Forty Days Without Shadow: An Arctic Thriller

by Olivier Truc

  “Aslak? The one who still lives in a tent? Do you think their herds will mix?”

  “Reckon they already have.”

  Klemet’s cell phone rang. He took a moment to wedge it inside the earflap of his chapka.

  “Reindeer Police, Klemet Nango.”

  Klemet listened for some time, cradling his coffee cup in both hands, grunting occasionally between sips.

  “Yep, we’ll be there in a few hours. Or maybe tomorrow. And you’re sure there’s no sign of him?”

  He swallowed another mouthful of coffee, listening to the reply, then ended the call.

  “So finally, Mattis’s reindeer are the first to go walkabout. Again. That was Johann Henrik. Says he saw thirty of them on his land. They must have made it across the river. Let’s go take a look.”

  2

  5:30 a.m., Kautokeino

  The museum’s entrance was broken wide open. Snow swirled through the gaping double doors. On the floor, shattered glass mingled with flakes already freezing hard in the icy wind, lit by a shaft of light from a snowmobile outside.

  The driver lunged forward clumsily, weighed down by his heavy snowsuit. He rubbed his cheeks hard, struggling to contain his mounting apprehension.

  Helmut Juhl and his wife had come to this forgotten corner of the Norwegian Far North in the pretourist era. In Kautokeino their fascination for Sami culture, and their talent as jewelry makers, had found a place to flourish.

  Patiently over the years, the couple had built up one of the most remarkable sites in the country. Little by little, a group of ten asymmetrical buildings had sprung up, clustered one against the other, on the hillside overlooking the valley. Helmut unhooked a flashlight from the lobby wall and began the painful process of taking stock. His “forbidden city,” as some dubbed it, had shocked some of the local aesthetes and Sami culture vultures, while arousing suspicion among Sami artisans. Helmut had learned their silversmithing techniques and become one of the region’s leading experts. By creating an ambitious, dedicated exhibition space, he had restored the status of an ancient art long since dispersed by nomadism. Helmut knew he had won the first battle when Isak Mikku Sara, chief of the Vuorje siida, a powerful clan west of Karasjok, had brought him his own childhood cradle, carved in birchwood, so that it could be displayed in the pavilion devoted to traditional Sami lifestyles. Now, he had one of the finest collections in northern Europe.

  Helmut crossed the second room, a spacious gallery devoted to collections from central Asia. The silver jewelry and pots were all there. Everything seemed in order.

  The silence was broken by the distant, unmistakable crunch of boots over broken glass. The footsteps had to be coming from the lobby. He paused to listen. The faint sound echoed through the galleries. Helmut held his breath, listening hard. Almost without thinking, he reached for an Afghan knife hanging on the wall, and extinguished his flashlight.

  “Helmut!”

  Someone was calling him by name. He breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Here! In the Afghan gallery!”

  He replaced the knife. Seconds later he saw a thickly swaddled silhouette struggling towards him. The local reporter, Tomas Mikkelsen, rotund in his tightly stretched snowsuit.

  “Tomas. Good God, what are you doing here?”

  “Berit called me. She saw a scooter heading off about half an hour ago.”

  Helmut moved on through the museum galleries. He was perplexed. Nothing seemed to be missing. Perhaps some drunken kid had shattered the front door? He reached the last gallery, known as the “white room,” arrayed with Sami art treasures—the finest jewelry in gleaming silver, beautifully worked and chased. Then Helmut saw the door to the museum’s reserve collection and stores. It stood open, with the handle wrenched off. Someone had struggled to open it. His stomach clenched tight.

  Seconds later, the neon strip lights flickered into life, flooding the space with raw, white light. The huge room was lined with storage boxes, numbered and arranged on shelves. A series of worn deal tables occupied the central area. Everything was in perfect order. So far, so good. Helmut looked again at the first shelf. Two boxes held figurines of camels, carved from horn in a workshop in Kandahar. All present and correct. But the shelf above was empty. His stomach clenched tighter still. That shelf could not be empty. The casket had disappeared.

  The reporter spotted the German curator’s horrified look.

  “What’s missing?”

  Helmut’s mouth had fallen open, apparently in shock.

  “Helmut, what’s missing?”

