Forty Days Without Shadow: An Arctic Thriller

by Olivier Truc

  He sat in the car with the engine switched off, for two long minutes. He had wound down one window, listening out for suspicious noises. The cold seized him, and he cursed his inadequate clothing.

  He took out a small flashlight with only a faint beam and moved slowly toward the barn wall, stopping frequently. He reached its big door, which stood slightly open. Inside, the vast space held two tractors and at least three big machines used in Olsen’s arable fields. The walls were all fitted with panels hung with tools and smaller, lightweight equipment, together with shelves and an impressive collection of knives. As a precaution, Klemet slipped on a pair of thin gloves before checking the blades, one after the other. None matched what they knew about the blade that had killed Mattis. But that meant nothing. Any set of farm buildings was full of hiding places. And Klemet hadn’t come for that.

  He scanned the corners of the barn and found what he was looking for. Several one-gallon jerricans of oil stood lined up next to an old cupboard and a set of battered gas cans. The jerricans were from various brands, but two contained Big Motors Super Winter Oil, from Arktisk Olje.

  Klemet was satisfied. He retraced his steps, poked his head out of the barn door, and looked around. A few hundred yards below, the main road was lined with streetlamps, lighting up the few passing cars. He was preparing to leave when he heard a truck approaching along the main drive. Soon, headlights swept the big farmyard. Hastily, Klemet shrank back into the barn.

  Who could be coming to Olsen’s place while the farmer was away? He pulled the door shut and hid in a dark corner. The truck stopped and the engine died. One of its doors opened shortly after, and Klemet heard something heavy hitting the ground, followed by footsteps. And a whistle. The truck driver was whistling a pop tune. The man seemed to be alone. Klemet tried to look through a crack in the wooden barn wall, but could see very little. He heard the man jumping on the spot, doubtless to keep himself warm, still whistling. Interminable seconds passed. Klemet was surprised to find himself trying to identify the pop song.

  Suddenly, the noise was drowned out by another vehicle turning into the main drive. A small diesel van, thought Klemet. Headlights swept the yard before dying when the engine was switched off. Two doors slammed. Klemet heard the three men clap each other on the shoulder. He recognized a voice. Mikkel, one of the herders working for Ailo Finnman and doing occasional maintenance work on Olsen’s machines. Great, thought Klemet. He’ll be coming into the barn. He looked around in the semidarkness, searching for a better hiding place. But no footsteps approached the barn door. The three men stayed outside in the yard.

  Klemet heard the truck door open again and thought another man had opened the rear door of the smaller van. He heard someone manipulating the truck’s hydraulic tailgate. The men grunted with effort. They seemed to be shifting merchandise from one vehicle to the other, apparently from the truck to the van. Klemet was overcome with cold. Five long minutes went by. He had left his thick gloves in the car, and now his fingers hurt.

  Outside, the three men stopped at last, slammed the vehicle doors shut once more, and lit cigarettes, talking about the merchandise. Klemet listened hard. His suspicions were confirmed: the three were involved in trafficking. One of the trio—Jonne, it seemed—said he would soon need a new stock of cigarettes. A list was passed around—the man Klemet had identified as Jonne told his colleague the spirits were listed on the paper. The other man, who was Swedish, said he would have to come back in three days. Klemet heard someone whistle and click their fingers. Then the three said their good-byes. The Swede climbed back into the cabin of his truck, called out, “Hasta la vista, guys!” to the other two, and slammed the door.

  The van was the first to start up, driving all the way around the yard. For a second, its headlights swept the bigger truck’s cabin. Peering through the crack, Klemet caught a flash of the Swedish driver’s tattooed arm.

  49

  Thursday, January 27

  Sunrise: 9:08 a.m.; sunset: 1:56 p.m.

  4 hours 48 minutes of sunlight

  Kautokeino

  The crowd outside the Kautokeino police station was getting bigger. The protesters had gotten themselves organized. A small encampment was taking shape, spilling onto part of the market square opposite the council offices. A number of breeders had towed wilderness trailers to the site. Three braziers warmed the thirty or so permanent protesters. Others stopped by early in the morning on their way to work. New placards had appeared.

