Blood Floe_Conspiracy, Intrigue, and Multiple Homicide in the Arctic

by Christoffer Petersen

  “Happy?”

  “Did I say that? I mean successful, of course.”

  Maratse turned at the sound of someone tramping up the steps to his house. He waved at Karl, nodding as his neighbour kicked the snow from his boots and opened the door.

  “You’ve got company,” Berndt said. “Perhaps I could call again, give you some time to make up your mind.”

  “I don’t need more time, Mr Berndt. I cannot help you.”

  “Because you are retired?”

  “Because I won’t interfere with a police investigation.”

  “I didn’t ask you to interfere, I asked you to investigate.”

  “It’s the same thing, the minute I get involved.”

  Berndt sighed, and said, “I think you are making a mistake, Constable.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “But more than that, I think we both know that it will be difficult for you not to get involved. Hell, you are already involved; it was you who discovered Ophelia and the fate of her crew. Are you not in the least bit curious as to what happened? Don’t you want to see the killer brought to justice? Is that why you retired? Because you stopped caring?”

  “Goodbye, Mr Berndt.”

  “Wait…”

  Maratse ended the call and looked at Karl. “I need a smoke,” he said, and walked towards the door.

  “I thought you were trying to quit?”

  “I still am.”

  He pulled on his boots and followed Karl onto the deck. Snow squeaked like brittle rubber as they walked to the railing and lit a cigarette each. Maratse brushed at the snow on his wool sweater and zipped his overalls to just below his neck.

  “How was your trip?” Karl asked.

  “I think you know.”

  “We saw the police car and the ambulance from the window,” he said, and pointed with the cigarette between his fingers. “We saw them come back too. You know Sammu? The local reporter?”

  “Iiji.”

  “He said someone was murdered on a yacht.” Karl studied Maratse’s face as he smoked. “He said you were the one who called the police.”

  “He’s right, and so were you.”

  “How?”

  “You said trouble seems to find me. It did.”

  “Again.”

  “Iiji.” Maratse finished his cigarette. “When are we eating?”

  “Buuti says to come when you are ready. She told the Danes to come at dinnertime.”

  Maratse laughed. “I bet that confused them.”

  “Aap,” Karl said. “I told them to come at six.”

  “That was nice of you.”

  “I know.” Karl squashed his cigarette against the metal lid of the rubbish bin attached to the railings. He dropped the butt inside. “See you later.”

  Maratse nodded and watched him leave.

  The Danes – Sisse, her daughter, Nanna, and partner, Klara – lived in the house beside Maratse. The women were artists, working with natural materials washed up on the beach, or, in winter, discarded from ravens, foxes, and hunters. When Maratse arrived at Karl and Buuti’s house, the Danes were already seated at the table, and Nanna was playing with a dog whip Karl had made for her with a short length of wood and a long piece of string. Sisse called out for Nanna to be careful as she swished the whip back and forth in front of Maratse as he walked into the lounge. Buuti hugged him and guided him to a seat next to Sisse.

  “We watched you leave yesterday,” Sisse said, curling her arm around her daughter as she bustled past with an imaginary team of dogs. She kissed Nanna on the head, prised the whip from her hand, and said something about playing again later, once they had eaten. Sisse turned back to Maratse. “Was that Tinka leading the team?”

  “Spirit,” Maratse said. “Tinka has to learn.”

  “But she is learning,” said Klara, “from Spirit?”

  “It’s the best way.”

  “Nanna likes Tinka, don’t you,” Sisse said, and stroked Nanna’s long blonde hair as she fidgeted on her seat.

  “She smells of fish,” Nanna said.

  “Nanna likes to kiss the dogs,” said Klara.

  “Oh, she shouldn’t do that,” Buuti said, as she placed a heavy pot in the centre of the table. Maratse caught the smell of seal meat wrapped in bacon, a wonderful combination of meat from the sea and the store. “Sledge dogs are not pets. They are working dogs. You should teach her to throw stones at the dogs instead, to keep them away, stop them coming too close.”

