same nonchalant tone that she had used to describe the Spanish Flu. Apparently, the girl’s parents had loaned Naruana their sled on the condition that he take her with him. Thóra didn’t need to ask what sort of parents would let their child travel around on a snowmobile with a drunk. The answer was obvious: parents who were even drunker than the man who took their child. But some good had come out of it. The girl had been taken away for observation since she had been present at a bloodbath and it was possible that she was infected, and at the hospital in Nuuk it was decided that something could be done to repair her damaged face. Moreover, the fact that the girl had been humming provided hope that with the correct training and treatment, she would be able to regain her voice and the ability to speak. Thus her parents had been convinced to move to Nuuk in order to be able to continue looking after the child, and they had given the snowmobile to Oqqapia and Naruana in gratitude for their help in getting medical assistance for their daughter. Thóra did not presume to understand this gesture of appreciation, and settled for being pleased that not everyone was cast in the same mould. What mattered most was that all these people appeared to be slowly heading towards a better life. They could use it.