The Girl Without Skin

2

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.

‘Yes!’ the photographer exclaimed as his massive camera clicked away. ‘Bloody amazing.’ He turned and looked at Matthew, wide-eyed. ‘Do you think my pictures will be in all the foreign newspapers?’

‘To begin with, yes.’ Matthew nodded lightly without taking his eyes off the ice beneath them.

‘Will they credit me?’

‘We’ll make sure they do,’ Matthew said. ‘But first let’s just find out who he is, shall we?’

‘This is insane,’ the photographer exclaimed, ignoring Matthew’s last words. ‘I’m gonna be world-famous. Holy shit, it’s insane! Yes!’

There was a jolt as the helicopter bumped against the ice. Matthew felt it sink as the wheels pressed into the belly of the heavy red body for one long second. It was his first trip in one of the big Air Greenland helicopters and, if his editor was to be believed, he might as well get his nerves and his stomach used to it, as many such trips awaited him—especially in the winter, when fixed-wing aeroplanes were often grounded by fog, storm, ice or thick snow.

None of that mattered right now. They had landed and were about to see the first Norseman mummy ever found. Dried out and preserved by the frost and the arctic air. Matthew could already visualise the headline: The iceman from the past. The last Viking. He tried to decide what would sound best in English, and how much drama he could inject into the story. A killing would be good. The last Viking, wounded and dying alone on the ice. That sounded intriguing. The last Viking. Left behind. Dying from his wounds.

3

The reflection from the ice was so bright that Matthew was almost forced to shut his eyes as he climbed through the helicopter door and made his way down the short iron ladder that had unfolded below his feet.

They were surrounded by a piercing whiteness more intense than anything he’d seen before.

The magic, however, was ruined by the still noisy rotors, which continued to chop the air into pieces above their heads with heavy, monotonous thuds.

One of the men signalled to the pilot, and soon the blades slowed as the engine was switched off. The din from the engine faded to a turbine-like drone before this tiny spot on the edge of the vast ice cap lay in deafening silence once more.

There had been three other men and a woman on board the helicopter. All were from Denmark originally, but as far as Matthew had gathered, they were now working at Ilisimatusarfik, the University of Greenland, except for one of the men, who was from the museum where Matthew had seen the Inuit mummies.

‘Hi, are you the reporter?’

Matthew looked around and saw a police officer who, in contrast to the group from the helicopter, looked Inuit.

The photographer was also Inuit. His name was Malik. He had been leaping about on ice and rocks ever since he could walk, and he was one of the few people from the newspaper Matthew had made friends with.

‘Yes,’ Matthew said, still with his eyes almost closed. ‘I’m supposed to write about the man found out here.’ His fingers instinctively sought out the wedding band that he no longer wore.

The police officer nodded. ‘He’s over there, but that’s not why I’m asking.’

‘So what is it?’

‘You mustn’t touch him, but I’m sure you’ve already guessed as much.’ He turned to Malik. ‘And you keep your distance—are we clear?’

‘Why?’ Malik demanded. ‘I mean, he’s frozen solid.’

The police officer shrugged and nodded in the direction of the archaeologists from the helicopter. ‘It’s their call.’

‘But it’s all right if we take some pictures and write about him, isn’t it?’ Matthew said, hoping that the archaeologists might hear him and invite him to join them. ‘This is big news, and we want to break the story before everyone else comes up here and steals our thunder. The whole world will want to know about this.’

He could see that his words hit home with the young police officer.

‘What did you say your name was?’ Matthew continued. ‘I want to be sure I spell it right in my story. After all, it’ll also go out in English.’

The officer pressed his lips together, but then he nodded. ‘Ulrik Heilmann. With two n’s.’ He gestured briefly to the photographer. ‘I went to school with Malik.’

‘All right, Heilmann with two n’s,’ Matthew confirmed, and looked at Malik. ‘Could you please take some pictures of Ulrik for the paper?’

Malik looked back at Matthew with his eyebrows raised, and then across to Ulrik. ‘But I thought we—’

‘Sure, sure, but we need the basics in place first,’ Matthew interjected. ‘We don’t want to miss anything.’

Before Malik had time to protest, Matthew turned to Ulrik again. ‘So can I write that you found him?’

‘Well, some hunters discovered him and contacted us at the station, so they’re the ones who found him.’

Matthew looked around. ‘And have they left?’

Ulrik nodded, his eyes big and round. ‘Yes, they’ve headed further up the ice to look for reindeer. Enok is getting married soon and they’ve gone hunting for meat for his wedding.’

‘Enok?’ Matthew echoed.

‘One of their cousins,’ Ulrik said with a shake of his head. ‘It’s not important. Only they were keen to move on.’

‘There aren’t many reindeer out here,’ Malik whispered to Matthew. ‘But they might come across a lost musk ox—you never know.’

Matthew looked at Ulrik. ‘It’s simpler if we write that you found him, but that you were acting on a tip-off from some hunters. It’s better that it’s your name in the paper when the calls start coming in from abroad. You’re much easier to track down than…’ Matthew looked across the fjords and the mountains, ‘…three hunters out there somewhere.’

Malik’s lens caught the now beaming officer, who nodded to himself before he turned to the small cluster of archaeologists and the museum curator, who had gathered around a long, brown cocoon of old fur.

Matthew craned his neck but could see nothing but the brown fur. His thoughts were still juggling different headlines in Danish and English, and all the media attention he would soon be getting.

He shook his head and stamped his feet on the glittering snow carpet. It felt solid, and yet when he stomped hard his feet would sink in. The heat of the sun was intense—he could feel it nipping at his skin and tightening his face. The snow was porous and coarse-grained. Summer snow. Its density increased with every centimetre it went down. That was pretty much all he knew about glacier formation. Eventually the pressure grew so great that the snow was compacted into ice. Several kilometres of it. Over the years the cloudy ice became clear as the purest crystal.

He looked up again. There was a dark crack in the ice cap not far from them. ‘Did you find him down there?’ he asked Ulrik, pointing at the crevasse.

Ulrik nodded with a smile, then his face fell. ‘They’re saying I shouldn’t have touched him before they’d had a chance to secure the discovery site, but we thought it was a dead hunter.’

Matthew smiled. ‘Of course—how were you to know? I’m sure they understand.’

Ulrik shrugged. ‘Perhaps… I hope so, anyway. It wasn’t until I’d brought him up and had a proper look at him that I realised how yellow he was and how the skin on his face and feet had dried up like a hide that’s been stretched out and hung up in the wind.’ He unzipped his black uniform jacket, took it off and draped it over one arm.

‘Feet?’ Matthew said. ‘He has bare feet?’ Again he tried to catch the eyes of the archaeologists, but to no avail.

Ulrik sniffed hard. ‘I didn’t see everything, but I think he was naked inside the fur as well. It seems to be stuck to him. The fur, I mean. Almost as if it’d grown together with his skin.’ He scrunched up his nose. ‘He’s been there a long time, let me tell you.’

‘About six hundred years, if he’s a Norseman,’ Matthew said.

‘I don’t remember the dates,’ Ulrik said.

‘But they think it’s a Norseman?’

‘That’s what I’ve been told, and there’s nothing to indicate that the body is more recent or that a crime has been committed, but they’ve requested forensic pathologists and crime scene technicians from Denmark, just to be sure. I don’t think they’ll get here until next week. Until then our job is to secure the area.’ He nodded towards the archaeologists. ‘But they’ve been given permission to look at him.’

‘This is global news,’ Matthew said. ‘BBC, NBC, National Geographic, Time. They’ll all want to know. So do you think we could have a quick look?’

Ulrik nodded. ‘All right—I’ll see how far they’ve got. You can check out the crevasse in the meantime. But hey!’ He caught Malik’s eye. ‘Watch your step. I don’t have time to fly the pair of you to the hospital.’

‘You’ve become really boring—did you know that?’ Malik said with a grin. ‘Before we know it, Lyberth will have got you voted into the Inatsisartut, and then all hope is lost. By next year you’ll be just as dried up and wrinkly as that mummy.’ Malik turned to Matthew. ‘Ulrik is a Siumut Party candidate at the next election, backed by Jørgen Emil Lyberth. We’re looking at a future minister for the environment or justice.’

‘Whatever,’ Ulrik mumbled, although he couldn’t quite hide a smile that sent a red glow of pride to his cheeks. ‘Let’s just wait and see what the voters have to say about it, ilaa? It’s only been sixteen months since the last election.’

‘Oh, you’ll get in. Lyberth has a seat in the cabinet with your name written on it.’

Ulrik shook his head. ‘I think it’ll take a bit more than just a sticky label.’

‘I don’t know about that.’ Malik raised his eyebrows. ‘Listen, if your ministry ever needs a photographer, promise you’ll give me a call?’

‘You just mind where you go and watch your step once you get down that crevasse, all right?’

‘We will, mate—you know me.’

‘Yes, that’s my point precisely.’

Malik rolled his eyes. ‘He’s never going to let me forget the time I drifted out to sea on an icefloe and they had to dispatch several helicopters to find me.’ He flung out his arms. ‘But seriously, mate, the light on the ice that day was mind-blowing!’

4

Matthew perched gingerly on the edge of the crevasse as he watched Malik, who was already quite far down the ice wall. When Matthew had seen the crevasse from the helicopter, it had appeared like a dark slash in the ground, but now that he was staring right into it, it was more like looking into a luminous iceberg.