  “Stones?” Klara said.

  “She’s right.” Maratse nodded. He reached down to pick up Nanna’s whip and studied it in the light. Nanna watched him as he turned it within his fingers. “If you stay away from the dogs, I’ll teach you to use the whip.”

  “How about that, Nanna?” Sisse said. “Would you like that?”

  Nanna nodded with a sharp dip of her chin. “Yes,” she said.

  “Yes, what?”

  “Thank you.”

  Maratse put the whip on the floor, nodded when Karl offered them all a beer, and smiled as Buuti heaped a generous amount of meat and potatoes onto his plate. He let the Danes lead the conversation around the dinner table, as they always did at mealtimes. It was as if they didn’t know how to enjoy their food without adding words to it. Maratse ate. He sipped at his beer, smiled at Nanna, and raised his eyebrows, yes, when Buuti offered him a second helping.

  The seal meat settled in his stomach, and Maratse felt the beer relax him, to the point where he began to nod in the heat of the living room. Karl kicked him under the table, and Maratse lifted his head as he heard Sisse say his name.

  “What’s that?” he said.

  “I said what are you going to do?”

  “About what?”

  “The yacht. We were just talking about it, and Karl said you had a call from the owner. He said he wants your help.”

  “Iiji.”

  “So what will you do?”

  Maratse turned the beer bottle within his fingers and shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said.

  Chapter 5

  Simonsen leaned against the door of the room designated as Uummannaq hospital’s morgue. He tucked his hands inside the pockets of his police jacket and watched as the doctor examined the dead body of the Danish man from the yacht. A nurse followed the doctor around the shallow metal basin, nodding and making notes as the doctor spoke into the microphone hanging from a cord around her neck. The doctor, Elena Bianchi, was Italian, but had a better grasp of Greenlandic than Simonsen ever would, and a more than passable Danish, although her pronunciation of some of the odd Danish vowels made him smile. He twitched when she caught his eye, chiding himself at being caught watching her and not what she was doing.

  “You realise we will need ice,” she said, “for the bodies.”

  “I’ll call the fish factory,” Simonsen said.

  “Of course, if you keep bringing me dead bodies, I might put in for a cold storage.” Elena wiped her nose with her wrist. She gestured at the room, and said, “Although, I wouldn’t know where to put it.”

  Simonsen stepped into the room and peered at the stomach wound. Cleaned of blood, it looked insignificant, hardly worthy of the moniker: cause of death, knife would to the stomach. But he knew the wound had been deep, he had the knife in an evidence bag at the station.

  “What about the woman?” Simonsen glanced over his shoulder and into the corridor behind him. He could just see the toes of the second body they had recovered from the yacht.

  “When I’m done with him,” Elena said. She tapped the nurse on the arm and said something in Greenlandic. Simonsen moved to one side as the nurse walked past him. He waited until the sound of her clogs, plastic heels tapping along the corridor, diminished, and then closed the door.

  “There’s not a lot I can do about the bodies, Elena,” he said. “These two were imported.”

  “They are people, Torben, you make them sound like cars, or washing machines.”

  Simonsen scoffed, and
said, “It would be easier if they were.”

  Elena caught his eye, and then flicked her gaze back to the dead man. “You don’t mean that.”

  “I don’t?”

  “No. You care about these people.”

  “I care about the people of Uummannaq. I’m just concerned that we seem to be getting more than our fair share of imported crime.”

  “You’re worried about your statistics?”

  “I’m worried about Aqqa. We’re only two. We need more officers.”

  “Then ask for them.”

  “It’s not that simple.” Simonsen sighed. “I could always retire.”

  “You’re too young.”

  “I’ll be fifty-nine in September.”

  Elena looked up. “A year older than me.”

  “Maratse retired at thirty-nine.”

  “He was invalided off the force. You know that. You of all people know he didn’t choose to retire.”

  “But nobody talks about it.”