  Brattsen pushed his way through, his face set in a stubborn glare, jostling a breeder carrying a placard with the words “No to Colonization” handwritten in large letters. The acting superintendent looked particularly bad-tempered today. He would happily have exchanged insults with the character in the blue four-pointed hat. But he forced himself to say nothing. He was Kautokeino’s police chief now. He’d been advised to keep on his best behavior. The role of police chief was a representational one, too. “The public face of the force.” Well, fuck that for a start. Pen-pushing bureaucrats. Still, Olsen had told him they were closing in on their goal, and he had to watch his step. The old farmer kept talking to him about his father, then reminding him of his future role as head of security at his miraculous mine. With a fat salary. No more kid gloves for the Sami and every other parasite on society then.

  Rolf reached the door of the police station, turned and shot a defiant glare at the protesters grouped in a semicircle about ten yards away. A silent standoff ensued, then he turned and disappeared inside without a word. He poured himself a coffee and went down to the basement. Asked the officer on guard to open the cell. The two Sami breeders had not been let out to freshen up that morning. Brattsen stared at them.

  “Well? Jesus, you look rough. Regular pair of criminals!” He grinned. “So, the three of us are going to have a little chat, aren’t we?”

  Renson drew himself up to his full height.

  “Yeah, yeah. You can keep your arrogant posturing for later, Renson. Won’t do you much good here.”

  Footsteps sounded in the corridor outside. Brattsen turned around. Tor Jensen stood in the cell doorway, an enigmatic smile on his lips. He was accompanied by a small man in a suit and another police officer.

  “Carry on, Brattsen,” said the Sheriff, still smiling. “The examining judge and myself will be conducting a small search. But don’t let us get in the way of your questioning.”

  “What the fuck?” Brattsen burst out.

  “The examining judge can’t spare us much of his time. We’ll tell you all about it later, if necessary,” said the Sheriff. “Least we can do for Kautokeino’s big chief of police.” He addressed the examining judge. “Isn’t that right, sir?”

  Brattsen swore into his coffee but was certain he’d get no response from the judge, a man he knew to be very nice and cozy with the local Labor Party. He glanced at the two prisoners, jaw clenched, then pushed past the Sheriff and disappeared upstairs, calling over his shoulder, “I’ll talk to you two when you’ve had a chance to clean up. Make yourselves look halfway decent, if you can!”

  * * *

  Nina and Klemet were waiting for the Sheriff and the judge at the entrance to the track leading to Olsen’s farm. They were still using Klemet’s elderly red Volvo. And they preferred to continue operating in plainclothes. They were about to go after Racagnal, but first, Klemet wanted a clean conscience.

  The judge got to work quickly. Two police officers took samples of the motor oil, working meticulously, taking plenty of photographs, then wrapped up the oil cans and placed them in the back of the police van. They seized the knives, too, and carried out a detailed search of the barn.

  The examining judge moved on to Olsen’s house. One officer opened the door with ease. No one in Kautokeino felt the need to install complicated locks. While the Sheriff and the judge searched the ground floor, Klemet went straight upstairs, followed by Nina. They found old Olsen’s bedroom, with its stale, acrid smell. And they had no trouble recognizing Kar
l Olsen’s father in the photographs on the wall. These were mostly of family, but one or two showed Olsen Senior out in the countryside, or in his fields, sometimes posing with other people—probably farm laborers. In these pictures, he adopted a dominant, paternalistic pose. Often, the workers—a downtrodden lot, thought Klemet—were posed crouching in a line, one knee to the ground, facing the photographer, while Olsen stood lording it behind them, his hand on one of their shoulders.

  “There’s the interpreter from the expedition,” said Klemet. “He must have worked for Olsen. The photo’s dated 1944.”

  “And here’s Karl Olsen with his father,” said Nina. “The only picture where you see them together. Olsen can’t be very old there. No more than ten, I’d say, probably less. He hardly even reaches the metal detector his father’s wearing across his chest.”

