Blood Floe_Conspiracy, Intrigue, and Multiple Homicide in the Arctic

by Christoffer Petersen

  “Am I under arrest?”

  Dieter rubbed his eyes with his fingers, and focussed on the policewoman sitting beside his bed.

  “You’re not under arrest, not yet, but I do need to ask you some questions.”

  “Who’s that?” Dieter asked, and looked at the man leaning against the wall.

  “He’s the Chief of Police here in Uummannaq. His name is Simonsen.”

  “Have we met?”

  Simonsen nodded, and said, “I pulled you out of a sinking car.”

  Dieter concentrated on the man’s words, which were not quite as clear as the woman’s German, not as practised. But the image of the car sinking through the ice seemed familiar.

  He heard the shush of black water sluicing into the car, pushing at the mats and the carpet hiding the wiring, the metal shell, the bolts and welded joints. He heard the shouts of the policeman, the rising panic in the man’s voice, and he felt the press of another man as he crawled over Dieter’s body to tug at the door. There was a sense of urgency about the man, but Dieter remembered him being calm, and it was a similar feeling that flooded through his own body, dampening the pain from the knife sticking out of his stomach, a liquid darkness washing through his body as the police car sank beneath the ice.

  “I remember,” Dieter said.

  “That’s good,” Petra said. “Now, if we work back from there. What else do you remember?”

  Dieter sniffed at the strange smell he imagined was coming from the wound in his stomach. He looked from the Police Chief to the Sergeant, and then reached for the glass of water by his bed. Petra helped him take a sip. He licked at the flakes of skin on his lips and then spoke.

  “I stole a police car. I was trying to get away.”

  “From who?”

  “Not who, what. I wanted to get away from the yacht, from Ophelia.”

  “What were you doing on the yacht?”

  “I was trying to find something.” Dieter glanced at Simonsen, and said, “The policeman, the one in plain clothes, he caught me going through my bags in the cabin. I was hiding in the cabin, that’s when I heard him come in.”

  “And what did you do?”

  “I wanted to get out. I felt trapped, so I grabbed a knife, the kind we wear on our belts when on deck. I think I cut him when I slashed at him, and then we fell – we slipped, I think… on blood.” Dieter paused as Petra made a note with a pencil in her notepad. He waited for her to look up. “We fell, and the knife went into my stomach.”

  “But you kept going?”

  “Yes, I had to get away from the yacht.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I couldn’t let them have it.”

  “Have what?”

  “The journal. Wegener’s journal.”

  Dieter waited as Petra said something to Simonsen. It had been a long time since he had spoken Danish, but he understood the woods for book and stolen and something about a man called Maratse.

  “Sergeant,” Dieter said, “where is the journal?”

  “Why don’t you tell us why it is so important?”

  “You don’t have it?” Dieter tried to sit up, but the pain in his stomach forced him to lie down again.

  “We know where it is.”

  Dieter closed his eyes, and said, “The journal is a record of Alfred Wegener’s explorations of Svartenhuk. It includes his findings, and information about the samples he took, and where.”

  “What samples?”

  “Thorium.”

  Dieter opened his eyes at the sound of Petra’s pencil scratching the surface of the paper in her pad. He waited for her to stop.

  “You said you didn’t want them to have the journal. Who is them and why shouldn’t they have it?”

  The light in the room brightened as a nurse opened the door. Dieter watched as Petra waved her away. The door closed, and he relaxed into the dim light cast by the lamp at his bedside. It reminded him of the flames licking at the thick glass window in the door of the cabin stove.

  “I was hired for the expedition as an expert on Alfred Wegener,” Dieter said.

  “Are you?”

  “Yes. I have worked at several institutions. Berndt found me through a contact of his at the Alfred Wegener Institution at Bremerhaven.”

  “And Berndt is?”

  “Aleksander Berndt is the CEO of the Berndt Media Group. He is also the owner of Ophelia. It is his step-daughter who runs Ophelia Expeditions.”

  “Therese Kleinschmidt?” asked Simonsen.

