The Girl Without Skin

30

A spell of milder weather had arrived, something that Jakob had not expected, but which in an ideal world would have occurred a few hours earlier, when he had stupidly sat by the broken window and the dead radiator and nearly frozen to death in his own living room. He glanced at Karlo. If it hadn’t been for his colleague’s prompt response, he might easily have died. Just before they left, Mortensen had added insult to injury by asking them not to mention to anyone that the two of them had been practically naked under the same blanket. Two men. Police officers at that. The people of this town shouldn’t start having thoughts like that about the forces of law and order. We’ll keep all of that in-house. Their boss had been unable to look at them as he spoke.

Jakob slipped in something outside the stairwell they were about to enter, and Karlo grabbed his arm.

‘Where on earth did that change in the weather come from?’ Jakob said. ‘And thank you.’

‘Oh, it’ll be frost again in a moment,’ Karlo said, sniffing the air. ‘I think we’ve escaped the big chaos of the melt for now.’

Jakob smiled and looked up at Block P. ‘Is this it?’

‘Yes, it’s on the second floor.’

‘Have you been up there?’

‘Not yet, but the door has been locked and I have a key. His wife and children have gone to stay with her parents.’

‘Including his daughter?’

‘Yes, she’s in the same place.’

‘Only now she’s safe,’ Jakob muttered quietly. It troubled him that he hadn’t ignored the rules and Mortensen’s words about the girls, but what else could he do? It was winter. There was nowhere to move them to.

Jakob remembered the apartment clearly. As he did all four apartments where he believed the police must take immediate action to save a minor from abuse. He sighed to himself. Save was the wrong word. These girls were already damaged for life, but at least they could have stopped any further abuse.

And now it had stopped for this man’s daughter, and for one of the others, while Najak had gone missing and Paneeraq was still trapped in her living hell. He patted his trouser leg and said, ‘Right, what have we got here?’

‘It’s exactly the same,’ Karlo said. ‘The ulo is lying in the middle of his intestines. He’s covered in blood. And he has been flayed. The Nuuk Ripper strikes again.’

The dead body had indeed been flayed like the other two; it looked like a bloody hunting trophy someone had tossed on the floor. The flayed face stared back at them. The bared teeth. The muscle fibres. Pale sinews. Blood. The belly had been brutally slashed open in the most agonising way that Jakob could imagine. The ulo wasn’t a stabbing tool or a knife to cut something open with. It was a tool designed to remove fat from skin, and the nature of the cuts to this man’s stomach indicated that the blade had ripped up his skin and flesh in slow, tearing movements. But it had been operated by a skilled hand. A hand that knew precisely where every cut should be made. The pain must have been excruciating.

Jakob got up and did a tour of the apartment’s two bedrooms. His stomach lurched when he looked at the beds in both rooms. Right there, the man’s little daughter had had to submit to her own father’s adult body, and no one had said or done anything to help her. No one. Except one person. And now it was Jakob’s duty to catch this someone and put them behind bars.

‘Doesn’t Anguteeraq Poulsen live nearby?’ He looked towards Karlo.

‘Two stairwells from here,’ Karlo replied, getting up from the floor, where he had been setting out small numbered flags for the forensic pathologist from Denmark, as well as for the photographer who would take pictures of the dead body before it could be moved.

‘I think we ought to visit him right away.’

‘And warn him? He’s the last man on your list.’

Jakob touched the cut on his forehead carefully. Then he shook his head. ‘I just want to see him.’

Karlo checked his watch. ‘You want to go over there now?’

‘Yes—if it’s all right with you?’

‘It’s not a problem, but I’m concerned about you. Your forehead is starting to go blue—maybe you should rest? And I still think you ought to see a doctor. You could easily be concussed. Perhaps you should sleep at my place tonight so you’re not alone?’

Jakob smiled. ‘My mother is eighty-one,’ he said, looking across to Karlo. ‘I believe I’m old enough to take care of myself.’

‘I know, I know. I was more thinking you might lose consciousness.’

‘Well, I’ll probably wake up again if I’m meant to.’ Jakob patted Karlo’s shoulder. ‘Don’t worry about me. It doesn’t feel like a concussion. But it’s kind of you to care.’

‘And we’re having pork chops tonight,’ Karlo said hungrily. ‘Big, fat, juicy ones.’

Jakob took a last look at the gutted man on the floor. ‘I’ll take a raincheck, thanks, Karlo. Once we’re done here, all I want to do for the rest of the evening is hide under my blankets.’

31

The stairwells looked pretty much identical. All were made from concrete, had the same doors and the same orange-red wooden banisters. The only difference was the names on the letterboxes and the stuff left outside the front doors or littering the communal areas. In some places shoes and boots were carefully arranged, while in others bags, clothes and fishing gear covered half the floor space.

Outside Anguteeraq Poulsen’s place, the boots were lined up neatly and they were clean, as was a pair of snowshoes, old and worn, but greased and ready for use.

‘Hello,’ Karlo said in a cheerful voice the moment the door was opened and a subdued-looking woman peered out from the crack. ‘We’re here to follow up on the police survey of children’s school habits. I’m afraid we didn’t manage to complete our form when we were here last, so we were wondering if we might trouble you with a quick visit.’

The woman closed the door as she nodded, and it grew silent on the landing as the two men stared at the closed door. Soon it opened again, and the man they had spoken to the last time they had visited popped out his head. He glared at Jakob, then turned his attention to Karlo and muttered something in Greenlandic. Karlo replied, and the two men spoke for just under a minute before Anguteeraq Poulsen finally took a step back and opened the door fully. He was wearing jeans and a stained and faded green T-shirt. His hair was messy.

‘He says he can’t be bothered to speak Danish today,’ Karlo whispered to Jakob as they entered. ‘So I’ll talk to him in Greenlandic and tell you what he said afterwards.’

Jakob inhaled the smell of the place through his nostrils. ‘Ask him if he knew the other three men, but don’t let on too much… Just ask a bit about everything.’

Karlo nodded and sat down on a brown sofa that the man had pointed to. Jakob sat down next to him, and they were each given a cup of black coffee.

The two Greenlandic men started talking, while Jakob studied Poulsen’s facial expressions and the apartment around him. Poulsen clearly resented Jakob’s presence. Anger exuded from his eyes, from the frowning of his forehead and from the restlessness of his body. In Jakob’s opinion, though, it was more than just anger. They weren’t welcome. Not just because they were police officers and because Jakob was Danish. No, they were people who had entered his home, which didn’t bear close scrutiny.

