About the Book
A thrilling new novel from the author of The Girl Without Skin.
When Danish Journalist Matthew Cave's half-sister Arnaq disappears, leaving behind only a trail of blood, he realises they are both pawns in a game of life and death.
As a young US soldier stationed in Greenland, their father took part in a secret experiment with deadly consequences. Accused of murder, he was forced into hiding.
Desperate to discover the link between these two disappearances, Matthew is joined by Tupaarnaq, a young Inuit woman, who returns to Nuuk to help her only friend—and to settle a few scores of her own.
But, as things begin to unravel, Matthew begins to wonder: Is the father he has been searching for his entire life actually a cold-blooded murderer? And is Tupaarnaq really who he thinks she is?
COLD FEAR
CONTENTS
COVER PAGE
ABOUT THE BOOK
TITLE PAGE
THE HUNTER
1
THE EXPERIMENT
2
3
4
TIME'S SHADOWS
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
THE MASK DANCER
12
13
14
15
16
17
THE FACE OF THE DEMON
18
19
TUPILAK
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
THOSE WHO LIVE UNDERGROUND
31
32
33
PRISONER OF THE DEMONS
34
35
36
FÆRINGEHAVN
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
THE ESCAPE
45
46
47
48
49
THE POOL OF THE DEAD
50
51
DEATH AND THE BOY
52
53
54
THE FURTHEST TOWN
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
THE THULE MAN
62
63
64
65
66
TUPAARNAQ
67
68
ALSO BY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
COPYRIGHT PAGE
THE HUNTER
1
TASIILAQ, EAST GREENLAND, 14 OCTOBER 2014
Tupaarnaq looked down the cliff to the outskirts of the town. Scattered clusters of red, green, blue and yellow wooden houses glowed orange in the afternoon sunshine. The sea between the small town of Tasiilaq and the mountains on the far side of the fjord was filled with floating growlers of glacier ice. Some had foundered on the shore; others moved slowly with the tide. Long tongues of snow had settled down the mountainsides, several reaching as far as the sea. Soon everything would be buried in white.
She sat there every day, close to a game track flattened over several decades by animals and hunters. From this spot she could see practically every single house in Tasiilaq, a place she hated more than anywhere else on earth. She could see where the cars went when they left the heliport and, through the telescopic sight on her rifle, she could watch the people going in and out of the houses.
Two Greenlandic men were standing not far away. A few minutes earlier they had left the track and deliberately walked around her. She saw one of them point at her while the other one nodded.
Both men had rifles slung over their shoulders but were otherwise empty-handed. No prey hung from their belts and their backpacks flapped limply. Even so, she knew that they weren’t discussing an unsuccessful hunting trip. They were talking about her. No one liked a woman with a rifle. Especially not one who just sat by the game track, day in, day out.
Tupaarnaq was sure that most people in Tasiilaq knew who she was, but no one greeted her and no one spoke to her.
She closed her eyes and ran her hand across her naked scalp. The skin felt cold. Smooth. If she could feel the cold, she’d probably have been freezing by now—she’d been sitting still for a long time without moving, and the temperature had plummeted. It might already be below zero. She inhaled deep into her lungs. The air felt cleansing.
In Tasiilaq people turned a blind eye to everything, although everyone knew what was going on.
She tensed her muscles under her black clothes: first her arms, then her chest, stomach and legs. She clenched her jaw, gritting her teeth.
The wind blew icily across her scalp. She exhaled and opened her eyes. The two men were still there. ‘What are you looking at?’ she whispered to herself. Her breath condensed in the air in front of her lips as she reached for her rifle. The cold wood and steel felt smooth. Clean. She held the weapon in front of her and loaded a cartridge into the breech. Very calmly she positioned the butt up against her shoulder and aimed the rifle at the two men.
One of them quickly grabbed his own rifle, but he didn’t have time to aim before she had fired hers. The men jumped as the echo from the gunshot rolled up the steep mountain behind them.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing, you crazy bitch?’ one of them shouted as he threw up his hands in exasperation. ‘Go back to where you came from!’
She lowered the rifle. The other man was shouting something at her too, but she wasn’t listening. Her gaze rested on a crippled dwarf willow not far from them.
‘Hey!’
She looked up and into the men’s eyes as she started walking towards them. She had slung her rifle over her shoulder.
‘We don’t want you here,’ one of them said. ‘Piss off home.’
‘I’ve never had a home,’ she said.
‘No, that’s what happens when you kill your own family,’ he went on. His voice was trembling now.
Tupaarnaq stopped about five metres away from them. The man who had spoken was still holding his rifle, his fingers tight around the stock.
‘I only killed one of them,’ Tupaarnaq said. The muscles quivered under her skin. ‘And he wasn’t a human being.’
The man raised his rifle, ready to fire. ‘You fucking whore—’
‘Stop,’ the other man said, putting a hand on his friend’s shoulder. ‘You can’t just shoot her.’
‘Why not? No one gives a damn about that murderer,’ the man behind the rifle sneered. He glared at her along the barrel, around the telescopic sight.