  “Yes, exactly.”

  Dieter continued. “I was flattered to be asked to join the expedition, and excited. The chance to find and recover one of Alfred Wegener’s lost journals was too good to miss.”

  “So you said yes?”

  “At once, at the first meeting.”

  “And the journal you found, was the one you had hoped to find?”

  “Yes.” Dieter took another sip of water as Petra made a note. “It was a bit of a disappointment, really. The journal was exactly where we thought it would be.”

  “In the cabin?”

  Dieter nodded. “We asked local hunters many times if they knew of the cabin, and, if they did, if they had seen a journal, but they said nothing. I was worried they might have burned the journal to start a fire.”

  “But they didn’t.”

  “A Danish hunter – I think he was called Axel – told the captain he knew where the cabin was. She paid him for the information, and she was going to pay him to take us there, but I don’t know what happened after that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that we prepared to leave the boat – five of us. The captain would stay behind. But the hunter did not show. At least, not before we left. I don’t know if he came later.” Dieter gritted his teeth as a wave of pain flashed through his body.

  “This was when you skied across the sea ice to the mountains?”

  “To Svartenhuk, yes.”

  “Did you find the cabin?”

  “Not at first. We were caught out in a wind blowing down the mountain. There was a lot of snow. The team wanted to go back. Nele was the guide, but Henrik was leading the team. He said we should turn around.”

  “And did you?”

  “Not me. I knew we were close, and if they had listened to me, we would have found the cabin together.”

  “So you stayed on the mountain?”

  “Yes.”

  “And found the cabin?”

  “Just. It was difficult.”

  “But no-one can prove you were in the cabin,” Simonsen said.

  “I found the journal. That is proof.”

  “But no-one saw you.”

  Petra frowned at Simonsen, but the Chief of Police held up his hand, waited for Dieter to answer.

  “I called my wife, on the satellite phone.”

  “From the cabin?”

  “Yes.”

  Petra asked for the telephone number and Dieter gave it to her. “Remember the country code,” he said, “forty-nine.”

  Petra tapped the pencil on the page. “So the team returned to Ophelia, and you found the cabin, found the journal, and then went back to the yacht.”

  “Yes.”

  “But when you went onboard…”

  “It was empty. Everyone was gone. Just lots of dogs on the ice. And then the policemen came.”

  “Dogs?”

  “Hunters’ dogs,” Simonsen said. “The narwhal came down from Upernavik.”

  Petra nodded. “But you didn’t think it was strange that the yacht was empty? I thought they were supposed to wait for you.”

  “I didn’t think about it,” Dieter said.

  “Because you wanted to find something,” Petra said, as she flipped through her notes.

  “Yes, a thumb drive.”

  “Like a USB?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was on it?”

  “A backup of my notes. I scanned them into my computer before leaving Berlin.”
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  “And they are important?”

  “Most important, especially now.”

  “Why?”

  “Because a man came to my house, and took the notes from Marlene.” Dieter glanced at Simonsen. “She told me when we talked on the satellite phone. She said the man needed the notes to help find me, and to help me.”

  “With what?”

  “This,” Dieter said, with a wave of his hand. He grimaced, and pushed his head back onto the pillow. When he spoke again it was barely more than a whisper. Dieter caught the faint trace of Petra’s perfume as she leaned over him to hear what he said. “When I was invited to join the expedition I was given a list of the other members, and a brief contact sheet with details about their career and education. When I searched for the same people online, I found different photos, but the same names. The dates and degrees were correct, but some of the specialist areas were slightly off.”

  “In what way?”

  “Geology instead of geography. Marine science not meteorology.”

  “Why does it matter?”

  “When you read Wegener’s journal, it matters.”

  “Tell me.”

  Dieter looked into the Sergeant’s eyes, and said, “Wegener found thorium in the mountains, a lot of it, but it was never reported, when he lost his journal it was forgotten, and when he died, the secret was buried with him.”

  “And a geologist?” Petra asked.

