The Girl in the Ice aka A Price for Everything

CHAPTER 1

Konrad Simonsen, chief inspector in Copenhagen’s Homicide Division, squinted up at the polar sun, hanging low over the long line of the horizon. Where sky met ice, clear pastel greens and blues hinted at more hospitable locations than this one, far, far away. What a place to be killed, it was plain wrong, he told himself, before dismissing the thought. As if it made any difference to the victim.

For a while he observed his own shadow in front of him, holding up one arm and letting its unnaturally extended counterpart reach impossible distances towards cracks in the ice. Eventually he grew tired of this game and glanced again towards the hazy sun, which seemed to radiate cold instead of heat. He found it disconcerting. The sun ought to rise and fall, not drag itself monotonously around the firmament, making day and night one and the same.

In a vain attempt to chase tiredness away, he closed his eyes and turned his face to the wind. He had not slept more than three hours in the past twenty-four, and it seemed unreal to him that a new day had begun. He rubbed his face with the palms of his hands and enjoyed the momentary darkness. He wondered if, in her last moments, the dead girl had thought about spring flowers, warm, sandy beaches or maybe a Midsummer bonfire? Probably not. All the same there was something terrible about the fact that she had had to die out here in this vast unfamiliar place where human beings did not belong. In a sense it was a double violation.

He glanced at his watch and noticed that the Danish time was seven-thirty. What that was in Greenland he could not immediately work out. He smothered a yawn, and realised he was more than usually exhausted. This morning he had forgotten to take his pills, or more correctly-there was no reason to lie to himself-he had forgotten again to take his pills, and now he was suffering the consequences. Desire for a forbidden cigarette gnawed at him cruelly. Just one or maybe even a half, a few restorative puffs to keep him on his feet a while longer. He tapped the chest of his padded jacket to reassure himself that his cigarettes were in the inside pocket. A year ago-or was it two?-he had been diagnosed with diabetes. The illness and the concern it had caused others had forced him to re-examine some of his bad habits. Or at least try to.

An unfamiliar feeling of anxiety made him consult his watch again. As before it meant nothing to him here. He turned to the man standing next to him and asked, “Do you know what time it is?”

The Greenlandic detective constable took a quick glance at the sun and answered curtly, “Almost three.”

He was a man who said no more than was strictly necessary, which had not made the wait any easier. He was called Trond Egede, and that was about all Konrad Simonsen knew about him. He considered returning to the light aircraft that had brought them here and trying to get a little sleep while the crime-scene technicians finished up. The hard, uncomfortable seat that he had cursed on the trip over from Nuuk seemed tempting to him now. A little sleep was better than none at all and there was no sense in standing alongside a mute colleague staring at four people, who worked neither faster nor slower because they were being watched. But it might offend his taciturn partner if Simonsen abandoned him, and establishing good relations with the Nuuk police was essential if they were to crack this case together. Or he could always say to hell with procedure and join the technicians in their search. It was unlikely he could do much here to contaminate the scene of the crime. On the other hand he risked being turned away, which would be humiliating for him as well as making him appear unprofessional, so the conclusion he reached was as clear as it was depressing-he must remain where he was.

For want of anything better to do he tried to start a conversation.

“How can you know exactly what time it is just by looking at the sun? I mean, you don’t have any landmark to work from here, just flat ice all around.”

With difficulty the other man took off one glove and rolled back the sleeve of his polar jacket over his wristwatch. After he had laboriously put his glove back on, he said, “The time is thirteen minutes past three.”

“So you were right.”

“Yes.”

“Based purely on the sun? Without any fixed reference point?”

“Yes.”

Simonsen backed down and concentrated on setting his own watch correctly. It made the time pass anyway. Suddenly an unpleasant suspicion struck him, a nagging little doubt. This place had completely disoriented him. It was embarrassing to show it in front of the other detective.

“So… that’s three in the afternoon?”

He aimed to make his voice as casual as possible but could hear that he had not succeeded. The Greenlander turned and looked at him appraisingly before he replied.

“Yes, in the afternoon. Are you sundowning?”

“I didn’t know there was a word for that. But I guess you’re right-I couldn’t be sure for a moment.”

“It can be pretty disconcerting.”

Simonsen nodded and relaxed. With difficulty he fished out his cigarettes, ignoring all the health warnings, lit up and inhaled with pleasure. The silence didn’t seem so oppressive with a cigarette in his hand. When he’d smoked it to the last shreds of tobacco, he bent down and meticulously stubbed it out on the ice, after which he stuck the butt in his pocket. The Greenlander observed him closely throughout. Simonsen tried to start a conversation again.

