Blood Floe_Conspiracy, Intrigue, and Multiple Homicide in the Arctic

by Christoffer Petersen

  Dieter rested the journal in his lap and rubbed his face with his hand. He blinked sleep from his eyes – or perhaps it was ice crusting his eyelashes, his own breath sticking to the hairs on his skin.

  “Marlene…”

  “No,” she said, “you have to listen. You are in the newspapers, even Die Welt. It says you are missing…”

  “I’m not.”

  “…and that two of the crew are dead.” Marlene stopped for a breath. “They were murdered, Dieter. Stabbed to death.”

  Dieter sighed. “Marlene, there is a box by my desk.”

  “Are you even listening to me? Stop talking about the box. I don’t care about the box, and neither should you. They are looking for you. They want to find you, to question you.”

  “Who?”

  “The police, the authorities. They have sent more police from the south of Greenland.”

  “To find me?”

  “Yes.”

  Dieter let the phone drift from his ear. He almost dropped it. He turned the pages of the journal, found the first entry about something buried in the mountains. He pressed the phone to his ear, and said, “They know, Marlene.”

  “What do they know?”

  “The secret. That’s what they are looking for, not me.”

  “Secret? You’re not making any sense.”

  “It’s all right, my love…”

  “No, it’s not. Nothing is all right. This is not okay. You have to leave that cabin, go down to the ice and give yourself in to the police.”

  “But then they will find out the truth. I can’t let that happen. It’s my secret now.”

  “Dieter,” Marlene said, her voice shook, and she bit back a sob. “You’re not well. I see it now, just like the man said.”

  “What man?”

  “The one I told you about. His name was Stefan. He said he was from Berndt Media. He looked like a soldier. He said he had some difficult news to tell me, that it was shocking. He asked if I wanted to call someone, or if there was someone he could call, to be with me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he said you were ill, that you were struggling, that the dark had affected you, that it had triggered a depression. He said the crew confirmed it, and that you had done… things. Terrible things.”

  “I left the yacht.”

  “How?”

  “I had to get away, Marlene.”

  “When?”

  “I didn’t go back. I stayed on the mountain, after our first search.”

  “But when, Dieter? The man said you killed those people. That you were crazy, obsessed with finding something…”

  “I did find something. It is wonderful, Marlene. It can change our lives.”

  “Our lives will never be the same again,” she said. “That’s what the man said. That’s why he took your box of notes.”

  “What?”

  “Your notes. He took all of them. He said it might help, if they could find evidence of your obsession, some kind of mental health problem, they might be able to help you.”

  “You gave him my notes?” Dieter’s breath condensed in the cold glare of the lamp in gusts.

  “I had to. Don’t you see? I want to help you, Dieter. I want you to come home. I love you.”

  “My notes.”

  Dieter put the phone down on the floor and stood up. He twisted around the cabin, placing his hand on imaginary boxes, shuffling from one cot to the other, crouching to look beneath them, as if the wooden cot was his desk, the cabin his office, and the soft green glow of the Northern Lights were the streetlights on Admiralstraße, Berlin.

  He heard Marlene’s voice pleading from the satellite phone’s tiny speaker. He whirled on it, and shouted, “Where are my notes, Marlene?”

  She didn’t answer. He kicked at the phone, ripping the cord for the antenna out of the unit. Marlene’s soft cries slid into the corner of the cabin as the screen blinked with the symbol warning that the battery was low, drained like Marlene.

  Dieter stopped in the middle of the cabin. With a short leap to either side, forwards or backwards, he could have touched the outer walls, slipped his nails behind the newspaper pasted to the old wood. Instead he clawed at his face, his blunt grimy nails drawing red lines on his cold, stiff cheeks, but no blood, it was too cold to bleed.

  The satellite phone died with a single beep, and the screen went blank, and then black, like the night, as the clouds obscured the polar moon and the wind dropped to a reverent whisper.

