'Some politician is flying in from Denmark this afternoon to open a new sports centre. Not everyone likes foreigners, I guess.'
He turned back to his desk, distracted now.
'About that something else?' she said. 'A charter plane.'
The man leaned back and shook his head. 'I don't have anything to do with that side.' He seemed relieved that he wasn't going to be able to help her. 'I'm just terminal operations.'
The sound of jeering issued from outside. The man made busy. Edie pulled out the piece of paper on which she'd scribbled the registration of the green plane and pushed it across the desk towards him.
'All I want to know, the name of the charter company operating this plane?'
The Inuk glanced at it, then looked up at Edie, wary.
'You one of them, a protestor?'
A wry smile came over Edie's face. 'Only on my home turf.' Remembering the Inuk pilot, she added, 'I'm thinking of chartering a plane, and a friend told me that the fella who flies this . . .' nodding at the piece of paper,'. . . is one of us.'
He picked up the paper and inspected it, before giving her a pinched look, as though he didn't quite believe her but had decided not to care.
'Looks like Johannes Moller's outfit.' He plugged something into his screen and flipped his finger down a list. 'Yup. He's a Dane but he's got an Inuk pilot works for him, Hans, I think it is.'
'You don't know where I'd find him?'
The Inuk shrugged. 'You could try Bar Rat in town. Lot of bush pilots hang out there.'
By Autisaq standards, Nuuk seemed like a vast urban sprawl. Until now, Edie had never been anywhere larger than Iqaluit. Was there an address?
The info guy shrugged again. He'd been co-operative enough. 'Like I said . . .' he began.
'. . .you're just terminal operations.'
While they'd been talking, another batch of uniformed police had arrived and taken up stations by the entrance to keep the protestors out. Edie brushed by them and out onto the pavement. It occurred to her then that she should have asked the Inuk for the name of a cheap guesthouse, but when she turned to go back inside, a uniformed arm barred her way.
'Only passengers with valid tickets,' the policeman said in English.
Edie tried arguing but the man wouldn't budge.
She crossed over the road alongside the terminal near to where protestors were penned in behind a series of crash barriers. A few were waving placards on which Edie could only make out the Greenlandic words for 'Greenland' and 'Greenlanders'. Native people by and large. They didn't look terribly threatening.
A sign on the other side of the barriers advertised buses to the town centre. There was nothing for it but to make her way through the crowd. A policeman opened the barrier to give her access. She moved through, using her elbows to force open a corridor, and finally came out on the other side near the bus stop. Who'd have thought that human crowds could be noisier than gulls and smellier than a seal colony?
She was trying to fathom out a printed timetable attached to the stop, when a young Greenlandic woman in a pink fleece leaned towards her and said something in the native language.
'I'm a foreigner,' explained Edie.
The young woman laughed and immediately said in English, 'Not foreign, Inuk.' She introduced herself as Qila Rasmussen. She worked at the airport cleaning and was coming off an early shift. 'First time in Kangerlussuaq?' she asked, using the country's Greenlandic name.
Edie nodded. A bus drew close and was caught momentarily in the crowd. Edie, who knew nothing about Greenlandic politics, said, 'Why do they care so much?'
For an instant, her new friend looked taken aback and she thought she might have offended her.
'We're sick of foreigners interfering in our country.' The young woman lowered her voice. 'I'd be there with them but I have four kids to think about and I need my job.'
The bus pulled up, and Qila stood aside to let Edie get on. She spoke to the bus driver in Danish and helped Edie pick out the correct money for a ticket. They walked down the aisle, Edie selected a seat and Qila tucked in beside her and the bus moved off, shaking and roaring. The only vehicle Edie had ever encountered of similar size was the Autisaq sewage truck, but this bus was louder and rattled along at enough speed to be alarming. She looked out of the window and bit her lip.
They passed by mountains, less craggy than those on Ellesmere but, despite the heat, still snow-coated, bisected by a metal line on which hung what looked like drying racks.
'Do you like skiing?'
Edie turned her head away from the window and gave Qila a blank look.
