About the Book
The Girl Without Skin
Matthew moved to look out of the helicopter window. They were near the edge of the glacier. Beneath them the sea was dense with pack ice. In front of them the endless whiteness stretched out as far as the light and the eye could reach. It hurt his eyes. Millions of white crystals. Except in one place. One spot. Right where the Norseman mummy had been found and Aqqalu had kept watch. There the ice was glossy red.
JOURNALIST MATTHEW CAVE is sent out to the edge of an ice sheet to write about the discovery of a mummified Viking corpse. But the next day the mummy has disappeared, and the body of the policeman who was keeping watch is found naked and flayed at the discovery site.
Matthew soon realises that the body is connected to a series of unsolved murders from the 1970s. As he delves deeper into his investigation, he finds shocking connections to the present. When he meets Tupaarnaq, a young Greenlandic woman, he knows there is no way back-but nothing has prepared him for what he will discover.
‘Macabre but engrossing.’ Jyllands-Posten
‘Gruesome, believable and incredibly tense.’ Bogfidusen
‘Everything the heart of a crime fan could desire.’ Krimifan
CONTENTS
COVER PAGE
ABOUT THE BOOK
TITLE PAGE
PROLOGUE
THE NIGHTMARE
1
THE MAN FROM THE ICE
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
THE WOMAN
15
16
17
18
BREATHING ICE
19
20
21
22
23
24
WHISPERING SEA
25
26
27
28
29
THE LIGHT OF DARKNESS
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
TRACES OF BLOOD
39
40
41
42
43
SHATTERED LIFE
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
FOSSILISED LIFE
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
SKIN
67
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
COPYRIGHT PAGE
PROLOGUE
His skin was drenched in sweat. He wanted to cough but could only gurgle. Mucus had built up in his throat behind the cloth. He tried to bite down on the gag, to spit it out, but it had been shoved in so deep that he could barely move his straining jaws.
His temples throbbed. The overhead light cut through the flimsy fabric that covered his face. His breathing was shallow. Tense. His breath came in bursts. He tried to swallow the thick saliva in his throat and tasted metal. He gulped again, triggering a sensation of choking nausea. Everything was spinning. His stomach lurched and he had to tighten his throat and hold his breath to stop himself retching.
He didn’t dare struggle. The pain in his hands was too severe. Every time he moved, screaming shafts of agony darted from the nail holes in his palms up through his arms to a point deep behind his eyes where everything imploded.
The air was irritating his nose. His lungs and head were pounding. He wasn’t getting enough oxygen. His throat went into spasms. His muscles tried to suck in air but found only saliva and mucus.
He gave a hollow groan when he felt the edge of a cold blade sweep up his stomach, slashing his shirt and heavy pullover all the way to his throat.
Tears trickled through his beard. Please, he pleaded. Please don’t kill me. But no words came out. Only a muffled growl.
He jerked when a finger softly traced a line up his taut stomach.
Then the blade carved a broad, stinging gash through the skin and tissue of his stomach. Steel crunched against bone as it hit his rib cage. Everything in his tensed body gave in. Skin. Flesh. Life. He gurgled a roar, the back of his head slamming against the floor as he pulled at his bloodied hands.
Snot bubbled up inside his nose, blocking the airflow. The cloth bled in his mouth. The light screamed. Disappeared. Screamed.
THE NIGHTMARE
1
NUUK, GREENLAND, 7 AUGUST 2014
The red Mercedes came out of nowhere, and the moment its right front bumper hit the blue Golf, both cars were knocked off course and flung together. The Golf reared backwards and crashed onto the road, while the nose of the Mercedes drove into the tarmac before the car was flipped up like an empty can. The force of a fresh blow to the rear of the Golf caused the Mercedes to stop in midair and drop back to the road, where it slammed against the blue roof. The Golf buckled and its right side was flattened, while to the left the chassis held firm.
The Mercedes continued its fall and smashed into the barrier so hard that a section tore loose and sliced open the side of the car. The Golf skidded diagonally off the road and down the slope, rolling onto its side. The engine had cut out. Inside the Mercedes a man was screaming at the top of his lungs. There were no words. No language. Only screams.
Inside the Golf an ashen-faced man was staring into the eyes of a woman. She was trapped between the compressed roof and the dislocated floor of the car. The man was caught between his seat, the seatbelt and the hissing airbag. The woman’s airbag had split open and deflated. The man was bleeding from several cuts to his head.
He reached down his hand to her, but she didn’t take it. Her body was limp. Her eyes fading. His hand caressed her cheek. She was still there with him, her eyes locked onto his. Her gaze crept inside him, where everything was breaking and starting to trickle out. Down onto her.
His hand moved to her stomach. Rounding the bump. The little girl. The child inside. The woman’s eyes closed forever. And with that everything disappeared.
Matthew woke with a scream and threw off his blanket. His T-shirt was soaked in sweat and clinging to his body. With a roar that came from deep inside his chest, he tore it off and hurled it away too. He smelt the acrid tang of his own sleep as he stumbled to his feet and made his way from the sofa to the balcony.
