Cold Fear

by Mads Peder Nordbo

  ‘I’ll give you a lift,’ Malik said, patting his stomach. ‘I’ll die if I eat any more cake.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Matthew said with a grin.

  Jakob grabbed Matthew by the elbow. ‘When you come back, I need to talk to you about the time we lived in Qeqertarsuatsiaat… Only not today.’ Jakob yawned. ‘My old head has had enough already.’

  ‘No wonder,’ Matthew said, patting Jakob lightly on the shoulder. ‘Happy birthday and many happy returns.’

  Tupaarnaq handed Matthew a bag. ‘Are you ready?’

  Matthew nodded.

  Next to him Malik let out a loud burp as he pulled on a boot. ‘Oh, God, why are my feet so far away?’

  ‘Let’s just get out of here,’ Tupaarnaq said. ‘Having to be social gives me a rash…Especially in a room full of cops.’

  10

  Malik parked halfway down the potholed gravel road, just after the tunnel through the rock that separated the industrial estate and Nuussuaq marina. The tide was high, lifting up the pontoon bridge.

  Matthew took the bag with the cakes and gave Tupaarnaq the key to the boat.

  ‘Which one is it?’

  ‘The third from the end,’ he said. ‘White and light brown.’

  ‘Excellent.’ Tupaarnaq swung her rifle bag over her shoulder. ‘I was afraid it might be one of the slow ones.’ She started walking towards the pontoon bridge. ‘If we didn’t already have a key, I would have taken a boat like that.’

  ‘Just text me if you want picking up later,’ Malik called out from the car. ‘I’m only going to spend the rest of the day gaming, so it’s no trouble.’

  Matthew nodded and followed Tupaarnaq. She was boarding the boat via the steel pulpit at the prow.

  ‘I’ve checked the battery,’ she said as soon as Matthew was on board. ‘How about fuel?’

  ‘The deal is that you always return it with a full tank,’ Matthew said. ‘But we’d better check.’

  ‘Do you know how to do that?’

  He shook his head as he closed the door of the wheelhouse behind him. The wheelhouse seated six people. Two seats faced forwards, with two double seats behind them, a pair on each side.

  ‘You really need to learn how to sail,’ Tupaarnaq said. ‘Turn on the ignition, would you?’

  Matthew turned the key. The engine started immediately and Tupaarnaq let the lid to the battery compartment fall back into place.

  ‘I met a man today,’ Matthew said, making himself comfortable on the seat to the left. ‘He said that my father died in 1990.’

  ‘But your sister was born in 1998,’ Tupaarnaq objected.

  ‘Exactly. So now I’m thinking that my father might have killed two men at the Thule base, then hid out in Nuuk until he was discovered and had to go on the run a second time.’

  Tupaarnaq turned her gaze towards Matthew. ‘Well, that would explain why you never saw him again.’

  ‘Yes.’ Matthew looked away. ‘Only I never imagined him being a killer.’

  ‘Had you ever imagined yourself as a killer?’

  The hairs stood up on Matthew’s back. The saliva thickened in his mouth.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said quietly. ‘But you see my point. How do you think I feel, having done twelve years in a crappy prison for killing a man who was far worse than Ulrik in every possible respect?’

  The boat jolted as she pushed the throttle and they pulled away from the pontoon bridge.

  ‘Can you load the rifle?’ she said, nodding towards the bag by her rifle. ‘There’s a clip of cartridges in the small side pocket.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were allowed to keep your gun and your ammunition in the same place.’

  ‘There are no rules up here.’

  Matthew picked up the rifle and took out the magazine. Once it was filled and back in place, he lifted the rifle and looked back towards the marina through the telescopic sight. Nuuk was disappearing slowly but steadily as the fjord widened and the mountains grew more desolate.

  ‘We’re not hunting seals today, are we?’

  ‘You never know what you might meet.’

  Matthew grimaced. He could still remember the taste of the raw seal liver she had forced him to eat when she had taken him hunting two months ago, the blood smeared across the bottom of the boat, the pink intestines spilling out of the steaming animal when she gutted its belly, the greasy skin that Tupaarnaq had peeled off the seal’s body with her hands and a small ulo. He shook off his thoughts. ‘Can’t we shoot something other than seals?’

