‘As are a young police officer and a fisherman,’ Matthew added. ‘They tried to pin the murders on Tupaarnaq because…’ He came to a halt.
‘I know about Tupaarnaq,’ Jakob said, and he smiled at her. ‘We had newspapers and the internet down in Qeqertarsuatsiaat.’ He took a deep breath and looked at Tupaarnaq. ‘I followed your case closely. You shouldn’t have been on your own. I’m sorry.’
Tupaarnaq tilted her head a little and looked at him. ‘Thank you. But I’ve always been alone.’
‘I know. You’re always welcome here, if you want to talk to someone.’
She gave a light shrug. ‘I don’t want to talk to anyone.’
‘No, I know that too, but sometimes it can be nice just to chat about seals, the tide and the colours of the ice.’ He gestured towards Paneeraq. ‘Paneeraq also lived in Tasiilaq once, and her parents were killed. You can share your thoughts with her, if you need to.’
‘You can,’ Paneeraq joined in. ‘My door is always open to you.’
‘Thank you.’ Tupaarnaq got up from the sofa. ‘Where’s the toilet, please?’
‘Let me show you,’ Paneeraq said.
Raindrops dotted the windows.
Matthew looked at Jakob in the armchair. ‘Can I ask how you escaped alive?’
Jakob turned his face away from the window and smiled at Matthew. ‘You must have been very confused after your visit here the other day. You should have said that you had read my notebook.’
‘I was under the impression that it was the killer who had written the last few pages. Only I don’t understand why he would do that… or her. The handwriting looks like a woman’s.’
‘It was actually the killer’s.’ Jakob turned his face back to the windows with a heavy sigh.
‘But you didn’t die,’ Matthew said.
‘That’s true. I’m referring to the woman who killed the men. I was right all along: the motive for the killings was revenge.’
‘But you didn’t report it and clear your name so you could stay in Nuuk?’
‘No, it was too late by then. And anyway, I couldn’t have done that to her. She was just like Paneeraq, only she was an adult. And I had to get Paneeraq out of Nuuk.’
He hesitated, then spoke again. ‘Ultimately, it was me who got the four men killed. My efforts to expose them. She heard everything. She read my files at the station without me noticing. Or maybe it never crossed my mind. All that coffee and cake. Her visit to my house.’
‘Lisbeth? Lisbeth killed the four men? She flayed and gutted them? And she killed Paneeraq’s mother?’
He nodded heavily. ‘Indeed she did. As a result of her own childhood.’ He looked up. ‘Did you know that in Greenland one girl in three is raped? In some villages, it can be as many as all of them, and they have to live with the trauma for the rest of their lives.’
‘Yes,’ Matthew whispered hoarsely. ‘I’ve read pretty much everything I could find of public reports and statistics.’
‘How could I ever have done anything but take Lisbeth and Paneeraq with me to a place of safety? We had a good life in Qeqertarsuatsiaat. We kept mostly to ourselves. Paneeraq went to school until she was fifteen, and from then on we taught her ourselves. Lisbeth and me, I mean. There’s a good library down there.’
‘And no one ever worked out your true identities?’
‘No, in that village the only thing people cared about was cod fishing. As far as they were concerned, I was just an eccentric Danish geologist, Lisbeth was my wife and Paneeraq our daughter.’
‘It was that easy?’
‘Yes, it was. I collected rocks, which was all the evidence they needed, and Lisbeth was Greenlandic.’
‘But she killed four innocent men and a woman.’
‘They weren’t innocent—I’m even more certain of that now. Except for Paneeraq’s mother. That haunts me to this day.’
Matthew shook his head and stared at the floor. ‘I don’t know what to say. She… she flayed those men and she gutted them. That’s…’ He shook his head again. ‘What did she do with their skins?’
‘She only did what she had been taught to do,’ Jakob said through a quick sigh. ‘She did exactly what her hands had done hundreds of times when she was a child. Nothing more. A dead body is a dead body.’ He shrugged. ‘We never spoke about it after that last night in Nuuk, so my knowledge is no greater than yours, and I’ve no idea what she did with their skins. Nor do I care, to be perfectly frank. My priority was the girls.’
‘And what about the puzzle piece?’
‘The puzzle piece?’
‘From your jigsaw puzzle. The one placed on the forehead of the final victim. She was willing to sacrifice you.’
‘Ah, the puzzle piece. I never asked her about it, but I don’t think she was trying to frame me. No, I think she was trying to send me a message. A message meant only for me. She didn’t think anyone else knew about the jigsaw.’
He glanced towards the hall. ‘Paneeraq has never really opened up about what happened in the time between the orphanage and the murders. Nor have we discussed that Lisbeth was the killer.’
‘So she doesn’t know who killed her parents, or that you and Lisbeth killed the Faroese man and chucked him into a crevasse in the ice cap?’
‘We’ve certainly never spoken about it. After I came round and realised what had happened, I was shocked and devastated. But what good was that? I couldn’t turn back the clock—it was impossible. So I stole a boat and we sailed to the bottom of a fjord with him. I pulled him across the ice on a sleigh on my own. It was a hell of a trip. We had to stop off at Kapisillit to refuel. I had wrapped him in some hides the Hemplers had left in the house, and I threw his intestines into the sea. We took Paneeraq with us, but she stayed in the wheelhouse and never saw what happened.’
He covered his face with his hands. They were thin and wrinkled. Shaped by a long life.
‘I thought the ice would eat that stupid Faroese, given how close we were to the outskirts of the ice cap, but I must have thrown him into a crevasse in a location where the ice movement was minimal. Or perhaps it wasn’t a crevasse, but just a crack in the rock with ice in it. It can be hard to tell in winter, and I didn’t dare go too far in.’
‘Well, whatever it was, he resurfaced,’ Matthew said. ‘Why did you move back to Nuuk?’
‘Why? I’m over eighty now, and Lisbeth died two years ago. I thought the time had come.’ He looked towards the door to the hall again. ‘I think we both needed to come back and unburden ourselves, should the opportunity arise. In our different ways.’
‘Are you hungry?’
Matthew looked up at Paneeraq, who was smiling at him from the doorway.
‘A little, but don’t you worry about that.’ He took his mobile from his pocket. ‘I have some pictures I’d like to show you. Perhaps you might recognise something. They may be of Najak when she was eleven years old. She’s in distress. Do you mind?’
‘Let me have a look.’
Matthew passed her his mobile.
Paneeraq took it and pressed her lips together. Then she nodded briefly before letting herself fall back into a chair. ‘I never expected to see that again.’
‘Can I get you anything?’ Tupaarnaq said, putting her hand on Paneeraq’s shoulder. ‘Water?’
Paneeraq shook her head. Wiped her eyes with her fingers. ‘No, thank you.’
‘You were there?’ Matthew said.
Paneeraq heaved a deep sigh. Her breathing trembled. ‘Yes.’
Matthew looked from Paneeraq to Jakob.
The old man shook his head. ‘I know nothing about that.’
‘I’ve never told anyone,’ Paneeraq said. ‘But I’ve been there. Just like Najak. All four of us were kept there for a couple of weeks after we came back to Nuuk. They called it quarantine—they said they were afraid that we might still be infected, but it was all a lie.’ She wrung her hands. ‘I’ve repressed it as much as my nightmares will allow me.’