“I have no plan,” she said to Dina as the Greenlander cupped her mouth and nose in her hands, staring through the window at the sea. “But I will finish this,” she said. “For Mikael, for you...” Fenna stepped behind Dina, wrapped her arms around her and smoothed her hands through her long, black hair, tugging it free of the jacket collar and letting it flow down her back. “I will finish it for you, Dina,” she said. “And Charlie,” she whispered.
Dina trembled as Fenna stroked her hair. The pink glow of the late Arctic afternoon spread down the mountain and disappeared into a cold shadow, black like the water, black like the hull of the Zodiac that drifted around the corner, black like death. Dina turned away from the window and buried her head against Fenna's chest as the driver of the Zodiac cut the power and the hull bumped against the ice. Fenna recognised the four men who clambered out of the inflatable. She watched as Bahadur secured the Zodiac to the rocks with a length of rope. She recognised the two policemen. They wore non-regulation jackets and carried the same model of antiquated rifle that Fenna had fired from the back of Maratse's police car. The scowls on their faces and the bandages around their heads were new. Burwardsley, she noted, stood apart from the rest as he removed the magazine from the SA80 rifle he carried, checked the magazine and slapped it home. Fenna shuddered as she heard the click, as if all her senses were wired to that one man. A second click caught her attention and she flicked her eyes from Burwardsley, scanning for his Sergeant, the merciless Nepali with the curved blade.
“These men,” she whispered, “are the single most important men in my life.” She watched as Bahadur nodded at Burwardsley and stalked towards a lip of rock, an elevated position above the schoolhouse to Fenna's left. “But it is my life,” she said and sank below the window. She eased Dina to the floor to the right of the window, and took the pistol and magazine from Dina's pockets as she leaned her back against the wall. Fenna crouched. She moved to the door, keeping low, and opened it. She peered around the frame as the policemen stopped in the snow, five metres from the boat and just thirty to the schoolhouse. Burwardsley didn't move.
“Konstabel,” said Simonsen. He coughed and spoke again in English for Burwardsley’s benefit, raising his voice. “Fenna,” he said. “Throw out your weapons and come out. There's nowhere to go,” he added and gestured at the fjord with his left arm.
Fenna stood and pressed her body to the wall. She shouted through the open door, “Get rid of your friends and I might consider it.” She glanced at Dina while she waited. The Greenlander looked at Fenna through the strands of her hair, as if she was peering through a blind in the jungle, shallow breathing, hoping the tigers would go away.
“I'm not going anywhere, Konstabel,” Burwardsley said. “You know that.”
Fenna took a breath and a firm grip of the pistol in her left hand. I knew that, she said to herself. With a quick glance at Bahadur's position, she snapped off a single shot at the Gurkha and ducked back inside the schoolhouse.
Dina clucked the remains of her tongue and pressed her hands to her ears. She looked at Fenna and then crawled the length of the table and hid at the end furthest from the door. Fenna leaned against the wall and listened as the policemen swore in Danish, thumping the snow from their trousers and jackets as they picked themselves up and moved into cover. Fenna smiled until she heard Burwardsley's laugh, deep and indulgent, as it broke against the schoolhouse wall, slamming into Fenna's gut like a boulder.
“We've been here before, love,” he said. Fenna heard the snow crunch beneath his boots as he walked forwards.
“Get down, you fool,” Simonsen shouted. Burwardsley ignored him and Fenna counted his strides. “She has two pistols.”
“Yes,” Burwardsley said. “Both of them yours.”
Fenna imagined Bahadur settling into the stock of his gun and lining his sights on the door. I'll give him ten strides. “And then I will kill him,” she said and shifted her position to the second of two windows, furthest from the door and closest to the kitchen. She counted five more strides, scooted a metre from the window, popped up and fired twice. The window shattered and she fired twice more at the British Lieutenant as he crashed to the ground and rolled to Fenna's right. She tracked him with the pistol, stepping to the left and firing again. Fenna felt the impact of her fifth round as if she controlled its flight with a wire, slamming into Burwardsley's right shoulder and spraying blood across the snow like a reckless painter.
“Bad,” Burwardsley yelled as he switched his grip on his rifle. “Take her.”
