Thóra did not get out of bed until Matthew was gone. She wanted to lie in a little longer, and didn’t want to give him the chance to peek into her suitcase when she looked in it for clean clothes. She had been shocked the night before when she finally saw what was in it. On top were high-heeled shoes and other equally inspired choices: capri pants that she’d probably thrown in because they looked good on her, skirts, dresses and a glittery pashmina shawl her parents had given her after one of their numerous trips to the Canary Islands. She had never worn the pashmina and never would, least of all here. After a long search she finally managed to find her jeans and a thick jumper that she could wear without embarrassment. Under the jumper she wore a silk blouse. The weather appeared to have calmed down, so luckily they weren’t in too much danger. Even if a wild storm hit they would still be inside, and then Thóra could saunter over to the cafeteria in her high heels and glittery shawl.
She brushed her teeth with the water they’d boiled in one of the sinks in the shared bathroom. She stared at the showerhead hanging there provocatively, the steel bone-dry and shiny. She was met in the mirror by an ugly sight: her hair was greasy at the roots and she had black mascara circles under her eyes. She covertly used a few splashes of the boiled water to wash her face and, after smearing on cream that supposedly guaranteed eternal youth and applying mascara, she finally looked presentable. As she stepped into the corridor she met Eyjólfur, who had a toothbrush in his hand. He looked almost as bad as she had just now. Nevertheless he smiled and stopped her as they crossed paths. ‘I forgot to mention one thing yesterday,’ he said. ‘I actually noticed that Bjarki’s jacket and boots are in the vestibule of the office building. That seems ominous, unless he’s wearing someone else’s jacket.’
Thóra tried to recall which garments had been hanging in the vestibule. She remembered two identical down jackets hanging on a hook and several dirty work coveralls. The floor was covered with shoes, mainly insulated work boots with steel toes. ‘Are the clothes labelled?’ she asked. ‘I mean, how do you know his clothes from the others’?’
‘Yes, they’re labelled,’ said Eyjólfur, smoothing down his hair in a fruitless attempt to make it look better. ‘Berg provided us all with outerwear and protective clothing. Of course I didn’t need a coverall, but the jacket and cold-weather boots have come in handy. Since we all had exactly the same kind of outerwear we had to label every garment, and one of the jackets hanging on the coat rack is marked “Bjarki”. His boots are there too.’
Thóra nodded thoughtfully. ‘And it’s not possible that he took someone else’s jacket by mistake?’
‘No, definitely not. The ones who went on leave took their jackets with them so they wouldn’t freeze to death on the way back, and the only extra jacket in camp is still hanging on the coat rack. It was left behind when an employee resigned shortly after the work started.’ He saw from Thóra’s expression that she wanted to know more about this person and hurriedly added: ‘He was an old man who’d simply had enough of the weather. No great mystery there. In fact, it’s incredible how low the staff turnover has been here. It’s my understanding that people rarely last long in this kind of workplace.’ He smiled at Thóra again. ‘Despite what Friðrikka said, Berg Technology is an exceptionally fair employer and that’s why its employees are so loyal. It would have been impossible for the owner to rush out here to take part in the search for a lost person, so it’s no reflection on him or how he treats his staff.’
‘Still, they all quit.’ Thóra was watching him carefully. ‘Except for you, no?’
Eyjólfur’s smile evaporated. ‘I’m sure they regret it,’ he said. ‘Of course, I don’t work directly for the company; I was just hired through an employment agency. My employer is the company responsible for Berg’s computers.’
‘Did you notice the jacket or boots of the other driller, Halldór?’ asked Thóra, keen to get off to breakfast.
‘No. They weren’t in the office, and I didn’t find them in the vestibule.’ Eyjólfur bit his lip. ‘Hopefully it means Dóri made it out of here alive, but I didn’t check his apartment, so we’ll probably find them there.’
‘Hopefully he’s wearing them.’ It didn’t take a genius to conclude that without protective clothing the man had little hope. Eyjólfur didn’t respond, but his expression brightened abruptly. ‘Had you heard about the tracks?’
‘Tracks?’ Thóra was speechless.
‘Yes, I met Alvar here earlier and this morning he found tracks leading from here out to Oddný Hildur’s building. Someone dug the snow from around the walls of her building and it looks like they removed something from beneath the house.’
‘Like what?’
‘No idea. It happened in the night or early this morning, since Alvar was apparently the first one up and the first to go out and see them.’
Thóra recalled the noise in the corridor the night before. ‘Could he tell from the tracks what shoes were worn? We’re all wearing different types of footwear, so it might be possible to compare the tracks with the soles of our shoes.’
