Forty Days Without Shadow: An Arctic Thriller

by Olivier Truc

  “Yes. But the Reindeer Police think the Frenchman might be implicated in some way. Because of the business with the mine and the drum. And the Sheriff seems determined to follow their lead.”

  Olsen exploded. “Stuff and nonsense!” Hastily he softened his tone. “You know what, lad? Your father—back when we were hunting Commies, they tried to lead him a dance every now and then, laying false trails. But he wasn’t fooled, not him. He had the measure of them. He always caught them out in the end. And I remember he used to say he had a sixth sense. He’d always flush them out, the bastards. Ha! You’re his boy and no mistake. A proper bloodhound! Am I right? There’s no telling you stories, is there, eh, lad? You can see it’s the breeder’s business. See what I mean, boy?”

  Rolf Brattsen fixed Olsen with his usual hard stare. Perhaps he understood, but Olsen wanted to be sure.

  “See, lad, what I’m getting at is, it would be a shame if the police wasted time and resources chasing after the Frenchman out in the vidda. And it won’t do our bit of business any good to have them on his tail. See what I mean, lad?”

  Brattsen seemed to be turning it over in his mind. Now Olsen was sure the policeman had taken his meaning. The old farmer watched the officer’s tortured expression, thinking that Brattsen looked every bit as stupid as his father. He had hardly known the man in truth, but it was there in his face.

  “Yeah, I see what you mean,” said Brattsen finally. “But there’s not much I can do to put Nango off the scent. The Sheriff doesn’t trust me.”

  “So the Sheriff’s the problem?”

  “In a way, yes. The Reindeer Police just do as they’re told. And the Sheriff’s under pressure to deliver results, with the UN conference coming up.”

  Olsen was deep in thought. “And what if your Sheriff, Jensen, was relieved of his duties. What would happen then?” he asked suddenly.

  “Relieved of his functions?”

  “You heard.”

  Brattsen thought hard. Suddenly, his face brightened into an expression of boyish delight. He was deputy superintendent, after all. Dear God, he looks almost simple, Olsen thought. But the old farmer smiled indulgently.

  “If Jensen was out of the way, I could call off the Reindeer Police,” said Brattsen.

  “Good lad. See, your old dad would have been proud. I’ve had a little idea. We’ll have to act fast, but it might just work.”

  * * *

  7 p.m., Highway 93

  Nina was sleeping in the passenger seat, curled deep in her snowsuit, her head resting on a cushion, her blonde hair tucked into her chapka. The heater was on full. Outside, the temperature was still glacial. The wind had risen again, blowing in from Siberia. Nina was tough, but she had sunk into the car after leaving the Geological Institute, grateful for a chance to rest.

  Klemet headed straight for Kiruna, to the north. Patrol P9 was expected at Reindeer Police headquarters the following morning. Isolated in the midst of the tundra, the mining town was home to the regional police headquarters for central Sápmi. Kiruna was Klemet’s hometown. He had been born there, and he’d lived there for a few years, too. He liked the plump, regular silhouette of the mountain, excavated into a series of steps.

  The mine had moved underground in the 1960s: a labyrinth of invisible, subterranean roads, 250 miles in total, made possible by ever more sophisticated technology. For the local Sami, the mine had disrupted their way of life, cutting across migration routes, bringing noise pollution, destroying pasture. Klemet’s father had worked in the mine at times when the farms in Norwegian Sápmi had less need of hired labor. Plenty of miners were seasonal, like him. People in Sápmi often had several different jobs throughout the year. No one was afraid of traveling long distances. Migration was in the blood, up here in the north. Klemet had tried to break away from all that. He had cherished a mad dream of becoming a whale hunter once, as he had told Nina, but he had never taken the idea any further. He dared not admit to his colleague that the nearest he had come to a seafaring life was two summers spent working in a fish factory in the Lofoten Islands. The work had been well paid, but held no appeal otherwise. And it had been made quite clear to him that the factory was no place for a Sami. But was he a true Sami, really? A true Sami was a reindeer herder. His father had never insisted on their Sami identity.

