The Fever in the Water: A Constable Petra Jensen Novella (Greenland Missing Persons Book 4)

by Christoffer Petersen

  I plucked at my shirt, suddenly conscious of my damp armpits, the sweat blistering strands of my hair to my forehead, and the tumult of confused endorphins stirred by Taatsiaq’s intentions, only to be quashed by the arrival of a seventy-year-old man and his five-year-old daughter.

  “I have to go,” I said. “Thanks for the dance.”

  “He can’t bring the girl in here,” the barman said, as I stepped off the dance floor.

  “It’s all right. We’re leaving,” I said, as Luui lurched out of Tuukula’s arms and into mine. She nuzzled her face into my neck, then pulled back to wipe her nose, whispering something to her father in Greenlandic.

  “She says you’re all sweaty,” Tuukula said.

  “She’s right.” I flicked my finger towards the booth along the wall and started walking towards it, skirting around the dance floor. “I need my jacket.”

  “I’ve been dumped for an older guy,” Taatsiaq said as he slid into the booth beside Gaba. He reached for his glass, lifted it in a mock toast, then drained the last slug of beer as I tugged my jacket out from behind Atii’s back.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Maybe another time?”

  “Maybe,” Taatsiaq said.

  I reached out for Atii’s hand, holding her fingers as I said, “You’re beautiful, Atii.”

  Atii smiled, then squeezed my hand and I felt a flood of warmth course through my body – forgiven, for the moment.

  “Petra,” Tuukula said softly, as he approached the booth. “We have to go.”

  Part 7

  “We’ll need a taxi,” I said, pressing Luui into Tuukula’s arms as I put on my jacket. I was still waiting for some kick of irritation, or the pinch of skin above my nose – just beneath my frown of curiosity, but what I felt most was relief. Not because Taatsiaq was not my type, only that I didn’t have a type. I wasn’t looking. I went to Mattak for Atii’s sake, and once her situation was resolved – or on the mend, at least – my sense of responsibility evaporated, just like the glimpse of passion on the dance floor when Tuukula gate-crashed the nightclub.

  “Just how did you get Luui past the bouncers at the door?” I asked, as Tuukula waved for a taxi driver to pick us up in the line outside Hotel Hans Egede.

  “I said I needed to see you and they let me in.”

  “They’re not supposed to.”

  “They didn’t seem concerned.”

  “You mean you tricked them?”

  Tuukula shrugged as the taxi pulled alongside us. “I said nothing they didn’t agree with.”

  “Ataata used magic,” Luui said, as she tumbled out of Tuukula’s arms and onto the back seat.

  “Only a little,” he said, as he got in beside her.

  The taxi driver chatted all the way to my apartment in Qinngorput. Luui scrambled over her father’s legs, squeezing between us, and plucking at my fingers as we drove. I felt the soft stab of her thumbs in my thighs as I tugged my purse out of my jacket pocket. Tuukula and Luui waited outside the entrance to the apartment block as I paid, following me inside as soon as the taxi pulled away. I could see Tuukula wanted to talk by the way he fidgeted, something I didn’t remember ever seeing him do before.

  “We’ll take the lift,” I said, telling Luui which button to press, before leaning against the polished railing.

  Tuukula said nothing before we entered my apartment, letting Luui do the talking for him, as the details of their journey south from Qaanaaq bubbled out of her in a mix of Greenlandic and Danish, spiced with a few words in English.

  “It’s late,” I said, as I hung my jacket by the door. “I guess you’ll stay the night?”

  “Aap,” Tuukula said. He pulled a toothbrush out of his pocket and pressed it into Luui’s hand, nodding at the bathroom and encouraging her with a soft pat on her bottom. He waited until Luui turned on the water, and then said, “It’s about a friend of mine.”

  “Who?”

  “Eqqitsiaq Kuannia. He needs our help.”

  “Eqqitsiaq? The man from Ingnerssuit? Why?”

  Tuukula said nothing more until Luui had snuggled beneath the covers of my spare bed. She wriggled from one side to the other as Tuukula tried to tuck her in, then held out her hands, drawing me into the room at the end of an imaginary rope she heaved on with exaggerated tugs and wheezes.

