“That’s what I heard.” Therese waited for her stepfather to finish swearing. “It doesn’t matter, daddy, just print the next article anyway, like we planned.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
“I’ll be in Ilulissat before midnight, Greenland time, but I have to keep sailing.”
“Just long enough to read the journal. You haven’t done anything illegal, Therese, don’t do anything stupid. All I need is proof, and then you can throw the journal overboard.”
“You don’t even want to see it? It’s a little piece of history.”
“The past is only important when shaping the future. Once we own the future, we can rewrite the past. Remember that.”
“I will.” Therese paused to tap the screen as it dimmed more than she liked. “I have to go, daddy. Sailor stuff – you know?”
“I know. I want you to take care, and I want you to call me every two hours – earlier if you find the proof in the journal.”
“I have to sail. I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to read.”
“Try.”
“Okay,” Therese said. A lick of chill wind caught a twist of her hair as she shook her head.
“I can hear you tutting, Therese.”
“I’m not.”
“It doesn’t matter. As long as you realise how important this is.”
“I wonder,” she said, as another slug of wind, stronger than the last, flapped her hood from her forehead, “would you push Andrea as hard if she could sail.”
“That’s not fair, Therese. You are both my daughters.”
“But only one of us is blood,” she whispered.
“Therese?”
“I have to go,” she said. “Wind’s picking up.”
“Call me in two hours.”
Therese stabbed the button to end the call, and zipped the phone into her pocket. The light of the moon leaked through a cheesecloth-thin cloud. The filtered glow caught something glinting in the black water some twenty metres in front of Ophelia. Therese unclipped her safety line, and snapped it onto the wire running along the starboard railing. She bent her knees to compensate for the shallow bumps of incoming waves, the first to tease Ophelia since she was released from the ice. When she reached the bow, Therese held onto the railings and squinted into the polar night. The cloud dispersed and the moon lit the pearl-white, cream and ivory tusks of the narwhal as they pierced the surface of the sea. Therese held her breath and watched as the pod of whales swam away from the shore and further out to sea. They must have escaped the hunt, she realised, or slipped past the northerly settlements in the troughs of deep waves, when the moon was hidden, and the snow needled at unprotected eyes.
She wiped at soft needles thumping against her cheeks, catching several in her eyes, blinking, the snow thawed against her eyeballs. The sea was in league with the earth – reluctant to give up its bounty, she thought, or was it Wegener’s ghost, making one more attempt to claim his journal and bury the secrets of Svartenhuk at sea?
Therese searched the water ahead. She tried and failed to find the narwhal again. She turned and walked back to the wheel, clipped into the safety lug behind her, and formed the wire-frame hood into a visor to protect her face. The thought of a prolonged battle with the elements, encouraged Therese to unclip her safety line, and to duck down into the cockpit. She spent a few minutes boiling water for coffee and draining her bladder before returning to the wheel. She stuffed the flask into a rubber-lined fibreglass tube welded into the deck, pulled on GoreTex sailing gauntlets, and squirmed her feet on the deck. She flipped the seat into a high saddle and leaned against it. Therese took the wheel, and let it jerk through her hands with small autopilot adjustments.
“I’m ready,” she said, taunting the wind.
There were bergs on the black horizon, black shadowy behemoths, mostly ranged like teeth along the shore. Therese wasn’t worried about them, but a chop of thunder began to bother her, and she flicked her head from side to side trying to locate it.
A beam of light, stronger and lower than the moon, cut through the snow swirling above the sea, and Therese realised she had discovered the source of the anonymous thump, in the shape of a Danish Navy Lynx helicopter, most likely from the deck of one of the Thetis-class ships like HDMS Vædderen or the smaller Knud Rasmussen-class HDMS Ejnar Mikkelsen.
“They’ve obviously got nothing better to do, eh?” she said.
Ophelia responded with a tug of the wheel. Therese dimmed the screen to the lowest setting, lifted her finger in anticipation of turning the autopilot off, and grinned.
