Matthew nodded slowly. ‘I’d like to see the archives after lunch.’
‘I’m sure we can work something out.’ Leiff put his hand on Matthew’s shoulder again. ‘I’ll show you where they are, but if we’re going to rake over this old case, we need to go about it quietly. A brutal murder like this one has only remained unsolved because someone important wanted it that way.’
10
The archives under Sermitsiaq’s offices were the darkest rooms Matthew had ever been inside, and he thought he had seen a few. The walls were of dark-grey concrete, and more than anything reminded him of Eastern European archives before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Rows of steel bookcases stood at right angles to the walls.
Leiff had shown him where in the basement he thought the relevant material might be kept—if there was anything at all. There were no records of the files in the basement. Whoever stored something there usually remembered where they had put it, but once that person left the newspaper, their knowledge was lost for good. Leiff had some idea of where the early 1970s files were, but he didn’t have time to spend the whole day in the basement, as he had an interview to do. However, he had promised to contact both his wife, who worked at Nuuk Town Hall, and a good friend who worked at the Sana Hospital, to persuade each of them to search their archives for any information about the four murders.
After several unsuccessful hours alone in the basement, Matthew sat down on a pile of newspapers and looked about him with an air of defeat. A bare light bulb glowed above him; there was another closer to the door. Their light hung like yellow clouds of dust in the dry basement air, but further down there was nothing but darkness. He had no idea how far into the darkness the basement extended.
Next to his right foot was a newspaper facing upwards: Air Greenland expands its fleet from three to eight Sikorsky S-61, and opens new helicopter base in Ammassalik this summer. His eyes wandered upwards to the date. May 1972. He pushed the newspaper aside, reached for another pile and resumed skimming the headlines.
‘Oh, no,’ he whispered as he opened a newspaper dated 25 October 1973. A Sikorsky helicopter had crashed just south of Nuuk, killing all fifteen people on board.
His head flopped forwards, and he sat resting his elbows on his knees with his face buried in his hands. His fingers smelled of newspaper ink and cold dust. Aqqalu’s bloody body haunted his thoughts. The gutted men. The little girls who had gone missing. The helicopter. Tine and the floor of the car. The smells of accident, metal, oil and death.
His world had imploded when Tine and Emily died. It hadn’t been particularly eventful before. But without them it was completely dead.
It was a red Mercedes containing four Romanian men. They had overtaken him on a bend, but hadn’t pulled out far enough and so collided with his Golf, which was crushed against the tarmac by the Mercedes and flipped off the road and into a field. He had been conscious throughout and felt every blow to his body, neck and face as the car rolled across the ground. His scalp and one hand had been lacerated by shards of glass, although he never knew exactly where it had come from.
He had been bleeding, and had to wipe his face constantly. Tine had been quiet. She hadn’t even screamed. Or perhaps she had. It was all a blur until the car stopped rolling. That was when he saw her. Her eyes were open. She was bleeding from her ears. She was trapped. She died.
He had crawled through the window of the damaged front door, found a farm where he had dripped blood all over the floor. He remembered that vividly. And he had seen a horse. A horse in the field where the car was lying. He remembered that. And then the ambulance. The nurse at the hospital, who had picked the broken glass from his scalp without him feeling anything at all, although it had made a crunching sound like when you snap a bone to get at the marrow. He remembered the foam collar around his neck and throat. Tine’s silent, grey face during the drive in the ambulance. They had fought to save her while he watched. But her blood had stopped pumping while she was still in the wrecked car. His heart had kept beating, and his wounds bleeding.
Then the darkness arrived. Darkness where every minute felt like a day. Sleepless days, nights tormented by the pain in his neck, which had started a few hours after the accident, never to go away again. The funeral. Months of daily rehabilitation with a physiotherapist. The machine pulling his neck. The warm compresses. Ultrasound. Countless reassurances that he’d be all right eventually.
