Forty Days Without Shadow: An Arctic Thriller

by Olivier Truc

  Aslak remembered how the long, slow migrations induced a state he had experienced nowhere else, a state he had never truly recovered since becoming a man. One of the young herders who came to see him sometimes had used the word happiness. Aslak had no idea what he meant. He only knew that as a child, he had learned everything a man needed to know in life from his grandfather.

  The old man had great difficulty walking. But during the long days waiting at camp, when the herders were out keeping watch over the animals at pasture, from a distance, he would sometimes take short walks. One day, he had taken Aslak to the top of a low mountain, with a flat summit, beyond which other mountains stretched as far as the eye could see. Aslak had learned to love the mountains when his grandfather had told him: “See, Aslak, they respect one another. None tries to be higher than the other, to cast a shadow over his neighbor, or hide him, or be more beautiful. We can see them all from here. If you go to the top of that mountain over there, it will be the same—you will see the others, all around.” His grandfather had never said such things to him before. His voice was quiet and calm, as always. Melancholy, too. “Mankind should be like the mountains,” the old man had said. Aslak had looked at his grandfather, and the landscape stretching in every direction. The gentle, sleepy ranges of Sápmi had never looked so beautiful. In the rays of the sun, the endless, billowing swell of heather sparkled and glowed with life—the colors of fire, blood, and earth. His grandfather held a reindeer antler he had picked up along the way. He took out his knife and began to carve the bone. They had sat quietly on the summit. Finally, his grandfather had shown him the antler, on which he had carved their initials and the date. Then he wedged it between two big rocks. He was tired, he said. Before walking back down to the camp he had clasped Aslak’s hand and told him: “When I am dead, men will know I came here today with my son’s son.”

  * * *

  Kautokeino

  Klemet and Nina conferred for a moment in the sitting room. They believed Berit’s version of events. Mattis’s farmstead and his wilderness trailer had been searched already, but the drum had not been found. Fresh coffee and a new candle stood waiting in the kitchen when they returned. Berit had dried her tears, but her eyes were swollen. Klemet knew her well enough to understand her tortured feelings. He went over to her and took her gently by the shoulders.

  “Berit, why did you give the police a false time? You knew that was wrong.”

  She gazed at him with immense sorrow in her eyes. “Mattis was like a younger brother to me. When I was a very young girl, I helped my mother deliver him. Our families grew up together. When he was living in his trailer, out in the vidda, he would come and see me here sometimes, to get something to eat, then sleep in the bedroom upstairs. It was easier for him than going back to his little farmstead, which is a lot further away. I did his laundry. I gave him food. I listened to him. He knew I would never judge him. He found some peace here.”

  Klemet nodded. “Berit, we need to know exactly who Mattis saw in the days leading up to his death. It’s very important we try to find the person he was talking about just before he left here.”

  Nina spread out the set of photographs she had brought from her desk at the station. She sorted out the pictures of the protagonists in both investigations, which had now, unquestionably, become one. They had identified the thief. But it remained to be seen whether or not Mattis had acted alone. Nina looked at the faces in the pictures. Mattis, Ailo, Jonne, Mikkel. Johann Henrik. Olaf. The pastor. Helmet Juhl. Berit herself. Racagnal. And Aslak. Nina had added one of Mads’s daughter, Sofia. And completing the lineup, to remind her, pictures of Aslak’s wife and the NRK journalist, Tomas Mikkelsen.

  Berit looked at the photographs. Klemet and Nina studied her reaction, but she registered nothing but an overwhelming sense of sadness. She touched the picture of Aslak’s wife. “Poor woman…”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know what to say. Mattis knew everyone. Helmut—he made drums for him sometimes, tourist souvenirs. Drums again. Always drums. He couldn’t get away from them, the poor man. It would have helped him if he could. He was in a world of his own. He believed everything was possessed of a soul: the smallest rock, the trees, everything.”

  Berit crossed herself. A reflex. She pushed the first photographs to one side and looked again at the rest. Gently, she slid out the photograph of Aslak, gazing at it as she did so. Then she picked up Olaf’s portrait.

