The Girl Without Skin

39

During the night Matthew had checked his mobile repeatedly, but there was nothing from Tupaarnaq. His thoughts kept returning to Lyberth’s part in everything, though the blood-soaked images Tupaarnaq had planted in his mind were a distraction.

It was light outside. He turned over in bed and reached for Jakob’s leather notebook, which was lying on the bedside table. Something in between the lines had got Lyberth killed, and now Tupaarnaq had been caught up in it, probably because she was an obvious scapegoat. She had nothing to do with the murder, Matthew was sure of it. The motive was to be found in Jakob’s notebook. Not directly, but because in it he had described something that someone had been prepared to kill to keep secret. Forty years ago as well as today.

He looked at the list of the girls. The lost girls. Maybe he could find them? Go back in time and discover the fates of the people Jakob had written about. The four men were all dead, but what about the girls? Next to the first victim’s daughter, Najak Rossing Lynge, Jakob had drawn a small cross and a question mark, but Matthew couldn’t be sure that she was dead. And then there was a near blank page about some films Jakob hadn’t felt able to write about. The notebook’s unanswered questions had lingered on in time after Jakob’s disappearance, but it should be possible to track down the girls. Especially Paneeraq Poulsen, whom Jakob had brought to his house.

Matthew didn’t have Ottesen’s mobile number, so he texted Malik asking him to ask Ottesen if any eight-millimetre films relating to the murders in 1973 had ever been found.

He checked his watch. Leiff must be at work now.

‘Hi, Matthew—what are you up to?’ Leiff sounded cheerful, as always. ‘You missed the morning briefing… again.’

‘No, I… Leiff, I was wondering, could you help me find some people who lived in Nuuk in 1973?’

‘You’re thinking about the people from the case I told you about, the four murders?’

‘Yes, that’s it.’

There was silence for a few seconds. ‘We’ll probably have to rummage through the Town Hall archives for that.’

‘Okay. Is that possible? I mean, right away.’

Leiff cleared his throat. ‘Yes,’ he began tentatively. ‘In theory, yes, but their archives from the seventies are even more chaotic than the ones here at the paper.’ His voice brightened up. ‘But listen, my wife works at the Town Hall, and she looked up some of them last week when we first asked about the murders. I’ll check with her. I’m sure she knows her way around every nook and cranny.’

40

Leiff and Matthew walked the short stretch from Sermitsiaq’s offices to the Town Hall. The rectangular building grew rust-brown, green and concrete-grey from one of the city centre’s T-junctions.

The sun shone warm and bright, as it had done yesterday, and there was nothing to suggest that autumn was coming. The arc of an almost cloudless firmament rested across the mountains except for a few flimsy, white tufts that stretched across the top of Mount Ukkusissat like snakeskins.

Matthew was dreading the phone call he would inevitably get once Lyberth’s body was discovered. If it hadn’t been found by tonight, he would have to do something. Lyberth couldn’t just lie there, rotting. It was unacceptable. The man had a family waiting for him, and the fact that Lyberth was lying there hidden away, crucified and gutted, wouldn’t make it any easier for them. Matthew was also very worried about Tupaarnaq by now. Perhaps she had gone back to her apartment. Or maybe far away. He looked down at his feet and kicked a pebble out of the way.

‘We’ll take the door to the right,’ Leiff said. ‘The main door is closed until noon.’

Matthew pressed his hand against his chest and breathed lightly a couple of times as he followed Leiff up towards the tall concrete building, whose height and pale colour were in stark contrast to the dark-brown and green extension.

‘Are you all right?’ Leiff said, looking at the hand Matthew was pressing against his chest. ‘You don’t seem yourself.’

Above them, Greenland’s flag flapped alongside Denmark’s, two red and white sails against the deep blue sky.

‘I’m all right,’ Matthew said, lowering his hand. ‘I think I got too much fresh air yesterday… I’m all right.’