  Sami society was close-knit and highly structured. The breeders were a caste apart, very much at the top of the pile. The aristocracy. They were the big families, the ones who owned vast herds, the ones who called the shots, who could tell the Reindeer Administration how many reindeer they intended to keep, not the other way around, without fear of reprimand, or almost. After that came the young people who had chosen to study. There were fewer of them, and the phenomenon was quite recent, but there were one or two Sami lawyers now, and doctors. And then came the anonymous ranks, the ones who didn’t really know whether they were Sami or Norwegian, Finnish or Swedish. And at the bottom of the pile came the people the world of reindeer breeding had spat out. The ones who had failed. The pariahs. Like his grandfather.

  Klemet wondered who had found that the hardest. His grandfather, who had thought it over and made a choice, because he could no longer feed his family, and who had thrown himself into farming and fishing on the shores of the little lake, where Klemet had spent his early years? Or his father, who had known the free nomadic life as a child, with its reindeer and its pride, and who suddenly, without understanding why, had found all that taken away and been subjected to the taunts of adolescents his own age? Demoted. When Klemet was old enough, his father had insisted he go to school to learn Norwegian, wanting to make a proper Norwegian of him, never to feel the shame. He’d wanted him to live his life far from the world of the breeders who scorned the family. But it hadn’t been that simple. At boarding school, he had found himself studying with the sons of nomadic breeders. With Aslak.

  Klemet was overcome with tiredness. They were nearing Kiruna. Already he could see the familiar floodlights and the silhouette of the mine. He liked the lights. They reminded him of coming home as a child from the family farm in Kautokeino, on the other side of the mountain, after hours on foot, or by boat, depending on the season. After anxious, exhausting hours journeying through the dark, the magic of the lights awaited him still.

  They arrived just as the nightly explosions began to shake the entrails of the mine. Nina was still sleeping. Klemet headed for the Reindeer Police hut on this side of town. Gently, he nudged her awake.

  They had been in their bunks just a few minutes when the hut shuddered slightly. Business was still booming.

  37

  Saturday, January 22

  Sunrise: 9:35 a.m.; sunset: 1:27 p.m.

  3 hours 52 minutes of sunlight

  9 a.m., Kiruna, Sweden

  Officers in the Reindeer Police were used to keeping odd hours. And just occasionally, they managed to convince their colleagues to adapt to their needs. The Reindeer Police headquarters were housed in a converted fire station—an unusual building with an attractive turret, all in white-painted timber, not far from the huge red wooden church, the pride of Kiruna.

  The other members of the Reindeer Police were nowhere to be seen—out on patrol in the four corners of Sápmi, or on leave. Klemet made coffee and placed the thermos in the meeting room. Its windows overlooked the church, which was due to be dismantled in a few years—part of a plan to displace Kiruna’s town center, so as not to slow the march of the iron-ore mine beneath their feet. Nina took some photographs out of the window—“On a long exposure,” as she explained to Klemet. They were several hundred miles south of Kautokeino, but it was still not fully light in Kiruna at this hour.

  Anders Sunneborn, the forensic pathologist, arrived at 9 a.m. precisely. He looked half frozen, wrapped in a huge fur-lined parka. He had slipped on a sheet of black ice just outside and entered the room limping and cursing.

  “Time you started wearing those shoe cleats your mother-in-law bought you,” advised Klemet.r />
  “Spare me the topical tips. Try to understand there are some depths a Stockholmer will never sink to.” He winced in pain as he spoke.

  Klemet liked Anders. They had worked together in Stockholm on the Palme investigation. He had seldom met anyone so open-minded and unprejudiced. They had drunk a few beers together at Pelikan or Kvarnen, when the doc had tried to make a Hammarby supporter of him. But Klemet was completely uninterested in soccer, as Anders had soon realized. Still, Klemet never felt the need to be on the defensive in his presence. And that was worth a certain amount of self-sacrifice: evenings spent following the match on a giant screen, surrounded by bellowing fans in green-and-white scarves, Anders included.

  Fredrik, from forensics, was not on time, which came as no surprise to Klemet. He had agreed to attend the meeting against his will, and it was just like him to make a show of discontent by turning up late.

  “Here’s Fredrik,” said Nina, waving through the window.

  Klemet looked at his watch. Only five minutes late. The man clearly wasn’t trying. Fredrik entered the room, removing his cashmere scarf and camel-hair hat with a theatrical gesture. He was freshly shaven, smelling of quality aftershave. He directed a charming smile at Nina.