  Simonsen stepped back as Elena moved around the table to take a closer look at the dead man’s ear. She took a swab and worked it inside the cavity, before holding it up to the light. She turned the swab in her fingers and clicked the microphone to record her observation of a pale green residue.

  “What about Maratse’s legs?” Simonsen asked. “I heard he came for a check-up recently.”

  “He was here at the beginning of November.”

  “And?”

  Elena dropped the swab onto a paper dish. She peeled the gloves from her hands and dropped them into a yellow biological waste bin for incineration.

  “That’s confidential,” she said, and moved to open the door.

  Simonsen stepped to one side. “But is he getting better?”

  “Yes,” she said, and walked into the corridor. “Help me switch these two.”

  “I thought he was,” Simonsen said, as he pushed the metal gurney that Elena guided through the door. She covered the man with a thick paper sheet, and then helped Simonsen roll the woman’s body inside the makeshift morgue.

  “The man died from his wound, but there’s something odd inside his ear,” Elena said. She clicked the brakes of the gurney with a quick jab of the toes of her clogs, and moved directly to peer inside the woman’s ear. She tugged on another pair of gloves, found a swab, took a sample, and held it up to the light. “Nothing,” she said.

  “Nothing what?”

  “I wondered,” she said, as she inspected the dead woman’s other ear, “if they had something similar in their ears.”

  “Like what?”

  “Hamlet,” she said, and waited for Simonsen to react. “Poison in the ear?”

  “I prefer war movies.”

  “It’s not a movie, it’s a play. Set in Denmark?”

  “I know what Hamlet is.”

  “Who,” Elena said. “Who he is.”

  Simonsen lifted his hands, palms up, an apology. “Okay,” he said, “tell me.”

  “The man showed no signs of struggling. Almost as if the knife was pushed into his stomach while he was sleeping.”

  “The rest of the crew were unconscious – drugged.”

  “Yes,” Elena said, “Ketamine. It’s also used to treat tinnitus by dripping it into the ear. We might not have a freezer for dead bodies, but our lab technician is a gift. She came in as soon as I called, took a blood sample, and identified Ketamine within an hour. I’m trying to convince her to extend her contract.” She pointed at the swab. “I’ll ask her to check if that is Ketamine too.”

  “What about her?” Simonsen pointed at the dead woman on the gurney.

  “Cause of death – knife in the throat – but she has cuts here…” Elena lifted the woman’s forearm and pointed at her wrist and the base of her palm. “And here.” She lowered the woman’s left arm and splayed the fingers of her right hand. “She fought. She wasn’t drugged.”

  “The other member of the crew – the German woman,” Simonsen said, and paused to check his notes, “Nele Schneider – said the dead woman was having an affair with…” He flicked to another page. “Henrik Nielsen. The dead guy in the corridor.” Simonsen tapped his ear, and said, “You don’t just squirt something in someone’s ear. You have to be pretty close.” He paused. “Intimate. Kissing, maybe?”

  “He would notice,” Elena said. “But, in a passionate embrace? She could distract him.” Elena held up her hands, and said, “I had better stop while I’m ahead. Just listen to me. It’s not right for me to speculate. It’s your case, Chief.”

  “And I rather wish it wasn’t.” Simonsen tucked his notebook inside his pocket, and jabbed a finger in the air above the ragged wound in the woman’s neck. “So, she was murdered?”

  “Yes.”

  “When can I talk to the crew?”

  “They are under observation right now. The captain and the man are still a little groggy, but you can talk to Nele Schneider.”

  “Aqqa is outside the door,” Simonsen said. “I’ll have him move her to one of the offices upstairs, if that’s all right with you?”

  “It’s fine. Take the office next to mine. It’s empty.” She sighed, “Another vacancy I’m trying to fill. If I can get a doctor for the month of December, I might be able to have a few days off over Christmas.”

  “When did you last have a holiday?”

  “April.”

  Simonsen nodded at the dead body. “Thanks for your help.” He turned to leave.