Outside the air was dense with evening mist. He could taste the sea and feel the moisture hiding in the cool North Atlantic fog while he rummaged around for his cigarettes. The packet in his jeans pocket was warm and squashed: he had been lying on it and sweating. He jammed a cigarette between his lips and lit it, then unbuttoned his jeans and kicked them off. His boxer shorts went too. Everything reeked of sweat.
The smoke seeped out between his lips, wafting down his face and naked body, then it merged with the fog—as did he. You’re a shadow child, his mother used to say to him when he was little. You’re so pale you might dissolve in the fog.
The mist from the cold sea around the headland wrapped itself around him. The chill tickled his skin, made the fine, blond hairs on his arms and legs stand up. The moisture grabbed them. He exhaled.
He still had trouble sleeping. His nightmares refused to leave him alone. T
hey lay in wait and, when he drifted off to sleep, would ambush him and tear him to pieces. Night after night. Month after month. The same nightmare. The same eyes. Staring deep into his.
The cigarette found its way to his lips for the last time before he dropped it into a glass bowl containing a muddy porridge of several hundred cigarette butts and rainwater.
Somewhere behind him his phone buzzed. He picked up his jeans and took it out. It was his editor.
‘Matt! Hi, it’s me. Are you all set for the debate?’
Matthew looked down at his naked body. ‘Yes.’
‘The first debate with Aleqa Hammond and Søren Espersen is on now. Jørgen Emil Lyberth from the IA Party is taking part as well.’
Matthew flopped onto the sofa, grabbing the remote control to turn on the television.
‘It’s on KNR,’ his editor said.
‘I know, I know—’
‘I want a summary of the debate on our home page as soon as it’s over. Misu is ready to translate, so we’re good to go. Have you found it?’
‘Yes, yes…I’m looking at it now.’
‘It’s only just started.’ His editor exhaled heavily. ‘They’re talking about the failed reconciliation commission and the ten million kroner.’
‘I’m looking at it now,’ Matthew said again, somewhat exasperated. ‘Aleqa Hammond says we need to unite rather than divide. Greenland must come together. Lyberth disagrees—he thinks the ten million would have been better spent on the arts than on some expensive commission the Danish government can’t even be bothered to take part in.’
‘Exactly, good, you’re watching it. Remember to get something online right away. You need to be writing while you’re listening, okay?’
‘Okay, I’m on it. I’m going to hang up now so I can make notes.’
The voice of Aleqa Hammond, Greenland’s prime minister, filled the room. ‘The ten million kroner isn’t the problem—the problem is that Denmark can’t be bothered to take part. We need this reconciliation.’
‘We don’t need reconciliation,’ Lyberth interjected. ‘What we need is to face up to some hard truths.’
A third voice joined in. ‘Surely this commission is just another political scam to milk the Danish taxpayer for even more money while at same time clamouring for more independence?’
‘It’s the exact opposite,’ Hammond retorted sharply. ‘It’s about solidarity and being part of a community, but we have a long way to go if the only politician we can get to come up here is some angry right-winger.’
‘And yet here I am,’ Espersen said swiftly.
‘The Danish prime minister and the rest of her government are cowards for not wanting to reconcile,’ Hammond said angrily.
‘What is there to reconcile?’ Espersen said. ‘If it were up to me, Denmark would be running absolutely everything up here. It’s grotesque that we send you billions of kroner every year and yet we don’t have any say at all in what you do with the money. We would never put up with it in any other part of Denmark if it had the world’s highest suicide rate or every third girl there were sexually abused.’
‘And that’s exactly the kind of rhetoric we’ve come to expect from the Danish People’s Party,’ Hammond sneered. ‘You’re reductive and racist.’
‘Being against raping children wasn’t racist the last time I looked,’ Espersen said.
Matthew turned down the volume and the voices faded away. He didn’t need to listen to Hammond and Espersen to know what they were saying. He had heard it all before. He grabbed his laptop.
The first of three planned political debates between Aleqa Hammond and Søren Espersen kicked off with the subject of the reconciliation commission, but was soon hijacked and led to sharp exchanges between the Greenlandic prime minister and the Danish People’s Party’s deputy leader and Greenland spokesperson…
Less than twenty minutes later his summary was ready, and the very same second that a disgusted-looking Hammond shook hands with Espersen, Matthew sent the text off to the translator so it could be uploaded in Danish and Greenlandic simultaneously on Sermitsiaq’s website.
Less than five years ago, when Matthew had completed his degree in journalism, he had never in his wildest dreams imagined that he would end up here in Nuuk writing about reconciliation. His dreams had been bigger. He’d always seen himself chasing scoops. He wanted more, though. He had loved Tine, loved the idea of having a family. Emily. The car crash had put an abrupt end to that dream—and if he couldn’t be with Tine, with their baby, the rest made no sense.
