The Shaman's Daughter

by Christoffer Petersen

  “That’s not listening, Petra, but if it helps.” Tuukula paused, and I heard the squeal of something like ice in the background. “The police will interrogate me. They will ask me what I have done with Luui. But I have done nothing. Luui is travelling.”

  “She’s five years old,” I said.

  “Aap.”

  The way he said yes – a statement, not a question – only made it more frustrating. I bit my lip harder, forcing myself to be patient, to concentrate, to let him tell me or guide me to a better understanding.

  “Okay,” I said, slowly, as I tried to clear my mind. “She’s travelling…”

  “It was her decision. I said she wasn’t ready, but you know Luui. She’s headstrong, independent…”

  And just five years old, I thought.

  “I told her no, and she said nothing more about it,” Tuukula said. “She knew we would visit Alma soon, and we stopped on the way back from the hospital. Alma and I agreed I would go fishing, and she and Luui would spend some time together.” Another pause, and more ice in the background. “Luui waited until I was gone. She told her anaana she was staying at a friend’s house. And then she went travelling.”

  “You mean she left her mother’s apartment?”

  “Aap.”

  “And where did she go?”

  “That’s a police question, Constable.”

  “And I am a police officer,” I said. “That’s the kind of question I ask.”

  “And I would tell you where she went if I knew, Petra. But I don’t. Her journey is a personal one. She decides where to go and who to visit.”

  “Family?” I asked. I turned as I heard the door of the police station swing open. Duneq glared at me from the entrance, and I ducked between two patrol cars, willing Tuukula to talk faster as Duneq waddled towards me.

  “She’s not visiting relatives,” Tuukula said. “But family – aap, you could call them family.”

  “Tuukula,” I said, as Duneq stomped across the parking lot. “You have to go to the police. They’re calling it a manhunt. They are calling you a priority suspect.”

  “But I’m looking for Luui.”

  “I know, but…”

  “You must help me, Petra.”

  “I will. Anything I can do. You know that.”

  “Constable Jensen,” Duneq shouted as he reached the rear of the patrol car.

  “Is that Sergeant Duneq?” Tuukula asked. “Let me talk to him.”

  I stood up and turned to face Duneq. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said.

  “Then help me,” Tuukula said. “Find Luui.”

  “I will,” I said, as I ended the call.

  Duneq’s jowls wobbled as he stabbed his finger at me. “You were in the briefing.”

  “Yes.”

  “I told you not to.”

  “I know, but…”

  “You ignored me, Jensen. You broke the rules…”

  “It’s not a rule.”

  “You are always breaking the rules. I stand up for you, and this is how you repay me.”

  “Sergeant?” I said. My eyes hurt as I frowned, following Duneq’s finger as he pointed at the police station.

  “I told them you had little more than a casual relationship with Tuukula Angakkuarneq and his daughter. I said you were recovering, that they didn’t need to bother you. That you needed your rest, Constable. I told them that.”

  “Who?”

  “Social Services. I gave you space and time to recover. And then…” Duneq looked at the phone in my hand, as if noticing it for the first time. “You were talking to him, weren’t you?”

  “No, Sergeant,” I said.

  Duneq snorted. “No? You’re sure about that?”

  “I can’t get hold of him. He’s looking for Luui.”

  “You think so?”

  “Yes. She’s…”

  Duneq waited as I wondered what to say.

  “Constable?”

  “She’s missing, Sergeant.”

  Duneq snorted again, wiping spittle from his mouth, before adding, “Maybe the commissioner finds you endearing, but this kind of attitude is close to insubordination, Jensen. No,” he said, as I started to speak. “Say nothing. It’s best you don’t. In fact, let’s just pretend you weren’t here. That this conversation never took place. You’re on sick leave, Constable,” he said, jabbing his finger at my phone. “It’s your choice whether you wish to share any information. But if you don’t then the little girl’s life is in your hands, and you can spend the rest of your sick leave contemplating your future on the force. Think about that, Constable. Think long and hard. Either way, with or without your help, the rest of us will do everything we can to find this girl.” Duneq glared at me for a second, before adding, “Tuukula has been spotted in Ilulissat. They’ll pick him up soon. And if they don’t, if he evades them,” he said, eyes rolling with glee as he drew out the word evades. “Gaba and his team will get him. Then we’ll find out what the shaman has done with his daughter.”