Matthew took a deep breath and felt the tears running down the palms of his hands. He raised his head and sniffed loudly. The air still felt dry, and his eyes were stinging. He got up and walked down to a new wall of newspapers piled onto the overburdened steel shelving. He lit a cigarette, then picked up a few newspapers, trying to decide where to resume his search.
Having identified and pulled out the relevant piles, he sat down on the floor to go through them. Time passed at a snail’s pace, as the cup by his side filled with cigarette butts and soon his head began to ache. Someone really ought to have transferred all the records in the basement to a digital archive, but it seemed a Sisyphean task.
When Leiff returned, Matthew was lying on the floor surrounded by stacks of old newspapers, too many to count, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. The sudden and unexpected noise from the door made him sit up.
‘What time do you call this?’ Leiff said with a frown. ‘And I’m pretty sure you’re not allowed to smoke down here.’
‘I haven’t checked the time, but I guess it’s late,’ Matthew croaked, quickly putting out his cigarette. ‘I think this is pointless…I’m sorry.’
‘Well, I did warn you. But listen, I’ve had a call from the hospital. They’ve found the post-mortem reports on all four men, and I persuaded them to scan and email everything to me. I forwarded it all on to you so you could print it out. You didn’t pick up when I called you, so I thought I’d better check up on you myself.’
‘There’s no signal down here, but thanks, that’s great news. Besides, I’m done here—my head is heavy from all that dust.’
‘Hang on just a minute,’ Leiff said. ‘I had a peek at the postmortem reports. Which year have you got there? Seventy-three, is it?’
Matthew looked at the newspaper in his hand and nodded. ‘October.’
‘You need November. That’s when the first victim turned up. But let’s get you something to eat. I can’t have you stay down here all night. I bet you’re thirsty too. My wife’s going out tonight, but she’s cooked spare ribs, so why don’t you have dinner with me? There are too many ribs for one person.’
‘Thanks, I’d really like that,’ Matthew said. He reached for the cup with the cigarette butts and got up from the floor.
‘Matthew Cave—now that’s a funny name for a Dane,’ Leiff said.
‘My father was an American soldier,’ Matthew said. ‘I got my name from him…along with my quirky eye.’
‘What you call quirky sounds shamanic to me,’ Leiff said. ‘An eye that can see into two worlds.’
‘Thanks, but I think it’s just a quirky eye.’
‘Is that what your father would say?’
Matthew shook his head. ‘I don’t know. He disappeared shortly after my fourth birthday.’
‘Where was he stationed?’
‘At the air base in Thule, which is where he met my mother.’ Matthew smiled. ‘I was actually born in Greenland. Crazy, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ Leiff said. ‘But you’ve stirred my curiosity now. I’m like that. Did he stay up here?’
Matthew shrugged. ‘I’m not sure. I believe he was in Nuuk at the time, and that he was going to join me and my mother in Denmark, but he never turned up. My mother had no idea what had happened to him, or where he’d gone. It’s a big world, I guess.’
‘Yes, but Nuuk is a small place. When was this?’
‘The last news we had from him was a postcard sent from Nuuk in August 1990.’
‘And what was his name?’
‘His name?’ Matthe
w hesitated and looked down. ‘His name was Thomas. Tom Cave.’
‘I love a mystery,’ Leiff said. ‘Mind if I take a look and see if I can find him?’
‘No, I don’t. But I doubt he’s still alive.’
‘You may be right,’ Leiff said. ‘But let’s wait and see. People up here have a habit of disappearing, but they pretty much always turn up again.’
11
NUUK, 10 AUGUST 2014
The body of Ari Rossing Lynge was discovered on Tuesday last week, but Godthåb Police have only now released the information to the press. Sermitsiaq has learned that his death was particularly brutal: Rossing Lynge was murdered and then gutted as if he were prey. Here at Sermitsiaq we have decided not to go into further detail, but on behalf of Godthåb Police we have agreed to report this killing, as well as two similar killings in Block P. Godthåb Police urge anyone with information to contribute to the case to get in touch with them. Please contact Jakob Pedersen at the Godthåb police station. We are publishing the full names of the three murdered men, along with pictures taken of them while they were alive.
