Thóra turned to Matthew. ‘What utter, utter bastards.’
‘Yes, they don’t seem to be particularly nice people, judging by this video.’ Matthew was always cautious, so Thóra didn’t push him for a stronger reaction. ‘I assume that these are Bjarki and Dóri, the drillers, the ones we’re searching for, along with other things.’
‘Yes, and I’m on the verge of believing that the world is better off without them. I want to show you something else on this page.’ She scrolled down. ‘Total nonsense, and most of it seriously nasty. I’d bet my right arm that if the bones in the drawers are Oddný Hildur’s, then these men were involved in cleaning the flesh from them. I’m certain they wouldn’t have thought anything of it.’
‘Have you watched all these clips?’ said Matthew as she scrolled from one media player window to the next.
‘Yes.’ Thóra let go of the mouse. On the screen was yet another clip waiting for her to click on ‘play’. ‘This is typical of the rest: the two of them thinking they’re funny. I don’t know who shot the video, or whether they set up the camera to record automatically. Usually only one of them is in the frame at a time.’ On the screen the men sat and smoked cigars with great enthusiasm. The joke was based on the decision to allow all the workers to decide for themselves whether smoking would be allowed in their individual offices. The corridor would be a smoke-free zone, and the smokers’ room as well, since its function was now obsolete. Speculation on what it could now be used for took over and the lameness of the humour increased exponentially.
‘I don’t understand half of what they’re saying but it seems fairly innocent.’ Matthew yawned. ‘Shouldn’t we just go to bed? We might very well have to wake up early tomorrow morning if the police have got anywhere in their investigation.’ Thóra stopped the video. ‘I doubt they’ve found anything. We were there for days and we didn’t make much progress.’
‘They have better equipment than us. They can detect blood and handle everything that we didn’t want to touch. And you never know, they might have sent additional personnel from the crime lab, and even sniffer dogs. I know that’s what I would do if I were conducting the investigation on behalf of the police.’
Thóra sighed. ‘Let me cling on to the hope that I’ll get to sleep in tomorrow. Please.’
Matthew bent closer to the computer. ‘What is this?’ He pointed at the clip that had been stopped on the screen. ‘Is this a part of the joke?’
Thóra also moved closer to see what he meant. The two men were frozen in strange positions, one with his eyes closed and his cigar raised, the other reaching for the ashtray, revealing dark sweat stains in his armpits. However, it wasn’t either of the men that had drawn Matthew’s attention, but something in the dark window behind them. ‘Is it possible to enlarge this?’ Matthew had got as close as he could without blocking the screen in front of Thóra. ‘That looks like some kind of weird figure outside the window.’
Thóra peered at the image. ‘Oh? I don’t see anything.’ She squinted to try to get a better look. ‘Oh yes. Is that a mask or a helmet?’
‘Maybe a snowmobile helmet.’ Matthew pointed at the area directly above the vague figure. ‘There’s something else. He seems to be dragging something along the window.’ He looked at Thóra and hurriedly added: ‘Or she. There’s no way to tell.’
Thóra tilted her head back a little and looked at the date of the clip. ‘This was made on the same day that Oddný Hildur disappeared.’ She set the clip in motion again and they watched the strange being move quickly past the window and out of sight. Whatever it had been dragging behind it left an irregular dark streak on the windowpane. ‘Could this be related to her disappearance? If it’s not an employee, then it’s possible that it might have been someone who wished to do them harm.’
‘Isn’t that rather far-fetched?’ Matthew straightened up as the clip finished. ‘It’s probably something related to the joke, or an employee of Berg.’
‘We can find out.’ Thóra stood up. ‘It would be best to have Friðrikka and Eyjólfur look at it. Since it was uploaded on the same day that Oddný Hildur disappeared, they would both have been on site, and I’m guessing that everyone followed this blog.’
‘Everyone but Arnar,’ said Matthew. ‘He would hardly have been waiting with bated breath for the next entry.’
‘No, hardly. We have to speak to him. It seems to me that if he tells us what could get him to return to work, it would be child’s play to persuade the other workers to do the same.’
Chapter 26
Friðrikka and Eyjólfur watched the video without a word until the very end, when the figure appeared outside the window. ‘What was that?’ said Eyjólfur.
‘We were hoping you could tell us,’ said Thóra. They were all grouped together in front of the computer. Alvar and Bella were standing at the back but tried to peek over the others’ shoulders. ‘Haven’t you seen the video before? It looks as if it was made the day that Oddný Hildur disappeared.’
‘I vaguely remember it but I don’t think I watched it all the way to the end.’ Eyjólfur rubbed his forehead as if to reactivate his memory. ‘If I remember correctly this came in an e-mail from either Bjarki or Dóri, but it was sent just before supper so I didn’t open it until the next day. There was so much going on because of Oddný Hildur’s disappearance that I only looked at it for a second. At least, if I did watch the whole video I didn’t notice that thing in the window. And I didn’t feel inclined to watch the clip on their blog because I don’t look at every single post.’
‘How about you?’ Matthew turned to Friðrikka. ‘Do you recognize this?’
‘No. Like Eyjólfur said, I had other things to think about when I got the e-mail. And I didn’t even open it when I saw it was just more of their nonsense. They were always putting up some rubbish or other and I was in no mood for their childish humour. I certainly remember receiving the e-mail, because it struck me how inappropriate their jokes could be at times.’
‘Well, obviously they didn’t know what was around the corner when they sent this out,’ said Eyjólfur sharply. ‘It would have been different if they had sent it out the next day, when we’d discovered that Oddný Hildur was gone.’
Thóra interrupted in order to prevent yet another argument between Eyjólfur and Friðrikka. ‘But do you have any idea of what this is in the window? Is it one of you who worked there, or an outsider?’ She added quickly: ‘What I mean is, do you remember the video being discussed the day after it was sent; maybe someone mentioned having taken part in the joke?’
They both shook their heads. ‘We didn’t talk about it,’ said Friðrikka, ‘and I sincerely doubt that any others were in on it. It was always just the two of them.’
Eyjólfur seemed put out that Friðrikka was doing the talking. ‘None of us was at the window and the smokers’ room was a long way from any paths. You’d only be approaching that window if you specifically wanted to look in, for some reason. Actually, you can’t see the person very clearly but I would be very surprised if it was one of us. We appreciated the heat indoors too much to be messing around outside in the cold. Also, it looks as if this person has something weird on his head and covering his face and that doesn’t fit either. I mean, why would any of us do that?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe to scare the men?’ Thóra rewound the video slightly and stopped it at the point where the figure had gone and the streak was left behind on the windowpane. ‘Do you remember maybe seeing this streak on the window?’
Both Friðrikka and Eyjólfur moved closer. ‘No, not when Oddný Hildur disappeared.’ Eyjólfur straightened up. ‘Bjarki said he’d found dried blood on the window, but that was a bit later. Of course we would have wanted to take a look at it if it had been connected with her disappearance. He noticed it when he went into the room to smoke and thought it had been made by a bird that had flown into the window. He was asking us whether we’d heard some sort of thud. I can’t remember exactly when that happened but it wasn’t while we were searching. That was when we spent the least amount of time in the office building.’