‘She’s not worth it,’ the other man went on.
Tupaarnaq snorted and sized up the angry man. ‘You’re just as rotten as your brother.’
‘He was your father,’ the man said angrily.
‘He was a pig,’ Tupaarnaq said. ‘I never had a father.’
The man let out a roar and aimed his rifle at a rock not far from Tupaarnaq. He emptied the magazine, the shots reverberating in the air. Tupaarnaq’s ears were ringing. Small clouds of dust and powdered snow rose in the air where the projectiles landed.
She shook her head. ‘You’re just like your brother.’
The other man grabbed hold of the shooter’s jacket, glaring at Tupaarnaq over his friend’s shoulder. ‘You shouldn’t be here,’ he said quietly. ‘You make people feel unsafe and angry.’
‘I’ll go back to Nuuk when I’m done,’ she sai
d and resumed walking towards them. She bent down and pulled a dead hare out of the low Arctic scrub. Blood stained its white winter fur. She held the hare up to her face and tilted her head, examining it. Then she shrugged, tossed the dead animal at the feet of the two men, stepped around them and made her way down towards the town.
She had been waiting for almost two months now. One day he would turn up, she was sure of it. One day he would come walking up that track, and she would stop him as she had stopped her father twelve years ago, when she had come home and found him sitting near the dead bodies of her mother and little sisters. His rifle in his hand. His screams as she had cut open his stomach and slashed his throat. Blood. Her father was dead and had rotted away long ago; now it was Abelsen’s turn.
THE EXPERIMENT
2
USAF THULE BASE, NORTH GREENLAND, 13 FEBRUARY 1990
Darkness enveloped the figures of the five silent men sitting in the snow. The last reading they had carried out showed minus thirteen degrees Celsius, and the wind, which swept the top layers off the snow and whirled it around them, worsened the biting chill.
Tom looked down at his body. Snow had gathered in several places in the folds of his white cotton underwear. At the beginning his body heat had melted the snow, but now the skin under the thin cotton was so cold that the snow stayed put. The fabric felt stiff, frozen to his skin. He looked at the others—his three friends from the base and Sakkak, a young Greenlander from the nearby village of Moriusaq. They all wore only their army-issued undergarments, the thin white trousers and long-sleeved shirts covering their bodies down to the blue trainers on their feet. The snow had stuck to their eyebrows and crew cuts like beads of ice on fur. Their skin was pale, the blood having retreated from the outer blood vessels.
Sakkak was panting and shaking all over, his hands clenching and unclenching every second. Pumping.
They had decided to include Sakkak halfway through the trial as a control element, and today was his first day outside with them. They needed to have someone present whose body reacted normally.
Tom closed his eyes. He could feel his heartbeat and the blood flowing under his skin. His heart was beating slowly. Idly. His pulse was low. His body still hurt, but not as much as during the early weeks of the experiment.
He felt like he was dying. His brain instinctively fought the cold. Every time they went to sit outside in the snow, he felt his body go through the stages that would prevent it from dying. His muscles would start to shiver. His pulse rose. His lungs demanded more oxygen. His skin grew pale.
Until the men achieved full control of the blood circulation in their cooled-down bodies, the Inuit was their insurance against death. When Sakkak started shaking severely and his fingers and earlobes turned blue, their limit had been reached and it was time to go inside. None of the others had mentioned that they were freezing yet, but the critical point must be close for all of them.
A hard gust of wind came down between the barracks, shaking them in their foundations. Tom turned his gaze towards the sky. It was dense with cloud, grey and black, with no light to be seen anywhere. There was only the prickling snow. He touched his fingertips. They felt alien, as if he wasn’t touching his own body. He reached a hand backwards and knocked on the external wall of the wooden building. His joints tightened as he moved.
They were called in one by one. Sakkak. Briggs. Bradley. Reese. Then Tom. They weren’t allowed to wait inside the building—the monitoring equipment had to be attached to them the moment they went from the cold into the warmth.
Tom inhaled deep into his lungs as he stepped inside. The heat felt intense and his skin started to tingle and sting immediately.
The others were sitting on a long bench, their bodies covered with small rubber patches, through which thin electrodes were connected to a series of measuring devices set up behind them.
Tom exhaled heavily as he pulled off his top and long johns, leaving only his boxer shorts. He found a space next to the young Inuit and felt the small rubber patches being pressed onto his skin.
Sakkak looked at Tom. ‘Are you Danish?’
‘No, but I speak Danish.’
‘The others don’t speak Danish,’ Sakkak went on. ‘Or Greenlandic.’
‘They’re from the base,’ Tom said. ‘They’re American like me.’
‘I’m Sakkak,’ the young Inuit introduced himself with a smile. ‘My Danish isn’t that good either.’ He rubbed his thighs and cleared his throat. ‘It is your first time as well?’
‘No.’ Tom inhaled heavily through his nose. ‘We’ve been doing this for just under two months.’
‘Wow,’ Sakkak said, his eyes widening. ‘That’s a long time.’ He continued to rub his thighs with the palms of his hands.