  “Looks as if Olsen Senior caught the metal-detecting bug on the 1939 expedition,” said Klemet. “Must have carried on with it alone, afterward.”

  “He certainly did,” said Nina. “Look here.”

  She had found the door to the tiny storeroom. She looked around inside, saw the old chest, the rolled maps, the yellowing newspapers, the storage boxes. Everything smelled stale and old. She leafed through a handful of papers. “These must be the maps Olsen’s father used. His name was Knut, apparently.”

  They looked again at the photographs.

  “Berit said that the other pictures had been put up in the attic,” said Klemet. “Let’s see if they can tell us anything.”

  They climbed the narrow stairs leading to the attic, clearly very little used. The space was large and tidily arranged, except for one corner stacked with a jumble of old storage chests. Klemet found the trunk Berit had mentioned, with pictures of Olsen’s wife’s family. A stern-looking lot. Like his own Laestadian family. The same accusing looks.

  “Klemet, come and see this,” Nina called from the other end of the attic.

  She was crouching behind two chests, pointing to two devices lying side by side on the floor. One was the metal detector seen in the photograph on the bedroom wall. She pointed to the second device and its instantly recognizable brand name.

  “A Geiger counter. The Geiger counter used in 1939.”

  “Yes. Maybe Flüger didn’t die in a fall, after all,” she said quietly and indicated the bottom of the device, marked with clearly visible, brownish stains. Faded but unmistakable. Klemet and Nina recognized them immediately. Blood.

  * * *

  Brian Kallaway jumped down from the helicopter that had dropped him next to Racagnal’s bivouac. The SFM had laid on the full works, as often when it sensed something really big. The company was more than able to mobilize the required resources. The helicopter also deposited a huge pallet shrouded in netting, suspended from the undercarriage for the flight. The drop contained a snowmobile, jerricans of gas, and storage chests full of equipment and provisions.

  The Frenchman observed the young Canadian, knowing exactly what he thought about the crack glaciologist the company had sent to help him. A joker. A joker with too many Mickey Mouse degrees, all dressed up for an adventure like fucking Tom Cruise, and as if that wasn’t enough, he was wearing a pair of little, round John Lennon glasses. One of the new breed, incapable of working in the field unless they’re surrounded with gadgets. Think it makes them look professional. The kid was wearing a heavily pocketed parka with special reflective fabric all over it, boots fit for an expedition to the fucking North Pole, and the latest brand of glacier goggles around his neck. His three-day beard had been carefully trimmed. A special pocket on his sleeve held a miniaturized GPS. He wore his ultralight Estwing hammer slung around his hips, like a gun. Racagnal counted at least two radiation dosimeters on his snowsuit. He wasn’t in the least surprised. Too many young geologists took ridiculous precautions nowadays. Racagnal could remember when guys would carry blocks of uranium in their backpacks and use them to decorate their desks back at the office. No one worried about a bit of radiation back then. But for the past ten years, all radioactive samples had been consigned to special storage. Too dangerous. Everything was too fucking dangerous now.

  Kallaway was already unfolding his portable solar chargers, ready to power his armory of electronic devices. Racagnal grinned openly at the Canadian’s panoply of state-of the-art equipment. Kallaway had no idea why his colleague was chuckling to himself. He’d been told Racagnal was a pro of the old school. Something of a hard man, that was all.

  “Two twenty,” he announced, looking at his watch with a satisfied air. “Don’t think we could have done it any quicker than that. Good thing the weather’s with us, or the pilot would have refused to take off.”

  Racagnal shook his head. The kid even had a Polimaster PM1208 watch with its own miniaturized Geiger counter, for Christ’s sake. A Mickey Mouse geologist and no mistake. He waited for the helicopter to take off, heading for Alta, then turned to Kallaway.

  “Aerial surveys?”

  The Canadian looked disappointed at the terse greeting. Not a word of praise for his efficient touchdown in the depths of Lapland, with all the required equipment, less than twenty-four hours after receiving his mission order. Yes, he had completed the aerial surveys.

