Cold Fear

by Mads Peder Nordbo

  Several of the mourners were starting to cross the road and a car pulled up close by. Matthew gestured for them to keep their distance. None of them had any idea of the kind of person Símin was and how far his thinking was from theirs.

  Someone started to shout.

  Símin stared desperately around at the clusters of onlookers, which grew larger and larger and came closer and closer. ‘God has determined that if you live the way you do, then you deserve to die,’ he railed at them. His voice had changed. The sneering had gone. ‘Was this what you wanted to save me for,’ he said to Arnaq. ‘Hordes of demons in human clothing?’

  ‘It’s…’ She struggled to speak and had to swallow a couple of times. ‘It hurts, Símin…Let me go.’

  Símin trembled. His mouth was open. His eyes flickered. ‘Is this your world?’

  ‘Let me go,’ she pleaded. ‘Símin, please let me go.’

  He tightened his grip on her and pressed her body against his. His breathing grew heavy in her ear.

  ‘Let her go now,’ Matthew said. He tried to catch Símin’s eyes inside the hood, but they kept flitting. ‘We can help you…You can be free.’

  ‘She belongs to me,’ Símin said. His tone was contemptuous once more.

  At that moment Briggs stepped in front of Matthew.

  Matthew reached out his arm to stop him, but Briggs was faster and had already reached Símin and Arnaq. For a brief moment Símin’s eyes grew calm and a smile began to spread across his face. Then Briggs knocked him unconscious with a single punch to his face.

  Arnaq freed herself and ran to Matthew, who hugged her and held her tight. Else arrived, sobbing, and embraced them both.

  Briggs picked up the unconscious Símin almost effortlessly and threw him over his shoulder. ‘I’ll take this guy to casualty, and I’ll stay there until the police arrive.’

  Matthew nodded. He pressed his lips together, but then smiled briefly. ‘Thank you.’

  THE FURTHEST TOWN

  55

  ITTOQQORTOORMIIT, EAST GREENLAND, 30 OCTOBER 2014

  ‘Are you asleep?’

  Matthew shook his head. The left side of his face was resting against one of the windows in the small helicopter. ‘No, I’m just watching the view. It’s mind-blowing.’

  The approach to Ittoqqortoormiit was so different from Nuuk that Matthew experienced a moment of serenity. After Rakel’s death and Símin’s attack his head had been one big mess, and the fact that he had been forced to travel to Ittoqqortoormiit as early as the day after Jakob’s funeral hadn’t helped. There were only flights to the isolated town on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and he didn’t want to wait until Tuesday in case Abelsen had made good on his threat to find Tom and had already have travelled there himself.

  The helicopter flew over the small town. Everything around them was covered by a thick layer of snow, and along the rocky coast broad ribbons of ice reached the sea. There were ice floes several metres wide in the stretches of open water, and it was clear that not only the fjords and the bays but the entire sea was in the process of freezing over.

  ‘How far north is this place compared to Nuuk?’ Matthew shouted over his shoulder. The rotors made a racket in the small cabin.

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ Tupaarnaq said. ‘A fair bit, I would think.’

  ‘We’re level with Ilulissat on the west coast,’ the pilot shouted back. ‘But the landscape here is harsher.’

  Matthew looked down at the scattered, brightly coloured houses half-buried in snow less than fifty metres below the helicopter.

  ‘And winter has also come early this year,’ the pilot added.

  ‘I had expected it to be dark all day over here by now,’ Matthew shouted.

  ‘No,’ the pilot shouted back. ‘But it won’t be long; in twenty days it’ll be dark twenty-four seven.’

  ‘Do you know where house number eighty-seven is?’

  The pilot shook his head.

  ‘Can you see the church?’ the co-pilot shouted.

  Matthew looked down at the town and identified what he thought must be the church. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Count three houses up the slope and then one to the right. It’s the blue one.’

  ‘Hah, this dump doesn’t have as many as three houses,’ Tupaarnaq quipped dismissively.

  Just under half an hour later they were outside number eighty-seven. It was a small house, but not the smallest one in town, and it was blue, as the co-pilot had said. There were no lights in any of the windows, but fortunately the daylight hadn’t faded completely yet.