Leiff put his hand on Matthew’s shoulder. ‘I’ve lived here for sixty years,’ he said, his voice mild and warm. ‘Every year new Danes arrive, their heads full of themselves and their romantic dreams about Nuuk and nature. Six months later more than half of them are back in Denmark—for good.’ He patted Matthew’s shoulder. ‘Danes who actually care enough to dig up a cold case and attack deep-rooted problems are few and far between… I’m always here for you, if you want something.’

‘Thank you,’ Matthew said. The way things were going, he couldn’t even be sure if he would still be in Nuuk next week, let alone in six months. If Tupaarnaq went down for Lyberth’s murder, he would be dragged down with her and he would be finished here.

The glass door opened inwards and took them into a narrow but tall corridor lined with glass and grey concrete. Leiff greeted a couple of women cheerfully and patted a young man on his shoulder. From the angular hall they continued into a low passage with glass walls that terminated in a new, bigger hall two floors high. In the middle of the hall was a shallow, rectangular turquoise basin containing clean water. An old leather kayak was suspended above the basin.

‘We’re going up those stairs over there,’ Leiff said, pointing to the far side of the basin.

‘Did she tell you what she has found?’ Matthew’s gaze lingered briefly on an oil painting of a mountainous area in a soft, arctic winter light.

‘No, but we’re about to find out. Have you made any progress since we last spoke?’

‘I don’t know.’ Matthew looked down at the orange-brown tiles below them. ‘I think I’m going round in circles, so I’m hoping that we can track down someone from the seventies case—someone who’s still alive.’

‘Fingers crossed.’ Leiff’s gaze followed Matthew’s down to the tiles. ‘Did you really not bring anything other than those sneakers?’

Matthew shook his head. ‘I promise to get myself a pair of boots soon.’

‘Hi, guys.’ A tall, sturdy woman popped her head over the white-painted wrought-iron bannister. A long row of slanted windows in the vaulted ceiling cast so much light over the steps and the basin that the hall felt more like an atrium.

‘Hi,’ Leiff called out and waved to her once. He turned to Matthew. ‘This is my wife, Ivalo.’

‘I’m Matthew,’ Matthew said, sticking out his hand as they reached her.

‘And I’m Ivalo,’ she said, and showed them into her office. ‘Nice to meet you, given that I missed you when you came round for dinner. I’ve looked up the names Leiff sent me, and I have to say that there wasn’t much, but I found a few things. Do sit down.’ Her fingers tapped the keyboard. ‘It’s only recently that we’re starting to get a proper handle on what data we have here. It’s all thanks to a series of IT grants.’ She shook her head. ‘You won’t believe this, but before computerisation we had no real cross-referencing of basic information, so not only was it difficult for people to have their cases dealt with efficiently, it was also easy for people to disappear. Especially anyone whose details were still on paper. We didn’t bring the past with us when we went digital. However, all is not lost because the information is still in the archives. All you need is an old woman who knows where to look, and I’m that old woman.’

Matthew found it difficult to judge Ivalo’s age, but thought she was probably around sixty. She was taller than Leiff and more robust. Not fat, just robust. Her hair was black and cut in a short, wavy style.

‘I found them all in the basement archives, but only one of them has made it to our new IT system. All the men died in ’73, and I can find absolutely no trace of Jakob Pedersen after that year, but as far as I recall he was a police officer and was regarded as deceased. Isn’t that right, Leiff?’

‘Yes, I believe so. He disappeared during the investigation into the killings, and when neither he nor his body was found, he was presumed dead. Murdered. As you know, the whole thing was very suspicious. Some people thought that he was the killer, others that the murderer had killed him.’ Leiff shrugged. ‘Whatever the truth, neither the murders nor Pedersen’s disappearance was ever solved, and nobody seems to have wanted to delve deeper into it until you came along.’

Matthew was tempted to tell them about the notebook, but decided to keep the information to himself for a little longer.