  “Let’s get started then.” Klemet did not attempt to conceal his irritation and made a show of looking at his watch, too. “We’ve got a long drive back to Kautokeino.”

  “Oh, you’re not staying tonight? What a shame.” Fredrik gave Nina a meaningful look. “There are some groups in town for the UN conference. They’re giving a concert this evening.”

  Nina smiled politely and turned to Klemet. Anders spoke first.

  “Well then,” he said, opening his file. “So our man Mattis died about an hour after being stabbed with a knife of this type.” He slid a photograph across the table. “And the ears were cut off roughly two hours after the time of death. Nothing new there. The second ear is Mattis’s, predictably enough. I’ve done some blowups of the marks on the ears.” He pushed more photographs across the table to the officers. “Have you gotten any further with the identification of the marks?”

  Klemet frowned. “I was getting further with just the one ear. The cuts on the second ear took me away from my initial lead.”

  “Could that mean two different breeders?” asked the examiner.

  “Normally, you need the marks from both ears to identify one owner,” Klemet told him.

  “But since the breeders aren’t in the habit of incising their own ears, perhaps we shouldn’t be reading these signs in the traditional way,” observed Fredrik drily, happy to put Klemet in his place.

  “Quite,” said Klemet, without looking at Fredrik. “Except the marks on the second ear really don’t suggest any breeder in particular, in the way the first ear did. And that makes me think they may not point to the reindeer breeders at all.”

  “On the subject of breeders and their marks, I’ve done tests on the knives taken away from Johann Henrik’s place,” said the doc. “Traces of blood on all of them. Reindeer blood, except on one knife where I found human blood. But not Mattis’s. A harmless cut, perhaps.”

  He slid a few sheets of paper over to Klemet.

  “And the GPS?” asked Klemet, somewhat impatiently.

  Fredrik got to his feet. “It’s all there. I managed to recover some of the data. Think I did a pretty good job.”

  “What did you recover?” Nina pressed him.

  “Data on his positions, basically, so we have a record of his movements over the past six months. I’ve printed out the week prior to his death. Let me know if you need more, Nina.”

  “Print out the week before that, then,” said Klemet, irritated that Fredrik was ignoring him and talking to Nina. “And do it now, so we can get going as soon as possible.”

  Klemet watched with satisfaction as Fredrik’s ears reddened. Double satisfaction when he complied straight away and left the room. Immediately, Klemet and Nina began examining the documents. The GPS data was fairly scant. The device was damaged, and it hadn’t been possible to retrieve any maps. But the raw data were there, at least, from which it would be possible to identify coordinates and times. A lengthy, painstaking task. And there was no indication as to whether the data were complete. This would become clear only once the coordinates were plotted on a map.

  Fredrik returned after five minutes with a handful of stapled sheets and dropped them onto the table.

  “Oh, I almost forgot, Mattis’s poncho. I picked it over very thoroughly. All kinds of stuff there. The list is in the file, too. You were interested in the grease stains. It’s motor oil, but not the kind he used in his scooter. That’s about it. If you’ve got no more questions for the moment, I’ll be getting along.”

  Fredrik was clearly annoyed. Swedish good manners demanded a gesture of reconciliation on Klemet’s part, but he really didn’t feel inclined. Arrogant, self-assured types like Fredrik exasperated him. He let him go without a word, leaving it to Nina to thank him.

  Anders smiled broadly when Fredrik had gone.

  “What an idiot,” he commented to Klemet. “You won’t change him.”

  “The guy doesn’t even realize he’s doing it. Behavior like that just comes naturally to him. All airs and graces. A proper Stockholmer,” he added with a wink for Anders.

  “Well, hark at you,” the doc joked. “Pay no attention to him, Nina—I can see you think he’s overreacting. Your partner has old scores to settles with a certain section of humanity.” Meaning Casanovas like Fredrik.

  “Absolutely not!” Klemet burst out amiably. “I’m not out to settle scores with anyone!”

