‘Yes, I think you had a lucky escape that night,’ Ottesen said, and smiled again. ‘Símin isn’t making much sense yet, but they appear to have killed Jakob because they believed that he murdered Bárdur’s father back in 1973.’
Matthew looked at the floor in exasperation. ‘This is all wrong.’
‘Yes.’ Ottesen checked the time. ‘I had better get going. The plan is that your father will travel with Briggs to Thule tomorrow morning. A plane has been booked for them at nine-thirty. I can pick you and Arnaq up, if you want to come to the airport to say goodbye to Tom. I might have some other business at the airport myself, if we get it done in time.’
‘Thank you,’ Matthew said, ‘but we’ll make our own way there.’
‘There was only one thing your father asked for in return for telling us everything.’
‘What was it?’
‘That we got the test results for the pistol before he leaves Nuuk.’
63
The snow had settled like a soft, protective blanket over the many graves on the long slope towards the sea. Matthew had visited the new cemetery before, but only to look at it. It was one of the most beautiful places in the Nuuk area. The nearest neighbours to the cemetery were the University of Greenland, some residential houses on the outskirts of Nuussuaq and then Mount Lille Malene. On the other side of the fjord, Mount Sermitsiaq rose from the sea like a snow sculpture.
Matthew studied the row of graves. They lay close. Each individual grave wasn’t much wider than a coffin, and many of them were covered by a thick layer of artificial flowers in many different colours. Soon the snow would be so deep that the flowers would be hidden for months.
‘I don’t know if I dare,’ Arnaq said.
‘Meet our dad?’ Matthew said, picking up a little virgin snow from Rakel’s grave.
‘Yes.’
‘I agree it’s weird.’
‘I’m not sure…I mean, if he’s going to jail for a hundred years, what’s the point?’
Matthew looked at his sister. Her face was still gaunt after her imprisonment. ‘Do you still see that psychologist?’
Arnaq sniffled briefly and sighed. ‘Three times a week.’
‘Does it help?’
‘It’s okay, I guess,’ Arnaq said with a shrug. ‘But she knows fuck-all about what it’s like when your friends are killed and you’re locked up by some psychos who starve you.’
‘But Tom does,’ Matthew said.
Arnaq looked down and nudged some snow. ‘I guess he does.’
‘I spoke to him on the plane from Ittoqqortoormiit and I think you were held in the same cell.’
She looked at him. ‘What do you mean?’
‘He was held in a cell under Færingehavn with the flickering light, the starvation and everything.’
‘When?’ Arnaq said in a hesitant voice, frowning.
‘Back in April 1990, but those lunatics were already living there, except for Símin, who hadn’t been born yet.’
‘So Tom was a prisoner there, is that what you’re saying?’
‘Yes, but he managed to escape and sail to Qeqertarsuatsiaat. Then he travelled across the ice cap to a small town in East Greenland where he hid out for a few months before making his way back across the ice to Nuuk at the start of August that same year.’
‘He should have stayed over there.’
‘Perhaps, but then he wouldn’t have met your mother.’
Arnaq nodded grimly and her gaze wandered across the low forest of white crosses. ‘Were they your friends, the people who died?’
‘Jakob and Rakel?’
She nodded. She sniffed hard again. The frost made their noses run.
‘Yes,’ Matthew said, looking at the two graves. ‘Yes, they were. It was Jakob who helped our dad get from Qeqertarsuatsiaat across the ice cap and to safety back in 1990; Rakel helped save your life.’
‘Shit.’ Arnaq wiped away a tear. She held up a dismissive hand when Matthew stepped closer.
Matthew stopped and nodded softly. ‘If you want to talk about what happened out there, just tell me.’
She turned around and nodded. She gazed across the sea. ‘I would like to visit Símin one day.’
‘Símin?’ Matthew said with a frown. ‘But he was—’
‘I just want to see him. I don’t think people understand what kind of person he is.’
Matthew took out his mobile and cigarettes and lit one. ‘We’ll talk about that later.’
Both his gunshot wound and the broken finger hurt whenever he searched for something in his pockets. He should still have his arm in the sling, but he couldn’t be bothered with that any longer. When he put on fresh bandages in the evening, the wound would bleed anyway.