  Tupaarnaq let her backpack slide down onto the snow, but kept the bag with her rifle slung over her shoulder. ‘Someone has forced the door.’

  Matthew frowned and took a closer look at it. She was right. It was slightly ajar and the handle looked damaged. He nudged the door. Behind it was a small hall with just enough room for the two of them.

  ‘Do you think this is where your father lives?’ Tupaarnaq said, picking up her backpack. She tossed it into the hall and continued to the next door that was facing them. Snow scattered from her boots and trousers as she moved.

  Matthew followed, dumping his own backpack next to hers. ‘Should we take off our boots?’

  She shook her head as she opened the door. ‘No, the place feels empty.’

  Matthew began to feel distinctly uneasy. ‘Don’t you think we would have heard if Abelsen had managed to find Tom? I mean, only four hundred people live here, surely some of them would know if he had?’

  ‘I think you can get away with pretty much anything here.’

  The living room was simply furnished. There was an ancient sofa along one wall. There were also a couple of armchairs, a bookcase and a coffee table, which left room for little more. There was a duvet on the sofa and it looked as if someone slept there regularly.

  At one end of the sofa was an old tiled stove. Matthew carefully placed his right hand on one of the tiles. It felt even colder than the room. He looked around him again. There were some magazines on the coffee table and several books in the bookcase. Someone had left a jumper on a sofa cushion.

  He walked over to the sofa and picked up the jumper. It was a thick sweater knitted from coarse yarn and yet it felt soft. He pressed the sweater to his face and inhaled through his nose, dragging the air into every corner of his lungs through the fibres. It was so long ago since he had last seen his father. He had no idea if the sweater smelled of Tom, but it smelled of a human being; of a man.

  Matthew sat down on the sofa and slumped. One hand held the sweater while the other slowly trailed the duvet. A part of him wanted to cry, but there was also a feeling of anger.

  ‘What’s keeping you?’ Tupaarnaq demanded; she was looking into the room adjacent to the living room from the doorway. ‘You need to come in here.’

  ‘Okay,’ Matthew said. His gaze was distant. ‘I just have to—’

  ‘Hurry up,’ she said, disappearing into the neighbouring room. ‘There’s a small lab in here.’

  ‘A what?’ Matthew frowned. Briggs’s stories about the Thule experiment and the pills suddenly felt very real.

  ‘But I don’t get why anyone would force the door,’ she went on. ‘Because I don’t think that anything has been taken…Everything looks just as it should be…As far as I can see.’

  ‘Wow.’ Matthew stopped in the doorway. ‘I wasn’t expecting that.’

  ‘No, me neither.’

  He stared into the room in amazement. It was smaller than the living room, but much more was crammed into it. At the centre were two dining tables. On one were several tall piles of papers, a handful of books, boxes, plastic tubs and some glass flasks, while on the other there was a chaos of papers, mixed with slim files, ballpoint pens and an old computer with a clumsy tower and a small monitor.

  ‘It certainly doesn’t look as if someone searched this room,’ Matthew said.

  ‘No, besides, you can’t sell stolen goods in Greenland. Everyone will know where they came from.�
��

  Matthew walked up to the table with the boxes and the tubs. There were many different types of chemicals, several without labels.

  ‘Why don’t we look through it all?’ Tupaarnaq suggested.

  He nodded. ‘Yes, let’s see what we can find.’ He glanced out of the only window in the room. The light outside was pink. ‘We also need to do a tour of the town and find out if anyone knows anything about my father,’ he said. ‘And ask if Abelsen and Bárdur were here the other day.’

  ‘Yes.’ Tupaarnaq had already begun to search. ‘What are we looking for?’

  ‘Good question,’ he said, examining the papers next to the computer.

  ‘Okay…’ She stopped her search and turned to him. ‘I’ll just check the rest of the house.’

  He looked up at her with a frown.

  ‘Somebody forced the door,’ she said. ‘And if Tom is lying dead somewhere, us trampling all over a crime scene isn’t a very bright idea.’

  The hairs stood up in Matthew’s arms. ‘No,’ he said in a low, croaking voice. He knew there had to be a first floor of some kind because there was a narrow staircase in the hall.

