‘Okay,’ Matthew said. His gaze wandered past Ottesen without ending up anywhere.
‘Are you all right?’
Matthew shook his head lightly. ‘Yes, yes.’
‘Good. I’ll go and get the she-wolf,’ Ottesen said with another smile, and he disappeared through the door to the corridor where Matthew and Malik had met with him earlier.
Matthew could hear her footsteps in the corridor before the door was even opened. Angry footsteps attacking the floor.
‘She’s all yours,’ Ottesen said with a friendly sweep of his arm towards the double doors.
‘I’m not anyone’s,’ Tupaarnaq snarled. ‘Can I go now?’
‘Yes,’ Ottesen said. ‘Absolutely, but a word of friendly advice: it’s a short road back to prison for someone who has only just been released.’
She eyeballed him until he looked away.
Tupaarnaq shoved Matthew aside and pushed open the glass door so hard it banged against the porch outside.
Matthew looked wearily at Ottesen, then traipsed after the incandescent woman, who was already well ahead of him. ‘Where are you going?’ he called out to her.
‘To talk to a man.’
‘About what?’
‘That’s none of your business.’
‘I went to take a look at Lyberth.’
‘Idiot. Why?’
‘He can’t just lie there, and they haven’t found him yet.’
‘I’d guessed as much, you halfwit, or those morons at the station would never have let me go.’
‘I’ve emailed the police to tell them where he is.’
‘You really are an idiot.’ She stopped for a moment and slapped his forehead hard with the palm of her hand. ‘What if they had found him while I was still in custody? Eh? You really don’t think things through, do you, caveman?’
‘How was I to know you’d beaten someone up? I thought we had agreed to keep a low profile.’
‘And you think emailing the police telling them that their venerated statesman and major pervert lies murdered in my apartment is keeping a low profile?’ She slapped Matthew’s forehead another three times. ‘I’ve just spent twelve years in prison for killing some other sick bastard who couldn’t keep his disgusting dick in his pants, for fuck’s sake.’ She spun around and continued her furious march towards the low housing blocks in the distance.
Someone had written ‘Fuck the state’ with green spray paint next to the door they went through. She continued up the stairs. Her strides were so long that she took the steps two at a time. She stopped on the second floor and checked the name on the letterbox before she started banging on the door.
‘How did you know his name?’ Matthew wheezed.
‘The other officer who attended mentioned it, and I bet there aren’t many men called Sakkak Biilmann living around here.’
Matthew didn’t have time to say anything else before the door was opened.
‘Is Sakkak in?’ Tupaarnaq demanded to know.
The short woman who had appeared in the doorway nodded quietly, then looked anxiously up and down Tupaarnaq’s tattooed arms, where the two skulls snarled at her.
‘Good,’ Tupaarnaq hissed and pushed the woman aside.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Matthew exclaimed and grabbed the woman, who was about to fall over.
‘What does she want from us?’ the woman whispered.
Matthew shook his head. ‘Not much, I hope. Did your husband go into town with your daughter today?’
The woman nodded. ‘Yes, and he was angry when he got home because some drunken thugs had pushed him into a ditch.’
Matthew could hear furniture being upended in the next room. He let go of the woman and rushed inside. Tupaarnaq had knocked over Sakkak Biilmann, who was lying on the floor beneath her, shrieking. She had a firm grip on his throat with one hand and was punching him with the other. His face glowed red from the beating and the lack of oxygen. Matthew had no idea what the man on the floor was saying, but he could tell from his panic that he was struggling for air.
‘If you ever touch your daughter again,’ Tupaarnaq screamed at him, ‘I’ll come back and kill you. And that’s not an idle threat. I’ll be watching you. Every day. One wrong move and you’re dead. Got it?’
The man yelped, but didn’t say anything.
Her hand reached across to his groin and gripped his testicles through his trousers. She squeezed them so hard that his yelp turned into the howl of a dying animal. Matthew watched her fingers tighten ever more. The man continued to scream, and then started to cry. Snot flowed from his nose as he whined and squirmed. She jerked her hand violently from side to side before getting up.
