Thóra was extremely relieved that Friðrikka was asleep when the intense light lit up the meeting room where they lay on the floor. She slipped carefully out from under the duvet and tiptoed to the one window on which the lights appeared to fall directly. Bella had closed the curtains at Friðrikka’s request, and now Thóra lifted one corner and looked out. Outside was a man. She was so startled that she dropped the curtain and stepped back from the window. She knew he hadn’t seen her because he was turned away, looking towards the cafeteria. Still, Thóra was alarmed and could not shake off the feeling that he had seen her. She made a desperate attempt to remember whether the front door had been locked but couldn’t recall at all which of them had shut it behind the men when they left. She looked at her companions, who were sleeping quietly, and wondered whether she should wake them. The answer was easy enough as far as Friðrikka was concerned, but Bella would probably remain calm and could even chase the man away. ‘Bella, Bella.’ Thóra whispered her secretary’s name as she shook her shoulder, first gently but then more forcefully. ‘Wake up! There’s someone outside.’ Bella only opened one eye, but she managed to give Thóra a look that conveyed her intense displeasure at being woken. ‘Get up. But be careful not to wake Friðrikka,’ Thóra said, still whispering.
The lights outside went off, and Bella appeared galvanized into movement. She raised herself on one elbow and got to her feet. They both looked ridiculous. Bella was wearing flannel pyjamas, while Thóra was wearing an evening dress made from quite a soft material, which had made her think it might work very well as a nightgown. ‘Who’s out there?’ asked Bella hoarsely. She went to the window and peeked out. ‘I don’t see anyone.’ Now that the floodlights were off, it was more difficult to see into the darkness from the well-lit room. Bella pulled the curtain a bit higher to get a better view, but then turned around quickly. ‘I saw him. He’s on his way out to the kitchen,’ she said, short of breath.
Thóra was completely taken aback. Under normal circumstances she could have called Matthew and warned him, but there was no mobile phone signal here. ‘Shouldn’t we let them know?’ She tried to remember whether the office building had a back door, but couldn’t. ‘We could go out through the back window and run over without him noticing us.’
Bella arched an eyebrow. ‘Are you mental?’
‘What if they’re asleep and this is the man in the clip?’ Thóra shuffled her feet on the cold floor in agitation. ‘What clip? What exactly do you mean by “clip”?’ Bella was starting to raise her voice a bit too much and Friðrikka shifted on the floor at their feet.
In the excitement Thóra had forgotten that the others in the group had no idea there was a video showing the lower half of a man as he lay on the floor, apparently being decapitated or beaten, with blood flying everywhere. ‘Nothing,’ she replied hurriedly. ‘Doesn’t matter. We just need to let them know so that the man doesn’t catch them off-guard.’
‘Then it’s best that you go,’ muttered Bella. ‘One of us needs to stay with Friðrikka anyway. We can’t leave her behind alone.’
Thóra couldn’t waste time arguing with Bella. ‘Then I’ll go, but you have to promise to watch me through the window.’ She narrowed her eyes at her secretary. ‘You’re not to take your eyes off me, or go out for a smoke.’
Bella agreed, and Thóra hurried to the vestibule and pulled a coverall over her dress. She didn’t have time to choose carefully and the one she ended up with was too large. Then she put on snow boots that were also too big, but at least this meant they were quicker to pull on than her walking shoes. She called back to Bella to let her know she was on her way out, and although she received no reply she had to move quickly. She would never fit through the window in this get-up, so she decided to use the door and hope for the best. If it came to the worst and the man attacked her, she would scream with all her might. She pushed aside the thought that this was a ridiculous plan – no one could come to her assistance in time – and opened the door.
It was freezing outside, but for the first time since arriving in Greenland she didn’t think about the cold; the strip of land between the office building and the cafeteria occupied her thoughts entirely. The man was nowhere to be seen. Thóra’s heart hammered in her chest. She had not expected this. She had assumed that the man was on his way over and would now have his back turned towards her so that she could sneak unseen between the houses. She tried to spot any new tracks but more or less all of the snow seemed to be tramped down on the way over to the cafeteria, making it impossible to discern which of the tracks belonged to the intruder. All she could do was keep going and hope he wasn’t lying in wait for her. She walked faster, heading straight for the entrance instead of going behind the building as she had originally intended. Since the intruder was nowhere to be seen it was just as likely that he was there. The large, awkward coverall made it difficult for her and the back cuffs of the legs dragged through the snow, meaning she didn’t go as quietly as she’d intended. Intent on the rustling noise the coverall was making, she didn’t notice the tracks that turned off from the path towards the rubbish bin and got a terrible shock when she walked past the large steel box: in its shadow stood the man. Thóra gasped.
