Blood Floe_Conspiracy, Intrigue, and Multiple Homicide in the Arctic

by Christoffer Petersen

  Maratse lifted a towel from a hook by the sink and wiped the pale palms of his weathered hands, the creases lined with blood. He stuffed the towel in the cargo pocket of his overalls and took a step forwards to peer at the woman laying on the floor, pausing as he lifted his foot; the floor was thick with blood. Maratse turned his attention to the crew slumped at and around the table. He retreated to the cabin steps, sat down, and fished inside his overalls to pull his mobile from an inside pocket.

  “I need to talk to Simonsen,” he said, when he got through to the Uummannaq police station.

  “He’s off-duty.”

  “All right,” Maratse continued, “I want to report an incident.”

  “Your name?”

  “David Maratse.”

  “Maratse? From Inussuk?”

  “Iiji.”

  “This is Danielsen.”

  “Danielsen, I’m on a yacht at the entrance to Uummannaq fjord. Two dead, three unconscious.”

  “Two dead? You’re sure?”

  Maratse glanced at the man with the knife in his belly, the fibres of his clothes stained black with blood. “I’m sure.” He paused at the sound of Danielsen writing notes, the scratch of the nib just audible over the sound of Maratse’s own breathing.

  “What about the others?”

  “Alive, I think.”

  “You can’t check?”

  “If I take one more step, I’ll contaminate the crime scene.”

  “I need to know.”

  “Wait a minute.”

  Maratse placed his phone on the bottom step and moved towards the crew members at the table, choosing a route with the thinnest layer of blood. He turned the blonde woman’s head and elicited a soft snort from her lips. A shiver ran through the man’s arm as Maratse slipped his fingers inside his wrist to check for a pulse. The woman slumped on the floor with the head injury had the weakest pulse of them all. Maratse examined her head and took a closer look at the corner of the bench, a few of the woman’s black hairs were clamped behind a fleck of wood, sealed with more blood. Maratse moved back to the steps and picked up his mobile.

  “Two women and one man, all alive. One woman has a head injury.”

  “How’s the ice?”

  “Good along the coast. There’s an open lead six kilometres north of Inussuk. You’ll have to drive around.”

  “This is going to take a while. I need you to stay there. Can you do that?”

  Maratse looked at the black-haired woman’s head. “I can stay, but I need to treat the woman’s injury, and check the others. I think they have been drugged.”

  “Do that. Just don’t touch the dead.”

  Maratse flicked his gaze to the dead man and grunted an acknowledgment before ending the call. He slipped his phone into his pocket and took a moment to study the interior of the cabin. Beyond the blood and the bodies, there was little to suggest there had been a fight. There were empty glasses at one end of the table, brushed to one side by the elbows of the crew. Maratse looked but could not see a bottle of wine, beer, or any trace of the kind of spirits he imagined would be necessary to knock someone out.

  Everything else inside the cabin was detailed and ordered. The phrase ship-shape came to Maratse’s mind, confirmed by the laminated lists tacked to the walls. All he knew of Ophelia was that it was a German boat designed for use in the Polar Regions. There were framed photos screwed to the cabin walls showing Ophelia locked in the ice as it wintered over in the Arctic and the Antarctic. The yacht was used to being moored in dark, isolated places.

  On first inspection, the only items out of place that Maratse could see were the knives that were no longer on the magnet strip above the hotplates of the oven, but were now implanted in the bodies in front of him.

  Unless they had stabbed themselves, Maratse could not see how they had been attacked. There was a curious lack of footprints of any kind in the blood on the cabin floor. He looked from the dead man to the dead woman, judged the distance to be little more than a metre, and then studied the clothes of the three survivors, all clean, apart from the spots of blood on the shoulder of the black-haired woman’s fleece shirt. If they hadn’t killed themselves, Maratse reasoned, then perhaps there was another crew member hiding somewhere onboard.

  Maratse looked behind the steps. The light was off. He saw a panel of switches and tried flicking them up and down. Either they didn’t work, or the bulbs had been removed. Maratse glanced at the black-haired woman. Her wound could wait, he reasoned. He pressed his right hand on his hip, forgetting for a moment that he no longer carried a pistol. He took a step towards the door to his right. It was open, a hand’s width.

  “Hello?”

  He waited for a response, took another step.

  If someone was hiding inside the cabin, and if they had murdered the two crew members and incapacitated the others, then they would make short work of a single Greenlander in a confined space. Maratse shook the thought from his mind and took another step.

  The howl of a dog tricked Maratse’s heart into an extra beat. He waited until the other dogs had joined in, and walked to the door. He slapped it open with a flat palm, only to jump back as something black and heavy thumped to the floor of the sleeping quarters. Maratse peered into the gloom, stared at the shape on the floor, and then jumped again at the sound of a woman’s voice.

  “It’s my bag,” she said in English, “a duffel bag. It was on my bunk.”

  Maratse turned to look at the woman, who had her hand pressed to her head.

  “It must have fallen.”

  “And them?” he said, and pointed past the woman, and into the galley. “Did they fall?”

