Cold Fear

by Mads Peder Nordbo

  When the video stopped, Matthew kept staring at the screen. Tupaarnaq patted his thigh gently.

  ‘I don’t recognise anything about him,’ Matthew then said, handing back the mobile. ‘But the guy playing the drums, I saw some pictures of him the week before last.’

  ‘Yes.’ Sakkak nodded grimly. ‘That’s Miki who is playing the qilaat. He’s dead.’

  ‘Oh, yes, the murders,’ Matthew said in a quiet voice. ‘I’m sorry. I’m a reporter and I covered the story, but I haven’t been able to make head or tail of it yet…It’s all right if you don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘I know that you write for Sermitsiaq,’ Sakkak said. ‘Your father is always very proud when he shows me your articles, and I read what you wrote about Nukannguaq.’

  ‘It all seems quite far-fetched,’ Matthew said, picking at the scatter cushion under his arm. Tupaarnaq sat down next to him with her legs pulled up underneath her.

  ‘Tom was helping me create a life for our young people,’ Sakkak explained. ‘Given how things are going, they need special skills if they’re to have a future in this area. Our numbers decline with every year, and the council and the government in Nuuk don’t care; they prefer to choke us slowly…It was exactly the same in the village I was from, Moriusaq. We had to leave it in the end, and now the same thing is happening here.’

  ‘It’s like that all over the world,’ Matthew said. ‘People leave their villages for a better life, and I can’t imagine that being as cut off from everything as you are up here helps.’

  ‘That’s true, but then it’s up to us to create a better life and more opportunities,’ Sakkak said, and took another sip of his coffee. ‘The young must get stronger so they can make the most of those opportunities. That was why we decided to make Salik, Miki, Konrad and Nukannguaq more resistant to very low temperatures…To further their opportunities. After all, we have a nine-month-long winter here, so if they could withstand the cold better, that would make it easier for them to hunt in the winter. And Tom also thinks we don’t make the most of our opportunities for winter tourism.’

  Matthew had straightened up on the sofa. ‘What did you do to make them stronger?’

  Sakkak exhaled slowly with his mouth almost closed so that his cheeks grew round like those of a mask dancer. ‘Only fifty years ago a hunter could easily catch five times as much up here as they could down in Tasiilaq, but those days are gone. Hunting has become more difficult and we have no other source of income.’

  ‘So what did you do?’ Tupaarnaq asked.

  ‘Tom doesn’t feel the cold,’ Sakkak said, fiddling with the coffee cup on the table. ‘When we went hunting together, he was never affected by the cold, or anything else, for that matter. I wanted my Nukannguaq to have the same ability so I asked Tom if it was because of the experiment in Thule where I would always get cold before he did, and he told me about the pills.’ Sakkak looked emptily into the air. ‘He also told me how they had tricked me during the experiment, and that our young people would benefit from the pills just as much as he had.’

  ‘So it was my father’s pills they had swallowed the day when…’

  ‘Yes. They were only supposed to take one a day…but the young men…’ He shook his head. ‘The place looked like an abattoir.’

  ‘Did you remove the pills?’ Tupaarnaq wanted to know.

  ‘No,’ Sakkak said quickly. ‘I saw no pills in there.’

  ‘Would it be possible for us to see the house?’

  ‘Yes, we can do that tomorrow.’ Sakkak picked at the seam of his trousers with a thumbnail, making a faint clicking sound. ‘It’s not a problem, no. And we’ve just had a visit from a police officer from Nuuk…He travelled on to Reykjavik to talk to Nukannguaq.’ He looked up. ‘I was also in Reykjavik for five days after the shooting, but I travelled home once my boy was stable. Hotels and plane tickets cost a lot of money.’

  ‘It’s insanely expensive up here,’ Matthew agreed. ‘Did you tell the police officer about your little experiment?’

  Sakkak shook his head. ‘Nukannguaq is innocent,’ he said firmly. ‘I know my son. It was Konrad who talked the others into it, and if anyone broke in here to get more of Tom’s pills, then it would have been Konrad.’

  ‘You think they forced the door?’

  Sakkak shifted in the chair. ‘Nukannguaq keeps muttering about pills and demons and God knows what else that made them want to kill themselves.’

