to his liking. She felt too poorly for that to make any difference to her, which seemed to irritate him even more. ‘Winters are rough out there.’ Matthew had clearly gone and bought himself a new rucksack. Thora came to this conclusion partly because she did not believe that he would have already owned one, but also because his huge backpack was so brilliantly clean that it could have come straight from the shop that very morning. Apparently that hadn’t been his only new purchase, because, for once, he was wearing a proper coat. Beneath this, though, he was wearing pressed, neatly creased trousers and a shirt that was actually quite casual for him. At least he’d had the sense to skip the tie. But Thora was pretty sure he had one or two in his backpack, just in case.
‘I know,’ said Thora, trying not to let his grumbling about the suitcase get on her nerves. One of their fellow travellers, whom they had met at the check-in counter, had confined himself to a quick, dubious glance at the bright green lump of plastic. He had introduced himself as Dr Finnbogi Kolbeinsson; he looked to be approaching fifty, with a slender build, and his battered hiking boots suggested that he was quite the outdoorsman. On the large rucksack that he swung as if it were empty were the remains of all types of stickers and patches from distant lands. Thora had the feeling that Matthew’s new and shiny rucksack inspired the same indignation in the doctor as her suitcase did – possibly even more. At least she wasn’t putting on pretences.
Thora couldn’t wait to show off to Matthew everything she’d thought to put into her big bag. She had no idea precisely what was in it, but hoped some sensible garments were hidden therein. She was actually pretty certain that Matthew had packed without knowing anything about cold weather conditions and camping, and although she of course could personally be considered no expert in either, she was quite familiar with sudden weather changes and winter conditions, a familiarity that had hopefully survived her intoxication. When Matthew tore everything out of his rucksack at their destination in search of woollen socks, and his ties and shirts were flung around the room, she could get back at him for all his grumbling. Still, she decided to change the subject, since his nagging and her headache were not a good combination. ‘I’m trying to memorize who’s who,’ said Thora, looking over the group, which had spread out around the little airport, each member armed with a mobile phone. Theirs was the only flight scheduled at this hour – the bank had made arrangements with Air Iceland to fly them to Kulusuk, where the company made regularly scheduled flights in the summer. From there they were to be transported north by helicopter, to a small village near the work camp. It wasn’t yet clear how they would travel the final stretch of their journey, but it was considered likely that they would find one or two cars from Berg Technology in the hangar by the helicopter pad, where they would usually have been stored. The employees who had gone home had left them behind, so unless they had been stolen the vehicles should be there. Thora prayed to God that that was not the case; if they had to walk, she would be in trouble. Her luggage was hardly designed for long hikes.
‘I can’t say that I know all the names, but I know who does what,’ said Matthew, apparently willing to abandon the suitcase discussion. ‘There aren’t that many on the team, and you’ll get to know them quite quickly in our isolation.’
‘Of course, of course,’ said Thora. ‘Everyone looks okay to me.’ She watched as the youngest member of the group by far, Eyjolfur ?orsteinsson, stuck a coin into the gumball machine standing near one wall. The machine swallowed the coin but refused to deliver the gum, and after trying peacefully to get his money back, the young man pounded energetically on the machine’s large plastic bowl, tossing the gumballs around inside it. This produced no result and he walked away angrily. Thora hoped that this wasn’t representative of Eyjolfur’s technical skills, because Matthew had said he was responsible for everything connected with the site’s computer system. In fact it was he who had first set it up, and thus knew all of its ins and outs. He looked to be about twenty-five years old, slim with a dark complexion, and probably popular among the women, handsome as he was. In that regard he was the absolute opposite of Alvar Palsson. Alvar was fortyish, and had been enlisted for the expedition because of his experience on rescue teams that had connections with Greenland – he had been among the Icelanders recruited to assist the Greenlanders in the organization of a rescue-team system there. Thora didn’t know what his main occupation was, but guessed that he was probably a lighthouse keeper or had a similar job that involved little human interaction. His face was fiery red, and he had barely responded when Matthew tried introducing Thora to him; he had simply snorted something and carried on trying to attach his walking stick to his rucksack. If Thora had been forced to describe him, the word ‘bad’ would have featured frequently; the poor man had bad teeth, smelled bad, looked in bad shape, and to make matters worse, was badly shaven.