Whimpering, the man coiled into a foetal position. He was trembling as he rocked himself back and forth.
‘Touch her again,’ Tupaarnaq hissed, kicking his ribs hard with her booted foot, ‘and you’re a dead man, you piece of shit.’
43
Outside the apartment block, Matthew stopped and looked around. ‘What’s this place called?’
‘You mean the area?’
‘Yes.’
‘Radiofjeldet, I believe.’
Matthew took out Leiff’s note and handed it to her. ‘Then we’re not far from this woman.’
‘What about her?’
‘Someone from work gave me this address. He thinks my father used to live with her.’
‘Your father?’
Matthew shrugged. ‘He disappeared when I was four years old. My mother and I never heard from him again. Someone from the paper offered to look into it, and earlier today he gave me this address.’
‘But why on earth would your father be in Nuuk?’
‘He was stationed at the Thule air base. That was where my mother met him.’ Matthew looked down at the paving slabs. ‘I was actually born in Thule, as it happens.’
‘You’re kidding me?’ Tupaarnaq nudged his shoulder. ‘You’re made in Greenland? Shut up! You’re a dark horse.’
He returned her smile cautiously. ‘I was thinking of going to see her.’
‘And so you should.’ Her brow furrowed. ‘That is, if you can control…what’s going on inside.’
Matthew nodded distantly. ‘I stopped being angry when… nothing mattered. Including him.’
‘Do you want to see him—if he’s still alive?’
‘Yes…I’m just not sure if I want him back in my life after all these years.’
‘You have to go see her,’ Tupaarnaq said, looking up at the sky. ‘I hate men. I hate fathers. But that’s just me.’ She let out a quick sigh. ‘In ten years you’ll hate yourself if you don’t knock on that door, now that you know it’s there.’ She patted his shoulder. ‘I’ll catch you later. It’s only two blocks from here.’
He watched her back as she disappeared down the path. The black boots. The black combat trousers. The dark jumper. At the end of the path she gestured with her right arm towards the next apartment block, while she herself turned left without looking back. Matthew shook his head. He hadn’t kept his promise to Ottesen to keep an eye on Tupaarnaq very long.
Soon Matthew was walking across the rocks between the buildings, and before long he was standing outside the stairwell where Else Kreutzmann lived.
He had only knocked twice when the brown door opened. A petite woman peered out. She had salt-and-pepper hair and wore spectacles with oval lenses. She looked Matthew up and down before her eyes settled on his face. ‘Yes?’
‘Are you Else Kreutzmann?’
‘Yes.’
‘I got your name from a friend.’ Matthew shook his head. ‘Forgive me. My name is Matthew Cave, I work for Sermitsiaq and I live here in Nuuk. I’ve been told you might know my father?’
Else looked at him. ‘Your name is Cave?’
Matthew nodded. ‘Yes. Matthew Cave. My father’s name was Thomas Cave, but I haven’t seen him since I was four years old.’
‘You had better come in,’ she said with a weary sigh, and turned aro
und.
Matthew followed her through a narrow passage and into a rectangular kitchen with a small table and two chairs.
‘Can I get you anything?’ she said, looking across the kitchen table, which, apart from some plastic tubs, a knife block and a microwave oven, was empty.
He shook his head. ‘No, thank you, but it’s kind of you to offer. I hope you don’t mind me coming here. I thought he might be here as well—Tom, I mean.’
She found a tin from a tall cupboard, put it on the table, pushed open the lid and took out a biscuit. ‘No, he’s not here, and it’s been a very long time since I last saw him.’
Matthew looked down at the smooth white tabletop.
‘He never mentioned a son,’ she went on. ‘Not once during the almost ten years I knew him…Have a biscuit.’
‘He was stationed at the Thule air base,’ Matthew said. ‘He was a soldier. We lived there until I was four years old, then my mother and I moved to Denmark. The plan was that he would follow us.’