‘It’s my understanding that the wind has blown so much snow into them that that would be impossible. All you can see is that someone went over there and did something around the crawlspace under the hut. Who it was, or why, nobody knows.’
‘Isn’t it possible to see whether something was there beneath the building, and what it was?’
‘No, as far as I understand from Alvar, it looked as if there was nothing there. A thin layer of snow had blown under the building and it appeared untouched, so this is all really strange. All I know for sure is that it wasn’t me out there.’
The tyres on the jeeps were so big and over-inflated that they reminded Thóra of Donald Duck’s car. She hadn’t noticed this when they arrived, since she hadn’t been in any condition to do so. It had taken everything she’d had just to squirm into the back seat. Now her attention was more focused and she took careful notice of everything she saw along the way. The scenery was indescribably beautiful, but at the same time it awakened dread in her heart. Alvar was at the wheel, and he, Thóra and Matthew had been joined by Friðrikka. She had recognized the description of the place immediately, south slope, L-3, and said that she could certainly take them there to look for signs of anything unusual. ‘It’s not much further,’ she said, pointing Alvar to a crag that could be seen vaguely, rising from the snow. ‘Turn left here. The trail runs in the direction of that mountain ahead.’
‘I located the spot too, on the GPS, so I know exactly where I’m going,’ muttered Alvar. ‘Someone took the trouble to input a lot of information into it, which is wise.’ He looked from the road to the device. ‘We’re just about there.’ Suddenly they saw something flash orange in the sheer white surroundings. The closer they drew the better their view of the drilling rig, which was unlike any piece of machinery Thóra had seen before. It was a large oblong house on tracks. Lying across the rig was an arm and on this a vertical steel mast that Friðrikka said was the drill. Next to it stood a little ramshackle hut. It must have been stronger than it looked since it had withstood yesterday’s storm, and doubtless others much worse. Friðrikka told them it was a moveable work shed for the drillers. Thóra saw no evidence of construction, but when she asked her the geologist replied that that wasn’t surprising; the snow covered all disturbances of the earth immediately, so signs of construction could very well lie directly beneath them. They would have to dig down if they were interested in seeing that. At that Alvar cheered up; he had just loaded the platform with all sorts of hand tools and ropes.
The cold bit right through them when they stepped out of the jeep. They were standing near a low peak in the shadow of taller mountains surrounding the area. Thóra was wearing a fur hat that was much too large, which she had borrowed from the coat rack in the cafeteria; it was constantly dropping down over her eyes. She had got her thick mittens from the same place and they fit her about as well as the hat did. They all stood silently for a moment as they adjusted to the cold, which attacked their lungs with each breath. Staring at the shed, they must have all been thinking the same thing: Were the men in there? If that was the case, the oppressive silence gave no indication that they were alive. ‘Who wants to go in first?’ asked Thóra, staring at the dented door.
‘I’ll go,’ said Matthew, and off he went. His hat and gloves fitted him perfectly, and were both as new-looking as his rucksack. ‘Is it locked?’ he asked Friðrikka, who was standing in stiff silence, her eyes glued to the little house.
‘Oh! Yes,’ she said, starting from her thoughts. ‘I know where the key is.’ She went with him to the drilling rig and opened a little hatch on its side, which emitted a low screech that echoed for a long time in the desolation around them. She stuck in her hand and pulled out a clunky-looking key. ‘There you are.’ She walked back to Alvar and Thóra and contented herself with watching from a distance as Matthew tried to put the key in the lock. First he had to move a covering that prevented fine snow from filling the lock when the wind blew outside. ‘I don’t know whether I should hope they’re in there or not.’
It wasn’t clear to Thóra whether Friðrikka was talking to herself, or to her and Alvar. ‘You knew them, I assume?’
Friðrikka simply nodded. A silence followed, which was interrupted when Matthew dramatically opened the door to the shed. He stuck his head in and then looked out again immediately. ‘No one here,’ he called out unnecessarily loudly.
The others relaxed visibly and walked over to the shed. It was larger inside than it appeared from the exterior and they all fitted in there easily. There was a little kitchen with two chairs and shelves fixed up along all the walls. On these were wooden boxes that Friðrikka said were designed specially to store core samples, to prevent them from being broken, damaged or mixed up.
Although Thóra thought she’d gone over the data in the case quite well, it wasn’t entirely clear to her why these samples were so important.