Matthew put the article on the coffee table and reached for the postmortem reports. After dinner with Leiff, he had returned to the basement and spent most of the night tracking down the relevant issues of the paper. He had eventually managed to compile all of November 1973, then he brought the papers home with him in the early morning hours when he had started to tire.
There were four post-mortem reports, but only three victims were mentioned in the newspaper article he’d found. The last man had been killed after the article was published.
He arranged the reports side by side on the coffee table. Four men. Three of them had a face. Matthew marked any recurring words in the reports with a yellow highlighter, trying to form an image of the victims in his mind’s eye.
The men were all Greenlandic and had lived in Block P. They were aged between thirty and forty years, and there was no mention of any unusual features. They were, he presumed, men who had grown up in Inuit villages and spent more time hunting and fishing than going to school. Nor was there anything unusual about the men’s height and chest measurements. They were smaller than your average Danish man, but that was to be expected.
Only the manner of the men’s deaths was remarkable. All four had been flayed and gutted from the groin to the breastbone, and their insides cut from their body with a sharp tool—an ulo, according to the police investigation. So the intestines hadn’t been ripped from their bodies, but cut free.
In the final report, which had been requested by a different police officer to the first three, several observations were listed. On closer examination, there was evidence that the last two victims had had a soft object stuffed into their mouths during the attacks. The earlier victims could not be examined for similar evidence as they had already been cremated. Further examination of the last two victims also suggested that the men had been gutted and had several of their internal organs removed while they were still alive. The skin, however, had definitely been flayed from their bodies after the intestines had been cut out.
His mobile buzzed and Matthew quickly answered it.
‘Sounds like there might be a witness to the killing on the ice cap,’ his editor said. ‘Seeing as you were out there, I thought you might be interested.’
‘What do you have in mind?’
‘I want you to find him and hear what he has to say. He’s a fisherman, and as far as I can gather he saw a man come ashore early this morning, covered in blood and carrying a black sack.’
‘And where will I find him?’
‘I believe he called the police while he was still at sea, but his boat will dock in about an hour. It’s down by the little harbour behind the public swimming pool. Could you check it out? Not many boats come in there, so you can’t miss him.’
Matthew rang off, got up and opened the balcony door while he lit a cigarette. A cool mist brushed his face and naked upper body before finding its way deep into his lungs. The fog came and went between the buildings.
He placed both hands on his stomach. The cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth. He frowned, then went inside to the kitchen, pulled out the top drawer and brought a chef’s knife back to the balcony. He closed his eyes and concentrated as he rested the tip of the knife just below his rib cage. Then he trailed the knife softly over his belly in one slow movement.
‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Have you gone completely mental?’
‘Shit,’ Matthew muttered and slipped the hand with the knife behind his back. The voice belonged to Malik. Matthew took the cigarette out of his mouth. ‘I was just trying something out,’ he called down towards the road, where Malik was staring up at him.
‘Seeing as you live in a country with the world’s highest suicide rate, could you not stand there wearing next to nothing and waving a knife around?’ Malik called back, craning his neck to get a better view of the second-floor balcony.
Matthew shook his head. ‘Sorry…Why don’t you come upstairs and I’ll tell you all about it?’
‘No, get yourself down here now. You’re coming with me. Some fishermen have found a body in the water out between the islands, and they think it’s been dead for quite some time.’
12
The two men drove to the Atlantic Port in Malik’s old Honda, which was in reasonable shape even if the exhaust fumes were practically black. Then again, the car didn’t have too many miles on it, as Malik only drove around Nuuk, and the short distance out to Qinngorput, where his girlfriend lived. If you wanted to go further than the rocky outskirts of Nuuk, you had to leave your car on the last patch of tarmac, ice or gravel and make your way on foot or by boat. No roads led out of Nuuk. No roads led into it. This applied to every town in Greenland. Nuuk was Nuuk, and the only thing surrounding the town and its sixteen thousand residents was mountains, sky or sea.
