Cold Fear

by Mads Peder Nordbo

  4

  USAF THULE BASE, NORTH GREENLAND, 27 FEBRUARY 1990

  Tom reached out his hand and moved his Spy right up close to one of Briggs’s red Stratego pieces. He looked up for a reaction.

  ‘Boom,’ Briggs said.

  Tom nodded contentedly. ‘I thought so.’

  Briggs pushed one of his pieces alongside the bomb.

  ‘Three star?’ Tom wanted to know.

  ‘I’m not going to tell you that.’

  ‘You can’t blame a guy for trying,’ Tom said and pushed a Miner in behind the four star he had sitting close to Briggs’s bombs.

  Briggs’s legs twitched. ‘I can’t focus on this bloody game.’

  ‘That’s why we’re playing it,’ Tom said.

  Briggs looked at the pieces as if they were poisonous snakes.

  ‘Just make your move,’ Tom said. ‘You know I’m going to beat you—I always do.’

  ‘Screw this game,’ Briggs exploded. He kicked the table with his foot, upsetting a couple of pieces.

  Tom looked up from the board. ‘Easy now.’

  ‘I can’t do this any longer,’ Briggs said. His breathing was agitated, his chest heaving and sinking under his grey sweatshirt. ‘They’re trying to break us.’

  Tom got up and went over to the only window in the room. It was pitch black outside, although it was the middle of the afternoon. The snow reached all the way up to the bottom of the window. He pushed it up. It was minus fifteen degrees Celsius outside at least. The clean air enveloped him. He could feel it entering deep into his lungs, but he didn’t feel cold, although he could see from his arms that his skin reacted the moment it came into contact with the frosty air. He stuffed both hands deep into the snow below the window and rested his chin on the wooden frame.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ Briggs said.

  ‘I can’t feel a thing,’ Tom said. ‘I’m not cold at all…Crazy, isn’t it?’

  ‘Who gives a toss about that if you fry your brain in the process?’ Briggs said. ‘Look at my God damn hands!’

  Tom extracted himself from the snow and turned to Briggs, who was standing with both hands outstretched.

  ‘I can’t think straight when they shake like this,’ Briggs said. ‘And my head is completely messed up…I shouldn’t have to be a part of this experiment, it’s not right.’

  Tom slowly slid his hands over his face. They felt wet, but not cold. ‘Do you want me to get you a sedative?’

  ‘What? A sedative…No. I’ve had enough of playing chemistry games. I want out. All out.’

  ‘It’s not that easy,’ Tom said.

  ‘I don’t give a crap,’ Briggs said. ‘This stuff will mess us up for good…and for what? So that we can stomp around the Arctic without getting cold?’ He threw up his hands. ‘Nothing ever happens here. What the hell are we even doing up here in this shithole country?’

  ‘It’s not about Greenland,’ Tom said. ‘There’s enormous potential in the ability to tolerate low temperatures. Neanderthals were more cold-resistant than we are, and if we can recreate that gene, then—’

  ‘Neanderthals?’ Briggs cut him off. ‘Fucking hell, Tom. If it was that important surely they wouldn’t have died out?’

  ‘The climate changes all the time.’

  ‘Yes, and it’s getting warmer…Thanks a million for messing up my brain with this experiment, but at least I won’t be freezing my balls off while the ice cap melts around us.’

  ‘The climate will change again,’ Tom said patiently. ‘And it might do so abruptly. But that’s irrelevant anyway, because this experiment is about the here and now. If we can use drugs to increase our resistance to very low temperatures, all of NATO’s Arctic units will be stronger. It might even pave the way for new settlements so that people from overpopulated and drought-stricken regions around the equator can begin a new life in the colder, sparsely populated Arctic.’

  ‘No one in their right mind would want to live here,’ Briggs shouted, punching the wall behind the sofa so hard that the skin on his knuckles split. He stared at his hand. ‘I don’t know what’s happening to me. I can’t sleep. I flare up and I can’t control my temper. It can’t go on. I want out.’

  ‘Do you also want out of Tupilak?’

  ‘There’s no way out of Tupilak,’ Briggs said abruptly. ‘Tupilak goes on, and the rest of you will have to handle the cold as best you can.’