Fenna dropped to the floor and rolled into the kitchen unit as the Nepali shredded the exterior of the schoolhouse and the windows disintegrated under his sustained burst of fire. This isn't for me, Fenna realised and forced herself to move. She cut her hands and knees on the glass as she crawled to the door. “It's covering fire,” she breathed and thrust the pistol around the door frame, firing blind and emptying the magazine as she sprayed the approach with lead.
“Fuck,” Burwardsley shouted.
“You like that, eh?” Fenna shouted as she switched pistols, stuffing Simonsen's into her pocket.
“Laugh it up, love,” Burwardsley shouted and opened up with three-round bursts that splintered the door frame and tore the door from its hinges. Fenna rolled onto her side as the door crashed onto the stone floor and fell against the remains of the frame, until another burst from Burwardsley's rifle splintered the door in the middle and it collapsed into two pieces, flat on the floor.
Fenna ignored the glass splinters in her hands and popped up behind the first window, firing two shots blind and sighting the third as she found Burwardsley, as close to the schoolhouse as he dared, too close for Fenna's liking. She aimed. Squeezed the trigger and then paused at a whush of air behind her and the sound of wood creaking and leather snapping like a whip on the ice. She turned as Dina's feet brushed the surface of the table, her neck noosed within a dog whip lashed by her own hands around the beam above her.
“No,” Fenna screamed and clambered onto the table top. She gripped Dina's feet and pushed them upwards, trying to lift her body as the British rifles pulped the side of the schoolhouse. Fenna screamed again as a tornado of splinters cycloned around the room, piercing her cheeks, stabbing at her body, pricking Dina with jagged chips as her almond face paled into blue and she swung beneath the beam until a burst of bullets severed the sealskin cord and she fell onto the table and rolled onto the floor. Fenna dropped the pistol and scrambled after her, lifting her head and tearing at the cord around Dina's neck with bloody fingers. It was tight, cinched, she pinched Dina's skin as she tried to pull it free.
The whip was no ornament. Cut from the skin of a ring seal, it was cured, greased in blubber, finger-wide at the base, it fluted to the diameter of a square pencil at the end where it was bound tight around the Greenlander's neck. Fenna held Dina's head in her arms and then, as the splinters withered to the floor, she pulled Simonsen's pistol from her pocket and slipped the last magazine inside the grip. She let go of Dina and reached for the other pistol beneath the table. She tapped the barrel into the floor to remove any stray splinters. With a pistol in each hand, Fenna stood up and walked to the door. The glass crunched beneath her feet, blood trickled from the cuts in her hands, from the ends of the splinters embedded in her cheeks, but her focus was elsewhere. Fenna raised the pistols and stepped over the remains of the door, pulling the trigger of each weapon alternately, first left, then right, searching for targets with a haphazard sense of apathetic justice, letting the bullets fall where they may. She was done. There was no more, and this was the end.
“Sergeant,” Burwardsley shouted as Fenna cleared the schoolhouse.
“Yes, Saheb,” Bahadur said and pulled the trigger.
Chapter 29
Fenna lay in the snow as the blood pulsed out of her left arm. The beat was stronger than the pain. The flesh of her right leg was clipped below her knee and a third shot from the Gurkha's rifle had broken at least three of
her ribs. Glancing blows, all of them. Crippling but not mortal. She would recover, she realised, and that was the last thing she wanted. Fenna stared at the fading light above her as the sky turned from pale blue to bruised purple, fading to black, unlike her memory. In her mind’s eye, Dina swung from the beam still as Burwardsley pressed his boot on Fenna’s wrist, plucking the pistol from her right hand. He repeated the action for the one in her left. Fenna ignored him, staring past his face, and the blood staining the shoulder of his parka. She heard the policemen as they entered the schoolhouse and called out Dina's status.
“She's dead,” Fenna said, speaking the words at the same time as Simonsen, as if they had rehearsed. But they hadn't. It wasn't meant to be like this, Fenna told herself, admonishing herself with another image of Dina swinging from the cord whipped around her neck. Dina swung back and forth, even as the snow crunched beneath the policemen's feet as they carried the Greenlander's body past Fenna to the Zodiac. As the sound of their boots and Simonsen's huffing and grunting retreated, Fenna heard the Gurkha arrive, his light step revealed only by the slap of the rifle against his back as he slung the SA80 and stopped at her feet.
“Saheb?” he said and nodded at Fenna. “What we gonna do?”
