‘Here it comes.’ Alvar looked happy, but it was probably the thought of beer at the airport in Kulusuk that cheered him so much. ‘You can see a big difference in the sky now from just a moment ago.’

Bella yawned. ‘It’s just as dark as it was before. Maybe time has stopped.’

‘What nonsense. You need your eyesight checked if you can’t see the difference,’ spat Alvar, before turning back to the window again and staring up at the sky. It was indeed as plain as day that the darkness was slowly starting to vanish. Friðrikka did not take part in the discussion about the colour of the sky. She was in a much better state than the night before. Admittedly, she wasn’t laughing and joking, but she was a great deal calmer. Crying was said to be cathartic, and it seemed to have done Friðrikka some good at least. ‘I can’t believe we’re finally going home.’ She looked at Thóra, who was starting to slump in her chair. ‘I only made arrangements for my cat until today. I haven’t been able to call or send a message to my neighbour, so I would have been in deep trouble if we’d had to stay here any longer.’ She looked embarrassed. ‘I know a hungry cat is hardly a big deal compared to what we’ve seen here, but I’m still worried about it.’

‘Bless you, of course you are.’ Thóra smiled encouragingly at her. She had worried about having the bawling woman sitting next to her on the flight home, but those worries seemed redundant now. ‘If we always had to compare everything with the worst thing we can imagine we’d never get to the end of it, you can’t ask that of anyone. Your cat will be happy to have you home.’ Thóra decided not to mention her children, who had hopefully missed their mother just a little bit.

‘I’m going to celebrate by going downtown and getting completely pissed.’ Eyjólfur stopped chewing his fingernails and shook himself as if he felt a sudden chill. ‘But first I’m going to take a two-hour shower.’

Although Thóra envied him in a way, her years of getting wasted downtown were behind her. She just wanted to see her children and pinch her grandson’s chubby cheek, but once she’d done that she would certainly be ready for a two-hour shower. With Matthew, and without the influence of alcohol. Until then she would try to keep her wits about her. It would have been unrealistic to hope that they would find the three missing people alive in an igloo, waiting to rescued. Friðrikka was perhaps the only one who had allowed herself to believe that. But their trip hadn’t been completely useless. As far as the bank was concerned, Thóra was quite content; the sudden deaths of the three employees, which appeared not to have had anything to do with Berg, were a big step towards a settlement with Arctic Mining. Thóra had already started writing a report for the bank but was finding it difficult to describe what had happened to the three employees without sounding like she was under the influence of illegal drugs. Bragi certainly wouldn’t appreciate her efforts if the bank came to that same conclusion.

‘The helicopter pilot has come out,’ said Alvar, excited. ‘It can’t be long now.’

Thóra saved her document and shut her laptop. In any case, she couldn’t finish the report; Matthew had told her about the arrival of the hunter’s son in the police car during the night and it still remained to be seen what role he had played in the case. Unfortunately what did seem clear was that his role would be an ugly one. Thóra felt sorry for poor Oqqapia. Their relationship had seemed quite unhealthy to her, and it could not have been pleasant for the woman to see the man she lived with dragged out of their home in handcuffs. Hopefully she would manage to stop drinking and get her life back on track. Unfortunately, statistics were not on her side. The police had taken Usinna’s files and books, the ones Oqqapia had lent them, promising to return them; Thóra hoped the delay in returning the box would not get Oqqapia into trouble.

Eyjólfur had got up and now stood next to Alvar, watching the helicopter pilot. ‘What are we waiting for?’ he said, turning around. ‘Shouldn’t we go out?’

‘They’ll come and get us when it’s time,’ replied Matthew. ‘They still have to load the helicopter and there’s no reason for us to wait out in the cold while they’re doing that.’

‘Are we taking Oddný Hildur’s body with us?’ asked Friðrikka in a weak voice. ‘She needs to get home.’

Thóra was quick to reply. ‘Almost certainly not today, but she’ll be sent back to Iceland soon. They still need to investigate a few things before that can happen.’ She didn’t want to use the word ‘autopsy’ for fear of upsetting Friðrikka. ‘The same goes for Bjarki and Dóri. They’ll be sent home so that they can be buried properly. You remember what the policeman said about the bones; they’ll be returned to the family as quickly as possible. The same goes for Oddný Hildur and those two.’