“Now we’re sailing.” She bit at the snow, licking it from her lips as she grinned. “This is what it’s all about.”
A childhood memory of stealing her stepsister’s favourite t-shirt – the blue one with the rainbow-streaked pony stencilled on the front – and splashing down the muddy lane to the stables, flickered into Therese’s mind. She pushed it to one side, and listened for the helicopter, looked for the cone of light from its searchlight, and then remembered once again being chased by her stepfather, the groom, and the stable manager.
She remembered being hunted.
It didn’t occur to her at the time, that it was an awful lot of men chasing her for something as silly as a t-shirt. But it didn’t seem silly when she heard them cough, wheeze, and swear from running.
Therese had been light on her feet then, quick to climb trees, higher than she should. She hid in the branches of her favourite oak, stayed there until just before the dawn, creeping back to the house with a tattered t-shirt, and twists of moss braided in her hair. Daddy had beaten her the next morning, pulled the t-shirt from her body and thrust her into the shower. Her mother had protested, but he had said something about her leaving if she didn’t like it.
“This is my house,” Therese whispered, remembering her father’s words. “My rules.”
She was twelve then, her stepsister was fourteen. It was too bad both their mothers had died. There was nothing Therese could do about that. Her own father was too busy, too successful to show any interest in her, much less in her mother. So when Therese realised that Aleksander Berndt cared enough to punish her, she decided he might just care enough to love her, to be proud of her, and to treat her like a daughter.
“And that’s what he did, with a little help from me,” she said, at the sound of the helicopter drilling another circle in the sky, sweeping the black sea with radar, night vision goggles, and Mark 1 eyeballs. “Now it’s time to make daddy proud.”
Therese tapped the screen and switched off the autopilot. The wheel twitched in her grasp, as Ophelia trembled with the anticipation of being released, let off the hook, just as Therese hoped.
The Lynx thundered into another circular sweep. Therese squinted into the distance, caught the pinpricks of light which could have been the navigational lights of the Ejnar Mikkelsen or its big brother.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “This is my house. My rules.”
Therese turned Ophelia into the wind, stifling a grin as the bow bit into the first obsidian wave, crashing through the crest as Therese throttled up the side of the next wave, and the next, set after set, as she drove Ophelia deeper into the Arctic waters of the Davis Strait.
“My house,” she said. “My rules.”
Chapter 18
Residents of Nuuk see the sun in winter. The days are short, but the sun makes an appearance, however brief. For Greenlanders living further north, in Inussuk, Uummannaq and in Qaanaaq – the most northerly village pretending to be a town – the sun does not shine for two to four months each winter. These northerly residents, Danes and Europeans among them especially, are easy to spot on winter flights from Kangerlussuaq to Copenhagen. When the Airbus 330-200 rises above the clouds, Nuuk residents tend to shield their eyes or turn away from the sun, while those from the north stare right at it, even though they shouldn’t. Some, like Maratse, might acknowledge the sun with a mental dip of the head, a nod to a long-lost friend. It’s b
een a while, they might say, and then turn away, fiddle with the foil-packed pretzels, or wonder if there is less leg room than the last time they flew on the Denmark flight. Others stare that bit longer, until the sun hurts their eyes, just as its absence hurts their soul. I’m struggling, they might say, won’t you come back?
The sun comes back every year, rising at the same place, at the same time, unless the glacier has melted a little more since the previous year. Then the sun might return a day early, gone again if you missed it. The sun is visible in Uummannaq roughly fifteen minutes more each day after its first appearance mid-January. In Qaanaaq the sun will shine thirty minutes longer than yesterday, from the day of its return around the eighteenth day of February. Once it has reached its summer height by the end of March, it won’t set again before September. In Ittoqqortoormiit, on Maratse’s east coast, the hunters, the fishermen, and their families share the same light and darkness as their west coast neighbours in Inussuk, only the mountains are different.