  ‘Relax,’ she said. ‘I only shoot when I have to, and I don’t intend to do so today unless we happen to come across the very animal I’m looking for.’

  ‘And that is?’

  ‘A pig.’

  ‘A pig? You mean a man?’

  ‘When we get a bit further south and are sheltered by the mountains,’ Tupaarnaq said, ‘then you can have a go at steering if you like.’

  The waves bounced against the hull of the boat. Matthew could see that they were travelling at around thirty knots. ‘I’d like to try. But I’ll be slower than you.’

  ‘You’ll soon get the hang of it,’ Tupaarnaq said. ‘This boat is easy to drive. It’s the rocks you need to watch out for.’

  Matthew nodded and looked out at the mountains, which rose steeply and suddenly out of the sea as far as the eye could see. There were no towns or villages between Nuuk and Færingehavn. Only the endless range of bleak mountains and the icy sea below them. ‘How do you know where the rocks are?’

  ‘I can tell from the sea…from the colours and the waves.’

  He studied the sea. They had reached a shaded area and the water looked pitch black to him.

  ‘I’m messing with you,’ she said. ‘The small monitor over here tells me. It even shows up large shoals of fish, if that’s what you’re looking for.’ She pulled the throttle back and the boat settled on the sea. The engine idled.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Matthew asked. ‘Are you worried we might be getting close to some rocks?’

  She pointed to one of the steep rock faces close to the surface of the water. Carefully she pushed the throttle again and let the boat cruise slowly towards the grey and brown mountain. Snow had started to collect in its cracks and on any ledges over a hundred metres above the sea. Within the next month the white carpet would reach all the way down to the water’s edge.

  Matthew peered into the deep below them.

  ‘Go to the bow,’ she said. ‘And take your mobile if you want photos…I saw a whale.’

  ‘A whale? This close to the mountains?’

  ‘Yes, it surfaced just now. It’ll be back. Just wait.’ She let go of the throttle and looked at him. ‘You can drop the anchor…But don’t forget to check that the other end of the rope is attached first.’

  Matthew smiled and shook his head.

  The boat glided across the water. The whale came up twice to turn over at the surface. It was a humpback, with a black-and-white speckled tailfin.

  ‘It’s feeding,’ Tupaarnaq said. ‘I thought so.’

  ‘This close to the shore?’

  ‘There are often big shoals of small fish near the rocks and a young humpback whale like that one will swim anywhere.’ She turned off the engine. ‘Drop the anchor or we’ll start to drift towards the rocks.’

  Matthew let the anchor plop into the sea and watched as several metres of rope were sucked from the boat. ‘Bloody hell, it’s deep!’

  ‘Yes, the mountains drop really steeply here.’

  He zipped his jacket right up to his chin and cricked his neck a couple of times.

  When the whale surfaced, they could hear it breathing in long, hoarse gasps. Water sprayed in misty clouds over its blowhole. It turned over, lazily slapping the surface of the water.

  Tupaarnaq had joined Matthew at the bow and together they watched the enormous animal rolling around and diving right under the surface. She had brought her rifle.

  ‘Is it dangerous?�
� Matthew asked.

  ‘Not in the least.’

  ‘What were you hunting in Tasiilaq?’ Matthew said, glancing at the rifle.

  There was silence for a moment. ‘Men.’

  ‘Men?’

  She nodded absentmindedly. ‘Abelsen.’

  ‘Do you really think he would hide out over there?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I know that it wouldn’t be the first time…And there are many men like him in that shithole.’

  Matthew looked at her black clothes. The thin jacket and her combat trousers. ‘How do you hunt a man?’

  She shrugged. ‘I just sit there and I wait. At a spot above the town where I can see almost everything.’

  ‘What happens if he turns up?’

  ‘Then he dies.’ She raised the rifle and aimed it at the mountains.

  ‘But if you shoot him, won’t you go down for another twelve years…like you did with your father?’

  ‘Just how stupid are you?’ She turned her head and glared at Matthew. ‘You’ve read my case file, haven’t you? I only did twelve years because I was also convicted of killing my mother and sisters… If I kill Abelsen, I’ll get five to eight years at most.’