There was a knock at the door and in peeked the young policeman who had stayed with them during the night. ‘You can get ready to go. We estimate the helicopter will be ready to take off in just over half an hour.’

They didn’t need to be told twice, and within the promised half hour they were all hurrying out to the helicopter. Their bags had been brought out and when Thóra’s suitcase was thrown in rather roughly she suddenly felt overwhelmed by the longing to go home. She accepted Matthew’s help in getting into the helicopter and in a few moments they were all in their seats with their belts fastened. However, they had to sit that way for some time. ‘Don’t tell me something’s come up,’ muttered Eyjólfur, craning to look out of the window in the hope of seeing some activity. ‘If this helicopter doesn’t take off soon, I’ll go mad.’

He’d barely got the words out before the reason for the delay became clear. It wasn’t because the bodies of Oddný Hildur or the drillers were being sent on the same flight; instead two policemen appeared in the cafeteria doorway, half dragging between them Naruana, the son of the hunter Igimaq. The man was in handcuffs and walked with his head bent, hiding his face. The chief investigator took his shoulders and directed him towards the helicopter, while his partner followed close on their heels. The two helicopter pilots ran to assist them, then got on board, put on their headphones and started going over their instruments while the policemen tried with some difficulty to strap the prisoner into his seat. Thóra and the others bore silent witness to the young man’s unhappiness and desperation. They either had to shut their eyes or witness the man’s hopeless attempts to escape, his crazed, bloodshot eyes and swollen face as he fought against the police tooth and nail. Then he collapsed without warning and surrendered control to them. The policemen exchanged cautious glances as they put the seatbelt around Naruana’s waist.

Thóra took Friðrikka’s gloved hand in hers as she stared at the back view of the man who had probably killed her friend. She leaned in close to Friðrikka and whispered in her ear so the others couldn’t hear: ‘Don’t think about it. You’ll be home soon, with your cat in your arms.’ Friðrikka nodded vigorously and seemed to accept this. Thóra released her hands and hoped that they would reach their destination without World War Three breaking out on board the helicopter.

The propeller blades started rotating and after that no one spoke. Thóra watched Naruana in between looking out of the window at the harsh white landscape. She noticed that he turned his head several times to look out, and couldn’t help but wonder what was going through his mind. Perhaps he knew he wouldn’t see his home again for a very long time and wished to fix in his mind how the cliff belts highest up on the mountains tore through the snowy wastes, and how the endless ice cap reflected the light of the sun, which was still low in the sky.

The helicopter landed in Kulusuk. Thóra and her colleagues were greatly disappointed to discover no plane from the Icelandic airline waiting for them on the runway. They would have to wait at the airport or go to the hotel. They left the helicopter wearily and waited as the police took Naruana off. Then they followed the trio in the direction of the terminal. As before, the chief investigator steered the young man, who seemed to have given up any attempt to escape. He walked alongside the officers without protest, although his steps were heavy. In the doorway of the terminal he suddenly turned around and looked back at them all. Friðrikka stopped abruptly, causing Bella to run into her.

‘I didn’t kill anyone.’ You didn’t need to speak much Danish to understand Naruana’s words. ‘I didn’t kill anyone,’ he repeated, before being pulled roughly inside. The group remained standing outside, silently. Thóra didn’t understand what the man hoped to achieve by telling them this; maybe he thought the group would get the authorities to release him. However, none of them wished to involve themselves in the man’s case, even if they had been in any position to do so.

‘What’s wrong with him?’ scowled Eyjólfur. ‘Does he expect us to feel sorry for him?’

‘I have to admit that I do now. This is a tragedy, no matter how you look at it. Maybe he thought he was pleasing the spirits that everyone fears so much.’ Thóra entered the terminal without waiting for a response from Eyjólfur or Friðrikka, who might have taken this to mean that Thóra was insulting the memory of her dead friend. A police officer approached her as she entered and said they should sit down and wait for a moment while he checked on their flight home. They sat in a row in the plastic seats fastened to the wall of the little waiting room. The police walked off with Naruana, who did not look around, but stared fixedly down at his feet.