‘That sounds just like him.’ She looked into Matthew’s eyes. ‘Not that I had any doubts. When I opened the door, I knew immediately.’
Matthew smiled. ‘The eye?’
She nodded. ‘Yes. There’s no doubt that the two of you are related.’
Matthew looked away again. ‘The last time I saw him was in 1990.’
‘That was when he came to Nuuk,’ Else said. ‘I knew him for almost ten years, then he disappeared. I’m sorry he never got in touch with you. I didn’t realise he had another family.’
‘That’s okay.’
‘He was always running away from something, so perhaps it should have crossed my mind. His invisibility.’
‘What do you mean?’
She sighed as she helped herself to another biscuit. ‘He was hiding from the army…the US Army. I don’t know why, but he was certainly hiding, always working under a false name. He never told the authorities his address.’
‘What did he do for a living?’
‘Well, while he was here in Nuuk, it was mostly cash-in-hand jobs. Sometimes it would be carpentry, other times he would work on the trawlers. But he made good money, so that was never a problem. He was strong and a hard worker.’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t know what he did when he was in the army, but it troubled him—often he’d be in a world of his own.’ She looked at Matthew. ‘Then again, he could have been thinking about you. I don’t know.’
‘But he never mentioned me? Or my mother?’
‘I genuinely don’t think I’m wrong when I tell you that I never heard him utter a word about the time before I met him.’ She glanced at her watch and then at Matthew. ‘I’m sorry, but I need to be somewhere. I was just getting ready to go out when you knocked.’
Matthew leapt up from his chair. ‘Yes, I need to get going too. I…I was just curious.’
Else looked at him and ran a tired hand across her face. ‘Hold on.’ She turned around and removed a picture from the fridge door. ‘This is my daughter, Arnaq,’ she said, passing the picture to Matthew.
He took it and studied the young girl. She seemed taller than her mother, and with hair a little lighter.
‘We had her in ’98, Tom and I. He left us two years later.’
Matthew closed his eyes. He could feel icy shivers running up and down his arms and his back.
‘She’s at school in Denmark, but if you want me to I can tell you more about her.’
Matthew slumped. His throat felt constricted and closed.
‘Give me your number, if you like,’ Else continued. ‘And we’ll see.’
Matthew nodded.
SHATTERED LIFE
44
GODTHÅB, 17 NOVEMBER 1973
‘Are you awake?’ Jakob asked as he knocked softly on the bedroom door. He gave the door a light push and peered inside.
Paneeraq pulled the quilt over her head.
‘I’ve fried you an egg,’ he went on. ‘If you come into the living room, you can eat your breakfast there. There’s also yoghurt and apple juice.’
He watched her peek out of the small crack between the quilt and the mattress.
‘Ah well,’ he said in a loud voice, retreating. ‘It doesn’t look like she’s here. I think I’ll go to the kitchen to get some cutlery, and we’ll just have to see if a girl drops out of the sky meanwhile.’
Back in the kitchen he could hear Paneeraq dash through the living room and over to the sofa. The sound of quick footsteps and a big quilt being dragged across the floor.
‘Good heavens,’ he exclaimed in mock surprise when he came back from the kitchen. ‘Did that quilt crawl in here all by itself?’
The quilt giggled.
‘I wonder,’ he went on in a pensive tone of voice, ‘if quilts like fried eggs and rye bread, or whether they just drink juice? I’ve never seen a quilt with a mouth, and I don’t think I really would want to, because it would be difficult to sleep if you’re worried about your quilt nibbling at your toes.’
A head appeared. Two black eyes surrounded by bed hair.
‘Oh no, it’s a troll!’ Jakob shrieked.
Her eyes widened.
He narrowed his eyes and inspected her closely. ‘Aha! It’s you, Paneeraq. Phew, you had me worried for a moment.’
She held out her hand and opened it so that he could see the fossil.
‘And the sea urchin. Are the two of you hungry?’
She nodded.
‘Then make your way to the table and eat your breakfast. I’ve read somewhere that fossilised sea urchins absolutely love fried eggs.’
