The Day Is Dark

its side, but the roof and the cables, which still connected it to strong fastenings, had prevented it from falling off. The banging they had heard during the storm had most likely come from the dish. Eyjolfur had fixed it back in its place but hadn’t got it to work properly, even though he considered it possible that the Internet connection could go on and off as it appeared to have done while the dish was swinging on the roof at the mercy of the wind. It was a different story with the dish on the roof of the cafeteria, to which the phones were connected. It was in a worse state, having presumably been subjected to more damage before it came loose, and in the end Eyjolfur came to the conclusion that its receiving equipment was so badly broken that phone calls were out of the question.

It was difficult to gauge the reasons why the dishes had suffered so much damage outside. Eyjolfur thought it doubtful that the weather was to blame, and tended towards the opinion that someone had hammered at the devices with a crowbar or other heavy object until they came loose. There could be no other explanation for the dents on them, he thought.

Eyjolfur must have still been thinking about the satellite dishes when he arrived at the storage unit, since the first thing that crossed his mind was that it had been broken into. The unit was unlocked and the paint was scraped away in several dented spots around the lock bracket. Inside was the snowmobile, surrounded by tyres of all shapes and sizes, spare car parts and various other supplies. Eyjolfur didn’t notice anything missing, so the team did not set much store by his conclusion that it was a case of breaking and entering. There could have been other reasons for the dents on the rusted bracket, and it was also possible that the hanging lock on the unit had disappeared long ago. Eyjolfur pointed out that he wasn’t particularly interested in cars or their maintenance and had only been in the unit once before, so he couldn’t say for sure what it had contained. However, he was certain that the unit’s door had always been securely locked. Fri?rikka had never been in the unit either, but she remembered that she had once walked past it when its door stood open. She recalled nothing about what had been in it. Of course it was possible that someone had broken into it to damage the snowmobile, although on what impulse she had no idea. The only motive they could think of was that someone had intended to hinder the drillers’ movements, although no one could contribute anything when Matthew sought an explanation for the possible reasons for wanting to do this. It was clear that the damage – if there was actually any damage – was not of the kind suffered by the satellite dishes, since there were no marks or dents visible on the snowmobile.

As the discussion about possible vandalism reached its peak, Fri?rikka pointed out that the drillers had also had the use of two cars, so damaging the snowmobile to immobilize the men would have been a fairly pointless exercise. The cars had been parked outside when they arrived and it hadn’t crossed anyone’s mind to check their condition. When they went to do so, they discovered that the cars wouldn’t start, and it looked very likely that one of the engines had burned out.

Now, Thora was sitting at the computer in the office that Fri?rikka said had been used by Oddny Hildur. She was planning to upload the photos that Eyjolfur had taken of the damage to the satellite dishes on the roof. Later, she would transfer the images to her laptop, but it was easier to view them on a good screen that wasn’t covered with the fingerprints of small children. Everything now suggested that the drillers’ disappearance, and consequently the cessation of the project, could be attributed to human intervention, and hence the photos could be useful to the bank in its dispute with the mining company. However, it was impossible to say who was behind this or why. Of course it was not out of the question that nature had been asserting itself, that a violent wind had blown over the satellite dishes, but Thora doubted that a polar bear or other wild animal had been involved; the roof was too high for that. Nor did the damage to the dishes appear to have been caused by claws or teeth. The dents in the thick metal shield were huge, and there were no scratches or scrapes to be seen. The marks could hardly have been made by anything but a tool. After her conversation with the Greenlandic woman she found it not entirely absurd to suppose that one of the villagers might bear the responsibility for it. There was a thin line between denying assistance to those in need and causing them wilful damage through acts of vandalism. Perhaps the villagers had been offended when their warnings hadn’t been heeded and had taken action in this way, which then raised the question of whether they had also played a part in the disappearance and death of Oddny Hildur. Thora had deliberately chosen to use the computer the missing woman had used, on the off-chance that something was hidden there that might shed light on her disappearance. So after uploading the photographs, Thora focused on combing through the computer’s files, and quickly became lost in that jungle.