“Tell me, do you come here often?”

The other man’s face reluctantly squeezed itself into a grin that made him resemble a mischievous troll. Simonsen could not help smiling back.

“Arne thought that too… your partner, I mean. I’ve forgotten his last name,” said Egede.

He nodded his head towards the plane instead of pointing.

“Arne Pedersen. His name is Arne Pedersen,” Simonsen told him.

“That’s right. Well, he had this idea that I often go trekking about on the ice cap. Five hundred kilometres out, a quick walk around the old neighbourhood, then hike home again with healthy red cheeks.”

The man’s irony was more cheerful than sarcastic.

“Okay, I get it. You haven’t been here before. Of course you haven’t.”

“That’s not quite correct because I was here yesterday,” said Egede, straight-faced, “but otherwise it’s not somewhere I’d choose to visit. Why would I?”

They both nodded, and for a moment Konrad feared that they’d lapse back into silence. But the other man said, “Pedersen mentioned you don’t like discussing a case before you’ve seen the victim. That it’s a kind of principle you have.”

“Principle is a bit of an overstatement, I’m not quite that rigid, but it is correct that I prefer to wait, if that’s all right with you? There are a couple of things, however, that we might as well deal with now. It’s probably no secret to you that I’ve been thrown headlong into this case.”

The other man stopped smiling.

“Yes, I heard that. Pedersen said that you were about to leave on holiday. To somewhere more southerly and a whole lot warmer.”

He gave his troll’s grin again.

Konrad liked him more and more.

“Thanks for reminding me! Yes, I should be on my way to Punta Cana-it’s in the Dominican Republic, by the way-where I was going to doze under a palm tree with my… my girlfriend, before being picked up by the good ship Legend of the Seas from the Royal Caribbean Cruise Line, and… Well, it hurts too much to think about the rest.”

“You’re welcome, it was nothing.”

“Anyhow, there hasn’t really been time to brief me about what happened yesterday, or maybe nobody I’ve talked to knows the full story. Was it really the German Chancellor who found the girl?”

“No, it wasn’t, but almost. It was a glaciologist who discovered her first and pointed her out to the chancellor.”

“Were you there when it happened?”

“No, but I got the story from someone who was. They were in a helicopter. In fact, there were three of Air Greenland’s big Sikorsky S-61s. You know, the red ones they call Sea Kings.”

Konrad had no idea what he was talking about, but courteously replied with a white lie.

“Yes, they’re impressive.”

“I think so too. Well, there was one machine for the chancellor and the Danish Minister for the Environment plus aides and hangers on, one for security people and subordinate German staff personnel, and the last one for journalists. The chancellor’s helicopter led the way. The route was roughly circular, over the ice cap from Ilulissat at Disko Bay and down to Nuuk, from where they were scheduled to take commercial flights back to Copenhagen and Berlin respectively. She-the chancellor, that is-insisted on going all the way to the middle of the ice, possibly based on a misunderstanding that the melting is worst there. But that was what she said she wanted, and no one raised any objections.”

“But what is there to see?”

“Nothing of any significance. Once you’ve seen the first puddle of meltwater, of which there are lots on the Ilulissat glacier within a ten-minute flight, there’s no point in looking at the next hundred. Besides, they actually become less frequent the farther you go over the ice, and as you can see for yourself, there’s not much else to look at out here.”

Simonsen answered him diplomatically.

“It’s fascinating, but perhaps a trifle monotonous.”

“Yeah, you could put it like that. All the same, the chancellor found the tour extremely interesting, and the glaciologist thought the same. He was sitting beside her, lecturing away throughout the whole trip. To the Minister for the Environment’s great irritation.”

“Didn’t she want to see the ice cap?”

“I’m pretty sure she’d rather have talked politics. There were two Greenlandic politicians along, one of whom I’ve spoken to, and she tells me they were laughing up their sleeves at the minister’s disappointment. Who knew the chancellor would be such a keen student of glaciology? Not too long ago the Minister for the Environment hosted a bunch of US senators on a similar mission but they viewed the guided tour almost as a pleasure trip. One of them even asked if he might be able to shoot a reindeer-possibly in jest-but our local press was very indignant about it, and naturally none of the visitors was keen to see more of the ice cap than strictly necessary.”

Simonsen brought him back on track.