  “You’ll remember the ice?”

  “I’ll have Anton at the factory send someone over.”

  “Today?”

  “As soon as they can,” Simonsen said. He smiled and left the room.

  The soft clap of clogs caught Simonsen’s attention, and he thanked the nurse as they passed in the corridor. He tried to remember her name as he walked to the lift. Danielsen would know, he seemed to know all the young Greenlandic and Danish nurses who worked at the hospital. Simonsen found his young constable busy with his smartphone as he leaned against the wall between the two rooms where the crew of the Ophelia were being treated and observed.

  “Busy?” Simonsen said. He stopped and adjusted his belt.

  “Two of them are sleeping. The woman is pretending to. That’s what the nurse said.”

  “Well, I want to talk to her. Bring her upstairs to the office next to Elena’s.”

  “You don’t want to talk to her here?”

  “I don’t want anyone listening in.”

  “Okay.” Danielsen paused, and said, “What about Maratse?”

  “What about him?”

  “Do you want to talk to him?”

  “Why? Do you think he did it?”

  “Naamik, definitely not.”

  “Then why would I want to talk to him?”

  Danielsen shrugged. “He’s all right, Chief. He’s one of us.”

  “He was one of us.”

  “You’re always a policeman,” Danielsen said.

  “Tell that to Maratse.” Simonsen turned to leave.

  “Why don’t you like him? Is it because of that Sirius woman?”

  Simonsen took a breath and turned. He took a step closer to Danielsen, and said, “She cold-cocked us with a pistol downstairs. You do remember?”

  “Aap,” Danielsen said, and lowered his voice. “I won’t forget that.”

  “Neither will I.”

  “But what has that got to do with Maratse?”

  “He helped her, Danielsen. She was being held for the murder of her partner, and he helped her escape.”

  “We don’t really know what happened.”

  “You’re right,” Simonsen said, and nodded. “We don’t. But until we do, I don’t trust him.”

  Danielsen tucked his phone into his pocket, and looked Simonsen in the eye. “Well, with respect, Chief, I do. And I hope you will too, one day.”

  “We’ll see,” Simonsen said. “Bring the girl upstairs.”

  The cleaners were using the lift when Simons
en pressed the button. He took the stairs instead. Thoughts of Maratse needled him as he climbed to the first floor of the hospital. He turned left, and walked through the waiting room, glancing at the tank of fish without breaking his stride. Tropical fish in Greenland. Each time he saw the tank, he entertained the idea of releasing the fish into the sea. If it wasn’t for the pleasure it gave the kids when they came for an appointment, he would have done it already.

  Simonsen opened the door to the spare office, sat down and placed his notebook on the desk. He closed his eyes for a moment, until he heard the squeak of Danielsen’s rubber soles, and the flap of hospital slippers in the corridor. He stood up as Danielsen showed the young German woman into the room, and gestured for her to sit. Danielsen leaned against the wall at the back of the room beside a poster used to check patients’ eyesight.

  “How are you feeling?”

  Nele glanced at Danielsen and then smoothed the hospital gown over her knees and zipped her fleece jacket to her neck. “It’s cold,” she said.

  “I thought you’d be used to that?”

  “It’s warmer on Ophelia.”

  “But you have been outside. You skied with the rest of the crew to Svartenhuk, didn’t you?”

  Nele nodded.

  “All of the crew?”

  “The captain stayed onboard Ophelia.”

  “So,” Simonsen said, and checked his notes, “five of you skied across the sea ice, and hiked into the mountains?”

  “Yes.”

  “But only four of you came back?”

  “Dieter…”

  “Dieter?”

  “Our Wegener expert, Dieter Müller. He said he wanted to stay. I thought he did.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” Nele fidgeted in her seat. She held her arm across her chest and pinched her bottom lip between her finger and thumb, biting her nail between sentences. “He came back. Later,” she said, “when he came back, later, he must have killed Henrik and Antje. He must have.”