‘There’s red wine on my socks,’ snivelled the geologist, starting to pull off the offending items. ‘It looks like blood.’ She wasn’t the only one; she’d dropped two bottles of the stuff on the ground and they’d all stepped in it as they rushed to get to her.
‘What were you doing inside the freezer?’ It was perhaps better to speak normally to the woman rather than encourage more tears by being overly compassionate. ‘Surely you didn’t find the bottles of wine in there?’
‘What?’ Fri?rikka looked up and stared dully at Thora. She was holding one of her socks. Suddenly she seemed to pull herself together. She spoke slowly, and once or twice a hiccup interrupted what she was saying. ‘The wine is stored in the cook’s office and I went there first. I only found three bottles and I thought that wouldn’t be enough, so I decided to check and see whether there was any brennivin.’ Out of the corner of her eye Thora noticed Matthew shudder. ‘They served some at the Midwinter Feast when I was here and it didn’t get finished, and it occurred to me that it had probably also been served the previous February and there might be some left over. It was stored in the freezer last year, so I went in there.’ The walk-in freezer was rather large. There were shelves along the walls and although several of them were empty some of them still held packaged meat, frozen bread and bags of vegetables. The freezer had a heavy steel door that now stood halfway open, allowing air to stream into the kitchen in cold gusts. A red alarm light spun in circles on the wall to warn that the door was open.
‘But why did you lift the plastic sheet?’ asked Thora. ‘Wasn’t the brennivin kept on a shelf?’
Fri?rikka closed her eyes and tears squeezed out of them. She stifled a sob; she was apparently reliving her moment of terror. ‘I thought that the cook might have hidden the bottle so that no one could sneak a drink from it. I saw the pile at the back of the freezer and peeked under the plastic to see if the bottle might be there.’ She opened her eyes. ‘I didn’t expect
‘Hasn’t anyone looked there since we arrived?’ asked Eyjolfur. ‘When we were looking for Dori and Bjarki, for instance?’ They all shook their heads.
‘It didn’t occur to us that we might find someone inside the freezer,’ said the doctor apologetically. ‘I looked in the kitchen, and completely overlooked that possibility.’
‘I think we should shut the freezer and go back,’ said Matthew. ‘The police will have to take over and it’s important that we disturb the scene as little as possible, things being as they are.’ They had all pushed into the freezer to see what had caused Fri?rikka such agitation. ‘It was a mistake to go in there in the first place, and it’s best not to make a bad thing worse.’
‘Was it Oddny Hildur?’ Fri?rikka looked inquisitively at Matthew. ‘I didn’t look. I couldn’t.’
Matthew shook his head. ‘No, it was a man, as far as I could see.’ Fri?rikka let out a sigh of relief, then her expression became mournful again. ‘Dori or Bjarki?’
‘No.’ Eyjolfur shook his head. ‘It was neither of them.’
‘What
Thora got goosebumps. What the hell was in the freezer? Who had taken the trouble to put the disgusting frozen corpse of this unknown man there? ‘Could this have been there the whole time?’ she asked. ‘Maybe it was put there before when the floodlights went on, and whoever did it might still be in here somewhere.’ She looked around instinctively as if she expected a madman to jump out of the large dishwasher.
Fri?rikka screamed again, the scream of someone driven mad with fear.
Chapter 18
Fri?rikka had stopped crying. It was as if her tear ducts had finally dried up. She let out several sobs, and then appeared to have recovered. She said nothing for a long time, but then announced that she would not sleep in this building while there was a body in the freezer. Attempts were made to persuade her otherwise, without success. In the end it was decided that Thora and Bella would sleep with her in the office building, since it wasn’t an option to let her stay there alone in the state she was in, especially while it was unclear what had happened there. They lugged their mattresses through the snow to the office building and although it was relatively calm outside, the breeze pushed hard against the thin foam pads. Their duvets were easier to carry through the wind and eventually everything was transferred and three beds set up on the floor of the meeting room.
Thora tried and failed to imagine less exciting accommodation. She could feel the floor through the worn-out foam, and Bella’s heavy breathing reminded her constantly of the company she was in. Although it didn’t feel that cold in the building when they were standing up, it was quite chilly down on the floor. In addition, Fri?rikka had demanded that the lights be left on, and the glare from the fluorescent bulb was so bright that you could still sense it with your eyes shut. One tube blinked, softly clicking, over and over again.
‘Are you awake?’ Thora replied that she was – she and Fri?rikka were clearly in the same boat. ‘Who could it be?’ The geologist’s voice was hoarse after all her crying.
‘I don’t know,’ replied Thora. ‘It was so hard to see him, and I didn’t know any of the people here anyway. It could have been anyone.’ Nonetheless, Thora tried to recall what she had seen. ‘It was definitely a man, and it looked to me as if he might have been a Greenlander. At least, he was wearing a jacket made of skins, though I only saw him from the shoulders up. We didn’t want to disturb anything unnecessarily.’ Thora raised herself up on one elbow to see Fri?rikka. She felt uncomfortable staring at the ceiling while Fri?rikka spoke. ‘No locals worked here, did they?’
Fri?rikka shook her head on the pillow. ‘No. They tried to persuade some to work here but as I recall no one was interested. The villagers have always been wary of the employees here. They had absolutely no reason to be, since we were nothing but kind to them, and they never used the land that was being taken over for the mine for anything. So it wasn’t resentment over the loss of the land that caused them to be suspicious of us. They simply believed the area to be evil, it seems.’
‘Maybe the locals don’t like outsiders very much? There can’t be many tourists here. Is there anywhere to stay in this area?’
‘No, I don’t think so,’ replied Fri?rikka, who seemed to be regaining her composure a little. Apparently it was doing her good to talk calmly like this. ‘Of course there are huts here and there where the hunters stay, but I can’t imagine they’d be good enough for tourists.’ She grimaced. ‘I’ve actually seen inside one of them and I won’t even try to describe the mess. I’d rather sleep in a snowdrift.’
‘Or on the floor of an office building?’ Thora smiled at the woman, who looked over and smiled back.
‘Thanks for staying here with me. I couldn’t have slept over there.’ Fri?rikka said nothing for a few moments. ‘Isn’t it strange what people will do for money? When I left here I swore never to return, but here I am. Just because the pay was tempting. I actually accepted the original job here for the same reason, so you can’t say I’m not consistent. I started at Berg several years before this project began but I never planned to go into exile like this. When I heard how high the salary was, things looked different. I won’t let myself be controlled by greed again, that’s for certain. You’d think I’d have learned my lesson by now, but apparently not. My job here cost me my marriage, for example, but I still came back.’
‘Oh, that must have hurt.’ Thora looked compassionately at her. ‘I’m divorced myself and I know it’s not easy. Still, I don’t regret it now, and as time goes on you’ll probably be happy to have made the decision.’
‘I didn’t make it. My husband left me. Saw his chance while I was spending a lot of time away from home, and hid behind the pretext that distance had come between us. Complete bullshit.’
‘Oh.’ By now Thora knew most of the reasons for divorce and in this instance it sounded as if the husband might have tried his luck elsewhere. ‘Did he leave you for another woman?’
‘No.’ Fri?rikka flushed. ‘For a man.’
‘O-kay.’
‘Horribly painful. Not to mention humiliating.’ Fri?rikka held her head a little higher, perhaps to remind herself and Thora that she still had her pride. ‘Oddny Hildur’s disappearance was the last straw, but I was quite depressed