‘That’s the worst duty free shop I’ve ever seen.’ Bella pointed at the corner of the hall where the different types of alcohol, countable on the fingers of one hand, and cartons of four different types of cigarettes were arranged on the shelves. ‘And I thought the duty free shop in Reykjavík was a joke.’ Her comment lightened the rather oppressive atmosphere.

‘Wouldn’t it be a good idea to have a drink?’ Alvar stood up and walked to the window where American chocolate and Greenlandic artworks were for sale. He cheerfully ordered a beer from a young Greenlandic girl and looked over at the group in the hope that others would follow his example. They did not respond. Alvar seemed slightly disgruntled as he paid; he walked back to his seat with the green Tuborg can in his hand and took a swig before sitting down. Thóra predicted that he would make another trip to the window in the blink of an eye. Her prediction was correct. In no mood for watching this idiot pickle himself again, she took out her mobile and called her son. He answered happily and informed her that all was quiet on the home front. Of course his dad was driving him crazy with his endless questions about what he was going to do after graduation, but since Gylfi still had two whole years of school to go after this one, he found the question more than premature. When you’re eighteen years old every year is like an entire lifetime. Otherwise everything was going fine except that, as a conscientious older brother, he felt that Sóley hadn’t been encouraged enough to practise her violin. He didn’t mind putting up with the screeching, and felt bad if she didn’t keep it up. According to him it was his dad’s new wife that had hampered Sóley’s musical development, since she couldn’t bear to be inside the house when the girl played. Thóra would have to deal with that when she came home. When Gylfi had sufficiently aired his concern for his sister’s music lessons he quickly switched to the proposed trip to Spain and described in a long speech how important it was that they planned their trip early. From what Thóra could gather from this monologue, he and Sigga were missing the boat and the gates to the wide world outside Iceland were about to close for good. Thóra stuck to her guns and said that she would discuss this with him calmly when she came home.

She hung up but didn’t have time to put away her mobile before it rang again immediately. She didn’t recognize the number, but it seemed familiar. She hoped it wasn’t the music school calling to complain about Sóley’s performance, but it turned out to be Arnar Jóhannesson, calling from Vogur. Thóra stood and moved over to one of the furthest corners of the hall so that she could speak to him in private.

‘I was told you were trying to reach me.’ Arnar’s speech was sad and slow; he sounded like a man who had suffered a shock but who would come to accept it. ‘I’m not exactly sure who you are or why you want to talk to me, but . . .’ He tailed off.

Thóra explained her position and the situation. She was in Kulusuk, on her way home after a trip to Greenland to work on finding a solution to the bank’s problems with Berg Technology. She deliberately gave nothing away about how the case was going. It was unwise to blurt out everything immediately, because then the man would have no reason to keep the conversation going. ‘I wanted to speak to you because I was hoping you could help me with some questions that still haven’t been answered. The case has been going well over the last few days, since the police arrived on the scene, but I’ve still got a few loose ends to tie up.’

‘What are the police saying?’ He didn’t expand on this question or specify what aspect of the situation he was asking about.

‘Naturally, the police aren’t telling us much.’ Thóra wanted to avoid upsetting Arnar for fear that he would hang up on her. ‘They’re in the middle of their investigation, and although it looks to me as if everything is going well for them, we don’t know exactly what’s happening.’ It surprised her that the man hadn’t begun by asking if they knew what had befallen his colleagues.

‘Has someone been arrested?’ Arnar spoke as ponderously as before, although now his voice seemed tinged with worry. She found this puzzling, since she’d expect him to be concerned by the idea that a culprit had not been identified. But perhaps she had simply misunderstood the tone of his question.

‘Yes, it seems so. One of the villagers. Naruana, whom I understand you know. He appears to be partly, if not fully, responsible for what happened.’

‘He hasn’t hurt anyone.’ Arnar paused. ‘The police do realize that, don’t they?’ Now the man’s voice had become childish, hopeful, reminding Thóra of Sóley when she asked her mother about something obvious, searching for reassurance. Mummy, the people in the plane crash will be all right, won’t they?