  Part 5

  Duneq left me between the patrol cars, pushing past Atii and Constable Kuno Schmidt as they stepped out of the police station. Kuno slowed as they crossed the parking lot, mouth gaping, until Atii slapped him on the arm, muttering something about black eyes and pull yourself together. She glanced over her shoulder to check that Duneq wasn’t watching, then pulled me into a gentle but firm hug.

  “She’s wrong,” she said. “That woman in there.”

  “Blixt,” I said.

  “Aap.” Atii pulled back to look at me. “She knows nothing. She’s got the wrong glasses on – looking like a Dane, seeing what Danes see.”

  “It is a small house…”

  “Stop, P.” Atii brushed a tear from my cheek. “There’s enough love in that house for a whole apartment block. You know it. I’ve seen it. That little girl…” Atii swallowed, biting back tears of her own. “We’ll find her.”

  “How?” I pointed splinted fingers at the police station. “Duneq’s ordered me home, told me to reflect on my career. I can’t leave Nuuk. Not officially. And if I’m temporarily off duty, how can I possibly join the search for Luui?”

  Atii gripped my arms, then grinned. She dipped her head towards Kuno. “Schmidt has an idea about that.”

  “What?”

  “In Ilulissat,” Schmidt said, overcoming the shock of my black eyes and bruised cheeks, and taking a small step forward. “There’s someone who can help you.”

  “Who?”

  “His name is Maratse. He’s a constable from the east coast. I’ve worked with him a few times. We both take temporary assignments around the country. He prefers the ones in the far north.”

  “Maratse?” I took a beat, thinking for a moment. “I’ve met him, I think. Just briefly. At the airport.” I looked up and caught Schmidt’s eye. “He’s in Ilulissat?”

  “Ja, looking after some dogs. Apparently, the owner had to go to court and then do a week in prison.” Kuno laughed. “Maratse was the one who put him there. Now he’s looking after the man’s dogs. It’s what he does. He has this crazy kind of conscience that…”

  “Yeah, well,” Atii said, stopping Kuno short. “Maratse’s on leave, but he’s one of us, and he’s in Ilulissat.”

  “And he’ll help?”

  “If you find him.” Atii shrugged, then nodded once more at Kuno. “Tap into his guilty conscience, or something. And if that fails…” She gestured at my face, teased my unruly hair. “Use some of that feminine guile.”

  “Not funny, Atii…”

  “I know, but…” She laughed, eyes sparkling in the early summer light.

  “I have to get home,” I said. “I need to pack.”

  “Schmidt will take you.” Atii pulled a set of keys from her jacket pocket. “I’ll run interference, keep Sergeant Jowls out of your way.”

  Kuno frowned as he took the keys. “Sergeant who?”

  “Duneq.” Atii bunched her fists beneath her chin, fattening her
neck. “It’s what we call him.”

  “Oh.”

  “Anyway,” Atii said, taking my elbow as she steered me around the back of the patrol car to the passenger side. “There’s a late flight to Ilulissat this evening – an extra flight on the schedule to move the passengers stranded earlier in the week.”

  “You checked?”

  “Aap. I even found out there was space. The seat’s yours, P. You just have to pay for it.”

  “I…”

  “Don’t worry about that either. I’ve got a few thousand kroner put aside, you’ve got some, and Schmidt will lend you the rest.”

  “I will?” he said. Atii gave him a look, staring at him until he added, “Right. Of course, I will.”

  “Schmidt will drop you off,” Atii said, opening the passenger door. She pushed me gently into the front seat. “But you’ll need a taxi to the airport. The flight is at seven.”

  “Atii…”

  “Aap?”

  I pulled her close and kissed her cheek, whispering, “Thank you.”

  Atii pulled back to close the door. “Go find her, P,” she said, before stepping back.