  ‘You carry on down here,’ Tupaarnaq said. ‘I’m guessing there’s only room for one upstairs anyway.’

  Matthew nodded slowly and resumed examining the piles of paper. Most of them were handwritten notes and data collected from different experiments; others looked more like chemical formulas and hand-drawn models of molecules, but there were also several printed sheets which looked like articles or possibly even a thesis.

  The light was fast losing strength outside and the small window didn’t help much. He flicked the switch near the door and the ceiling light came on. Then he turned on the computer. Nothing happened and he couldn’t see if it was even connected to a power source as it was pushed right up against the wall.

  ‘Hey, take a look at this.’

  Matthew turned to Tupaarnaq, who had come back downstairs. She held out a small metal box and a faded buff file in front of her. ‘Your father’s not here, but I found this box upstairs and these papers in the bin.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘There’s a pistol and two dog tags in the box…’

  ‘Oh, shit.’ Matthew closed his eyes.

  ‘Are you okay?’ She set down the box on the table in front of him and placed the file next to it. ‘I didn’t think you could get any paler than you already were.’

  He gulped. ‘What do the dog tags say?’

  ‘Christian John Bradley and Mark Reese…Blood type A+ and O.’

  Matthew cleared his throat, took a deep breath and exhaled. Then he removed the lid and looked inside the box.

  ‘Don’t touch the pistol,’ she said quickly. ‘Everything must be tested by forensics.’

  ‘All this stuff…’ Matthew sat down on the chair by the table with the computer. ‘I’m starting to think that my father really did kill those two men, that…’ He shook his head. ‘But then why keep the evidence?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Tupaarnaq said. ‘As a trophy? Out of guilt? It’s been known.’

  Matthew sighed. ‘I’m not sure I can take much more of this.’

  ‘We’ll try to see the bigger picture when we’re done here.’

  ‘Yes, and Ottesen needs this evidence as soon as possible,’ Matthew said, picking at one of the hinges on the box. The lid slammed shut with a bang that made him jump.

  ‘Idiot…What about the papers from the bin?’

  ‘No idea, did you read them?’ He looked at the buff file. On the cover the words US NAVY and CONFIDENTIAL had been stamped in purple a long time ago; a little further down the word TUPILAK was stamped in red.

  ‘Only briefly,’ she said. ‘It looks like data, but most of it is medical jargon.’ She opened the file and spread out the pages. ‘Apart from the fact that the doses are rather alarming, it doesn’t mean all that much to me.’

  Matthew skimmed the sheets. There appeared to be two types of documents. One was a comprehensive list of purchases and requisitions, while the other looked like data. A number of readings taken over a longer period had been entered into a table.

  ‘Briggs seems to have signed off on a lot of these,’ Matthew said in a low voice. ‘Now, he told me that he had left the experiment, but of course I don’t know when. These papers go as far as the middle of March 1990.’ He looked up at Tupaarnaq. ‘I need to find out when the murders happened…The postcard I got from my father was sent from Nuuk in August 1990.’

  ‘Remind me what he wrote, will you?’

  ‘That he couldn’t follow us to Denmark as quickly as planned.’

  She nodded. ‘Does the other information mean anything to you?’

  Matthew skimmed the various readings. ‘Vitamin B12, BP 157/97, 163/101, 172/105, ECG.’ He looked up at her. ‘I haven’t got the slightest idea what homocysteine is, but the numbers are rising alarmingly, and if a hundred is the norm, then the guinea pigs would have been pretty out of it at the end…Or whatever happens to you when you’re given too much homocysteine.’

  Tupaarnaq had found her mobile and was staring at the screen while she nodded. ‘Mobile coverage here is patchy.’

  ‘Yes,’ Matthew said. ‘So I’ve heard.’

  ‘I certainly can’t access the internet right now,’ she said, letting her hand drop down. ‘So what do we do?’

  ‘Raid the fridge?’

  ‘I was rather thinking that we need to find out if Abelsen and Bárdur are in town.’

  ‘What if they are?’ Matthew said. ‘I mean, there’s no way we can leave this place, is there?’

  ‘Then I’ll sit here and wait for them,’ Tupaarnaq said, patting her rifle bag.

