The Winter Trap

by Christoffer Petersen

  “A friend of mine said it was one of the better farms to visit.”

  “It’s not,” Innaaq said. “There’s nothing there. Not even a guesthouse.”

  “Still,” I said. “If I hire a boat, I can go wherever I want to.”

  It was Innaaq’s turn to think. He looked away for a moment, then turned back to say, “I’ll come with you.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “I’ll come. Be at the docks at eight tomorrow morning. Bring warm clothes, Constable. It can be cold on the fjord.”

  I wanted to tell him I knew all about sailing on fjords in Greenland. But what he saw was a city girl, and while true, I let him think that’s all there was. Besides, I had been promised drinks in the bar.

  “Tomorrow, then,” I said, turning my back on Innaaq, and pushing Venus out of my mind. Just for a few hours, I thought. Then I’m all yours. All weekend.

  Part 13

  It might have been inappropriate, but after two rum and cokes, I was determined to at least try to do what the commissioner had ordered, to find a partner, to make life complicated. I dipped my head to one side, presenting my ear to Carran Brigham, a tall Englishman Michael said I could trust to treat me right and entertain me.

  “Just don’t ask him about his estate,” he said, winking as he bought another round of drinks in the hotel bar.

  “What estate?” I said, raising my voice – higher than intended, but what the hell… I was off duty. “Like a car?”

  “Not a car,” Carran said, moving his head closer to mine. “My parents have money, that’s what Michael wants me to tell you.”

  “Lots of money?”

  Carran leaned back on his stool, reaching for his bottle of beer on the bar. He raised his eyebrows as he tilted the bottle to his lips.

  “But I’m still a nice guy,” he said.

  “Really?”

  He had a long blond fringe, brushed to one side, and a light stubble that matched his trendy but crumpled clothes. I sipped at my rum and coke, nodded when he asked if I wanted another, and ignored the brush of his leg against mine, as he stretched his leg, hooking one heel of his city shoes over the bar on my stool.

  “What about you?” he asked, sliding my drink across the bar and into my hand. I brushed his fingers with mine as I took the glass.

  “I don’t have any money,” I said, giggling in the heat and his sudden proximity.

  “Then we can’t possibly get married.”

  “What?” I frowned at his sudden serious face, playing along, enjoying the moment, curious what Atii would say, what she would do, if she was here with me – my wingman.

  “My parents would never agree to it.”

  “Then we’ll elope.”

  “Perfect,” he said, taking another swig of beer. And then, another serious look, followed by, “Do you want to get out of here?”

  “What?”

  “Outside.” He plucked at his sweaty collar. “It’s hot in here. I could use some air.”

  “Okay.”

  The beat of the music followed us to the door, pulsing through the thick soles of my boots. Sweat trickled down my spine, with another trickle from my armpits, tickling my ribs, but the shiver of sudden fresh air confused me, flashing my brain with a jolt of clarity, that I wasn’t supposed to be having fun, that I was here to look for a missing person: Venus.

  I was failing – badly.

  “Are you all right?” Carran walked beside me to a table and we sat down.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Your face, back then…”

  I snorted – very attractive. “Is there something wrong with my face?”

  “No,” he said, softly. “Nothing at all.”

  “Careful,” I said. “Don’t make a girl blush.”

  “Why not?”

  Even after two drinks, starting on my third, it was a good question. It deserved an answer.

  “I’m a cop.”

  “I happen to like coppers.”

  “What?”

  “Coppers – English for cops.” He finished his beer and set the empty bottle down on the table. The door banged open, and we turned our heads, nodding at one of the guests, turning him around with directions to the toilets. “I could take you there,” Carran said. “England.”

  “London,” I said.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “I’ve never been.”

  “Where have you been?”

  “Denmark. Mostly Greenland.”

  “And would you leave?”

  “Greenland? Are you asking me?” I laughed at Carran’s open-mouthed expression. “Don’t answer that. And no, I wouldn’t leave. Not forever. I would always want to come back.”

