beneath a pile of rocks. It’s possible that it was in a coffin.’
‘It also seems doubtful that Berg employees dug this up accidentally,’ said Matthew. ‘Cairns must stand out in this landscape.’
The doctor shrugged. ‘Maybe they needed to dig in the area where it was buried and didn’t realize what it was until after they’d started removing the stones.’
‘Could these bones date back to 1918?’ asked Thora. Maybe the workers had found the remains of the people that disappeared from the original settlement.
‘No, I don’t think so.’ Finnbogi stroked the skull’s crown. ‘This doesn’t look that old.’ He looked at her in surprise. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘I read in a book over in the cafeteria that there was a settlement here, but that everyone died of famine and exposure. I thought this might be one of those poor sods.’
‘That wouldn’t fit at all.’ The doctor heaved a sigh. ‘Shame, because it would be an incredibly convenient explanation.’
‘What about the tag?’ Thora asked, pointing to a scrap of paper that had been lying beneath the skull in the drawer. The code G-57 – nothing else – had been written on it with a broad black felt-tip pen.
‘Do you think it’s related?’ asked Matthew. ‘Maybe it was in the drawer before the skull was put there.’ He looked at the name-plate on the door of the office. ‘It’ll all come to light, because the person whose desk this was is one of the ones who refuses to come back here. Maybe Eyjolfur and Fri?rikka also know something about this. Maybe the skull was even found when one of them was here.’ He turned to the doctor. ‘I know this is a ridiculous question, but is it possible to know whether this person died of natural causes?’
The doctor did not seem to find this ridiculous. ‘Well, she didn’t die from a head injury, that much is certain. The bones are whole and uncracked. The teeth suggest that she was a young person, so it wasn’t old age. The teeth are also in decent condition, so the individual took good care of them. However, it’s impossible to say whether she died through illness, injury or human intervention. Hopefully it’ll be explained when we know more about the origin of the skull. The fact that it’s here definitely points to her death occurring under unusual circumstances. In the normal way of things, the bones would have been interred in a graveyard, because they’re found in most, if not all of the settlements in this country, as they are elsewhere.’
Thora heard familiar footsteps approaching in the corridor. Bella appeared in the doorway, an unfathomable look on her face. ‘There are bones in all of the desks except for five,’ she said, not appearing overly surprised. Matthew had assigned her the task of exploring the other rooms in the office building in the unlikely event that more skulls could be found, or the rest of the skeleton. None of them had thought that anything would come of it. ‘The drawers were all locked, but Fri?rikka told me that they all had the same lock – she gave me a key that she found in one of the rooms and it worked for all of them. I didn’t want to touch the bones, so you’ll have to come with me if you want to see them for yourselves.’
‘It appears to be a complete skeleton.’ The doctor clearly had no idea how to deal with this new discovery. ‘It’s possible, of course, that it’s missing something, but all the main bones are certainly here. Closer examination will reveal whether they are all from the same individual, but I would consider it likely.’
‘It will have to wait,’ Matthew said firmly. ‘We’re not going to touch the bones, and we will leave this to the police.’ He shut the drawer of the last of the desks that Bella had pointed out. ‘Actually, we should have left the skull alone, but we can’t undo that now.’ He watched the doctor place it carefully back in the desk and close the drawer.
The wind blew something against the side of the building and its foundations creaked. Thora shuddered; the storm was about to hit – that was certain. The windows on the side of the office building facing into the wind shuddered at regular intervals, and each time Thora was convinced that a shower of glass would rain over them. She realized she was, discreetly, keeping as far away from the windows as possible. Accompanying the whine of the wind was a regular knocking sound from the roof, which the doctor had thought was probably a loose piece of roofing. Thora found the sound unpleasant and its regularity and pitch grated more and more on her nerves. She would rather the piece flew off and let a little snow in than have this sound constantly in her ears.
Fri?rikka and Eyjolfur had come over to the office building while Finnbogi was in the middle of examining the bones, but both of them denied knowing anything about them. They both seemed convincing and sincere in their amazement as they stood in the little vestibule and brushed most of the snow from their clothing. When Matthew had quizzed them about the discovery without finding out anything new, and they had been allowed to see the remains for themselves, it was decided that Eyjolfur should inspect the computer system and try to establish contact with the outside world. Fri?rikka, in the meantime, would assess the status of the project. The bones’ discovery did not change the purpose of the trip.
‘Does anyone know how long the storm is supposed to last?’ asked Thora, looking out into the heavy blizzard. It was starting to grow light, although visibility was still poor because of the snow. ‘We can’t investigate the area much if it keeps coming down like this.’ Just that moment another gust struck the window, making it wobble.
‘I think it’s supposed to subside tonight,’ said Matthew. ‘It can hardly continue much longer than that.’
The doctor snorted loudly. ‘Storms here can last much longer than half a day. You might as well resign yourselves to this one lasting for days. Hopefully it won’t – but you never know.’
Thora scowled. ‘Oh, that’s just
They both looked at the doctor. What should he do? Each of them was clearly reluctant to trust a stranger with their own project. The doctor, seeming to sense this, straightened up ceremoniously. ‘Well, I need to collect samples from the taps and elsewhere. We may very well find
‘And then they evaporated as a result?’ asked Thora.
‘No, but they might have tried to seek help and then become too exhausted to reach their destination. Legionnaires’ is a dangerous disease and can even be fatal if left untreated. Or perhaps they made it to a hospital somewhere and couldn’t get in touch with anyone due to their illness.’
Thora didn’t fancy coffee any more, even if the water came from melted snow rather than the camp’s plumbing system. She and Matthew went to search the offices of the two drillers and discovered quickly that they had shared one room. On the way they passed Eyjolfur, who was sitting in the corridor in a kind of makeshift computer lab. On the screen before him was an indecipherable menu and the young man’s fingers flew over the keyboard. ‘Is everything all right with the system?’ asked Thora. ‘We’re going to have a look at some of the employees’ computers and we don’t want to damage anything.’
The young man looked up from the screen and smiled at her. ‘You can’t do any harm,’ he said. ‘The system is all right, except that there’s no Internet connection. The servers were turned off, but they’re undamaged and working properly. You can get into them just fine and that’s where all the data relating to the project should be saved.’ He reached for a pen and paper lying next to the keyboard. Something was scrawled on the paper but he tore off a blank strip. ‘Which computers are you thinking of looking at?’
‘The drillers’, to start with,’ she replied. ‘We’ll probably end up looking at all of them but we want to start there.’
‘Then you need passwords.’ He clicked on the mouse to bring up another menu with the names of the system’s users. ‘I have no idea what passwords everyone had but I’ll change them all to the same one.’ He wrote 1234 on the piece of paper and handed it to Thora. ‘Just use this; the username should pop up after you boot the computer but give me a shout if that doesn’t happen. This should get you into everything. Except the Internet, which is totally down. I’m starting to think the dish has malfunctioned.’
‘The dish?’ Thora wasn’t particularly familiar with computer systems.
‘We connect to the Internet via satellite dish, but everything suggests it’s kaput. It’s up on the roof, but no one’s going up there in this weather. Hopefully there’s not much wrong with it, then I should be able to fix this.
