Or not. Thora turned to Fri?rikka but decided not to waste time asking her about it a second time. She was sure she would receive the same answer. ‘Could Oddny Hildur have had two dental implants in her lower jaw?’
The unexpectedness of the question seemed to disarm Fri?rikka enough to make her reply quite mildly. Or perhaps she was just glad not to have to justify the blind eye she had turned to the harassment. ‘No. Definitely not. She had really nice teeth.’
Matthew looked at Thora and raised his eyebrows. Then who did the bones belong to? They weren’t from any of the employees of Berg Technology and it was out of the question that the original villagers who had starved to death had been decades ahead of their contemporaries in dentistry. Perhaps they had been purchased online after all. Hopefully the police would find the answer. ‘Do you think the employees can be convinced to return to work at the camp?’ Thora was almost afraid to hear the answer. ‘Supposing the police find explanations for the disappearance of Oddny Hildur and the drillers, would the crew be satisfied? You must have spoken to them. Especially you, Eyjolfur.’
The young man apparently had some difficulty making up his mind about whether he would be betraying the confidence of his colleagues by talking about them. Finally he spoke, but slowly, seeming to weigh up every word. ‘Of course, it depends what comes out of the investigation. If the findings are that all three of them vanished or died because of something that can be easily explained and sorted out, it’s likely that they’d return. Jobs like these are hard to come by, and people get used to having high wages.’ He had started speaking faster now. ‘If, however, it turns out that something horrible happened to them, then I don’t know what will happen. Most people value their own hides more than money in the bank. I’m sure the other employees scheduled to arrive in the summer aren’t thinking much about these issues, though; they’ll be laying the runway and doing other construction jobs necessary for the mine.’
‘Why didn’t they start sooner?’ Alvar had moved away from Bella a bit and could now sway around as much as he wanted. ‘You’d have thought it would be wiser to have the airport ready for use immediately, for the transportation of raw materials and things like that. Not to mention the added security it provides in case something serious happens.’
‘That wasn’t possible,’ said Fri?rikka sullenly. ‘First we had to get the results from the core samples so that we could situate the mine in an appropriate place. What use would it be having an airport here if the mine was in a completely different location?’
Alvar’s drunken brain did its best to process the information. ‘Yes, but…’ He said nothing more, and instead just went bright red. For the first time Thora felt sorry for the man, and she wondered what his idea of a nice evening might be. What sort of company made him feel comfortable, and what topics of conversation interested him? Probably stories about lost ptarmigan hunters. It would hardly surprise Thora if their investigation turned up one of those.
It seemed to Igimaq that the policemen were finally starting to go to bed, though several lights were still on in the camp. He hadn’t noticed any movement for a long time and the only sound that could be heard was the buzz of the electrical generators. He was still at some distance from the buildings because he did not want to set off the floodlights, but sounds carried well in the calm night air and he had heard the murmur of men’s voices while some of them were still up and about, without being able to distinguish what they said. But even if the men had gone to bed it did not change the fact that tomorrow was a new day and they would start up again. They had arrived in two groups: first came five men, but after the people who had been in the camp over the previous few days were evacuated, three others joined the five, this time with dogs. They were not sled dogs, and the hunter had trouble understanding what purpose they were supposed to serve. They didn’t appear to be pets, as were common in the cities, but rather working animals, although it wasn’t clear to him what they were capable of. They were short- haired and their ears too long and thin to be able to endure the weather for long periods, which was likely to be why they had been taken inside and hadn’t come out since. Igimaq was glad he had left his huskies sufficiently far away. They wouldn’t have let strange dogs waltz around without at least letting them know who was top dog in these parts.
Unlike his dogs, who were never in doubt as to how to react to new circumstances, Igimaq was stumped. What should he do? This is what happened when you trusted others. When he had first heard of the plans for the mine, his friend Sikki had promised him that the prohibited area would only be driven over – no work would be carried out there. Igimaq had believed him, despite the old familiar look in his eyes that suggested he was not telling the truth. When the camp started to be built on the outskirts of the area he had spoken again to Sikki and again been promised that it would be all right; he would tell those who came that they should not wander any further north, but instead keep themselves south of the camp. Again he had seen that look – nevertheless, Igimaq had chosen to believe what Sikki said rather than what his own eyes told him. Now the story had repeated itself a third time and although Igimaq should not have let himself be fooled, it was too late. There would be no turning back.
Had Igimaq dealt with this the first time he was lied to, things might have turned out differently. But just like his countrymen of the same generation, it simply ran contrary to his character and upbringing to argue or get worked up. It was an ancient custom; those who lived together in small groups could not afford discord, meaning that those who raised their voices or bickered with each other were looked down on. The only way to express one’s disapproval was to remain silent, because words spoken in anger had a way of snowballing, intensifying and provoking hostility that would eventually put the survival of the entire community at risk. The Greenlandic language was thus free of invective and Igimaq was not about to start swearing in Danish. He should have pushed the issue with Sikki, forced him to explain how he intended to keep the workers out of the area, even though such a discussion would have been against his upbringing.
He had also been taught to have immeasurable respect for his ancestors, and from them he had inherited the responsibility of keeping the area free of human activity. He and Sikki, his old friend. And now they had both failed. Igimaq could not lay all the blame on Sikki.
He tried to imagine what would happen next. He knew little about the police, since they were seldom seen in these parts. Through the years various things had happened that the police would undoubtedly have wanted to investigate, but the villagers were better suited to dealing with their own problems, evaluating them and determining guilt and innocence. And, most importantly, deciding on punishment for the guilty. More often than not it was enough for the offender to live with the shame of having done wrong, but Igimaq remembered one instance from his youth when a man who had murdered his son in a brutal manner and showed no remorse had been exiled from the area. News of him reached the village intermittently and it was always in the same vein: he was thrown out of one settlement after another when people found out who he was. Finally no further news came of him and people said that he had died alone out in the wilderness. The police would never have dealt with the situation like this, but this solution was the only correct one. The man had no more business being in prison than any other Greenlander. Greenlanders were not to be locked up; that was just plain wrong. Igimaq would go crazy if he were denied the chance to breathe the cold, outside air and his eyes would go blind if they were deprived of the stimulation that the endless expanse of land granted him.
No, the police had no business here, even though the fact that four of them appeared to be his countrymen. They were doubtless more Danish than Greenlandic, probably from the west coast, and unfamiliar with the situation of the inhabitants on this side of the ice cap. None of them would understand Igimaq, or anyone else who knew the history of the place, and it was little use trying to explain it to them. They might even be the lowest form of Greenlanders: those who did not speak their own language, only Danish. Whether this was the case or not, these men would probably twist everything around and interpret it all the wrong way. It was perhaps wisest for him to leave; take his dogs and move even further north. He could easily lose them. It wouldn’t matter how hard they tried to find him; in the end they would give up. He had no trouble at all living far from any human settlement for months or even years at a time; he knew places that no one could reach except exceptionally experienced men on dogsleds. Snowmobiles were no match for these old vehicles when it came to long distances, and no one could assess situations in the same way as dogs. Igimaq himself would have ended up at the bottom of the sea long ago if he’d chosen to cross the ice on a motorized sled, because the dogs knew the ice and where it was sound. They heard cracks that the human ear could not distinguish and which could not be seen on the surface of the ice, but which were the predecessors of larger cracks that opened into the icy cold depths of the sea, and spared no one.
If he left, then he would never return; that much was clear. Igimaq had long intended to end his life in this