He flopped back on the sofa. The screams from his nightmare echoed in his thoughts. His fingers could still remember the curve of her stomach. He rubbed his eyes. It was late, but he wouldn’t be able to sleep much more tonight. The town wouldn’t get fully dark. The fog would probably lift. He pulled his laptop bag closer and stuck his hand into one of the pockets, where his fingers found a handful of old photographs. He studied them one by one and then arranged them on the sofa next to him.
All the photographs were dog-eared from constant handling. He’d had some of them since he was a child. Those of his father were the oldest. They had been taken at the US air base in Thule, in northwest Greenland, and his father wore a uniform in all of them except the one where he was sitting with Matthew’s mother in what looked like a military mess hall. His father was smiling. They were both smiling. His mother with her big belly. One of the pictures wasn’t a photograph but a postcard sent from Nuuk in August 1990. I’m not able to come to Denmark as soon as planned, it said. Sorry, love you both.
Matthew traced each letter with his finger. Those words were the only thing he had left of his father. The postcard had arrived a few months after Matthew and his mother had moved back to Denmark.
The last picture slipping through his fingers was that of Tine. Tine sitting down, watching him with a broad smile. She was smiling because they had learned that very same day that they were going to have a daughter. They had even seen their baby girl on the monitor at the prenatal clinic. We’ll name her Emily, Tine had said. Emily. And when she gets a bit bigger than my stomach, I’ll read Wuthering Heights to her. He had loved Tine. And she had loved him.
THE MAN FROM THE ICE
2
NUUK, 8 AUGUST 2014
The powerful helicopter rotors whirled the snow on the ice cap around the few men already present on the ice. The snow became a tornado of furious glass shards, and Matthew watched as the men raised their hands to their faces to shield themselves. Not that it would do them much good; once roused, the ice and the snow had a knack of finding their way into every nook and cranny. Nor did it help that the sun was high in the sky, and caught the thousands of tiny ice crystals in the dual fire of its rays and the reflection from the ice cap beneath them.
‘Can you see anything?’ a voice in front of him called out.
‘Only some men,’ Matthew shouted back, squinting and holding up his hand to shade his face from the sunlight. His fingers were trembling as usual, and he clenched his fist, pressing it against his forehead as he shut his eyes for a moment.
The huge Sikorsky helicopter flicked its tail and slowly turned on its own axis before starting its descent to the thick layer of compacted snow and ice. The sunlight was replaced by shade, and Matthew caught a brief glimpse of his pale face and blond hair reflected in the window.
The photographer sitting next to him leaned out so far that he risked plummeting to the ice. Matthew wondered why anyone would be mad enough to open the door before the helicopter had landed.
‘There!’ The photographer interrupted Matthew’s catastrophising and quickly raised his camera to his face. ‘Look! Over there!’
Matthew took a firm hold of the strap by his seat and leaned towards the photographer’s shoulder, trying to follow the angle of the camera lens. Not many metres left to go now. The snow was being blown far away by the force of the downdraft from the blades, making the area immediately below them entirely smooth. Matthew
’s other hand brushed his jeans pocket, checking that he had remembered his cigarettes and lighter.
The men on the ice grew bigger, big enough for Matthew to see their squinting eyes and brown faces.
He had only been in Nuuk for a few months, and he had been sent to cover this story purely because there had been no one else in the office that morning when the editor called. You need to be at the airport in half an hour. Some hunters have found a dead body that’s been there so long it’s been mummified. It might be a man from the Viking age. This is huge, I’m telling you. Huge!
Shortly after his arrival in Nuuk, Matthew had been given the obligatory city tour, and had been shown the Inuit mummies at the museum in Kolonihavnen. It was rare for new mummies to be discovered these days, though, and this one, of Nordic appearance rather than Inuit, would be unique. It would be the first time a well-preserved Norseman had ever been found, and historians and archaeologists already had high hopes that this mummy would teach them more about the everyday life of the Norsemen.
Matthew had read that the Norsemen had disappeared leaving practically no trace after inhabiting Greenland for more than four hundred years—a disappearance shrouded in mystery, as it seemed odd that such an established population would vanish so suddenly. Norsemen had also settled in Iceland and on the Faroe Islands, where their descendants still lived to this day, while in Greenland there was a gap from approximately 1400 to 1721, when the Dano-Norwegian missionary Hans Egede came in search of the Norsemen, found the old settlements abandoned, and so instead started his mission to convert the Inuit and laid the foundations for the Danish colonisation of modern Greenland.
Now a Viking had emerged from the ice. No one could as yet fathom what he had been doing so far out there in the white loneliness, but he was real, and it was him they had flown out there to see.
The editor’s words kept going round in Matthew’s mind: We want to break this story. No one else. It’s our news and our scoop, and we want the credit, understand? You can write in English, can’t you?
Of course he could. He had assured his editor of that many times during his job interview. English, German, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, but not Kalaallisut, the Greenlandic language, although it had been a job requirement.
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