  ‘I thought two of them were shot in the chest?’ Tupaarnaq interjected.

  ‘Yes,’ Sakkak said, staring down at the table. ‘And that’s why Nukannguaq is still in custody.’ He cleared his throat a few times. ‘Two of the four men were brothers. Salik and Miki.’

  ‘Brothers?’ Matthew said. ‘Does Nuuk Police know that?’

  ‘Yes, yes, they know,’ Sakkak said.

  ‘What do you think happened?’ Tupaarnaq asked him.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. He hesitated and then added: ‘It was to do with their little sister and Konrad, but it’s not something people talk about.’

  ‘Whose little sister?’ Tupaarnaq said quickly.

  ‘Salik’s and Miki’s.’

  ‘How old is she?’

  ‘Seventeen, I believe. Yes, Sika must be seventeen now.’

  ‘And the police know this as well?’ Matthew said. ‘I mean, the officer from Nuuk who came here.’

  ‘Yes,’ Sakkak said. ‘I believe he spoke to her a couple of times.’ He looked up. ‘It’s definitely Konrad. If something bad has happened, it would have been Konrad who did it.’

  Matthew furrowed his brow. ‘But Nukannguaq shot himself, didn’t he?’

  Sakkak nodded slowly.

  The room fell quiet. Outside darkness had descended upon the town.

  Tupaarnaq got up. ‘Apart from Tom, does anyone use this house?’

  Sakkak shook his head. ‘No. Normally it’s just Tom. Why?’

  ‘We need a place to sleep,’ she said, glancing at the duvet on the sofa. ‘I’ll see if I can find some clean bedlinen. There are more duvets upstairs.’

  ‘I’ll be all right on the sofa,’ Matthew said.

  ‘Yes,’ was all she said as she left the room.

  Sakkak slapped his thighs. ‘Time for me to be getting home.’

  Matthew pushed the scatter cushion aside and turned his attention to Sakkak, who had stood up. ‘Before you go, have any strangers been here asking for Tom?’

  ‘That police officer wanted to talk to Tom, but Tom had set off before he got here, so I don’t think he found him. And then two men arrived yesterday who also wanted to talk to Tom.’

  ‘Someone came here on a Wednesday?’

  ‘Yes, by sledge. Just like the Sirius Patrol in February.’ He frowned and then said: ‘There was something military about them, but they weren’t from Sirius because we know them. These two men were dressed in white Arctic clothing from top to toe.’

  ‘Was it a slim man with black hair, about sixty, and a big, ruddy-faced man about fifty?’

  Sakkak shrugged and tilted his head slightly. ‘They could have been about fifty, and one of them might have had red hair. It was hard to see because they were wearing thick fur collars on their jackets and trapper hats.’

  ‘Was one of them called Abelsen?’

  ‘I don’t know their names, but there was something about one of them that seemed familiar, or so I thought.’

  Matthew got goosebumps all over his arms. ‘Where are they now?’

  ‘I think they drove on.’

  ‘They followed Tom?’

  ‘I don’t know. They didn’t say very much.’

  Tupaarnaq returned to the living room. ‘Right, that’s the bedding sorted out,’ she said, and threw a set of clean bedlinen at Matthew.

  57

  Matthew turned over on the sofa. The duvet wasn’t very thick, but it didn’t matter because after a few failed attempts they had managed to light a fire in the stove. It wasn’t sealed properly, so th
ere was a faint smell of smoke in the living room, but it was preferable to being cold.

  He had spent most of the evening sending text messages to Ottesen about his discoveries in Ittoqqortoormiit so far, and was now scrolling through them to see if he had remembered to include everything.

  I don’t know how far you got when you were here, but I think I’ve found the murder weapon from Thule. It’s a pistol that was in my father’s house. We will bring it to Nuuk—haven’t touched it. My father is in big trouble. Have you found him? I’ve heard more about what happened that night in Ittoqqortoormiit. I’ve spoken to Nukannguaq’s father, Sakkak, as I gather have you. The four young men smoked cannabis and took some pills similar to those from the US military experiment in Thule in 1990. They contain substances which seemed to trigger severe psychoses and delusions, if you take too many. Sakkak hinted that Konrad raped Salik and Miki’s younger sister, whose name is Sika, but I believe you already know that? He’s also the opinion that it must have been Konrad who shot them—if they were killed. Perhaps he’s right. Nukannguaq was off his face and he may not have experienced any of it as real until Konrad started shooting and finally shot himself. And then there was that business about the demon knocking on the window. Perhaps Nukannguaq panicked and shot himself?