  “Mattis and Olaf weren’t close. I think Olaf was suspicious of him, a little. Or found him too…too distant. Mattis went to one of Olaf’s political meetings once. He was interested in those things, Mattis. Sami history. Independence. Sami values. I think Mattis may even have voted for Olaf in the elections to the Sami parliament. But when Olaf asked Mattis to hand out tracts in the markets, Mattis almost always forgot to go. Olaf grew tired of him. He began to criticize Mattis. Olaf said that Mattis’s obsession with the drums reminded him of the politicians who wanted to round the Sami up into a theme park for tourists. I remember his exact words, because I thought that was unpleasant, and harsh.”

  She placed Olaf’s photograph on top of Aslak’s and took the next one. Ailo Finnman. Before she could say anything, Nina stayed her hand.

  “Berit, you haven’t said anything about Aslak…Yet he and Mattis were quite close, weren’t they?”

  Berit looked like a little girl caught doing something she knew was wrong. Then she narrowed her eyes.

  “Oh. Aslak. Yes. That’s true. They knew one another. They respected each other. They saw one another out in the vidda. That’s all.”

  She picked up Ailo’s photograph, as if to cut short her comments on Aslak. Nina was surprised, but let her continue.

  “Him. Mattis would have done better to leave him well alone. And the other two as well. Always together. Ailo Finnman. He had his family. They think they can do whatever they want. They threaten everyone out in the vidda. They elbow everyone aside to make room for themselves.”

  “Mattis spent time with them?”

  “A little. Sometimes they did small bits of business between themselves. He gave them a helping hand, too, during the triage. I told Mattis to keep away from them, but he always did as he pleased. The others sold his drums on the black market. And they sold other goods, too. I never wanted to know anything about that. But you must know, Klemet. Small-time trafficking, using the big trucks that drive right across Sápmi, moving between Norway, Sweden, and Finland all the time.”

  “Do you know if Mattis had been anywhere else before coming to see you on Sunday? According to his GPS readings, he was in Kautokeino from ten o’clock onward that night. But perhaps he came to you a little later than that?”

  “Yes, that’s possible. I can’t remember the exact time now. If your machine tells you that, then it’s probably true. I don’t know who else he would have seen. Or if he saw anyone at all. He had definitely been drinking before he arrived, that I do know. That wasn’t surprising. He knows I have no alcohol here. And I never allowed him to drink in this house. But dear God, oh, that night, he had drunk and drunk…”

  Klemet and Nina thanked Berit for her help. Berit placed the last of the photographs on the top of the pile, then looked across at those Nina had set to one side—the photographs from Henri Mons’s 1939 expedition.

  “Goodness me, whatever is he doing there?” she said.

  The two officers bent over the top photograph, moving it further into the candlelight.

  “Who do you mean?” Nina’s voice was feverish with excitement.

  “Him. The small man with the mustache.”

  “Do you know him?” asked Klemet.

  “No, but the other day, when I was cleaning upstairs at Olsen’s house, for the first time in a long while, I saw the pictures in the old man’s bedroom. And there was that face. It might very well be his father.”

  Olsen’s father. The mystery man on the expedition. He must have been a farmer at the time, perhaps supplying some of the equ
ipment—vehicles, or pack animals. But that did not explain his disappearance from the photographs shortly after Niils Labba had left with Ernst Flüger, the German geologist. The expedition had taken place before Karl Olsen was born, but he may have heard about it from his father.

  “We’ll pay him a visit,” said Klemet. “We’ll soon see. When is he most likely to be over at the farm?”

  “He’s there every morning at the moment,” said Berit. “Mikkel and Jonne are working on the machines. They come over in the morning, and Olsen likes to keep an eye on them. To make sure they do a good job.”

  “Jonne and Mikkel? Have they been working for Olsen for long? I thought they were just doing odd jobs at the garage.”

  “They get everywhere,” said Berit. “They’ve been hanging around Olsen’s farm for years. Yes, years. And Mattis would go and find them there too, sometimes. He would work on the machines with them. Mattis borrowed Olsen’s tools. They probably discussed their bits of business there.”

