The Girl without Skin

by Mads Peder Nordbo

  ‘Fingers crossed.’ Leiff’s gaze followed Matthew’s down to the tiles. ‘Did you really not bring anything other than those sneakers?’

  Matthew shook his head. ‘I promise to get myself a pair of boots soon.’

  ‘Hi, guys.’ A tall, sturdy woman popped her head over the white-painted wrought-iron bannister. A long row of slanted windows in the vaulted ceiling cast so much light over the steps and the basin that the hall felt more like an atrium.

  ‘Hi,’ Leiff called out and waved to her once. He turned to Matthew. ‘This is my wife, Ivalo.’

  ‘I’m Matthew,’ Matthew said, sticking out his hand as they reached her.

  ‘And I’m Ivalo,’ she said, and showed them into her office. ‘Nice to meet you, given that I missed you when you came round for dinner. I’ve looked up the names Leiff sent me, and I have to say that there wasn’t much, but I found a few things. Do sit down.’ Her fingers tapped the keyboard. ‘It’s only recently that we’re starting to get a proper handle on what data we have here. It’s all thanks to a series of IT grants.’ She shook her head. ‘You won’t believe this, but before computerisation we had no real cross-referencing of basic information, so not only was it difficult for people to have their cases dealt with efficiently, it was also easy for people to disappear. Especially anyone whose details were still on paper. We didn’t bring the past with us when we went digital. However, all is not lost because the information is still in the archives. All you need is an old woman who knows where to look, and I’m that old woman.’

  Matthew found it difficult to judge Ivalo’s age, but thought she was probably around sixty. She was taller than Leiff and more robust. Not fat, just robust. Her hair was black and cut in a short, wavy style.

  ‘I found them all in the basement archives, but only one of them has made it to our new IT system. All the men died in ’73, and I can find absolutely no trace of Jakob Pedersen after that year, but as far as I recall he was a police officer and was regarded as deceased. Isn’t that right, Leiff?’

  ‘Yes, I believe so. He disappeared during the investigation into the killings, and when neither he nor his body was found, he was presumed dead. Murdered. As you know, the whole thing was very suspicious. Some people thought that he was the killer, others that the murderer had killed him.’ Leiff shrugged. ‘Whatever the truth, neither the murders nor Pedersen’s disappearance was ever solved, and nobody seems to have wanted to delve deeper into it until you came along.’

  Matthew was tempted to tell them about the notebook, but decided to keep the information to himself for a little longer.

  ‘It was pretty much the same when I started looking for the girls,’ Ivalo said, unprompted. ‘Two of them died of cancer when they were still in their early thirties, while one vanished without a trace in November 1973. The last girl also disappeared, but she turned up again. We have no information on her in the period from 1973 up until 2012, when she suddenly reappeared here in Nuuk, saying she had just moved here. She claims to have lived in a village one hundred and thirty kilometres south of here, but even so I still can’t find anything on her between 1973 and 2012. Like I said, it’s only recently that we have digitalised our basic data, and we still have many villages to add—maybe we’ll never get round to it. So she could easily have lived in some coastal village for all those years. She had no parents, as they died shortly before she herself went missing.’

  ‘They were killed,’ Leiff corrected her. ‘They were buried here in Nuuk.’

  ‘And the girl is in Nuuk now?’ Matthew was on the edge of his seat. ‘She’s alive?’

  ‘Yes—I’ve made a note of her address for you.’ She handed him a piece of paper.

  Paneeraq Poulsen, it said at the top. Matthew looked out of the window by Ivalo’s desk. The daughter of the fourth victim. The one with a heart next to her name in Jakob’s notebook. ‘Thank you so much. You’ve been a huge help.’ He hesitated. ‘Are you sure it’s the right person?’

  ‘Yes. I don’t believe there’s any doubt about that.’

  ‘Paneeraq,’ Matthew whispered to himself. She would be over fifty years old now, and no longer a little girl hiding under Jakob’s blankets with her sea urchin.

  Outside the windows, the weather had changed dramatically—more so in such a short space of time than any place Matthew had ever experienced. The sky had turned from blue to black, and the rain was sheeting down in dense, grey curtains.

  ‘What’s on your mind?’