  Matthew was distracted from his texting when something was thrown down the steps.

  Shortly afterwards Tupaarnaq appeared with a mattress and some bedding draped over one arm. She was wearing trackpants and a black tank top.

  ‘There’s ice on the inside of the wall upstairs,’ she said, chucking her duvet and pillow on the floor. ‘No wonder your father sleeps on the sofa…I’m moving down here to the stove.’

  ‘Would you like the sofa?’

  ‘No need, I bought the mattress.’ She pushed the mattress in place near the stove and sat down on it with her duvet wrapped around her waist and legs. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I was just updating Ottesen.’

  ‘You’re such a snitch.’

  ‘I haven’t told him everything.’

  ‘Sure you haven’t.’ She threw back her head and looked up at the ceiling. ‘I’m just teasing you; it’s okay. We need to find your father.’

  Her skin gleamed golden in the faint glow from the stove door. Mostly around those parts of her face which weren’t tattooed. The tattoos on her collarbones, shoulders and arms seemed almost alive in the flickering light. The many leaves, stems and vines looked like slowly moving, languid snakes.

  She looked at him and pulled the duvet up around her shoulders. ‘Do you think your father is here?’

  Matthew raised his eyebrows and stopped staring at her skin. ‘It makes no sense for him to head to Daneborg now, given that he has been hiding from the US military for twenty-four years.’

  ‘He might be desperate,’ she said. ‘Besides, Daneborg is Danish territory, not American.’

  Matthew nodded. ‘I don’t think that Abelsen and Bárdur were the men who came here looking for him. Why would they take a dog sledge across the ice cap rather than fly? It sounds more like the Sirius Patrol, even though Sakkak didn’t recognise them.’

  ‘What would Sirius want with your father?’

  ‘Probably the same thing he wants from them.’ Matthew raised a hand to his face and pressed his eyelids while he exhaled heavily. ‘I think it’s all connected to the 1990 experiment.’

  ‘The one described in the files in your father’s study?’ Tupaarnaq said. ‘Tupilak?’

  ‘Yes. It looks like the experiment was never cancelled completely, and now that it has resurfaced, it appears to have rattled someone’s cage.’

  ‘Do you know the original meaning of tupilak?’

  ‘It’s to do with spirits, am I right?’

  ‘It’s your ancestor’s spirit, which you summon by carving a small demonic figure, and then you can ask the spirit to go after your enemy. It can backfire, though. If your tupilak meets an even stronger spirit, it can be turned and come back to destroy you. It looks like some of the people involved in the experiment have realised that it’s coming back to bite them.’

  Matthew rolled over onto his back. ‘Do you believe in that spirit business?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t really believe in anything.’

  He looked around the edges of the ceiling. It had been wallpapered a long time ago, but it was starting to come off. In one place he could see that a whole length was loose. ‘I want to believe in souls and spirits.’

  ‘Because of the people you have lost?’

  ‘Yes.’ He could feel the cold spread like a shiver through his body and he tightened the duvet around him.

  ‘It was a traffic accident, wasn’t it?’

  Matthew coughed. In just a few seconds the chill in his body had turned to heat, and the skin on his forehead and chest started to feel clammy.

  ‘It was a red car. With four Romanian men. They overtook when they shouldn’t have and forced us off the road. The driver survived, but Tine and Emily died.’ Matthew gulped. Pushed the duvet off his upper body. ‘The car rolled across the ground. I was conscious the whole time. Tine died. I touched her belly. They were trapped. She was bleeding.’

  ‘Have you ever thought of tracking him down?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The man who killed your wife and daughter?’

  Matthew carefully wiped the lower rim of his eyes with a forefinger. ‘Sometimes…Not really. I don’t see why I would. I don’t want to see him. I wouldn’t know what to do with him.’