'The ski lift.' Qila pointed at the metal line.
'We don't have all that much snow where I'm from.' She felt safe enough with this woman. 'It's more rock and ice.' Then she thought of Joe, skiing his way back from Craig Island, half delirious.
They passed beside a long, low building the shape of a door wedge and above it on a mountain slope, a cross.
'You a believer?' Qila asked, suddenly.
Edie looked out of the window to the cross then away across the willow. 'I believe in all sorts of things.'
'We're Christians here,' Qila said quietly. 'Except for a few qalunaat who don't believe in anything.'
The road busied between two crags, then fell gradually towards the town. They passed a sign reading 'H. J. Rinksvej' which looked like the name of the road. In Autisaq, everyone called the streets Street One and Street Two, but no one could agree on which was which.
Buildings began to appear, spread out across low rocks. They trundled on up and soon they could see the whole of Nuuk. Though she knew it was small by southern standards, to Edie's eyes, the town seemed impossibly crowded.
They passed a boxy white building set into the rock and surrounded by carpets of Arctic willow.
Qila said: 'The Hans Egede church. Some people think he was kind of a hero. Have you heard of him?'
Edie shook her head.
'A missionary. He came looking for Viking settlements and got us instead.' She laughed a bitter laugh. 'Still, he was a good man, took the time to learn our language, translated the Bible.'
The bus driver hooted at someone outside, who returned the greeting with a wave.
Qila said: '"Our father, who is in heaven, give us this day our daily harbour seal." That was Egede. We're just about to pass his house.'
They were on the coastal road now, a street so busy with buildings and people that it made Edie's head spin. A way down, the bus slowed to a halt and the doors opened with an alarming hiss. Qila stood up.
'Time to get out.'
They shuffled down the aisle and stepped onto the pavement beside a long, low A frame building painted reddish brown. Edie put her bag down and looked about. The air bore the familiar Arctic smells of dogs and drying fish.
Edie turned to Qila and awkwardly held out a hand to say goodbye.
'Where are you staying?' Qila said.
They were standing before a series of vast glass-and- concrete cliffs set back from the shore.
'Here, the Norblok apartments. We're in Blok 7 . . . The kids are out on the land with their father. There's plenty of room.'
The blank entranceway, steel-fronted elevator, the dreary, concrete stairs and thin, stained corridors were so alien it was hard to imagine any human life, let alone Inuit, who were used to their freedom, being able to survive in so strange a place. As Edie trudged up the steps behind her hostess (the elevator didn't seem to be working), she wondered if Qila ever asked her god why she and her children were forced to live like seagulls perched on cliffs.
They reached the fourth floor and turned left down a corridor smelling deliciously of boiled seal, past five identical doors, each shouldered by two tiny windows through which vague shapes buckled and swung. At the sixth door, Qila stopped.
'This is us.'
The apartment was larger than the tiny windows suggested. The walls were painted in bright colours and with the early afternoon li
ght streaming in the place gave off a cheerful air. The view outside was of the sea with a patch of headland to the north just visible. Edie moved to the window and looked down. Below her were streets and, on either side, apartment blocks exactly like this one.
A slightly older woman wandered into the room from somewhere at the back, bearing a striking resemblance to Qila. She spoke at first in Greenlandic, then, after Qila said something, broke into English, introducing herself as Qila's older sister, Suusaat.
'Qalunaat call me Susie.'
She moved across the living room to the kitchenette and put the kettle on. Looking back over her shoulder she flashed a smile. 'But you can call me Suusaat.'
They sat sipping sweet coffee - another novelty for Edie, who generally drank tea - and eating delicate little nuggets of fried blubber.
'Come to see family?' Suusaat asked politely.
'Not exactly,' Edie said. She'd mapped out a story at the aiport in Iqaluit, where she'd changed planes. 'More like to do right by family.'
Suusaat passed round the snack. 'Oh?' She sounded intrigued.
Qila interjected: 'Edie's from . . .' She laughed. 'I don't know where.'
'Umingmak Nuna, Ellesmere.'