He was wearing an animal-skin jacket and furry white trousers that looked to Thóra to be made from a polar bear pelt. The man could have been very well-built or quite puny; his clothes were so bulky that it was impossible to tell. His eyes were deep brown, almost black. Yet he was not cruel-looking, his face giving more of an impression of sorrow than evil. Thóra stood frozen, in an agony of indecision. Her original plan to scream for help was forgotten and fear was scrambling her common sense, so all she could think of to do was wish him good evening. As soon as she had said the words she could not recall what language she’d said them in. She’d probably spoken Icelandic, since the man stared at her, clearly understanding nothing. She repeated her greeting in Danish, just to be sure.
‘You must leave this place.’ The man spoke Danish, which even Thóra could hear was not his mother-tongue.
‘Why?’ asked Thóra. Although she didn’t really expect a reply, the man could hardly expect her simply to say yes, go inside and start packing.
‘Your friends are not coming back. Go home.’ The man’s voice gave no hint of whether he was threatening or advising her.
‘How do you know that?’ Thóra suddenly felt the cold that she hadn’t noticed during her initial adrenaline rush. ‘What happened to them?’
‘They’re gone.’ The man stared at her without blinking. ‘This is an evil place.’ Maybe this was the old hunter the woman in the village had mentioned. He was dressed strangely enough to be living rough in the wilderness. Thóra remembered his name and decided to ask him straight out. ‘Are you Igimaq?’ The man appeared surprised by the question, but he nodded. ‘I was told you could tell me about this area.’
‘I have told you. This is an evil place. Leave immediately.’ He didn’t ask who had told Thóra about him. ‘You don’t understand and you don’t belong here. Go and tell the others to leave. This place is evil.’
Here was Thóra’s opportunity to squeeze some information out of him about what was wrong with the place. It would be nigh on impossible to find this peculiar man again if he didn’t want to be found, and if he had had anything to do with the disappearance of the drillers or Oddný Hildur he would be just as likely to go into hiding when the police arrived. ‘You’ve got to explain this to me better. Maybe we’ll leave when we understand why this is necessary.’
The man stared at her. He appeared to be growing angry. ‘People died here.’
‘The people who first moved here?’ Thóra remembered the chapter about the settlement in which everyone had died of hunger. ‘Is that what you mean?’ The book hadn’t mentioned a direct link, but it seemed likely to her that the legend of a curse on the area had arisen in consequence of those long-ago deaths. She wasn’t sure whether this would help the bank’s case, but one never knew.
‘The people who died have no descendants, because they also died. Therefore their souls could not be reborn in their children and grandchildren and they are still here, even though this occurred many years ago. They will be here forever. This is not a good place and those who come here might never leave again.’
Thóra had grown colder than could be explained by the frost alone. Although she wasn’t religious and didn’t believe in ghosts, she felt very moved by the idea of the poor original inhabitants, who would never be free from cold and poverty even after their deaths. ‘So the souls of those who starved to death here are to blame for the disappearances?’
‘The ice preserves many things, and destroys nothing. In the end it returns what it has swallowed.’ The man took off one of his leather gloves. His hand was missing its index finger. He showed Thóra his palm, in which nestled a little square made of tiny coloured beads. ‘My wife was making this thirty years ago. She never finished it, because she lost it. Yesterday I found it in a place where I often go at this time of year. The ice is melting and revealing what it’s been keeping. It’s bad to be here, now more than ever.’
It seemed a simple yes or no was too much to ask of him. ‘I understand that you know this area better than anyone. Are you willing to tell me what’s wrong with this place? Are there often polar bears here?’
‘I was telling you. You do not listen.’ The man had become angry again.
‘Yes, I was listening but I have trouble understanding what you’re saying. We speak and think in a different way where I live. For example, our souls don’t move around after we die.’ Thóra knew she had a limited time to ask the man what she wanted to know. His eyes were starting to dart around as if to determine which way he should leave. To Thóra it was all one endless ice sheet that led either to the mountains or out to sea, but for him the landscape must look much more diverse. ‘We are missing two men and one woman from our camp. You said that our friends would not return. Do you mean these people, and are you implying that they are dead?’ The man did not reply, gazing into the distance. ‘Are they dead?’ For the first time since stopping in her tracks Thóra moved, stepping directly into the man’s line of sight. ‘I’ve got to know.’
‘Leave this place and tell the others to keep away.’ He stared into her eyes. ‘You will regret it if you do not.’