He took a deep drag on his cigarette and checked his mobile. He had sent nine text messages to Tupaarnaq after returning to Nuuk, but she hadn’t responded to a single one of them.
‘Let’s have one.’
Matthew looked at Arnaq, who had stuck out her hand to him. ‘You don’t smoke, do you?’
‘Yes, I do,’ she said without missing a beat. ‘And if it’s okay for you to do it, then surely it’s okay for me too?’
‘That’s it!’ he exclaimed, and took another drag before extinguishing the cigarette. ‘I’m quitting right now.’
‘What?’ Arnaq frowned. ‘Are you serious?’
He nodded and looked about him for a bin. ‘I only started a few years ago…and it was a dumb decision.’
Arnaq laughed and looked at Matthew. ‘How was Tom able to live in Nuuk for so long if he was on the run?’
‘Because nobody knew who he really was and everyone thought he was dead. He lived with your mother for ten years until he discovered that a former US officer had moved to Nuuk from the Thule base, and then he had to leave immediately.’ Matthew looked at Arnaq. ‘The crimes our dad is charged with could very easily lead to the death penalty. Last year an officer in the US Army was sentenced to death for something similar by a military tribunal.’
‘Shit…Why couldn’t he just have stayed away! Why did he come over here?’
‘Because those small villages in East Greenland had no contact with the outside world in those days and he was scared that something had happened to me.’
She looked at the snow around the toes of her boots. ‘Do you think he has also been following my life…from a distance?’
‘I know that he has.’
64
NUUK, WEST GREENLAND, 2 NOVEMBER 2014
Matthew ran a finger down the blue brace around his little finger while Tom greeted Arnaq. He could see Tom moving in to give her a hug, but she flinched and withdrew. Only a little, but enough for Tom to get the message.
‘You’ve grown,’ Tom said. His eyes kept trying to catch Arnaq’s, but she wasn’t letting him. His arm was still tied up in the sling, but it was a more modern version than the one he had been issued with in Ittoqqortoormiit.
‘Arnaq is in her last year of school now,’ Matthew said.
‘I’m so happy to see you,’ Tom said to her.
She nodded.
‘Do you like your school in Nuuk?’
She shrugged. ‘It’s all right.’
‘It has been a tough few weeks,’ Matthew quickly interjected.
‘Yes.’ Tom turned his gaze down towards the brown tiled floor in the waiting area. ‘But thank you for coming, Arnaq. I haven’t seen you since you were two years old.’
‘I’m aware of that,’ she said.
Matthew looked at Tom. ‘And it could be a long time before we next see you.’
‘You can say that again,’ Briggs quipped. He looked like a man who was excited and exhausted at the same time. ‘We’re talking desertion, misuse of army property and two killings.’
‘But they’re not dead,’ Matthew protested. He shook his head in despair. ‘We saw them in Ittoqqortoormiit. They were the ones who shot Tom and me.’
‘They’ve been dead for more than twenty-four
years,’ said Briggs, dismissing him. ‘It couldn’t possibly be the same men.’
‘But you also thought that Tom was dead,’ Matthew argued. ‘And yet here he is, so who was in his coffin back in 1990?’
Briggs stared stiffly at Matthew. ‘I can hear that it hasn’t taken your father very long to convince you of his fanciful stories. Matthew, Bradley and Reese died a very long time ago. Your father shot them.’ He threw up his hands. ‘You yourself carried the evidence back to Nuuk from his house!’
‘I also saw some documents, where you—’
‘Stop!’ Tom stared hard at Matthew. ‘I’ll handle this.’
Matthew looked across to Arnaq.
‘You’re as crazy as he is,’ Briggs said.
Tom turned to Briggs. ‘Do I have time to go to the bathroom before we board?’
Briggs checked his watch and nodded.
Matthew’s mobile buzzed in his pocket. It was a text message from Leiff who wrote that his friend at the hospital had finished studying the Tupilak file and had sent Matthew an email.
‘Hello, sorry, it took a while.’
Matthew turned and saw Ottesen walking towards them.
‘We have all the results now,’ Ottesen went on, shaking Briggs’s hand.
‘Couldn’t you just have emailed them to me?’ Briggs said, sounding mildly irritated.