‘It was pretty much the same when I started looking for the girls,’ Ivalo said, unprompted. ‘Two of them died of cancer when they were still in their early thirties, while one vanished without a trace in November 1973. The last girl also disappeared, but she turned up again. We have no information on her in the period from 1973 up until 2012, when she suddenly reappeared here in Nuuk, saying she had just moved here. She claims to have lived in a village one hundred and thirty kilometres south of here, but even so I still can’t find anything on her between 1973 and 2012. Like I said, it’s only recently that we have digitalised our basic data, and we still have many villages to add—maybe we’ll never get round to it. So she could easily have lived in some coastal village for all those years. She had no parents, as they died shortly before she herself went missing.’

‘They were killed,’ Leiff corrected her. ‘They were buried here in Nuuk.’

‘And the girl is in Nuuk now?’ Matthew was on the edge of his seat. ‘She’s alive?’

‘Yes—I’ve made a note of her address for you.’ She handed him a piece of paper.

Paneeraq Poulsen, it said at the top. Matthew looked out of the window by Ivalo’s desk. The daughter of the fourth victim. The one with a heart next to her name in Jakob’s notebook. ‘Thank you so much. You’ve been a huge help.’ He hesitated. ‘Are you sure it’s the right person?’

‘Yes. I don’t believe there’s any doubt about that.’

‘Paneeraq,’ Matthew whispered to himself. She would be over fifty years old now, and no longer a little girl hiding under Jakob’s blankets with her sea urchin.

Outside the windows, the weather had changed dramatically—more so in such a short space of time than any place Matthew had ever experienced. The sky had turned from blue to black, and the rain was sheeting down in dense, grey curtains.

‘What’s on your mind?’

Leiff’s voice scattered Matthew’s thoughts.

‘Sorry, I… I… What did you just say?’

‘That you’ll get your feet wet in this weather.’

‘Yes—how did that happen? Only a minute ago it was sunny.’

‘The North Atlantic is more fickle than a newly married Greenlandic woman,’ Leiff chuckled.

Ivalo looked at him sternly. ‘Watch it!’ She shook her head, then bent down to examine Matthew’s sneakers. ‘Are those your only shoes?’

‘Yes… I haven’t got round to buying anything else yet, but I’m sure I’ll be all right. I wear these all year round.’

‘I’m sure you do, my dear—in Denmark, but not in Greenland. You’ve no idea how quickly it can turn cold and wet here.’

‘Or how deep the snow can be,’ Leiff added.

‘What size are you?’ Ivalo was looking at her husband. ‘Leiff, you must have some boots in the basement? Let’s see if you have a pair that would fit Matthew.’

Matthew looked at his sneakers. ‘I can just go and buy myself a pair in the Nuuk Centre, if it becomes necessary.’

‘It has just become necessary,’ Ivalo said. ‘But let me check our basement first. There’s no need to spend money on new ones, if Leiff has a pair that will fit you.’

‘Why don’t we drive home and take a look now?’ Leiff said, his voice brightening up. ‘Anyway, it’s time for lunch.’

Matthew’s mobile buzzed in his pocket, and he quickly took it out. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said to no one in particular. ‘I’ve just got an email, and I was expecting—’ He ground to a halt. In his inbox was an email from jelly@hotmail.com, but there was no information about the sender other than a name at the bottom of the message.

The email had been sent only ten minutes ago.

‘Bad news?’ Leiff asked him.

‘No, it… Sorry, it just threw me.’

‘Was it work?’

‘No, it was someone I haven’t heard from in a long time, so it caught me off-guard. Never mind—it really doesn’t matter.’ He felt a shiver run down his spine.

‘Yes, that can give you a bit of a shock,’ Leiff said, smiling, while he took out a note and handed it to Matthew. ‘I left this on your desk today, but as you didn’t come into the office, I brought it with me instead.’ It was an address scribbled on a piece of paper, just like Ivalo’s note, and below it the words: I think your father lived with this woman for a long time.