‘So do you know anything more about this body?’ Matthew asked as he got out of the car.
Malik took the key out of the ignition and shook his head. ‘No. Let’s go find out.’
Matthew reached a hand behind his neck, grabbed his jaw and wrenched it back until it cracked.
Malik grimaced. ‘That can’t be good for you.’
‘It loosens things up.’
‘Oh, crap! The fog is coming back already.’ Malik nodded towards the sea, where the fog had built up so densely that only the odd mountaintop could be made out. The sea had pretty much disappeared again.
‘It seems to roll in from nowhere,’ Matthew said.
Malik grinned. ‘It’s the sea breathing.’ He raised a hand to his chest and inhaled deeply. ‘In fifteen minutes, it might be completely clear again or the whole town could be invisible. It depends on her breathing.’
‘Who?’ Matthew said. ‘The sea?’
‘Yes, the mother of the sea.’
‘The same mother who’s pleased if you chop off your fingers so they can become seals?’
‘Yes,’ Malik said with a smile. ‘That’s one way of putting it, though that’s not really the point of the story. It’s more about how if you sacrifice something to nature, it comes back to you. In the myth you’re talking about, fingers come back as seals.’
‘So a hunter sacrifices his surplus to the sea—is that it?’
‘Not everyone does it, but yes, it’s always wise to sacrifice something you don’t need. It goes against our culture and our respect for all living things to let anything go to waste.’
‘Including intestines?’ Matthew ventured.
‘Yes. Say you kill a seal. You toss the intestines into the sea so the fish or the birds can eat them.’ Malik looked at Matthew with a puzzled expression. ‘But why would you ask that?’
‘Four men were killed here in Nuuk in the 1970s, and when they were found, their intestines had been dumped next to their bodies. Perhaps a Greenlander would have done it differently?’
‘I don’t know,’ Malik said. ‘It’
s always possible, I guess, but I’ve got no idea what it means when you kill people like that.’
Matthew stared at the grey tarmac. ‘Have you heard more about yesterday’s killing?’
‘Yes,’ Malik said. He fished out his cigarettes and offered one to Matthew in silence.
Matthew took a cigarette and lit it. ‘We don’t have to talk about it, if you don’t want to.’
‘It’s okay…He’d been gutted, we all saw that, but…’ Malik stopped and closed his eyes. ‘His intestines were actually missing.’
Matthew shuddered. ‘We may have a witness, but I don’t know much about him yet. My editor called to tell me just before you turned up.’ Matthew took a long drag on his cigarette and looked at Malik, hesitant. ‘Did you notice anything about his skin? Yesterday, out on the ice?’
‘What do you mean?’ Malik frowned.
‘Those men back in the 1970s had been flayed…It was just a thought.’
Malik shook his head. ‘That’s sick.’
The sound of a car diverted them from their grim thoughts, and a big dark-blue four-wheel drive pulled up next to Malik’s Honda. The police officer behind the wheel called something in Greenlandic through his open window. Malik replied, gesturing towards the fog across the sea a few times. The driver turned the engine off, and the two officers stepped out onto the quay. They greeted Malik and Matthew with a nod, and continued talking to Malik. One of them was Ottesen.
‘They say the boat will be here in a few minutes,’ Malik told Matthew, and beckoned him closer. ‘The fishermen are too scared to look inside the black bag they’ve found, so it might be a false alarm. It might just be the remains from a hunting trip. A hunter wanted to tip something into the sea, say, but accidentally dropped the whole bag. Anyway, the fishermen are a bit freaked out because they’re convinced it’s a dead man.’
‘Is it all right if we tag along?’
The Girl without Skin Page 5
