A familiar recorded message announced to him that the phone was out of range. Now it all depended on his making the phone call he had feared so much and hoped never to have to make.
The struggle for space at the window was so great that Thóra had to use all her strength to keep her place. She was standing in the best spot, in the middle, between Matthew and Dr Finnbogi. Friðrikka and Eyjólfur had taken places on either side of them and had to stretch to see out, while Bella and Alvar were forced to peek over the others’ shoulders. The police force was working hard at photographing and measuring the body in the snow and investigating the area around it. The men had noticed their audience long ago, but apart from having tried twice to shoo them away with hand gestures, they left them alone.
‘I don’t understand this.’ Eyjólfur sounded like a scratched record. He had repeated himself so often that Thóra had stopped counting. ‘Arnar wasn’t here. He went home with the others.’
‘Couldn’t he have come back to chop his co-workers into little pieces?’ Bella exhaled gustily, and Thóra felt her warm breath on her ear. ‘Weren’t they the guys who harassed him?’
Eyjólfur seemed surprised that someone had been listening to what he said. ‘No. I mean, yes, but it doesn’t fit.’
‘Maybe this is someone else,’ suggested Alvar. ‘He’s lying on his stomach, so you can’t see much. I don’t get how you can be so sure who it is.’
‘It couldn’t be anyone else. He was the only one here who had a hat and boots like that.’ Eyjólfur pointed at the furry knee-length moon boots the corpse was wearing. Presumably out of respect for the dead he said nothing, but everyone thought the same; the boots literally cried out to be made fun of. The matching hat was just as flamboyant.
The photographer squatted next to the body and a policeman hunched down beside him. He took off his thick gloves and put on latex ones, then used tongs to lift the bottom of the hat from the body’s neck. The camera’s flash blinded the audience in the window for a moment but they recovered quickly and saw what it covered.
‘No disease killed that man.’ The doctor was the only one who did not gasp when the large cut on the back of the corpse’s neck was revealed. The hat’s white fur lining was blackened by a large stain, and it was as if the rabbit hair had stuck or frozen fast to the wound, which lifted slightly along with the hat. It was difficult to determine whether the bits pulled between the head and the hat were human hair or fur from the lining, but Thóra prayed they were one of the two and not something even more disgusting.
Thóra heard Friðrikka’s rapid breathing and cursed herself – and Matthew for good measure – for not having told her to wait at the table. Of course, Matthew had the excuse that he was woken with the news of the corpse behind the house, and thus hadn’t realized what was going on. Thóra, however, should have known better. She looked at Friðrikka, but couldn’t see her face through the red hair that had fallen over her cheeks. Her head hung on her chest, but from the way she was shuddering it looked as if she had finally lost it. ‘Friðrikka? Are you feeling OK? Maybe you should move away from the window and sit down. This could get even… worse.’
Suddenly Friðrikka’s heavy sobs filled the office. She grabbed the curtains and tried to pull them shut. The rings on the curtain rod were stuck and only one of them gave in to her efforts, since she was pulling more downwards than to the side. ‘Close the curtains. Close the curtains,’ begged Friðrikka hoarsely. ‘I can’t watch this.’
‘Then do as Thóra says and get away from the window. We want to watch,’ said Bella, spying her chance to move to a better spot. Eyjólfur, who had leaned closer to the window, was now muttering repeatedly: ‘Shit, shit, shit.’
‘What’s wrong?’ Matthew grabbed the young man’s shoulder and pulled him away from the window. ‘It’s not Arnar. His hair isn’t that long, and it’s blond.’ Eyjólfur exhaled heavily – he seemed to have an endless supply of air in his lungs. Thóra remembered that the Greenlandic policeman had been very surprised when Thóra and Matthew had informed him that Arnar lay dead behind the office building, asking her to repeat the name and enquiring whether Berg might have two employees named Arnar Jóhannesson. When Thóra said no, the officer had replied that it seemed unlikely the body was Arnar’s, since he had received information that the engineer was undergoing treatment for alcoholism in Iceland, as Thóra had mentioned. He said he hadn’t actually managed to talk to the man but had been assured nevertheless that he was there. Thóra had received a similar response when she’d called him from the hotel, after concluding her conversation with the final employee on her list, although the answer she’d received was more vague and did not actually confirm that Arnar was at Vogur Hospital.
Friðrikka gave a short scream, then sounded oddly calm when she whispered, ‘It’s Oddný Hildur,’ before breaking into uncontrollable sobs.
‘Please excuse the inconvenience, but unfortunately it was imperative that we detain you here in light of the circumstances.’ The Greenlandic police officer who was leading the investigation addressed the group. ‘I see no reason to keep you any longer, and you have been extremely helpful in keeping the investigation afloat as far as possible.’ They had all been questioned and made to recount again and again the order in which things had happened.
‘When can we leave?’ Friðrikka had stopped crying now that several hours had passed since she had recognized the corpse in the snow. In the meantime they had been given food and drink, although Friðrikka hadn’t been able to swallow a single morsel. The doctor had urged her to drink as much as she could since she was draining her body’s water supply with her floods of tears, and fortunately she had heeded him, since she would be shedding more tears by the end of the meal. ‘I can’t bear to be here any longer.’
‘I understand,’ said the police officer almost gently, before continuing in an entirely more commanding tone. ‘Unfortunately the helicopter can’t fly in the dark, so you can’t leave before dawn tomorrow. But the helicopter is here, and as soon as conditions are favourable you can leave.’
‘Do you have any idea what happened? I mean, to the woman you just found. Oddný Hildur.’ Eyjólfur was subdued and lethargic, and appeared distracted. It was as if this peculiar case had finally become too much for him. ‘It looked to us as if she’d been in an accident.’
‘I can’t tell for certain at the moment but it appears that the woman received a head injury, perhaps more than one. Hopefully we’ll figure it out.’
‘Where was she?’ asked Alvar. ‘I mean, it’s been several months since she disappeared and there’s no way she was behind the building the whole time.’ As usual, he blushed as he spoke. ‘I’m a rescuer and I know a bit about these things.’
At first the police officer refrained from speaking, as if he were trying to contain his desire to say something inappropriate. Then he said, with a hint of sarcasm, ‘I’ll tell you. At first glance it appeared the woman had been dead for quite some time. You can stop worrying about the search you conducted for her. It’s my understanding that although you did all you could to find her, things wouldn’t have turned out any differently even if you had searched for longer or in larger groups.’
‘So we could have saved her if we hadn’t given up?’ Friðrikka appeared to be completely disconnected from everything that was happening around her. ‘I knew it. I always said that.’ Eyjólfur started to say something in reply, but then decided against it. Even he felt sorry for her in this puffy-eyed, broken-down state. He pressed his lips shut and closed his eyes.
‘You’ve misunderstood me, madam. You could not have done anything to save the life of your friend. I just wanted to point that out to you in the hope that maybe you would feel a little bit better. As difficult as it is.’