Jakob nearly burned himself when he raised the cup to his lips. He looked into the steaming coffee, before nodding politely to the woman sitting on a light-coloured chair by the door to the kitchen. There were another two doors leading from the living room, but both were closed. Between the two brown sofas was a pine coffee table, with a brass lamp above it that sent out its light through a series of yellow oval glass discs. The walls were bare except for a single, simplistic painting of a man in a kayak on the sea in front of Mount Sermitsiaq.

Jakob turned his attention back to Anguteeraq Poulsen. His trousers. His T-shirt. His gaze. The cowed wife sitting by the door, staring at the floor, her hands resting on her legs, which were pressed together.

‘Karlo,’ he sighed, ‘would you please tell Mr Poulsen that we have a few questions for his daughter, because we didn’t manage to complete the form the last time we were here.’

‘She’s asleep,’ Anguteeraq Poulsen interjected in Danish.

Jakob sniffed the air and picked up the aroma coming from the kitchen. ‘It smells like you’re about to eat.’

Anguteeraq Poulsen scowled at them both, then got up and disappeared into one of the rooms. A few minutes later he emerged with the girl in his arms. He put her down on the sofa and sat beside her, keeping his hand on her shoulder all the while.

‘She’s not quite herself,’ he said. ‘She went to the hospital today for an injection.’ For a moment his gaze seemed more apologetic than angry. The girl’s body was floppy. She wasn’t making eye contact, but just stared down at herself. Her hands were gathered like her mother’s.

‘Sorry to wake you up, Paneeraq,’ Jakob said. ‘It’s just that we forgot a few things the last time we were here, and we want to make sure that our survey is perfect so we can build the best school for you children.’

The girl nodded. According to Jakob’s notebook, she was eleven years old. Her father was the last of the four men on his list of people who should never be allowed near a girl or a woman for the rest of their lives. He struggled to contain his emotions.

‘Paneeraq…’

The silence after her name shaped a question in the air, and the girl looked up.

A shiver went down Jakob’s spine as all the blood and life inside him froze. ‘Paneeraq,’ he repeated in a croaking voice. ‘Do you like going to school?’

She didn’t say anything. She just looked down again, but she nodded lightly.

‘And if you have any problems, do you get plenty of help?’

She shook her head very slowly.

‘So no one helps you?’

‘No one,’ she whispered.

Jakob watched as tears trickled down the girl’s chubby cheeks.

Her father tapped her shoulder and her whole body flinched. ‘You asked her that the last time,’ he growled. ‘She’s tired.’

‘Sometimes you get different answers depending on when and how you ask the question,’ Jakob said, without taking his eyes off the girl. ‘Paneeraq, it’s always okay to ask for help. Don’t you ever forget that, ilaa?’

She didn’t say anything, and he realised that he had to release her from her father’s grip. ‘That’s enough. Paneeraq, you’re free to go back to bed if you want to.’

The girl got up so quickly that her father didn’t have time to stop her. She kept her eyes firmly on the floor, but shook hands with both Karlo and Jakob before she limped with some difficulty towards the door to the bedroom and disappeared.

Jakob could no longer bear to look at Anguteeraq Poulsen. His face spoke volumes now, and all of it was ugly.

‘I’ll bloody well kill him myself,’ Jakob fumed when they were back outside Block P, looking up at the closed windows of the apartment. ‘I’ll bloody well kill him and gut him myself.’ Everything whirled around in his mind, and he struggled to keep hold of the many loose ends. ‘Oh, damn,’ he then exclaimed. ‘I need to go back to Ari Rossing Lynge’s place. Do you know if his wife is still living there?’

‘You want to go there now?’ Karlo checked his wristwatch as he stepped further away from the apartment block, and his eyes moved from the watch face to the front of the building. ‘The light is on, so I’m guessing that she is.’

Jakob rubbed his face with a weary expression. ‘I have to have another look. Around the living room and the bedrooms.’

‘But—’

‘It’s all right.’ Jakob raised his eyebrows. ‘You don’t have to come with me. It’s okay. I can hear the pork chops calling you.’

‘Is it really all right?’

‘Of course. It’s late.’ He sighed and shook his head. ‘I just need to check something. I won’t be long.’

‘Sure. Mind how you go.’

32

‘Hello?’

Jakob had only just entered the brightly lit stairwell where Ari Rossing Lynge had lived when a voice called out to him.

‘You’re a police officer, aren’t you?’

The voice was coming from the first door to the right. Its white surface was ajar, and through the gap he could make out a strip of a female face. An eye, a cheek and a little of her mouth.

‘Yes,’ he said, stepping closer to the door. ‘My name is Jakob Pedersen, Godthåb Police. I’m looking for Mrs Rossing Lynge.’

‘Is this about their daughter?’

Jakob hesitated. ‘I’m sorry, but why do you want to know?’

The door opened fully so that he could look in. A petite woman about thirty years old was standing on the tiled floor just inside the door. Her face was short and broad, and her eyes as black as her hair.

‘My name is Inge-Lene,’ she said with a timid smile. ‘Would you mind coming in for a moment?’ She glanced around and listened briefly to the silence in the stairwell. ‘There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell the police for a long time. About the night Najak disappeared.’

‘You know something about Najak’s disappearance?’ Jakob said, looking at the woman with consternation. ‘It’s really important to pass on such information to the police immediately.’

She nodded. ‘Yes, and that’s what I’m doing now. Come inside for a moment. I don’t want to talk out here.’

‘Of course.’

When Jakob had taken his boots and coat off, she showed him into a small living room and invited him to sit on a green sofa with wooden armrests and several embroidered cushions. Inge-Lene herself continued into the kitchen, where he heard a clatter of plates and cupboard doors open and shut. He had hoped that she would just tell him what she had to say so that he could get home to his own armchair, but he didn’t have the heart to refuse her hospitality.

There was a lamp hanging over the coffee table. The shade consisted of three lime-coloured glass panels; on the table below was a magazine and some knitting. There was no TV in the room, but several drawings in pale wooden frames adorned the walls. All were pencil sketches, sensitively coloured so that the colour didn’t steal the attention from the subjects. Jakob got up and went over to the longest wall in the living room to study the artworks. The first one depicted two girls, both wearing Greenlandic national costume. The younger girl was sitting at a table, while the older girl—with some effort, it seemed—was trying to put a kamik boot on the foot of the smaller one. The older girl’s hair was piled up on top of her head in the shape of an ulo, while the little girl’s hair was short and loose.

‘Here we are.’

Jakob turned around. ‘What impressive drawings.’

‘Thank you,’ Inge-Lene said with a big smile as she set down an orange enamel tray on the table and picked up her knitting. She looked about her, then placed the yarn and the knitting needles in a basket next to the sofa. ‘They’re of my sister and me when we were little.’

