‘Thanks, I’d really like that,’ Matthew said. He reached for the cup with the cigarette butts and got up from the floor.
‘Matthew Cave—now that’s a funny name for a Dane,’ Leiff said.
‘My father was an American soldier,’ Matthew said. ‘I got my name from him… along with my quirky eye.’
‘What you call quirky sounds shamanic to me,’ Leiff said. ‘An eye that can see into two worlds.’
‘Thanks, but I think it’s just a quirky eye.’
‘Is that what your father would say?’
Matthew shook his head. ‘I don’t know. He disappeared shortly after my fourth birthday.’
‘Where was he stationed?’
‘At the air base in Thule, which is where he met my mother.’ Matthew smiled. ‘I was actually born in Greenland. Crazy, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ Leiff said. ‘But you’ve stirred my curiosity now. I’m like that. Did he stay up here?’
Matthew shrugged. ‘I’m not sure. I believe he was in Nuuk at the time, and that he was going to join me and my mother in Denmark, but he never turned up. My mother had no idea what had happened to him, or where he’d gone. It’s a big world, I guess.’
‘Yes, but Nuuk is a small place. When was this?’
‘The last news we had from him was a postcard sent from Nuuk in August 1990.’
‘And what was his name?’
‘His name?’ Matthew hesitated and looked down. ‘His name was Thomas. Tom Cave.’
‘I love a mystery,’ Leiff said. ‘Mind if I take a look and see if I can find him?’
‘No, I don’t. But I doubt he’s still alive.’
‘You may be right,’ Leiff said. ‘But let’s wait and see. People up here have a habit of disappearing, but they pretty much always turn up again.’
11
The body of Ari Rossing Lynge was discovered on Tuesday last week, but Godthåb Police have only now released the information to the press. Sermitsiaq has learned that his death was particularly brutaclass="underline" Rossing Lynge was murdered and then gutted as if he were prey. Here at Sermitsiaq we have decided not to go into further detail, but on behalf of Godthåb Police we have agreed to report this killing, as well as two similar killings in Block P. Godthåb Police urge anyone with information to contribute to the case to get in touch with them. Please contact Jakob Pedersen at the Godthåb police station. We are publishing the full names of the three murdered men, along with pictures taken of them while they were alive.
Matthew put the article on the coffee table and reached for the postmortem reports. After dinner with Leiff, he had returned to the basement and spent most of the night tracking down the relevant issues of the paper. He had eventually managed to compile all of November 1973, then he brought the papers home with him in the early morning hours when he had started to tire.
There were four post-mortem reports, but only three victims were mentioned in the newspaper article he’d found. The last man had been killed after the article was published.
He arranged the reports side by side on the coffee table. Four men. Three of them had a face. Matthew marked any recurring words in the reports with a yellow highlighter, trying to form an image of the victims in his mind’s eye.
The men were all Greenlandic and had lived in Block P. They were aged between thirty and forty years, and there was no mention of any unusual features. They were, he presumed, men who had grown up in Inuit villages and spent more time hunting and fishing than going to school. Nor was there anything unusual about the men’s height and chest measurements. They were smaller than your average Danish man, but that was to be expected.
Only the manner of the men’s deaths was remarkable. All four had been flayed and gutted from the groin to the breastbone, and their insides cut from their body with a sharp tool—an ulo, according to the police investigation. So the intestines hadn’t been ripped from their bodies, but cut free.
In the final report, which had been requested by a different police officer to the first three, several observations were listed. On closer examination, there was evidence that the last two victims had had a soft object stuffed into their mouths during the attacks. The earlier victims could not be examined for similar evidence as they had already been cremated. Further examination of the last two victims also suggested that the men had been gutted and had several of their internal organs removed while they were still alive. The skin, however, had definitely been flayed from their bodies after the intestines had been cut out.
His mobile buzzed and Matthew quickly answered it.
‘Sounds like there might be a witness to the killing on the ice cap,’ his editor said. ‘Seeing as you were out there, I thought you might be interested.’
‘What do you have in mind?’
‘I want you to find him and hear what he has to say. He’s a fisherman, and as far as I can gather he saw a man come ashore early this morning, covered in blood and carrying a black sack.’
‘And where will I find him?’
‘I believe he called the police while he was still at sea, but his boat will dock in about an hour. It’s down by the little harbour behind the public swimming pool. Could you check it out? Not many boats come in there, so you can’t miss him.’
Matthew rang off, got up and opened the balcony door while he lit a cigarette. A cool mist brushed his face and naked upper body before finding its way deep into his lungs. The fog came and went between the buildings.
He placed both hands on his stomach. The cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth. He frowned, then went inside to the kitchen, pulled out the top drawer and brought a chef’s knife back to the balcony. He closed his eyes and concentrated as he rested the tip of the knife just below his rib cage. Then he trailed the knife softly over his belly in one slow movement.
‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Have you gone completely mental?’
‘Shit,’ Matthew muttered and slipped the hand with the knife behind his back. The voice belonged to Malik. Matthew took the cigarette out of his mouth. ‘I was just trying something out,’ he called down towards the road, where Malik was staring up at him.
‘Seeing as you live in a country with the world’s highest suicide rate, could you not stand there wearing next to nothing and waving a knife around?’ Malik called back, craning his neck to get a better view of the second-floor balcony.
Matthew shook his head. ‘Sorry… Why don’t you come upstairs and I’ll tell you all about it?’
‘No, get yourself down here now. You’re coming with me. Some fishermen have found a body in the water out between the islands, and they think it’s been dead for quite some time.’
12
The two men drove to the Atlantic Port in Malik’s old Honda, which was in reasonable shape even if the exhaust fumes were practically black. Then again, the car didn’t have too many miles on it, as Malik only drove around Nuuk, and the short distance out to Qinngorput, where his girlfriend lived. If you wanted to go further than the rocky outskirts of Nuuk, you had to leave your car on the last patch of tarmac, ice or gravel and make your way on foot or by boat. No roads led out of Nuuk. No roads led into it. This applied to every town in Greenland. Nuuk was Nuuk, and the only thing surrounding the town and its sixteen thousand residents was mountains, sky or sea.