‘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.’