would change everything. Thora couldn’t help but hope this were the case. Oqqapia looked from the brochure to Thora and seemed to notice the doubt in her eyes. ‘I can learn, absolutely. I’ve looked at Usinna’s books and I understand a lot in them.’
Thora spoke slowly, although her excitement was growing; finally things were starting to become clear. ‘Of course you can learn. If you know how to read and you can retain information, then all roads are open to you.’ She was careful about what she said next. ‘Which books are you talking about? Did Usinna leave behind something connected to her research?’
‘Yes, not here, but Naruana brought them with him when he moved in. He also brought all kinds of junk that he had at his mother’s.’ She pointed at the polar bear pelt on the floor. ‘He shot this polar bear when he was just twelve years old. He would have been a great hunter if he hadn’t-’ Her words died out.
‘Finally!’ Matthew stood up from the couch triumphantly. ‘It’s ringing!’ He clamped the phone against his ear with his shoulder and stuck the slip of paper with the numbers on back into his wallet.
Thora was happy for him but didn’t want to miss the opportunity to go over Usinna’s research files if they were part of the book collection the woman was describing. There was only a small chance that they contained any information about the area, but she could always hope. ‘May I perhaps see these books? And did she leave behind any notes?’
Chapter 23
Thora found it incredibly cold in the office building but Fri?rikka had told her that it took the electric heating system more time than the hot water supply to heat the buildings when the temperature dropped so abruptly outside. Thora hoped that they would be gone before it grew warm inside, and now she wrapped a far-too-large fleece jacket more tightly around her. She had borrowed it from the back of a chair in one of the offices, first checking carefully to see whom it belonged to. She was disgusted at the thought of wearing any more clothing from people who were almost certainly dead. It wasn’t cold enough for that.
‘When are they coming, then?’ They were all gathered in the meeting room, where Fri?rikka sat at a window, staring out. ‘It shouldn’t take them this long to get here from Angmagssalik in an emergency. You’d think they would have priority access to the helicopter.’ Like the others, Thora was impatient for the police to arrive, but unlike the others, she made no attempt to disguise the fact. After Matthew had managed to contact a policeman who spoke decent English he had been ordered to go back to the camp and gather the team in the office building in order to ensure the minimum possible disturbance of the scene. They were to wait there. That had been more than three hours ago.
‘It takes them some time to prepare for departure.’ Matthew had grown tired of Fri?rikka’s endless grumbling about how late it was and how the weather could change at any moment.
‘What will we eat if they don’t come today? All the food is over on the other side of the site,’ scowled Bella. ‘I’m not going to starve on top of everything else.’
‘Then I’ll go over and get us something to eat.’ Matthew sat at the meeting table and watched Finnbogi examine Usinna’s files, which Thora had managed to prise from Oqqapia earlier in the day. At first he and Thora had tried to go over the data themselves, but gave up quickly on the biology and asked the doctor to take over. Bella would photocopy the documents later, since Thora had promised on her honour that they would be returned at the first opportunity. Oqqapia did not want Naruana to discover that she had let the files leave the house and the longer Thora had the box, the more likely he was to notice that it was gone.
‘But we can’t go to the kitchen; the police have prohibited it. You said so yourself.’ Fri?rikka’s voice was on the verge of cracking as she glanced back from the window to Matthew.
He sighed. ‘Everything’s going to be fine. They’ll be here before you know it.’ Fri?rikka opened her mouth as if to object, but Thora decided to pre-empt her. ‘Tell me, Fri?rikka. How is it that you never mentioned that Arnar had acquaintances in the village? You insisted you hadn’t had any interaction with the villagers besides the kind of brief contact that we’ve experienced on this trip.’ She looked accusingly at Eyjolfur, who was absorbed in his laptop. ‘And that goes for you, too.’
Eyjolfur was first to reply. Fri?rikka, looking ashamed, said nothing. ‘I knew nothing about it, so there’s no need to tell me off. I didn’t see him with anyone from the village, and I never heard him mention anyone. If he was meeting the natives, it didn’t happen while I was here.’ He stared at the back of Fri?rikka’s neck; she had turned to the window again, her cheeks bright red. ‘She was here a lot more than I was.’
‘What do you have to say for yourself, Fri?rikka? Why did you never mention this?’ Thora was not about to drop it.
Fri?rikka spun around. ‘I just didn’t realise it mattered. If I remember correctly you asked whether any Greenlanders had worked here, which they certainly did not.’ She sniffed loudly, and Thora hoped another crying fit wasn’t on the way. ‘To my knowledge he went to the village several times, on Sundays, but he didn’t tell me much about it and he never mentioned that he had any particular friends there. I think he was trying to start an AA group. I never went with him and I don’t know any more about it.’ Then she brightened, as if a light had been switched on in her head. ‘Of course, you can ask him yourself when we return to Iceland.’
‘What about your friend, Oddny Hildur? Did she ever tell you that she’d gone with him down to the village?’
Fri?rikka furrowed her brow. Her whole face had reddened and it almost looked as if she’d used red eye- shadow on her pale eyebrows. ‘What?’
Thora repeated herself, but she was wondering whether there could possibly be another woman. If neither Oddny Hildur nor Fri?rikka had gone with Arnar to visit Naruana, there weren’t any others to choose from as they were the only women listed on the staff organizational chart. ‘Could she have gone without you being aware of it?’
Fri?rikka seemed uncertain. ‘Well, I sincerely doubt it, but I wasn’t with her every single Sunday. For example, I was ill for several days and she might very well have gone to the village. However, I clearly remember that she never said a single word about it to me.’
‘Isn’t that strange,’ said Thora heatedly. ‘You would have thought new topics of conversation would have been welcome around here.’
Alvar cleared his throat to remind them of his presence. Reserved as he was, he tended to blend into the surroundings. ‘Is there anything to drink over here? I’m pretty thirsty.’
Finnbogi looked up from his reading. ‘You’re not drinking anything from here. Everything in the little refrigerator is old, and it would be too risky. You’ll just have to get yourself a handful of snow.’
It clearly wasn’t the oddest suggestion Alvar had ever heard, because he stood up without complaint and left the room. ‘Is there really nothing else available?’ asked Bella. ‘I’m dying of thirst too, but I didn’t realize until he started talking about it.’ She snorted. ‘I’m not about to eat a handful of snow, though.’
‘Then you’ll just have to stay thirsty,’ said Finnbogi, without looking at her. He had re-immersed himself in his reading. Then he slammed the book shut and pushed his reading glasses up onto his head. They sat better there, since one of the arms was damaged, making them sit crookedly on his nose. He turned to Matthew. ‘Will you come and discuss something with me in the hallway? There’s more privacy there.’ Fri?rikka and Bella had clearly started to get on other people’s nerves too, thought Thora as she followed the men out of the room.
‘I don’t know how much to say in everyone’s earshot,’ said Finnbogi after shutting the door and leading them a way down the corridor. ‘But I feel it’s inadvisable to talk about anything out of the ordinary with Fri?rikka. I think she may be losing it.’
‘Did you find anything in the files?’ Thora hugged herself. It was even colder in the empty corridor than the meeting room.
‘I’m not completely finished but I think I’ve got most of it. Some of it is actually beyond my level, which I’m surprised by, so I’ve been poring over every detail. This Usinna wasn’t doing research for some secondary school or undergraduate programme. At least, it appears more theoretically demanding than that.’
‘Is it connected to this area somehow?’ Thora was impatient and wanted to stop him before he started