  “No…” The doc’s reply was heavy with irony. “Anyway, Nina, you should know you’re working with one hell of a cop, a real obsessive for the fine detail that can make an investigation. A dedicated seeker after proof. Klemet, you remember the dark circles under Mattis’s eyes? You asked me to take a look.”

  “That’s true,” Nina interrupted, “they struck me, too, when I saw the corpse. Dark rings, maybe bruises. He must have suffered terribly.”

  “Well, they were smears, not bruises.” The doc was staring straight at Klemet. “Smears of blood.”

  * * *

  9:30 a.m., Central Sápmi

  Aslak and Racagnal had set out early, in the same direction as the day before. Racagnal continued sending radio messages at regular intervals. This morning, he had taken the gun lent him by the proprietor of the Villmarkssenter, too. One of the reindeer they had spotted yesterday would make a nice change for supper. Before setting off, he had spent a long time poring over the map, asking Aslak about this or that fault line, the cliffs, a river. The Sami had an encyclopedic knowledge of the region. And he could describe the shapes and colors of particular boulders in just a few terse words. No substitute for a geologist’s observations in the field, of course, but enough for Racagnal to narrow the area of his search.

  Aslak had said nothing since leaving the camp, but the geologist was unconcerned. Racagnal walked slowly, astronautlike in his thick, fur-lined snowsuit and field boots, his face almost completely hidden by a scarf. As always when out in the field, he began talking to himself, out loud. And Aslak made a great audience. He listened to everything, acquiesced to everything, in silence.

  “A nice little reindeer tonight, what do you say, Sami? We’ll cook up a feast, you’ll see. I can be out prospecting for two, three, even four weeks. And you can’t carry food for four weeks. But a true geologist will get by. Give me a fishing rod and I’ll feed a village. But a little reindeer will do just nicely. Got a problem with that? No comment? Just as well. Ah, look at that boulder. Magnificent. You won’t mind if I give it a scratch. I just take my hammer—this one’s Swedish, did you know that?—and smash it good and hard in the face, there, job done. See that, Sami? The boulder didn’t put up much a fight, eh? But you don’t know what boulder means. Well, I’ll tell you, it’s a nice piece of rock stuffed full of mineral ores, see? No, you don’t see
. Yes, you see. Well, just listen, you seem happy enough doing that. This one’s a fine little piece of magma. See how it glitters there? That’s a pretty bit of quartz. Couldn’t give a damn, could you? You’re right. It’s shit. Pretty, but shit. But see here, the old farmer’s gold, you can find it in quartz like that. So get a move on. I want to get on around the bend in the river. Scratch around a bit down there. Won’t take too much out of the day.”

  Racagnal felt good now. He was in his element. King of all he surveyed, on the scent, every sense honed, dredging his memory for rock classifications, comparisons with a fault line observed in another place twenty years ago, something that might help him interpret what he was seeing, something that no other geologist alive would think of. All because he, Racagnal, had an unerring sensory memory.

  He could remember every single one of his sexual conquests. Kept a precise inventory, allowing him to re-create every last detail—the texture of the skin, the feel of the hair, the plump curve of a hip, a budding breast. And the look. The eyes. Racagnal had seen so many. A whole gallery. He saw them one by one in his mind’s eye now: intimidated, submissive, blank, conquered. Rebellious, begging, terrified. Conquered. Every one of them conquered.

  They had reached the bend in the river.

  “Here.” He held out his hammer to Aslak. “Break some ice there. We’ll take a look.”

  Racagnal installed a makeshift shelter against the cold and spread out the reindeer skins Aslak had been carrying. He took out his field stove and boiled some water, diffusing a hint of warmth in the shelter. It would be a tough day. The cold devoured your energy, fast. He slipped fresh hand warmers inside his gloves, stepped outside the shelter, and looked around. The river wasn’t very wide at this point. To the east, an open stretch of ground extended for several hundred yards, covered in a fine layer of snow. Even the smallest swellings and mounds broke through the white surface, revealing clumps of heather crystallized by the cold. He could practically count the shrubs in sight, they were so few, so thin. Further off, a low mountain barred the horizon, with what looked like a lake at its foot, judging from the flat, uniform sheet of white. This was a sleepy, gently rolling landscape, glittering now in the rays of the rising sun. Not enough to warm the bones, but it meant the day’s prospecting was about to start in earnest.