  Tom stared at his own hands. They were shaking. He closed his eyes. Rubbed them carefully. A sense of fatigue gnawed deep inside his body. ‘We’ll need to scale down your dose,’ he said. ‘Reduce you to half a dose for one week, then phase you out completely. It’s the only safe way to do it.’

  Briggs sat down on the sofa and buried his face in his hands. ‘Can’t you see what it’s doing to us?’

  ‘We knew that from the start.’

  ‘Bullshit,’ Briggs said. ‘You and I can decide how many pills we take. It must be enough just to run the trial on Bradley and Reese.’

  ‘No. That’s above our pay grade and you know it.’

  ‘Just as long as we don’t end up in the loony bin,’ Briggs said angrily.

  ‘It’s a question of adjustment,’ Tom said. ‘The rage will pass.’

  Briggs shook his head. ‘How are Annelise and Matthew?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘How are they doing in Denmark?’

  ‘They’re good,’ Tom said. ‘They live in a village in the countryside. It’s called Tommerup.’

  ‘Don’t you miss them?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then quit this madness and join them before it’s too late. You must be owed a lot of leave.’

  Tom closed the window again. ‘You said it yourself: there’s no way out of Tupilak.’

  Briggs looked down at a small white scar just above his left wrist.

  ‘That was a long time ago,’ Tom said with a smile.

  ‘You always were a nut job,’ Briggs said. ‘Make it a deep cut, you said. That way we’ll be blood brothers.’ He looked up. ‘That was another time you damn well nearly got us killed.’

  Tom glanced at the scar on his own wrist. ‘Listen…if anything happens to me, will you keep an eye on Matthew?’

  ‘If anything happens?’

  ‘If I disappear or die, I mean.’

  ‘Don’t. I can’t stand kids.’

  ‘I’m being serious!’

  Briggs inhaled the air deep into his lungs before exhaling. ‘There’s no way I can look after a kid.’

  ‘I’m not asking you to adopt him.’ Tom grabbed his left wrist and rubbed the scar lightly with his thumb. ‘I just want you to follow him…from a distance. And be there if he gets himself mixed up in something bad. If you ever have any kids, I’ll do the same for them.’

  ‘Okay,’ Briggs said. ‘I’ll watch him. From a distance!’

  ‘Is that a promise?’

  ‘Yes, I just said so. But try not to die, will you? I’m crap with kids.’ Briggs shook his head and got up again. ‘I’m going to the gym to pump some iron. Wanna join me?’

  ‘Not today.’

  Tom walked Briggs to the door of his room, then went to the ensuite bathroom where he opened a small mirrored door in the cabinet above the sink. He took out a jar with no label, shook out two uneven pills and popped them into his mouth.

  He stared at himself in the mirror. His face was narrow. Pale. His eyes stared back at him. One of them had two pupils. Matthew had inherited this pigmentation error; the black dot that made it look as if he had two pupils in the same eye. Tom closed his eyes and saw his little blond boy smile at him. On the day Annelise and Matthew had boarded the plane in Thule to travel to Denmark, the little boy had also smiled and waved. He was too young to understand how much time would pass before he saw his father again. But given how the experiment had been progressing, Tom couldn’t keep them on the base. He simply didn’t dare.

  The pills kicked in. His muscles tensed. Tom let himself
fall forwards onto the linoleum, starting his press-ups the moment he hit the floor; he carried on for longer than he could be bothered to count.

  A knocking on the door to his quarters brought his attention back to the present. He got up from the floor and quickly rinsed his face.

  The sweat trickled down him along with the water.

  The knocking resumed.

  ‘Hang on. I’m coming.’

  He opened the door and saw one of the short Inuit women from the mess on the other side. His arms and chest were tightening and throbbing.

  She smiled at him. ‘Sergeant Cave. You have a phone call…from Denmark.’

  TIME’S SHADOWS

  5

  NUUK, WEST GREENLAND, 17 OCTOBER 2014

  The body of Jørgen Emil Lyberth, former speaker of the Inatsisartut, was found in a flat in Nuuk on Wednesday afternoon. Nuuk Police have released very few details, but sources say that Lyberth suffered a violent death, during which he was nailed to the floor and gutted. Police say they have little evidence to go on, but are working on the theory that the murder was motivated by Lyberth’s outspoken support for Greenland’s independence from Denmark. The police are now looking for Kjeld Abelsen, a senior civil servant with the Greenlandic government, and a young woman from Tasiilaq who was recently released after serving a prison sentence in Denmark. Both are regarded as persons of interest, according to lead investiagtor Michael Ottesen.

