Blood Floe

by Christoffer Petersen

  Chapter 14

  The Dash 7 was still parked outside the airport building when Maratse bumped the snowmobile up and over the ice foot beside the dock in Qaarsut. He swerved to avoid a string of loose sledge dog puppies and then powered up the road. When he braked to a stop outside the door, the fumes from the exhaust caught up with him creating a halo of smoke that followed him through the door and into the waiting lounge. A small girl screamed at the sight of Maratse, blood streaking his hands and face, and a sharp glint in his eye. A young woman enveloped the girl in her arms as Maratse took another step and glared at the passengers preparing to board the Dash.

  “That’s quite an entrance,” Petra said, as she pushed back her chair and shouldered her pack.

  “What?” Maratse twitched as she placed her hand on his arm.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Have you seen her?”

  “Seen who?” Petra said, as Maratse stalked between the tables. “David, I just got here. Who are you looking for?”

  “Therese Kleinschmidt,” he said, and then again, louder, for the benefit of the passengers, personnel, and visitors.

  “You’re scaring people,” Petra said, and slipped her hand down Maratse’s arm to take his hand. “And why are you covered in blood?”

  “Narwhal,” he said, as he pulled free of her grasp. Maratse opened the door to the toilets, and banged on each locked door, shouting Therese’s name.

  “Okay,” Petra said, and dumped her pack on the floor. “That’s enough. She gripped Maratse’s elbow and steered him behind the check-in desk and into the small office behind it. She shut the door, pushed him into a chair, and tucked her hands onto her hips. “You’re lucky I’m in uniform,” she said. “Now talk.”

  “Therese, the German…”

  “Yes?”

  “She took something from me, something I took from the man on the ice.”

  “The one who killed the two crew members?”

  “Maybe. Dieter. He had a journal, and I took it from him.”

  “A journal?” Petra gripped the back of an office chair and pulled it in front of Maratse. She sat down. “Alfred Wegener’s journal?”

  “Maybe.” Maratse shrugged. “It was old and written in German. I couldn’t read it,” he said, and looked at Petra.

  “And you thought Therese was leaving on the plane?”

  “It made sense.” He glanced at the door.

  “She’s not here.” Petra ran her fingers through her hair, tugging at her pony tail as she thought.

  Maratse tapped his bloody nails on his knees, looked at Petra, and said, “It’s good to see you, Piitalaat.”

  She laughed. “It is good to see you too, although, the way you barged through the door, it was pretty wild.”

  “Iiji,” he said. Maratse’s cheeks twitched and he ran a bloody hand over his wispy beard.

  “Do you know what’s in the journal?”

  “Eeqqi.”

  “I have an idea, and, if it had been stolen from me, I might have reacted just like you.” Petra reached out to touch Maratse’s knee. “Why did you take it? Why not give it to Simonsen?”

  Maratse shrugged, and said, “I just took it.”

  “A policeman wouldn’t do that.”

  “I’m retired,” he said, and grinned. “But, I thought it might be important, and I thought you could read it.” He glanced at the door. “What do we do now?”

  “If she’s not here, where else would she go? The yacht?”

  Maratse shook his head. “I came from there.” He lifted his hands to show her the blood-streaked palms. “They were working on the whales on the ice. I didn’t see her.”

  “She must have gone to Uummannaq. Maybe she’s trying to talk to the crew.”

  “She said something about the ship’s log, and how she couldn’t find it.”

  “Then one of the crew must have it.” Petra stood up. “She’s in Uummannaq. Without a doubt.”

  “Then we can find her.” Maratse pushed back his chair. Petra bent over to kiss him on the cheek as he stood up.

  “It is good to see you,” she said, “but now we need to get going.”

  “You’re not dressed for the snowmobile.”

  “Give me a minute, and I will be.” Petra left Maratse alone in the office. He watched her leave, and then loitered at the door.

  In truth, he had surprised himself when he took the journal. He had no need for it, but somehow it had seemed important. It was clear it meant a great deal to Dieter, it was the only thing he had on him when they found him. He would ask Petra to ask him, as soon as they got to Uummannaq.

  “You’re looking for a European woman with red hair?” One of the airport staff said, as she walked into the office.

  “Iiji.”

  “She was here, and then she borrowed a snowmobile.”

  “Qujanaq,” Maratse said, and waited for Petra.

  She appeared a few minutes later wearing thick ski salopettes the colour of blushed mango. She zipped the sides beneath her black police jacket and nodded that she was ready. She tucked her arms inside the backpack, sat on the snowmobile and then circled her hands around Maratse’s waist as he climbed into the driver’s position.

  Petra spoke in his ear as he started the engine. “No cigarette?”

  “I’m trying to quit,” he said, and reversed away from the airport building, before clicking the snowmobile into first gear and driving down the hill to the ice. The skids bumped over the ice foot, and Maratse accelerated towards the white peaks of the heart-shaped mountain that gave Uummannaq island and the town its name.