‘Where did the geologist go?’ asked Thora. ‘The woman?’ Of the team’s six members there was one other woman besides Thora, Fri?rikka Jonsdottir. She had worked on this project during its early days but had resigned and gone to work for Reykjavik Energy. Matthew told Thora that a decent sum of money had persuaded her to take some days off to come with them, since she knew the project so well and was likely to be able to assess the status of the drilling without needing to first familiarize herself with everything.
‘She must be here somewhere. At least, she’d already checked in by the time we did. Maybe she’s just out having a cigarette, or on the phone?’
‘Did she see the video?’ asked Thora.
‘No,’ he replied, setting his briefcase down on the table between them. ‘There was no time for that, and perhaps it wouldn’t have been appropriate either. If she’d backed out, there was no need to have bothered her with unnecessary details.’ He opened the briefcase and took out a hefty stack of spiral bound notebooks. ‘I wanted to give you these. It’s probably good for you to have them on the plane if you want to use the time to read through them. They’re all about the construction contract.’
Thora took the entire pile, which was far thicker than the contracts she was used to. ‘But this Fri?rikka might still have been able to say whether the video was taken at the site, and maybe even have recognized the feet by the slippers,’ she said.
‘Yes, of course,’ said Matthew. ‘Still, we decided not to show this to anyone but you and the doctor. We’ll see how it goes once we get there. Maybe then it’ll be time to let the others watch it. The IT guy could also possibly identify the feet, since he knows the group even though he didn’t actually belong to it.’ He shut the briefcase. ‘But I’m hoping that we won’t need to do that.’ Looking around, he added: ‘We’re actually missing one passenger.’
‘Oh?’ asked Thora. ‘Who’s that?’
‘Bella,’ he replied, not meeting her eye.
‘Ha ha,’ said Thora sarcastically. Her hangover felt even worse at the thought of her secretary. She stared piercingly at Matthew, who was still avoiding her gaze. ‘Don’t even joke about it – is that meant to be funny?’
‘No,’ said Matthew hesitantly. ‘Your partner Bragi called me last night and fobbed her off on me, saying we didn’t even need to pay her. It’ll help to have someone who can take care of typing everything up on the computer. I called the bank this morning and they gave it the green light – they were ecstatic, even, since it’s not often they’re offered something for free.’ He was gabbling now, and added even more rapidly: ‘She’ll be helping the group out before you know it, and you won’t even know she’s there. There’s a lot of information that needs to be entered on the computer, so her skills will undoubtedly be of great use to us.’
‘You’re kidding!’ said Thora. ‘I have a hunch that the seal hunters in Greenland would be better at typing up information than Bella, and they’d certainly move faster.’
Matthew made no attempt to argue this point. ‘I couldn’t say no,’ he hissed. ‘You’ve always said how pushy Bragi can be, and he gave me no other choice than to accept the help.’ He smiled sheepishly. ‘Believe me, I tried many times to decline it.’
Thora was speechless. She was both frustrated with Matthew and furious at Bragi, and couldn’t decide which of them she would rather lock inside a cupboard with Bella for a week. But her hangover prevented her from arguing about this any further. The entrance to the airport was not visible from where they sat, but she could see the check-in counter, where all was quiet. ‘Maybe she’ll miss the plane,’ said Thora, looking at the clock on the wall. ‘I bet she misses the plane.’ Then she started thumbing through the documents in the hope that her anger would dissipate.
‘Yes, maybe,’ said Matthew, awkwardly. ‘But we won’t make a fuss about it if she turns up too late. It was only this morning that I received final confirmation that she could come, but I don’t know when Bragi delivered the message to her.’
Thora ground her teeth and continued to read. There was a total of five volumes of various thicknesses and she could see immediately that only two of them mattered: the contract terms and letters sent between Berg Technology and Arctic Mining during the negotiation process. The other three volumes contained information about geological studies of the area, the climate and drawings that had been scaled down so small that Thora was unable to make out the tiny print. One of the notebooks was labelled ‘Job Description’, and its contents covered the details of each of Berg Technology’s tasks and how they would be paid for. Thora knew that she would have to