‘Forgive me, but I have to ask. How much do you know about what happened here? You say he hasn’t hurt anyone, but you haven’t asked yet whether anyone was hurt in the first place.’

‘I know a few things,’ replied Arnar, apparently not as offended by the question as Thóra had feared. ‘I called Naruana yesterday and he told me that the police were on the scene; that they’d come to his house to ask him and the woman living with him, Oqqapia, about various things. He told me everything that he gleaned from their questions, so I do know something about it.’

‘So you’re aware that Oddný Hildur, Bjarki and Dóri were found dead, and that she at least was murdered?’

Arnar said nothing, but then spoke up again. ‘I didn’t know that Oddný Hildur had been found or that there was any suspicion she’d been murdered. However, Naruana told me that the drillers had come up during the police questioning and that they were dead.’ He was breathing rapidly.

‘When exactly did you speak to him yesterday?’ Thóra guessed that Oddný Hildur’s body hadn’t been found at the time. Naruana wouldn’t have had any reason to keep that a secret from Arnar.

‘It was after dinner, around eight thirty or nine.’ Thóra subtracted the time difference between the two countries and saw that that fitted; Oddný Hildur’s body hadn’t been found until over an hour later. The police had then set off again to question Naruana and brought him back in handcuffs during the night.

‘Then was Naruana arrested for the murder of Oddný Hildur? That’s bollocks; he didn’t kill anyone. How the hell could they have thought that?’ Arnar seemed agitated, desperate to convince Thóra of his friend’s innocence, as Naruana himself had tried to do not long before.

‘I know nothing about that, unfortunately. I’m unaware of what might have happened.’ She slowed her breathing down to ensure she didn’t lose control of the conversation. ‘There’s more. A body was found in the camp’s walk-in freezer and bones were found in the office building; the bones seem to belong to Usinna, Naruana’s sister. Maybe his arrest has more to do with them. Of course the body was very old, so maybe he had nothing to do with that. However, I understand that it’s not known how his sister died, but that she was interred far from the settlement.’

‘He hasn’t killed anyone, and the police can’t say he did. He’s very sensitive and I doubt he’s capable of defending himself properly. He could easily end up being convicted even though he’s innocent.’

‘Well, I don’t know the man but I certainly agree that he’s taking this badly. He travelled with us in the helicopter and it was difficult to see him in that state. He’ll probably get help now that he’s been brought to a larger community. I don’t know if he’s on his way to Angmagssalik or Nuuk, but they’re hardly going to question him at the airport or in the hotel.’

‘This is a total misunderstanding and it would probably be best if you were to tell the police that. For fuck’s sake, Naruana is an alcoholic, he could never kill another person, let alone more than one. He already has enough of his own problems to deal with, without looking for new ones.’ Arnar’s words came out in a torrent, as if he were recounting everything he could think of that might help to defend his friend. ‘He took his sister’s death very badly and it’s absolutely clear that he holds no responsibility for it. He had no say at all in where she was buried; that was up to his father, he chose the place. I know Naruana quite well, I was trying to help him overcome his addiction and he would be incapable of murder. He even had to stop hunting because it affected him so badly, and he had trouble staying on the wagon. And it’s considerably more difficult to kill a man than it is to kill an animal for food.’

‘I agree with you completely, but the police will need something a bit more concrete if your friend is to be saved. Hopefully he’s perfectly innocent and is hoping that the truth will come out, even though he might have trouble defending himself.’

‘But what if the truth doesn’t come out?’

‘I’m not familiar with the penal system here in Greenland but it seems likely that he’d receive a prison sentence. I couldn’t say how long that would be. I suppose it would be something similar to the sentence in Iceland. Sixteen years or so.’ Now it was time to turn the tables. Thóra had done too much answering and wanted to do more questioning. ‘Why were Usinna’s bones scattered around the offices and not kept in one spot? I’ve already heard one explanation for this, but I wasn’t convinced.’

‘That just shows you what things were like there,’ replied Arnar. He seemed pleased that for the moment, attention was being directed away from Naruana’s troubles. ‘Nobody could work out what to do with the bones after the villagers refused to speak to the people who went down there.’