  “And how old are you?”

  “Do you ask all your women that?”

  “All my women?”

  “Twenty-four,” I said, enjoying his discomfort.

  “I’m thirty-two.”

  “And rich,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  I stood up, leaving my drink on the table, and reached out for Carran’s hand, clutching it before I could change my mind.

  “Come on,” I said. “You can walk me back to my room.”

  “In the hotel?”

  “No,” I said, flicking my finger into the distance. “Not so lucky.”

  He talked on the way back – nervous talk. It only made me more curious, how he ticked, and what he was like, even what he looked like, as I imagined what I thought we might do as soon as we got back to my room. The walk cleared my head, but not my intentions. Love could wait, but it felt good to make things complicated.

  I initiated the first complicated act when I stopped outside the hostel entrance, curling my hands into Carran’s shirt, pulling him close, pressing my lips against his, tasting beer and sweat and coffee and…

  I broke off with a shiver, collecting myself, smoothing my hand against his chest, then taking his hand, leading him into the hostel, pausing at my door as I fumbled the keys from my pocket.

  “Petra,” he said, voice low. “Are you sure?”

  I bit my lip, nodding once, as I opened the door.

  The shiver struck me again as I blinked in the moonlight shining through the window, framing the loose sheets of paper, Venus’ letters, and photos, now strewn across the room, together with the contents of my backpack emptied on my bed and dumped onto the floor.

  “Petra? What happened here?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, turning on the light. “But I think you’d better go.”

  I didn’t even say sorry. I barely noticed as Carran slipped away. My mind spun with questions and there was no room for further complications.

  Part 14

  “It’s late,” Innaaq said, as I let him into my room.

  “I know.” I shut the door and gestured at the papers littering the floor. “But I had to call. Look.”

  “Your papers fell out of your bag?”

  “Someone went through my bag. They swept the papers off the desk.”

  “What are they about?”

  I took a breath, thinking as Innaaq worked his way through the papers, like crossing a minefield, to the other side of the room.

  “Venus Manumina.”

  “Venus?”

  “She went missing,” I said.

  “I know who she is.” Innaaq swore, then pointed at the papers. “That’s what this is about?”

  “Letters,” I said, bending down to collect them. “Articles. Some photos. Everything from the last few years of her life, 1971 to 1975, before she went missing.”

  “She’s dead,” Innaaq said, stooping to help me. “She went hiking, got lost, got cold, slipped into the fjord. Gone. Dead.”

  “Missing.”

  “True, they never found her body. But she’s dead, Constable. Believe me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m a police officer. Because I know the case.”

  “Not that. Why do you think she’s dead?”

>   “It’s in the files.”

  “At the police station?”

  “Aap. In Qaqortoq.”

  “Who filled in the reports?”

  Innaaq straightened his back and stared at me. “You’re calling me a liar?”

  “No. I’m saying you’re just a few years older than me. It wasn’t your case. Venus went missing before you were born. So, it was someone else’s case. Someone else filed the reports.” I sighed when Innaaq didn’t answer. “You know I just gave a talk about digital Greenland, only not everything is digital. Old files, records, they haven’t been scanned. Maybe one day, but not…”

  “It was ataata, my father, Sergeant Aksili Paniula. He closed the case on Venus Manumina.”

  “The press didn’t believe him,” I said, shuffling the articles in my hand until I found one that Tuukula had translated for me. “They said the search was called off.”

  “What search? No one knew where she was, or who she was with. The papers lied. The journalists made stuff up to make ataata look incompetent.”

  I said nothing, just watched Innaaq, curious that he should be so passionate about this case, how it seemed to distress him. I thought of Kiiki Anguupisen – her face, her scream, back in the residential home. Everything about Venus Manumina seemed to cause people distress.