  Klemet’s phone rang. He looked at the name on the screen. Tor Jensen. Klemet moved into the sitting room and took the call. The conversation lasted just a few minutes. The Sheriff was back in Kautokeino. Not quite incognito, but almost. He had heard about the Reindeer Police being taken off the case and wanted to see Klemet that evening. He meant business—Klemet understood that from his tone. Jensen was back, and Klemet was delighted.

  Back in the kitchen, Nina greeted him with a radiant, knowing smile. An intensely satisfied smile, too. In the middle of the kitchen table, a dark, oval, convex shape had been placed on a blanket. Klemet knew immediately what it was. The drum. The drum stolen by Mattis. The drum that had led to his murder.

  43

  Monday, January 24

  11:30 p.m., Kautokeino

  Klemet and Nina drove back to the tent in a state of high excitement. On the way Nina told him that while he was out of the room, it had suddenly occurred to her that they hadn’t asked Berit the simplest and most obvious question. Mattis had left the drum in the bedroom, in Berit’s care. And Berit had stowed it right there in her kitchen cupboard. Patrol P9 had left immediately, taking the priceless artifact with them. Berit was under strict orders to say nothing about the drum to anyone: the investigation was still ongoing. She was already open to charges of false witness and receiving stolen goods, and she had not been difficult to persuade.

  “What do we do with the drum now?” Nina voiced both their thoughts. “We’re meant to be out in the tundra checking reindeer herds, not helping the investigation along.”

  “Well, let’s not spoil the party straightaway,” said Klemet. “I’m not handing it over to Brattsen. No way.”

  “But he’s about to arrest Olaf and Johann Henrik.”

  “He’s arresting them for Mattis’s murder, not the theft of the drum. Except he’s hoping he can wave his magic wand and catch everything in the same net. He’ll have to be extremely convincing now.”

  “But how can we keep the drum a secret? The UN conference is just days away.”

  “I’m aware of that. But we have to consolidate our position. Find out more about what the drum can tell us. And let Brattsen get bogged down in his own mess, good and deep. Then everything will work out.”

  “Well, I don’t much like playing games,” said Nina. Concentrating on the icy road ahead, Klemet pictured her scowl from the tone of her voice. “And what about the Sheriff? Are you planning to tell him?”

  Klemet hadn’t decided on that yet. Tor was on their side, but Klemet preferred to wait and see what his boss had in mind, now that he was back in Kautokeino.

  “We’ll out find out shortly—he’s coming over to the tent.”

  “And what about the drum itself? Shouldn’t we be protecting it somehow? Juhl said it had to be treated before it could be exposed to the air and light. If it deteriorates because we don’t know how to look after it, there’ll be a high price to pay.”

  “We’ll stop by Uncle Nils Ante’s place tomorrow morning first thing. He’s sure to know what to do.”

  * * *

  Back at the tent, Klemet and Nina pored over the drum. The firelight cast strange shadows around the sides of the lavvu, as if the painted motifs had sprung to life. A line was drawn across the upper section, just as Henri Mons had remembered it, with the stylized reindeer, reminiscent of prehistoric rock art drawings. The central cross was there, too. But the complexity of the motif came as a surprise to Nina. She took out her camera and photographed it, eager to preserve a permanent record of its design. Then she resumed the close study of its taut, crackled skin.

  Reindeer appeared in both sections. Fish, too. Two dark birds that might represent crows, though the species couldn’t be identified with any certainty. There was a snake, huge and thick, to judge by its size compared to the other animals. But Nina quickly reflected that their relative proportions bore no relation to reality here. The birds and fish were the same size as the reindeer. Some of the signs looked rather like Native American motifs, she thought, without really being able to say why. There were ragged pine trees, a sun, or perhaps a figure standing in the sun. To the bottom left of the cross, Nina saw some sort of boat in a circle. Beneath the dividing line, the design featured a grille-like pattern. And there were lozenge shapes straddling the line. Strange wavelike forms lined the right-hand edge of the drum, smaller at the bottom but forming bigger, broader curves toward the upper section. Nina was struck by the asymmetry and the finesse of the motifs, convinced their meaning could be deciphered. But how?