  Kuno started the motor and backed out of the parking spot. I fiddled with the seatbelt, cursing my fingers until Kuno helped me, then I waved at Atii as she jogged back to the police station.

  “She’s got it all worked out,” I said, turning to look at Kuno. “You both have.”

  “That’s what friends are for,” he said.

  I nodded, but it was more than that. As police officers we had a duty, not just to each other, but to the people of Greenland. Finding Luui was part nationwide search, part manhunt, dressed in bureaucracy, garnished with media attention, but at its heart it was all Greenland.

  I closed my eyes for the rest of the drive back to my apartment, nodding at the different things Kuno said, muttering responses, while in my mind I packed a bag, picking out what I would need, with the occasional pause to wonder if this guy – Maratse… if he would help me.

  “He’ll help,” Kuno said as if reading my mind, as he pulled up outside my apartment block. “It’s what he does.”

  Part 6

  The commissioner called as I waited in line to board the plane to Ilulissat.

  “You’re not at your apartment,” he said, as I shuffled towards the gate with my boarding card tucked inside a strip of fresh bandage.

  “You came to visit?”

  “I’m parked outside, Constable. I was at the briefing, remember?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Blixt was harsh. I saw your reaction, and I wanted to see if you were all right.”

  “That’s kind of you, Sir.”

  “And?”

  “Sir?”

  “Are you all right, Constable?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Are you fine… in Nuuk?”

  I bit my lip as I prepared to lie to a senior officer – the senior officer – for the second time in one day. Bending the truth was one thing. I could do that, and did that often enough, especially when looking for ways to pursue missing persons cases. But lying to Duneq was one thing. Lying to the man who had stuck his neck out for me on more than one occasion, was another.

  I just couldn’t do it.

  “I’m getting on a plane, Sir,” I said, presenting my boarding card to the Air Greenland assistant.

  “So, not in Nuuk…”

  “Please don’t ask, because I really don’t want to tell you.”

  I waited as the assistant slid my boarding card back inside my bandage, smiling as she did so. I smiled back, although it was probably more of a grimace. She waved me through the gate, and I stepped out of the airport and onto the apron, following the other passengers to the de Havilland Dash 8 parked a short distance from the airport building. A helicopter thundered into land at the end of the runway, and I hoped the noise was the reason I hadn’t heard the commissioner say anything.

  Of course, I knew it wasn’t.

  “Commissioner?” I said, raising my voice as the helicopter settled. The wash from the rotors blew at the loose hair that escaped the beanie hat I had tugged onto my head. “Sir?”

  “Keep me informed, Constable,” he said.

  “Yes, Sir.” I ended the call with a swipe of my thumb and climbed the steps into the plane.

  The money Atii and Kuno gave me covered the return flight to Ilulissat, but I hadn’t thought about accommodation. I thought about calling Tuukula, as I waited for a taxi to take me into the centre of town, but hanging out with Greenland’s most wanted, didn’t seem like a smart career move. I trusted to luck, and when the taxi driver asked where to? I told him to take me to where they kept the sledge dogs, just beyond the outskirts of town.

  There was still snow on the ground, and I wondered if I had enough clothes for Ilulissat in May. The look on the driver’s face suggested he was thinking the same thing as he glanced at me in the rear-view mirror. Then I remembered my face.

  “It’s not what you think,” I said.

  “You’re all right?”

  “Yes.”

  It was nice of him to ask, but I wasn’t ready to tell him that a rogue police constable broke my nose and my fingers before he was shot in the chest with his own pistol. Perhaps it was best to let the driver think the worst – whatever that might be – because the truth wasn’t much better.

  I squinted into the late sun as we drove past Hotel Arctic on the right and dropped down to the harbour below. The sun reflected off the fishing boats, shining off aluminium-hulled dinghies, turning the weathered shipping containers into rich blues and reds. We turned left onto the main street, and up a small rise, wheels spinning for grip in the turn, before the driver accelerated. I noted the heavy jackets people were wearing on the street and realised I had packed for the month of May in Nuuk, not three hundred and fifty kilometres north of the Arctic Circle.