Jakob was surprised and took a closer look at the drawing, and then at the pictures near it. ‘You’re the artist?’

‘Yes. I’ve always loved to draw, so people in my family don’t have a lot of wall space left.’ She laughed briefly. ‘I’ve just made a pot of coffee, so I got you a cup and… some cake. Well, it’s just fruit loaf, really.’

Jakob was given a slice on a plate, then he sipped his coffee. He had long since grown used to coffee always being drunk black in Godthåb. Especially during the long, dark winters. ‘I hate to ruin the nice mood,’ he began, ‘but please tell me what you saw and heard the night that Najak went missing.’

Inge-Lene retreated slightly down her end of the sofa. ‘Let me just…’ She chewed and swallowed.

He smiled and took a bite of his fruit loaf. The butter was thick, and his teeth left marks in it.

‘I don’t know what to think,’ she said quietly. Her eyes had grown serious and glum. ‘I’m scared that something has happened to her.’ She took a sip of her coffee and swallowed it with a slight shudder as she put down the cup. ‘Anyone can see that she’s not a happy child. She has had a bad life so far. When I think about her eyes and the way she moves, I feel awful. It’s like she’s invisible. I’ve never seen her cry, but then again, I’ve never seen her smile either. Not once.’

Jakob took another bite of his fruit loaf and leaned back on the sofa. ‘So you know her well?’

Inge-Lene shrugged. ‘I invite her in from time to time, but not very often because she’s pretty much terrified of her own shadow.’ She looked at the walls. ‘She likes my drawings, and I know that she’s fond of drawing. I told her once that it was like being in another world when you draw, and she understood that, I could see it. So I try to get her to come here to draw as often as I can.’

‘So the two of you draw together?’

‘That’s probably an exaggeration, but she has given me one of her drawings, so I know how good she is. I mean, she’s only eleven years old.’ She got up from the sofa and went over to a brown sideboard with three doors. ‘Just a moment. Here it is—her drawing, I mean.’

Jakob reached out and took the paper she was holding out. It was coloured right into every corner with shades of blue, grey, yellow and black, which together produced a sombre image of a woman’s head and neck breaking the flat calm surface of the sea in between two dark mountains. He turned to Inge-Lene. ‘Did Najak draw this picture?’

She nodded with a sad smile.

The room fell silent.

‘I want you to have it,’ Inge-Lene said.

Jakob cleared his throat and put the picture down on the coffee table. ‘No, it’s yours. I don’t know Najak the way you do. I can’t accept it.’

‘Please take it with you,’ she urged him. ‘You can give it back to me when you find her.’

‘Are you so sure that I will find Najak alive?’

She stared at the floor. ‘No.’

‘I’ll do whatever I can,’ he promised. ‘Not just for her, but also for the others.’

‘That’s what I’m hoping.’

Jakob slowly massaged his upper lip with his thumb. ‘Are you ready to tell me about that night?’

She inhaled deep into her lungs, and then expelled the air. ‘It was the night before Ari was murdered. Several men had gone up to his place, and there was a lot of screaming and shouting. It was mostly Nukannguaq, Ari’s wife, doing the screaming, while the men were shouting. In Greenlandic and in Danish. A little later it grew quiet again. With hindsight it was probably an ominous silence, but I didn’t think so at the time. I didn’t hear Najak’s voice at any point either, so I don’t know if she disappeared that night, but I have a feeling that something terrible happened, and because of that Ari ended up getting killed.’

‘Did you see any of the men?’

‘I saw them.’ She gathered her hands in her lap. ‘And that’s why I didn’t contact the police.’

‘But you’re talking to me now?’

‘This is different. You wouldn’t be sitting here, talking like we are now, unless I trusted you. Besides, nobody knows that you’re here.’

Jakob leaned closer. ‘You should only tell me more if it’s what you want.’

‘I do want to talk to you,’ she said. ‘I feel I must.’ Her eyes shone with sincerity. ‘It was dark, so I couldn’t see clearly, but I saw three men come down from upstairs, and once they were outside this block, they met up with a fourth man. He was a thick-set, red-haired man with a bushy beard. When the others left, this man entered the stairwell, and I heard him walk up the stairs. Later that night I heard thumping from Ari’s place, as if someone was banging on the floor, but I ignored it because it was now several hours since I had last heard or seen someone in the stairwell. Later, I fell asleep, and the next day all hell broke loose when Ari was found murdered. Nukannguaq was in shock and Najak was gone.’

‘Could you identify any of the first three men you saw?’ Jakob didn’t want Inge-Lene to know that what she had heard was undoubtedly a dying Ari’s hands bashing the floor as he was being gutted alive.

She shook her head. ‘Only one of them.’

33

Jakob had only managed to sink a few centimetres into his armchair before there was a knock on his front door. He scowled at the dark windows and heaved a sigh. The knocking persisted, and he closed his eyes in an attempt to disappear so deep inside himself that only the silent night would remain.

The next sound to reach him came from the window. Fingers tapping the glass lightly. ‘Wake up, Jakob.’

The voice was female. It belonged to Lisbeth. He opened his eyes and hurried to the door.

‘Lisbeth, do come in,’ he said, smiling, with a glance at the folded blanket in her hands.

She stared at his forehead. ‘Good heavens—does it hurt?’

‘Hurt?’ Jakob touched his forehead. ‘No, it’s fine. Nothing to worry about. I hope you haven’t—’

‘I’ve brought you some rissoles,’ she interrupted, nodding at the blanket. ‘I didn’t think you should be on your own after being attacked yesterday.’ She looked down. ‘Or have you already had dinner?’

‘Why don’t we eat together?’ he suggested, taking a step backwards. ‘I love rissoles.’

He followed her into the kitchen, where she unwrapped a dish from the blanket.

‘Is it all right if we eat at the coffee table?’ he asked. ‘There’s a jigsaw puzzle on the dining table.’

‘Yes, yes, of course. You’re in charge.’

He looked at her back and at her long, black plait hanging down. ‘It smells good.’

‘Thank you. I hope it tastes even better.’ She turned around and looked at him. ‘If you don’t mind setting the table, the food will be ready in just a sec.’

Jakob found a couple of plates and carried them to the living room. ‘Do you drink wine?’

‘Yes, indeed I do.’ Her voice was soft and vibrant. ‘But I’m not sure it’s a good idea with that cut to your head.’

Jakob opened a door in the sideboard behind the dining table, and took out two wineglasses.

‘Do you have a trivet?’ She had appeared from behind, holding the steaming dish in two oven gloves.

He nodded and put the glasses on the coffee table, then rushed back to the kitchen. ‘I can’t find one,’ he called out, reappearing in the doorway. ‘We’ll just use a book.’

