Blood Floe_Conspiracy, Intrigue, and Multiple Homicide in the Arctic

by Christoffer Petersen

  Maratse sighed. “What other tasks?”

  “I’ll let you know,” Therese stood up, let the sleeping bag fall to the floor and tucked her thumbs into the panty elastic around her waist. “I’m going to get changed now. I suggest you do the same. We’re going to be gone all day, longer if we get permission to sail.” Therese plucked the elastic from her waist and let it snap against her skin. “Well?”

  Maratse put his mug on the table and stood up. He heard the smooth slip of Therese’s underwear on her skin as he climbed the stairs to his room. Things were moving just a little too quickly, and of their own accord. A helpless feeling wormed its way into his mind, and he gripped the thin duvet in his fist. Police work often had an element of helplessness attached to it, but this feeling was different, it had an edge, Maratse recognised it for what it was, he felt used.

  He let his thoughts simmer as he dressed, tugging on Karl’s hand-me-down thermals that Buuti had brought over the day the sun disappeared for the winter. When he was ready, and had enough layers for a day on the ice, he opened the wardrobe and pulled his police jacket off the hanger. He ran his fingers over the dark square of material and loose threads where the police shield had once been attached, and pulled it on, amazed once again at how good it made him feel to wear it. He felt almost whole, stronger, empowered, and ready to steer this private investigation into something more agreeable.

  Therese was right about one thing, he realised, it was easier to say yes to something when the decision had already been made. He might be in Berndt’s debt, but Therese was in his country, and Greenland had its own rules, its own climate, and its own culture. Strengthened by the weight of the jacket on his shoulders, the pain in Maratse’s legs didn’t bother him as climbed down the stairs. Therese packed a small backpack in the living room as he pulled on his overalls, and tied the arms around his waist. Maratse pulled on his boots and opened the door.

  “Where are you going?” Therese asked.

  “To get the keys.”

  “Keys?”

  “For the snowmobile. My dogs are staying here.”

  Maratse shut the door as Therese started to speak. He was halfway down the steps when the police Toyota bumped over the ice foot and drove onto the beach. Danielsen waved him over as Simonsen got out from behind the wheel, leaned against the side of the car, and lit a cigarette. The engine rumbled as Maratse crunched through the snow and accepted a cigarette from Simonsen.

  “A peace offering,” he said, as Maratse leaned in to the flame from the lighter cupped in Simonsen’s hands. Simonsen tucked the lighter in his pocket. “There’s a woman in your house, Constable. Who is she?”

  “Berndt’s daughter.” Maratse blew a cloud of smoke over his shoulder as Therese stepped onto the deck. He nodded at her as she lit a cigarette of her own, curled the hood of her jacket over her fiery-red hair, and watched them.

  “Berndt called us this morning. He wants permission to sail his yacht to a safe harbour.”

  “She said the same.”

  “Did she also say he wants you on the boat with her?”

  “Iiji.”

  Simonsen glanced at Danielsen. “You see, it’s this kind of thing that makes it difficult for me to like you, Maratse.”

  “I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “No, you haven’t, but you always seem to be in the thick of it.” Simonsen turned his head at the sound of the radio crackling inside the car. Danielsen reached inside to answer it. “I haven’t made a decision yet. I need to wait for the investigative team to finish up.” He paused as Danielsen spoke rapidly in Greenlandic. “What is it?” Danielsen held up one finger and looked away. Simonsen looked at Maratse. “What is he saying?”

  Maratse translated, “Something has happened onboard the yacht.”

  “I sent two policeman and a detective out there early this morning.”

  “Someone’s been hurt.” Maratse flicked his cigarette onto the snow as Danielsen leaned inside the car, clicked the radio into place, and then leaned over the bonnet to speak to Simonsen.

  “The detective has been stabbed.”

  “Onboard the yacht?”

  “Aap.” Danielsen held up his hand, as Simonsen reached for the door handle. “There’s more.”

  “Go on.”

  “The assailant took the police car. He’s driven off, deeper into the fjord.”