‘We need to keep still while they carry out the readings.’ Tom looked at Sakkak. ‘My name is Tom.’
‘I live with my girlfriend in Moriusaq,’ Sakkak said.
Tom nodded. He already knew that.
‘I’m a hunter.’
Tom looked at the body of the young Inuit. His skin was red and speckled with white dots. He was still shaking.
Sakkak gazed out the dark windows. ‘My girlfriend’s name is Najârak. She’s twenty-two and we’ve been together for almost three years.’ A tremor went through his body. He chuckled to himself. ‘She’s from Savissivik. We met in Moriusaq one year when my village was chosen as the summer meeting point for everyone from the other villages. I had just killed my first polar bear, and Najârak was butchering it. She was pretty hopeless at it and asked me for help, but I didn’t know what to do either, so we both ended up covered in blood. We caught sight of one another and we started to laugh.’ Sakkak looked back at Tom. ‘She bore me a son this year. His name is Nukannguaq. I’m so happy that we have him.’
‘That’s great,’ Tom said. ‘I also have a son, but he’s in Denmark with his mother. He’s three years old.’
‘Denmark?’ Sakkak said. ‘You need to go see him soon. A son needs his father to teach him, that much I know. No one cares for orphans…Nukannguaq has me.’
‘We just need to finish all of this,’ Tom said, nodding in the direction of the equipment and the scientists taking readings.
Sakkak smiled. Then he frowned. ‘I don’t understand why I get so cold when none of you lot do?’
‘Sergeant Cave?’
Tom turned his head and looked over his shoulder.
‘What’s the Eskimo saying?’ the voice behind them continued in English.
‘He’s just talking about his girlfriend and their son,’ Tom replied.
‘Make him shut up, will you?’
Tom looked back at Sakkak. ‘We need to be quiet.’ He nodded down at the rubber patches on his arm. ‘It interferes with the readings.’
Sakkak studied his feet. ‘Perhaps the pills are more effective on you white people.’
Tom closed his eyes and withdrew inside himself. His skin was still tingling. The blood was running freely again. They had sat outside for more than an hour this time and he hadn’t felt cold at any point. His body had been stiff and it had ached when he stood up, but the sensation of being cold had been completely absent.
3
‘How’s the aggression?’
Tom looked at his colleague. ‘I’m not sure, but I think it’s changing.’
The three biochemists, Christine, Lee and Tom, were the only ones left in the room. Sakkak, Briggs, Bradley and Reese had gone once they had been disconnected from the monitors.
‘Actually, there’s a definite change,’ Tom corrected himself. He checked his notes. ‘In the last month there has been a marked change in my mood and social skills.’
‘Negatively?’
‘Yes, negatively.’
‘Our data also shows increased activity in the amygdala,’ Christine said. ‘And yesterday’s scans showed a clear deterioration in the pathway between the amygdala and the frontal lobes.’
‘Which supports the theory that we�
��re becoming increasingly aggressive?’ Tom said.
‘Absolutely,’ Christine said. ‘Such symptoms have also been observed in many people with convictions for violence. The diminished pathway between the amygdala and the frontal lobes and the sudden outbursts of rage, I mean.’
‘Is it worse than expected?’ Tom wanted to know.
Christine nodded. ‘After only six weeks on the drug? Yes.’
‘But at the same time, we’ve also concluded that your ability to tolerate very low temperatures has risen significantly,’ Lee said. ‘Our data is unequivocal as far as that’s concerned, so we’re on the right track. It became even more obvious once we doubled the dose.’
‘Sadly that also increased the side effects,’ Christine added.
‘Yes,’ Lee said. ‘However, the positives outweigh the negatives, as far as I’m concerned.’
Tom shrugged. ‘I find it hard to give an accurate assessment of the others, but it’s clear that everyone keeps more and more to themselves, avoiding contact and conversation.’
‘Including you?’
‘Yes. I’m not feeling very motivated these days, and in the mornings I can lose my temper over nothing, but I’m still in control.’
‘I would really like to double your dose again,’ Lee said.
Tom looked at his notes. ‘Okay.’
‘It’s too soon,’ Christine objected. ‘We need to see if the side effects stabilise first.’
Lee nodded. ‘And what about Sakkak? Do we keep giving him the placebo or do we start giving him the real thing?’
‘Placebo,’ Christine interjected quickly. ‘We’re not having civilians taking those pills yet.’
Tom rubbed his forehead. ‘We could also look at the formulation.’
‘I don’t think we should tinker with it at this stage,’ Lee said. ‘We’ll increase the dose in two weeks and see what the readings tell us. Anything else would confuse the results.’
‘I agree,’ Christine said. ‘We daren’t do otherwise. If the deterioration between the amygdala and the frontal lobes continues, we could end up with blackouts and psychosis.’ She caught Tom’s eye. ‘After all, you’re taking the same dose.’
‘I know.’ Tom pressed both hands against the bridge of his nose, then rubbed his eyelids. ‘But I think we should increase the dose now.’
Cold Fear Page 1