Cold Fear

by Mads Peder Nordbo

  Matthew went to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of ice-cold water from the tap. He also found a packet of crackers in a small wooden cupboard. He sat down on the sofa and opened the metal box that contained the pistol. It was shiny and it looked heavy. It was a powerful hand weapon. 9 mm. He was tempted to pick up the pistol purely to gauge if it could tell him anything, but he decided against it, and when at the same moment he heard a snow scooter pull up outside the house, he closed the box and pushed it to the centre of the table.

  Before he had time to get to his feet, the front door had already been pushed open and moments later Tupaarnaq appeared in the doorway to the living room. Her clothes were covered in snow, and her scarf and cap were iced over. The skin on her face blossomed pink at the sudden encounter with the heating in the living room. The rifle hung over her right shoulder and in her right hand she held three dead Arctic hares by the ears.

  She let the hares fall to the floor. ‘I’ll gut them later.’

  ‘I’m sorry—’

  ‘Shut up,’ she cut him off. ‘We were meeting Sakkak at eleven, weren’t we?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m going to take a shower.’ Her gaze seemed locked to the floor. ‘Keep away.’

  59

  The sun hung low on the horizon when they met Sakkak outside number seventy-three.

  The short, compact Inuit smiled happily at them as they approached him. He glanced at the rifle hanging over Tupaarnaq’s shoulder. ‘We’re not going hunting.’

  ‘I’m always hunting,’ she said in a flat voice without making eye contact.

  ‘Shall we take a look inside?’ Matthew said quickly.

  Sakkak nodded grimly and pushed open the door.

  Even from the outside it smelled mouldy, and it only got worse once they stepped inside. The air reeked of stale beer and smoke, and there was a cold dampness everywhere.

  ‘Shouldn’t it have been cordoned off?’ Matthew asked as he entered the living room.

  ‘Well,’ Sakkak said quietly. ‘I think it was a free-for-all while I was in Reykjavik. Everyone wanted to take a good look at where it had happened.’

  ‘So lots of people have been tramping about in here?’ Tupaarnaq concluded.

  ‘Yes, pretty much the whole town.’ Sakkak pointed across the coffee table. ‘That’s where it happened.’

  Matthew looked at the carpet by the coffee table. There was a lot of dried blood. He closed his eyes, and for a short moment his nose remembered the smell in the corridors under Færingehavn. The police had found the bodies of Andreas and Lasse in a big freezer in the abattoir close to Bárdur’s quarters. Matthew was still tormented by the fact that he hadn’t brought the four young people back from Færingehavn when he first went to see them. But how could anyone possibly have known that a crazy family lived under the town? The police had found Alma’s body at the bottom of the pool. There were many other dead bodies in the water and it had taken Arctic Command divers a whole day to recover their remains as sensitively as possible. Most of the dead were reduced to bones, while Alma was still in one piece. The youngest skeletons were those of newborn babies. There were many of those. All had had their necks wrung.

  ‘Nukannguaq was sitting over there,’ Sakkak said.

  Matthew forced the disturbing thoughts out of his mind and looked at Sakkak, who was pointing to a frayed, stained armchair. There was blood spatter on the wall behind the chair, right above its back.

  ‘And Salik and Miki were sitting over there,’ Sakkak went on, pointing to the sofa on the other side of the coffee table, which was still littered with empty bottles and overflowing ashtrays. ‘Konrad was lying on the floor.’

  There was blood everywhere. On the sofa, in front of the sofa and on the carpet.

  ‘And he had been shot through the mouth, just like Nukannguaq, is that right?’

  Sakkak nodded without looking at either of them. He seemed exhausted.

  Matthew positioned himself right next to the bloodstain on the carpet where Konrad had lain and pointed at the sofa. He found his mobile and swiped to the picture were Salik and Miki lay dead on the very same sofa. ‘Konrad really did shoot them,’ he whispered to himself and looked towards Tupaarnaq. ‘But why, if he was the guy who had raped their sister? Surely you would expect them to have shot him, wouldn’t you?’

  Tupaarnaq shrugged. ‘Don’t forget that they were high as kites. Possibly psychotic. But, yes, I would have shot Konrad, if it had been me.’