She smiled and set down the dish when he placed a book on the table. ‘Shall I do the honours?’

He nodded while he poured the wine.

‘Cheers,’ Lisbeth said, raising her glass. ‘And thank you for inviting me.’

He looked up at her with a frown.

She smiled and winked. ‘I’m just teasing you, Jakob.’

‘Cheers… And thanks for the rissoles. It was kind of you to think of me.’ He put down his glass. ‘Have you always lived in Godthåb?’

‘No, I’m from Qeqertarsuatsiaat.’

‘Qeqertarsuatsiaat,’ he echoed. ‘I haven’t been there yet.’

‘Only a few hundred people live there now,’ she said. ‘But my grandmother is still there. She doesn’t want to move to Godthåb.’

‘We could go down there one day in the police boat,’ he said. ‘I mean, if you would like that.’

‘You know how to sail?’ A big smile had spread across her face, all the way into her eyes. ‘I’d love to, but I don’t want to cause problems for you. Promise? It would probably take us all day.’

‘I have a lot of time on my hands,’ he said.

She sipped her wine and smiled. ‘That would be wonderful. I miss my grandmother. She’s the kindest person I know.’

‘I can imagine.’ Jakob topped up their glasses and raised his own to his lips. He rarely drank wine, even though he enjoyed the taste.

‘Are you getting anywhere with your investigation?’ She put down her cutlery, which clattered softly.

He shook his head in despair. ‘We’re not getting anywhere at all.’

‘I guess I shouldn’t ask you about it.’

He took a big gulp of his wine. ‘It’s not the killings. Well, don’t get me wrong, the murders are terrible, but they’re just men. Grown men who weren’t good people in any sense of the word, and frankly I would happily have beaten Anguteeraq Poulsen to a pulp myself, although it’s very wrong of me to think like that.’

Lisbeth tilted her head and tucked up her legs underneath her. He could see her black tights where the grey marl skirt ended around her knees.

‘I understand,’ she said quietly.

‘I just don’t get men like him. I mean…’ He ground to a halt as he tried to articulate his thoughts. ‘Surely the most natural feeling in the world is to love your child?’

‘It certainly ought to be,’ Lisbeth said.

‘Yes, it should, shouldn’t it? Surely nothing is more important than that. I wish it was like that for all children. No child should ever suffer abuse.’

Jakob reached out and grabbed the bottle in order to share the last of the wine between them.

‘The same goes for adults,’ she said softly. ‘The older we get, the more introverted, fearful and frightened of love we become.’

He nodded. This wasn’t his area of expertise at all, but the wine and the food had loosened his tongue. ‘Adults carry their childhood sorrows with them all their life. That’s why it’s so important to love your child, so that it can grow up knowing that love exists, and that it’s safe to accept that love and to love in return.’

She looked at him with a gaze that was simultaneously wistful and warm. ‘Do you have a child back home in Denmark?’

He looked down and shook his head.

‘Only suddenly it sounded as if you had. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry.’

‘That’s quite all right. However, I’m very concerned about child abuse.’

‘You would make a good father,’ she said, and drained her glass. ‘I used to go hunting with my father. It was always me who butchered the seals. My mother taught me how to slide the ulo in between the blubber and the skin, and slowly remove the skin from the body. I was ten years old when I flayed my first seal. My father had cut open its belly so the intestines spilled out—the rest was my job. I cut free its guts. Intestines, heart, lungs. Everything. We always had to taste the liver. It makes you strong, my father would say.’ She shook her head. ‘My arms could barely reach right round the seal while I cut it.’ She looked at her hand. ‘The warm sensation of the blubber… and of the body.’ She looked down. ‘My father nudged the seal with his boot. He never really helped me. It’s women’s work, he would say. You’re a woman now.’ Her gaze disappeared in the deep-pile rug. ‘I knew that he saw me as a woman. Whenever I cut up an animal, I would think of him. Sometimes I would be covered in blood all over. In some strange way I enjoyed it.’

Jakob looked at his plate. He pushed his empty wineglass further onto the coffee table.

Lisbeth shook her head. ‘I talk a lot of nonsense. I’m sorry. I think I had better be going.’

‘It’s not nonsense,’ Jakob said, looking at her face. Her freckles and her black hair gleamed in the electric light. ‘Many people have deep wounds that no one ever sees. I’ll walk you home, if you don’t mind. It’s a dark and cold night.’

She smiled to him. ‘Thank you, but I’ve lived with this weather all my life.’

‘I don’t mind walking you home,’ he offered again. ‘Maybe we’ll see the northern lights.’ He had seen the northern lights many times, but she didn’t have to know that.

Lisbeth looked at his face. Then she reached up and kissed him lightly on his cheek. ‘Thank you.’

34

When Jakob returned after walking Lisbeth home, he could see from the path leading up to his house that someone had left a small bag on his doorhandle. He freed the bag from the handle and turned to look out into the night, where the snow lit up the darkness. There were too many footprints in the snow by his door for him to see if any of them were fresh. His fingers had detected immediately that the bag contained two reels of film.

Once inside, he kicked off his boots and pushed the door shut. He hung up his coat and cap on the old pine coat stand in the small hall.

‘Now, what’s going on here?’ he muttered to himself.

He picked up the box Karlo had brought in. It didn’t take him long to plug in the small grey projector and turn it on. The two reels were labelled 1 and 2, so he assumed that he should watch number one first. He glanced at the glass with Mortensen’s cheroot butt and fetched a clean glass from the kitchen. The aroma of whisky reached his nostrils before the taste spread inside his mouth and, for a brief moment, numbed his tongue before the heat exploded. He put the glass on the armrest and pressed the play button.

The film began rolling with a monotonous clicking sound, and the light flickered on the white wall in front of him.

The camera appeared to have been mounted in the corner of a large shipping container. The walls were covered with a metallic material that reminded him of tinfoil, but it was thicker, more substantial. The floor looked like plywood. Uneven sheets. From the ceiling hung a single naked light bulb that turned on and off all the time. Sometimes it would be dark for a few seconds. At other times for longer. The light was bright when it was on. Everything went pitch-black once it disappeared. It was stressful for his eyes to look at.

His fingers tightened around the glass on the armrest. The tinfoil room was completely empty. Except for one thing. In a corner furthest from the camera, a small girl was curled up. There were no sounds in the light and the darkness. Just the clicking rhythm of the projector in Jakob’s living room. The girl disappeared and came back again with the light. She didn’t have any shoes on. No boots. Only tights covering her legs. Red tights. Her dress was dark brown. It was covered by a green jacket that fitted her tightly. She held her arms close to her body. Her hands were by her mouth. She was gripping something dark and knitted. A hat. Pressing it to her face as if it were a teddy bear. She would chew the hat. Her eyes were closed. Her body twitched. The light coming and going clearly distressed her behind her eyelids.

