The Girl without Skin

by Mads Peder Nordbo

  He let the note slip from his hand and put the second reel on the projector. He drained his glass of Johnnie Walker in two big gulps and refilled it.

  The film crackled and clicked like the first one. It was the same room. Tinfoil walls and plywood flooring. The naked light bulb dividing up the time. Najak curled up in a corner with her woolly hat pressed against her mouth. Her hair was more tangled and messier than in the first film. Her tights were stained with dirt.

  Jakob jumped when the camera suddenly came to life. It moved towards the huddling girl. The light disappeared. Came back. Disappeared. She flinched even more. Shaking. The camera was very close to her now, and a hand reached out and snatched the hat from her.

  Jakob jumped up, swiping the glass so hard from the armrest that it smashed against the wall.

  Her mouth opened and it looked as if she was screaming. She buried her face in her hands. Her short fingers were stiff and quivering. Her lips sucked the skin on one hand. The film ended.

  Jakob ran out into the hall and tore open his front door. ‘I’m going to bloody well kill you all!’ he roared.

  Everything was quiet around the house. The frozen air settled around him. The night was black. The windows in all the houses were black. He looked over to where the shadow who had thrown the stone had come from. ‘I’m going to bloody well kill you all,’ he vowed quietly.

  35

  GODTHÅB, 16 NOVEMBER 1973

  The frost intensified dramatically after the last hint of autumn warmth had soaked the town in slush for half a day. The cold returned with a vengeance and everything froze, even the sea around the more sheltered parts of the headland, and that meant it was a severe frost, because the morning and evening tides did their best to break up the ice and allow the moon to continue gazing at its own reflection in the black sea. And yet it turned to ice. Large, white sheets formed by layers of trapped, turquoise seawater.

  The frozen water gained a foothold even in the centre of town, climbing up and down the buildings. In some places the icicles were so thick that not even a man could get his arms round them. The snow on the square between Hotel Godthåb, the police station and Brugseni was shovelled into high piles by a rusting yellow bulldozer, leaving the square itself open and clear.

  Jakob took a sip of his coffee. He stared absent-mindedly at the black liquid. If he had trusted Mortensen more, he would have shown him the films, but he didn’t dare run the risk. The threats in the notes and the official indifference towards Najak made him fear that it would do her more harm than good, were he to open his mouth. She was alive for now, he kept telling himself. He didn’t know where she was. He didn’t know who she was with. But if he continued investigating the case—discreetly—he would catch a break eventually.

  His eyes moved from his coffee across the many papers and files on his desk and out through the window, where his thoughts slipped past the orange supermarket walls and up towards the white peak of Store Malene and Hjortetakken’s stubby top. His gaze stopped abruptly and came crashing down to earth by the piles of snow near his window. He shifted so he could see past the mother-in-law’s tongue on the windowsill.

  There was a small girl out on the square. All alone. Well hidden in a shabby, dark green coat with a hood and a black fur collar. On her back she had a black and orange satchel. Her hands were bare and as red as her cheeks, which he could just make out inside the hood.

  ‘Paneeraq,’ he whispered to himself, then he turned in his office chair to look at the others in the room. He wished that Karlo had been here, but he was on a job down by the harbour and it would take time to get hold of him. He looked back at the girl. She couldn’t just stand there. Why was she standing there? He knew that the other officers would complain if he brought her in, but he couldn’t leave her outside all on her own.

  He took a deep breath and got up from his desk without looking at the others.

  ‘So, Pedersen,’ Benno called out, ‘are you off to see Lisbeth?’

  Storm leered like an idiot. ‘Get me a cup as well, will you?’

  ‘It’s…’ Jakob pushed open the door to the reception area. ‘There’s a little girl outside in the cold. I think she wants to talk to me.’ The door closed behind him, and he stopped talking. He didn’t give a damn about them. About any of them. Except for Karlo. Karlo was the only Greenlandic police officer there, and the only one he could trust when a case got to him.