  The museum director stared at Tomas, closed his mouth, and swallowed. “The drum.” He stammered the words.

  “Fuck.”

  3

  11:30 a.m., Central Sápmi

  Nina crouched low on her snowmobile, the accelerator handle turned fully forward. Dwarf birch twigs lashed her visor. The powerful machine climbed the steep slope with ease. A thick layer of snow softened the relief, making progress easier. Mattis’s trailer nestled in a dip halfway up a second, gentler hill. She reached it just a few seconds after Klemet. It never ceased to amaze her that the reindeer breeders were able to survive in these mobile shelters for weeks on end, in the depths of winter, in temperatures as low as minus 31°F, sometimes even minus 40, in complete isolation, dozens of miles from the nearest village. The wind had risen now, blasting unimpeded across the bare, empty mountains, but Mattis’s trailer stood in a relatively sheltered spot just below the summit. Nina removed her helmet, adjusted her chapka, and took a closer look at the trailer. Part caravan, part shipping container, but smaller. Smoke issued from a tin stovepipe. The trailer was white and mounted on broad runners, which allowed it to be towed through the snow. The sides were reinforced with metal sheets. It was ugly, but aesthetic appeal counted for little out here in the tundra.

  Nina looked around at the clutter outside the shelter: the breeder’s snowmobile; a rudimentary workbench for cutting wood, with an ax planted in a log; jerricans and plastic containers; two metal storage boxes loaded onto a snowmobile trailer; lengths of plastic-coated rope scattered everywhere; even the skin and head of a reindeer tossed in front of the trailer, its blood staining the snow. The animal’s viscera were strewn about in a mess of torn rubbish bags, doubtless the work of a hungry fox. Nina stepped through the narrow doorway behind Klemet, who had entered without knocking.

  Mattis sat up slowly, rubbing his cheeks.

  “Bores.” Klemet greeted him in the traditional way. As usual, he had taken advantage of the reliable cell signal at the nearby lake to call ahead and give Mattis advance warning of their visit.

  Nina stepped forward in turn and bowed slightly toward Mattis.

  “Hello. Nina Nansen. I’m new to the Reindeer Police: Patrol P9, with Klemet.”

  Mattis extended a greasy hand. Nina shook it and smiled. She looked around, struck by the mess and filth. The trailer was sparsely furnished. Shelves along the left-hand wall were loaded with tins of food and plastic containers filled with different-colored liquids. Utensils, leather straps, and traditional Sami knives hung from nails. The shelves were actually quite tidy, Nina thought. These things were obviously important. There was a set of bunk beds.

  A wood-burning stove and a chest-seat stood against the right-hand wall. A long, narrow table occupied the space between the bench and the bunk beds. The top one was piled with plastic sacks overflowing with clothes and more tins of food. Ropes, blankets, a snowmobile suit, a large reindeer-skin cloak, several pairs of gloves, and a chapka formed an untidy, dirty jumble. Mattis had been lying on the lower bunk, half-submerged in a thick sleeping bag laid over a bed of reindeer skins. The sleeping bag was covered with frayed blankets, stained with food and grease marks.

  A large cooking pot stood warming on the stove, on a low heat. Another pot stood at Mattis’s feet, full of melting snow.

  Two sets of reindeer-skin leggings and several pairs of grubby socks had been hung up to dry on a line strung across the width of t
he trailer, together with two pieces of reindeer hide, scraped clean of their fur. Two pairs of thick winter shoes could be seen poking out from under the shelf.

  Nina gazed around, her eyes wide. She would have liked to photograph the scene, but didn’t dare ask. The shelter was dirty, repellent. But fascinating. She was venturing into unknown territory, beyond her comprehension. How could people live like this here in Norway, in her own country? The scene reminded her of a TV documentary she had seen once, about a Roma encampment in Romania. All that was missing was a cluster of half-naked children. She felt uneasy, without really knowing why.

  Klemet seemed perfectly at home. But then this was his country. He knew all about it—the other face of Scandinavia. Klemet had explained that Mattis did not live here all year round, he had a small homestead, too. Still, could this really be Norway? In Nina’s home village, in the south, the fishermen kept cabins scarcely any bigger than this, on stilts out over the water. They used them to store their boats and nets. Nina had hidden there sometimes as a child, watching the big fishing boats as they came into the village harbor—the boats her mother had forbidden her to go near. Men were the bringers of sin, her mother said. Her mother saw sin everywhere.