The girl sat like this for the whole film, which lasted about twenty-five minutes. Afterwards there was darkness in his living room. The reel rotated with the loose filmstrip flapping.

Jakob was hyperventilating. He had never seen Najak but it had to be her. She had gone missing eleven days ago, and now someone had sent him a film of her. His thoughts were all jumbled up. There were no containers of that size in Godthåb right now. Very few large container ships called in here in the winter, especially given what the weather was like at the moment. Then he remembered the bag on the doorhandle. He jumped up from his armchair, found the bag and took out the second reel of film. Along with the film was a note that looked similar to the one that had been tied to the stone. If you tell anyone about this film, she dies. Stop your investigation or she dies.

He let the note slip from his hand and put the second reel on the projector. He drained his glass of Johnnie Walker in two big gulps and refilled it.

The film crackled and clicked like the first one. It was the same room. Tinfoil walls and plywood flooring. The naked light bulb dividing up the time. Najak curled up in a corner with her woolly hat pressed against her mouth. Her hair was more tangled and messier than in the first film. Her tights were stained with dirt.

Jakob jumped when the camera suddenly came to life. It moved towards the huddling girl. The light disappeared. Came back. Disappeared. She flinched even more. Shaking. The camera was very close to her now, and a hand reached out and snatched the hat from her.

Jakob jumped up, swiping the glass so hard from the armrest that it smashed against the wall.

Her mouth opened and it looked as if she was screaming. She buried her face in her hands. Her short fingers were stiff and quivering. Her lips sucked the skin on one hand. The film ended.

Jakob ran out into the hall and tore open his front door. ‘I’m going to bloody well kill you all!’ he roared.

Everything was quiet around the house. The frozen air settled around him. The night was black. The windows in all the houses were black. He looked over to where the shadow who had thrown the stone had come from. ‘I’m going to bloody well kill you all,’ he vowed quietly.

35

The frost intensified dramatically after the last hint of autumn warmth had soaked the town in slush for half a day. The cold returned with a vengeance and everything froze, even the sea around the more sheltered parts of the headland, and that meant it was a severe frost, because the morning and evening tides did their best to break up the ice and allow the moon to continue gazing at its own reflection in the black sea. And yet it turned to ice. Large, white sheets formed by layers of trapped, turquoise seawater.

The frozen water gained a foothold even in the centre of town, climbing up and down the buildings. In some places the icicles were so thick that not even a man could get his arms round them. The snow on the square between Hotel Godthåb, the police station and Brugseni was shovelled into high piles by a rusting yellow bulldozer, leaving the square itself open and clear.

Jakob took a sip of his coffee. He stared absent-mindedly at the black liquid. If he had trusted Mortensen more, he would have shown him the films, but he didn’t dare run the risk. The threats in the notes and the official indifference towards Najak made him fear that it would do her more harm than good, were he to open his mouth. She was alive for now, he kept telling himself. He didn’t know where she was. He didn’t know who she was with. But if he continued investigating the case—discreetly—he would catch a break eventually.

His eyes moved from his coffee across the many papers and files on his desk and out through the window, where his thoughts slipped past the orange supermarket walls and up towards the white peak of Store Malene and Hjortetakken’s stubby top. His gaze stopped abruptly and came crashing down to earth by the piles of snow near his window. He shifted so he could see past the mother-in-law’s tongue on the windowsill.

There was a small girl out on the square. All alone. Well hidden in a shabby, dark green coat with a hood and a black fur collar. On her back she had a black and orange satchel. Her hands were bare and as red as her cheeks, which he could just make out inside the hood.

‘Paneeraq,’ he whispered to himself, then he turned in his office chair to look at the others in the room. He wished that Karlo had been here, but he was on a job down by the harbour and it would take time to get hold of him. He looked back at the girl. She couldn’t just stand there. Why was she standing there? He knew that the other officers would complain if he brought her in, but he couldn’t leave her outside all on her own.

He took a deep breath and got up from his desk without looking at the others.

‘So, Pedersen,’ Benno called out, ‘are you off to see Lisbeth?’

Storm leered like an idiot. ‘Get me a cup as well, will you?’

‘It’s…’ Jakob pushed open the door to the reception area. ‘There’s a little girl outside in the cold. I think she wants to talk to me.’ The door closed behind him, and he stopped talking. He didn’t give a damn about them. About any of them. Except for Karlo. Karlo was the only Greenlandic police officer there, and the only one he could trust when a case got to him.

‘Paneeraq,’ he called out, even as he walked down the front steps. The cold crept through the fibres of his knitted jumper. ‘Paneeraq, what are you doing out here in the cold?’ He looked at her red fingers. ‘Why don’t you come inside for a bit?’

She didn’t move. She just stood there. Like a pillar of stone.

He bent down and looked at her face inside the fur-lined hood. ‘It’s far too cold for you to be out here, sweetheart.’

‘I don’t want to go home,’ she said quietly.

‘Come inside with me,’ Jakob said again. ‘And I’ll see what I can do about it.’ He struggled to force the last words up through his throat. What if there was nothing he could do for her? What if he had to send her home, even though she had asked him for help? ‘We’ll work something out—you come inside with me.’

He didn’t dare touch her, so he sufficed by pointing towards the door. ‘Lisbeth will get you some hot chocolate,’ he said. There was no way the child could be in the office with the other officers when Karlo wasn’t there, Jakob had already decided. Benno’s frequent derogatory remarks about Greenlanders made Jakob sick.

Paneeraq didn’t say anything else, but she took some small, tentative steps towards the door.

Jakob smiled. Not on the inside, but to her. Then he smiled imploringly at Lisbeth as he explained that Paneeraq had got very cold and needed a cup of hot chocolate. He smiled when Lisbeth got up to look after Paneeraq with a maternal gaze and the promise of yummy hot chocolate. And he smiled as he walked through the door of the chief of police, closed it behind him and accepted being enveloped in the stench of cigars that lingered in the room.

He continued to smile as he told Mortensen about Paneeraq. He still didn’t tell him about the films and Najak. What if her abductors carried out their threat and killed the girl because of him? He only allowed himself to talk about Paneeraq. Who she was. Her father. His well-founded suspicion that she was a victim of incest. Her limping. Her cry for help outside in the cold. He even smiled as Mortensen started getting het up, but only because his smile was so fixed at this point that he had no idea it was still plastered across his face.