  “Goodnight, Luui,” I said, kissing her freckled nose.

  “Goodnight, pretty woman,” she said, and giggled.

  “You think so?”

  “Aap.”

  “All right then,” I said. “Sleep now.”

  I turned out the light on my way out of the room, leaving the door ajar when Luui protested at me closing it.

  “Go to sleep, Luui,” Tuukula said.

  I stifled a yawn as I checked my smartphone, wondering where Atii was, and how fit we would be for work the next day. “Later today,” I whispered to myself, before joining Tuukula in my kitchen.

  “I don’t have any tea,” I said. “Just coffee.”

  “Coffee is fine.”

  Tuukula sat straight and tall on the chair, resting his arms on the table in front of him, lacing his fingers tight as he watched me. I had never seen him so quiet, so concerned.

  “We took Eqqitsiaq to the hospital today,” I said.

  “I know.”

  “And before that…”

  “You chased him to Ivittuut.” Tuukula nodded his head, slowly. “I know that too.”

  “How? Were you already in Nuuk?”

  “I arrived this evening – late. I came straight from the airport to the nightclub.”

  “How did you know I was there?”

  Tuukula shrugged. “It’s not important.”

  A flat smile crept onto my lips as I recognised Tuukula’s simple evasion. Tuukula’s magic, as Luui called it, wasn’t something he tried to hide, but neither did he feel the need to explain it at length, at least no more than was necessary. I placed a mug of coffee in front of him and sat down at the table, blowing on my own drink as I waited for him to speak.

  “Eqqitsiaq is my friend,” he said. “And he needs our help.”

  “How?”

  “You met him today.”

  “Yes.”

  Tuukula nodded. “I wanted to visit him at the hospital, but they said he was sleeping. I think he was sedated.” He paused to take a sip of coffee. “Was he confused?”

  “Very. He thought I was his daughter.”

  “When?”

  “In the house, in Ivittuut.”

  “You followed him inside?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I took his gun.”

  Tuukula sighed, and said, “Eqqitsiaq is not himself. You could have been hurt.”

  “Actually, I think he just needed to talk.”

  “And you talked to him? What did he say?”

  “Not much.” I put my mug down and warmed my hands around it. “Gaba came in shortly after I took Eqqitsiaq’s rifle. I thought it was all over, until you showed up.”

  “I had to come,” Tuukula said.

  “Because he’s your friend?”

  “Because he’s in trouble. They all are. Everyone in Ingnerssuit.”

  Part 8

  I lit a candle, curious at the way the light flickered in Tuukula’s eyes, teasing shadows out of his grey hair, the tuft on top of his head, and casting them onto the wall behind him. I sipped at my coffee as he talked, describing a younger Tuukula, many years before Luui and I were born, when he and Eqqitsiaq worked the cryolite mine in Ivittuut.

  “It used to be just Danes, Canadians and Americans working at the mine,” he said. “Although, there were some Greenlanders working in the kitchen. Then, in the 80s, before the mined closed, there were a few Greenlanders working inside the mine. Just a handful.”

  “Including you and Eqqitsiaq.”

  “Aap.” Tuukula paused for a smile and a sip of coffee. “It was hard work, lots of machinery, lots of history, too. We told stories in the evenings, some of them about the war.”


  “What war?”

  “The Second World War,” he said. “Before your time, and just before mine. Denmark was occupied. But not Greenland. The Americans were here, protecting the mine with their soldiers. They needed the cryolite to refine aluminium for planes.”

  “I didn’t know,” I said.

  Tuukula shrugged. “Not many people do. We don’t talk about the war in Greenland like they do in Europe. But the mine carried on long after the war, closing down in 1987. I was thirty-nine. Eqqitsiaq was a year younger. He met Iikkila. She worked in the kitchen.” Tuukula grinned and cupped his hands to his chest. “She had big breasts, and Eqqitsiaq couldn’t take his eyes off them.” Tuukula chuckled and reached for his coffee. He took a sip, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then patted the side of his head, fiddling with his ear, as if searching for the cigarette he often kept there. “I must have smoked them already,” he said. “Anyway, Iikkila told my friend that if he was going to spend so much time looking at her breasts, then he should be useful while he did it. She had him carrying all the heavy things from the boat to the pantry each time the kitchen was resupplied. This was in his free time, when he was finished in the mine for the day.”