  Under normal circumstances, the early stages of uranium prospecting were carried out by air, covering vast expanses of terrain. The results were still haphazard, of course. If the uranium ore was three feet below ground, or beneath a lake, nothing would show up. But an aerial survey could identify likely areas for further exploration.

  Brian Kallaway went to shake Aslak’s hand. The Sami returned his firm grasp, saying nothing. Kallaway moved one of his devices over to a folding table he had set up and spread a map next to it.

  “This section contains several spots,” he announced. “Where did you find your boulders?”

  Racagnal indicated his finds on the Canadian’s map.

  “Well,” said Kallaway, “I’ll get to work right away. I’ll start by exploring this area, and you carry on over there. After that we’ll take this direction and intersect with this axis, following the river upstream. Shouldn’t need more than a couple of hours.”

  * * *

  The Sheriff and the judge headed back to the station, while Klemet and Nina returned to Klemet’s house. Their equipment and uniforms lay waiting where they had left them several days before.

  The old Geiger counter would be sent away for immediate tests on the bloodstains. If that was what they were. The examining judge had also ordered DNA samples from Ernst Flüger’s remains in the cemetery in Kautokeino. If necessary, he could order an examination of the German geologist’s cranium, too.

  Klemet and Nina adjusted their uniforms: the grey fatigue trousers and thick navy-blue jackets.

  “What I think,” said Klemet after a long silence, “is that the interpreter, the one Henri Mons told you about, must have talked to Knut Olsen, his employer. Told him what Niils Labba had said to the German geologist. All about the drum, the mine, the map. And that fired Knut’s imagination.”

  “That would certainly explain why he disappeared so soon after Flüger and Niils Labba left,” said Nina. “He followed them. Simple as that. And he must have waited for Niils Labba to go off alone, then attacked Flüger. Perhaps he threatened him. Perhaps Flüger tried to defend himself. And so Knut Olsen struck him with the Geiger counter.”

  “He didn’t find the field book, even so. But perhaps that was how he found the map. The famous map Eva was talking about.”

  “Is she on her way?” asked Nina.

  Klemet glanced at his watch. “Should be here in two or three hours.”

  “Do you really think the old geological map was in Olsen’s storeroom?”

  “She’ll be able to tell us, I hope. I gave her all the clues from the drum, so that she can incorporate them when she examines the other maps at Olsen’s place,” said Klemet.

  He looked forward to seeing Eva in Kautokeino. And he found himself thinking about th
e night he’d kissed Nina. He was relieved that Nina seemed to have dismissed the embarrassing incident. She didn’t bear a grudge. She said very little about her boyfriend, the fisherman from down south. Lucky guy. Klemet had never met him, of course, but he felt kindly disposed toward him, if only because he had enabled Klemet to cut Fredrik from forensics in Kiruna down to size.

  It hadn’t escaped Klemet’s notice, either, that Nina seemed troubled by her last encounter with Aslak, ten days ago, when she hit the reindeer while driving to the airport, en route for France. Klemet’s memory of his own last encounter with Aslak, as he and Nina had ridden across his land, still rankled. The image of Aslak always left him deeply troubled. It always would. And that was something he could never come to terms with.

  He looked at Nina, buttoning herself into her navy fatigue jacket, the Reindeer Police badge shining on her sleeve. She patted her uniform, replacing items in the pockets. She took out her notebook, leafed through it, and tried to return it to her breast pocket. It didn’t quite fit, and she searched for whatever was in the way. She pulled out a small pouch, seemed to remember something, and reddened at the thought. Aslak’s gift. She saw that Klemet had noticed and opened the little bag.

  “Aslak give this to me after I hit the reindeer. I hadn’t even looked at it,” she said, as if to justify herself. But she seemed flustered.

  Klemet said nothing. He checked his stuff, collected his bags, and went outside to finish loading the patrol car. After two trips, everything was ready. He stood waiting on the doorstep. But Nina had sat down at the living room table, looking preoccupied.

  “Let’s go, Nina.”

  “Just a minute.”

  Klemet sighed and headed for the kitchen to pour himself a glass of water. Passing behind Nina’s chair, he looked to see what she was doing. She had taken out a piece of paper and was sketching designs.