‘You will be careful, won’t you?’ Matthew called out.

Malik turned and looked up at him with exasperation. ‘This isn’t an active part of the glacier. The crevasse is solid, and the footholds I’m using have been here forever. Don’t worry. I’m only going to that ledge over there where they found him.’

Matthew looked down at him tentatively. Then he took a deep breath and stretched his neck from side to side a few times.

‘Why don’t you come on down?’ Malik went on. ‘We’re going no further than this, so you’ll be completely safe.’

Matthew rolled over slowly and let himself slide down until his feet found a foothold. He looked around. Malik was several metres below him, but the photographer was right—the ice felt safe and solid. Matthew looked to the side. Not far from him there was a vertical drop, and he couldn’t see where the crevasse ended. Deep down, there was nothing but total darkness.

Malik had followed his gaze. ‘We’re not going down there today, but let me know if you want to do that sometime. The caves around here are absolutely insane. Mind-boggling. Completely turquoise. I can show you my pictures when we get back, if you like.’

Matthew nodded slowly. ‘Another time, perhaps.’ He was shivering, and regretted leaving his jacket in the helicopter. The moment they had climbed down between the enormous walls of ice, the temperature had dropped and their breath turned to wispy fog. ‘So you’ve been down here before?’ he asked.

‘No, not here, but you find the same world in every crevasse and cave.’

There was silence for a moment. They could no longer hear voices from above. Matthew looked at Malik. He wore sturdy boots, thick orange trousers and a grey knitted jumper. A wiser choice than the sneakers and jeans in which Matthew had left his apartment.

‘Are you coming?’ Malik continued. ‘This is the place. I can see where he was lying.’

Matthew didn’t respond, but let himself glide down another level, grabbing hold of cracks and protrusions in the ice and compacted snow.

‘Look, there it is!’ Malik’s camera clicked away first from this angle, then from that. Then he straightened up and looked towards the rim of the crevasse above them. ‘The storm the other day must have uncovered him. We don’t usually have such windy weather at this time of year, but you never can tell.’

‘How would the storm have done that?’

‘It must have swept away the snow to reveal him.’ Malik tilted his head and ran a hand through his dense black hair. ‘The wind here can move a mountain of snow in a matter of hours.’ He glanced at Matthew. ‘Let’s head back up into the sunshine. I have some good pictures.’ He hesitated. ‘Do you want some mattak? I’ve got some in my rucksack.’

‘Mattak? That’s whale skin, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, and blubber. It’ll warm you up in no time, I promise.’

Matthew shook his head. ‘I think a bit of sun is all I need.’

‘But it tastes fantastic and it’s full of warming oil. Are you sure? You look like you could do with a cube or two.’

‘I think I’ll pass,’ Matthew replied, and grabbed at the ice, preparing to climb back up. He placed one foot on a small protrusion while the other felt around for a good crack or a lump of hard snow to stand on. Getting down had been much easier than going up. It was like trying to climb up a slide, and the smooth soles of his sneakers weren’t helping. His foot found a hollow and he pulled himself up with one arm, but soon he felt the snow shift, throwing him off balance. The void below reached out for him, and he had a vision of himself lying at the bottom of the turquoise deep with a hundred broken bones and a cloud of frozen breath hanging over him.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’

Matthew felt Malik’s firm grip on his jumper, and allowed himself to be pulled back to his foothold in the snow.

‘I thought we were being careful?’ Malik reminded him.

The snow filled Matthew’s hands as he dug his fingers into it. He was panting now, and could feel the cold ice wall against his face.

‘That never would have happened if you’d eaten some mattak.’ Malik grinned and slapped Matthew on the back a couple of times. ‘And mattak clears your mind, so you can look into nature rather than just walk around it.’ Still smiling, he pointed out a couple of holes in the ice wall close to them. ‘Climb up over there. It’s safer.’

‘I just slipped, that’s all,’ Matthew grunted. He collapsed on the ice ledge and fished out his cigarettes from his jeans pocket. He looked up at Malik. ‘Do you want one?’

Malik nodded and sat down next to him. Matthew took out two cigarettes and lit them both.

‘Jørgen Emil Lyberth,’ Matthew said, blowing smoke into the cold air. ‘He was the speaker of the Inatsisartut for quite a few years, wasn’t he?’

‘Yes, he was the longest-serving speaker ever. He served several terms, but he’s been out for a few years now. When Ulrik gets elected, the old man will recapture some of his former glory.’ Malik took a deep drag on his cigarette and pressed his chin towards his chest. ‘I don’t remember where Ulrik is from—one day he was just there. He came from some small village and Lyberth took him in. It’s probably thanks to Lyberth that Ulrik was popular from day one, even though he was so strange and dark.’ He took another deep drag on his cigarette, then tossed what was left of it into the void. ‘And now he’s married to Lyberth’s youngest—would you believe it? Have you seen her?’

Matthew shook his head.

‘She’s seriously hot… He’s done good, he has, the boy without a past.’

‘Thanks,’ Matthew said, and he tossed his glowing cigarette butt after Malik’s. ‘That’ll help when I start writing my story.’

‘That’s kind of my point. Don’t make an enemy of Lyberth—it’s not worth it. Nuuk is a very small town.’

5

The sun was still beating down on the ice cap, and Matthew warmed up the moment he was free of the crevasse. Once again the snow blinded him with its thousands of tiny white mirrors, but his eyes soon adapted to the sharp light. The surface of the ice cap was rippled like a calm sea. Small hollows, mounds and frozen waves spread as far as the eye could see, formed over the years by the snow, the rain and the wind. All around them, steel-blue mountains stretched towards the azure blanket of the sky. At this time of year only a few peaks had any serious snow on them—although the snow had started to fall on the highest ones, it only stayed on the shaded sides, in ravines and crevices. There, however, it had been lying the whole summer. Matthew had yet to go hiking in the mountains, but knew it was only a matter of time. He had gathered that it was one of the things you had to do, if you were a new Dane in Nuuk and wanted to earn a little respect.

‘So did you get some good pictures down there?’ Ulrik asked.

Malik gave him a thumbs-up.

‘Excellent,’ Ulrik said. ‘I’ve been told that you can have a look at him now, and that they’re happy to answer questions.’ He turned to Matthew. ‘After all, we want Greenland’s own media to be first with this news, don’t we?’

‘Absolutely,’ Matthew said with a nod.

Ulrik smiled, possibly at the thought of the many pictures of him that would soon be beamed around the world on the strength of a story about the man they had found in the ice.

The archaeologists and the museum curator had retreated to near the helicopter, where two of them were on their satellite phones while the others were staring at a couple of open laptops.

‘They’ll be flying back shortly,’ Ulrik announced. ‘As far as I can gather, they need to pick up some equipment before setting up a camp out here, so they can examine the entire crevasse right down to the bottom. The police will guard the iceman tonight to make sure nothing happens to him. The archaeologists aren’t allowed to move him until our people have examined him, but they’ve been given permission to put up a protective tent around him. They say he needs stabilising. I don’t know why—he seems perfectly stable to me. When I pulled him out, he was stiff as a board.’ He chuckled to himself. ‘I can’t imagine that lying in the sun will do him much good after all those years down in the cold, but he can’t get any more dead, can he?’

‘So will you be sleeping here?’ Malik teased him. ‘Next to the dead man?’

‘I don’t know if it will be me. Not that it matters.’

Malik gave a light shrug. ‘Rather you than me.’

‘Why?’ Matthew frowned. ‘Could you freeze to death out here?’

‘Easily,’ Malik said. He looked down. ‘But I was thinking more about the spirits. They hate being disturbed. If he’s been lying dead down there for all those centuries, many spirits will be attached to him… And they won’t be the nice ones. They’re from underground.’

Ulrik rolled his eyes. ‘Ignore him. There are as many spirits out here as there are musk oxen.’

‘A stray one might turn up looking for food,’ Malik objected.

Ulrik threw up his hands in disbelief. ‘There are no spirits or musk oxen on the ice cap!’

‘It’s full of spirits and demons underground,’ Malik insisted. ‘I’ve seen them myself.’

‘When you play your drum?’

‘Before I play my drum, obviously.’

‘It’s a part of our culture, and it’s beautiful,’ Ulrik told Matthew. ‘But personally I don’t believe any of that stuff. It makes no sense that the bedrock is full of spirits, and that we can use them against our enemies by carving little tupilak figures—but hey, each to his own.’

‘Well, let’s see if you survive the night,’ Malik said with a broad grin. ‘I could always come out here and play my drum for you, if you want me to? I could be back before it gets dark.’

‘Oh no, I’m not having you getting under my feet out here. And I don’t think I’ll be the one staying anyway.’ Ulrik clapped his hands. ‘Right, why don’t we take a quick look at the discovery before the others decide they’re ready to fly back to Nuuk?’ He nodded towards the group by the helicopter.