‘Why didn’t you go and talk to Naruana or Oqqapia, since you knew them?’

‘I didn’t want the others in the camp to know that I was going down to the village on my days off. It wasn’t any of their business. I also didn’t know until I spoke to Naruana on the phone yesterday that they were his sister’s bones. I didn’t pay particular attention to them at the time and I wasn’t involved in what happened to them, any more than I was with anything else there. I just assumed they were the bones of a man who had died long ago and that the villagers knew nothing about them. So I didn’t waste much time thinking about them.’

‘Then you don’t know how the bones ended up in the drawers?’

‘Yes, I do know, although I’d really rather forget it.’ Arnar fell silent, but then continued when Thóra said nothing. ‘I couldn’t help noticing that most of the people in the office building had their eye on the skull and were bickering about who should be allowed to keep it. Should it be the man who first found the cairn, or the one who opened it, or the one who noticed the bag, and so on. It was disgusting to listen to, like most things that went on in that office. I was the only one who laid no claim to the bones, since I didn’t want them. I found it all to be in extremely poor taste.’

‘What about Friðrikka and Oddný Hildur? Did they try to claim the bones?’

‘Oddný Hildur had vanished and Friðrikka had left. It was last January. In the end it was decided that the bones would be divided through a game of chance. A game of bingo, to be precise.’

‘They played bone bingo?’ Thóra exclaimed.

‘It was supposed to be one of the activities for the Midwinter Feast, which was being planned at the time. The bingo game was to be the highlight of the evening, as far as I could tell. I didn’t go, any more than I went to any of the other activities and events that passed for a social life there. I wasn’t usually invited, but I wouldn’t have been interested anyway.’

Thóra felt sorry for the man, but now was not the time to discuss the harassment he had experienced, or to sympathize with him. ‘So the bingo game decided who got what?’

‘Yes. The skull was the main prize, but the other bones were divided into several different lots. Not everyone won some. Far from it. Bjarki and Dóri, for example, didn’t win any, and they were rather upset. They’d been the most excited about getting some, preferably the entire skeleton.’

‘I understand.’ Thóra felt rather lost in this strange conversation. At least now she had an explanation for the little note found lying under the skull, G-57. Was it that number that had granted the skull to its new owner? ‘But if your friend didn’t kill Oddný Hildur, then who did? Do you have any theories you’d like to share with me?’

‘No.’ Although the answer was curt, there was no anger in it. ‘I’ve only just found out that this is a murder case – I honestly thought she’d got lost and died of exposure. Thinking about it, most if not all of the Berg employees could be suspects. Everyone except for me and Friðrikka, of course. Oddný Hildur was the only one who was decent to me, so as you can imagine I was absolutely beside myself when she disappeared. Of course the others were shocked but I don’t know how deep their shock went. She’d fallen out of favour after drawing the CEO’s attention to the way they treated me. That didn’t make the men very happy, but instead of dropping it they started bullying Oddný Hildur as well. Idiots.’

‘So the group found out that Oddný Hildur had complained?’

‘Yes. Not from me, that’s for certain. I guess the owner hadn’t been very discreet about it, which is nothing new for him.’

Recalling the CEO’s awkward e-mail to Oddný Hildur, Thóra could well imagine. ‘Is it conceivable that someone was trying to play a prank on her in revenge, but that it got out of control and she died accidentally? Maybe the two drillers?’

Arnar thought it over. ‘I don’t know. It seems quite a stretch, but I’m damned if I know. Neither Bjarki, Dóri nor anyone else acted in a way that led me to suspect they might have done anything like that.’

Thóra tried not to feel too disappointed, but she had thought she’d get more out of him. ‘Who knows, maybe it was just an accident, even though the circumstances are very peculiar.’ She smiled ruefully and decided to tell Arnar what her clever theory had been. ‘I got a little ahead of myself there. I was starting to imagine that the drillers killed her by mistake, regretted it when they were left alone at the camp and killed themselves. With poison.’ However, her fantastic hypothesis did not explain how they wound up cut into pieces and dumped on an island.

‘Yes, well, no. They didn’t kill themselves.’ Arnar cleared his throat. ‘I killed them.’