  Simonsen opened the door and climbed in behind the wheel. “Get in,” he said to Maratse. He shifted into first gear as Danielsen climbed into the passenger seat, and Maratse opened the door behind Simonsen. He was half inside the vehicle when the door opposite him opened and Therese climbed in.

  “This is not a taxi,” Simonsen said. “Get out.”

  “That’s my boat, Chief,” Therese said, and shut the door. “I’m coming with you.”

  “This is police business. You’re a civilian.”

  “So is he,” she said, nodding at Maratse.

  Maratse closed his door, as Simonsen cursed and accelerated off the beach, slipping the Toyota into four-wheel-drive to negotiate the ice foot.

  “Don’t,” Maratse said, as Therese reached for the seatbelt and began to stretch it across her chest. “We might need to get out quickly.” She nodded and let it slip back against the seat.

  Simonsen accelerated through the gears, steering wide of the icy coastline, and following the peninsula to drive around the open lead of black water. Maratse noted the softer patches of ice as Simonsen raced across the frozen surface of the sea towards the hunters’ camp in the distance. The moon lit the ice with a searchlight-white beam as the police emergency lights flashed blue against the bergs, and the winter dark was charged with colour.

  Therese punched Maratse on the arm, her teeth flashing, her eyes green and bright, as Danielsen chattered on the radio, and Simonsen concentrated on the road ahead. Maratse wondered if Therese would be smiling if she knew the road was just twenty centimetres thick, perhaps less. He decided she probably would, shook his head and laughed, her excitement was infectious.

  Maratse stopped laughing when he heard Danielsen ask the policeman to repeat what he had just said.

  “What is it?” Simonsen said, as he downshifted to slow the Toyota. Maratse could see the dogs stirring as they approached the yacht.

  “It’s the detective. He was first onboard. That’s when he was attacked.”

  “All right.” Simonsen glanced at Danielsen. “There’s more?”

  “Aap.”

  “Spit it out.”

  “The assailant took the detective’s gun.”

  “He’s armed?”

  Danielsen nodded as Simonsen slowed to a stop beside the yacht.

  Simonsen turned in his seat and nodded at Therese. “Out,” he said. “No discussion. You said it was your boat, I want you to get on it and stay on it.”

  Therese opened the door, and stepped onto the ice. She looked at Maratse, and said, “What about him?”

  “He’s coming with me.” Simonsen nodded at Maratse, and then held out his hand to Danielsen. “Give me your sidearm.”

  Danielsen hesitated, and glanced at Maratse.

  “I know what you are going to say, Aqqa, but I need you here.” He looked up as one of the policemen from Ilulissat jogged over to the Toyota. “Get the ambulance out here, and keep an eye on the German girl. Quickly.”

  Danielsen tugged his pistol from his holster, leaned between the seats, and pressed it into Maratse’s hand. “I want it back,” he said, and opened the passenger door. He slapped his hand on the policeman’s shoulder and told him to get into the car. Simonsen shifted into first and accelerated into a tight turn as Therese joined Danielsen on the ice.

  “Which way?” Simonsen said, as the policeman closed the passenger door.

  “Northeast, past that pointy berg.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Forty minutes.”

  Simonsen gritted his teeth, and then nodded at Maratse in the back. “Introduce yourselves
.”

  “Inuk Taorana,” said the policeman. “From Ilulissat.”

  “We’ve met,” Maratse said, “a few years ago.”

  “Really?”

  “You came to Ittoqqortoormiit onboard Sisak II.”

  “Yeah, I remember. Maratse?”

  “Iiji.”

  “Okay, enough introductions,” Simonsen said. He pointed at a dark stationary shape between two icebergs. “Get ready, because that’s my patrol car.”

  Maratse sat on the edge of the seat and peered through the windscreen as Simonsen slowed the Toyota to a crawl. Clumps of ice frozen into the surface crunched beneath the Toyota’s tyres. Simonsen stopped the vehicle and turned off the emergency lights.

  “Inuk,” he said, “I want you to go to the right. Maratse?”

  “Iiji?”

  “Go left of the bergs. I’m going to drive straight up to the car.”