‘This case,’ Mortensen practically shouted. ‘Dammit, Pedersen, as if we didn’t have enough problems with the gutted men, and now you come here… You have to drive the girl home. We can’t keep her here, can we? What the hell were you thinking?’

Jakob rubbed the scab on his forehead. ‘But, sir, that child is probably being raped every day. We can’t just turn a blind eye. There must be something we can do for her. We can’t let her down now that she has finally plucked up the courage to come here. She’s just a little girl, for God’s sake! If we had removed Najak, then she wouldn’t have… vanished into thin air.’ He stared down at his shoes.

‘That’s what life is like up here, Pedersen. You can feel sorry for them, but that’s all. There’s nothing we can do. It goes too deep. Drive her home.’

‘Is this a police station?’ Jakob exploded. The blood was boiling in his veins. ‘Or a slaughterhouse?’

‘That’s enough!’ Mortensen screamed so loudly that his high-pitched voice slipped into a falsetto shriek. ‘Have you completely lost your mind? You solve your murders and leave the politics to the rest of us.’

‘I’m trying to prevent murders!’ Jakob said, still shouting.

‘Are you really? Are you sure about that? You’re the one stomping around a slaughterhouse. After all, the murdered men are all from your so-called school survey. Eh? You drive that girl back to her parents, who are probably out of their minds with worry, and don’t you dare go near anything that involves children from now on. If I hear another word about those girls, I’ll suspend you immediately and put you on the first flight back to Denmark. Do you understand?’

Jakob stared briefly at the small, balding man. Then he turned on his heel without saying a word. He disappeared down the corridor and went out into the reception area, where Paneeraq had just finished her hot chocolate and had pushed back her hood, so her face was visible. Her eyes were black and round. Her cheeks still red. Her hair dark, smooth and short. She smiled cautiously to Lisbeth, who had given her the hot chocolate, and handed the cup back to her. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered politely.

‘I’ve found a place where you can stay for a little while,’ Jakob said to her, and in response got the same anxious smile from the girl that Lisbeth had received.

Lisbeth took his hand gently and gave it squeeze, nodding lightly. Then she let go.

He fetched his coat, his files and the notebook from his desk and took Paneeraq with him as he left the police station. There was no help to be had there, but even so, there was no way that girl was going home to her father.

36

The heating was turned up in the small living room, where an aroma of fried sausages and boiling potatoes had spread and now lay like an enticing, transparent quilt around the girl on the black sofa at the far end of the room. She was holding her maths exercise book. Her open satchel lay by her side. Jakob had spent more than two hours helping her get started on her homework, and when she finally understood it, she had continued doing sums in the book. Jakob had wondered whether they shouldn’t move on to another subject, but in a strange way it seemed as if the logic and repetition of maths were absolutely the right thing to calm their thoughts.

Paneeraq had decided that they should have sausages for dinner. He had asked her what she would like, and after a long pause she had replied: Sausages.

The curtains were closed. Outside, the dark had settled around the house and all of the town, and Jakob had decided to draw all the curtains so that no one could look in. He had even locked the front door, something he rarely did. After the murders and the stone with the threat, security had become a priority—and now, with the girl here, it was crucial.

The sausages sizzled in the frying pan. The potatoes were nearly ready. It wasn’t often that he cooked a proper hot meal, but he had been lucky today and got fresh sausages in the supermarket.

From the kitchen he could see Paneeraq on the sofa. She wasn’t very tall—about one metre twenty would be his guess. Shorter, perhaps. She had tied back her short hair with an elastic band she had found in his kitchen. He smiled to himself at the memory. She wore a dress that reached just below her knees, where a pair of thick yellow stockings took over. There were polka dots on her dress. Big dots in different colours. The dress was buttoned right up to her neck and had a Peter Pan collar.

She was too short to sit the way she did. Her feet couldn’t reach the floor, but stuck out into the air under the coffee table. Her eyes were deep into the maths book. One hand held the book, while the other controlled the pencil from sum to sum. Jakob was delighted to see her working. She was a bright child, and he was surprised at how swiftly she had picked up the logic behind her homework.

‘Are you hungry?’ he asked into the air.

She looked up from her homework and nodded. He could feel her eyes on him. They were filled with something that simultaneously contained calm and scepticism. Distance and hope.

He couldn’t possibly imagine how her day would normally have unfolded. Nor did he want to. He wanted to protect his thoughts from the images that invariably followed. Then he reproached himself for being so sensitive. What right did he have to shield himself from what this little girl had to subject her body and her mind to so often? Her thoughts must be plagued by nightmares, day and night. Jakob felt powerless and guilty. His hatred for her father knew no bounds. No limitations. As she sat there in her dress, doing her homework, it was absolutely beyond him that an adult would ever want to hurt her.

‘I’ll put two sausages on your plate,’ he went on, giving his attention back to the frying pan. He turned off the stove, drained the potatoes and added some cream to the fat in the frying pan. ‘Do you fancy eating your dinner on the sofa?’

She shrugged, and he could tell from her eyes that she didn’t know what to say.

‘Yes, let’s eat there,’ he said, answering his own question. ‘Would you like me to cut up your food for you?’

She shrugged again.

‘Does your mum cut up your food?’

The girl looked at him quizzically. A small frown appeared on the fine skin on her forehead. ‘Not often,’ she said.

‘Do you like it when your mum cuts your food into bite-size pieces?’

Her frown grew deeper and her eyes widened.

‘I mean, in small bits?’ he explained.

The wrinkle disappeared as she nodded quickly.

‘Then I’ll cut it up for you,’ Jakob said with a smile, and plated the food.

He covered her dress with a clean tea towel, put the plate on top of it and handed her a fork. His mother would have turned in her grave, had she seen it, but he had been eating like this for a long time now. Besides, he thought the girl might feel safer if she was allowed to stay on the sofa, rather than having to sit at the dining table with him. On the sofa she had a small spot where she had sat for several hours with her homework and been left alone.

She ate slowly. Carefully and tentatively. As if each bite needed examining before it could be swallowed. He tried eating at her pace, so she wouldn’t feel out of place, but found it hard because his tongue couldn’t wait so long before swallowing once it had tasted the food.

Halfway through the meal she looked up. ‘Will I be sleeping here?’

He hesitated and tried to read the expression in her eyes. ‘Yes—if you’d like to?’

She looked down at her plate and skewered a piece of potato. ‘I would like to. You are nice and you help me.’

‘You can sleep in the bedroom,’ he said. ‘In the big bed. I’ll be sleeping here in the living room, so you’ll be all on your own in there, but if you want anything, just give me a shout. I can easily hear you.’