  ‘Paneeraq,’ he called out, even as he walked down the front steps. The cold crept through the fibres of his knitted jumper. ‘Paneeraq, what are you doing out here in the cold?’ He looked at her red fingers. ‘Why don’t you come inside for a bit?’

  She didn’t move. She just stood there. Like a pillar of stone.

  He bent down and looked at her face inside the fur-lined hood. ‘It’s far too cold for you to be out here, sweetheart.’

  ‘I don’t want to go home,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Come inside with me,’ Jakob said again. ‘And I’ll see what I can do about it.’ He struggled to force the last words up through his throat. What if there was nothing he could do for her? What if he had to send her home, even though she had asked him for help? ‘We’ll work something out—you come inside with me.’

  He didn’t dare touch her, so he sufficed by pointing towards the door. ‘Lisbeth will get you some hot chocolate,’ he said. There was no way the child could be in the office with the other officers when Karlo wasn’t there, Jakob had already decided. Benno’s frequent derogatory remarks about Greenlanders made Jakob sick.

  Paneeraq didn’t say anything else, but she took some small, tentative steps towards the door.

  Jakob smiled. Not on the inside, but to her. Then he smiled imploringly at Lisbeth as he explained that Paneeraq had got very cold and needed a cup of hot chocolate. He smiled when Lisbeth got up to look after Paneeraq with a maternal gaze and the promise of yummy hot chocolate. And he smiled as he walked through the door of the chief of police, closed it behind him and accepted being enveloped in the stench of cigars that lingered in the room.

  He continued to smile as he told Mortensen about Paneeraq. He still didn’t tell him about the films and Najak. What if her abductors carried out their threat and killed the girl because of him? He only allowed himself to talk about Paneeraq. Who she was. Her father. His well-founded suspicion that she was a victim of incest. Her limping. Her cry for help outside in the cold. He even smiled as Mortensen started getting het up, but only because his smile was so fixed at this point that he had no idea it was still plastered across his face.

  ‘This case,’ Mortensen practically shouted. ‘Dammit, Pedersen, as if we didn’t have enough problems with the gutted men, and now you come here…You have to drive the girl home. We can’t keep her here, can we? What the hell were you thinking?’

  Jakob rubbed the scab on his forehead. ‘But, sir, that child is probably being raped every day. We can’t just turn a blind eye. There must be something we can do for her. We can’t let her down now that she has finally plucked up the courage to come here. She’s just a little girl, for God’s sake! If we had removed Najak, then she wouldn’t have… vanished into thin air.’ He stared down at his shoes.

  ‘That’s what life is like up here, Pedersen. You can feel sorry for them, but that’s all. There’s nothing we can do. It goes too deep. Drive her home.’

  ‘Is this a police station?’ Jakob exploded. The blood was boiling in his veins. ‘Or a slaughterhouse?’

  ‘That’s enough!’ Mortensen screamed so loudly that his high-pitched voice slipped into a falsetto shriek. ‘Have you completely lost your mind? You solve your murders and leave the politics to the rest of us.’

  ‘I’m trying to prevent murders!’ Jakob said, still shouting.

  ‘Are you really? Are you sure about that? You’re the one stomping around a slaughterhouse. After all, the murdered men are all from your so-called school survey. Eh? You drive that girl back to her parents, who are probably out of their minds
with worry, and don’t you dare go near anything that involves children from now on. If I hear another word about those girls, I’ll suspend you immediately and put you on the first flight back to Denmark. Do you understand?’

  Jakob stared briefly at the small, balding man. Then he turned on his heel without saying a word. He disappeared down the corridor and went out into the reception area, where Paneeraq had just finished her hot chocolate and had pushed back her hood, so her face was visible. Her eyes were black and round. Her cheeks still red. Her hair dark, smooth and short. She smiled cautiously to Lisbeth, who had given her the hot chocolate, and handed the cup back to her. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered politely.