  But the fishermen’s cabins were not squalid, like this. Then again, the trailer wasn’t really squalid, either, Nina thought after a moment. No, the trailer reeked of misery and distress.

  Nina’s mother would have known how to succor this lost soul. She always took the right decision, distinguished good from evil. Nina wondered if Klemet was thinking the same thoughts as her. Perhaps her colleague was immune to it all by now. Perhaps he thought conditions like this were perfectly normal up here.

  Mattis glanced uncertainly from one police officer to the other. He avoided making eye contact.

  “You gave me a fright when you called just now,” he ventured, addressing Klemet who had taken a seat opposite him on the bench. “You said ‘police.’ Scared me half to death. You should have said ‘Reindeer Police.’”

  Klemet chuckled and took a set of cups from his rucksack.

  “S’right, though, isn’t it?” Mattis went on. “Get a call from the police, you might be in any sort of trouble. Get a call from the Reindeer Police, you know it’s nothing serious. Right? Eh, Klemet?”

  Klemet seemed pleased to have scored a point with his call. He took out a plastic bottle full of transparent liquid.

  “Ah, no way!” exclaimed Mattis. “You won’t get me on that rotgut liquor of yours…”

  “It’s water this time,” Klemet reassured him.

  Mattis relaxed. He began to sing softly, opening his arms, addressing Nina, a hypnotic, halting, sometimes guttural chant. Nina understood nothing, but recognized what was probably a joïk of welcome to strangers. Klemet listened and smiled.

  Nina was about to sit on the end of the bench. It was covered in stains, like everything else.

  “Fetch the pot over to the table, before you sit down,” said Mattis.

  Nina glared at him. He had made no effort to get to his feet.

  “Of course,” she smiled. “You look tired. Your song was beautiful.”

  Mattis showed signs of drunkenness, Nina could see that. She hated to see people in that state. It made her feel very uncomfortable. She removed her chapka, looking for somewhere clean to leave it, then picked up the pot and carried it over to the table with good enough grace. Immediately, Mattis plunged his fork into the stew and pulled out a chunk of meat. He began to chew, the broth trickling unchecked down his sleeping bag, from which he had barely extricated himself.

  “My uncle was a great joïk singer, too,” said Klemet.

  “That’s true. Your uncle Nils Ante. He was good joïker.”

  “He could improvise a chant just like that, on the spot, about a place, a person, something he’d seen, something that had touched him. Even when he spoke, his voice had that chanting quality. I used to notice how his eyes sparkled when he was about to sing.”

  “And what’s he do now, your uncle?”

  “He’s old. He doesn’t sing anymore.”

  Klemet poked a knife into the pot and pulled out a piece of meat, transferring it to his mess tin. Nina watched but didn’t join him. He was used to dealing with the breeders. You had to take your time with them, he said. She wasn’t sure Mattis was allowed to slaughter a reindeer for food, as he clearly had. Klemet was already bending over the stewpot again, apparently in no hurry to get down to business. He spotted a length of shank.

  “May I?” he asked Mattis.

  The breeder replied with a jerk of his chin in the direction of the pot, while fishing out a tobacco pouch. Klemet’s phone rang just as he was preparing to snap the reindeer shank with a blow from the handle of his dagger.

  “Dammit!” he groaned.

  He stared for a moment at the slender bone, as if expecting it to reply. A few shreds of meat clung to it in the salty broth. Irritated by the intrusion, he turned to look at Mattis. The reindeer herder was putting the finishing touches to a hand-rolled cigarette. Droplets of broth glistened on his chin. A tiny shred of meat had stuck in his beard. Klemet made a face, still holding the bone and the dagger. Between ringtones, the only sound was the furious Siberian wind that had chilled the Finnmark for the past two days. As if twenty-two degrees below zero wasn’t enough.

  Mattis took advantage of the lull in conversation to pull a three-liter plastic container out from underneath his bunk. He heaved it up onto the table and filled his cup.

  The cell phone was still ringing. Even in the depths of the vidda, they were sometimes within range of a signal.