‘Eh?’ Matthew burst out. ‘Are you serious? He… I…’

‘Give it a try,’ Leiff went on. ‘It’s just an address, but you never know.’

41

Less than thirty minutes later Matthew was dropped off outside his building with two pairs of boots in a bag. A pair made from black leather and a pair of blue Sorels that had never been worn. Leiff continued to the office to let them know that Matthew would be working from home on his story about the information they had unearthed from the Town Hall archives. This was technically true, but the moment Matthew got in, he put on the Sorel boots and went straight to Tupaarnaq’s apartment. The addresses on the two pieces of paper were burning a hole in his pocket, but they could wait. Or they could wait more than Tupaarnaq and the recently deceased Lyberth, who was apparently still sending emails.

Rather than walk back through the town, around Tele-Posthuset and down Samuel Kleinschmidtip Aqqutaa, he took the footpath behind the blue community hall and emerged close to Lyngby-Tårbæksvej, which ran past a large area of low, white apartment blocks before reaching Block 17.

The weather was still bad, and he soon felt the water penetrating every opening in his clothing. He wasn’t even halfway there by the time his jacket and trousers were soaked. Only his feet in his new boots remained dry.

He could see the Atlantic Ocean most of the way, but it was grey and hazy due to the dense rain that fell between the houses from moisture-rich, foggy clouds. The water soaked his head and dripped from his hair and nose.

It was only one o’clock in the afternoon, but the cloud cover over Nuuk was so thick that it felt more like early evening. Water swept in from all sides. The wind tossed the fog and the water around. It tore at his jacket and he had to lean into the gusts so as not to be knocked over.

The rain and the wind also tore at the damaged doors and howled up the stairwell leading to Tupaarnaq’s apartment. On the first floor, where some of the glass in the door to the gallery was missing, there were puddles of water on the floor. There was a heavy, clammy smell. Like damp cardboard, or wet mortar.

The fingers of his right hand closed around the cold steel handle on the door to Tupaarnaq’s apartment. The handle responded. It moved down with a quiet, light click as the locking mechanism let go of the doorframe.

Matthew’s heart was pounding. His blood was roaring, swelling the veins under the skin on his hands and arms. He swallowed a couple of times and forced himself to slow his breathing.

The hallway was bleak. As empty as if no one had ever lived in this place. On either side of him were two closed doors, while the middle door was open. It was from there that the sparse light entered the small space. He closed the front door behind him, almost without making a noise, and listened for any sounds. The wind was still howling, but not as crazily as out in the stairwell.

He wanted to leave. Reverse out of the door. Walk backwards all the way down the stairs and far, far away.

The apartment smelled of sewage. Sewage and damp. He closed his eyes and listened. He stood very still, taking deep breaths. It was so quiet. So empty. He couldn’t imagine how anyone else but him could be here. And certainly not a dead body. Nor could he smell death. Death smelled differently. It was dry. Medicinal. Not rotting. It is an indeterminate smell seeping out of every pore only minutes after the blood has stopped circulating. Colour fades from the skin. Everything turns grey. Then the smell arrives. He had seen it with Tine in the wrecked car. Felt it in the ambulance. He was getting that sensation now.

A door slammed in the stairwell and he almost jumped out of his skin. He looked over his shoulder in order to see the front door. The sound of stomping boots on the stairs grew louder, then rapidly faded. Matthew turned back towards the light in the living room and entered it.

Without thinking, he took out a cigarette from the packet in his jeans pocket and lit it. The warm smoke slipped deep into his lungs. ‘Oh, shit,’ he whispered, and took another drag so deep that he ended up coughing up the smoke.

Lyberth was positioned like a Christ figure, with a big nail bashed through each palm. His palms were facing upwards and were filled with dark, congealed blood. The flesh around his nails was frayed.