‘Yes,’ Ottesen said. ‘But I had a few questions for you and I thought I might as well ask you in person before you take off because then I, too, can close my investigation.’
‘Such as?’
‘Let me start by confirming that it was Tom’s pistol that Matthew found in Ittoqqortoormiit.’
‘Surely there was never any doubt about that?’
‘No, I guess not, but there was something else, which I think is significant: the last set of fingerprints doesn’t belong to Tom, but to Kjeld Abelsen, and the same goes for the prints on the trigger.’
Briggs exhaled heavily and stared right into Ottesen’s eyes. ‘What are you saying?’
‘And we found traces of Tom’s blood on the barrel, which suggests that he was knocked unconscious with his own pistol…by Kjeld Abelsen.’ Ottesen paused. ‘Going on the ballistics evidence alone, there’s much to indicate that Kjeld Abelsen knocked Tom out and shot the other two. That is if Tom’s pistol really was the murder weapon.’
‘Of course it was,’ Briggs said quickly. ‘Our examination of the crime scene proved that as early as 1990. Why couldn’t you just have emailed me this information, that’s what we agreed?’
‘Yes, of course. And we will.’ Ottesen flashed Briggs an amicable smile. ‘I just wanted to give you the good news that it doesn’t look like it’s one of your own who committed the murders. You’ll be hearing from us in due course as I’ll need an explanation as to what Kjeld Abelsen was doing at the Thule base in March 1990, and why it now looks as if he got away with killing two US soldiers while he was there.’
Briggs lowered his gaze. ‘We’ll give the matter our consideration.’
‘Once you’re done with Tom,’ Ottesen went on. ‘We want him extradited.’
‘Who says we’ll ever be done with him?’ Briggs said, looking up again.
‘He faces some civilian criminal charges,’ Ottesen said. ‘They include the manufacture and possession of banned substances and, if he’s unlucky, potentially a charge of manslaughter.’
‘Yes, yes,’ Briggs said, glancing towards the door to the lavatories.
‘Your prints were also on Tom’s pistol,’ Ottesen said. ‘Both on the handle and the trigger. Then again, you were an officer at the Thule base, weren’t you?’
Briggs nodded slowly. ‘Yes. Tom and I were buddies, if you know what that means?’
Ottesen raised his eyebrows.
‘We often practised on the shooting range using each other’s weapons,’ Briggs explained. ‘You can’t go into battle with an unfamiliar weapon and so you need to know your buddy’s weapon as well as you know your own.’
‘Even somewhere as remote as Thule?’ Matthew interjected.
‘If you slack on discipline in one area,’ Briggs said, ‘the rot will spread.’
Matthew nodded and then turned to Ottesen. ‘What about Bradley’s and Reese’s fingerprints? Were they also on the pistol?’
Ottesen shook his head.
‘You really don’t have a clue about buddies, do you?’ Briggs said. ‘We always trained in pairs. Tom and me were one, Bradley and Reese another.’ Briggs furrowed his brow. ‘Surely it doesn’t matter if my prints are on the pistol. I was negotiating contracts with a Greenlandic civil servant when the shots were fired.’
‘Was that civil servant Kjeld Abelsen?’ Matthew said quickly.
Briggs expelled a short, contemptuous snort. ‘Well, it couldn’t have been if he was the shooter, could it?’ He clapped his hands together. ‘Tom has had enough time in the bathroom.’ He stepped away from the others, went to the lavatory door and knocked hard.
Matthew, Arnaq and Ottesen followed Briggs, who knocked on the door again.
The door opened and Tom came out. ‘Take it easy, Colonel. It’s a bit tricky with just one arm,’ he said.
‘We’ll be boarding soon,’ Briggs said in a surly voice. ‘Time to say goodbye.’
Tom nodded slowly and looked at Arnaq. ‘You loved it when I carried you around so you could bash the lamps at your mother’s.’
She looked at him without expression.
He smiled grimly. ‘I’m sorry,’ he then said, turning to Matthew. ‘I know it has been too long. That you were far too young to remember me.’
‘I remember you,’ Matthew said, his voice shaking. ‘We’ll see you soon. Ottesen has just told us that the last person to use your pistol was Abelsen.’