  ‘Kill him.’

  The room fell silent. The fire crackled in the stove.

  ‘Is the pain still raw?’ Tupaarnaq then said.

  Matthew touched his empty ring finger. ‘I carry my wedding ring in my pocket nearly all the time.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Oh, you know what it’s like,’ he said in a trembling voice. ‘And your pain is worse than mine, I think.’

  ‘But I want to be rid of mine,’ she said. ‘And I want to find Abelsen and kill him.’

  ‘Because you think it’s his fault that your family died?’

  ‘Because I know that he signed my mother’s death warrant and that of my sisters when he raped my mother,’ she said angrily. ‘Even his rapist son ended up dead. There’s just me and Abelsen left, and he must die.’

  ‘He needs to go to prison,’ Matthew said, straightening up in order to see her. ‘If you kill him, you’ll be locked up for the rest of your life…What’s the point of that?’

  ‘There’s not much else I need to do apart from watch him die.’

  ‘When I was in the bunker, I hid under a table and I overheard Abelsen and Bárdur talking.’

  Matthew sank back onto the sofa and stared up at the wallpaper on the ceiling. His pulse had risen and he was breathing more rapidly.

  ‘And?’

  ‘He…’ He ground to a halt. ‘Abelsen. He said…He called you his daughter.’

  There was silence for a moment. Then she got up and let the duvet fall to the floor. She didn’t even look at Matthew. She just walked out of the room. Her back was straight and her fists tightly clenched. The muscles stood out sharply under her tattooed skin.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Matthew called out after her, and sat up fully. ‘I had to tell you at some point.’ He waited. Listened to her moving about upstairs. ‘We don’t even know if it’s true.’ He buried his face in his hands. Abelsen had had absolutely no reason to lie when he was alone in the kitchen with Bárdur, the dead Viktor and the unconscious Malik.

  Matthew got up and found his trousers. He had only told her in order to get her to drop the idea of killing Abelsen, but now he was afraid that it had had the opposite effect. He hadn’t thought it through. The man everyone believed to be her and Ulrik’s father had killed their mother and their two little sisters because he found out that he wasn’t Ulrik’s father, that the boy’s real father was Abelsen. What if he had learned at the same time that he wasn’t Tupaarnaq’s fath
er either? She had been imprisoned for twelve years for killing all of them, but she knew that she had only killed her father, who, in her eyes, deserved to die for so many reasons. What if she now felt that she had indirectly caused the deaths of the others by being yet another catalyst for her father’s rage?

  Tupaarnaq dropped something upstairs.

  Shortly afterwards she came back down. She was wearing her outdoor clothes. The rifle hung over her right shoulder. Her gaze was fixed on the floor and she didn’t look up for one second. She just disappeared out of the door and into the dark, Arctic night.

  58

  ITTOQQORTOORMIIT, EAST GREENLAND, 31 OCTOBER 2014

  The wind had increased dramatically during the night. Around two a.m. it had grown so strong that Matthew could feel it inside the house whenever a gust of wind blew down the cliff at the foot of which the small town was situated. Apart from a few Danish soldiers in Mestersvig, the next town was over six hundred kilometres away, and the only means of getting there was by helicopter or dog sledge.

  Outside the small windows everything was black and the snow was whirling around in sweeping blankets of piercing ice crystals.

  He had slept only in snatches. Without a steady rhythm. Instead he had spent some of the night reading through his father’s papers, but they still made little sense to him. The only thing that seemed clear was that the Thule experiment must have been extremely hard on everyone, physically and mentally, judging from the readings. And though he didn’t know precisely how the pills affected the body, it didn’t come as a total surprise to him that the experiment had ended in disaster when one of the participants ran amok. What did seem completely insane—apart from them having exceeded all safe dosages—was that Tom had then attempted to recreate the experiment many years later in Ittoqqortoormiit. Even if it was a lesser version, and even though the town desperately needed a boost, it seemed indefensible.

  Dawn broke around nine o’clock. Matthew pushed the duvet aside and got up. The clouds had been blown away and everything was bathed in a pink glow. The snow had rearranged itself around the houses, and in a few places people had gone outside to clear snow from their doors.