  The woman turned to look in the direction Maratse was pointing. Her hand fell from her head and she screamed. The scream changed pitch as the energy flooded from her body, and Maratse caught her as she lurched back towards the cabin.

  “No,” he said. “Don’t look.”

  “Henrik,” she said, the name pressed through the fingers she clamped over her mouth. She trembled in Maratse’s grip as he lowered her to the floor.

  “Let me look at your head.” Maratse placed his hands either side of the woman’s head, and turned her slightly towards the dim cabin lights.

  “Is that a knife,” she said, “in his stomach?”

  “Iiji.”

  “What?”

  “Yes, it is a knife.” Maratse let go, and said, “How many of you are onboard?” And, when she didn’t answer, he asked, “How many crew?”

  The woman turned to look at the man she called Henrik. Maratse stepped over her legs and squatted in front of her, blocking her view. He tilted his head to look in her eyes. They were glassy, pupils wide, unfocussed.

  “What have you had to drink?”

  “Drink? I don’t know,” she said.

  “How many crew?” Maratse pressed his hand on her shoulder. “How many?”

  “Six.”

  “Six? Total?”

  “Yes.”

  “Stay here,” he said, as he stepped over the woman, and walked the two steps to the cabin. There was a torch clipped to the bulkhead between the doors to the sleeping quarters. Maratse unclipped it and turned it on. He shone the beam inside the starboard sleeping area, stepping over the black duffel bag to shine the light into the corner. The beam caught on a reflective strip of a sail visible through the opening, cinched with a toggle and cord. He found more sails stowed in the corner of the second sleeping area, the torchlight reflecting off another patch of reflective tape.

  Maratse walked past the woman and shone the torch beam over the other crew members, and then up the short flight of steps and into the galley. He stopped at the outer reach of the blood pooling on the deck. If he jumped he might land on the top step, or tumble down all three of them. Maratse snorted and stepped into the blood. He reached the top step with his second stride, crouched to point the torch beam deeper inside the yacht, towards the stern, and then descended the stairs. The shower was empty, a
s was the tiny toilet in the on the opposite side of the corridor. He found two more bunks on either side of the corridor, and a storage space in the bow with a crawlspace and hatch, sealing the living area from the compartment used to store more gear. Maratse ducked out of the storage area and walked back to the generous living area. He climbed the steps, placed his foot within his own bloody footprint and crossed the galley to speak to the woman. He paused to look out of the cockpit window, and saw two pairs of lights in the distance, on the ice, beyond his sledge and dog team. He pictured Danielsen at the wheel of the police Toyota, and hoped that Simonsen was in a better mood than the last time they had met at a crime scene. Maratse unclipped a first aid kit from the bulkhead and carried it to the woman.

  “Help is on the way,” he said, as he crouched beside her. He opened the kit and tore open two alcohol swabs to clean the woman’s wound.

  “The police?”

  “And ambulance.”

  “I think I know what happened,” the woman said. Maratse stopped her with a shake of his head.

  “I don’t want to know.”

  “My friend is dead.”

  “The police are on their way. You can tell them.”

  “You’re not a policeman?”

  “Eeqqi,” he said, and shook his head. “I’m retired.”

  “But you searched the boat.”

  “I found the boat.”

  “You helped.”

  “I reported it. The police are on their way.”

  “Why won’t you help me?” She wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand.

  “I’ve done all I can do,” Maratse said. He stood up at the sound of car motors decelerating, and tyres slipping to a stop on the ice outside. “The police are here now, and the doctor. They will help you.”

  “You can’t just leave,” the woman said. She reached for his hand.

  Maratse placed the torch on the floor beside the woman, and climbed the stairs onto the deck. He met Danielsen and the Italian doctor on their way inside.

  “The chief is waiting for you on the ice,” Danielsen said.

  Maratse nodded and climbed over the railing and down the short ladder to the ice. He found Simonsen smoking beside his sledge and gear. Maratse’s dogs shuffled within their traces, nosing the air, voicing their apprehension with low growls. Maratse shushed them and lit a cigarette of his own.

  “Tell me, Constable,” Simonsen said, as he exhaled a cloud of smoke. “How is it possible that you are always the first at the scene of a crime?”

  “This is only my second since we have known each other.”

  “It’s becoming a habit.”

  “It’s a coincidence.”

  “It’s suspicious, is what it is.”

  Maratse puffed at his cigarette and stuffed his hands inside his pockets. Simonsen squinted at him through another cloud of smoke.

  “Do you want my report?”

  “Report? You’re a civilian.”

  “You called me Constable.”

  “Because you can’t seem to let go. That’s going to get you into trouble one of these days.” Simonsen nodded at the yacht. “Perhaps it already has?”

  Maratse tugged the towel from his cargo pocket, and said, “I put my hand down on a surface. That’s where you’ll find my prints.” He tossed the towel at Simonsen. “There’s a set of my boot prints in the blood on the floor of the cockpit, next to the man with the kitchen knife in his stomach. You’ll find more prints where I walked to check the rest of the yacht. The woman said there should be six crew members. Two are dead. Two are unconscious, drugged maybe, and there is a woman with a cut on her head. The last member of the crew, the sixth, is missing.” Maratse flicked the butt of his cigarette onto the ice and took a step towards his dogs. “That was my report. You can call it what you like.”