It took Malik only seconds to reach the brown bundle on the scarred surface of the ice cap. Matthew approached more slowly with Ulrik. They couldn’t see very much of the dead man, but his face and feet were, as Ulrik had said, free from the stiff brown and yellow fur wrapped around him. It was impossible to tell whether the fur had been rolled around his body or whether he had pulled it tight around himself, but they guessed that he was naked beneath it, given that the feet and lower legs sticking out from it were bare. The fur itself seemed fossilised, almost like bronzed turf, the individual hairs having merged over time into a solid mass. The skin on the man’s face had shrunk around his skull, and his eyes were long gone. All that remained were two deep hollows in the shrivelled, leathery skin, while his beard still bristled over his chin and halfway up the empty pouches of his cheeks. It was impossible to say whether he had been blond or red-haired, but his hair was definitely not black, and his facial features were far more Nordic than Inuit, so the theory that he was a Norseman seemed solid.

Malik bent over the mummified body with his camera, trying to capture every macabre detail. ‘He looks like a tupilak with that demon face.’

The iceman’s lips were nothing but two thin lines that had dried up and then pulled away from his jaw. It looked like he had died while grinning—a hysterical, angry grin, which had bared his teeth and torn his lips free from his face.

‘Does it get dark out here at night?’ Matthew asked.

Ulrik and Malik both looked at him. ‘Not really,’ Ulrik said. ‘The snow lights up everything, and the sun isn’t completely gone for very long at this time of the year.’

Matthew nodded. The snow. He had forgotten about that. Even so, he’d rather not sleep out here next to the dead man, no matter how light the night.

Malik had lain down flat on the ice to get a good shot of the iceman’s shrivelled feet. He glanced over his shoulder. ‘This is pure beef jerky, this is. Yuck, it’s gross.’ Then he smiled at Matthew, a mischievous look on his face. ‘What those feet need is some whale blubber to make them baby-soft again.’

Matthew heaved a sigh and shook his head at his photographer, then headed back to the helicopter.

He stopped when he reached the archaeologists. ‘Excuse me. Which one of you is from the museum?’

‘I am,’ said a middle-aged man of medium build.

Matthew couldn’t decide whether he looked more Danish or Greenlandic. Not that it mattered. Genetically, Scandinavians and Inuit had been well and truly mixed up over several centuries.

‘Can I ask you a question about the discovery?’

‘Yes, of course. This find will give us a great deal to talk about.’ The man raked his fingers through a dense, greying beard. ‘There’s every sign that this is a unique discovery.’

‘Yes, that was my question. Just how unusual is it?’

The man straightened his back. ‘As far as I’m aware, no one has ever found a mummified Norseman from the Viking age. Bog finds and skeletons, yes, but none mummified, and that’s crucial, because his skin, bones and possibly his stomach contents will have been extremely well preserved.’ He paused, but Matthew could see he had more to say. ‘Have you heard of Ötzi from the Tyrol? That’s how important this discovery could be. The mummy might be a valuable source of knowledge once we open him up. But we need to proceed carefully or vital evidence could be lost. This is an exceptional discovery for Scandinavia, and possibly for the world.’

‘So you’re sure that he’s a Norseman from a Viking settlement in West Greenland?’

‘I find it hard to believe otherwise. We haven’t collected samples for analysis yet—we need to wait for the police technicians—but I’d expect all our assumptions and theories to be confirmed in due course.’

‘You compared him to Ötzi just now—is that because there might be some dramatic reason that he ended up all alone in the crevasse?’

‘You’re thinking murder, or death in battle?’

‘Yes, something like that.’

‘I haven’t seen any marks on him yet, but we definitely can’t rule it out. We know that the Norsemen disappeared completely from their many settlements after living here for about four hundred years, so something drastic must have happened. If this man lived during the Norsemen’s last days in Greenland, then injuries from weapons or the contents of his stomach could certainly help explain their fate.’

‘So he might have been killed?’

‘Yes, he might easily have been killed.’

The sun was still high over the Atlantic when Matthew got back to his apartment. Both he and Malik had headed straight home from the airport to work undisturbed. They had agreed to meet early the next morning, so they could upload Matthew’s story and Malik’s photographs to Sermitsiaq’s website.

As Matthew began writing, he felt his skin tingle. It was a long time since he’d last experienced that sensation. It reminded him of the time he got top marks in his final exams, and when Tine had told him she was pregnant. A sense of being untouchably alive. The feeling was coming back to him now—not as strongly, but it was close. Before noon tomorrow, much of the world would have read his story, or heard about the discovery because of it.

As soon as he had emailed his story to his editor, Matthew shut the lid of his laptop and flopped back on the sofa. He reached for a plate of crispbread topped with thin sheets of chocolate that he’d prepared before sitting down to write.

Crispbread was one of Tine’s things, preferably served with a thick layer of butter and thin sheets of milk chocolate. During the early years of their relationship they would often go bike riding, and Tine would always pack crispbread for their trips. A white manor house had been a favourite destination. They would cycle along a path through the forest and picnic at the far end of the park. Tine rode a green bicycle with a white basket at the front where she kept the crispbread and bottles of water.

The crispbread crunched in his mouth. Dry, soft and sweet. He wished he could tell Tine that he loved her. Properly. Intimacy and openness had never been his strong suit.

6

The wind had changed direction overnight and dense fog had settled over Nuuk in the morning hours. Visibility was down to ten metres. Everything was swallowed up by this grey North Atlantic blanket, whose moist breath licked the houses and the mountains and caused everything to run together in a foggy, cold cloud.

Everything was obscured. Erased. Even the sea and the mountains Matthew could normally see from his flat. He inhaled the smoke from his cigarette deep into his lungs and let it take effect for a few seconds before releasing it into the fog.

When he first arrived in Nuuk, he’d imagined that he would just find himself a place to live. No private rentals had been available, but a company had offered him one of their apartments. It was on the second floor of a grey and yellow block with huge windows. Several items of furniture had been left behind, and he’d quickly decided to stay there as the place had everything he needed and more. There were two bedrooms and a living room with wonderful views over southern Nuuk, the sea and some distant mountains, and it was only a five-minute walk from the city centre.

He flicked away his cigarette butt and watched it fall towards the street, then he took a step back and closed the balcony door before returning to his bed.

He picked up his iPhone from the floor beside him and checked the time. It was only seven-thirty here, but eleven-thirty back home in Denmark. Home. Nuuk was his home now. He had taken the job with Sermitsiaq for an indefinite period of time because he had nothing to go home to. He opened his mailbox and skimmed the new emails. He had sent his story to his editor late last night so it could be uploaded early the next morning, once it had been edited.

The reply from his editor was short and to the point:

Matthew opened the edited document and carefully went through the text twice to make sure he hadn’t overlooked anything, then he saved the new version and emailed it to the Greenlandic translator.

Then, with some reluctance, he untangled himself from the bedclothes a second time and sat up on the edge of the bed. He reached for his jeans and pulled them on, before going to the bathroom.

The man in the mirror looked exhausted. Pale, skinny and haggard. Coming to Nuuk hadn’t put much colour in his cheeks, although the air here was clear and pure like nothing he had ever known. The problem was that he didn’t spend enough time outside in it. His cheeks and chin were covered by a fine layer of reddish-blond stubble. He turned his head slightly and craned his neck to examine the stubble under his chin.

Some days his eyes were slate-blue, other days more green, and others again just grey. It depended on the weather, but he had noticed that they were blue more often in Nuuk than at home. He had never seen the blue in his eyes in Denmark in quite the same way. Close to his left pupil was a black dot, which made it look as if his eye had two pupils. He had never seen a doctor about it because his mother had told him that his father’s eyes had been the same—it was nothing but a pigmentation error. Tine had called it an extra well in his eye. A place to hide his thoughts.

He had trouble hiding from his thoughts—couldn’t hide from them anywhere—but since he’d come to Nuuk, they seemed to come together more easily. He’d started to feel like a human being again, for the first time since the accident. Or something close to human, anyway. He still had trouble sleeping, but it wasn’t as bad as it used to be. Last night he’d managed five hours in total, which only six months ago would have been impossible due to the pain in his neck and the gloomy thoughts that refused to leave him alone for more than a few minutes. All that remained were the violent nightmares, some occasional pain and night sweats.

The sound of angry knocking roused him.

‘Coming,’ he called out and made his way to the front door. ‘Malik! What—’

‘I’ve been burgled.’

‘Eh? What are you talking about?’

‘My studio has been burgled. Everything is gone. The whole bloody lot!’

‘Come in,’ Matthew said. ‘God, I’m so sorry to hear that. I didn’t even know that you had a studio.’

An agitated Malik pushed past him and flopped down on the sofa. ‘They’ve taken everything. All of it. My camera, computer… Everything.’

‘How is that possible? I thought you kept your gear at home?’

‘I do, but I spent the night with my girlfriend, and when I came home this morning… Bang. Gone.’

‘Are you insured? I know that’s not the point, but having the money for new equipment would be a start.’

‘Yes, yes, everything’s insured. What I want to know is why it was stolen in the first place. They also took all my USB sticks and every single memory card I had lying around. Why would anyone do that?’

Matthew shrugged. ‘Have you spoken to the police?’

Malik dismissed the suggestion with a wave of his hand. ‘Not yet. Listen to me, Matt, you can’t sell stolen goods in Nuuk. Everyone would know it was my camera and my computer, so to get rid of it you’d have to leave town, which means sailing or flying, and you’d have to go a bloody long way to find somebody who doesn’t know that stuff belongs to me. Forget it. I’ll never see it again.’

‘But why would someone take it if they can’t sell it? I don’t understand.’

‘Neither do I. It makes no sense.’