  Leiff’s voice scattered Matthew’s thoughts.

  ‘Sorry, I…I…What did you just say?’

  ‘That you’ll get your feet wet in this weather.’

  ‘Yes—how did that happen? Only a minute ago it was sunny.’

  ‘The North Atlantic is more fickle than a newly married Greenlandic woman,’ Leiff chuckled.

  Ivalo looked at him sternly. ‘Watch it!’ She shook her head, then bent down to examine Matthew’s sneakers. ‘Are those your only shoes?’

  ‘Yes…I haven’t got round to buying anything else yet, but I’m sure I’ll be all right. I wear these all year round.’

  ‘I’m sure you do, my dear—in Denmark, but not in Greenland. You’ve no idea how quickly it can turn cold and wet here.’

  ‘Or how deep the snow can be,’ Leiff added.

  ‘What size are you?’ Ivalo was looking at her husband. ‘Leiff, you must have some boots in the basement? Let’s see if you have a pair that would fit Matthew.’

  Matthew looked at his sneakers. ‘I can just go and buy myself a pair in the Nuuk Centre, if it becomes necessary.’

  ‘It has just become necessary,’ Ivalo said. ‘But let me check our basement first. There’s no need to spend money on new ones, if Leiff has a pair that will fit you.’

  ‘Why don’t we drive home and take a look now?’ Leiff said, his voice brightening up. ‘Anyway, it’s time for lunch.’

  Matthew’s mobile buzzed in his pocket, and he quickly took it out. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said to no one in particular. ‘I’ve just got an email, and I was expecting—’ He ground to a halt. In his inbox was an email from jelly@hotmail.com, but there was no information about the sender other than a name at the bottom of the message.

  Meet me by Nipisa Friday evening at 10 o’clock. I won’t be in Nuuk until then. It’s about a notebook belonging to Jakob Pedersen, which you claim to have. I would like to see it. I haven’t heard his name for a long time. Regards Jørgen Emil Lyberth.

  The email had been sent only ten minutes ago.

  ‘Bad news?’ Leiff asked him.

  ‘No, it…Sorry, it just threw me.’

  ‘Was it work?’

  ‘No, it was someone I haven’t heard from in a long time, so it caught me off-guard. Never mind—it really doesn’t matter.’ He felt a shiver run down his spine.

  ‘Yes, that can give you a bit of a shock,’ Leiff said, smiling, while he took out a note and handed it to Matthew. ‘I left this on your desk today, but as you didn’t come into the office, I brought it with me instead.’ It was an address scribbled on a piece of paper, just like Ivalo’s note, and below it the words: I think your father lived with this woman for a long time.

  ‘Eh?’ Matthew burst out. ‘Are you serious? He…I…’

  ‘Give it a try,’ Leiff went on. ‘It’s just an address, but you never know.’

  41

  Less than thirty minutes later Matthew was dropped off outside his building with two pairs of boots in a bag. A pair made from black leather and a pair of blue Sorels that had never been worn. Leiff continued to the office to let them know that Matthew would be working from home on his story about the information they had unearthed from the Town Hall archives. This was technically true, but the moment Matthew got in, he put on the Sorel boots and went straight to Tupaarnaq’s apartment. The addresses on the two pieces of paper were burning a hole in his pocket, but they could wait. Or they could wait more than Tupaarnaq and the recently deceased Lyberth, who was apparently still s
ending emails.

  Rather than walk back through the town, around Tele-Posthuset and down Samuel Kleinschmidtip Aqqutaa, he took the footpath behind the blue community hall and emerged close to Lyngby-Tårbæksvej, which ran past a large area of low, white apartment blocks before reaching Block 17.

  The weather was still bad, and he soon felt the water penetrating every opening in his clothing. He wasn’t even halfway there by the time his jacket and trousers were soaked. Only his feet in his new boots remained dry.

  He could see the Atlantic Ocean most of the way, but it was grey and hazy due to the dense rain that fell between the houses from moisture-rich, foggy clouds. The water soaked his head and dripped from his hair and nose.

  It was only one o’clock in the afternoon, but the cloud cover over Nuuk was so thick that it felt more like early evening. Water swept in from all sides. The wind tossed the fog and the water around. It tore at his jacket and he had to lean into the gusts so as not to be knocked over.