Maratse recognised a few of the passengers from his home town, and looked at them as he did the sun, just like intimate strangers.
“You’re quiet,” Petra said.
“I don’t like planes.”
“You don’t like flying?” She took Maratse’s packet of pretzels and opened them, splitting the packet down the middle as a hunter might gut a seal, exposing the innards.
“Just planes, the insides of them.”
“You’re just bored,” Petra said, and ate a pretzel.
“Iiji.”
“Then why don’t you read?”
“I need a new book.” Maratse caught Petra’s eye as she reached for the last pretzel. She lunged for it, giggling as the pretzel crumbled beneath her fingers.
“I like pretzels,” she said.
“I can see that.” Maratse wiped the crumbs into the foil packet, and pushed it inside his empty coffee cup, the wrapper crackled as it expanded within the circumference of the cup. Maratse wiped his hands, and said, “Tell me what the Commissioner said.”
“We’re to meet with Hannah Mayer, a contact of his in the German Bundespolizei.”
“I can’t even say that.”
“That’s why the Commissioner sent me. He said you were ‘on your own dime’, or something like that.”
“Berndt’s money,” Maratse said, “he made a deposit into my account.”
“Right.” Petra waited as the flight attendant removed their empty cups. “Simonsen is going to visit Axel Stein. He’ll probably send Danielsen.”
“Iiji.”
“And the German captain, Katharina, will remain in custody until the deaths have been cleared up, all of them. As captain of the Ophelia she is responsible for her crew.”
“And Nele?”
“I’m not sure. The German embassy has been putting pressure on the First Minister, Nivi Winther, and she is pressurising the Commissioner. He is stalling them by sending me to Berlin, but, as for Nele Schneider, I think she is being sent home, something about being traumatized, and needing therapy from a German trauma psychologist, someone who speaks her own language.”
“So, free to go?”
“I suppose so.”
Maratse tapped his fingers on the tray table.
“You don’t think she’s innocent?”
“I don’t think Dieter did it.”
“And yet, he’s the most likely suspect.”
“Because he has no alibi.”
“Because he was the only one not dead or drugged, and he attacked a police officer.” Petra shrugged. “That’s the circumstantial evidence. I didn’t say he did it. But he has some interesting theories.”
“The fake CVs?”
“And who knows what else.The CVs alone should be cause enough to dig deeper into who these people are. And what they were looking for.”
“And Therese?”
“Apparently she slipped past the Ejnar Mikkelsen, but they are chasing her, and the Knud Rasmussen is heading for Cape Farewell to cut her off.” Petra looked up at the clatter of the service trolley. “Once that part of the story breaks in the news, Greenland will gain a lot of exposure.”
“And?”
“And that’s exactly what Berndt wants.” Petra leaned back as the flight attendant placed a tray on the table in front of her. She swapped Maratse’s dessert for her salad.
“I like dessert,” he said.
“But you don’t eat enough vegetables.” Petra slapped at the back of Maratse’s hand as he tried to recover the plastic tub of chocolate mousse. He gave up, as Petra rearranged the items on her tray table, pushing the desserts further away from Maratse.
“You didn’t finish,” he said. “What does Berndt want?”
“He wants Uummannaq in focus so that he can apply emotional pressure to keep people away from Svartenhuk.” Petra paused, and said, “Out of respect.”
“For the dead?”
Petra nodded. She brushed a length of hair behind her ear, and prised the thick foil lid from the lasagne dish, stopping to blow on the tips of her fingers.
“You think he staged the murders?”
“No,” Petra said, “but I think he intends to use them. It’s convenient, otherwise he would have thought of something else.”
“To keep people away from Svartenhuk?”
“To stop them digging around in the mountains.” Petra folded the lid to one side, and opened the plastic bag of cutlery. “It’s a shame you didn’t read the journal.”
“I can’t read German.”
“I know, but if you could, if there had been time, you might be the one who could prove what Wegener found in Svartenhuk.”