  “Would be far more interested in minerals than a geographer.”

  “Marine scientists…”

  “They look down at the seabed, meteorologists look up.”

  “What did you think they were going to do with the journal?” Simonsen asked, as she took a step closer to Dieter’s hospital bed.

  “After being scanned, it would be preserved, papers would be written, and I could move Marlene into a nice house on the outskirts of the city, perhaps even to Bremerhaven.”

  “You could advance your career?”

  “Yes, Sergeant, a find like this is priceless.”

  “You would get paid more?”

  “Maybe, that’s not important. But I could have my pick of jobs. Maybe even teach abroad.”

  Dieter closed his eyes. He heard his name being called, twice. He blinked and focussed on the police sergeant standing by his bed.

  “Dieter,” she said, “two people were murdered onboard Ophelia. Henrik Nielsen and Antje Jung.”

  “Murdered?”

  “Yes. You remember the blood?”

  “Yes,” he said, and lifted his head. “I was focussed on the thumb drive. I needed to prove my theory.”

  “Which is?”

  “Berndt didn’t want the journal, he wanted Wegener’s secret.”

  “But Berndt picked the team.”

  “Yes.”

  “So he knew about the fake references?”

  “Maybe he didn’t,” Simonsen said. He placed his hand on the rail at the foot of the bed, and said, “Nele Schneider says you and she were having an affair. Is that correct?”

  “What?”

  “She also said that the two deceased, Nielsen and Jung, were romantically involved.”

  “I don’t remember,” Dieter said.

  “Don’t, or can’t?”

  “Chief,” Petra said.

  “I have a wife in Berlin,” Dieter said. “Marlene and I are very happy together. We want to have children.”

  “Were you having an affair?”

  Dieter looked at Petra. He shifted position, wincing at the pain in his stomach. “Ophelia can be quite cramped, intimate,” he said. “We sailed from Germany. It took a long time. We all got to know each other, some more than others.” Dieter took Petra’s hand, and said, “I have been unfaithful, just one time, on Ophelia.”

  “With Nele Schneider?”

  Dieter shook his head.

  “Who?”

  “The captain. Katharina Fischer. Just one night, when we were in Ilulissat, before we sailed to the edge of the ice.”

  The door opened and Dieter let go of Petra’s hand. The nurse entered the room with a bedpan, a thermometer and a sleeve to check his blood pressure. She waved the police officers out of the room, and pressed the thermometer into Dieter’s ear.

  Dieter watched her as she worked, listed to the click and clack of her pen as she recorded his temperature on the chart hanging from his bed, and then pressed the pen into the metal coil holding it in place in the breast pocket of her uniform. He could see the police sergeant watching him from the corridor. He tried to smile, but the nurse blocked his view as she took his blood pressure, pumping the sleeve around his arm until it was tight, almost uncomfortable. Another click of the pen, and then she asked him something in English, he knew it was important, but not as urgent as his confession to the policewoman. He needed to tell her that he loved Marlene. He needed to tell Marlene, but the nurse was insistent. She placed the bedpan by the side of his bed, and then rolled back the sheets to look at the bandage plastered to his abdomen. He smelled it then, as she peeled back the plaster and released a whiff of decay, bacteria, something hot and active in his wound. Dieter started to sweat. The room dimmed, and he heard the clap of the nurse’s feet as she walked to the door and called out something in Greenlandic. A doctor arrived at Dieter’s bedside. It was time for Dieter to dig in and focus on recovering from his wound.

  “For Marlene,” he whispered, and closed his eyes.

  Chapter 16

  Petra tugged the collar of her police jacket around her neck and walked outside. She found Simonsen smoking beside the police Toyota. He flicked the butt of his cigarette onto the ground and scuffed it into a patch of ice with the toe of his boot. Petra stuffed her hands into her jacket pockets and waited for Simonsen to speak. The burr of a snowmobile across the hard-packed snow covering the road distracted her, and she caught the eye of the driver, a grizzled Dane with what looked like a permanent sneer scarred into his top lip. Petra held his gaze until the man turned his head and accelerated up the road towards the ramp leading down to the sea ice.