‘And the pictures really are gone?’

‘Yes, it’s all gone. My camera, my computer, my memory cards, photos. Everything.’

‘Shit! The story’s going up today.’ Matthew slowly slid his hands over his face. ‘I’ll call the editor—there might be time for us to return to the ice and take some new pictures. And you need to call the police to report the theft.’

‘Okay,’ Malik said. ‘Let’s just get going. I’ll stop off at the police station later.’

7

With a heavy drone from its whirring rotor, the Bell Huey helicopter from Air Greenland chopped its way to the edge of the ice cap.

Apart from the pilot, the passengers were the same four archaeologists, Malik, Matthew and Officer Ottesen, who would be replacing Officer Aqqalu, who had been guarding the mummy overnight. Matthew was sitting on the starboard side of the angular helicopter body, and he could feel the sun roast him through the large, square windows.

Grey-black mountains glided past underneath them in long, serrated, undulating rows. There were still several large patches of snow hiding in the darkness and cold of a gorge, while in other places the mountains were covered by green summer growth. The sea was a brilliant bright blue, speckled with white and turquoise growlers that had broken off the edge of the ice cap at the heart of the fjord.

The helicopter banked to the right, and Matthew’s gaze was drawn down towards the shimmering surface of the sea.

‘Do you see those two traces in the water right there?’ Malik exclaimed, pointing.

‘Where there’s a little bit of foam?’

‘Yes, that’s it.’ Malik nodded enthusiastically. ‘Two whales just came up for air. Humpbacks, I think. They had broad, speckled tails.’

‘So they won’t be coming back up for a while—is that what you’re saying?’

‘No, I think they’ll reappear a little further down, in the direction of the foam. There aren’t any boats around to disturb them.’

The sea turned into sky when the helicopter straightened up. Then mountains and sea once more. They had followed the arm of the fjord most of the way, but now they changed course and were flying across a broad expanse of dark mountains. In front of them the patches of ice grew bigger and more frequent, and the bright white light from the ice cap began to intensify.

‘Did you know that the ice cap is bigger than France and the UK together?’ Matthew said, without taking his eyes off the window in the side door.

‘Really?’ Malik said. ‘No, I’ve never heard that.’ He had a camera borrowed from the newspaper around his neck.

Matthew turned his attention to the museum curator. ‘Do you have more information about the guy who was found? The Norseman?’

The man shook his head. ‘No, sadly. We still don’t know if he’s a Norseman, but I fail to see how he couldn’t be. When you find a naked, mummified Scandinavian wrapped in reindeer skin at the very edge of the ice cap, what else could it be?’

‘But I thought the ice cap was larger back when the Norsemen were here?’

The curator looked up. ‘Yes, it was, and that’s what’s bothering me. My theory is that there might have been a mountain cabin somewhere nearby.’

‘But that doesn’t change the fact that he was found naked and wrapped in fur in a crevasse…’

‘You’re still fishing for a violent death?’

Matthew nodded. ‘He could easily have been killed fighting an Inuit, or been chucked into the crevasse as a sacrifice, couldn’t he?’

‘A human sacrifice that late in the Middle Ages would be atypical, but living conditions were probably extreme in the last few decades the Scandinavians were here, so we can’t rule it out.’ He combed his dense beard with his fingers. ‘When times are hard, people sometimes throw morality and ethics overboard.’

‘But what about a battle?’

‘You’re suggesting he might have been killed by an Inuit?’

‘Yes.’

‘It just so happens there were no Inuit anywhere in south-west Greenland when the Norsemen arrived, so it was actually their country rather than the Inuit’s, but the Norsemen’s many trips to the north attracted the Inuit, who began coming south, and so in that respect the Inuit came closer. It’s possible that the Inuit developed a taste for the Norsemen’s sheep, which were easy to catch and very tasty… so different from the fish and seals which the Inuit had lived on for generations. And yes, it’s also possible that it might have been the Inuit who expelled the Norsemen from their settlements.’

‘Hang on,’ Matthew said, taking out his mobile. ‘Let me just make some notes in case we go for that angle… great. Okay, so you’re saying that the Danes, who came later, didn’t take the land from the Inuit, seeing as the Inuit had themselves stolen it from the Norsemen three hundred years earlier?’

‘It’s a plausible theory, but we can’t prove it. Besides, if I kick you now, it doesn’t give you the right to kick me in twenty years, does it?’

‘So the Inuit arrived in Greenland after the Norsemen, and then they wandered down and into the land of the Norsemen?’

‘Yes, that part we can prove. It’s just the business with battles and wars which is dubious, even though the Historia Norvegiae states that Norse hunters came across small men in the north, whom the Norsemen named skrællinger, and that these small men got “white wounds” if they were slightly injured, but would bleed violently when fatally wounded.’ He gave a light shrug. ‘You might well ask yourself why it was so important to pass on to posterity the bit about superficial and fatal injuries, unless it was because it related to battle, especially if we bear in mind that the same passage states that these skrællinger used walrus tusks and sharp stones for weapons.’

‘Hello, Ottesen?’ The pilot’s voice could be heard over the headsets, and attracted everyone’s attention. ‘Ottesen, could you come over here and take a look? I think we have a problem.’

The three Danish archaeologists started to look around the cabin, whispering and nodding.

‘Is something wrong with the engine?’ Matthew wondered aloud.

‘It’s not that,’ Malik said quickly. His face was pressed against the window, his eyes aimed in the direction they were flying.

‘Then what is it?’

‘Look down.’

Matthew was aware of the curator leaning over him to get a look too, and moved his head close to the 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.

There was silence in the cabin. The only sound was the chop-chop of the rotors.

‘Is that…’ Matthew’s voice trailed off. ‘Is that Aqqalu?’

‘I know Aqqalu,’ Malik stuttered. ‘We were at school together.’

‘But—’

‘I don’t know, but who else could it be?’

The curator sank back into his seat. ‘Do you think it’s him? But what happened?’

‘Nanook,’ Malik whispered. He didn’t take his eyes off the ice beneath them. ‘I kept saying I should have played my drum before anyone slept here. You can’t just pull an old, dead soul into the light like that.’

‘We’re landing,’ Ottesen’s voice announced. ‘You all need to stay inside while I get out and secure the area. A Sikorsky will take off from Nuuk in ten minutes and fly here to meet me. You’ll stay in this helicopter and be sent back straightaway. Understand?’

Matthew leaned close against the window. The ice was glistening. The red was glistening. Growing. The body of the helicopter turned and prepared to land on the spot where Aqqalu should have been waiting for them. Matthew didn’t know whether to look, but when Malik very slowly raised his camera and started pressing the shutter release, he too fixed his eyes on the ice beneath them.

Aqqalu was naked. His clothes had been dumped in a pile not far from his body. He was lying on his back with his arms stretched out to the sides. He had been gutted from his groin to his breastbone. The sides of his stomach had been pulled apart, and were hanging over the ice. His abdominal cavity was black from dried blood, as were his skin and flesh, which were exposed. The bottom of his rib cage shone white amid the darkness and the red. His organs had been ripped out of him and were lying on the ice, while his intestines seemed to be missing completely. There was blood spatter a metre away from the body. In one place several metres.

Malik gulped. ‘This was no polar bear.’

The helicopter hit the ice unexpectedly hard, and they all jolted. Matthew’s head bumped against the windowpane.

Ottesen jumped out and immediately signalled for the helicopter to take off.

Matthew’s gaze settled on the small camp. He turned to the three archaeologists. ‘Did you move the mummy yesterday?’

One of them shook his head. ‘No.’

‘It’s gone now,’ Matthew said, turning his face back to the cold glass. The red spot underneath them grew smaller and smaller. Aqqalu lay gutted in the middle of it, and Ottesen was kneeling close to him on the red crystals, which only yesterday had been Aqqalu’s warm blood.

8

Matthew was at his desk at Sermitsiaq, scrolling through Facebook without taking anything in. Less than twenty-four hours ago he had held a global scoop in his hands, only for it to slip through his fingers as it turned into a violent murder.

His iceman article was open on the big screen, while Facebook was up on the smaller screen on his laptop in the docking station, where his mailbox was usually open. The article was ready to be uploaded, but it was impossible now. They had orders not to release any information about the two bodies. Not a single word, no photographs, about the iceman or the murder of Officer Aqqalu. These orders had come from on high, and his editor had stressed that they mustn’t compromise the police investigation.

Matthew would still have liked to send his article about the Norseman mummy out into the world, and he had defended his position by saying that the archaeologists and the museum curator could all vouch for the discovery, but it made no difference to his editor. It’s out of my hands, Matt, he had said. This is a small community. We have to listen to one another, and right now I’m listening to the people who are trying to find a police killer. If you leak anything, he had added with a weary look, then you’re finished here.

Matthew sighed and closed the document with the article. Someone had left a plate with a piece of cake on his desk. A large, stale raspberry slice. The pastry was pale. Just like him. He rubbed his cheek. The stubble scratched his palm. Who the hell would gut a police officer and run off with a mummy? And in a town like Nuuk, of all places. Matthew pushed aside the plate.

Nor could they write about Aqqalu until his family had been informed, and that would apparently take some time, given that his older brothers had gone reindeer hunting somewhere out the back of beyond and wouldn’t be home for days.

‘Cheer up—it might never happen.’

