The Day is Dark (29 page)

‘Yes, but I can’t remember what she was called. I only met her once.’ Oqqapia’s face brightened. ‘I remember the name of the man who brought her here. He can probably tell you who she was.’

‘Man? What man?’

‘The AA man. Arnar.’ The woman pronounced the name incredibly well considering that she knew no Icelandic. ‘He often visited Naruana. He was going to help him stop drinking. He brought books and pamphlets that were supposed to make it easier. Once a woman came with him, maybe the one who disappeared. It was maybe six months ago? They didn’t just talk about alcohol, because their conversation was partly about Usinna, I remember. I’m not quite sure how she came up but I remember that the woman had asked about a girl who was on board an ambulance flight. She wanted to know how she was doing, and from that the conversation led on to the subject of only girls being born here. The woman said she was planning to have children herself; maybe she thought that she would be infected by this strange phenomenon. No one wants just girls. Not Greenlanders, and obviously not strangers either.’

Thóra felt it likely that Oddný Hildur would have been concerned about more than just the gender of the foetus. If Thóra were planning to have another child she was sure she’d be interested in anything unusual about births in her immediate vicinity. ‘And Naruana discussed his sister with those two without losing it like he did with us?’

‘Naruana considered this Arnar to be his friend. He enjoyed his visits and he trusted him. I think he wanted to spend time with Arnar, even if he had no plans to stop drinking. He just felt comfortable talking to him, since he was friendly and seemed not to judge us for our lifestyle.’ She shifted in her seat and took a folded piece of paper from her back pocket. ‘I’m still thinking of trying it. I want to make something of myself, like Usinna did. I’m sure I could do it if I stopped drinking. I’m clever too.’ She looked at the brochure as if it contained a magic spell that would change everything. Thóra couldn’t help but hope this were the case. Oqqapia looked from the brochure to Thóra 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.’

Thóra 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.

Thóra 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

22 March 2008

Thóra found it incredibly cold in the office building but Friðrikka 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. Thóra 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 Friðrikka 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, Thóra 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 Friðrikka’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 Thóra had managed to prise from Oqqapia earlier in the day. At first he and Thóra 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 Thóra 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 Thóra 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.’ Friðrikka’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.’ Friðrikka opened her mouth as if to object, but Thóra decided to pre-empt her. ‘Tell me, Friðrikka. 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 Eyjólfur, who was absorbed in his laptop. ‘And that goes for you, too.’

Eyjólfur was first to reply. Friðrikka, 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 Friðrikka’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, Friðrikka? Why did you never mention this?’ Thóra was not about to drop it.

Friðrikka 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 Thóra 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, Oddný Hildur? Did she ever tell you that she’d gone with him down to the village?’

Friðrikka 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?’

Thóra repeated herself, but she was wondering whether there could possibly be another woman. If neither Oddný Hildur nor Friðrikka 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?’

Friðrikka 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 Thóra 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.’ Friðrikka and Bella had clearly started to get on other people’s nerves too, thought Thóra 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 Friðrikka. I think she may be losing it.’

‘Did you find anything in the files?’ Thóra 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?’ Thóra was impatient and wanted to stop him before he started outlining the technical aspects of the study.

‘Yes and no. The research is based on the theory that particular manmade toxins in the diet affect the gender of foetuses. These toxins are persistent organic pollutants that do not degrade in nature, so they accumulate in the food chain and more often than not wind up in the sea. They are found in more plentiful quantities the higher they go in the sea’s food chain, so they occur in the greatest quantity at its surface. They include substances like the pesticide DDT; PCB, which is used in coolants; fire-retardant chemicals, and other chemicals that affect the endocrine system. It has long been known that seals and polar bears have a high level of these toxins in their systems – a million times higher than in plankton, for example. Their meat is the main subsistence food in the Inuit diet, therefore it’s not too surprising that the Inuits are the most impacted by this pollution.’

‘It’s pretty ironic, given that there can’t be people that pollute the environment
less
.’ Thóra had never read about any of what the doctor was telling them, since she was hardly a news addict – she made do with skimming the headlines.

The doctor appeared angered by her comment. ‘Yes, it is. It’s thought that if the toxins are present in excessive amounts during the first weeks of pregnancy they can be carried to the foetus through the mother’s blood. There they imitate the hormones controlling the child’s gender and prevent the creation of boys. Figures on the gender ratios of newborns in the Arctic support this theory. Among the Inuits in Russia and in northern Greenland it’s not uncommon for two girls to be born for every boy. In some villages no boys are born – as appears to be the case here in these parts.’ Matthew’s expression suggested that he found this rather disagreeable. ‘What do you mean about the hormones controlling gender? Is it like a sex change in the womb?’

‘No, not exactly. During the first weeks of development male and female foetuses are identical. The genitals, for example, are formed from the same cells, so this makes sense. Even without these pollutants, historically more girls are born than boys. The difference is very small, but it’s increasing throughout the world. I found an article there saying that since 1970, around 250,000 fewer boys than girls are being born each year in Japan and the US. No one has been able to explain this development, but these pollutants might be involved. Of course they cause much more damage to the natural environment than just these gender changes, but in a hunting culture in which the men provide the food it’s extremely serious.’

‘And elsewhere, too,’ added Thóra. ‘It’s hardly desirable to disrupt the ratio of men to women in any community.’

‘No, of course not,’ said the doctor. ‘But this is still just a theory, and this woman’s research was trying to demonstrate that it could be substantiated.’

‘Isn’t a whole village where only girls are born pretty compelling evidence?’ asked Matthew.

Finnbogi smiled patronizingly. ‘That alone proves nothing about the relationship between
these substances
and the gender ratios. They could be caused by something completely different. Demonstrating it properly would require, among other things, the collection of blood samples from the girls’ mothers, and that’s one thing this woman was doing.’

This seemed a likely explanation for Oddný Hildur’s entry about Usinna.
Blood tests.
‘Was she able to prove anything? Did she get the blood?’ asked Thóra.

Finnbogi took a deep breath before continuing. ‘I found a list with the names of the mothers, I think, and she’d put ticks against all of them. She’d probably got her samples, even though there are no results recorded there. She’s hardly likely to have had the necessary equipment here to identify the substances in the blood. I don’t know if she made several trips here and stored the samples elsewhere in the meantime, or whether they were still here when she disappeared. It actually doesn’t matter. New samples can always be taken from the mothers.’