  Dieter gathered the journal into his hands, bound it with the sealskin thongs around the cover, tucked it into the inside pocket of his jacket and tugged the zip to a close. He collected the different parts of the satellite phone, hid the spare battery in the pocket closest to his body, coiled the antenna lead, and collapsed the tripod into one jacket pocket, the phone into another. Dieter looked at his mitts, studied the jagged holes and tears in the ragg wool weave. He zipped his jacket, pulled his fleece hat over his ears, and shaped his hood like a funnel to hide his face.

  He crouched in front of the stove and waited for the fire to die.

  As the flames flickered and the fiery nails began to cool, Dieter dug into the shadows, and glanced at the drift of snow spread, fan-shaped, inside the door. The still polar night enticed him out of the cabin, and he shut the door, smiling as he lifted the polar bear handle. The snow crunched beneath his boots, as he traced his route a few steps away from the cabin, turning his whole head, up, down, all around, staring through the funnel of his hood with his tunnel vision.

  Was it really such a good idea to leave the shelter of the cabin?

  “They are coming for me,” was Dieter’s answer, a new-found strength and determination, driving him on. Stronger than the will to survive, Dieter was driven to succeed, to discover Wegener’s secret.

  The lighter layers of windblown snow dusted the trail in Dieter’s wake as he lifted his heels, picking his way down the glacial valley towards the sea ice. If they were looking for him, as Marlene suggested, Dieter convinced himself he knew why.

  “They might have taken my notes,” he said, his voice muffled, his warm breath tickling his nose, “but they don’t know how to read them. They don’t know what they are looking for.”

  Dieter pictured his bunk onboard Ophelia, and his duffel bag stowed beneath it. He thought about the thumb drive hidden between the bottom of the canvas bag and the stiff layer that gave the duffel bag its shape. His smile was hidden by the hood, but the astute observer might notice a lighter gait, a renewed purpose in his stride.

  Conflicting thoughts countered his enthusiasm, thoughts that included the police, they could be armed. He was a wanted man. The police thought he was a murderer.

  He shook the thoughts away. “It won’t be a problem.”

  Only when he drew close to the ice at the foot of the mountain, where the sea lifted its frozen edges to the rhythm of the tide, did Dieter stop to pause, to think again. He stared in the direction he knew Ophelia was anchored to the ice; he himself had dug one of the two ice axes into the frozen sea.

  Dieter unzipped the funnel hood, pressed his head into the cool air and cinched the hood into a high collar. He took a step onto the ice foot, slid over its smooth edges, and stumbled onto the sea ice. He started walking, fascinated at the smooth, wide, empty path ahead of him, interspersed as it was with the occasional iceberg. He sought out the familiar bergs they had used as waypoints from the yacht to the mountains, found them, altered course, and concentrated on walking at an efficient speed through the night, his second night without sleep.

  “I can’t sleep. Not yet,” Dieter said, his breath curling over the collar of his jacket. Ice began to bead on the zip, and above his own lip, clinging to the hairs on his cheek bones, and making his eyelashes tacky. He blinked and walked on.

  The wind had blown the snow into shallow eskers, like an old three-dimensional map fashioned from layers and plates of cardboard. The going was straight, firm, and smooth, but not w
ithout danger. Dieter mustered the strength to walk over the black ice, reminding himself that it was thick enough to drive a car on, forcing himself not to look, not to second guess. He hoped the narrow lead ahead had not widened, and was relieved to find it had shifted, the two edges of the ice had moved closer. Dieter leaped over the gap and walked on.

  At one point he thought of polar bears, only to forget all about them when he spotted the lights and activity around Ophelia still a kilometre, maybe more, from where he stopped and stared. It was as if the carnival had arrived, disgorging the carnies, performers, and animals onto the ice, into tents pitched alongside boats instead of trucks, dogs instead of lions. Someone had turned on Ophelia’s lights, and her mast was lit like a sparse Christmas tree, a single red and green navigation lamp, lost in the black polar night.

  There were noises too, and Dieter realised that only the hungriest of bears would approach the whale carnival, with its Arctic revellers – howling dogs and high-spirited men. Even the heavens crackled, with the occasional shooting star arcing across the night sky beneath a curtain of green and white.