  ‘Setting aside the minor point that it would be your second murder conviction,’ Matthew said. ‘You have a law degree, so you do the maths…How about moving on and making a new life for yourself?’

  ‘A new life?’ she echoed scornfully. ‘How? When you’re raped as a child, you can never grow up. Your ability to grow up like other people has gone. Raped from you.’ Her hands clenched the rifle; her knuckles glowed white. The whale had surfaced again and its hoarse breathing lingered in the air. ‘When that pig plunges his dick into you, when you scream because it hurts, when you’re beaten so that you’ll keep your mouth shut, when he rapes you again while the blood is still running out of you…Then you lose the ability to have a life like other people. When you feel his disgusting body press you into the mattress. His sweat. The stench of his rotting teeth. The noises coming from that bastard’s throat.’

  Matthew sat down heavily on the moulded plastic seat behind them. ‘I’m sorry…I didn’t know.’

  ‘Sorry is the most useless word ever invented.’ Tupaarnaq pressed the stock of the rifle against her cheek. Her hands tightened around the grip. Her gaze was focused.

  The whale wheezed and turned over heavily in the sea. Its body glistened like wet rubber as it exhaled in a long, rusty hiss that filled the air above it with moisture.

  Tupaarnaq aimed her rifle at the mountain behind the whale and fired it three times.

  Matthew jumped and pressed his eyes shut in response to the echo between the rocks.

  ‘That’s why the suicide rate up here is so high,’ Tupaarnaq went on, firing again. ‘Damaged young women and men. They take their own lives because they’re incapable of growing up. Everything in their mind has been raped. Nothing can ever feel good…And a child who has been raped attracts new rapists…like vultures circling a dying animal.’ She fired towards the mountains again before letting the rifle slip along her leg. ‘Abelsen raped my mother and it’s his fault that my father went berserk and killed my sisters…He has to die. Just like my father.’

  11

  It had started to snow as they sailed in to the fjord that led to Færingehavn. Matthew had steered the boat along the coast, but Tupaarnaq had taken over so they wouldn’t be too long in getting there.

  Matthew had gone outside and was sitting at the stern, looking towards the shore. He had Tupaarnaq’s rifle lying across his thighs; every now and then he would pick it up to study the shoreline through the telescopic sight.

  They sailed past the long wooden quay with its row of large, dilapidated warehouses, some square, others curved. Two months ago, inside one of the arched metal buildings, they had found the remains of an eleven-year-old girl who had been starved and tortured to death in a converted shipping container over forty years earlier. Images of the terrified little girl in the container gnawed furiously at Matthew’s thoughts.

  ‘We can’t dock here,’ Tupaarnaq called from the wheelhouse as she turned the boat right and let it drift towards the grey building at the far end of the quay where they had dropped anchor the last time. ‘Drop the anchor and untie the dinghy,’ she added.

  Matthew nodded and threw the anchor overboard. The sea wasn’t nearly as deep here.

  He undid the knots holding the rubber dinghy in place and pulled the rope. A thin layer of snow had already settled on the black bottom of the dinghy, but it fell out the moment he flipped it over.

  ‘You are holding on to the rope, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, of course I am,’ he said, handing her the rifle. ‘Are you taking this?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  She grabbed the weapon and stepped around him and down into the black rubber dinghy.

  ‘It’s bloody freezing,’ he said, looking ashore. The place hadn’t changed since their last visit. The medium-sized wooden houses with broken windows and peeling paintwork all looked the same. Only the roofs seemed different now that they had been given a dusting of virgin snow, but under the snow was the same old rusty corrugated sheet metal or faded roofing felt. Although the houses were badly damaged from having been abandoned over thirty years earlier, the colours were still clear on the many red, green and grey wooden walls. Most of the buildings were one storey, but some had two. All were trashed and battered by an endless series of storms and Arctic winters.

  ‘Are you coming?’

  ‘Yes, sorry.’ Matthew shook his head and grabbed the bag with the cakes that Else had given him.

  ‘What did I tell you about that word?’ Tupaarnaq took the oars and a few minutes later they were close enough that she and Matthew could jump ashore. They pulled the dinghy higher up than the last time, right up past the furthest building, which had light grey walls. Alongside it, out of the wind, were piles of dark, rusting oil barrels.