Burwardsley stepped over Fenna and crouched beside her. He prodded her ribs with two stiff fingers, smirking as she winced, ignoring the pain in his own shoulder. He lifted his hand. Fenna watched as Bahadur pressed a field bandage into it. Burwardsley lifted Fenna's arm and, with Bahadur’s help, he bound the wound, pressing the bloody sleeve of the jacket beneath the bandage. He bound her leg with a second bandage from Bahadur, flicking the Gurkha's hand away as he tried to plug the wound in Burwardsley's shoulder.
“It can wait,” he said. “Like her ribs.”
“Policemen coming back, Saheb,” Bahadur said.
“Stall them. I need a minute with the Konstabel.” Burwardsley reached down and turned Fenna's face towards him as Bahadur met the policemen and discussed when they would leave. Fenna stared past Burwardsley until he pressed her cheeks together, his finger and thumb squeezing between her teeth and forcing her lips to part. “Look at me, Konstabel,” he said. Fenna flicked her eyes past the swinging shadow of Dina's corpse and stared at Burwardsley. “That's better,” he said and relaxed his grip.
Burwardsley pulled the glove off his left hand and searched Fenna's body. She waited for him to violate her, to cup his hand around her breast, to grope between her legs, but Burwardsley was professional, thorough but fast. He dug the Webley out from beneath Fenna’s back and tossed it towards the policemen. His fingers lingered over the square of plastic tucked inside her thermal top. He unzipped the pocket and pulled out the SD card.
“Interesting,” he said and held it up in the last of the evening light. “Charlie give you this?”
“Yes,” Fenna breathed. Her eyes flickered from the card to Burwardsley's face, and then back to the image of Dina in her mind.
“Do you know what's on it?” he said. “Hey, Konstabel.” Burwardsley slapped her face with the back of his hand. “I said do you know what's on the card?”
Fenna flicked her eyes towards his. “I have an idea,” she said.
“Will you use it?”
“I don't understand...”
“Yes you do,” he said. “Will you use it?”
Fenna listened to the throb of her blood, pulsing past her temples and pressing at her wounds. She ignored Burwardsley until, a second slap later, and he had her attention.
“Yes or no, Konstabel.”
“Yes,” she said.
“Good.”
“Why?” Fenna said.
“Because I’m done,” he said and flicked the lapels of her jacket to the side. Burwardsley reached beneath her sweater and slid the card inside her pocket. He zipped the pocket halfway as Simonsen crunched through the snow. He removed his hand and stood up.
“Is she hurt?” Simonsen said and stared around Burwardsley at Fenna.
“She’ll live,” Burwardsley said. “What about the Greenlander?” he said and nodded towards the Zodiac. Bahadur helped Danielsen shove the boat off the ice and into the water. The policeman held the rope as Bahadur crawled over the side and started the motor.
“Yes,” Simonsen said and cast a glance at Fenna. “I'd love to pin it on her, but honestly don't know how she could have done it.” He shook his head. “She was pretty intent on killing you.”
“I have that effect on women,” Burwardsley said. Fenna waited for him to laugh, and couldn't decide if she was surprised when he didn't.
“Lieutenant,” Simonsen said and lowered his voice. He gestured for Burwardsley to step away from Fenna. “What happened here today, I need to write it up. If it hadn't been for the call from Premierløjtnant...”
Fenna stiffened, the throb of blood forgotten as she strained to hear what Simonsen was saying. Burwardsley turned his back to her and leaned in close to the policeman. He towered above the Dane and Fenna gave up on trying to hear what was said, the look on his face confirmed it. It was a done deal, she realised. Bulletproof. Fenna let her head flop back onto the snow. The back of her neck cooled and she looked up at the first stars, closed her eyes, and imagined Dina's face. The image of the Greenlander stayed with her as the policemen lifted her up, cuffed her, and marched her to the Zodiac.
Dina was her focus as Bahadur sailed across the fjord, weaving slowly around the ice, and steering past the bergs as they threatened, in all serenity, to crumble at a glance. Fenna crumbled each time the image of Dina in her mind was replaced with the sight of her slumped in the bow of the boat, a red welt around her throat, the sealskin whip hanging loose around her neck. The lights of the town flickered into her vision as the Zodiac idled at the slipway, long enough for the policemen to drag Dina's body out of the boat and into the back of the ambulance, long enough for them to return and march her into the Toyota waiting at the top of the slipway.