  “Where are you going?”

  Maratse pointed towards the mountains to the northeast. “Svartenhuk.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s where I was headed.”

  “When are you coming back?”

  “Thursday. I have been invited to dinner.”

  “There and back in two days? Less now. You’ll never make it.”

  Maratse reached down and unclipped the dogs from the ice axe. “We’ll see,” he said, and tugged the line to the sledge.

  “You’ll answer your phone?”

  “Maybe.” Maratse turned and watched as Simonsen strode across the ice to the yacht, smoke curling from his lungs, as Danielsen appeared on the deck and shouted for him to hurry. Then he clipped the dogs’ traces through the karabiner and gave two soft clicks. Spirit herded the team into position as Maratse ran alongside the sledge. He leaped onboard as Spirit and the team tightened the traces. Tinka ran alongside Spirit, and Maratse wondered if she was as eager to get away from the yacht as he was.

  Chapter 3

  The man dug his hands into the snow like spades. His fingers splayed inside snow-clad wool mitts, frozen, linking each digit with webs of wool and ice. They were bloody but they did not bleed. They were numb, like the man’s mind. And yet, a single thought drove the man onwards, clawing at his conscience as he clawed at the snow. A day earlier, several hours past, he would no sooner have labelled himself a survivor than an explorer. Two equally foreign descriptions for what he actually was – a researcher, and what he actually did – research. Surviving, being a survivor was not mentioned in his job description, and he did not recall seeing it as a prerequisite for the Ophelia Expedition. He preferred the expedition’s subtitle: The Alfred Wegener Greenland Svartenhuk Expedition. It confirmed his place on the team, and his position as the authority on all things related to Alfred Wegener. Those years of study, endless nights poring over heavy books in German and English, gloving-up to read musty journals from the field in the archives of the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven, and removing his glasses to rub his eyes when searching the Institute’s online database, that knowledge had turned the researcher into a survivor. He knew there was a cabin, Wegener’s cabin, at the base of the mountain upon which he crawled. The hunters they had approached were unusually reticent to provide details or to even acknowledge the existence of the cabin, but he he knew it was there, and now he had to find it.

  He crawled, bumping his knees on black-lichened rocks poking through the surface, scuffing the toes of his hiking boots, tearing at the elbows of his jacket. He wailed long curses, pressing and spitting the syllables through stubborn bloodless lips. Between curses and on smooth stretches, he prayed, digging deep into his spiritual roots just as he dug deep into the snow, appealing to God, entreating God, and, when the straight-edged shadow of a roof captured his attention, he thanked God, thanked him for every spade of snow he shovelled beneath his body, as he crawled to the cabin door.

  The wind, the tail-end of a katabatic downdraught, nipped at the exposed flesh of his cheeks, flung more snow, spindrift, and ice, at his chin, his mouth, his blue lips, as he clawed at the handle of the door to the cabin.

  “Please,” he said, as the handle proved to be as stubborn as his lips. “Please.”

  It didn’t budge, and the man dragged the stiff cuff of his winter mitts across his eyes to search the cabin for a window. He would smash it if he had to. But the only window was boarded, sealed from the outside, bear-proofing the cabin.

  He pressed his head against the blistered flakes of green paint. He would die like this, on his knees, frozen in place like the foetal-cast victims of Pompeii. The cruellest of comparisons. Even in death, of all the thoughts his mind might conjure, it chose one of heat, lava-death, he could almost feel it on his cheeks, almost imagine the brittle patches of exposed lichen bubbling either side of the cabin, consuming him.

  “No,” he cried, and the survivor in him took over, grasping that one straw of knowledge the man had overlooked. The cabin was designed to confound polar bears. He pushed his hands up, and the handle of the door moved as the heavy wooden door creaked. He pulled back and swun
g with the door until the snow shortened the intended arc and the man, the survivor, was presented with a gap the width of his head.

  It was enough.

  He rolled onto his side, bit at his lip, and shunted his body through the gap. The wind chased snow up his legs, blasting his face with one last gust of ice needles, and then he was inside. He slumped onto his back and choked, before he realised he was not choking but laughing.

  He rolled onto his elbows, blinked at the ice coating his eyelashes, like staring through an icy glue. He recognised the shape of the wood-burning stove, almost chuckled at the absurdity of burning wood in a land without trees, reassuring himself that in winter, the fire is always set. He laughed at the sight of the twists of newspaper and kindling inside the iron belly of the stove.

  “There will be matches. A box with one or two matches sticking out, easy to grasp with cold fingers.” Dieter forged thoughts that would keep him surviving.

  There were three. Three matches sticking out of the box. He tugged his hand from the heavy woollen mitten, the ice beaded into the wool fibres rattled as he dropped it on the black timber floor. He struck the first match and stared at the flame.

  He pressed the match to the paper. Too hard. The flame died. He lit the second match, watched as the flame curled around the paper, blackening the edges. He would have forgotten to add wood from the metal bucket to the fire if the pressing voice in his head hadn’t reminded him, “Light the kindling.”