He had been a short, compact man with stumpy legs and a fat belly. Now he had been gutted. His skin, fat and flesh had been pulled aside and nailed to the floor so that his belly opened up like a crater. Inside, only the pale bones and the muddy, dark flesh remained. Everything else was gone. A coagulating brown lake surrounded the body. But no intestines. When Tupaarnaq had told him about the dead Lyberth on her floor, his abdomen hadn’t been nailed to the wooden floorboards; she had described how the dead man’s intestines were lying around him. Nor had she said anything about there being a sock in his mouth or a piece of fabric draped over his eyes. She had said that his mouth had been smeared in blood and saliva, and the blood vessels in his eyes had burst.

A flimsy fraying cloth was flapping outside on the balcony. It had probably hung there in all kinds of weather for years. The light played with the holes torn in the sun-bleached fabric and cast fleeting shadows and patterns across the wooden floor around Lyberth. Apart from the shadows, there was nothing in the living room. This apartment stood empty, as did so many others in these blocks, which had been condemned due to mould.

Suddenly Matthew caught a glimpse of a face on the balcony. For the second time he nearly jumped out of his skin, and he ducked immediately. The face was gone as quickly as it had appeared, and the flapping curtain had obscured every recognisable feature in the brief second the face had been visible.

Matthew turned and stared at the front door. He knew that the balcony reached as far as the kitchen door, and that it was possible to reach the hall that connected the living room and the front door through the kitchen.

His eyes swept across Lyberth’s bloated and emptied abdomen.

Footsteps in the kitchen caused him to look up. They were rapid. Running feet. His heart beat wildly in his chest.

‘Hello?’ he called, and cleared his throat. ‘Tupaarnaq?’

The front door slammed. Matthew ran towards the noise. The hall was empty. The kitchen was empty. He ran outside to the gallery. Somewhere below him he could hear footsteps jumping down the stairs.

He bent down and picked up a damp cloth lying on the gallery floor, then went back to Tupaarnaq’s apartment, where he opened the door he guessed led to the bathroom. He dropped his cigarette butt into the toilet bowl and lit another one. Then he tore off a large wad of toilet paper from the roll and started walking through the apartment and wiping off any possible fingerprints. Every handle, door surface, kitchen cupboard. Including Lyberth’s skin. He looked in every cupboard in every room, but found no trace of Tupaarnaq. Not one. Finally, he flushed the cigarette butts, the toilet paper and the cloth down the toilet.

On his way out of the apartment block, he paused on the first floor and took out his mobile to reread the email from jelly@hotmail. com. Then he pressed reply, and started typing with one finger:

Next he opened a web browser and went to jubii.dk, where he created a new account and wrote:

As soon as he had sent the email to Nuuk Police, he deleted the account.

At the bottom of the stairwell, a man was sitting up against the wall on piles of junk mail and old newspapers. He looked to be in his mid-fifties, but it was hard to tell as he was wrapped in several layers of filthy clothing, and his face was grimy and weather-beaten.

‘Piss off home to Denmark,’ the man grunted as Matthew went past. His eyes followed the cigarette on its way to Matthew’s mouth. ‘Give us one,’ he said.

Matthew hesitated and took another drag. The man hadn’t been here when he arrived. Then he took out his cigarette packet and gave it to him. ‘You can have all of them, but if anyone asks, I was never here—understand?’

The man nodded as he pushed open the packet. Fifteen cigarettes were left in it.

‘Did you see someone run past just now? A woman, possibly? No hair?’

The man on the floor shook his head as he took out a cigarette. ‘I won’t tell anyone.’

Matthew’s mobile buzzed in his pocket. He nodded to the man and pushed open the door. ‘Yes?’

‘It’s Tupaarnaq. Can you pick me up from the police station?’

‘Yes… Pick you up? Why?’

‘The idiots have brought me in again. They just don’t get it, morons.’

Matthew looked up across Block 17. ‘Why have they arrested you?’

‘I can’t be bothered to explain that now. So are you coming or what? They’ll let me go as long as someone agrees to keep an eye on me… and I don’t know anyone else.’