  “About time,” Simonsen said. “He’s been in town far too long.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Axel Stein.”

  “The Axel Dieter mentioned?”

  “Yep.”

  “Then why are we not interviewing him?”

  “Danielsen spoke to Axel when he was in hospital. He cut his own arm with a knife.”

  “A knife?” Petra took a step towards the car as Axel weaved between the dogs and the fishing boats locked in the sea ice.

  “Forget it, Sergeant. Axel isn’t the killer.”

  “He has an alibi?”

  “He told Danielsen that he was approached by one of the crew – he couldn’t remember which one. They called his mobile and he talked to them for about three minutes before hanging up. His phone log shows the call, from a German mobile.”

  “And there’s nothing strange about that?”

  “The strange thing is that he had a mobile at all. Axel has taken a hunter’s cabin and called it his own. He has a history of alcohol and abuse. Children are frightened of him, especially when their parents tell stories about the Stein Monster. It suits Axel just fine. He’ll die in that cabin.”

  “What makes you so sure he didn’t kill the crew?”

  “Axel is an evil man, there’s no doubt, but he’s also a coward. He wouldn’t fight a man. Besides, this is too sophisticated for him.”

  “In what way?”

  “The way the crew were drugged. Axel couldn’t figure that out. He’s more of a blunt-force-trauma than anything fancy. Although,” Simonsen said, with a glance at the shadow of Axel Stein disappearing across the ice, “I didn’t expect him to stay so long in town. I’ll have Danielsen look into it.” Simonsen nudged Petra’s arm and pointed at a taxi bumping across the ice, up the ramp, and along the road to the hospital. “Here he is now.”

  The taxi driver waved as Danielsen and Maratse opened the doors and stepped o
ut of the car. Maratse took a can of fuel from the car boot, and gave the driver a few hundred kroner. The smile on Maratse’s face tugged at his cheeks as he walked over to join Petra and Simonsen. He put the jerry can on the ground by his feet as Danielsen leaned against the side of the police car.

  “Our brave knights,” Simonsen said, with a quick glance at Danielsen.

  “We screwed up, Chief,” he said.

  “You did. Now how about you make up for it and go inside the hospital. You can warm up while you wait outside the German’s door.”

  Danielsen looked at his watch, and said, “My shift’s nearly over.”

  “I know, I’ll send one of the assistants to relieve you.”

  Danielsen nodded, winked at Petra, and then walked inside the hospital.

  Simonsen waited until the door closed with a thump, and then said, “You ran out of fuel?”

  “Iiji.”

  “Well, she shouldn’t get far. The Navy has the Ejnar Mikkelsen just south of Ilulissat. They’ll find her.” Simonsen nodded at the car, and said, “Get in.”

  “Where are we going?” Maratse asked.

  “To talk to the crew,” Petra said. She climbed into the passenger seat as Maratse put the fuel can in the boot and got in behind Simonsen. Petra caught Maratse’s eye in the rear-view mirror, and, even in the dark, she was almost certain she saw him blush.

  Simonsen backed out of the parking spot, and drove to the hostel where the crew were staying. The moon ducked behind a cloud, and the polar afternoon did its best to pretend it was later than one thought.

  There was a crowd outside the youth hostel, a flash of bright blue-tinged beams from smartphones, and a dark patch of something on the snow. One of the crowd ran to the driver’s side of the car as Simonsen wound down the window.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Someone is dead.”

  “Slow down, Angut,” Simonsen said, as the man chattered through a description of what happened. Petra got out of the car, and Maratse followed.

  The crowd peeled to both sides as Petra approached. She stopped to look at the blood staining the packed snow on the road, stepped around it, and knelt beside the body on the ground. She pressed her fingers to the man’s throat, pulled out her mobile, and called the hospital.

  “What did you see?” she asked. When a young woman began to answer in Greenlandic, Petra turned to Maratse for help.