'You have relatives up at Qaanaaq?' A wary note had crept into Suusaat's voice.
The Nares Strait between Qaanaaq and Ellesmere was barely thirty kilometres wide and frozen solid for nine months of the year. Until relatively recently families regularly crossed over from Qaanaaq to hunt musk oxen at Hazen. Travel between the two places was now discouraged. In the navigation season the Canadian Coastguard patrolled the area and the Ellesmere police were required to report any Greenlander found on Ellesmere to the RCMP in Ottawa. Many Ellesmere Islanders were at least distantly related to the Qaanaaq Inuit.
'My great-great-great-grandfather was from Etah, near Qaanaaq,' she said, in answer to the question.
The two women flashed each other a look of alarm. Suusaat hissed something at her sister, which Edie did not understand. Qila put her hand on her sister's arm to reassure her.
'Qila's job is terribly important to us, as a family,' Suusaat said, her tone insistent. 'Particularly now I've lost mine. We can't really afford any more trouble.'
Edie was no clearer. 'I'm not at all clever,' she said. 'In fact, probably the opposite.'
Qila said: 'Suusaat was on the classifieds desk of the Greenlandic newspaper, Kangiryuarmiut.'
Suusaat took up the tale. 'I feed the odd story to the editorial department. At least, I used to. A week ago I came across some information about the new sports centre. Confidential information. It doesn't matter how. I guess you've heard about the sports centre opening?'
Edie thought back to her conversation with the Inuk at the info desk and nodded.
'My source discovered that it was Fyodor Belovsky, a Russian oil billionaire, who'd put up the money. Belovsky never invests in any country unless he intends to interfere in its politics. Worse, he wanted his donation to be anonymous. I passed the story on to editorial but they wouldn't touch it, so I ran it as a classified. Some people read it and decided to stage a protest. I didn't really think so many people would care. Anyway, I lost my job.'
'When you mentioned having relatives near Qaanaaq we thought you might be involved in the demonstration,' Qila added. 'Because of the dig up near there?'
Edie felt bewildered. Her thoughts had been only to find the owner of the green plane and track down the two men who had flown into Autisaq posing as hunters; men who, she was convinced, had flown over Craig in the same plane the day Andy Taylor disappeared. But the mention of a Russian - and of oil - had ignited her curiosity. Maybe there was no connection between this Russian and the ones who had washed up in Autisaq, but it seemed important to find out.
'Look, I'm not out to cause you any trouble . . .'
'In that case, let's not talk about it,' Qila said decisively.
Picking up Edie's bag, she motioned for her to follow, then pointed to a bedroom door.
'My sons, Tomas and Ortu, share this room. Pardon the mess.' She threw open the door and announced that supper would be in thirty minutes.
Inside, the room was the same tangle of plastic toy trucks and seal bones as Joe and Willa's, the same fug of dust, sweat and accumulated farts. She unpacked her things and sat on the bed. The weight of the last few months pressed down and her eyes began to drift.
She rose later to the sound of knocking. Supper was on the table. It was unexpectedly dark for summer and a low, greenish light was pouring in from outside. She went to the window and looked down, expecting to see a lamppost, then soon realized the light was coming from the sky itself, the colour of emeralds, greener than anything Edie had ever seen on Ellesmere, and miasmic, like the residue of something long since passed. She watched it move, billowing and swaying like a flag, though there was almost no wind. Living so far to the north of the auroral oval, she had hardly ever seen the Northern Lights and never in this formation. The spectacle seemed to transfer its energy to her and she felt suddenly brave and full of purpose.
It was later than she thought. Qila had knocked on her door a while before and, getting no response, delayed the meal. Supper was a stew of halibut and potatoes. The sisters made small talk but it was no good trying to pretend. Eventually, over coffee, Edie told them about Joe, about how he had seen a green plane just before he had died and that she had come to Greenland to trace it.
Johannes Moller,' Qila said, then clocking Edie's expression of surprise she continued, 'I work at the airport, remember. If there's something dirty going on, Moller usually has a hand in it.' She seemed to hesitate for a moment.