‘They show what the ground beneath us contains,’ explained Friðrikka patiently, when Thóra voiced her puzzlement. ‘The purpose of this project is to determine whether there is molybdenum here in any usable quantity. The more we exploit accessible areas of the earth, the more expensive the metals and other precious material in the ground become. So it starts to pay off to get it from remote places like this.’ She pointed at the boxes. ‘There is much less known about the bedrock here on the east coast than on the west coast, so we basically have to start from scratch. We drill boreholes in the ground and extract core samples that show a full breakdown of what’s to be found here. It’s all documented and if a sufficient quantity of precious material is found in the samples, then it’s possible that it would pay to establish a mine somewhere in the vicinity. We prepare maps that show the strata and estimate how they are situated between the boreholes, and after that’s done we can pinpoint the most suitable place for the mine. Mining sites aren’t just chosen by sticking a pin in a map or throwing dice.’
‘But isn’t it hopeless trying to drill through all this snow?’ asked Thóra. She would have thought such work would have been much easier during the summer, when the ground was bare.
‘No, absolutely not. The drill goes through the snow like a knife through butter, and the snow protects the ground and covers over disturbances caused by the machinery or the transport of people, worksheds, and other things like that. We need to cover a lot of ground in the search and it wouldn’t be a pretty sight if the snow weren’t so thick. We try to keep our impact here to a minimum. It’s an expensive process, and in some instances we also need to restore the area after a project, which can also be costly.’ She shrugged. ‘Since the snow cover melts so quickly every year, we actually have to work fast in our studies. In a few years things will be much more difficult, and we’ll make tracks all over the place.’
Thóra frowned. ‘Is the snow thinning and the ice melting?’ The hand in the photograph had appeared to be enclosed in ice, and if the ice were retreating rather than advancing it seemed doubtful that it was Oddný Hildur’s hand. ‘Do you mean, then, that more ice melts in the summer than is formed in the winter?’
Friðrikka gave her a puzzled look. ‘Yes, I suppose so. I’m not always so good at the small details of these things, but I would think so. And of course the geological conditions from place to place, as well as the wind, probably play a part. Even though it appears white everywhere you look, the layers are thinning and more melts away each summer.’ She looked out of the shed’s tiny window and raised her hand to shield her eyes from the glare of the snow cover outside. But shouldn’t we get going to Borehole L-3 and investigate whether the photo was taken there?’
‘And what if we do find a hand in the ice?’ exclaimed Alvar. None of them knew the answer to that.
The people in Kaanneq treated Igimaq coldly, as usual. The women gave him the evil eye and the men greeted him only by lifting their chins slightly. One of them actually called out to him and asked whether it wasn’t too late for him to move back in with his wife, now that all the men had used her. The hunter ground his teeth but did not turn around, acting as if nothing were out of the ordinary. Whoever said it was a coward; no one with a trace of self-respect would say such a thing to a man whose back was turned. A real man either spoke his mind to your face, or kept quiet and let the womenfolk gossip. Igimaq recognized the voice and knew perfectly well who the man was. It was one of those sheep, a man who had allowed himself to be debauched by alcohol and now let the system provide for him. Like Naruana, his son. Still, their fates were not comparable, nor was the man’s as tragic. He had had nothing to offer, had been a poor hunter with the stamina of a little boy. He’d been skinny his whole life and conditions here weren’t suited to that build, as you could see from the creatures that thrived in this place.
His son, however, had been blessed with all the qualities a good man needed. He was sturdily built, tenacious and unflappable. He had done the hunter’s ancestors proud, until he started to slip down the slope of misfortune. The boy had lost everything that drives a man: pride, enthusiasm and perseverance. From being self-sufficient and having enough to spare, he became like that wretch who shouted insults at people. Hopefully Naruana had not yet sunk so low – still, he had fallen far enough. Igimaq hoped he would not run into his son. He wouldn’t be able to bear it and he feared losing his self-control and hitting him so hard that the young man’s remaining teeth would be knocked out. But realistically there was no danger of seeing him. It was still too early in the day for his son to be on his feet. His time was the night; his behaviour that of the scavengers that hung around the heels of superior and more resourceful animals. Memories of the lessons when the hunter had held his son’s soft hand in his rough palms piled up. The stump where his index finger had been ached.
The hunter’s finger had been frostbitten. At the start of a seal-hunting expedition out on the ice he had clumsily cut a hole in one of his gloves with a small knife inherited from his father, and instead of turning back and waiting until the next morning he had allowed himself to be lured by the great catch the day promised. The ice had been thick and uncracked and the weather the best it could be for hunting. When he returned home that evening with a sledful of seals, his finger was useless. He cut it off before he went to sleep and asked his son to take his place on a sled trip he had promised to lead with a group of Westerners. He wanted to repair the glove before he went back out into the cold, and that’s how his son became acquainted with brennivín; he sat drinking with the group at the end of the trip and never looked back. The loss of his finger had cost the hunter much more than the effort it took to train his middle finger to pull the trigger of his rifle easily and securely. Naturally it took several months for the young man to plunge to the bottom, but all the signs of what was to come appeared immediately after he returned from the trip. He stared at the beer cans in the hands of people they met in a way that was embarrassing to see. Then he started disappearing night after night and always returned home late, until the day came when he did not return. The hunter’s wife went the same way soon afterwards, and that’s when he left. Now he lived in a tent, like his forefathers, far enough from the village to ensure that no one would disturb him. The only ones who visited him were the old men, who appreciated the ancient values and understood his decision and the pattern of his life.