The editor’s voice made Matthew look up. His boss had a habit of pacing up and down between the desks and striking up conversations here and there.

‘We’ll find a solution, I promise. I’m sorry I came down so hard on you. It’s just that… well, when we get orders from above, we tend to listen to them. It’s the way things are done around here.’

‘It’s all right,’ Matthew said, looking up at him. His boss was a short man around fifty. Fair-skinned, blond hair and at least twenty kilos heavier than his shirts could easily accommodate. ‘What happened to that police officer was just awful. It… he had been gutted.’

‘I know. I’ve never experienced anything like the last twenty-four hours here.’ The editor arched his back. His second-last shirt button had come undone, revealing a patch of white skin. ‘We’ll be able to publish something soon. We just need to wait for the right moment.’ He turned to leave, but then he stopped. ‘Listen… if you need to talk to a psychologist, I can get hold of one.’

Matthew shook his head. ‘No… no, but thank you. I just need to find another story, something else to focus on for a while.’

His editor nodded: ‘If you want something to keep you occupied, there were some brutal murders here back in the 1970s that might be worth looking into. It was before my time, obviously, but someone mentioned them to me a few years ago. They’ve more or less been forgotten. I couldn’t find anything much when I looked into them, but the archives are a nightmare up here. Paper only. For every decade you go back, it’s actually more like a century. But there’s something about the death of Aqqalu that made me think of them again. Check with Leiff downstairs, if he’s in. He must have been a very young man back then, but he’s been with the newspaper for a hundred years. At least.’

‘Leiff? Okay. I’ll head down there now and see if there’s something in it. If there is, can I write about it?’

‘Yes, I should think so. I mean, it’s unlikely to create much of a stir after all these years, but if you find some hard evidence it might drag a few skeletons out of the closet and help make your name up here. After all, it’s still one of the most violent unsolved murder cases in the Arctic.’

‘Thanks,’ Matt said. ‘I’ll head down now and take a look.’

His editor nodded and rubbed one eye. ‘Sure, but don’t get your hopes up. Sometimes it can be good to just lose yourself in a cold case. That’s what I do when I want to take my mind off other things.’

Matthew turned his gaze back to his screen.

His editor patted his shoulder. ‘How are things going otherwise? I mean, here in Nuuk?’

‘Oh, I’m all right,’ Matthew said, glancing up at the chubby man’s pale face. ‘I take it a day at a time. It’s so different here. Amazing landscape.’

‘That’s good to know. And the apartment is okay?’

‘Yes, absolutely. It’s great. Thank you.’

‘Let me know if you need anything, all right?’

Matthew nodded and grabbed his mouse. He googled the 1970s murders but found nothing, and sighed as he pushed his keyboard away.

If there really had been murders in Nuuk back in the 1970s that bore similarities to what had happened out on the ice, then he wanted to know more—if for no other reason than to have an angle when the time came to write about the murder of Officer Aqqalu.

9

Leiff was on his perch as always. No sooner had Matthew mentioned the murders than Leiff nodded, glanced around and suggested that the two of them go for a walk. That suited Matthew fine. He knew that, whatever Leiff told him, he could only benefit from the older man’s years of experience with the newspaper.

Soon afterwards, the two men passed the big, rust-red Tele-Post building, and they continued along past the newest part of Brugseni supermarket. From there they took the pedestrian crossing between the supermarket and Hotel Hans Egede. The sun had moved well over the town and was bouncing off the long row of hotel windows, which flashed gold in the sun.

‘When I was ten years old, they built a huge apartment block over there.’ Leiff pointed to a large area of wasteland between the city centre and a row of shabby grey residential blocks. ‘Ambitions were high—back then it was the biggest housing development in all of Denmark. Two hundred metres long, and with three hundred and twenty apartments. But, as is so often the case, ambitions failed to allow for real life.’

The area was now covered with colourful skateboard tracks, mounds of earth and climbing frames. At the far end were six light-grey housing blocks that had to be nearly as old and shabby as the one that had been demolished. On the end of one of the blocks someone had painted the giant face of a wrinkled, smiling old Inuit in shades of blue, turquoise and grey.

‘Many of the families who were moved to Nuuk,’ Leiff continued, ‘came from small villages, and they never settled in the claustrophobic apartment blocks miles from where they were born. I think it must be Denmark’s most disastrous policy ever, wanting everyone in Greenland to be Danish. The Inuit were used to being at one with nature in their villages. It was where they lived, where they caught their food, where they could breathe freely. They couldn’t breathe here, and the idea of living in a box high above the ground was foreign to them. Most people kept their windows open day and night, and some even lit fires in their living rooms. They were refugees in their own country.’ He stopped. ‘I know you didn’t ask about that, but it’s all connected.’

‘That’s all right,’ Matthew said. ‘I want to know more about Nuuk’s history and its people, and nothing beats a guided tour like this… So what happened to the apartment block?’

‘Many of the old apartment blocks in Nuuk are still standing, although they’re falling apart. They’re all numbered, except for the giant that used to be here. It was called Block P, and it became a troubling symbol of Nuuk’s problems. It was demolished in 2012, so not all that long ago—but still fifty years too late, in my opinion.’ He turned to Matthew. ‘Have you had anything to eat today? You look a bit peaky.’

‘No, I didn’t have time, but it doesn’t matter. I want to know how Block P is connected to the murders I asked you about.’

Leiff nodded and pointed to a cafe by Pisifikk supermarket on the corner of Hotel Hans Egede. ‘Let’s go to Cafe Mamaq.’ He scratched his nose. ‘It was in the early seventies, I believe… Yes, it must have been, because I turned eighteen that winter, so we’re talking late 1973. That was already a year of chaos. Everyone was up in arms about Greenland having to join the European Community as a part of Denmark, and about the oil crisis and everything else that was happening. But the murders still came as a bolt out of the blue, and it traumatised our small community. People were used to violence taking place behind closed doors, not out in the open for all to see. They found four men in their prime, flayed and gutted from their groins to their rib cages… their intestines ripped out of their bodies.’ He frowned. ‘When I think about it now, it was madness. Only it’s so long ago that few people remember.’

‘Flayed,’ Matthew echoed. His thoughts had screeched to a halt at the word. ‘Can you really flay a human being?’

‘Well, I didn’t see them for myself,’ Leiff said. ‘But, yes, the rumours were that they’d been flayed. The skin had been removed from their bodies with an ulo—a kind of flensing knife—and then pulled off them. And, like I said, their insides had been cut out.’

‘Gutted and cleaned like a hunting trophy,’ Matthew said. ‘Just like Aqqalu.’

‘Exactly, but he wasn’t flayed—not as far as I’ve been told.’

Matthew shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘It didn’t look like it.’

‘Nor do I think anyone else here has been, since those four men in Block P.’ Leiff furrowed his brow. ‘But it’s a long time ago, and I believe the point of those killings in 1973 was to cover something up.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘They were never solved, but I think the murders were motivated by revenge.’

‘Revenge?’

‘Yes, because two girls also went missing in ’73.’

‘And was this all part of the same investigation? I mean, the one with the dead men?’

‘Yes, it was. Two girls aged ten or eleven years, as far as I recall. They were never found.’

‘So why did people think the murders were related?’

‘Because two of the dead men were the girls’ fathers.’

Leiff and Matthew had reached the glass door to Pisifikk and Cafe Mamaq, and Leiff pushed it open. In the doorway Matthew brushed shoulders with a young woman with a shaved head. ‘Sorry,’ he said, briefly making eye contact with her. He could see no hint of make-up, but she wore an angry scowl. She looked him up and down. Did the same with Leiff. Then she pressed her lips together and marched on without a word.

She was slim and tall, her body sinewy and strong. Her black combat trousers fitted her legs tightly, and ended in a pair of scuffed army boots. She wasn’t carrying a jumper or a jacket. She wore only a black sleeveless vest that was even closer-fitting than her trousers. An old rifle with a wooden stock and a telescopic sight was slung over one shoulder. In her right hand she carried an ulo. In her left was a bottle of water.

Matthew looked after her as she disappeared. At her rifle. Her ulo. Her muscles. The colours.

All the skin visible from her neck down was covered by tattoos of flowers and leaves. Not delicate and pretty, but lush and winding. He’d caught a brief glimpse of the soft crooks of her elbows, where on both her right and left arm a set of teeth grew from the deep foliage. Bared, snarling teeth. The size of fingers. Clenched in rage. A frozen, graphic flash of sneering skulls.

‘She’s something special, ilaa?’

Matthew felt a hand on his shoulder and turned his attention back to Leiff. ‘Yes, she… Yes.’

Leiff patted his stomach. ‘Right, let’s get something to eat. All this running around makes me hungry.’

Matthew nodded slowly. ‘I’d like to see the archives after lunch.’

‘I’m sure we can work something out.’ Leiff put his hand on Matthew’s shoulder again. ‘I’ll show you where they are, but if we’re going to rake over this old case, we need to go about it quietly. A brutal murder like this one has only remained unsolved because someone important wanted it that way.’

10

The archives under Sermitsiaq’s offices were the darkest rooms Matthew had ever been inside, and he thought he had seen a few. The walls were of dark-grey concrete, and more than anything reminded him of Eastern European archives before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Rows of steel bookcases stood at right angles to the walls.