42

Ottesen was the first person Matthew met at the police station. The officer smiled as he shook his head. ‘I get where you’re coming from, Matt Cave, but be careful. She’s a she-wolf.’

‘A she-wolf?’ Matthew echoed.

‘She’s a wild one. I would watch my back if I were you.’ Ottesen hesitated and tilted his head. ‘It was her who bit Ulrik the first time we arrested her.’

‘What happened?’

‘We were chasing her across the rocks… she runs like an arctic hare. Anyway, we reached the edge of the rocks, and I guess the drop was too steep so she turned around and slumped to her knees… just like one of those Olympic sprinters. And when Ulrik tried to grab her, she lunged at him with such force that they rolled a fair way down the rocks, and then she bit him. We heard them both snarling like wild animals.’

Matthew rubbed his upper lip. ‘So what has she done this time?’

‘She beat up a man behind Brugseni. She wanted us to arrest him because she had seen him groping his daughter, but there were no other witnesses and the girl clammed up. In the end we had no choice but to bring Tupaarnaq in so that she could calm down. We never intended to keep her very long.’ He patted Matthew on the shoulder. ‘Are you getting somewhere with your story?’

‘I’ve been out and about looking for information. I think I might be close to finding a witness. Fingers crossed.’

‘A witness? I hope you’ll keep me in the loop.’

Matthew nodded. ‘When I asked you about the eight-millimetre films and the 1973 case… are you absolutely sure you’ve never seen any film reels here at the station?’

‘Totally,’ Ottesen said. ‘Now, I can’t know what happened forty years ago, obviously, but I’ve never heard about any films, and I’m sure we haven’t got them now.’

‘Okay,’ Matthew said. His gaze wandered past Ottesen without ending up anywhere.

‘Are you all right?’

Matthew shook his head lightly. ‘Yes, yes.’

‘Good. I’ll go and get the she-wolf,’ Ottesen said with another smile, and he disappeared through the door to the corridor where Matthew and Malik had met with him earlier.

Matthew could hear her footsteps in the corridor before the door was even opened. Angry footsteps attacking the floor.

‘She’s all yours,’ Ottesen said with a friendly sweep of his arm towards the double doors.

‘I’m not anyone’s,’ Tupaarnaq snarled. ‘Can I go now?’

‘Yes,’ Ottesen said. ‘Absolutely, but a word of friendly advice: it’s a short road back to prison for someone who has only just been released.’

She eyeballed him until he looked away.

Tupaarnaq shoved Matthew aside and pushed open the glass door so hard it banged against the porch outside.

Matthew looked wearily at Ottesen, then traipsed after the incandescent woman, who was already well ahead of him. ‘Where are you going?’ he called out to her.

‘To talk to a man.’

‘About what?’

‘That’s none of your business.’

‘I went to take a look at Lyberth.’

‘Idiot. Why?’

‘He can’t just lie there, and they haven’t found him yet.’

‘I’d guessed as much, you halfwit, or those morons at the station would never have let me go.’

‘I’ve emailed the police to tell them where he is.’

‘You really are an idiot.’ She stopped for a moment and slapped his forehead hard with the palm of her hand. ‘What if they had found him while I was still in custody? Eh? You really don’t think things through, do you, caveman?’

‘How was I to know you’d beaten someone up? I thought we had agreed to keep a low profile.’

‘And you think emailing the police telling them that their venerated statesman and major pervert lies murdered in my apartment is keeping a low profile?’ She slapped Matthew’s forehead another three times. ‘I’ve just spent twelve years in prison for killing some other sick bastard who couldn’t keep his disgusting dick in his pants, for fuck’s sake.’ She spun around and continued her furious march towards the low housing blocks in the distance.

Someone had written ‘Fuck the state’ with green spray paint next to the door they went through. She continued up the stairs. Her strides were so long that she took the steps two at a time. She stopped on the second floor and checked the name on the letterbox before she started banging on the door.

‘How did you know his name?’ Matthew wheezed.