  She looked again at the central cross. It was broad and wide, drawn in double thickness, with a lozenge motif at the center. Each branch of the cross supported a different symbol. Another was drawn at the heart of the lozenge shape. Nina glanced at Klemet, hoping to catch some flash of comprehension in her colleague’s eyes. “What do you think?”

  He was lost. He wasn’t prepared to admit it, yet, but the indecipherable drum forced him to acknowledge the chasm separating him from traditional Sami culture, setting him apart, as it always had. Dozens of academics would have moved heaven and earth to lay hands on this artifact, but Klemet was unable to make sense of it. He had grown up isolated from Sami culture, and this drum—the very heart of that culture, the key to this whole case—was as strange to him as it was to Nina. He remembered his uncle’s words. The Sami had been caught up in a holy war, a true war of religion. And they had lost. Klemet himself was the living, breathing proof of that. In the presence of this drum, an object that should have stirred strong, deep-seated emotions in him, he felt helpless.

  He studied the design again. The dividing line was placed very high up across the oval surface. The cross was central to the bigger of the two sections and was elaborately decorated. Was that unusual? He had no idea. He could identify the reindeer, fish, birds, what looked like pine trees and mountains, perhaps, or—more likely—Sami tents. Even then he couldn’t be sure. No point playing the art expert, he told himself. Fine Sami you are.

  “We must tell Tor,” said Nina.

  “True. He should know about this. But tell me, Nina—you’re not Sami, you know nothing about the culture, so what do you see in the drum? An untrained eye might spot something new…”

  Nina had overcome her initial excitement at the discovery. She was scrutinizing the symbols now, committing them to memory.

  “Yes, that’s true. There are things I think I can see, but I’m being influenced by what I know about the drum’s history. I see a cluster of Sami tents. Why? I don’t know. And this frontier, this separation. It might be the surface of an expanse of water, dividing the world above from the underwater world. And the lozenges look to me like icebergs. The underwater section is the biggest, the most important. Perhaps a lake concealing something? A drowned village? Some sort of dam project? Klemet, you said you first came to work here when people were protesting in Alta. Wasn’t that about a dam project?”

  He got to his feet, lifted the drum and turned it over, looking at
it from every angle.

  “That’s an interesting theory. I was focusing on childhood memories, but they’re very vague. My uncle’s stories about the frontier between the realm of the living and the dead. But a drowned village. Or a flooded mine––”

  “Or both!”

  “Or both.”

  “This grille pattern along the line might be some kind of ladder half in and half out of the water.”

  “A ladder… Why not?”

  “Here’s a stylized figure of a man holding two crosses: a pastor? And there, you see a cross symbolizing the sun, but you can interpret it in other ways, too: your kingdom of the dead, perhaps. Or it may have nothing to do with the sun. I see a kind of compass, or a wind rose. And that circle looks like another compass,” Nina suggested.

  “But why two compasses?”

  “Why? I don’t know. The person who drew the drum may have had a lot to hide.”

  “Or a lot to tell,” muttered Klemet. His face darkened.

  Ten minutes later, the Sheriff arrived. His air of exhaustion had vanished and he looked ready for action, clad in gray fatigues with patch pockets and a navy-blue parka. Klemet hadn’t seen Tor in uniform for years. The addiction to black licorice sweets had taken its toll: the outfit was a little tight. But that didn’t matter. The Sheriff was out for revenge, thought Klemet. Big time.

  Before he arrived, Klemet had stowed the drum carefully in one of the chests lining the tent. He offered the Sheriff a beer.

  “So what happened in Hammerfest?”

  “Hammerfest! Bunch of clowns. The entire region is hamstrung. Every interested party has people strategically placed. Either there’s a Laborite in every cupboard––”

  “Like you,” Klemet pointed out, grinning.

  “Enough of your cheek…Or you’ve got a Progress Party man pulling the strings and manipulating the Conservatives. That’s how it is down in Oslo and, believe me, that’s exactly how it is out here in the back end of the Finnmark. Just as many fucking idiots as down there in the capital.”