Leiff had shown him where in the basement he thought the relevant material might be kept—if there was anything at all. There were no records of the files in the basement. Whoever stored something there usually remembered where they had put it, but once that person left the newspaper, their knowledge was lost for good. Leiff had some idea of where the early 1970s files were, but he didn’t have time to spend the whole day in the basement, as he had an interview to do. However, he had promised to contact both his wife, who worked at Nuuk Town Hall, and a good friend who worked at the Sana Hospital, to persuade each of them to search their archives for any information about the four murders.

After several unsuccessful hours alone in the basement, Matthew sat down on a pile of newspapers and looked about him with an air of defeat. A bare light bulb glowed above him; there was another closer to the door. Their light hung like yellow clouds of dust in the dry basement air, but further down there was nothing but darkness. He had no idea how far into the darkness the basement extended.

Next to his right foot was a newspaper facing upwards: Air Greenland expands its fleet from three to eight Sikorsky S-61, and opens new helicopter base in Ammassalik this summer. His eyes wandered upwards to the date. May 1972. He pushed the newspaper aside, reached for another pile and resumed skimming the headlines.

‘Oh, no,’ he whispered as he opened a newspaper dated 25 October 1973. A Sikorsky helicopter had crashed just south of Nuuk, killing all fifteen people on board.

His head flopped forwards, and he sat resting his elbows on his knees with his face buried in his hands. His fingers smelled of newspaper ink and cold dust. Aqqalu’s bloody body haunted his thoughts. The gutted men. The little girls who had gone missing. The helicopter. Tine and the floor of the car. The smells of accident, metal, oil and death.

His world had imploded when Tine and Emily died. It hadn’t been particularly eventful before. But without them it was completely dead.

It was a red Mercedes containing four Romanian men. They had overtaken him on a bend, but hadn’t pulled out far enough and so collided with his Golf, which was crushed against the tarmac by the Mercedes and flipped off the road and into a field. He had been conscious throughout and felt every blow to his body, neck and face as the car rolled across the ground. His scalp and one hand had been lacerated by shards of glass, although he never knew exactly where it had come from.

He had been bleeding, and had to wipe his face constantly. Tine had been quiet. She hadn’t even screamed. Or perhaps she had. It was all a blur until the car stopped rolling. That was when he saw her. Her eyes were open. She was bleeding from her ears. She was trapped. She died.

He had crawled through the window of the damaged front door, found a farm where he had dripped blood all over the floor. He remembered that vividly. And he had seen a horse. A horse in the field where the car was lying. He remembered that. And then the ambulance. The nurse at the hospital, who had picked the broken glass from his scalp without him feeling anything at all, although it had made a crunching sound like when you snap a bone to get at the marrow. He remembered the foam collar around his neck and throat. Tine’s silent, grey face during the drive in the ambulance. They had fought to save her while he watched. But her blood had stopped pumping while she was still in the wrecked car. His heart had kept beating, and his wounds bleeding.

Then the darkness arrived. Darkness where every minute felt like a day. Sleepless days, nights tormented by the pain in his neck, which had started a few hours after the accident, never to go away again. The funeral. Months of daily rehabilitation with a physiotherapist. The machine pulling his neck. The warm compresses. Ultrasound. Countless reassurances that he’d be all right eventually.

Matthew took a deep breath and felt the tears running down the palms of his hands. He raised his head and sniffed loudly. The air still felt dry, and his eyes were stinging. He got up and walked down to a new wall of newspapers piled onto the overburdened steel shelving. He lit a cigarette, then picked up a few newspapers, trying to decide where to resume his search.

Having identified and pulled out the relevant piles, he sat down on the floor to go through them. Time passed at a snail’s pace, as the cup by his side filled with cigarette butts and soon his head began to ache. Someone really ought to have transferred all the records in the basement to a digital archive, but it seemed a Sisyphean task.

When Leiff returned, Matthew was lying on the floor surrounded by stacks of old newspapers, too many to count, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. The sudden and unexpected noise from the door made him sit up.

‘What time do you call this?’ Leiff said with a frown. ‘And I’m pretty sure you’re not allowed to smoke down here.’

‘I haven’t checked the time, but I guess it’s late,’ Matthew croaked, quickly putting out his cigarette. ‘I think this is pointless… I’m sorry.’

‘Well, I did warn you. But listen, I’ve had a call from the hospital. They’ve found the post-mortem reports on all four men, and I persuaded them to scan and email everything to me. I forwarded it all on to you so you could print it out. You didn’t pick up when I called you, so I thought I’d better check up on you myself.’

‘There’s no signal down here, but thanks, that’s great news. Besides, I’m done here—my head is heavy from all that dust.’

‘Hang on just a minute,’ Leiff said. ‘I had a peek at the postmortem reports. Which year have you got there? Seventy-three, is it?’

Matthew looked at the newspaper in his hand and nodded. ‘October.’

‘You need November. That’s when the first victim turned up. But let’s get you something to eat. I can’t have you stay down here all night. I bet you’re thirsty too. My wife’s going out tonight, but she’s cooked spare ribs, so why don’t you have dinner with me? There are too many ribs for one person.’

‘Thanks, I’d really like that,’ Matthew said. He reached for the cup with the cigarette butts and got up from the floor.

‘Matthew Cave—now that’s a funny name for a Dane,’ Leiff said.

‘My father was an American soldier,’ Matthew said. ‘I got my name from him… along with my quirky eye.’

‘What you call quirky sounds shamanic to me,’ Leiff said. ‘An eye that can see into two worlds.’

‘Thanks, but I think it’s just a quirky eye.’

‘Is that what your father would say?’

Matthew shook his head. ‘I don’t know. He disappeared shortly after my fourth birthday.’

‘Where was he stationed?’

‘At the air base in Thule, which is where he met my mother.’ Matthew smiled. ‘I was actually born in Greenland. Crazy, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ Leiff said. ‘But you’ve stirred my curiosity now. I’m like that. Did he stay up here?’

Matthew shrugged. ‘I’m not sure. I believe he was in Nuuk at the time, and that he was going to join me and my mother in Denmark, but he never turned up. My mother had no idea what had happened to him, or where he’d gone. It’s a big world, I guess.’

‘Yes, but Nuuk is a small place. When was this?’

‘The last news we had from him was a postcard sent from Nuuk in August 1990.’

‘And what was his name?’

‘His name?’ Matthew hesitated and looked down. ‘His name was Thomas. Tom Cave.’

‘I love a mystery,’ Leiff said. ‘Mind if I take a look and see if I can find him?’

‘No, I don’t. But I doubt he’s still alive.’

‘You may be right,’ Leiff said. ‘But let’s wait and see. People up here have a habit of disappearing, but they pretty much always turn up again.’

11

Matthew put the article on the coffee table and reached for the postmortem reports. After dinner with Leiff, he had returned to the basement and spent most of the night tracking down the relevant issues of the paper. He had eventually managed to compile all of November 1973, then he brought the papers home with him in the early morning hours when he had started to tire.

There were four post-mortem reports, but only three victims were mentioned in the newspaper article he’d found. The last man had been killed after the article was published.

He arranged the reports side by side on the coffee table. Four men. Three of them had a face. Matthew marked any recurring words in the reports with a yellow highlighter, trying to form an image of the victims in his mind’s eye.

The men were all Greenlandic and had lived in Block P. They were aged between thirty and forty years, and there was no mention of any unusual features. They were, he presumed, men who had grown up in Inuit villages and spent more time hunting and fishing than going to school. Nor was there anything unusual about the men’s height and chest measurements. They were smaller than your average Danish man, but that was to be expected.

Only the manner of the men’s deaths was remarkable. All four had been flayed and gutted from the groin to the breastbone, and their insides cut from their body with a sharp tool—an ulo, according to the police investigation. So the intestines hadn’t been ripped from their bodies, but cut free.

In the final report, which had been requested by a different police officer to the first three, several observations were listed. On closer examination, there was evidence that the last two victims had had a soft object stuffed into their mouths during the attacks. The earlier victims could not be examined for similar evidence as they had already been cremated. Further examination of the last two victims also suggested that the men had been gutted and had several of their internal organs removed while they were still alive. The skin, however, had definitely been flayed from their bodies after the intestines had been cut out.

His mobile buzzed and Matthew quickly answered it.

‘Sounds like there might be a witness to the killing on the ice cap,’ his editor said. ‘Seeing as you were out there, I thought you might be interested.’

‘What do you have in mind?’

‘I want you to find him and hear what he has to say. He’s a fisherman, and as far as I can gather he saw a man come ashore early this morning, covered in blood and carrying a black sack.’

‘And where will I find him?’

‘I believe he called the police while he was still at sea, but his boat will dock in about an hour. It’s down by the little harbour behind the public swimming pool. Could you check it out? Not many boats come in there, so you can’t miss him.’

Matthew rang off, got up and opened the balcony door while he lit a cigarette. A cool mist brushed his face and naked upper body before finding its way deep into his lungs. The fog came and went between the buildings.

He placed both hands on his stomach. The cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth. He frowned, then went inside to the kitchen, pulled out the top drawer and brought a chef’s knife back to the balcony. He closed his eyes and concentrated as he rested the tip of the knife just below his rib cage. Then he trailed the knife softly over his belly in one slow movement.

‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Have you gone completely mental?’