  I was preoccupied.

  “Here?”

  And recovering – not myself.

  The driver coughed as he slowed to a stop. “Is this far enough?”

  I looked up, blinking in the rays of the low-hanging sun. An assortment of rough sheds and drying racks, not unlike those on the frozen beach in Qaanaaq, stretched in a ragged line along the snow-packed road. “Is this the sledge dog area?”

  “Aap.” The driver pointed into the distance. “Further on is the visitor centre. Then a path out to the ice fjord.”

  I heard the crack of calving ice in the distance as I followed his finger.

  “Then I guess this is it.”

  “You’re sure you’re all right?” he asked as I paid the fare.

  “I’m fine.”

  I fumbled with the door handle, biting my lip as I struggled to squeeze my fingers into the gap to open the door.

  “I’ll get it.”

  “Thank you,” I said, as the driver opened the door. He reached inside for my pack, holding it like a jacket as I slipped my arms into the straps. I saw my reflection in his glasses, saw the crazy woman fleeing from some violent episode to a dog yard, of all places. “This might seem strange,” I said.

  “Aap,” he said.

  “But really, I’m all right.”

  He pulled a card from his shirt and tucked it into the chest pocket of my thin city jacket. “My number. If you need a ride, or…”

  “That’s kind of you,” I said, adding, “Actually, I’m a police officer.”

  “Okay,” he said, although he didn’t look okay. Far from it.

  He left with a frown on his face, and I waved as he turned the car and headed back into town. The rumble of car tyres on the winter road retreated, replaced by the familiar if a little eerie rattle of chains across hard packed snow and ice. I scanned the row of rough shacks and racks, the sledges perched on top of plastic fish bins and stacks of oil-smeared pallets, the patches of yellow snow, and the dark scatter of frozen turds.

  “Lovely,” I said, my breath frosting into my hair.

  Sledge dogs o
f all shapes and sizes turned their gaze on me, judging me, perhaps, as I returned their gaze, searching for one man among a few hundred dogs.

  “How hard can it be?” I said, as I took a step towards them.

  Part 7

  Kuno had promised Maratse was the kind of man who would help, no questions asked, working on some kind of inner moral code, as Kuno described it.

  “He’s not exactly loquacious,” he had said, when he dropped me off at my apartment.

  “Not exactly what?”

  “Talkative.” Kuno shrugged. “He doesn’t say much.”

  I remembered as much from the brief meeting I had with Maratse in Nuuk Airport. He was arriving. I was leaving. But I didn’t catch his name before our roles were reversed, and I bumped into him on my return to Nuuk.

  It wasn’t much of a history we shared, and it was hardly significant. All I knew was that the weather was colder than I had prepared for, and the only living things in this part of Ilulissat were the ravens, me, and the dogs – hundreds of dogs.

  I looked back along the road, wondered how I could get the taxi driver’s card out of my pocket with my splinted fingers, only to pause as a sledge dog howled, followed by another. A wild chorus erupted with dogs from each of the rustic islands – shack, chains, sledge, and dogs – until the whole area was alive with plaintive calls prickling the tiny hairs on my arms, sending a shiver through my body.

  The howling stopped as suddenly as it started. And in the hollow of silence, carved out of the winter air, a stiff door in one of the shacks creaked as someone opened it.

  “Maratse,” I breathed.

  It could only be him.

  The late sun splashed on the dog yard, highlighting the bold POLITI letters printed on the back of the man’s dark blue – almost black – police jacket. He stepped out of the shack, a stack of layered buckets gripped in each hand, and kicked the door closed. The snow crumped beneath his boots as he placed a bucket by each dog, fending off their excitement with his knee, his thigh, a gruff bark here, and something like a growl there. He didn’t say a word of any human language, but he appeared fluent in sledge dog slang. He had a cigarette clamped between his lips and small clouds of smoke hung heavy in the cold air above the dogs. The chains attached to the dogs’ collars rattled and thumped the lips of the buckets as they ate, and the neighbouring dogs looked on, curling long pink tongues around ice-pearled chops.