  Matthew pushed aside the article he had printed out from Sermitsiaq’s website almost two months ago. The paper was grubby and crinkled from having lain too long in his bag. His colleague, Leiff, had written the article shortly after Lyberth’s mutilated body had been found in Tupaarnaq’s flat in a run-down apartment block on the very edge of the headland. Matthew had kept a low profile following the murder, at least until Abelsen had been caught a few days later and Matthew had been forced to kill a police officer in self-defence.

  The first time Matthew had met the young police officer, Ulrik had been a cheerful and ambitious man about to follow in the political footsteps of his foster father, Jørgen Emil Lyberth. That was before Ulrik’s life violently imploded, when he learned that he was Abelsen’s biological son, a result of rape, and that his sister, Tupaarnaq, who had recently been released from prison after serving twelve years for killing their biological family, was back in Greenland. While Tupaarnaq blamed their father and Abelsen for the death of their mother and two young sisters, Ulrik had blamed Tupaarnaq for everything. At the age of fifteen she had been found next to the gutted body of their father, covered in the blood of all the victims, and had subsequently been convicted of all four killings. When Ulrik had discovered that Abelsen was his biological father, he had tried to kill both Abelsen and Tupaarnaq, and Matthew had had no choice but to kill Ulrik. Ulrik and Tupaarnaq had grown up together in Tasiilaq, but the killing of their parents and two younger sisters, Tupaarnaq’s many years in prison and Ulrik’s bottomless hatred of his older sister had kept the two apart, until she turned up unexpectedly in Nuuk and found herself in the middle of another murder case.

  The rising sun bathed most of Matthew’s living room in a sharp golden light. The sofa was cluttered because he had upended his bag looking for a USB stick and the cushions were covered with detritus. Papers. Pictures. Everything. He rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands. Everything was one big mess. His eyes itched in the dry Arctic air. The long nights without sleep didn’t help either. Four months ago he had moved to Nuuk from Denmark to find peace and serenity, but when he’d met Tupaarnaq and the two of them had begun to investigate a cold case about revenge killings and the sexual assault of children, everything had spiralled out of control. Before he knew it, he had found himself on the first floor of Jakob’s house, watching Ulrik plunge a knife into Tupaarnaq, while Abelsen sat tied to a chair in the living room below them.

  In the days that followed, Matthew had mostly stayed with Tupaarnaq at the hospital, but as she regained consciousness he began to have flashbacks to the violent events in Jakob’s house. Tupaarnaq bleeding from the side, where Ulrik had stabbed her. The feeling in his hands as he hurled Jakob’s old harpoon at Ulrik’s back. The sound of the curved blade of the ulo as it sliced into Ulrik’s throat. Blood had spurted from the diagonal cut onto his chest. His body had slumped forwards and crashed onto the floor, with the harpoon still sticking out of his back.

  The bile rose in Matthew’s throat. He swallowed a few times, suppressing the nausea and saliva. He looked over towards the big living room windows and the balcony door. The autumn wind swept across Nuuk clear and clean. It was only a few degrees above zero; a couple of days earlier a violent storm, full of lashing icy rain, had squeezed the last signs of life out of the late summer. The mountains had wept as never before and the water cascading down them had created wild waterfalls everywhere.

  Matthew found a cigarette and lit it. He studied his hands. The smoke felt good. He closed his eyes and took a deep drag, letting the cigarette dangle between his lips.

  Questions had been asked after Ulrik’s death, but the police and Ottesen in particularly had been good at shielding him. The post mortem concluded that it wasn’t the harpoon to his back but the slashing of his throat that had caused Ulrik’s death, and thus there would be no court case, no trial. Matthew had killed Ulrik in self-defence, only that wasn’t how he remembered it. Ulrik had been straddling Tupaarnaq on the bed. She had been naked, and when Ulrik had stabbed her, Matthew had hurled the harpoon into his back so forcefully that it had come out the other side.

  Matthew had covered Tupaarnaq’s naked body and pressed his hand against her wound. The blood had run out between her tattooed leaves and his fingers and onto the mattress.