  The rain and the wind also tore at the damaged doors and howled up the stairwell leading to Tupaarnaq’s apartment. On the first floor, where some of the glass in the door to the gallery was missing, there were puddles of water on the floor. There was a heavy, clammy smell. Like damp cardboard, or wet mortar.

  The fingers of his right hand closed around the cold steel handle on the door to Tupaarnaq’s apartment. The handle responded. It moved down with a quiet, light click as the locking mechanism let go of the doorframe.

  Matthew’s heart was pounding. His blood was roaring, swelling the veins under the skin on his hands and arms. He swallowed a couple of times and forced himself to slow his breathing.

  The hallway was bleak. As empty as if no one had ever lived in this place. On either side of him were two closed doors, while the middle door was open. It was from there that the sparse light entered the small space. He closed the front door behind him, almost without making a noise, and listened for any sounds. The wind was still howling, but not as crazily as out in the stairwell.

  He wanted to leave. Reverse out of the door. Walk backwards all the way down the stairs and far, far away.

  The apartment smelled of sewage. Sewage and damp. He closed his eyes and listened. He stood very still, taking deep breaths. It was so quiet. So empty. He couldn’t imagine how anyone else but him could be here. And certainly not a dead body. Nor could he smell death. Death smelled differently. It was dry. Medicinal. Not rotting. It is an indeterminate smell seeping out of every pore only minutes after the blood has stopped circulating. Colour fades from the skin. Everything turns grey. Then the smell arrives. He had seen it with Tine in the wrecked car. Felt it in the ambulance. He was getting that sensation now.

  A door slammed in the stairwell and he almost jumped out of his skin. He looked over his shoulder in order to see the front door. The sound of stomping boots on the stairs grew louder, then rapidly faded. Matthew turned back towards the light in the living room and entered it.

  Without thinking, he took out a cigarette from the packet in his jeans pocket and lit it. The warm smoke slipped deep into his lungs. ‘Oh, shit,’ he whispered, and took another drag so deep that he ended up coughing up the smoke.

  Lyberth was positioned like a Christ figure, with a big nail bashed through each palm. His palms were facing upwards and were filled with dark, congealed blood. The flesh around his nails was frayed.

  He had been a short, compact man with stumpy legs and a fat belly. Now he had been gutted. His skin, fat and flesh had been pulled aside and nailed to the floor so that his belly opened up like a crater. Inside, only the pale bones and the muddy, dark flesh remained. Everything else was gone. A coagulating brown lake surrounded the body. But no intestines. When Tupaarnaq had told him about the dead Lyberth on her floor, his abdomen hadn’t been nailed to the wooden floorboards; she had described how the dead man’s intestines were lying around him. Nor had she said anything about there being a sock in his mouth or a piece of fabric draped over his eyes. She had said that his mouth had been smeared in blood and saliva, and the blood vessels in his eyes had burst.

  A flimsy fraying cloth was flapping outside on the balcony. It had probably hung there in all kinds of weather for years. The light played with the holes torn in the sun-bleached fabric and cast fleeting shadows and patterns across the wooden floor around Lyberth. Apart from the shadows, there was nothing in the living room. This apartment stood empty, as did so many others in these blocks, which had been condemned due to mould.

  Suddenly Matthew caught a glimpse of a face on the balcony. For the second time he nearly jumped out of his skin, and he ducked immediately. The face was gone as quickly as it had appeared, and the flapping curtain had obscured every recognisable feature in the brief second the face had been visible.

  Matthew turned and stared at the front door. He knew that the balcony reached as far as the kitchen door, and that it was possible to reach the hall that connected the living room and the front door through the kitchen.

  His eyes swept across Lyberth’s bloated and emptied abdomen.

  Footsteps in the kitchen caused him to look up. They were rapid. Running feet. His heart beat wildly in his chest.

  ‘Hello?’ he called, and cleared his throat. ‘Tupaarnaq?’

  The front door slammed. Matthew ran towards the noise. The hall was empty. The kitchen was empty. He ran outside to the gallery. Somewhere below him he could hear footsteps jumping down the stairs.