She scrunched up her nose and looked sceptically at her fossil, but then she put it on her plate next to the rye bread and the fried egg.
They couldn’t see out of the windows, which were completely covered by the snow that had drifted up against the house overnight. Jakob could hear the wind still raging and tearing at everything.
‘I think we’re snowed in,’ he said, nodding towards the front door. ‘Have you ever tried that before?’
She nodded and looked towards the windows on either side of the front door.
Jakob got up and walked over to the front door. ‘I’ll be looking through that window in a moment—if I can clear the snow away, that is.’
Paneeraq nodded again. She reached for her juice.
The front door opened with a hollow sound, and Jakob muttered to himself as he stepped outside and a long, cold gust of wind found its way into the living room.
Paneeraq looked alternately at the door and the window. ‘Jakob?’ she called out tentatively after just under ten minutes. She frowned. ‘Jakob?’ she called out again, louder this time.
A windswept face covered in snow appeared in the doorway. ‘Yes?’
He saw her dive back under the quilt while he brushed the snow off his face. ‘I’m almost done,’ he continued. ‘You’ll be fine here. I’ll leave some food out for you, and I’ll lock the door behind me.’
Paneeraq’s eyes scanned the living room, and Jakob tried to follow her gaze. It was completely different from the living room she was used to at home. The dark furniture and the many fossils and books must have seemed strange to her. He remembered what Lisbeth said: that many little girls in Greenland didn’t know love and affection in a way that was natural to him. He looked at the quilt and the girl. She might well prefer to be with him because it was safe and fun, but he didn’t have to think too hard before realising it could never happen. There was no physical evidence against her father, and her mother was doing her best—despite the father’s long shadow. Jakob sighed to himself. Mortensen would have a heart attack when he found out about it. You kidnapped a child, Pedersen. A potential witness in your own crackpot investigation!
‘Would you like some more juice before I go?’
‘Yes,’ she said from under her quilt. ‘Can stones not feel anything at all?’
‘No, I don’t think so,’ Jakob replied with a smile, while he put two cups on the table. ‘After all, i
t wouldn’t be very good if we always had to apologise to the rocks for walking on them.’
Paneeraq looked down at her clenched fist and smiled almost imperceptibly.
‘What do you think its name was?’ She opened up the palm of her hand so that he could see the small, dotted piece of flint.
He exhaled and raised both eyebrows. ‘I really don’t know what those creepy crawlies were called all those millions of years ago, but… well, why don’t we call it Paneeraq, just like you?’
She turned her gaze towards him. ‘Do you think that was its name? Is it a girl?’
‘Well, I know it’s not called Jakob, because that would be a silly name for a sea urchin.’
She turned her hand slightly so that she could study the sea urchin from another angle. Her eyes had grown sad again. Her fingers closed around the fossil. ‘They’ll come back.’
‘Who?’ Jakob pressed his lips together.
‘The men. They always come back.’
‘We don’t know that,’ he responded as swiftly and as calmly as he could, but he struggled to hide his agitation. He had been hoping that she had slept through it all. ‘They were just angry. That happens to grown-ups like them sometimes.’
‘They always come back.’ Her voice had slipped deeper into the embrace of the quilt.
Jakob looked at her. ‘Do you mean those specific men?’
She nodded. Slowly. Without looking up.
‘Do you know them?’
‘They visit my dad sometimes,’ she said in a voice so small it was barely audible. ‘And the last time they brought an old man from Denmark.’
‘Old?’
‘Like you…The minister, that bastard, my dad called him when he had gone.’
There was total silence in the room.
Jakob wanted to sit next to Paneeraq and give her a big hug, but he was scared to even touch her hair.
‘They’ll never come back,’ he said. ‘And that’s a promise.’
45
It proved quite a challenge for Jakob to get to work that morning. The storm continued to rage around the houses, snapping up anything left lying on the ground, and it felt as if snow was being hurled at the town from all sides.
The Girl without Skin Page 17