  56

  The living room smelled of cup noodles. There hadn’t been much else in the kitchen so they had ended up with boiling water and a handful of colourful plastic beakers filled with chicken-flavoured dried noodles.

  Matthew had just stuck his spoon into his second cup when the front door was pushed open and they heard boots.

  They both looked up, but neither of them could see the door from where they were sitting.

  Tupaarnaq rose quickly and disappeared into the adjacent room, while Matthew merely set his food on the coffee table and stood up.

  ‘Tom?’ someone called out from the hall.

  ‘Hello,’ Matthew answered tentatively, glancing towards the door to the lab where the muzzle of Tupaarnaq’s rifle was sticking out. It was aimed at the door to the hall.

  A short Greenlandic man appeared in the doorway. He was wearing a sturdy jacket and he brushed snow from his hair.

  Matthew closed his eyes briefly and heaved a sigh of relief.

  ‘You’re not Tom,’ the stranger said.

  ‘My name is Matthew.’

  The short man narrowed his eyes and came closer. ‘You’re Matthew? Tom’s Matthew?’

  ‘Yes…’ Matthew wanted to say something more, but the words refused to form a sentence.

  ‘I’m Sakkak,’ the Inuit said shyly, extending his hand. ‘I saw that the light was on and I wanted to see if Tom was back.’ He turned to the other door. ‘You can put your rifle away. I’m Tom’s friend.’ He frowned. ‘But you wouldn’t know that, of course.’

  ‘Where is my father?’

  ‘I believe he has driven up along the coast.’

  ‘Driven?’

  ‘Yes, on his sledge.’ Sakkak smiled. ‘He has this monstrosity that uses wind rather than dogs. Not my kind of thing, but Tom is very proud of his kite sledge.’

  Tupaarnaq entered the living room. She had put down the rifle.

  ‘I think he gave up waiting for you,’ Sakkak added, looking at Matthew. ‘He wanted to go as far as Daneborg, which is several weeks travel north of here, and after all, he’s on his own…We’ll have to see.’

  ‘I haven’t seen the man for twenty-four years,’ Matthew said in a wounded voice. Anger had bubbled up inside him at Sakkak’s words about Tom having given u
p waiting. It was only two weeks, that was all, since he had received Tom’s note, and where had Tom been when Arnaq’s life was in danger?

  ‘Would you like some coffee?’ Tupaarnaq interjected.

  Sakkak looked at her with a smile. ‘I never say no to coffee.’

  She nodded and carried her own and Matthew’s noodles out into the kitchen.

  Sakkak turned to Matthew again. ‘I’ve known your father for many years. We met at the Thule base where I took part in an experiment involving some pills.’ He nodded his head in the direction of the lab. ‘Tom is obsessed with all that chemical mumbo jumbo.’

  Matthew smiled without quite smiling.

  ‘Why has he gone to Daneborg?’ he asked Sakkak. ‘I don’t understand. Only soldiers live there, don’t they?’

  ‘Yes, pretty much. It’s the main camp for the Sirius Patrol.’ Sakkak unzipped his thick jacket so he could reach his inside pocket. ‘I moved to the east coast with my son seven years ago, when my wife died, and I found that Tom was already here.’ His eyes lit up. ‘I recognised him immediately. The two of you look so alike.’

  ‘Here you are.’ Tupaarnaq placed a steaming cup of coffee on the table in front of Sakkak, who was still looking for something in his jacket.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, finally getting hold of a mobile phone. ‘If you want to see your father, I have some videos I shot last year. My son, Nukannguaq, recorded them while we were dancing.’ He smiled sadly at Matthew and took a sip of his coffee. ‘I taught Tom mask dancing and qilaat playing.’

  Matthew reached across the coffee table and took the mobile. On the screen was a video of two men performing a mask dance while a young Inuit played a round, slim drum.

  It was the first time in twenty-four years that he had seen his father, and he didn’t recognise him. He just saw a tall, slim man whose face was painted red and black like a proper Inuit mask dancer. His blond hair shone through the dark paint, but his face was made up and distorted beyond all recognition. A black and red face with the cheeks puffed out. The two mask dancers moved to the monotonous and viscous sound of wood against wood from the qilaat drum as if in a trance.