threw away my clothing, and made the police officer do the same. I’m hoping the extreme cold saved the people who gathered up the body parts out on the island. Still, they’re being disinfected at the moment. If this was a virus, we’ve got serious problems. Of two evils, the lesser one would be for the men to have ingested poison accidentally.’
‘How would that have happened? Could we have been infected?’ Matthew moved even farther from the sink.
‘No, I doubt it. Maybe the person who cut up the bodies, but I can’t be absolutely certain.’
‘Why not? Do you think he was wearing protective clothing?’ Thora couldn’t imagine that the person carrying out his task so energetically in the video had been wearing a white coverall with a hood and plastic mask covering his face. His actions seemed too barbaric for that degree of premeditation.
‘I imagine that person is already dead, if what killed the drillers is as deadly as everything seems to suggest. Maybe others have died as well, if he had a family or was in close physical contact with other people. But we would have heard about it, if that were the case. He would have been forced to detail his recent movements if he had admitted himself to a hospital somewhere, and although he would hardly have told anyone that he’d stopped in the wilderness to cut up a couple of bodies, he would have named the location in the hope of a quick diagnosis.’ Finnbogi added hurriedly: ‘But I should emphasize that I have nothing more to go on than an external inspection of a couple of dismembered bodies. Proper autopsies need to be performed on them and all sorts of samples tested before we know anything for certain.’
In other words, Thora could stop worrying about whether Fri?rikka or Eyjolfur would be better suited to identifying the remains. That wouldn’t be happening. She also had enough to contend with, worrying about her own health and that of the others in the group. ‘What about Oddny Hildur? Could she also have been infected by something and died there that night?’
‘That could very well be the case,’ replied the doctor. ‘If so, it’s imperative that we discover the mode of transmission. Enough time passed between the two events to make it clear that the disease is not transmitted between humans.’
‘But the man in the freezer?’ Matthew was still frowning. ‘Did he also die from some kind of infection?’
‘Funny you should ask, Matthew,’ said Finnbogi, smug as ever. ‘They did in fact allow me to examine him more closely, and although there is much to suggest that he died from that huge wound, there’s some likelihood that he suffered the same kind of illness as the other two.’ He shook his head thoughtfully. ‘However, I discovered something quite alarming when I looked at him under better light.’
Thora didn’t think Finnbogi was just talking about the giant hole in the man’s chest. ‘What did you find out?’
‘The man has been dead for years. Even decades.’
Chapter 30
Igimaq stood as if petrified, staring into the forbidden area. It repulsed him to stay there for long, but the unrest in his mind prevented him from turning back. The dogs were all whining, each more loudly than the next. They could not understand why they’d been forced to stop in this place, where there was nothing. Only a black hole in the cliff-face where the heart of evil beat. Now it was clearly visible that it was a cave. It became more visible with each year that passed, though at first only a very thin streak of black had distinguished it from the grey surrounding rock. This was the place that people had to be kept away from; the place that pulled anyone who came too close down into the abyss. The spirit would be dragged out of the body leaving behind an empty, hollow carcass, like the sea-conch shells Igimaq discarded after he’d sucked out the meat. But it was not the small cave that disturbed him most. He had seen it many times before and always made sure to keep himself at a suitable distance, like now. No, it was not the expanding opening in the cliff wall that made his heart ache and filled him with despair.
Usinna’s cairn was gone. Where the low stone pile had been there was now a path that the snow was not able to hide completely. Tyre tracks were visible running up to it, indicating that someone had driven there only a short time ago. Tracks in loose snow, whether from animals, men or vehicles, were blown away like foam on the waves as soon as the breeze picked up, so the biting wind of the preceding days would have made all but the most recent tracks disappear. But it had been longer than that since the cairn had vanished. Igimaq jumped off the sled and took several steps in the direction where it had been. He did not need to rely on landmarks or locate the cairn in any other way. He simply knew where it had been and could never forget it. It was enough for him to see the low stones on both sides out of the corners of his eyes to come to precisely where Usinna had been laid to rest. He stopped there and stared down at his feet. When had this track been laid? He had been here several months earlier to ensure with his own eyes that the people in the camp kept themselves away from this area. He had felt lighter after turning his sled around, not only because he was leaving a place where he felt bad, but also because of the false hope that it raised in his heart, that his lifelong friend Sikki had been true to his word. Igimaq had gone the way of other men – believing what he wanted to believe. Yet he also remembered having considered himself deserving of some honour, since the area was still devoid of human activity at that time; the vandalism he had committed on the equipment that had to be moved out of the dangerous area had perhaps frightened the people away.
The dogs’ whining grew louder and to Igimaq it sounded as if it were accompanied by a different, human sound, the piteous weeping of tormented souls who had waited more than a man’s lifetime to be freed from the clutches of the land. They wanted to soar with the birds of the sky, watch the land from above; not from within, where eternal darkness ruled like a winter’s night in the farthest corner of the north, but worse, because down under the rock neither moonlight nor stars could mitigate the darkness and make it more tolerable. Maybe it had been the weeping of only one soul; the soul that was closer to his heart than any other. He was not certain, but he had to get away from here. The weeping sounded uncomfortably similar to the beseeching voice of his daughter when she had died here in the sight of her father and brother. The two of them had stood here, in this very same place, trying to ignore her pleas and not let her see that they were on the verge of giving in and extending a helping hand. Igimaq did not regret having stood by and observed from a safe distance, but when Sikki had demanded his presence there he could not conceive of watching his own offspring die from a place of hiding. Of course he could have done it that way – there were enough crags here to hide behind – but his pride had prevented him from watching from out of sight. He was fulfilling his obligations to his ancestors and those who demanded revenge for their deaths. If Igimaq had lost his courage he would have brought an even worse fate upon himself and the village. He could not heal his daughter and sacrifice others. In any case, that would only have been a temporary respite. His daughter bore the mark, and for that she was killed. She would only have dragged him and Naruana to death with her. The message was clear: those upon whom death places his mark will die, and they must do so alone and uncomforted, because any who try to ease their passing will suffer the same fate. And Igimaq had no intention of dying here.
Now the dogs had fallen quiet in the still, frozen air, and Igimaq could hear every sound. The peace here was very different from the silence around his tent, more complex. The gift of being able to read the unknown was vanishing; just as the ice thinned, the knowledge that had been in this country for centuries was disappearing, and one day, when he and his generation had passed on, it would have melted away as completely as the ice. The silence encouraged him to get moving, not to hang about there any longer than necessary. It told him that the dogs awaited his command and were growing restless and suspicious of his intentions. They wanted to go farther out into the wilderness, run until nothing mattered but the horizon. Igimaq breathed quickly through his nose and looked at the snow-covered track beneath his feet. He would find out later which had happened first, the removal of the cairn or the laying of the track – or whether it had happened at the same time. It didn’t really matter. The damage had already been done. What could not happen had happened. Usinna was gone from the resting place that was supposed to have kept her until there was nothing left of her. The only tiny positive note was that the police had obviously had nothing to do with it. The evidence showed that the track was older than that. In fact only the people at the camp could have removed the cairn.