  Maratse opened the door and stepped onto the ice. He stepped away from the car, gripped the pistol in both hands, and nodded once at Inuk as Simonsen pulled away. The engine rumbled, but beyond that, all was still, dark, and cold, as the moon retreated behind a thick cloud and it started to snow.

  Chapter 10

  Petra woke early on Sunday morning. The winter sun had yet to rise, and the Northern Lights blazed in the pre-dawn sky. She made coffee and stood at the window of her new apartment in Qinngorput and looked out over the bay towards the centre of Nuuk. The building cranes stood proud of the cityscape, lit in such a way that the stars might have fallen like snow to rest on the long metal arms, illuminating and approving Nuuk’s steady climb to fame and fortune, a modern jewel in the Danish Crown waiting to be prised free of its colonial masters.

  A flash of blue light caught Petra’s attention. She tracked the police car’s emergency lights from the harbour until they were lost, hidden, gone, as the weekend night shift wrapped up, and the day shift slipped out of their houses leaving families, loved ones, friends and pets to sleep on. Petra finished her coffee, turned her back on the Nuuk nightscape, and slipped under the covers of her bed. She picked up her smartphone and considered calling Maratse, and then slapped the phone, screen down, on the duvet as she remembered the woman, the German floozy, currently embedded in Maratse’s tiny house in Inussuk.

  “Embedded.” Petra said the word aloud, and then swore. “So long as she hasn’t bedded Maratse, I might still forgive him.” She blew a strand of hair from her mouth as she wondered why it was so important. What would it matter if he did sleep with her? The heavy curtains absorbed her words, and Petra, alone in the dark, slipped another half metre beneath her duvet.

  After a while she rolled over, picked up her phone and checked her social media. She saw that one of her colleagues had shared a link to a Sermitsiaq article about the murders in Uummannaq. Petra clicked on it, read the name of the journalist: Kitu Qalia, and then slid her finger down the screen as she read. According to a quote from the Chief of Police in Uummannaq, none of the crew had been charged yet, nor was there sufficient evidence to pursue the case. The next paragraph made Petra sit up, as Simonsen was further quoted to say that one member of the crew was still unaccounted for, and that they were keen to find him, and talk to him.

  “Greenland’s first manhunt,” Petra said, and smiled.

  There had been plenty of chases in Greenland that she knew of, and many more that were too old to interest her, and they were all affected by the weather. She knew that Maratse had once chased a murderer into the mountains around Ittoqqortoormiit. A Danish writer had tagged along, and published an article in an American magazine. Few people in Greenland had read it, and Petra wondered how much of it had been true. Knowing Maratse as she did, it wouldn’t surprise her if all of it was true, but he rarely spoke of it. She smiled at the thought of another manhunt on Maratse’s doorstep, and couldn’t resist imagining him pursuing the killer across the ice and into the mountains.

  She slapped the phone down on the mattress, and sighed at the sound of her own voice, muffled as it was beneath the duvet. “Get it together, Piitalaat.”

  Petra gave up trying to sleep and threw the duvet further down the bed. She dressed in her workout clothes, prepared a bag, and then pulled on her salopettes and jacket, bracing her self for a moment before leaving her apartment, climbing down the stairs, and stepping out into the snow, swirling and drifting between the apartment blocks overlooking the bay. She found the keys to the car she was looking after for her Danish friends on vacation, cleared the windscreen, and then drove to the gym. Petra parked alongside the other insomniacs, and punched her code into the door.

  The musky smell of sweat pricked at her nostrils as she peeled off her outer clothes in the changing rooms before stepping into the gym. Petra didn’t recognise the Dane lifting weights in the corner, but guessed he might be on a temporary contract, with access to the gym a perk of the job. She knew the other man running on the treadmill far too well.

  Petra pressed her water bottle into the holder of the machine next to Gaba Alatak, stretched, and then stepped onto the treadmill to programme her preferred distance and speed. Gaba tugged the ear bud out of his left ear as Petra began to run.

  “You’re up early,” he said. The gym lights reflected in the sheen of sweat blistering his bare torso.

