unthinkable that Berg Technology wouldn’t have provided such a thing. Perhaps the men had tried to make it to a more southerly settlement by snowmobile, and died of exposure on the way.
‘He didn’t go by dogsled, that’s for sure,’ replied the woman emphatically. ‘There’s no one here who would have taken him, and he didn’t steal dogs or a sled. I would have heard about it. And I didn’t notice any snowmobiles. They’re loud and the dogs always bark at them.’ She stuck her hands in her pockets and shrugged her shoulders, her jacket rising again and making her neck disappear once more. ‘They know that they’re a threat to them. They can sometimes replace the dogs. But not always.’ She realized that she’d got off the subject and went back to it. ‘No one would have taken the man on a dogsled or a snowmobile.’
‘Why would no one have wanted to take him if he needed help?’ Thora suspected that the woman wasn’t quite as all-knowing about what happened in the village as she pretended to be. ‘Do you dislike outsiders so much?’ Thora’s sentences had become practically all English since her Danish vocabulary could no longer handle the conversation. But it didn’t seem to do any harm.
The woman frowned. ‘We’re not bad to outsiders. We don’t like the place you choose to live in. No one should be there; you are disturbing the evil that dwells there and by doing so you’re putting us all in danger. We just want you to go somewhere else.’
In a way, Thora was slightly relieved, as it was conceivable that the natives’ prejudices against the work site could be used to justify the delays on the project. There was nothing in the contract to protect Berg against this, even though it could be argued that it should have been included. The villagers had possibly done more than just nag the staff to go home. ‘What’s wrong with that area?’
The woman looked panicked. ‘Nothing that you would understand,’ she said. ‘I want my money.’
‘You’ve got to tell me,’ replied Thora. ‘Is the area considered bad because of a particular occurrence, or is something else wrong with it? Something palpable such as polar bears or other dangers?’
The woman had grown irritated. Her eyes narrowed as she stood there shuffling her feet and looking around as if to see how many people were witness to the conversation. Although there was no one else to be seen, there were doubtless people watching from behind the curtains of the nearby houses. ‘I don’t know. It’s just something that everyone knows. The area is bad and it’s dangerous to be there. We never go there and if you had listened to us then you wouldn’t be looking for this man.’ She stopped her hopeless search for invisible observers and looked at Thora head-on. Her pitch-black pupils gleamed in the yellow whites of her eyes. ‘You’ll never find him.’
Before Thora could reply to this assertion, Matthew and Finnbogi started heading back over to the car. The woman appeared startled. ‘Those are my friends,’ said Thora, to try to calm her down. She had a certain sympathy for the woman’s sense of self-preservation, to agree to speak to a stranger in the hope of payment – there were hardly many opportunities to make money in the village. The boats in the harbour were of the sort used for small, personal catches; larger fishing vessels could not enter the harbour, which was surrounded by sea ice. The villagers should actually have celebrated the project as a source of increased opportunities for work that it surely brought. Instead, their complete lack of interest in attempting to profit from the project clearly revealed their deep-rooted fear of the afflicted place. Thora pointed at Matthew as he approached with Finnbogi. ‘He’s got the money.’ The woman nodded worriedly. While Thora explained things to the two men, the Greenlander stood there looking as if she expected the three of them to do her in.
None of them had any idea how much they should pay the woman. Finnbogi was convinced that if they paid her too much, they would soon be beset by people who would invent stories simply for the money. In the end they gave her five hundred Danish crowns and she took them without any indication as to whether it was more or less than she’d expected. She thanked them in a soft voice as she stuffed the bills into her pocket. ‘Where do you live?’ asked Thora.
‘Why?’ The woman’s voice was suspicious and she frowned instinctively.
‘I might need to speak to you again,’ Thora replied. ‘If the phones at the camp can’t be reconnected we might need to make a call from your phone. Of course we’ll pay if it should come to that. I’d also like to know more about what you were saying about the work site. You could maybe try to find out from some of the older people here what the explanation is for the area’s bad reputation.’
The woman shook her head. ‘I don’t want to talk to them for you. You’ll just have to do that yourselves.’ She appeared to be somewhat undecided, however, and it was perhaps in the hope of receiving more cash that she didn’t leave. She looked away from Thora and began to scan the windows of the nearby houses again.
‘We can’t get anyone else to speak to us and you know that,’ said Thora. ‘You’re the only person who’s offered to help at all. I promise that we’ll pay you for all the assistance you give us.’
The woman looked around her one last time and finally turned to Thora and pointed discreetly in the direction of the harbour. ‘See that house standing at the end of the village? It’s blue.’ Thora saw that it was the house she’d noticed as they drove through the village. From this angle it didn’t appear any more attractive than it had earlier. Bright orange skis stood stuck in the snow against the house’s gable but otherwise there was little there that called to mind sports or a healthy lifestyle. Thora assumed that the woman had been behind the curtains that moved as they passed by. ‘I live there.’ She peered furtively at the men. ‘You can make calls from there if you want. Not them. Just you.’ She turned away without saying goodbye.
‘What about the information?’ called out Thora after the woman had turned her back on them. ‘Can you try to find out for me about the history of the area?’
The woman replied without looking back. ‘No. You could try talking to Igimaq. He should know the story.’
‘Who is Igimaq?’ The doctor was the first to ask and Thora tried as best she could to hide her irritation. The woman clearly would not answer him – only Thora.
The woman looked back angrily and stared hard at Thora, acting as if the two men were not standing there. Finnbogi had the good sense to say nothing. ‘He’s an old hunter and he knows this area well. He’s even experienced first hand what it costs to spend time in those parts. He lost his daughter there.’
‘What do you mean?’ Thora started thinking about the polar bear again. ‘Did she die of exposure?’
‘Ask Igimaq yourself. He lives west of town. If you head towards the black cliff you can see in front of the glacier, you’ll come across his tent.’ She looked from Thora to the car. ‘You won’t make it there in that. You’ve got to find yourselves dogsleds or snowmobiles.’ She turned away from them once more and walked away. ‘Good luck finding it.’
They watched her as she strode off, proud and upright, and Thora admired the way the young woman managed to keep her back so straight. It was as if they were watching one of the most illustrious women in the village. Despite her yellowed eyes and the odour of alcohol, they could still sense her proud spirit, which must have been based on her coming from much sturdier stock than them. It was as if she were two different people, a front and a back, where the front had stumbled on the road of life but the back was still proud and victorious.
‘Okay. Igimaq.’ Finnbogi looked to the sky in the hope of seeing where the sun was in its short working day. He had forgotten about the fog, which made it impossible for him to determine the source of the grey light that slipped through. ‘Perhaps we should check whether we can find even one snowmobile.’ He sighed loudly. ‘We forgot to show her the bone and the Tupilak.’ He tapped lightly at his jacket pocket.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Matthew. ‘I suspect this Igimaq knows more about these things than the girl, anyway.’
‘If he wants to talk to us about them at all,’ said Thora, rolling up the window. There was no need to breathe in more cold air when warmer air was available. It wasn’t always possible to make such a choice. On a snowmobile, for instance.
Chapter 14
In the end they were unable to meet Igimaq. There was a snowmobile at the camp, as Thora had expected, but it wasn’t in working order. Alvar spent the rest of the day trying to repair it, with no luck. They’d found it inside a storage unit behind the camp on a tip-off from Fri?rikka and Eyjolfur, the latter of whom went with Matthew and Alvar to the unit, happy to stop working on the satellite dishes for a while. He had made no progress, and the dishes appeared to have suffered some rather unusual damage. The one on the roof of the office building was on