  “And they got married,” I said.

  “Aap. She married Eqqitsiaq. He did whatever she told him to do. And they moved to Ingnerssuit, where her family came from, the place where she was born.”

  I thought about the Eqqitsiaq I had met, the wild glint in his eyes, as if he was unmoored, adrift without direction.

  “What happened to him?”

  “I don’t know.” Tuukula turned the mug in his hands, distracted by the last dregs of coffee as they swirled around the bottom of the mug. “We lost touch. I found a job on a fishing trawler out of Ilulissat. He stayed in the south. I never saw him again. But last month, Iikkila called me. She said Eqqitsiaq was sick, and that he wasn’t the only one. She knew about me. I think Eqqitsiaq told her once about my father, how he was angakkoq, how medicine ran in our family, and how I was chosen to be a shaman by my father. She thought I could heal Eqqitsiaq. She still thinks I can heal him.”

  “Can you?”

  Tuukula looked up, a fierce light burning in his eyes, only to flicker and die before me. “Petra,” he said. “You know that’s not how it works.”

  “Then she wants you to help in some other way,” I said, clutching at straws in the face of Tuukula’s uncharacteristic sadness. “There must be something you can do. That’s why Iikkila called you.”

  “There is something I can do. But I can’t do it alone. I will need your help.”

  Part 9

  “Forget about it, Jensen.” Sergeant Duneq’s jowls wobbled as he shook his head. “You’re working the next four weekends, starting tomorrow. Even if you had leave, which you don’t, you still couldn’t go.”

  “Why not?” I asked, conscious that Tuukula and Luui were having breakfast in Katuaq, and that I had promised to join them as soon as I had talked with my supervisor. “I’m following up on a case.”

  “A case?” Duneq laughed. “You are a constable, Jensen. You’re not a detective. You don’t work cases. And no,” he said, waving a fat finger in front of me. “The Missing Persons desk doesn’t count. And, even if it did. There’s no one missing, Constable. Kuannia is in Dronning Ingrid’s Hospital. You took him there. The rest of the family is in Ingnerssuit. No one is missing, Jensen. You can’t go swanning off on your own assignment this time.” Duneq snorted, then wiped his nose with his thumb. “You’re stuck, with me, here in Nuuk. Get used to it.”

  “But the Commissioner…”

  “Constable Jensen,” Duneq said. The desk between us shook as he slapped his palms on the surface. “The Commissioner can’t help you, even with those favours you do for him. That’s right,” he said, sneering as he spoke. “You thought I didn’t know about your little editing sessions. It’s funny, for a girl of your supposed intellect, you’re not very clever after all, are you?”

  “I just…”

  “What?”

  “It’s Tuukula. He’s helped me before.”

  “Right, your angakkoq – the magician. Is that him? Gaba told me all about how he brought that little girl to the nightclub.”

  “Luui is his daughter. He couldn’t leave her alone.”

  I felt my cheeks flush, a sure sign I should have stopped long before I reached this point. But I was desperate now and failed to recognise the warning looks flashed by my colleagues sitting close by at their desks in the open office area.

  “Luui?”

  “Yes,” I said. “She’s five.”

  “Your shaman friend brought a five-year-old to a nightclub?”

  “Yes,” I said, weaker now, less convinced.

  Duneq shook his head, and said, “I rest my case. You have no case. This conversation is over. Perhaps you should get some rest? I don’t recommend that my officers go clubbing midweek, especially not when they have an evening shift the following day. Perhaps that explains your total lack of judgement.” Duneq cocked his head to one side, baiting or waiting for me to speak.

  “I just…”

  “Yes?”

  “Nothing,” I said, after catching another warning glance from the officer seated at the desk closest to Duneq’s. “There’s no case.”

  “There isn’t.”

  “I don’t work cases.”