  ‘I’ve found a place where you can stay for a little while,’ Jakob said to her, and in response got the same anxious smile from the girl that Lisbeth had received.

  Lisbeth took his hand gently and gave it squeeze, nodding lightly. Then she let go.

  He fetched his coat, his files and the notebook from his desk and took Paneeraq with him as he left the police station. There was no help to be had there, but even so, there was no way that girl was going home to her father.

  36

  The heating was turned up in the small living room, where an aroma of fried sausages and boiling potatoes had spread and now lay like an enticing, transparent quilt around the girl on the black sofa at the far end of the room. She was holding her maths exercise book. Her open satchel lay by her side. Jakob had spent more than two hours helping her get started on her homework, and when she finally understood it, she had continued doing sums in the book. Jakob had wondered whether they shouldn’t move on to another subject, but in a strange way it seemed as if the logic and repetition of maths were absolutely the right thing to calm their thoughts.

  Paneeraq had decided that they should have sausages for dinner. He had asked her what she would like, and after a long pause she had replied: Sausages.

  The curtains were closed. Outside, the dark had settled around the house and all of the town, and Jakob had decided to draw all the curtains so that no one could look in. He had even locked the front door, something he rarely did. After the murders and the stone with the threat, security had become a priority—and now, with the girl here, it was crucial.

  The sausages sizzled in the frying pan. The potatoes were nearly ready. It wasn’t often that he cooked a proper hot meal, but he had been lucky today and got fresh sausages in the supermarket.

  From the kitchen he could see Paneeraq on the sofa. She wasn’t very tall—about one metre twenty would be his guess. Shorter, perhaps. She had tied back her short hair with an elastic band she had found in his kitchen. He smiled to himself at the memory. She wore a dress that reached just below her knees, where a pair of thick yellow stockings took over. There were polka dots on her dress. Big dots in different colours. The dress was buttoned right up to her neck and had a Peter Pan collar.

  She was too short to sit the way she did. Her feet couldn’t reach the floor, but stuck out into the air under the coffee table. Her eyes were deep into the maths book. One hand held the book, while the other controlled the pencil from sum to sum. Jakob was delighted to see her working. She was a bright child, and he was surprised at how swiftly she had picked up the logic behind her homework.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ he asked into the air.

  She looked up from her homework and nodded. He could feel her eyes on him. They were filled with something that simultaneously contained calm and scepticism. Distance and hope.

  He couldn’t possibly imagine how her day would normally have unfolded. Nor did he want to. He wanted to protect his thoughts from the images that invariably followed. Then he reproached himself for being so sensitive. What right did he have to shield himself from what this little girl had to subject her body and her mind to so often? Her thoughts must be plagued by nightmares, day and night. Jakob felt powerless and guilty. His hatred for her father knew no bounds. No limitations. As she sat there in her dress, doing her homework, it was absolutely beyond him that an adult would ever want to hurt her.

  ‘I’ll put two sausages on your plate,’ he went on, giving his attention back to the frying pan. He turned off the stove, drained the potatoes and added some cream to the fat in the frying pan. ‘Do you fancy eating your dinner on the sofa?’

  She shrugged, and he could tell from her eyes that she didn’t know what to say.

  ‘Yes, let’s eat there,’ he said, answering his own question. ‘Would you like me to cut up your food for you?’

  She shrugged again.

  ‘Does your mum cut up your food?’

  The girl looked at him quizzically. A small frown appeared on the fine skin on her forehead. ‘Not often,’ she said.

  ‘Do you like it when your mum cuts your food into bite-size pieces?’

  Her frown grew deeper and her eyes widened.

  ‘I mean, in small bits?’ he explained.

  The wrinkle disappeared as she nodded quickly.

  ‘Then I’ll cut it up for you,’ Jakob said with a smile, and plated the food.