  Matthew chewed his lip. It was the exact same scenario as on the Thule base where his father was alleged to have killed two men in some kind of psychotic rush triggered by the experimental drug. Only something didn’t add up. He looked towards Sakkak. ‘The rifle was lying next to Nukannguaq when they were first discovered, correct?’

  ‘Yes, he was the last person to shoot himself,’ Sakkak said.

  Again Matthew turned his gaze to the old armchair opposite the sofa. ‘How well did Nukannguaq know their sister?’

  ‘Everybody knows everybody here; there are so few young people.’

  ‘Is it possible to talk to her?’

  ‘She was gone when I came home from Iceland. I believe she went to visit her aunt in Tasiilaq right after that police officer had spoken to her.’

  ‘Because I would like to…’ Matthew was interrupted by a noise from the adjacent room.

  Tupaarnaq let her rifle slip into her hands and eased the bolt forward to chamber a round.

  ‘Is someone here?’ Matthew asked with a frown.

  Sakkak shook his head. ‘No, there shouldn’t be.’

  Matthew looked at Tupaarnaq. It was the first time since last night that she had made eye contact with him.

  She pointed to the door with her rifle.

  Matthew nodded grimly. His chest tightened. He pushed open the door without blocking her line of fire and looked back at Tupaarnaq and Sakkak.

  ‘Tom!’ Sakkak cried out.

  Matthew turned to the doorway. A tall, blond man was tied to a chair in the middle of the room. The man looked at them. His face was stained with dried blood.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Sakkak said. He had rushed past Matthew and was squatting next to his friend. He removed the strong tape from Tom’s mouth and began untying the ropes with which Tom was restrained.

  Matthew’s hands were shaking and he started to hyperventilate.

  Tupaarnaq placed a hand on Matthew’s shoulder. ‘So he does exist after all.’

  ‘Yes.’ Matthew’s voice was so feeble that his reply escaped his lips only as a whisper. His shoulders twitched and for a moment he was a little boy, barely four years old, standing on the top step of the plane waving to his daddy. He nodded and was aware of Tupaarnaq walking past him. Towards Tom.

  The first few months, Matthew had refused to believe that his father would never come to Denmark. The meaning of the word never still didn’t exist for him, but he learned it eventually. It didn’t happen suddenly, but over time. One day he finally understood that never really did exist, and he started to cry. He had cried silently for years. He had cried when he sat alone in the darkness, and whenever he saw films about fathers. Even at school, he had secretly cried at parents’ evenings when his classmates turned up with their fathers. To begin with he had told everybody that his father was a spy at the American base in Greenland, and they had all believed him, but that stopped and turned into never. To nothing. Eventually he couldn’t even remember his father’s face, his smile, his smell or the sound of his voice.

  Sakkak had finished untying the ropes and Tom sat rubbing his wrists without saying anything. His eyes were locked firmly on Matthew.

  Tupaarnaq watched Tom in silence, and then left the room with her rifle draped over one arm.

  Tom chewed his lower lip tentatively. ‘Matthew,’ he whispered as the tears started rolling down his cheeks.

  Matthew trembled at the sound of his name. And the memory of his father’s face, his voice, the nuances, the depth, the warm
th came flooding back. He wanted to clasp Tom’s face with both hands. He wanted to press himself against his chest. Feel his adult heart beat strongly in there. But he stopped himself. He tried saying the word dad, but he couldn’t.

  ‘Who did this to you?’ Sakkak’s voice cut through.

  Tom shook his head. ‘I don’t know…I didn’t see them.’ He turned to Sakkak. ‘I’ve been sitting here since yesterday morning.’

  Tupaarnaq returned with a glass of water, which she handed to Tom.

  He took the glass and drained it in a couple of big gulps. He then exhaled noisily and said, ‘Thank you.’ He tried to get up, but fell back onto the chair. ‘The muscles in my legs have seized up.’

  ‘Would you like me to get you some clean trousers?’ Sakkak asked.

  Tom looked down and nodded. The stains were not only blood. ‘Yes, please…I guess I need to sit here and stretch my legs for a while before I try standing up again.’

  Sakkak left the room to go back to Tom’s house and it fell silent. Tom slowly extended his legs.