‘Shit,’ Matthew muttered and slipped the hand with the knife behind his back. The voice belonged to Malik. Matthew took the cigarette out of his mouth. ‘I was just trying something out,’ he called down towards the road, where Malik was staring up at him.

‘Seeing as you live in a country with the world’s highest suicide rate, could you not stand there wearing next to nothing and waving a knife around?’ Malik called back, craning his neck to get a better view of the second-floor balcony.

Matthew shook his head. ‘Sorry… Why don’t you come upstairs and I’ll tell you all about it?’

‘No, get yourself down here now. You’re coming with me. Some fishermen have found a body in the water out between the islands, and they think it’s been dead for quite some time.’

12

The two men drove to the Atlantic Port in Malik’s old Honda, which was in reasonable shape even if the exhaust fumes were practically black. Then again, the car didn’t have too many miles on it, as Malik only drove around Nuuk, and the short distance out to Qinngorput, where his girlfriend lived. If you wanted to go further than the rocky outskirts of Nuuk, you had to leave your car on the last patch of tarmac, ice or gravel and make your way on foot or by boat. No roads led out of Nuuk. No roads led into it. This applied to every town in Greenland. Nuuk was Nuuk, and the only thing surrounding the town and its sixteen thousand residents was mountains, sky or sea.

‘So do you know anything more about this body?’ Matthew asked as he got out of the car.

Malik took the key out of the ignition and shook his head. ‘No. Let’s go find out.’

Matthew reached a hand behind his neck, grabbed his jaw and wrenched it back until it cracked.

Malik grimaced. ‘That can’t be good for you.’

‘It loosens things up.’

‘Oh, crap! The fog is coming back already.’ Malik nodded towards the sea, where the fog had built up so densely that only the odd mountaintop could be made out. The sea had pretty much disappeared again.

‘It seems to roll in from nowhere,’ Matthew said.

Malik grinned. ‘It’s the sea breathing.’ He raised a hand to his chest and inhaled deeply. ‘In fifteen minutes, it might be completely clear again or the whole town could be invisible. It depends on her breathing.’

‘Who?’ Matthew said. ‘The sea?’

‘Yes, the mother of the sea.’

‘The same mother who’s pleased if you chop off your fingers so they can become seals?’

‘Yes,’ Malik said with a smile. ‘That’s one way of putting it, though that’s not really the point of the story. It’s more about how if you sacrifice something to nature, it comes back to you. In the myth you’re talking about, fingers come back as seals.’

‘So a hunter sacrifices his surplus to the sea—is that it?’

‘Not everyone does it, but yes, it’s always wise to sacrifice something you don’t need. It goes against our culture and our respect for all living things to let anything go to waste.’

‘Including intestines?’ Matthew ventured.

‘Yes. Say you kill a seal. You toss the intestines into the sea so the fish or the birds can eat them.’ Malik looked at Matthew with a puzzled expression. ‘But why would you ask that?’

‘Four men were killed here in Nuuk in the 1970s, and when they were found, their intestines had been dumped next to their bodies. Perhaps a Greenlander would have done it differently?’

‘I don’t know,’ Malik said. ‘It’s always possible, I guess, but I’ve got no idea what it means when you kill people like that.’

Matthew stared at the grey tarmac. ‘Have you heard more about yesterday’s killing?’

‘Yes,’ Malik said. He fished out his cigarettes and offered one to Matthew in silence.

Matthew took a cigarette and lit it. ‘We don’t have to talk about it, if you don’t want to.’

‘It’s okay… He’d been gutted, we all saw that, but…’ Malik stopped and closed his eyes. ‘His intestines were actually missing.’

Matthew shuddered. ‘We may have a witness, but I don’t know much about him yet. My editor called to tell me just before you turned up.’ Matthew took a long drag on his cigarette and looked at Malik, hesitant. ‘Did you notice anything about his skin? Yesterday, out on the ice?’

‘What do you mean?’ Malik frowned.

‘Those men back in the 1970s had been flayed… It was just a thought.’

Malik shook his head. ‘That’s sick.’

The sound of a car diverted them from their grim thoughts, and a big dark-blue four-wheel drive pulled up next to Malik’s Honda. The police officer behind the wheel called something in Greenlandic through his open window. Malik replied, gesturing towards the fog across the sea a few times. The driver turned the engine off, and the two officers stepped out onto the quay. They greeted Malik and Matthew with a nod, and continued talking to Malik. One of them was Ottesen.

‘They say the boat will be here in a few minutes,’ Malik told Matthew, and beckoned him closer. ‘The fishermen are too scared to look inside the black bag they’ve found, so it might be a false alarm. It might just be the remains from a hunting trip. A hunter wanted to tip something into the sea, say, but accidentally dropped the whole bag. Anyway, the fishermen are a bit freaked out because they’re convinced it’s a dead man.’

‘Is it all right if we tag along?’

‘Yes, I don’t think the officers mind, or they’d have said.’ Malik straightened up and raised his head. ‘That’ll be the boat now.’

Matthew fixed his gaze on the grey mass across the sea. He couldn’t hear anything, but a few minutes later the bow of a blue and white wooden boat ploughed its way through the fog in a long, smooth movement, cleaving it in two. The fog was so thick that they could see it peeling back against either side of the boat’s hull.

There was a hollow thud as the boat docked. The two officers approached it.

‘Let’s follow,’ Malik said, nodding towards the boat.

Three men were waiting on the deck. One of them called out to the officers, throwing his hands up in the air.

‘He says they want to get back out as quickly as possible,’ Malik translated. ‘He thinks the dead body’s spirit will curse their haul.’ He pointed to the older police officer. ‘Ottesen told him that was a load of rubbish, and they should just chuck the sack ashore, but they’re refusing to even touch it, so now Ottesen and Minik are having to board the boat to get it.’ Malik dropped his cigarette butt and squashed it under his boot. ‘Bertelsen, one of the guys on the boat, is shit-scared of spirits.’

Both officers jumped on board, and Malik waved Matthew even closer. ‘Come on—I want to see what’s going on.’

Bertelsen called out again to the two officers.

Malik stopped. ‘He says he doesn’t want them to open the sack on the boat, so they’re going to have to bring it ashore before they look inside.’

Ottesen bent down and picked up something they couldn’t see from the quay. Shortly afterwards he called to his colleague.

‘The sack doesn’t seem all that heavy,’ Malik said. ‘He says that if it contains a dead body, it’s likely to be a child.’

The sun had come out again and swathed the whole harbour in a blinding light. The fog kept to the sea for now.

The black plastic sack was wet and glossy in Ottesen’s arms as he stepped back onto the quay. Malik took out his camera.

‘Are you going to take pictures?’ Matthew asked.

‘Sure,’ Malik said, then he hesitated. ‘But not if it’s a kid, obviously.’

Matthew fell silent, his fingers twirling the invisible wedding band. ‘I’ll be in the car,’ he said, without looking at Malik.

‘Eh? I thought you wanted to—’

But Matt had slammed the car door shut behind him before Malik could finish his question.

A red Dash-7 aircraft swept across the sea not far from them. The planes were waiting for breaks in the fog. Malik went to join the policemen.

From the car, Matthew couldn’t see what was going on, but he saw the three men flinch as the bag was opened. An animated Malik ran back towards the car, beckoning insistently.

Matthew nodded, got out of the car and reluctantly went to join the others.

‘It’s insane,’ Malik called. ‘I’ve never seen a guy that rotten before. I nearly puked my guts out. You won’t believe it. He fucking stinks.’

‘Something doesn’t add up,’ Ottesen said when Matthew and Malik reached him. ‘The plastic sack looks new.’

Matthew pinched his nose and struggled to control his stomach. The body had been gutted and the man’s rotting organs stank, but he hadn’t been flayed. The decomposing organs were fresh—but the skin was like tanned yellow leather.

Matthew drew Malik aside. ‘I’m glad they’ve already called for a pathologist,’ he said quietly. ‘This is our mummy from the ice cap, only someone tried to get rid of him by throwing him in the sea.’

‘What?’ Malik leaned forward. ‘Yes, you’re right. That’s him. But then why—’ His eyes moved to the mass lying on the tarmac: a brown, greasy liver, two kidneys, a heart, lungs and intestines. Then he turned around and threw up. He slumped to his knees and kept retching in long spasms.

Matthew looked at Ottesen, struggling to put his suspicions into words. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know how to say it… but I think the organs belong to your colleague, Officer Aqqalu.’

13

The road behind the public swimming pool was made up largely of potholes and granite chips. Several old dinghies lay scattered between the road and the bay. Sport fishermen would dock here when they had been out at sea.

Matthew expelled the smoke hard between his lips, and watched it disperse in the fog. His gaze scanned the small bay and continued down the arm of the fjord separating Nuussuaq from Qinngorput. Qinngorput wasn’t far away, but the fog blocked his view of the buildings there.

He crossed a gravelled area where some boats had been pulled ashore. Two of them would definitely never go to sea again, while the other three looked in reasonable shape. A blue boilersuit on a coathanger was hanging from the gunwale of a boat, making it look as if an invisible man was standing next to the hull.

His mobile rang and he answered it. ‘Matt, it’s me,’ his editor said. ‘Have you reached the harbour yet?’

‘Yes, I’ve just got here.’ Matthew took another look around the small bay. ‘There’s no one here. Did you get my message about the sack that the police opened over at the Atlantic Port?’