“But the chancellor did?”

“Yes, like I said. The helicopter flew low and everyone was equipped with binoculars, which no one except the chancellor and the glaciologist used after the first half an hour. The Danes napped and the Germans worked on their computers, my source says.”

He smiled and Simonsen interjected, “So far, so predictable. What happened then?”

“Nothing at all for a good hour… hour and a half. The chancellor got her climate lesson, and the others minded their own business. Until she and the scientist suddenly started calling out because they had seen the corpse on the ice. So after a little discussion the pilot got the helicopter turned around and they flew back and found it here.”

“Did they land?”

“No, they just hovered in the air for a couple of minutes while the pilot reported the coordinates. Someone had the presence of mind to direct the journalists’ helicopter away from the scene before the representatives of the world’s press could slug it out for a photographic scoop. I mean, who’s going to cover a climate-change conference when there’s a juicy murder to write about instead? But they couldn’t contain the story completely. Word got out, after the group reached Nuuk, and a couple of photos taken from the security helicopter are in circulation. It’s front-page news all over Europe. Chancellor Sherlock Holmes-that’s Bild-Zeitung. The London Times’s lead article is a much more staid Chancellor Finds Murdered Girl. The Danish newspapers are featuring it big-time, and CNN has had the story as ‘breaking news’ since last night. Do you need any more on this?”

“No, for God’s sake, that’s more than enough.”

“Well, looks like… whoever he is… your colleague… was right. Now I’ve forgotten his name again, God help me-I have a thing about names, they get away from me. But he also said you probably wouldn’t be too enthusiastic about the coverage. Don’t you like the press?”

“If you mean in theory, then yes. I don’t especially care for crime reporters, though.”

“But the press made you famous, I understand.”

“Famous? Nonsense. I’m not famous.”

“Well known then.”

“That’s rubbish. I am neither well known nor famous.”

Simonsen stamped lightly on the ice to emphasise his words and almost toppled backwards when his foot slid out from under him.

“If you say so, but somehow or other you must have made yourself really unpopular in Germany, since it’s said the German Chancellor herself sentenced you to a spell in the freezer instead of letting you take your Caribbean holiday.”

Strangely enough Simonsen found he didn’t mind being teased by the Greenlander, maybe because the little man radiated so much friendliness once he had opened his mouth. And maybe because Simonsen secretly felt a little proud of the way his presence had been formally requested.

“All complete nonsense,” he asserted, unconvincingly.

They stood there in a silence broken only by stifled laughter from Egede. Simonsen decided it was time to change the subject.

“I understand you’ve had the opportunity to see the victim?”

“Yes, yesterday, as I said. We had to make sure of what we were dealing with, but I haven’t done anything out here other than look at her and then put up the barricade.”

He nodded over towards a circle of iron spikes hammered into the ice around the body. Red and white striped crime-scene tape had been wound between them.

“It took us about half an hour to get those in. The ice is like stone, and they are clearly unnecessary out here, but I had strict orders to cordon her off.”

“Is she a Greenlander?”

Egede’s cheerfulness vanished abruptly. “Why do you ask that? Does it make any difference?” he asked sharply.

“It’s a serious crime whatever her nationality. But that apart, it makes a world of difference when it comes to chains of command and jurisdiction. Besides, I have a hard time understanding how I can contribute to a case where a local woman from a community I don’t know has been killed.”

“She’s not a Greenlander, she’s Danish. And with respect to jurisdiction, that’s not something you need worry about. You can consider yourself the leader of this investigation. All parties to it are in agreement on that.”

“All parties? I didn’t know there were more than two.”

“Three. But as I said, there is no dissent as to leadership.”

“You’re saying the Americans are involved too?”

“I thought you wanted to wait for the details until you’d seen her.”

“Yes, well, with a little luck that will be soon. It looks as if they’ve passed the first phase.”

Simonsen took out his cigarettes again without really meaning to. Feeling guilty, he slid the pack back into his pocket unopened. Shortly afterwards a technician came over to them. She was Danish, and moved slowly and laboriously, taking infinite care over where she put her feet. Maybe she believed if she did not touch an old footprint in the snow she would win the lottery on Saturday. Simonsen did not recognise her.

“We’re just about done. If you’re going to wake up Arne Pedersen, it’s time. And be careful over there, it’s very slippery.”

She pointed towards the crime scene. Trond Egede nodded amiably, he would no doubt walk carefully. Simonsen thought that it was slippery everywhere, and ignored her.