  The carnival lights were celestial, the shadows of tent, boat, dog, and man, thin and angular with only the occasional beam of a snowmobile or even a car capable of catching Dieter in its glare as he approached. He noticed that the Greenlanders were laser-foccused on the ice bobbing sea. Only the dogs looked towards the mountains, relegated as they were to dormant modes of transport, as the men whooped, pointed, jabbered into mobile phones, and hurried to slide the flotilla of fibreglass skiffs and dinghies from the ice into the sea. Harpoons were raised, rifles loaded and slung, outboard motors dipped, and boats boarded. In the space of just ten minutes, Dieter and the dogs were alone on the ice, as the hunters chased thin spumes of mist far out to sea.

  If he had binoculars, and if he knew where to look, if a Greenlander had stood by his side, placed a hand on his shoulder, and turned Dieter in the right direction, he might have seen pearl tusks and grey rubber flanks between the growlers of ice in the black sea. He might have seen the narwhal. But Dieter’s eyes were drawn to another jewel, another prize, and he slipped between the tents, stepped over the anchor lines, and climbed the ladder onto the deck of Ophelia.

  Dieter opened the door to the cockpit and climbed down the short flight of steps. He flicked a switch and the cockpit lights blazed through the glass, bright squares lined with thick icy frames. The blood-soaked floor of the galley gave Dieter a start, and he steadied himself with a hand on the panel to his right.

  It was clear where the victims had died, and how they had died – it was bloody. He shrugged and let the survivor in him guide him past the blood and deeper inside the yacht. He opened the door to the cabin on the right, found his duffel bag in the middle of the floor, as if it had fallen from his bunk. He unzipped it, slipped his hand around and between the clothes he had folded inside, and pressed his fingers into the space where he had hidden his thumb drive.

  Dieter frowned, sat on his heels, and drew the duffel onto his thighs. He plunged his hand inside the bag again, and a third time. Then he switched on the light, emptied his clothes onto the deck, and ripped the bottom layer out of the bag. When everything was spread before him, and he had patted and unfolded every piece of clothing, checked inside every sock, Dieter threw the duffel bag against the sail bag in the pointed bow end of the cabin, tore off his hat, and gripped his head in his hands.

  The dogs mistook Dieter’s roar for a howl and joined in.

  Chapter 9

  Maratse heard the telephone ring three times before he understood what it was. He blinked, rubbed his eyes, and rolled over in his bed just as he heard Therese pick up the phone and answer the call. She answered in German, and, when she continued, he decided the call must be for her. He rolled onto his side and tugged the pillow over his head. He didn’t hear Therese when she called to him, nor did he hear her run up the stairs in her bare feet. It was her perfume that pricked at his consciousness and forced him onto his elbows to stare at her. When she came into focus, he looked away.

  “There’s a woman on the phone. She wants to speak to you,” Therese said.

  “Hm.”

  “I told her she could call back, but she said she would wait.”

  “Okay,” Maratse said, and rubbed his eyes, blinking in the glare of the light from the landing.

  “You’ve got balls, Maratse,” Therese said. “I only spoke to her for two minutes, and, if I were you, I wouldn’t let her wait longer than it takes you to run downstairs.” Therese giggled as Maratse pulled back the covers and slid out of bed. He stumbled on his way to the stairs, but only when he reached the top step did he feel it was safe to open his eyes.

  “I’m not naked, Constable,” Therese called, as he climbed down the stairs.

  “Might as well be,” he said, his mouth dry with sleep.

  Maratse bit through the standard morning pain in his legs, before his muscles warmed up. He reached for the phone and pressed the receiver to his ear.

  “Maratse,” he said, and pressed his free hand against the windowsill as his legs trembled.

  “Your girlfriend told me you were sleeping,” Petra said.

  Maratse waited for her to laugh, but when no laugh came, he felt compelled to answer straight away.

  “She arrived yesterday, when I was out.”

  “And who is she?”