  They cruised alongside the tracks carved by the taxis, police cars, and the ambulance that had driven between Uummannaq and the mainland, once the ice had been declared safe to drive on. Petra rested her head on Maratse’s shoulder, content to observe the winter landscape, so very different from a few months earlier, when the sea was exposed, along with the evil that drove some men to seek power, and to be consumed by it. She spared a thought for Tinka, the daughter of Greenland’s First Minister, and the circumstances of her last case in the area.

  “You’re quiet,” Maratse said, as he slowed at the mouth of the harbour.

  “Just thinking.”

  Maratse drove up the ramp to the right of the boats and a dog team tethered on the ice beside a bloody sledge. He drove down the road to the hospital, and parked outside. He turned off the engine as Petra climbed off the snowmobile and adjusted the straps on her back.

  “Does Simonsen know you are here?”

  “He knows I’m on my way,” she said. “He said I should call him from the hospital.”

  “He’ll meet you here?”

  “Yes.”

  Maratse nodded. “Then I’ll try and find Therese.” He climbed onto the snowmobile. It stuttered into life after three turns of the key. “Needs more fuel,” he said when Petra frowned. “Dieter is bound to be in the hospital still. You stay here and speak to him and I’ll ask Danielsen to take me to the other members of the crew – the survivors. They are not behind bars, but they have not been allowed to leave. Danielsen will tell me where they are.”

  “I’ll need to talk to them too.”

  “Iiji,” Maratse said, “but Dieter first.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t know if he’ll live. He had a knife in his belly when I found him.” Maratse backed the snowmobile until he was positioned right beside Petra. “Talk to him first.”

  Maratse waited for Petra to go inside and then pulled out of the hospital parking area, and drove up the hill, past the blue offices of Nukissiorfiit, the power company, and further up the hill to the police station on the right. Danielsen grinned when he saw Maratse’s hands.

  “Narwhal?”

  “Iiji.”

  “Christmas is saved, eh?” Danielsen stood up. “What do you need?”

  “Petra is here. She’s going to meet Simonsen at the hospital.”

  “He’s on his way, and t
hen maybe I get the car for an hour or so.”

  “It must be difficult with only one car.”

  “That’s not the worst, my CDs were in the one that sank.” Danielsen lifted the flap of the counter and nodded for Maratse to follow him. “You want to talk to the crew?”

  “I’m probably not allowed.”

  “You can be a guest. It’s allowed. But why do you want to talk to them.”

  “You remember the German girl?” Maratse waited as Danielsen said something about Therese’s looks and temperament. He raised his eyebrows in agreement, and said, “She left my house earlier, and I think she came here.”

  “Of course,” Danielsen said, “she must think the crew has what she wants.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I watched her pull the yacht apart, remember?”

  “She also has a journal, the one they were looking for.”

  “Wegener’s journal? How does she have that?”

  “Because I took it from Dieter,” Maratse said. He shrugged at the look Danielsen gave him, and said, “When I searched him for a weapon.”

  “And you think she has it?”

  “Iiji, and Petra says it is important.”

  Danielsen took his jacket off the rack by the door and pulled it on, adjusting the waistband to free the grip of the pistol on his hip. He noticed when Maratse glanced at it. “Naamik, you can’t have it.” Maratse opened the door and gestured for Danielsen to get on the back of the snowmobile. The engine spluttered into life. Maratse turned in the parking area and pulled out onto the road.

  “Where are the crew staying?”

  “In the old Youth Hostel. The council bought it from the hotel owner. We put them there.”

  Maratse nodded and drove up the hill, turned left and accelerated past the fire station, passing the old police house on the rocks above the road, and then along the upper road through the village. He reduced speed when a group of children ran across the road to the store. Maratse slowed into the next bend and then accelerated to the hostel.

  Danielsen tapped him on the shoulder and pointed at a woman getting onto a snowmobile parked under the hostel’s staircase. “The hair,” he said, and waited for Maratse to react to the shock of red hair flowing out from beneath the woman’s helmet and across the shoulders of her jacket. Even in the dark of early afternoon, there was no mistaking Therese. She turned as she started the engine, her head fixed in their direction as she recognised Maratse. Therese flipped the visor into position, revved the engine, and gripped the handlebars as the snowmobile lurched forwards.

  “On or off?” Maratse shouted.

  “I’m staying on,” Danielsen said. “Go get her.”

  Maratse twisted the throttle and thundered down the hill, past the hostel on the right. Therese’s snowmobile slipped on a swathe of ice outside a water station. She recovered, and sped up a hill cut into the mountain with steep rock walls on both sides. Maratse slid across the same patch of ice, and followed her.

  “We’re high above the sea here,” Danielsen said, as Maratse braked into a hard left as Therese raced between two dog teams, snow pluming from the track churning beneath her seat. “But if she gets to the end of the road, there’s a narrow path that zigzags between the rocks.” Danielsen pointed. “There,” he said. “She must know about it.”

  “She’s been here before.”

  “She must have been.” Danielsen tapped Maratse’s shoulder.

  “What.”

  “It’s steep.”

  “Okay.”