  The ringtone ceased. Klemet looked at the screen but said nothing. Nina stared at him, insistently. Finally, her partner passed her the telephone. Nina read the name.

  “I’ll call him back later” was all Klemet said.

  Evidently, reindeer breeders were quick to turn jumpy and short-tempered when their herds began to mingle.

  Mattis pushed the plastic container across the table to Klemet.

  “No thanks.”

  Mattis looked at Nina, who shook her head and thanked him with a smile. Mattis drained half his cup and winced, narrowing his eyes. Klemet picked up the shank bone again, snapping it clean in two. He held out one half to Nina. There was no smile of thanks this time. Nina had made herself comfortable, stretched out on the bench, her snowsuit gaping open at the front. The trailer was almost warm.

  “Want some?”

  “No,” she replied drily. Here it came again. Klemet’s favorite joke.

  Slowly, her colleague raised the bone to his mouth, staring at her all the while. He sucked out a piece of marrow, slurping noisily, then wiped his mouth on his sleeve, winked at Mattis and turned to Nina with a twinkle in his eye.

  “Know what they call this? Sami Viagra.”

  Mattis looked uncertainly at the two police officers, until Klemet burst out laughing.

  Nina stared at him. Yes, she had heard that one at least twice already, during their four days on patrol. Now it was Mattis’s turn to laugh, a manic laugh that caught Nina by surprise. He took the other piece of bone and sucked out the marrow, with obvious relish.

  “Heh heh! Sami Viagra!”

  Unable to contain himself now, Mattis threw his head back and roared with laughter, his mouth wide open, offering a broad panorama of his remaining, stumpy teeth. Bits of meat jumped around in his mouth. Nina began to wonder what on earth she was doing here, but kept her feelings to herself. She knew Klemet was playing her up and hoped he would know when to stop. She knew she was still too much of a novice in the breeders’ world to tell Mattis what she was really thinking.

  Mattis held the dripping shank bone out to her, drooling from the corner of his mouth.

  “Go on, try it! Sami Viagra!”

  And he burst out laughing again, not without shooting a quick glance at Klemet. He launched into a new joïk, clapping in time, staring in Nina’s direction, though he seemed to be looking st
raight through her. Klemet seemed to be enjoying the show. He wiped the corner of an eye and looked at Mattis, smiling.

  Still on the end of the bench, Nina tucked her knees under her chin and folded her arms across her shins. Her sulky pose. The snowsuit made the maneuver difficult and uncomfortable. She frowned, then gratified Mattis with a diplomatic smile of refusal. Women were a rare sight in these parts, it seemed.

  “Well, that’s set me up for the day, anyhow,” Klemet insisted, with a wicked glance in her direction. Mattis roared with laughter once again, slapping his thighs.

  “She’s a beauty, though, isn’t she?” He hiccuped.

  Klemet stood up suddenly and helped himself to a ladleful of broth. Clearly, the joke was over. Mattis’s laughter stopped short. Nina unfolded herself and poured coffee, refusing a cup of reindeer broth. Mattis glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, poring over the young woman, the hint of her breasts in the outline of her dark-blue sweater. Then he shot another quick glance at Klemet and lowered his eyes.

  Nina felt exposed and out of place. The leering reindeer herder disgusted her, but she knew that more than anything, he deserved her pity.

  “Well then, Mattis, your animals have got over to the other side of the road. You know they’re with Johann Henrik’s herd? He just called us.”

  Mattis was surprised by Klemet’s sudden change of tone. He looked nervously at the police officer, then at Nina, first her face, then her breasts.

  “Oh?” he said innocently. He rubbed the nape of his neck, glancing sideways at Klemet.

  The cell phone rang again. Klemet picked it up, his gaze still fixed on Mattis, and cut the connection straight away. This time, the screen announced a call from police headquarters in Kautokeino. They could wait, too.

  “So?” asked Klemet.

  Nina looked at Mattis. He had his people’s prominent, high cheekbones, a deeply lined face, and quite a well-developed beard. Whenever he was about to speak, he would wince sharply and narrow his eyes, his lower lip gripping his top lip, before opening his eyes and mouth wide. She felt uncomfortable in this man’s presence, but riveted, too. There was no one like him in her little village on the shores of the fjord, twelve hundred miles to the south.