Joe wasn't my blood, Qila,' Edie said, 'but I swear, he was the same to me as Tomas and Ortu are to you.'
The two sisters sat in silence for a while, then Qila shot a look at Suusaat, who nodded.
'A couple of months ago, two Russian anthropologists got permission to study some of the remains of the old Thule whalebone houses up near Etah. Moller took them up there. Some fishermen saw them disturbing old graves.' Qila bit her lip. 'The authorities don't seem to want to do anything about it. We think there's a connection with Belovsky. Our source said the Russians were wearing Beloil caps.'
The pieces were beginning to fit together. It was possible that these two Russians weren't the same as those who had pitched up in Autisaq demanding to be taken to Craig, but they could at least be working for the same man. The thought that Zemmer and Beloil might be after the same thing set Edie's heart knocking inside its box. 'You think Belovsky bought off the authorities with a sports centre?'
'Of course,' Qila said. 'It's an election year.'
Suusaat took up the story. 'Which is why I got fired for blowing the whistle. The editor of Kangiryuarmiut is in bed with the ruling party.'
'Why Belovsky might be in the business of desecrating
Inuit graves, we don't know,' Qila continued. 'Given his business interests, you'd think it had something to do with oil, but the industry here is really tightly regulated. It's unlikely that the government would grant a company with the reputation of Beloil an exploration licence. Besides, all the current interest is in offshore drilling. No land-based exploration has ever really got anywhere in Greenland. Whatever Belovsky wants up there, it's not oil.'
Edie's throat felt tight. A plan was beginning to come together in her mind.
'Would you show me the way to Bar Rat?'
The two sisters frowned. Eventually Qila said:
'If that's really what you want, OK. Moller usually goes late.'
They washed up the dishes, then Edie and Qila went out into the ash-hued night. The aurora had vanished and the grid of lights emanating from the Norblok apartments illuminated the women's path. Qila stopped before a dingy two-storey building, which appeared to be in darkness.
'It's here,' pointing to a door at the top of a small set of stairs. 'But you have to ring on the bell.' She put a hand on Edie's shoulder. 'I saw you at the airport talk
ing to Pedr. I was just coming off shift. We collect our payslips from the office next door.'
'Is that why you approached me at the bus stop?'
Qila shrugged. 'If you'd been qalunaat I probably wouldn't have, but you're Inuk and you seemed pivinik.' She took a step back. 'Like you wanted to be useful.' She gave a small smile. 'I knew you were after something. Be careful.'
Edie returned the smile.
'Say Julia sent you. We'll expect you back later.' And with that she turned and started to pick her way back up the track.
Edie called after her. 'Who's Julia?'
The reply came back mixed with laughter. 'My Danish name.'
Not long after Edie's knock, a large, bearded qalunaat came to the door. He made a point of looking the tiny figure standing on the other side up and down, then said something in Danish. Edie introduced herself and repeated Julia's name.
'I'm looking for Johannes Moller.'
'Not a Greenlander, eh?' the man replied, switching seamlessly into English.
'No.'
The qalunaat's smile melted into his beard, though whether he was sneering or simply amused Edie couldn't tell.
'We can always use new ones.'
He ushered her through a corridor then out of a door at the back into another, much smaller building.
'Now I see why it's called Bar Rat,' Edie said.
The qalunaat let out a belly laugh.lRat is Danish.' He pumped his fist up and down. 'It means joystick, sweetheart.'
He opened the door and waved her in. 'Enjoy.'
Edie had seen enough TV cop shows to know she was in some kind of sex club. A few men, mostly qalunaat, were sitting around tables surrounded by half-clad, mostly native, women. Some were playing cards, others drinking and talking. The air was thick and acrid with cigarette smoke and Edie could detect, somewhere beneath it, the tang of marijuana.
The bearded qalunaat led her over to a table in the corner where a huge, red-faced blond man in his late fifties was playing chess with a smaller, younger Inuk.
'Julia sent this one. She's foreign.'
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