  “Okay,” I said, interrupting a sudden bout of silence. “Suppose the papers lied. Suppose she is dead. Why did someone break into my room? Why did they go through my stuff? What were they…”

  “Looking for?” Innaaq knelt down to pluck a small card from the floor. “Or what did they leave behind?” He handed the card to me.

  “I haven’t seen this before.”

  “No?”

  I glanced at Kiiki’s scrapbook on the desk. “It wasn’t inside the pages, or the envelope.” I looked at the card – a cheap business card. It looked and smelled old. “Pannapa Photography.”

  “Pannapa Imaakka.” Innaaq nodded his head. “That fits.”

  “What does?”

  “Nikkuliit must have talked to him. You can’t trust her. She’s like a sieve.” He reached out to pluck the card from my fingers. “Pannapa is an old man now. Sentimental. This,” he said, wafting the card in front of me, “is one of his business cards. He carries them around all the time, as if he still has a business, as if he ever had one. It must have fallen out of his pocket.”

  “You think Pannapa came here and did this?”

  “Who else?”

  “Why?”

  Innaaq gave me the card and shrugged. “It was in the report. Pannapa had something going on with Venus. Ataata described him as being obsessed with her, or something. Whatever it was, it was unhealthy. She was twenty-nine when she went missing. Pannapa was a few years younger. Twenty-five, I think. So, this pretty girl who wants to be a model wants him to take photos of her.” Innaaq laughed. “Couldn’t help himself, could he?”

  “What are you saying?”

  “You should know, Constable. A pretty thing like you, flies into Narsarsuaq, and suddenly all the men can’t help themselves.”

  “You followed me from the bar.” I swallowed, fought hard not to clench my fists.

  “I was looking out for you.”

  “Spying.”

  “Protecting you, Constable. It’s what colleagues do for one another.” Innaaq forced a smile onto his face, waited for me to return it, and then carried on when I didn’t. “Anyway,” he said, stepping over the last of the papers on his way to the door. “Tomorrow at eight.” He reached for the door, pausing to check his watch. “Correction. Today at eight. Get some rest, Constable. Don’t be late.”

  I let him go, didn’t even turn around, just stared at the papers on the floor, the articles and photos in my hand, and the business card of an old man searching for ghosts.

  Part 15

  I should have been looking at the lush patches of green grass burning away the oranges and browns of winter, raging down the slopes, teasing at the granite feet of the mountains. I should have listened to the rush of black water surging to the fjord down tiny rocky channels cutting through the landscape as the ice cap wept. I should have taken a deep breath of crisp, cool air as I walked to meet Innaaq and Tornginnguaq at the docks, but Pannapa’s business card burned my fingers as I clasped it inside my jacket pocket. Also burning, setting my mind alight, were conflicting thoughts about who knew what, who I could trust, and what the day had in store.

  One thing I knew was that Greenland casual wasn’t appropriate for the trip to Ilua. I dressed in my full uniform, comfortable in the signal I was sending, but lamenting the fact I left my utility belt and pistol at the station in Nuuk. I missed the weight on my hips. Such a thought would normally make me laugh, but the serious look on Tornginnguaq’s face, coupled with Innaaq’s bleary eyes and thin smile, made laughing impossible. It looked like they had had words, an argument, maybe something more. But with little more than a nod and a few directions as to where to sit, Tornginnguaq settled us into her boat and we motored away from the dock.

  The wind whipped at my hair, tugging at my ponytail, plucking loose strands out of the elastic I wore. Innaaq sat hunched in the bow, hands in his pockets, a cigarette clamped between his lips. Tornginnguaq drove the boat, flicking her blue eyes from me to Innaaq, then back to the whitecaps teasing life into the black water. Tornginnguaq’s blonde hair – a product of her Scandinavian genes – curled out from beneath her thick wool hat, flicking the sides of her neck as she stared forwards, driving the boat towards Ilua. I sank deeper inside my jacket, nose pressed against the zip, wishing I had remembered a hat, but pleased at the distraction, freeing my mind from other thoughts for at least the length of the boat journey.