Burwardsley walked alongside the policemen, leaning on the door as they shoved her into the passenger seat. He waved Danielsen away as the policeman tried to shut the door.
“Give us a minute,” he said and the policeman walked away to smoke quietly next to Simonsen. Burwardsley took a breath and Fenna watched as he favoured his left arm. She hoped the right hurt like a motherfucker. He followed her gaze and laughed. “Yes, love, you finally got me.”
“I'm not your love,” she said. “I never was.”
“No,” he said and glanced over the roof of the car at the mountain, its features snow-cut and stark in the distance. “Its a pretty country. Brutal and unforgiving but pretty. Don't you think so, Konstabel?” Burwardsley said and looked down at Fenna.
“I used to,” she said as the bump of sledge runners in her mind forced her to think of Mikael, Dina...
“Listen, Konstabel, shit happens and jobs have to be done.” Burwardsley shrugged. “Bahadur and I, we're just good at what we do. More or less. We were meant to gather all the loose ends at the cabin. Kjersing arranged for you to bring the satellite to us. We brought Dina. Only,” he paused and winced at the wound in his shoulder, “things didn’t go quite to plan.”
The twinge of satisfaction Fenna felt at the obstacles she had overcome, how she had evaded the British Lieutenant, again and again, was banished by the guilt of Dina's death and Mikael’s murder. “What did you mean when you asked me if I would use the card?”
Burwardsley glanced at the policemen as they finished their cigarettes and took a step towards the Toyota. He leaned inside the car and said, “Humble pays for everything, but the things he takes for free still have a price. The girl should never have been involved,” he said and glanced at Fenna. “I’m not a complete monster. Use the card, Konstabel. Make the bastard pay.” Burwardsley nodded once, turned and walked down the slipway to the Zodiac. Fenna watched as he slipped his long legs over the side of the boat and waved for Bahadur to take them back to the ship. Danielsen closed the door and Fenna pressed her face to the wi
ndow, watching as Bahadur ploughed a course through a patch of brush ice towards The Ice Star. The ship stirred in the fjord, the navigation lights sparkling as the propellers maintained its position in the face of the tide. Fenna lost sight of the Zodiac as it disappeared in the black water and Simonsen backed the Toyota onto the road and drove the short distance to the hospital.
She let them drag her from the back of the car. She let them stand in the room as the nurse undid her bandages and stripped Fenna to her underwear, tossing her dirty, blood-stained clothes onto a chair in the corner of the room. Fenna sat on the bed at the nurse's instruction and lifted her arms for her to clean and bind the superficial wound in her chest where Bahadur's bullet had glanced her ribs. He was surgical, she realised. And I got off lightly. Unlike Dina down in the morgue. Danielsen and Simonsen stepped out of the room as the nurse undid Fenna's bra. She cleaned her skin and bound a fresh bandage over her arm before slipping a gown over her head. Fenna noticed that Simonsen had found a seat in the nurse's office in the adjacent room. He stared at her through the observation window, and Fenna realised she was in the island equivalent of Intensive Care, a pane of glass and a spit wad from the medical staff.
The nurse dumped Fenna's bloody bandages and her own surgical gloves into a yellow medical waste bag and helped Fenna onto the bed and beneath the sheets. Fenna lowered her head onto the pillow and stared up at the ceiling as Danielsen entered the room, closed his fingers around her left wrist and cuffed her to the rail of the bed. He tugged at the chain once and then walked out of the room without a word. The nurse followed him and turned out the light. Darkness, Fenna realised, was not the friend she’d hoped for.
She tried to sleep, tried to force the image of Dina from her head, but she was trapped in the room with the ghost of the Greenlander. And when the image of Dina did fade, Mikael sledged into her mind, his red beard dark with blood, and the back of his scalp flapping as they crested the top of a gulley, or pushed the sledge over the ice foot and onto the frozen sea. The howl of the dogs kept her awake, as did the crack crack of 9mm rounds and the maniacal grin of the elephant man as he bled from his ears and pleasured himself, one stroke after another until Dina returned, swinging in front of Fenna through the long, dark polar night and into the morning. It was only the bustle of the nurses and breakfast that forced her to accept that sleep was gone and the nightmares were not confined to the night.
The Ice Star (Konstabel Fenna Brongaard Book 1) Page 19