Jakob knew very well that the situation wasn’t sustainable. Paneeraq couldn’t continue to stay with him. It was Lisbeth who had suggested that he bring her home when he’d asked her advice, and she had pointed out how odd it was that Paneeraq wasn’t scared of him, given that he was a man. Many girls here have a tough father because we’ve pretty much always lived in a tough culture, surrounded by a tough environment. Perhaps she’s just glad to have met a nice man. It’s good for her to experience that. Why don’t you take her home so that she can calm down and have a nice evening where she’s treated well? But be careful—if she gets a taste for it, she won’t want to go home. I’ve seen that happen so many times. She had said the latter with a glint in her eye. I found it hard enough to go home myself.

He had asked Lisbeth if she would like to join them, but she was hosting a kaffemik party for her sister. It’ll probably do you good as well, she had said, and now Paneeraq was ensconced in the middle of his sofa.

37

Jakob flicked through his book on rocks and fossils. He had decided that Paneeraq might like a bedtime story, and now she was snuggled up under the big, airy quilt in his bed, while he perched on the edge with his book.

The idea of reading aloud to her was a good one, but he had forgotten that his library contained mostly non-fiction and police magazines—and while educating the young about the value of police work mattered greatly to him, it probably didn’t appeal to an eleven-year-old girl. He had finally settled on his geology book, but was only halfway through Igaliku sandstone in the sedimentary rock chapter when he was forced to concede that it might not be of interest to the little girl either.

He slammed shut the book. ‘This is really boring, ilaa?’

She nodded and smiled feebly.

‘I don’t mind you saying so,’ he said. ‘In this house you can say whatever you like, and even I have to admit that rocks can be a bit dull.’

Her smile widened. She had pulled up the big, white quilt so far that her face was only visible above her nose.

‘Wait here,’ he said. ‘I’ll just get something from the living room.’

He returned with a fossilised sea urchin and the shell of a more recent sea urchin. He placed them both on the mattress next to her pillow so she could see them.

‘These are both sea urchins,’ he said, giving each of them a little push. ‘One became fossilised, while the other is like a seashell. The sea urchin itself was probably eaten by a seagull or a raven in the summer.’

Paneeraq looked curiously at the two objects on the mattress. The shell was lying on its back, so it was easy to see that the two objects were very similar. The furrow on her brow reappeared, and she looked up at Jakob.

‘You’re allowed to touch them,’ he said, nodding towards the fossil and the shell.

Her small fingers closed around first the fossil, and then more delicately around the shell. She turned them over and studied their backs and their stomachs. The fossil was solid, the shell hollow and delicate. ‘How did it turn into a stone?’

‘It was probably buried in the mud of a big ocean more than three hundred million years ago, and it was slowly fossilised and turned into flint stone. Its shell has long since disappeared, so what you’re looking at is the soft animal inside the shell.’

She didn’t say anything, but clutched the fossilised sea urchin.

‘It’s incredible, don’t you think, that these little creatures crawled around in the sea all those millions of years ago? And that they look and function in exactly the same way today as they did thirty or a hundred million years ago. On the beaches back home in Denmark, where I come from, you can bend down and pick up a living sea urchin with one hand and a fossilised one with the other.’

Her hand enclosed the fossil. ‘Can I turn into a stone?’

He rubbed one eye. ‘Yes, you can, as a matter of fact, but it would take many more years than there have been people on this earth, so no one would ever know.’

She smiled contentedly and nodded softly, while she opened and closed her hand. ‘It feels warm.’

‘It’s your hand warming it up. Rocks love heat, and if they get plenty of it, they become liquid.’

She looked at him in disbelief.

‘It’s the truth. Once, all of Greenland was liquid. It’s called lava and comes from the core of the earth.’ He could see that she recognised the word lava.

He stopped speaking, and she let her head sink back on the pillow, but she continued to clench the fossilised sea urchin in her hand. ‘You can keep it, if you like,’ Jakob said.

She looked at him without really daring to look.

‘It’s yours now,’ he added, and got up from the bed.

Her clenched fist disappeared under the quilt, as did the rest of her face. Only a little tuft of hair continued to stick out. He wished he could stroke her hair, but he didn’t dare touch her.

‘Good night,’ he whispered, and turned off the light. ‘I’ll leave the door ajar.’

The quilt said nothing. It didn’t even move.

Jakob carefully pulled the door to, leaving a gap. He went over to the sideboard and got out the projector. When he had brought Paneeraq back to his house, another bag had been hanging on the doorhandle. Jakob had removed it and opened the door as if nothing had happened. Through the thin plastic he could feel the box with the reel between his fingers, and had known that the contents were important. But he had set the bag aside and concentrated on Paneeraq’s homework and dinner instead.

Now he set up the small projector next to his armchair again, and mounted the new reel. He looked at the door to the bedroom for a long time before starting the projector. Light filled the room, as did the clicking sound from the motor, feeding the film from the reel through the heart of the projector.

The camera was static. Mounted in the corner that was facing Najak. The light came and went. Jakob jumped every time. Not because the light and the darkness were frightening in and of themselves, but because every interruption came without rhythm or order, and so felt like a shock. Because the little girl was still curled up in the far corner of the shiny tinfoil hell, which would alternately scream in light and reflection and then be lost in total darkness. Her body was scrunched up. Wrapped around itself. Her hair was messier. Uncombed. Rat-tailed. It was several days since the last recording, it would appear. Her feet were bare now. Her tights were gone. Her legs bare and stained with dirt. The seconds stood still. Najak looked lifeless.

Jakob tried to keep his gaze fixed on the glowing square with the girl in the corner. The room around him came and went in time with the light on Najak. He could see only a little of her face. She was chewing monotonously, sucking one hand. There was no other movement. Traces of tears on her cheek. Smeared. Dried.

The film kept on playing. It was the longest one so far.

Jakob got up and fetched himself a large whisky and four painkillers, before collapsing back into the armchair. The film continued playing, but there was no movement other than the light going on and off, and the child sucking her skin.

He disappeared inside himself. The film carried on. As did everything else. Without noticing it, he slipped into an uneasy, shallow slumber.

38

Jakob shot up from his armchair so fast that he nearly blacked out, but he grabbed the back of the armchair for support and regained his balance. The spots stopped dancing in front of his eyes. He could tell from the clock on the wall near the kitchen that it was ten-thirty in the evening. The reel had run out. Someone was knocking on the door and, still dazed, he looked towards the hall. It was the knocking that had woken him up. No one ever visited him at night. Especially not on a winter’s night when the cold was this fierce.

He looked about him, then quickly unplugged the projector and hid it in the sideboard. More knocking on the door. He took a few steps towards the hall.