Tom buried his face in his hands. He breathed heavily.
‘Even if they keep insisting that Bradley and Reese are dead,’ Matthew said, ‘then you didn’t shoot them.’
‘You’re jumping to conclusions,’ Briggs snapped. ‘Abelsen could have picked up the weapon after Tom had killed them.’
Matthew looked at Ottesen, who shrugged and said, ‘You’re right in theory, but you can’t convict a man of murder if there are doubts as to who fired the kill shot.’
‘Come on.’ Briggs grabbed hold of Tom.
‘Dad!’
Tom turned around and looked at Arnaq.
‘Can I call you sometime?’
‘Yes…always. Matthew has my number.’
‘Let’s go!’ Briggs said.
Matthew watched them leave. ‘This is so wrong,’ he said to himself, and opened an email on his mobile. It was from Leiff’s doctor friend. He had examined the pictures Matthew had taken of the Tupilak experiment in Thule in 1990.
The numbers are disturbing. The individuals who were experimented on must have been close to death; very high blood pressure, high homocysteine numbers. Even an argument could kill them. If this really is from a long-lasting experiment, I would regard it as medical murder.
Matthew closed the email and wrote a text message to Leiff:
About the pictures I sent you. Can you find a similar buff file in our old archives and then print the same words on the cover using the same colours? And then print out all the pictures and make them look like the real thing? I need it now, sorry. I’m coming over.
He stuffed the mobile back in his pocket and grabbed Ottesen. ‘Stop them…They mustn’t take off.’
‘Why not?’
‘Everything that happened in Thule; it was Briggs’s doing…He might even be controlling Abelsen.’
‘But we’ve already discussed that,’ Ottesen said. ‘Are you saying now that you’ve finally found some evidence?’
‘While I was in the bunker, I overheard Abelsen say that the colonel had told him that Tom was in Ittoqqortoormiit. A few days earlier I had mentioned to Briggs that my father was in Ittoqqortoormiit…and Abelsen seemed scared of this colonel.’ Matthew shook his head. ‘Briggs is th
e colonel, and ever since I told him about the letter from my father, he won’t leave me alone…Can I borrow your car?’
‘Just because they both use the term colonel doesn’t mean there’s a connection.’ Ottesen looked towards Tom and Briggs, who were making their way to the gate. Briggs was holding tight to Tom’s arm.
‘Briggs also told me that Bradley and Reese were shot with Tom’s pistol,’ Matthew continued. ‘But how could he know that if both the pistol and Tom were gone before the bodies of Bradley and Reese were even discovered? The investigation he’s talking about never happened! In order to prove that Tom’s pistol was the murder weapon, surely they would need to have had it?’
‘But you don’t even believe that they were shot?’
‘No, but Briggs insists that they were,’ Matthew said. ‘But how could he know anything about a murder weapon that went missing before the dead bodies were found? And why are the Americans insisting that there were three coffins? There shouldn’t have been more than two, but no one seems to care about that. They’re full of crap!’
Ottesen nodded grimly and looked at the queue at the gate again.
Matthew scratched his wounded arm carefully. ‘The man who shot me was either Bradley or Reese even though, according to the US military, they were killed in Thule in 1990,’
‘You only have your father’s word for that last bit, don’t you?’
‘I also have some documents from the army operation that they were part of. Briggs’s name is on most of them.’
‘I thought they were lost in the fire?’
‘Briggs is the man behind Abelsen…The man behind the killing of Lyberth. Give me a break…He’s going to kill my father!’
Ottesen handed him his car keys. ‘I can hold the plane. You have one hour.’
‘Get them inside,’ Matthew shouted as he ran towards the airport exit. ‘And throw Briggs in a room of his own.’
Ottesen shook his head.
Matthew continued out the door, towards Ottesen’s car.
65
Two reporters from KNR and a couple from Nuuk TV were hanging around when Matthew returned to the airport just under an hour later. There were also a few police officers. Matthew recognised all of them, and he had no doubt that it was a combination of the police presence at the airport and the delayed plane that had attracted reporters from the other two news agencies in town. The weather often delayed planes in Greenland, but it was rare for there to be police at the airport at the same time.
Cold Fear Page 27