Malik soon returned. ‘We’re out of luck. Ulrik appears to be off sick today.’
Matthew nodded. ‘That doesn’t surprise me. He’s had a rough few days.’
‘He’s not normally such a wuss,’ Malik said. ‘But you’re probably right. He’ll need to man up if he wants to climb the greasy pole as far as Lyberth has.’ He looked towards the door leading to the offices. ‘Ottesen will be out in a moment, though. They told me he has something for us.’
‘For us?’
‘Yes, I asked yesterday if he knew anything about those gruesome murders back in the seventies. I guess it must be about that.’ Malik walked up to a vending machine. ‘Fancy a brew?’
‘No, thanks, and definitely not coffee.’
‘I think I’ll have a hot chocolate.’ Malik sounded undecided.
‘I still think I’ll pass,’ Matthew said. His thoughts felt muddled. About the 1970s case, the mummy, even the hot chocolate. But it was the woman who had been arrested for the murder of Aqqalu he couldn’t stop thinking about.
‘Oh, shit…’
Matthew looked at Malik, who was flapping one hand in the air while holding a steaming cup in the other.
Malik smiled towards the woman behind the reception counter. ‘I’m sorry, but this hot chocolate is really… well, hot.’ His face contorted in a grimace of apology. ‘Sorry.’
The door to their left opened and Ottesen appeared. ‘Hi, guys, good to see you again. This way, please.’
They walked down a short corridor to an office.
‘I’m glad you’re here because I’ve come across something you might want to take a closer look at.’ Ottesen produced a brown leather notebook from a buff envelope and placed it on the desk between them. ‘I was in our archives earlier, and I found quite a lot about the murders from 1973, but I can’t give you access to our files because some of the information relates to people who are still alive. Relatives, witnesses and so on.’
‘Of course,’ Matthew said.
‘But I found this,’ Ottesen continued. ‘It wasn’t filed as a part of the report or logged as evidence or anything like that. It’s a private diary.’ He leaned forward. ‘It contains notes on the case, but nothing official. It’s just one man’s thoughts, interspersed with various observations about nature and life in Nuuk in 1973.’
Ottesen slid the notebook towards Matthew, who opened it carefully and flicked through it. All the pages were yellow and densely covered with pencil.
‘Just pop it back in the envelope before you go, will you?’ Ottesen said. Then he added: ‘I can’t wait to see what you’re made of, Matt.’
‘Thanks,’ Matthew said, his voice uncertain. ‘Who’s the author?’
Ottesen glanced towards the door, then looked back at Matthew with a determined expression. ‘His name was Jakob Pedersen. He was one of the first police officers to investigate sexual assaults of girls up here. I think he’d worked on similar cases in Denmark, because men with that sick urge are found all over the world. Jakob became obsessed with the case of the men who were cut open, but he disappeared without a trace at the same time the murders stopped.’
Matthew tapped the notebook a couple of times, nodding to himself. ‘Thank you so much.’
‘You’re welcome, but you didn’t get it from me. I don’t care what you do with it or what you have to say about it. Only you didn’t get the information from this building—are we clear?’
‘Of course,’ Matthew said. ‘I’ll invent a source. An uncle or something. But can I ask you about the woman you’ve arrested in connection with the current case?’
Ottesen got up. ‘There’s nothing to tell.’ The others took their cue from him and stood up too. Malik shook his hand and said something in Greenlandic. Ottesen’s reply was brief.
Back at reception, Matthew stopped in his tracks. The woman he had bumped into outside Cafe Mamaq was standing at the counter. She was wearing the same tight black clothing. The same scuffed boots. The tattoos wound their way up and down her arms, over what he could see of her back and around her neck. Her head was just as smooth as the first time he’d seen her, only this time she wasn’t armed.
Matthew tugged Ottesen’s arm. ‘I’m sorry—who is she?’
‘Her?’ Ottesen said. ‘She’s the woman you were just asking about. We arrested her in connection with the killing on the ice cap, but we had no evidence against her except her past, and the items we confiscated turned out to be clean.’ He shrugged in exasperation. ‘She’s a wild animal. I’d like to keep her here but I can’t, and she seems to know the law inside out.’
He said something in Greenlandic loud enough for the woman to hear. She didn’t look up, but Matthew could tell from her back that she had heard it.
Ottesen fixed his eyes on Matthew’s. ‘If anyone asks, you came here today to talk to me about her, and I told you that you can’t write anything yet. That’s it.’
The woman disappeared through the door, showing absolutely no sign of acknowledging them, yet Matthew was convinced that she had noted every feature on their faces. He felt as if she’d looked inside him and penetrated his thoughts.
‘Who is she?’ he asked again.
‘Her name is Tupaarnaq Siegstad,’ Ottesen replied. He sighed. ‘She’s been in the care of Danish Social Services and the Prison Service ever since she shot and killed her mother and her two younger sisters and stabbed her father to death at the age of fifteen. They say she just sat in the middle of the carnage, covered in blood, clutching her mother’s ulo. She had pretty much ripped out her father’s guts. That’s why we brought her in. She only moved back to Greenland a week ago, straight from serving a long sentence in Denmark. Oh, and one of the first things she did when she returned to Nuuk was to buy a rifle and an ulo.’
‘Did she kill her family here in Nuuk?’ Matthew asked.
Ottesen shook his head. ‘No, that was in Tasiilaq, on the east coast. Her father had shot a polar bear three days earlier. I don’t know why I remember that bit. He’d also shot a walrus that same month. He was something of a local hero over there. A highly respected hunter and fisherman who ignored quotas and restrictions. Then again, global warming is a far greater threat to polar bears and walruses than hunters are.’ He shrugged. ‘Anyway, I’ve got work to do.’
They said goodbye to Ottesen and left through the doors in the middle of the long, black and brown building.
‘What did Ottesen say just as Tupaarnaq left?’ Matthew wanted to know.
‘That it was a woman who had injured Ulrik during an arrest, but they’d had to let her go.’
Matthew frowned. ‘Injured? How?’
‘Search me,’ Malik said, throwing up his hands. ‘I think he only said it so that she would hear it.’
Matthew nodded.
‘Do you want a lift home?’ Malik offered.
‘No, I’m happy to walk.’ Matthew’s eyes followed Tupaarnaq Siegstad down the street. Her back was straight, her footsteps hard and firm. He shook his head. ‘I need to get a couple of things over at the Nuuk Centre.’
‘Okay, I’ll see you tomorrow, then. You take care, won’t you?’
‘Yes, you too… Oh, hang on. What did you ask Ottesen about when we were in his office?’
‘I asked him why he gave us the notebook.’
Matthew looked at him quizzically. ‘And?’
‘He said, “Karlo was my father.”’
‘Karlo?’
‘Yes, Karlo. Apparently he’s mentioned in the notebook.’
17
As soon as Malik had left, Matthew tried to catch up with Tupaarnaq. She walked briskly and steadily, her stride long and determined. Even from a distance he could sense how hard her heels hit the road.