‘Certainly did. What a story. I can’t make sense of it, but you just stick with it.’ His editor hesitated for a moment. ‘Don’t forget, though, we can’t write about it yet.’

‘It’ll leak out eventually,’ Matthew argued. ‘You can’t keep things secret for very long up here.’

‘Once it leaks, we’ll leak with it, Matt,’ his editor said. ‘You’ve got a couple of stories ready to go, haven’t you?’

‘Yes, we’re good to go.’

‘Great.’

‘This boat I’m supposed to be looking for,’ Matthew said. ‘Is it open or does it have a wheelhouse?’

‘A wheelhouse, I guess. Perhaps he’s not back yet? Are the police there?’

‘No. I reckon they’re still busy with the… black plastic sack.’

‘All right. You find that fisherman and get him to tell you what he saw. I’m told he didn’t see the killer’s face, but he did see the boat the bloodstained man came ashore in, and he’ll be able to identify it. You should be able to get something out of him. Keep at it, eh, Matt.’

There were only two boats with wheelhouses in the bay. One was about twenty metres out in the water, and the other very close to the shore. There was no way he could reach the one in the water without access to another boat.

The second boat lay near the low rocks. Matthew could hear it scrape against them, a grating, almost mournful sound. The waves were small, yet lively enough to cause the boat to bob up and down.

Matthew grabbed a rope hanging over the bow of the boat. He could see no signs that the boat was moored to the shore or that its anchor had been dropped. It was simply chafing against the rocks. When the tide turned, the boat would be carried out to sea in no time.

‘Hello?’ he called out, putting both hands on the gunwale. He tried calling out again, this time in Greenlandic. ‘Halu?’

Matthew looked about him. There wasn’t a soul to be seen who could help him. He managed to haul himself over the gunwale and roll onto the small deck.

‘Halu?’ he called out again tentatively. ‘Is anyone here?’

Slowly he edged his way past the small wheelhouse in the middle of the boat. There was barely enough room to squeeze past it, and he would never have dared try this manoeuvre on the open sea. The waters around Greenland were so cold all year round that you would go into shock and die within minutes of falling in.

‘Hello? Anyone here? I’m just visiting, all right? I’m looking for a witness who saw something this morning.’ He hesitated, then continued cautiously, ‘I’m working with the police. There’s nothing to worry about. Officer Ottesen will be here in a moment.’ That last bit was just a guess.

Carefully, he pressed down the handle to the small wheelhouse. The door opened with a click. He hesitated again before pushing it open. The room behind it was dark. Because the fog was so dense today, the portholes didn’t let much light into the hull.

‘Halu? Anyone here?’

He could smell fish and engine oil in the dark cabin. He made out some tins to one side, and a couple of half-full fish crates on the other. That didn’t leave much floor space. He nudged the top crate. It was mostly cod and redfish, and none of it had been covered with ice, despite the fish being gutted and cleaned. There was a puddle of fish guts and blood on the floor by a tall cupboard jerry-built from masonite.

‘Why would you abandon your catch?’ Matthew mumbled to himself. ‘Fish need to be kept cold, don’t they?’ He looked dubiously at the puddle of fish guts at his feet. He was baffled as to why the fisherman hadn’t gutted his fish outside. Surely cleaning the wheelhouse floor would create much more work for him than simply hosing down the deck?

A big wave jolted the boat, which crashed against the rocks. At the same time Matthew heard a bump from inside the cupboard. He looked down at the pink fish blood at the toes of his shoes. Then another wave hit, the cupboard flew open, and a short, heavy-set man lunged at him. They both crashed to the floor, knocking over a crate and scattering fish everywhere.

Matthew shouted and lashed out, pushing the man off him, and he didn’t stop yelling until he had scrambled back to the door, where he collapsed. His hands, trousers and jumper were covered in blood. The man was lying on his back between the fish. He had been cut open from his groin to his chest. Just like the fish, he had been gutted.

14

There was a hiss as Malik flipped the cap off the bottle and handed the beer to Ottesen. By now there were quite a few empty bottles on the table in front of them. Malik had insisted that they needed sustenance so they had ended up getting a crate of beer and three large pizzas from Cafe Prego before returning to Matthew’s apartment.

They had spent most of the evening discussing Aqqalu and the fisherman. Both were dead—killed and mutilated.

‘This is my last one,’ Ottesen stated firmly as he took the bottle. ‘I’m not usually much of a drinker, but today I really needed a beer.’

Malik raised his own beer to his lips. ‘It’s just insane. The mummy, me being burgled, the murders… and Aqqalu.’

‘Promise me you’ll never board a boat on your own again,’ Ottesen told Matthew, closing the lid on his empty pizza box. ‘Anything could have happened.’

‘How was I to know a dead man would fall out of the cupboard?’ Matthew replied.

‘Well, that’s just it,’ Ottesen grunted. ‘Do you know who tipped off your editor?’

‘No,’ Matthew said. ‘I was just told to investigate, but believe me, I wish I’d never set foot on that boat.’

Ottesen took another swig of his beer. ‘Still, I’m glad you called me straightaway.’

‘I’m going outside for a cigarette,’ Malik said, getting up. ‘Are you coming, Matt?’

Matthew shook his head. ‘Not right now.’

Ottesen picked up the printouts of the post-mortem reports, the notes and the newspaper cuttings from the coffee table and looked across at Matthew. ‘May I?’

‘Knock yourself out. It’s an old case my editor suggested I look into.’

Ottesen skimmed the pages, nodding lightly. ‘I know about this case.’ He looked up. ‘Four men flayed and cut open from their groins to their chests.’

‘And now we have another two,’ Matthew said, ‘except that they weren’t flayed.’

‘True,’ Ottesen said. ‘But they’re very different cases. The murders in ’73 were of four very similar men with almost identical backgrounds. Our two victims are a police officer who was guarding a mummy and a fisherman who knew something about the murder of the police officer. Two very different men.’

‘Sounds like you know the ’73 case well?’

‘Of course I do. They were the most brutal murders Nuuk had ever seen, and the killer was never caught.’

‘Did the police have any idea who did it?’

‘They certainly had a suspect, who went missing the same night that the last murder took place, but whether he did it I’m not sure. Not everyone thought he was guilty—that much I do know.’ He put down the papers. ‘Listen, we need an investigative consultant at the police station. Are you interested?’

‘Isn’t that a job for a police officer?’

‘Normally, yes, but we’ve advertised the post for six months and haven’t had a single suitable applicant. It’s often like this up here, I’m afraid.’

‘Sorry,’ Matthew mumbled. ‘But I don’t think that’s a job for me.’

‘Never mind—it was just a suggestion. No harm in asking, is there? I think we could do with someone whose approach is different from ours.’

Matthew shook his head.

‘Well, think about it,’ Ottesen said, getting up from his chair. ‘And let me know if you find out anything about the ’73 murders. They baffled the police throughout all of Denmark at the time.’

‘I promise,’ Matthew said, looking at the papers on the coffee table. ‘But there’s not a lot to go on.’

‘No, I agree, there isn’t,’ Ottesen said, and waved goodbye through the glass door to Malik on the balcony. ‘I’d better be heading home,’ he called. ‘See you soon.’ He turned back to Matthew. ‘By the way, what’s your surname? I need it for my report about the man you found today, and I didn’t get all your details when we met down by the boat.’

Matthew hesitated. ‘Cave. My father was an American soldier based in Thule.’

Ottesen raised his eyebrows. ‘Matthew Cave. Right, catch you later. You take care, Matt Cave.’

The sun was in the sky above the sea and the mountains as he left, though twilight was falling. Nuuk still enjoyed many hours of daylight in August, but in just a few months the darkness would be so intense that the sun would come out only for a few hours each day.

‘So Ottesen’s headed home,’ Malik said when he came back inside.

Matthew nodded. ‘He wanted to hire me as a consultant.’

‘Hah, he’s always trying to hire people. Sounds like a boring job, doesn’t it?’

‘Probably.’ Matthew looked down at the bottle in his hand. ‘It’s seven per cent alcohol. This… Musk Ox beer.’

Malik had flopped onto the black recliner. ‘Did you know that the musk ox is a goat?’

‘A goat?’

‘Yes, it’s a big, fat goat hidden underneath the most incredible fur.’ He rolled onto his side. ‘What happened today in the Atlantic Port? When you hid in the car?’

‘Nothing. I just didn’t want to see the body.’ Matthew drained his beer and dropped his cigarette butt into the bottle. ‘I knew I wouldn’t be able to cope if it turned out to be a child.’

‘No, they say that’s the worst.’

The room fell silent.

‘How old was your child?’ Malik tried tentatively.

‘My wife was six months pregnant when the accident happened. They both died.’ Matthew slumped. ‘They asked me if I wanted to see my little girl, but she was dead, wasn’t she.’ It was as if the falling darkness had crawled inside the living room and was now enveloping him. ‘I had felt her moving in Tine’s belly. Her kicks. What use would it be to see her dead? That wouldn’t be the person I had been talking to and cared about.’ Matthew’s voice had grown weaker, until it was nothing but a whisper.

‘Do you know something?’ Malik said. ‘I think everything has a soul. I think we can be together both before and after life, if our bond is strong enough.’

Matthew pushed himself up off the sofa. ‘I’m going for a piss.’