The man clearly didn’t intend to explain any further, so Thóra tried a different tactic. ‘What happened to your daughter? I was told that she died here in this place.’
Igimaq squinted at her. The corners of his mouth turned down. ‘My daughter is none of your business. She is no longer here.’
Precisely. ‘Did the same thing happen to her as to the people we’re looking for?’
‘You will certainly find that out if you do not leave. Then it will all be too late.’
He put the piece of beadwork in his pocket and put his glove back on. ‘When you see the marks you will understand what I am talking about.’ He moved past her. ‘But then it will be too late.’
‘What?’ Now it was Thóra’s turn to be angry. ‘Marks? Can’t you just explain properly? What marks do you mean?’ The man walked away without looking back. ‘Why did you come here?’ she called out after him, hoping to delay him.
‘I have done what I came to do. I came to ask you to leave.’ The man turned around, and now his face was framed by the fur hood he had thrown over his head as he left. ‘But you do not listen, any more than those who came here before you.’
‘Did you damage the satellite dishes and snowmobile?’ Thóra’s limited language skills prevented her from knowing what these things were called in Danish, but she hoped that the Danes had taken the English names unchanged, as they usually did with technical terms. The man looked back one last time at this, but his expression showed that he understood none of it.
Thóra watched him walk into the night, annoyed at herself. He had a long stride but walked in complete silence. It was as if he had made a deal with the snow not to crunch beneath his feet. When he walked between the floodlight towers they went on again, but he appeared not to be startled by the intense light. It wasn’t until he disappeared entirely from her sight that Thóra got moving herself. I doubt Bella is even watching, she thought as she tore open the cafeteria door. The man could have killed and eaten her during the time she had been gone, and there was no sign of her chain-smoking guardian angel. But this was probably just as well, since the man would have disappeared if someone else had turned up. Still, she decided to pause for a moment before she went back to the office building, just to torture Bella a bit, make her pace the floor and worry over Thóra’s fate. She was going to find Matthew and finish her glass of wine in the lounge before going back to bed. She did not need to search long; he and the doctor came running to the vestibule while she was still pulling off her coverall.
‘What’s wrong?’ Matthew hurried over and took hold of her shoulder to steady her when she stumbled trying to get out of the second trouser leg. ‘Did something happen?’ He looked in astonishment at her dress but said nothing. The last time he had seen her in it, they were at the theatre.
‘Well, not exactly. I met Igimaq, the hunter the woman told us about. He came here to tell us to leave.’
‘What?’ Matthew seemed furious. ‘What were you doing out there?’
‘I was coming over to warn you. The floodlights went on and we saw a man outside. He was walking in this direction and I thought maybe you were asleep.’ Suddenly she realized what a bad idea this had been. Maybe Oddný Hildur had made precisely the same mistake when she disappeared. The floodlight system hadn’t been operational at the time, but she could very well have seen the man despite that and followed him out into the cold. ‘Anyway, nothing happened. He was very cryptic and it was impossible to get anything useful out of him. We need one of the locals to speak to him for us.’
‘Are you out of your mind, just rushing out there like that? Especially when you’d just seen a stranger outside?’ He was nearly shouting.
‘I’m very sorry, and I know it was ridiculous,’ she said as apologetically as possible, ‘but I still managed to talk to him. That was worth something, since we’re not going to get to visit him by snowmobile.’ Thóra hung up her coverall. ‘He pretty much confirmed that Bjarki and Dóri are dead, as well as Oddný Hildur.’
‘What do you mean by “pretty much confirmed”?’ asked Finnbogi.
‘He said that our friends would not return. I can’t interpret that in any other way.’
‘Was he involved in their deaths?’ Matthew was clearly still annoyed about Thóra’s impulsive trip outside. And no doubt his anger was fuelled by the fact that he and Finnbogi had sat by the window and peered through a crack in the curtain when the floodlight came on, but had seen nothing. It hadn’t crossed their minds to go outside to see what was up. Doubtless it irritated him that, for once, she had proven to be more resourceful than him.
‘Maybe,’ she replied. ‘I have absolutely no idea.’ They moved into the lounge, where she told them everything she could recall of her conversation with Igimaq. Neither man understood his statement about marks. They guessed that he had meant some sort of signs or symbols. Natural phenomena that in a primitive understanding could be considered omens of hidden danger. After drinking the remainder of the Opal schnapps Thóra returned to the office building, now accompanied by Matthew. When they entered the meeting room Bella was not pacing the floor fretfully, as Thóra had hoped, but snoring under her duvet.