By the time she had more or less finished viewing everything that she considered to be of any worth, the rumbling in her belly was driving her crazy. She looked at the clock on the screen and saw that time had flown. She didn’t feel any better informed. Oddny Hildur appeared to have been rather reticent and did not leave any clues about herself on her computer. Her e-mails were incredibly unexciting and centred mostly on work; there were numerous short messages with attached reports about the progress of the project and strata that Thora did not understand at all. Still, several messages to the owner of the company roused Thora’s interest. In them Oddny Hildur appeared to be complaining about the atmosphere at the workplace and the harassment she said the engineer Arnar was suffering. Thora searched for and found the man’s reply, in which he seemed to disregard all of Oddny Hildur’s concerns and make little of her request for him to intervene. His message contained rather feeble advice such as, ‘It sounds like it’s just good-natured teasing that shouldn’t be taken seriously,’ and ‘I’m sure it doesn’t matter to him, he has a thick skin,’ and Thora could not help but admire the geologist’s determination not to give up. She had sent her final message on this subject two days before she disappeared. The message hadn’t been answered. In it she had said that it was now no longer possible to turn a blind eye to the matter; the man was having a bad time of it and the cruelty of his co-workers clearly ‘did matter to him’; the harassment was becoming more serious and was heading towards something that could not be taken back. Thora recalled the tiff between Fri?rikka and Eyjolfur over the homosexual engineer. Although she was unable to be completely certain, it all looked as if the poor man had been made an outsider by the prejudices of his co-workers. At least that’s what she had understood from the conversation, even though she also vaguely recalled Eyjolfur’s argument that it was the man’s alcoholism that had made him unpopular – or rather the fact that he had managed to gain control over the disease, which had made him boringly holier-than-thou. It wasn’t possible to determine, either from Oddny Hildur’s messages or from her boss’s reply, whether it was the man’s sexual preference or his sobriety that had provoked the harassment.

Besides this, Thora found an exchange of emails between Oddny Hildur and Arnar himself. It wasn’t clear from these either what had caused the harassment or how Arnar felt about it. Thora’s interpretation was that he had tried to tough it out, and didn’t feel comfortable complaining even though his co-workers’ behaviour hurt him. Of course it must have. If Oddny Hildur’s insinuations were anything to go by, it would have been bad enough to have had to endure it eight to ten hours a day, five days a week, but in this case workplace and home were merged into one for a huge portion of the year, with no refuge to be had anywhere. Thus, statements such as, ‘It doesn’t matter, I’m not going to let them affect me,’ and ‘Luckily I don’t care what others think of me,’ could not have been made with complete sincerity. Arnar had written them more to convince himself than Oddny Hildur; he had tried to build an invisible shield that protected him from all of it. However, one sentence clearly showed that if there were such a shield, it was not solid. Arnar had invited Oddny Hildur to coffee at his apartment one evening to discuss this and that; he had been thinking about quitting since ‘this isn’t working any more’. This message was the last that Thora found from him to Oddny Hildur, and it had been sent two days before the geologist disappeared. If she had answered him, her message had been deleted. It was certainly possible that Oddny Hildur had accepted the invitation verbally; they worked in the same building and ate all their meals at the same table. It was actually strange that they should have e-mailed each other at all, although Thora knew that she herself sent her colleagues e-mails when she didn’t feel like getting up and speaking to them face to face. It was often just quicker that way. In any case, she would have to speak to this Arnar when they returned to Iceland.

The woman appeared to have had few friends to whom she sent e-mails, but that might not be the whole story. Thora personally chose to keep her work e-mail separate from her personal e-mail, other than in exceptional circumstances. She used a different address for the personal mail and it was generally full to the brim with silly pictures, jokes and stories that one was supposed to forward to at least ten others, who doubtless cared as little for such rubbish as Thora herself did. It could well be that Oddny Hildur had been drowning in e-mails from her friends and acquaintances but that that mailbox was located elsewhere in cyberspace. With things as they were, it would be of little use for Thora to try to investigate the main e-mail applications in the hope that the geologist had let the computer save her password. It was fairly clear that Oddny Hildur’s friends and relatives were not connected with her disappearance, but it was conceivable that the woman had sent them more comprehensive descriptions of the situation in the camp.