  Matthew had sat down on the bed next to Tom’s chair. Tupaarnaq was standing up, looking out of the window.

  ‘Say something,’ Tom said, looking at Matthew, who had yet to speak.

  Matthew shook his head. Everything that was going on inside his head was too complex to say on the edge of a shabby bed in one of the world’s most remote towns. He hugged himself and rubbed his arms.

  ‘There’s so much,’ he began.

  Tupaarnaq turned around and looked at them. ‘Let me know when you’re good to go. We shouldn’t stay here any longer than we have to.’

  ‘I won’t need long,’ Tom said.

  ‘Back in Thule,’ Matthew said. His gaze was fixed firmly on the floor, which was just as filthy as the rest of the house. ‘Did you do it?’

  Tom rubbed his face with both hands. He took a couple of deep breaths. ‘How much do you know?’

  ‘Pretty much everything,’ Matthew said. ‘Tupilak, the pills, the disturbing data, Sakkak, Briggs. I just want to know if you really are the man everyone wants to lock up for murder.’

  ‘I doubt that you know as much as you think you do,’ Tom said. ‘We were in bad shape that night. It had spun out of control, all of it, and we probably went too far.’

  ‘Probably? It looks like you were all on the verge of a mental breakdown and a stroke,’ Matthew said.

  ‘Those weren’t exactly the words I was looking for,’ Tom said. ‘But you’re not far wrong, either. Sakkak, who I see you’ve met, was performing a mask dance for us, but somehow the dance and the sounds affected the darkness inside us. Suddenly Bradley and Reese were at each other’s throats. They went berserk, their emotions were heightened. Sakkak fled out of the door and then Abelsen appeared. I don’t know where that bastard had been hiding. I screamed at him that those pills must never leave Thule, but that man doesn’t give a toss about anyone but himself.’ Tom rubbed his face again. ‘I don’t remember anything else. Only flashes…Bradley and Reese covered in blood. They lay still. I think they had been shot.’

  ‘But who shot them?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Tom said in a weary tone. His eyes were wide and his lips pressed shut. ‘I don’t know who killed them,’ he said. ‘There’s a black hole in my memory. Perhaps Abelsen did because I wanted to stop the experiment…Perhaps I did. I don’t know. After all, I did have my pistol, there was a struggle…I was knocked out. There were three empty shells next to me when I woke up, and Bradley and Reese were…but…I didn’t have my pistol anymore…I think.’ He shook his head and squeezed his eyes shut. ‘It’s all a blur.’

  ‘Doesn’t Sakkak remember anything?’

  Tom shook his head. ‘Even less than me. Don’t forget that he ran away shortly before Abelsen arrived.’

  ‘We found a small box in your house,’ Tupaarnaq said. ‘It contains a pistol and Bradley’s and Reese’s dog tags.’

  ‘That’s impossible,’ Tom said. ‘At no point did I have their dog tags and I haven’t touched my pistol since that night. It was Abelsen who forced me to flee and go AWOL, and I took nothing with me from the base. Nothing.’ He stared down at the floor.

  ‘I don’t know what to make of it,’ Matthew said with a sigh. ‘We have a lot to talk about.’ He looked towards the living room. ‘Like the young men in there. It was Thule all over again, wasn’t it?’

  ‘No,’ Tom said, shaking his head.

  ‘Can it wait?’ Tupaarnaq interrupted. She looked at Tom. ‘Let’s get you on your feet so we can go back to your house. This place gives me the creeps, and whoever tied you up will surely come back.’

  60

  As soon as they turned onto the path in the snow that led up to Tom’s house, they could see that the front door was wide open. The blue wooden walls were draped with curtains of snow, held in place by the wind and the frost, and in the short time the door must have been open, a small mound of snow had been blown into the hall.

  Matthew wiped ice off his eyebrows. The snow had got a tight grip on them in the less than sixty metres that separated the two houses. He dusted snow off his jacket and went inside.

  Behind him Tupaarnaq had released her hold of Tom, who turned to face the wind and squinted at the prickling, flying snow.

  ‘It’s wonderful that it can snow this much,’ he said. ‘Without it snowing.’

  ‘Sakkak?’ Matthew called out.

  Tom looked quizzically at his son, who rushed inside the house.