Maratse thought about the snowmobile chase across the ice, and Therese’s long red hair as she pulled off her helmet to stare at him. He had been reluctant to get involved, and then he had been used.
“Next time, I won’t get involved.”
“With what?”
“An investigation. Of any kind.”
“You’ll just retire?”
“Iiji,” he said, “again.”
“What if next time, the case is personal?”
“There won’t be a next time.” Maratse peeled back the lid of his lasagne.
“But if something happened to someone you care deeply for?” Petra turned her head, strands of jet black hair drifted over her cheek. She pulled them to one side with the tips of her nails, searching for Maratse’s eyes with a deep brown gaze.
“I’ll go fishing,” he said, and plucked his dessert from Petra’s tray. He waved his prize in front of her, and said, “You never know what I might catch.”
“Fair enough, Constable,” Petra said, and leaned back in her seat. “But I don’t think you can retire, not even if you tried.”
Petra dozed after the meal, her head resting on Maratse’s shoulder, her hand curled around his arm. He thought about what she said, about people he cared about – deeply. Yes, he realised, if anything happened to Petra, to Karl, Buuti, the people of Inussuk, even the temporary residents, he would not go fishing. He would hunt, instead, and he would find them, help them, solve the case, but not for money, he would do it because it was the right thing to do. He looked at Petra, and realised he would also do it out of love. He tugged a length of hair from the corner of Petra’s mouth and brushed her cheek. She twitched and smiled at the light touch of his creased and calloused hands, squeezed his arm, and repositioned her head. She didn’t wake before they landed in Copenhagen.
It was Petra who took over once they arrived in Denmark, leading Maratse through customs, vouching for him when she showed her police identity card, and collected her pistol.
“You’re flying on to Berlin?” said the customs officer.
“Yes.”
“Then you may as well leave that with me,” he said, and nodded at the USP Compact pistol Petra was about to holster.
“I can do that?”
“It’s the only thing you can do,” he said. “It would be different if yo
u were driving, or had official papers.”
“We are meeting a German officer.”
“Not good enough.”
“Then I’ll leave it with you.”
Petra placed her pistol onto the desk and signed her weapon over to customs. She smiled at the officer, and then whisked Maratse through the crowds to the departure gate, shaking her head as he stopped and started while she weaved a line in and around the passengers.
“You’re hopeless at this,” she said, when she stopped to let him catch up for the fourth, maybe the fifth time. Petra laughed, as Maratse stopped to wait for another family, and then an older woman, and her daughter.
“There are fifty-eight people in Inussuk.”
“And?”
“Fifty-eight, Piitalaat,” Maratse said, as he hurried through a gap to stand next to Petra.
She took his hand. “Ready?”
“Holding hands?”
“It’s that or we miss our flight,” she said.
“I’m not ready for Berlin,” he said.
“I can see that. But,” Petra said, and tugged at Maratse’s hand, “let’s worry about that once we’re on the flight.”
Petra pulled Maratse through the crowd, all the way to the gate, letting go of his hand only when she thought he could keep up. Once they were boarded, buckled into their seats, and airborne, Petra stole the bag of peanuts from his tray.
“Airport tax,” she said. The corners of her eyes twitched as she opened the peanuts, nibbling at them, one at a time, between smiles.
“Who are we meeting?” Maratse said, stirring sugar into his coffee.
“I told you earlier.”
“I forgot.”
“Hannah Mayer. I think the Commissioner worked with her in Nicaragua. Some kind of special task force. A bit like Polarpol.”
“What’s that?”
“Something I have been invited to be a part of.”
“Like Europol?”
“Yes, I think so.” Petra frowned. “The first meeting never really came to anything. There was this American, supposedly with the United States Geological Survey, although he admitted all of that was really only a cover.”
“And he is with Polarpol?”
Blood Floe: Conspiracy, Intrigue, and Multiple Homicide in the Arctic (Greenland Crime Book 2) Page 15