  He bent down and picked up a damp cloth lying on the gallery floor, then went back to Tupaarnaq’s apartment, where he opened the door he guessed led to the bathroom. He dropped his cigarette butt into the toilet bowl and lit another one. Then he tore off a large wad of toilet paper from the roll and started walking through the apartment and wiping off any possible fingerprints. Every handle, door surface, kitchen cupboard. Including Lyberth’s skin. He looked in every cupboard in every room, but found no trace of Tupaarnaq. Not one. Finally, he flushed the cigarette butts, the toilet paper and the cloth down the toilet.

  On his way out of the apartment block, he paused on the first floor and took out his mobile to reread the email from jelly@hotmail. com. Then he pressed reply, and started typing with one finger:

  Deal. We will meet as you suggest, Friday night. I’ll bring the notebook.

  Next he opened a web browser and went to jubii.dk, where he created a new account and wrote:

  Jørgen Emil Lyberth lies murdered on the second floor in Block 17, stairwell J, behind the door with the words ‘abandon hope all ye who enter here’.

  As soon as he had sent the email to Nuuk Police, he deleted the account.

  At the bottom of the stairwell, a man was sitting up against the wall on piles of junk mail and old newspapers. He looked to be in his mid-fifties, but it was hard to tell as he was wrapped in several layers of filthy clothing, and his face was grimy and weather-beaten.

  ‘Piss off home to Denmark,’ the man grunted as Matthew went past. His eyes followed the cigarette on its way to Matthew’s mouth. ‘Give us one,’ he said.

  Matthew hesitated and took another drag. The man hadn’t been here when he arrived. Then he took out his cigarette packet and gave it to him. ‘You can have all of them, but if anyone asks, I was never here—understand?’

  The man nodded as he pushed open the packet. Fifteen cigarettes were left in it.

  ‘Did you see someone run past just now? A woman, possibly? No hair?’

  The man on the floor shook his head as he took out a cigarette. ‘I won’t tell anyone.’

  Matthew’s mobile buzzed in his pocket. He nodded to the man and pushed open the door. ‘Yes?’

  ‘It’s Tupaarnaq. Can you pick me up from the police station?’

  ‘Yes…Pick you up? Why?’

  ‘The idiots have brought me in again. They just don’t get it, morons.’

  Matthew looked up across Block 17. ‘Why have they arrested you?’

  ‘I can’t be bothered to explain that now.
So are you coming or what? They’ll let me go as long as someone agrees to keep an eye on me…and I don’t know anyone else.’

  42

  Ottesen was the first person Matthew met at the police station. The officer smiled as he shook his head. ‘I get where you’re coming from, Matt Cave, but be careful. She’s a she-wolf.’

  ‘A she-wolf?’ Matthew echoed.

  ‘She’s a wild one. I would watch my back if I were you.’ Ottesen hesitated and tilted his head. ‘It was her who bit Ulrik the first time we arrested her.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘We were chasing her across the rocks…she runs like an arctic hare. Anyway, we reached the edge of the rocks, and I guess the drop was too steep so she turned around and slumped to her knees…just like one of those Olympic sprinters. And when Ulrik tried to grab her, she lunged at him with such force that they rolled a fair way down the rocks, and then she bit him. We heard them both snarling like wild animals.’

  Matthew rubbed his upper lip. ‘So what has she done this time?’

  ‘She beat up a man behind Brugseni. She wanted us to arrest him because she had seen him groping his daughter, but there were no other witnesses and the girl clammed up. In the end we had no choice but to bring Tupaarnaq in so that she could calm down. We never intended to keep her very long.’ He patted Matthew on the shoulder. ‘Are you getting somewhere with your story?’

  ‘I’ve been out and about looking for information. I think I might be close to finding a witness. Fingers crossed.’

  ‘A witness? I hope you’ll keep me in the loop.’

  Matthew nodded. ‘When I asked you about the eight-millimetre films and the 1973 case…are you absolutely sure you’ve never seen any film reels here at the station?’

  ‘Totally,’ Ottesen said. ‘Now, I can’t know what happened forty years ago, obviously, but I’ve never heard about any films, and I’m sure we haven’t got them now.’