  “That’s right, Constable. You don’t.”

  “I’ll be back later, for my shift.”

  “That’s exactly what you are going to do, Jensen.”

  Duneq’s chair creaked as he sat down. I paused for a second, glancing at my own desk and the broken chair tucked beneath it at the far end of the room. If the phone rang, I was allowed to answer it, as per the Commissioner’s instructions. But if it didn’t ring, there was no case. And if no one was missing, there was nothing to be done. Tuukula was alone on this one.

  “Maybe I didn’t explain it properly,” Tuukula said, as I sat down between him and Luui at their table in Katuaq. “I was tired. I should have told you.”

  “Told me what?”

  “That someone is missing.”

  “From Ingnerssuit?”

  “Aap.”

  I glanced at Luui as she patted my arm with her tiny hand. She had such big brown eyes; one could get lost in them.

  “I don’t understand,” I said, turning my head from Luui to look at her father. “Unless someone is reported missing, they have probably just moved away.”

  “Naamik,” Tuukula said, with a shake of his head. “This man is not missing. He just disappeared.”

  “Who?”

  “The one Iikkila said has all the answers.”

  “Do you know his name?”

  “Why?”

  “Because if you called this number,” I said, writing the extension of the number for the phone on my desk on a napkin, “you could report him missing.”

  “I’m telling you he is.”

  “Yes,” I said. “But that’s not how it works. At least, not for me. You have to call this number. You have to report him missing. And then I can help you.”

  Tuukula frowned, and said, “It seems like a complicated way to ask for police assistance.”

  “You have no idea,” I said, with a sigh. “But, if you call I can help.”

  “Poof,” Luui said, as she splayed her fingers. “Like magic.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Something like that.”

  Part 10

  Police Commissioner Lars Andersen was new to Greenland but not to policing. He understood the bigger picture that stretched further, beyond Sergeant Duneq’s sphere of influence, digging deeper into the community, its roots and culture. Danish or Greenlandic, the principles were the same and the commissioner applied them. It was his opinion that the missing persons desk fulfilled a role for the wider community that might sometimes be hard to find when a missing person become just another investigation alongside regular police work. Having a dedicated number to call
provided community members with the means of differentiating between someone who was lost, requiring immediate help, or someone who had been missing for a longer period. Sometimes the lines were blurred. Sometimes the missing persons simply didn’t want to be found, often turning up in Denmark years later. But each case presented some form of closure, for better or worse. As I understood it, it was the closure that interested the commissioner most, identifying the need and applying the necessary tools and people to achieve it. Which is why it was fortunate he was in the office at the start of my shift when Duneq answered the phone on my desk.

  I had never seen Duneq so quiet, nor so flushed as he listened to the caller provide the details, circumstances, and description of the missing person. Duneq reached for the notepad on my desk, flipped it open to a new page, and started making notes as he spoke, clarifying the details.

  “In his seventies? Medium height. Slight build. Grey hair, often worn bunched at the top of his head?”

  I bit my lower lip, turning away from Duneq and the commissioner as I realised the caller, who I knew to be Tuukula, was describing himself. I swallowed as Duneq ended the call and turned to the commissioner with his notes.

  “Honestly, I don’t know what to make of it,” he said. “The caller…” Duneq paused as he searched his notes for a name. “Isak Petrussen, claims that an older man, also Petrussen – may be a relative, with the first name Ivan.” Duneq snorted, snapping the notepad closed as he leaned against the edge of my desk. “Apparently Ivan went missing over a year ago.”

  “From where?” the commissioner asked.

  I knew where. I dipped my head as Duneq stared at me for a second, before answering the commissioner’s question.

  “Ingnerssuit,” he said. “It’s the same settlement as Eqqitsiaq Kuannia.”

  “Kuannia? The man Gaba brought in?”

  “Together with Constables Jensen and Napa,” Duneq said.

  “A coincidence,” the commissioner said.

  “Aap,” Duneq said, casting another long look at me.

  “Well,” the commissioner said. “You know my policy on this. As long as we have the budget for it, and if you can free Constable Jensen from her current duties, I think we should investigate.”