  “Couldn’t sleep.” Petra allowed herself a single glance at her ex-lover’s pectoral muscles and then concentrated on finding her running rhythm.

  “I was at a meeting on Friday,” Gaba said. “Your name came up.”

  “What meeting?”

  “It was very interesting.” Gaba grinned as Petra did a double step to lengthen her stride.

  “You ape,” she said. “Are you going to tell me about it or not?”

  “Not if you keep insulting me.”

  Petra picked up her water bottle and squeezed a mouthful into Gaba’s face.

  “Speak,” she said.

  “I tell you what, Sergeant,” Gaba said, as he wiped the water from his face, “if you stop calling me names, and play nice, I’ll let you buy me brunch at Katuaq when we’re done here.”

  “Brunch? It’s still too early for breakfast.”

  “You don’t know how far I’m running.”

  Gaba pulled the remote from the holder next to his water bottle and turned on the television mounted on the wall in front of them. He flicked to the teletext channel. Even in the technological wake of modernisation, some things never changed. KNR’s teletext channel had, somehow, been overlooked, but not forgotten. The news cycled in Greenlandic and Danish with one or two slow moving pages for each story.

  Petra read the Danish news as she ran. She was just about to give in and invite Gaba to brunch when breaking news of the Uummannaq manhunt flicked onto the screen. She glanced at Gaba as she read about a policeman being stabbed with a knife, the suspect now considered armed and dangerous. Petra had to give the teletext reporters credit, with a very limited amount of available text they had set the scene for a drama that would grip the nation. Even in the areas where Internet was either unavailable or unaffordable, nearly every household had access to a television and the teletext channel. She imagined Maratse following the story as it developed, and then remembered that his was one of the few households without a television. She decided to call him as soon as the sun was up in Nuuk.

  “Have you heard anything about this?” Petra asked Gaba.

  “Nothing. This is news to me.”

  “Do you think they will send you in?”

  “The SRU? Maybe. That’s up to Simonsen.”

  Petra read the same news item each time it cycled through the channel until her own running programme neared a close and she slowed before stretching and hitting the showers. Gaba continued running.

  “How long?” she asked.

  “Just another five kilometres,” he said, “maybe eight.”

  “I’ll wait, and buy you brunch.”

  Gaba grinned, and said, “I thought you might.”

 
“You’re still an ape.” Petra turned off her running machine, grabbed her water bottle and let Gaba run in peace.

  She was dressed in her salopettes, the straps and bib hanging loose at her sides, with her jacket over one arm when Gaba walked out of the changing rooms. He nodded at his car and said he would meet her there. Petra wiped more snow from the windscreen and then drove to the Katuaq Cultural Centre. Gaba parked his SUV next to her Volkswagen, and followed her inside. They found a table and hung their jackets over the backs of the chairs, but as Gaba picked up his plate for the buffet brunch, Petra outlined the rules.

  “Rules? For brunch?”

  “Yes,” she said.”

  “Like what?”

  “This is not a date.”

  “Sergeant…”

  “I used to be Petra, remember?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then, we can agree, this is not a date.”

  “We agree.”

  “Second,” she said, and pinched her middle finger.

  “Are you giving me the finger?”

  “I will, if you don’t agree to rule two.”

  “All right. What is it?”

  “You’ll tell me everything.”

  “Everything I can tell you, yes.”

  “Fine,” she said, and waved at the buffet tables, “you can eat.”

  Petra watched as Gaba weaved his way between the tables. She had to admit that the leader of Greenland’s Special Response Unit took care of his body. She pushed the memories of that same body aside, pulled her smartphone from her pocket and called Maratse. She pressed the phone to her ear and waited for him to pick up.

  “Piitalaat,” he said, his voice a whisper with static from the wind making it hard to hear what he said.

  “I can hardly hear you.”

  “I can’t talk. Not now.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’ll call you,” Maratse said, and ended the call.

  Gaba put a plate of pancakes, sausage, and egg between his cutlery and picked up one of two empty coffee mugs. “Everything all right?” he asked.