  He covered her dress with a clean tea towel, put the plate on top of it and handed her a fork. His mother would have turned in her grave, had she seen it, but he had been eating like this for a long time now. Besides, he thought the girl might feel safer if she was allowed to stay on the sofa, rather than having to sit at the dining table with him. On the sofa she had a small spot where she had sat for several hours with her homework and been left alone.

  She ate slowly. Carefully and tentatively. As if each bite needed examining before it could be swallowed. He tried eating at her pace, so she wouldn’t feel out of place, but found it hard because his tongue couldn’t wait so long before swallowing once it had tasted the food.

  Halfway through the meal she looked up. ‘Will I be sleeping here?’

  He hesitated and tried to read the expression in her eyes. ‘Yes—if you’d like to?’

  She looked down at her plate and skewered a piece of potato. ‘I would like to. You are nice and you help me.’

  ‘You can sleep in the bedroom,’ he said. ‘In the big bed. I’ll be sleeping here in the living room, so you’ll be all on your own in there, but if you want anything, just give me a shout. I can easily hear you.’

  Jakob knew very well that the situation wasn’t sustainable. Paneeraq couldn’t continue to stay with him. It was Lisbeth who had suggested that he bring her home when he’d asked her advice, and she had pointed out how odd it was that Paneeraq wasn’t scared of him, given that he was a man. Many girls here have a tough father because we’ve pretty much always lived in a tough culture, surrounded by a tough environment. Perhaps she’s just glad to have met a nice man. It’s good for her to experience that. Why don’t you take her home so that she can calm down and have a nice evening where she’s treated well? But be careful—if she gets a taste for it, she won’t want to go home. I’ve seen that happen so many times. She had said the latter with a glint in her eye. I found it hard enough to go home myself.

  He had asked Lisbeth if she would like to join them, but she was hosting a kaffemik party for her sister. It’ll probably do you good as well, she had said, and now Paneeraq was ensconced in the middle of his sofa.

  37

  Jakob flicked through his book on rocks and fossils. He had decided that Paneeraq might like a bedtime story, and now she was snuggled up under the big, airy quilt in his bed, while he perched on the edge with his book.

  The idea of reading aloud to her was a good one, but he had forgotten that his library contained mostly non-fiction and police magazines—and while educating the young about the value of police work mattered greatly to him, it probably didn’t appeal to an eleven-year-old girl. He had finally settled on his geology book, but was only halfway through Igaliku sandstone in the sedimentary rock chapter when he was forced to concede that it might not be of interest to the little girl either.

  He slammed shut the book. ‘This is really boring, ilaa?’
<
br />   She nodded and smiled feebly.

  ‘I don’t mind you saying so,’ he said. ‘In this house you can say whatever you like, and even I have to admit that rocks can be a bit dull.’

  Her smile widened. She had pulled up the big, white quilt so far that her face was only visible above her nose.

  ‘Wait here,’ he said. ‘I’ll just get something from the living room.’

  He returned with a fossilised sea urchin and the shell of a more recent sea urchin. He placed them both on the mattress next to her pillow so she could see them.

  ‘These are both sea urchins,’ he said, giving each of them a little push. ‘One became fossilised, while the other is like a seashell. The sea urchin itself was probably eaten by a seagull or a raven in the summer.’

  Paneeraq looked curiously at the two objects on the mattress. The shell was lying on its back, so it was easy to see that the two objects were very similar. The furrow on her brow reappeared, and she looked up at Jakob.

  ‘You’re allowed to touch them,’ he said, nodding towards the fossil and the shell.

  Her small fingers closed around first the fossil, and then more delicately around the shell. She turned them over and studied their backs and their stomachs. The fossil was solid, the shell hollow and delicate. ‘How did it turn into a stone?’

  ‘It was probably buried in the mud of a big ocean more than three hundred million years ago, and it was slowly fossilised and turned into flint stone. Its shell has long since disappeared, so what you’re looking at is the soft animal inside the shell.’