‘The other officer who attended mentioned it, and I bet there aren’t many men called Sakkak Biilmann living around here.’

Matthew didn’t have time to say anything else before the door was opened.

‘Is Sakkak in?’ Tupaarnaq demanded to know.

The short woman who had appeared in the doorway nodded quietly, then looked anxiously up and down Tupaarnaq’s tattooed arms, where the two skulls snarled at her.

‘Good,’ Tupaarnaq hissed and pushed the woman aside.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Matthew exclaimed and grabbed the woman, who was about to fall over.

‘What does she want from us?’ the woman whispered.

Matthew shook his head. ‘Not much, I hope. Did your husband go into town with your daughter today?’

The woman nodded. ‘Yes, and he was angry when he got home because some drunken thugs had pushed him into a ditch.’

Matthew could hear furniture being upended in the next room. He let go of the woman and rushed inside. Tupaarnaq had knocked over Sakkak Biilmann, who was lying on the floor beneath her, shrieking. She had a firm grip on his throat with one hand and was punching him with the other. His face glowed red from the beating and the lack of oxygen. Matthew had no idea what the man on the floor was saying, but he could tell from his panic that he was struggling for air.

‘If you ever touch your daughter again,’ Tupaarnaq screamed at him, ‘I’ll come back and kill you. And that’s not an idle threat. I’ll be watching you. Every day. One wrong move and you’re dead. Got it?’

The man yelped, but didn’t say anything.

Her hand reached across to his groin and gripped his testicles through his trousers. She squeezed them so hard that his yelp turned into the howl of a dying animal. Matthew watched her fingers tighten ever more. The man continued to scream, and then started to cry. Snot flowed from his nose as he whined and squirmed. She jerked her hand violently from side to side before getting up.

Whimpering, the man coiled into a foetal position. He was trembling as he rocked himself back and forth.

‘Touch her again,’ Tupaarnaq hissed, kicking his ribs hard with her booted foot, ‘and you’re a dead man, you piece of shit.’

43

Outside the apartment block, Matthew stopped and looked around. ‘What’s this place called?’

‘You mean the area?’

‘Yes.’

‘Radiofjeldet, I believe.’

Matthew took out Leiff’s note and handed it to her. ‘Then we’re not far from this woman.’

‘What about her?’

‘Someone from work gave me this address. He thinks my father used to live with her.’

‘Your father?’

Matthew shrugged. ‘He disappeared when I was four years old. My mother and I never heard from him again. Someone from the paper offered to look into it, and earlier today he gave me this address.’

‘But why on earth would your father be in Nuuk?’

‘He was stationed at the Thule air base. That was where my mother met him.’ Matthew looked down at the paving slabs. ‘I was actually born in Thule, as it happens.’

‘You’re kidding me?’ Tupaarnaq nudged his shoulder. ‘You’re made in Greenland? Shut up! You’re a dark horse.’

He returned her smile cautiously. ‘I was thinking of going to see her.’

‘And so you should.’ Her brow furrowed. ‘That is, if you can control… what’s going on inside.’

Matthew nodded distantly. ‘I stopped being angry when… nothing mattered. Including him.’

‘Do you want to see him—if he’s still alive?’

‘Yes… I’m just not sure if I want him back in my life after all these years.’

‘You have to go see her,’ Tupaarnaq said, looking up at the sky. ‘I hate men. I hate fathers. But that’s just me.’ She let out a quick sigh. ‘In ten years you’ll hate yourself if you don’t knock on that door, now that you know it’s there.’ She patted his shoulder. ‘I’ll catch you later. It’s only two blocks from here.’

He watched her back as she disappeared down the path. The black boots. The black combat trousers. The dark jumper. At the end of the path she gestured with her right arm towards the next apartment block, while she herself turned left without looking back. Matthew shook his head. He hadn’t kept his promise to Ottesen to keep an eye on Tupaarnaq very long.

