‘It’s just blood,’ she said, and she ran two fingers down his face, leaving broad, dark traces on his skin.
The liver grew in his hand. His eyes were drawn to the flayed, dead body of the seal. The skin and the blubber at his feet. The ulo. The intestines. The seal’s belly as it had surrendered to the knife and sprung open in a fleshy wound.
He started hyperventilating. He swallowed saliva that wasn’t there. Suppressed his nausea. His fingers found their way to his mouth. The liver went in. His teeth cut through the soft, jelly-like substance. The meat burst. A taste of metal filled his mouth. His throat tightened.
‘Go on, spit it out,’ Tupaarnaq said with a short grin. ‘I need you to be able to walk. You’ll be carrying half the seal to Brættet.’
He spat into the sea. ‘I think I just failed your test,’ he spluttered. ‘No, you didn’t. I don’t want a companion with a taste for blood.’
Matthew looked at what was left of the seal with a frown. ‘But you… We just…’
She nodded grimly. ‘It’s the easiest way to make money right now. It’s how I was brought up.’
28
The black plastic bag with the large chunks of freshly killed seal weighed heavy on Matthew’s back. He could feel the bones from the animal digging into him through the plastic and pressing into his back. His shoes and trousers were stained with salt water and seal blood, and he had no idea whether he had successfully washed the blood off his face.
Tupaarnaq walked alongside him in her old, thick jumper, with a bag similar to his slung over her shoulder. Rust-coloured patches were drying on the light-grey wool; her rifle hung from the same shoulder and bounced slightly with every step she took.
‘How far is it?’ he said. The weight of the meat was sending jolts of pain up his crooked neck. He gave in to it and shifted the bag, so that it rested against his shoulder.
‘You don’t know where Brættet is?’
‘Is it next to Brugseni?’ he ventured.
She nodded. ‘We’ll be there in a few minutes.’
He only had himself to blame. He had refused to get on the bus with the bags. Blood was dripping from their seams, and the thought of sitting on the bus and watching blood run across the floor was more than he could handle. When she told him how far it was to walk, she hadn’t mentioned how many rocks and steps they would be going up and down. He was worn out already, and his back hurt as much as his neck.
Sweat trickled down his forehead and under his jumper. He looked back at the path they had walked. When he’d switched shoulders, more blood had run out of the bag, leaving on the gravel a small, dark puddle of death.
Brættet was busy when Matthew and Tupaarnaq entered through the glass door. To their left were several steel tables with big lumps of dark meat, and very close to them lay two heads and the fins from a couple of porpoises. To their right were several white plastic crates with different kinds of semi-gutted fish.
‘I’ll just find a buyer for this,’ Tupaarnaq said.
Matthew let the bag slip from his shoulder so it dangled from his hand and arm. There was blood on several of the steel tables. Puddles on the floor below them. The two small whales looked as if their heads had been chopped off with one violent blow. The display seemed to have been set up so that you could see the porpoises’ smile. Further into the market was a seal, gutted like theirs. Its bloodstained body had been spread out into flat halves.
Tupaarnaq was busy talking to a man, who rummaged around in her bag.
The biggest tables were at the back of the market, and on them lay large chunks of dark meat. He had never before seen such big, firm pieces of meat without any bones in them. They looked like the thigh muscles of a dinosaur. On a sign taped to the table he read the words ‘fin whale’. The man behind the desk had a solid hold of a chunk the size of his own torso while he spoke to a woman in Greenlandic. He nodded and started slicing the meat with a long, thin-bladed knife.
‘Give your bag to that guy over there.’
Matthew jumped. He spun around and looked at Tupaarnaq. ‘Okay. Did you manage to sell everything?’
‘Yes. As I expected.’
Matthew turned back to the man with the big lumps of meat. ‘Is he cutting whale steak?’
‘Yes, and we can buy one, if that’s what you fancy.’ She took the bag from his hand. ‘Only not for me—I’m not having any.’ Then she went over to the man who had bought her seal meat and chucked the bag on the table next to the other one.
The man in the white coat pushed down the plastic bag to get a good look at the reddish-brown lumps of meat. He picked up a broad piece with the ribs exposed and turned it over a couple of times, then nodded contentedly and looked at Tupaarnaq. He put the meat down on the table again, where it left a bloody outline on the steel.
Tupaarnaq nudged Matthew’s shoulder. ‘You’re completely away with the fairies. You’re quite sure you don’t want some whale?’
He shook his head slowly without turning to her.
‘Just ask the guy over there if you fancy trying some. He’ll cut you a steak… my treat.’
‘I…’ Matthew hesitated as his thoughts moved back and forth between the dying seal in the sea and the flayed, fleshy skulls staring emptily at him from the steel tables. ‘No, not today. I think. Neither seal nor whale.’
‘Okay—it’s up to you. You can always come back another time.’ She nudged him again. ‘I’m off. Are you coming?’
‘Yes,’ he gulped and raised his eyebrows. ‘Where are we going?’
‘I’m going home,’ she stated firmly. ‘Alone. I’m not used to being outside, so I need some time on my own now.’
He smiled and followed her out of the door.
She turned to him outside in the square. ‘I just need to get a few things.’
‘From Brugseni?’
‘Yes, but I’ll do it on my own.’ A short grin crossed her lips. ‘I’m glad you tasted the liver today. If you hadn’t, I would have thrown you into the sea.’
She was smiling but he wasn’t at all sure that she was joking. His gaze moved to the small, simple stalls put up on the square outside Brugseni. Low tables, rugs and cardboard signs. The hawkers sold everything from figures carved out of reindeer antler to knitwear, seal mittens and old DVDs. They also sold pink frozen prawns, and one sold second-hand toys.
‘Why did you give me the USB stick?’
‘You wanted to know who you were going hunting with.’
‘But the articles don’t tell me that, do they?’
She exhaled deeply and looked him in the eye. ‘I gave it to you because you wanted to understand about murder and what it means to kill. And that was also why I took you with me today. Perhaps it’ll make sense when you switch off your light tonight.’
He frowned.
‘Causality,’ she went on. ‘If you want to understand why a ball is rolling, you need to find out what set it in motion. The rest is nothing but effect, and the effect is visible to everyone. The explanation is found in the cause.’
29
The smoke seeped slowly out of the corner of Matthew’s mouth. He was lying on the floor with a pillow under his neck near the balcony door, and could feel the cool air creep in around him. In one hand he held an almost empty Musk Ox beer, and a cigarette rested between the fingers of the other.
Tine was never a fan of smoking. Everything reeks of smoke, she would say when they had been among smokers.
He took a deep drag and let his hand flop back to the floor.
He had bought his first packet of cigarettes the day after the accident. He had been standing by the till, looking at his shopping, and when the cashier had smiled to him he had asked her for a packet of twenty Prince. With or without filter? she had asked. Back then he had still worn his ring.