  They heard the change in engine tone as Therese braked to navigate the sharp turns to the left, and the sharper turns to the right, as she snaked the snowmobile between the rocks and down to the sea ice below. Maratse followed, invigorated by the chase, as eager and reckless to catch Therese as she was to escape. He accelerated when she bumped the snowmobile off the island and onto the ice.

  “Go,” Danielsen shouted, as Maratse throttled up, and twisted the skids with two quick jerks onto the ice to follow the path Therese carved through the fresh snow that had fallen in the night. The red rear light of Therese’s snowmobile, almost as vivid as her hair, glowed like the eye of the devil as she topped one hundred kilometres per hour, pushing the snowmobile towards one hundred and fifty.

  Maratse felt the bite of the air on his ears, his cheeks, the tip of his nose. He pushed on, chasing the eye of the devil. He felt Danielsen shift his grip, clutching him tighter around his waist.

  “Hold on,” Maratse said.

  He accelerated.

  Maratse knew the location of the leads he was forced to work around close to the mainland, and he also knew the current ran strongest closer to the island. Therese, he noticed, favoured the perceived safety of the island and hugged the coastline, whereas Maratse drifted away from the island, and further out. The advantage Therese gained by gunning the snowmobile along the island, would, he gambled, be lost once she encountered bad ice, and had to slow down.

  “There,” Danielsen said, and pointed. “She’s slowing.”

  Maratse grinned, as he turned in a wide arc towards Therese, but as she slowed to negotiate thinner ice, the engine started to splutter, and they lost speed.

  “Fuel?” Danielsen said, as he released his grip around Maratse’s waist.

  “Iiji.”

  The engine coughed to a stop, thrusting them into a quiet bubble of sound defined by the grating of the skids on the ice as the snowmobile slid to a halt. Maratse reached for the packet of cigarettes in his pocket and offered one to Danielsen. They smoked in silence as they watched Therese pick her way across the ice, away from the poorer surface eroded by the current beneath.

  “Shes going to get away,” Danielsen said. “But where will she go?”

  Maratse said nothing. He knew where she was going.

  Therese stopped and let the engine idle. There was just thirty metres between them. It might has well have been three hundred. She unclipped the strap of the helmet and lifted it from her head. Therese placed the helmet in front of her, ruffled her hair with gloved fingers, and then stopped to wave at the two men.

  “She’s playing with us.”

  “Iiji.”

  Maratse pictured the flush of red in her cheeks as her skin cooled. He saw her freckles – so many – her red hair, those green eyes. He felt a flush of heat when he remembered seeing her for the first time wearing nothing more than his dirty bath towel that barely reached her thighs. She was a beauty, he knew that, but there was a beast driving her, and he knew too, that he would have to be smarter if he was going to catch her. And he would need more fuel.

  “The Navy,” he said, as Therese pulled the helmet onto her head, adjusted her position, and revved the engine.

  “What’s that?”

  “Maybe the Navy can catch her.”

  Maratse rolled the cigarette between his teeth and placed a warm palm against his cheek. He dipped his head at Therese as she waved. He heard the click of gears and then she was gone, accelerating into the polar night.

  “She is going to Ophelia,” Maratse said.

  “The yacht?”

  “That’s how she is getting out of Greenland.”

  Danielsen tugged his phone out of his pocket, and said, “She must be crazy to sail alone in winter.”

  “Iiji.” Maratse said as Danielsen called Simonsen. He listened as the young constable briefed the Uummannaq Chief of Police, and watched as the tail light of Therese’s snowmobile blinked with each bump in the ice.

  Danielsen finished the call, and said, “Simonsen says he’ll call Ilulissat, see if they can intercept her. She’s sailing away with our crime scene.”

  Maratse remembered what he had read about Ophelia, what the boat was capable of. He recalled the pictures of Ophelia locked in the ice in Arctic and Antarctic waters. Given what the boat was designed to do, all it needed was a capable and adventurous skipper. From what he knew of Therese Kleinschmidt, the Greenlandic police, even the Danish Navy, would be h
ard-pressed to catch her.

  “Simonsen is sending someone to pick us up. He wants us both at the hospital. The German guy, Dieter, has started talking.”

  Chapter 15

  Dieter tried to blink his eyes open. He was in a bed, a real one, not a broken cot in a hunter’s cabin. The fabric he could feel with his fingertips was cotton, not wool stiff with mould. It was sore when he moved. He kept trying to open his eyes, turning his head in the direction of the sounds – a scrape of a chair leg perhaps, maybe even voices. He sensed there were people waiting for him to open them, and the minute he did so, he would have to answer some hard questions.

  “I need to open my eyes,” Dieter said, his words morphine-slurred.

  The woman’s face was as unexpected as it was angelic, lit as it was in the soft light of the bedside lamp. She smiled at him, and Dieter squinted at her. She spoke his language, and he blinked again to focus.

  “Take your time,” she said. “There’s plenty of time.”

  “Who are you?”

  “My name is Sergeant Petra Jensen,” she said. “I’m with the Greenland Police.”

  “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.”