Soon Matthew was walking across the rocks between the buildings, and before long he was standing outside the stairwell where Else Kreutzmann lived.

He had only knocked twice when the brown door opened. A petite woman peered out. She had salt-and-pepper hair and wore spectacles with oval lenses. She looked Matthew up and down before her eyes settled on his face. ‘Yes?’

‘Are you Else Kreutzmann?’

‘Yes.’

‘I got your name from a friend.’ Matthew shook his head. ‘Forgive me. My name is Matthew Cave, I work for Sermitsiaq and I live here in Nuuk. I’ve been told you might know my father?’

Else looked at him. ‘Your name is Cave?’

Matthew nodded. ‘Yes. Matthew Cave. My father’s name was Thomas Cave, but I haven’t seen him since I was four years old.’

‘You had better come in,’ she said with a weary sigh, and turned around.

Matthew followed her through a narrow passage and into a rectangular kitchen with a small table and two chairs.

‘Can I get you anything?’ she said, looking across the kitchen table, which, apart from some plastic tubs, a knife block and a microwave oven, was empty.

He shook his head. ‘No, thank you, but it’s kind of you to offer. I hope you don’t mind me coming here. I thought he might be here as well—Tom, I mean.’

She found a tin from a tall cupboard, put it on the table, pushed open the lid and took out a biscuit. ‘No, he’s not here, and it’s been a very long time since I last saw him.’

Matthew looked down at the smooth white tabletop.

‘He never mentioned a son,’ she went on. ‘Not once during the almost ten years I knew him… Have a biscuit.’

‘He was stationed at the Thule air base,’ Matthew said. ‘He was a soldier. We lived there until I was four years old, then my mother and I moved to Denmark. The plan was that he would follow us.’

‘That sounds just like him.’ She looked into Matthew’s eyes. ‘Not that I had any doubts. When I opened the door, I knew immediately.’

Matthew smiled. ‘The eye?’

She nodded. ‘Yes. There’s no doubt that the two of you are related.’

Matthew looked away again. ‘The last time I saw him was in 1990.’

‘That was when he came to Nuuk,’ Else said. ‘I knew him for almost ten years, then he disappeared. I’m sorry he never got in touch with you. I didn’t realise he had another family.’

‘That’s okay.’

‘He was always running away from something, so perhaps it should have crossed my mind. His invisibility.’

‘What do you mean?’

She sighed as she helped herself to another biscuit. ‘He was hiding from the army… the US Army. I don’t know why, but he was certainly hiding, always working under a false name. He never told the authorities his address.’

‘What did he do for a living?’

‘Well, while he was here in Nuuk, it was mostly cash-in-hand jobs. Sometimes it would be carpentry, other times he would work on the trawlers. But he made good money, so that was never a problem. He was strong and a hard worker.’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t know what he did when he was in the army, but it troubled him—often he’d be in a world of his own.’ She looked at Matthew. ‘Then again, he could have been thinking about you. I don’t know.’

‘But he never mentioned me? Or my mother?’

‘I genuinely don’t think I’m wrong when I tell you that I never heard him utter a word about the time before I met him.’ She glanced at her watch and then at Matthew. ‘I’m sorry, but I need to be somewhere. I was just getting ready to go out when you knocked.’

Matthew leapt up from his chair. ‘Yes, I need to get going too. I… I was just curious.’

Else looked at him and ran a tired hand across her face. ‘Hold on.’ She turned around and removed a picture from the fridge door. ‘This is my daughter, Arnaq,’ she said, passing the picture to Matthew.

He took it and studied the young girl. She seemed taller than her mother, and with hair a little lighter.

‘We had her in ’98, Tom and I. He left us two years later.’

Matthew closed his eyes. He could feel icy shivers running up and down his arms and his back.

‘She’s at school in Denmark, but if you want me to I can tell you more about her.’

Matthew slumped. His throat felt constricted and closed.

‘Give me your number, if you like,’ Else continued. ‘And we’ll see.’

Matthew nodded.