  Matthew looked around. He could see thirty or so large buildings. Many seemed to be houses of some sort or another, though the ones that lay along the harbourfront were all warehouses.

  ‘I wonder where they can be,’ he said.

  ‘They should have heard the boat,’ Tupaarnaq said with a shrug. ‘Let’s take a look around. Perhaps they’re down by that big grey house.’

  Matthew looked up at the first row of houses and then across the open plain, which had a large, grey house at the end of it.

  Tupaarnaq swung her rifle over her shoulder.

  The grass on the plain was brown and withered, and the cold wind was bringing with it snow that had started to settle in the many hollows. Matthew remembered from his last visit the importance of stepping on the mounds, as there were often puddles of water in the dark, muddy holes and cracks between them.

  Above them the sky was gathering in heavy grey clouds and the snow began to fall faster.

  They walked the last stretch to the grey house along a wooden walkway. This house was just as damaged as the others, but its corrugated sheet-metal roof was still intact. It was stained and rusty, but it had no holes. The house consisted of a wide main building and two short wings; a damaged door hung diagonally at the front of the left wing. Every window was smashed, either by the weather or by people.

  ‘Hello?’ a voice called out from the house.

  Matthew and Tupaarnaq both stopped and looked towards the house. The owner of the voice was a slim young man who had called out to them from the first floor.

  ‘Someone’s coming,’ he called out over his shoulder. ‘They have a gun.’

  Three other people quickly appeared in the wide window.

  Matthew waved to them and saw his sister wave back.

  ‘They seem fine to me,’ Tupaarnaq said.

  The young people disappeared from the window and came running down the walkway towards Matthew and Tupaarnaq soon afterwards.

  ‘What’s up?’ Arnaq said. ‘Did my mum send you out here?’

/>   Matthew nodded and handed her the bag. ‘Sort of…We bring cake. Leftovers from Jakob’s kaffemik party.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Arnaq said. ‘But we’re fine and we don’t need any more babysitters…Lars is plenty.’ She turned and introduced her friends. ‘Meet Lasse, Alma and Andreas.’

  ‘Hi,’ Matthew said, looking at the three young people. It was Lasse who had called out from the window; he was the tallest of them and had blond, shoulder-length hair. Andreas was shorter with reddish hair, while Alma was blonde like Lasse, but with the addition of freckles.

  ‘It’s seriously cool out here,’ Andreas said. ‘A-ma-zing.’

  ‘And so cold,’ Alma said.

  ‘Didn’t you bring any other clothes than what you’re wearing?’ Tupaarnaq asked.

  ‘Oh, sure,’ Arnaq said. ‘They’re inside…We’re camping out up on the first floor. The rooms are full of old stuff.’

  ‘A-ma-zing,’ Andreas said again.

  ‘She looks like you,’ Tupaarnaq said. ‘Arnaq.’

  Matthew smiled. ‘Does she?’

  ‘Yes, something about her cheeks and nose.’

  ‘Is this your brother?’ Lasse wanted to know.

  Arnaq nodded. ‘Yes, this is Matthew.’ She turned her gaze to Matthew. ‘We’ve only met a couple of times.’

  Lasse looked at Tupaarnaq. ‘And do you hunt?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Father says that women and guns are like women and cars,’ he grinned.

  Alma elbowed him. ‘Is your dad from the Stone Age?’

  ‘So what?’ Lasse exclaimed, flinging out his arms. ‘That’s how they talk at Father’s hunting lodge.’

  Tupaarnaq pulled the rifle from her shoulder and held it in her right hand while she picked up a rusty can with the other. She walked up to Lasse and placed the can on his head.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he said.

  ‘Shut up and don’t move,’ Tupaarnaq said angrily.

  He removed the can from his head without looking at her.

  Tupaarnaq grabbed his arm forcefully and prised the can from his hands. She jabbed a finger hard against his forehead. ‘Didn’t I just tell you to shut up?’ She looked him right in the eye until he stood very still. Then she replaced the can on his head. ‘If you move, I’ll blow your ear off, understand?’