  After an hour and a half of slapping the hull across small but impetuous waves, Tornginnguaq clicked the outboard motor into neutral and let the boat drift the last few metres to the shore. She clicked the motor into reverse, slowing at the last minute, before bumping the bow into a thin strip of pebble beach beside a stream running off the mountain and into the fjord. Innaaq leaped over the gunwale. He held the boat, yawning as Tornginnguaq switched the motor off and cranked the propeller shaft out of the water. Ravens cawed in the sky above, and the wind rustled the stiff grasses marking the boundary between the pebble beach and the first proper field I had encountered in Greenland.

  “This way,” Innaaq said, after he secured the boat.

  “I’ll wait here,” Tornginnguaq said.

  “Sure,” he said, stifling another yawn.

  Innaaq waited for me to climb out of the boat and then led the way up a short but narrow path into the field.

  I expected to see sheep, but saw no movement save the wind in the grass, and the swoop of black ravens headed for the mountain slopes. We passed a stone shelter with a rusted metal roof, one edge creaking in the wind. Innaaq walked right past it, while I stopped at the open entrance to peer inside.

  “It’s just a sheep pen,” he said. “Nothing interesting.”

  I shrugged and followed him, choosing not to comment, not to say anything at all. I thought Innaaq should be the first to speak.

  “This way,” he said, climbing up a small rise.

  I saw the wooden farmhouse as we climbed up and over the black lip of granite. A generator chugged in the near distance, echoing off the curved corrugated roof of what looked like half a massive metal pipe pressed into the Arctic grass.

  “For the sheep,” Innaaq said. He pointed at a worn path curling down from the rise and leading to the farmhouse.

  I looked for signs of sheep inside the metal shed, then jogged along the path to catch up with Innaaq. He slowed as we approached the farmhouse, just as an older man with a shotgun stepped out of the front door.

  “It’s okay, Joorsi,” Innaaq said as he stopped on the path. “Just come for a chat.”

  Joorsi spat on the ground, then lifted the shotgun, tucking the butt into his shoulder.

  “Easy now, Joorsi.” Innaaq raised his hands,
palms out. “I don’t want any trouble.”

  “Neither do I,” Joorsi said, right before he pulled the trigger.

  Part 16

  The shot sped harmlessly over our heads, while the smoke from the blast hung in the air, drifting past Joorsi’s face as he broke the barrel, ejected the spent shell, replacing it with a new one from the bib pocket of his overalls. Innaaq slid his hand to the pistol at his hip but said nothing.

  Joorsi’s fingers trembled as he snapped the barrel into place. He glared at Innaaq, lips quivering as he raised the shotgun a second time.

  “Don’t do it,” Innaaq said. He stuck to Danish, and I wondered if it was for my benefit or Joorsi’s.

  “I told you, just like I told your father…”

  “You leave him out of this.” Innaaq jabbed a finger at Joorsi. “I warned you about that before.”

  “And I told him I never wanted to see you again – no one in your family.”

  “Innaaq,” I said.

  “Not now.” He took a step forward, just as Joorsi tugged the shotgun to his shoulder.

  “Your father was a liar…”

  “Shut your mouth…” Innaaq plucked at the snap holding his pistol in place. Spittle flecked his lips, caught in his thick moustache as he took another step forward.

  “A womaniser…”

  Innaaq drew his pistol. “I said shut your mouth…”

  I caught a flicker of movement in the farmhouse window, saw a woman rush to the door. She ran out, turning Innaaq’s head as he raised his pistol. I took a step forward, grabbed the back of Innaaq’s jacket, one hand beneath each shoulder, as I stuck my foot between his legs and curled the heel of my boot around his leg. I toppled Innaaq to the floor, pushing him down and landing on top of him, just as the woman reached Joorsi. She plucked the shotgun from his hands as he crumpled to his knees, clutching his chest and wheezing for breath.