No, the hunter had other things to attend to than meeting up with the disgrace that was his family. He had come to speak to the man considered to hold the most power in the village, a childhood friend of his who had been involved in casting his son and wife to ruin. The hunter did not look forward to it, but their conversation had to take place nonetheless. This former friend of his had to listen to him – he owed him that, having cost him his daughter. He took no pleasure in watching his friend grovel and count the minutes until their conversation ended. Far from it. However, the hunter had to warn people, and this was the way that he felt would be most effective. He wasn’t about to start going from house to house to tell people that hanging over them was the same fate met by the first residents of the town. No one would listen to him that way. Besides, it was only this former friend of his who knew the story and so would hopefully understand the gravity of the situation immediately. Unless he had lost his connection with his roots.
Two little girls with tightly plaited hair walked past and quickened their pace when they saw him. Their mothers had doubtless warned them about him, told them that the man in the tent would take them and eat them if they didn’t behave themselves. He never saw any boys here any more, which hurt him more than the loss of his own son. Perhaps this conversation wouldn’t matter. The town was marked for death anyway if there were no men left in it to hunt.
Thóra felt terribly sunburned on the tiny bit of her face that was exposed. The snow magnified the weak winter sun, which had risen slowly as they drove to the site. She felt relieved when they put down their shovels and went back into the shed. Still, their efforts had been successful; beneath the heavy snow they had found an irregular hole in the apparently bottomless ice layer, but Friðrikka said that it did not fit with any procedure the drillers were supposed to carry out. It was the correct location for their drilling, but according to her the drill had been applied in an extremely unusual manner, and there were peculiar marks left by ice axes and shovels. If the proper procedures had been followed, facing them now should have been a single black borehole the same diameter as the drill shaft, but instead there were many holes scattered about, none of which penetrated deep enough into the ice to be useful for gathering core samples. All of these peculiar holes had been made in one larger pit that appeared to have been dug with a shovel, but when they cleared it of snow it turned out to be empty. The pit was up against a cliff wall at the foot of a mountain rising high above them a bit further north. Directly behind the pit appeared an arched line of stone in the cliff, which rose up through the ice and formed a sort of halo. At the edge of the pit Matthew had caught a glimpse of something in the ice, and they decided to try to get whatever it was out in the hope of gaining some idea of what the ice might have contained before the drillers started working. With great difficulty they managed to scrape out an extremely unusual object, the likes of which neither Thóra nor Matthew had ever seen before. After removing most of the ice from it, it turned out to be a bone that had been polished, with holes drilled in two places in the middle. A leather strap had been tied to it at both ends, meaning that above all, it resembled a giant’s armband.
‘Does anyone know what this is?’ Matthew passed around the object.
‘No idea,’ said Friðrikka. ‘It’s something Greenlandic, but what it’s for I don’t know.’ Alvar took the bone and looked it over, but he was equally unable to provide an explanation for it and gave up trying to guess what it was. He handed the object back to Matthew with a shrug.
‘Maybe the villagers can provide us with an answer,’ said Matthew, grabbing a dirty tea towel from the back of one of the chairs in the shed. He wrapped it around the bone and stuck it in his pocket. They were hungry and ready to head back to the camp. Thóra hoped that someone had had the sense to put together lunch for the group, but she doubted it. Neither the doctor nor Eyjólfur appeared likely to be very domestically minded, and she knew Bella well enough to recognize that she would be the last person to have prepared them a meal.
On the way to the car Friðrikka opened the door to the drilling rig’s cab. They could see through the window that no one was inside it, either alive or dead. Nevertheless, she wanted to have a look inside in case the drillers had left behind a notebook or any other clues that could explain what they were doing. She said that they’d all been careful to record things as they went along, because it was difficult to rely on memory alone when it came to writing it all up in their journals in the evenings. Matthew followed Friðrikka and Thóra saw him climb into the cab after they seemed to have spotted something.
‘Did you find anything?’ called out Thóra to Friðrikka, who was still standing outside the cab.
‘Yes,’ replied the geologist. ‘Now I’m completely at a loss.’