There was another knock. This time it was hard and insistent, and Jakob felt his terror pulling at the cut on his forehead. He swore softly under his breath, and grimaced before he took the last few steps towards the door, which he unlocked and opened. The cold air swept inside immediately and enveloped his upper body, like the breath of an icy demon.

He recognised two of the three men outside, but the third, who was still standing with his fist raised to knock, he had never seen before. He was a broad, ruddy-faced man with messy red hair, a bushy red beard and two gruff, ice-blue eyes hidden under thick eyebrows. He wore an Icelandic sweater, jeans and black clog boots.

‘Jakob,’ one of the other two men said, putting his hand on the red-haired man’s shoulder to move him aside. ‘We’ll just come in for a moment.’

Jakob wanted to protest, but the three men had already pushed their way past him.

‘I’m sorry that you’ve had a wasted journey in this cold,’ Jakob said, following the three men into his living room. ‘But can’t it wait until tomorrow?’ His heart was pounding.

The two men stared at him, while the man with the red beard walked around, inspecting the furniture and the jigsaw puzzle on the table. Jakob knew one of the two men, a young Danish lawyer called Kjeld Abelsen. He was thin, bordering on gangly, and so light-skinned that the contrast between his black hair and his pale face made him look like a black-and-white photograph stripped of any softer shades. He was clenching his jaw so tightly that his lips almost disappeared, and his eyes were shiny and piercing. He had only been in Godthåb for a few years, but had already earned himself some status and respect. He had—in Jakob’s opinion—an uncanny ability to always know on which horse to bet.

The other man he recognised was Jørgen Emil Lyberth, and his round body and head made him Abelsen’s physical opposite. He was an Inuit, and one of the members of the Greenlandic Provincial Council who made the most noise when debating secession from Denmark and leaving the European Economic Community.

Jakob knew exactly what the two men represented, both individually and together, but he had no idea what they were doing in his house with a red-haired Icelander late one night with biting frost and wind. To the outside world, Lyberth and Abelsen were opposites in terms of politics and vision, but behind the scenes they were, as far as Jakob had worked out, a strangely secretive pair who might very well turn out not to sing the same songs in darkness as in daylight.

‘What do you want?’ Jakob demanded to know, unable to hide his irritation that the young men and their older, red-bearded attack dog had forced their way into his home.

‘Why don’t you sit down, Jakob,’ Abelsen said with a cold look.

‘I’m fine standing.’

‘I think you should, or I’ll have to ask our friend from the Faroe Islands to help you.’

Jakob looked at the robust man, who had moved close to him. ‘I’m fine standing,’ he reiterated angrily.

‘Suit yourself,’ Abelsen went on. ‘Then again, you’ve never seen him gut a pilot whale, but never mind, the fall will be the same wherever he drops you.’

Lyberth had sat down on the sofa, but he got up again. Abelsen looked towards him and made a quick gesture with one hand. Lyberth nodded grimly.

‘You have a nice home.’ Abelsen picked up a rock from a shelf and tapped it against his forehead. ‘But I see that you keep injuring yourself. Then again, being a police officer is a dangerous job, isn’t it? And we’re up to our necks in murders right now.’

Jakob thought frantically about the murders, the film reels and Najak. He did his best to keep an eye on the bedroom door and Paneeraq, while at the same time trying not to send even a fragment of his attention in that direction. ‘What’s this about?’

‘We have a conflict of interests, Pedersen,’ Abelsen said, almost without moving his narrow lips. ‘And you would do well to keep your nose out of our business. Some investigations end up being shelved, as you well know. In the public interest.’

‘I don’t follow.’

‘Wind up your investigation.’ Abelsen had walked right up to Jakob so their faces were close. ‘Conclude that the murders were committed by a Greenlandic man, and people will lose interest.’

‘But we don’t know that they were,’ Jakob objected, looking to Lyberth. ‘We can’t just pin the blame for three murders on an innocent man.’

‘Thomas Olesen from Block 16,’ Abelsen went on, still eyeballing Jakob. ‘There’s your killer. Pick him up tomorrow after the morning briefing.’

‘Thomas Olesen,’ Jakob exclaimed. ‘But he’s just a lonely drunk.’

‘Charge him with the murders and close the investigation tomorrow morning. Thomas Olesen?’ Abelsen snorted with contempt. ‘Who is going to miss him? He drinks, he gets into fights all the time, he’s known for being the first to pull his knife, and he can gut a seal like no one else. Bring him in and close the case so the rest of us can get on with our lives.’

‘I’m a police officer,’ Jakob said, his gaze jumping between the two men. ‘I’m not a mercenary or an executioner. What on earth do you think you’re doing? I’m going to have to talk to Mortensen about this.’

‘You charge Olesen with the murders tomorrow morning or suffer the consequences.’ Abelsen turned his upper body slightly, and nodded towards the Faroese man. ‘Either we make you the next victim or we charge you with the murders.’

‘Well, you clearly can’t do that,’ Jakob said, aware that his voice was quivering. His gaze shifted from Kjeld Abelsen’s eyes to his narrow lips, which looked even whiter and deader than usual. If he was right in his suspicions, these men might kill Najak. He clenched his fists, digging his nails into his skin while staring stiffly at the men, one after the other.

‘Jakob, he’s just an alcoholic hunter. He doesn’t matter.’

‘Everyone matters. We can’t just jail an innocent man so you can get political breathing space. I won’t be a part of it, and I’m not going to let it happen.’

‘Okay.’ Abelsen beckoned to the Faroese. ‘You’re finished, Jakob Pedersen. You’re a danger to Greenland.’

The broad Faroese with the piercing blue eyes reached Jakob in seconds. He grabbed Jakob’s neck with one hand and his right wrist with the other. Jakob was so stunned by the man’s strength and speed that he did nothing to defend himself.

The man released Jakob’s neck and ripped open his shirt, exposing his chest and stomach, while with his other hand he took out a knife. Before Jakob had time to think, the knife was pressing against his ribcage.

He breathed in short, shallow gasps. It was too late to fight back. His thoughts were chaotic. Najak, who was being held a prisoner. Paneeraq, who, more than anything in the world, mustn’t make the slightest sound. Not one. This wasn’t about politics or breathing space.

The room closed in on him. He could feel the three men. The knife against his skin. The furniture. Karlo sitting by the jigsaw puzzle. Karlo was missing from the living room now. The snow outside. The drumming dancer. The beat of the drum merged with the beating of his heart, only centimetres from the tip of the blade.

‘I’m a police officer,’ he croaked. ‘You can’t—’

‘It’s up to you,’ Abelsen cut him off. ‘You decide who lives and who dies.’