  Then followed days at the hospital. Scattered interviews. Tupaarnaq regained consciousness and left Nuuk without even having been discharged from the hospital. She had held his hand and then she was gone. Ottesen had discovered that she had bought a one-way ticket to Tasiilaq, and that was all the information Matthew had. She didn’t reply when he texted her; she didn’t answer her phone. She hadn’t been well enough to travel, but she was gone—and silent. He had tried writing all sorts of text messages in the hope that something would make her react, but nothing did.

  Matthew let the cigarette butt fall into a cup on the coffee table, where it hissed briefly. He looked at the pictures on the sofa. Pictures of Tine. Tine’s belly. The picture had been taken only a few weeks before the car crash in which both Tine and Emily, the baby in Tine’s belly, had been killed. His fingers brushed the wedding ring in his jeans pocket. He still wasn’t ready to put it away, unable to let go of the security the ring had represented. Sometimes he would put it in a drawer for a day or two, but it always left him feeling lonely and naked. Tine had been buried wearing her wedding ring. It had all happened so quickly. The accident. Death. Tine’s eyes as she died. His fingers on the curve of her stomach. The life that disappeared before it was born.

  Most of Matthew’s photographs were dog-eared by now. Some of them were as old as he was. Those of his father were the oldest. They were from the Thule base, taken before Matthew and his mother had left; his father had never followed. Matthew turned over the postcard his father had sent from Nuuk in August 1990. I’m not able to come to Denmark as soon as planned. Sorry, love you both. Apart from the pictures from the Thule base, where his parents were mostly photographed together, the postcard was all he had left of his father. The last proof of life.

  In the middle of the mess on the sofa was the black notebook where he had started to write down his thoughts. He wrote them down for Emily. He needed to tell her about life and the world, although she had never been, and never would be, a part of it.

  The air tasted of smoke as he inhaled it. The sun sat high above the low buildings that reached down towards the Moravian Brethren cemetery. He opened the thread of unanswered text messages he had sent to Tupaarnaq and stared at them. Then he reached for his cigarettes, lit a fresh one and got to hi
s feet. The dust danced in the air around him. The apartment stank.

  ‘Let’s get some fresh air in here,’ he said to himself.

  The balcony door opened easily and stayed open when he let go of it. There had been days when it was so windy that he could barely control it.

  He took a deep breath, mixing the clean Arctic air with the smoke from his cigarette. Tupaarnaq was right. He really ought to quit. Except that right after the car crash it was all he had been able to do: light cigarettes and stare into space.

  Thoughts were buzzing around his head. It was less than two months since the deaths of Lyberth and Ulrik, and now he had to write about three violent suicides that had occurred a few days earlier in Ittoqqortoormiit, on Greenland’s east coast. Last night his editor had sent him some pictures and the initial witness statements. There was only one proper police officer in Ittoqqortoormiit. His two assistants were untrained and employed on a casual basis, and it was one of them who had supplied his editor with the information about the deaths. There was nothing legitimate about that arrangement, and Matthew had immediately passed the material on to Ottesen. Not because he wanted to grass on his editor’s sources, but because they would run into problems if they used the material. There were several close-ups of the dead bodies. Two of the men had been shot in the chest and one through the mouth. The room in which they were lying looked like a trashed cannabis den, but was apparently the home of one of the young men. Ittoqqortoormiit was a small town in decline, although a dozen of its remaining four hundred inhabitants did their best to keep it alive. It was the smallest town in Greenland, close to becoming just a village. It was also Greenland’s most remote town. Perhaps even the most remote town in the whole world, with eight hundred and fifty kilometres of mountains and ice separating it from its nearest neighbour, Tasiilaq.

  There had been four people in the room, four young men from Ittoqqortoormiit, but only three of them had died. The fourth man had also shot himself, but he had survived. It was the picture of him that had caused Matthew to pass everything on to Ottesen. The picture was a close-up of his head. Half of the young man’s face had been blown off. His lips hung limply and his cheek had burst open so that you could see the teeth on his jawbone. A few teeth were shattered, lying like white splinters across his gutted cheek. His face was smeared with blood, as was his throat. In the middle of it all, one eye stared at the photographer. Just the one. The other eye was covered in blood.