  “The boat owner’s daughter, I think.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “They have different surnames.” Maratse looked up as Therese walked into the living room. Even the skin on her flat stomach had freckles. He looked away. caught his breath, and focussed on the pain in his legs – a necessary distraction.

  “So you accepted the job.”

  “Not yet.”

  “I don’t understand, David. There’s a German woman living in your house?”

  “Staying in my house…”

  “Fine, let’s call it that.”

  “What do you want, Piitalaat?”

  “What do I want?” Petra caught her breath, and Maratse pictured her biting her lip. “How about you call me Petra from now on?”

  “Hey…”

  “In fact, let’s just say, as far as you’re concerned, my name is Sergeant Jensen.”

  “Don’t be like that, Piitalaat. I didn’t invite her here.”

  Therese carried two mugs of coffee into the living room and placed one on the windowsill. She leaned close to Maratse and whispered into the handset that his coffee was ready, and then giggled as she walked to the sofa. Maratse stared at her as she unzipped her sleeping bag and pulled it over her bare legs. He pulled his eyes away from the flesh-coloured sports bra pinching her breasts and pressed his forehead against the cool glass of the window.

  “She’s leaving soon,” he said, and wondered if Therese could speak Danish. When Petra didn’t answer Maratse tried a different tack. “Sisse told me to say ‘hi’.”

  “I’m sure she did.” Petra sighed. “Listen, let’s talk later.”

  “We can talk now.”

  “No,” she said, “we really can’t.” Petra ended the call, and Maratse put the phone down. When he turned around to look at Therese she was smiling.

  “She’s a handful,” she said, in English. The sleeping bag slipped as she bent her leg and tucked her knee against her chest.

  “Her name is Piitalaat.”

  “Greenlandic?”

  “Iiji.”

  “But you spoke Danish.”

  “Piitalaat doesn’t speak Greenlandic.”

  “Funny, her German is pretty good.”

  Maratse tugged his t-shirt over the waistband of his underwear, picked up his mug, and slumped in the chair opposite Therese.

  “You said your name was Kleinschmidt.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Not Berndt?”

  “It’s not important.” Therese curled long freckled fingers around the mug and rested it on her knee. She stared at Maratse u
ntil he coughed and looked away. “You’re wondering why I’m really here, aren’t you?”

  “Iiji.”

  “I was in Ilulissat when daddy got news of what happened on Ophelia. He put me on the first plane to Qaarsut to come and take care of her.”

  “Ophelia?”

  “Yes.”

  “You sail?”

  “I have my Yachtmaster Ocean certificate. What about you?”

  “Small fishing boats.”

  “Daddy always said it’s not the vessel it’s the water. I respect anyone who sails in these waters.”

  Maratse relaxed as the topic shifted to more familiar territory. If it wasn’t for Therese’s long legs and minimal sleeping wear, he might have enjoyed the conversation.

  “Tell me what you want,” he said, and sipped his coffee.

  “I need to get Ophelia into a safe harbour, and I need the ship’s log.”

  “Doesn’t the captain have that?”

  “No,” Therese said. “She was unconscious when they took her off the boat. That’s all I know.”

  Maratse nodded. “I found her like that.”

  “I know.” Therese placed her empty mug on the table between them. She wrapped the sleeping bag around her waist and Maratse decided he could relax just a little bit more. “I need you to take me to Ophelia. Today.”

  “We would need permission from the police.”

  “Daddy’s working on that. He says they might be willing to let me sail it back to Ilulissat.”

  “Not without an escort,” Maratse said. He wrinkled his brow as Therese tilted her head and smiled.

  “That will be one of your jobs.”

  “I haven’t said yes.”

  “No? That’s strange when you consider that your bank account has an extra five thousand Euro in it.” Maratse frowned, and Therese said, “Our branch in Berlin confirmed the transfer this morning, while you were sleeping, before your girlfriend called.”

  “I didn’t agree to that.”

  “I wouldn’t worry; we tend to jump over that part. It’s much easier to get someone to do what you want when the money is already in place. You’ll get another three thousand once you have completed the other tasks daddy wants you to do.”