  Tupaarnaq raised her rifle.

  Matthew knelt down alongside Sakkak, who was lying flat on his stomach in the living room.

  ‘What’s happened?’ Tom said. He bent down next to Matthew and put his hand on Sakkak’s neck.

  Matthew was about to say something, but was interrupted when a tall man appeared in the door to the small lab. He was dressed for the Arctic winter in white clothing from his boots to his trapper hat and fur collar. He stared at Tom, then he pointed his pistol at him. Matthew jumped up to shield his father the moment the man pulled the trigger. The bullet hit his right arm, which felt as if it had been ripped off.

  Another man dressed just like the first appeared in the doorway.

  Matthew cried out and gasped for air while he pressed his left hand against the wound to his arm. Tupaarnaq was standing right behind him with her rifle aimed at the man who had shot Matthew. The man continued to point his pistol at Tom.

  Then the second man kicked a small, dark green plastic cylinder into the living room, and it exploded seconds later, filling the room with dense, grey smoke. Three shots were heard. Two from the pistol and one from Tupaarnaq’s rifle.

  ‘Out!’ Tupaarnaq’s voice shouted somewhere in the smoke.

  Matthew looked around, but he couldn’t see very far. He was coughing so violently that he had to spit on the floor.

  ‘Get the hell out of here,’ Tupaarnaq shouted again.

  Matthew felt her shoving him. Both his arms were working, although one of them was injured. The smoke almost made him throw up and he could hear the others cough and splutter. He fought his way to the door and was soon back outside in the snow. Smoke was pouring out of the house and the roof. He looked at his arm and pulled off his jacket. It seemed to be a flesh wound only, but there was quite a lot of blood on his clothes. The bullet had gone straight through his clothes and his arm without doing any damage other than severing some blood vessels.

  ‘Help me,’ Tupaarnaq called out from the hall.

  She was trying to drag Tom outside, and Matthew rushed to help her get his father out.

  Tom wheezed and groaned. He growled deep in his throat, his face contorted in pain and his forehead covered with beads of sweat.

  A burning smell was coming from inside the house. A dazed Sakkak appeared in the doorway and Tupaarnaq quickly helped him out and down to Tom before she herself ran back inside the house.

  Tom was getting increasingly breathless, and pulled off his jacket and jumper with a grunt.
Underneath he wore a black bulletproof vest, fixed around his waist, and he loosened it in order to breathe more freely. There was a big, red bruise to his skin right above his rib cage. He was bleeding from one arm, as was Matthew.

  Tupaarnaq reappeared and chucked her own and Matthew’s backpacks into the snow.

  ‘No, it can’t be,’ Tom said, staring emptily out into the air. His face was pale and his lips were trembling slightly.

  Behind him the flames had started licking the windows of the small house.

  Tom tried to stand up, but had to abandon his attempt and collapsed with a strangled yelp.

  ‘It’s too late,’ Tupaarnaq said. ‘They’ve torched the lab, everything in there is gone.’

  ‘They’re crap shots, though,’ Sakkak said, looking at Tom’s arm.

  ‘Oh, he never misses,’ Tom said. The snow had started to settle on his skin. ‘Those three shots landed precisely where they were supposed to.’

  ‘He?’ Matthew said. ‘You know who it was?’

  ‘The shooter was Bradley. The other guy was Reese.’

  61

  CONSTABLE POINT, EAST GREENLAND

  Tupaarnaq grew smaller and smaller below the helicopter. Matthew sat with one hand held up against the window. She had only waved briefly as they took off and now she was nothing more than a dot standing alone outside the tiny airport at Constable Point.

  Ottesen had requested a helicopter and a doctor from Iceland, which had arrived at Ittoqqortoormiit two hours later.

  Meanwhile they had put pressure on the injuries and administered whatever pain relief they could find in the small town’s health centre. There was no doctor at the centre this week, but the town’s only nurse had assisted them.

  The doctor from Iceland soon concluded that they might as well be flown to Nuuk, given that neither Tom’s nor Matthew’s injuries required specialist treatment in Reykjavik.

  The helicopter from Iceland had then taken them from Ittoqqortoormiit to Constable Point, where they boarded an Air Greenland Bell 212.