‘She will,’ Ottesen said quietly, and came closer to the bed. ‘You don’t seem to be answering your mobile today, so I decided to stop by to see how you were. I thought I might find you here.’
In the hospital bed between the two men, Tupaarnaq was resting under a thick, white quilt that was wrapped tightly around her. Except for the spot where Matthew’s head had dislodged it. On the other side there was a steel stand with two drips hanging from the crossbar. One contained blood, the other saline. Tupaarnaq’s pulse ran in monotonous, green jumps across a small monitor.
‘We need you to call in at the station to finalise your witness statement,’ Ottesen said. Then he nodded towards the bed. ‘The same goes for her when she wakes up.’
‘If she wakes up,’ Matthew whispered, his eyes returning to the quilt. ‘And I told you everything yesterday.’
‘Yes, I know, but… the body count is quite high, wouldn’t you say? They’ll double-check everything in Copenhagen, so I want to be sure that it all adds up one hundred per cent.’
Matthew rubbed his eyes and ran his hand over his nose and the fine, pale stubble on his chin. ‘Abelsen?’
‘Don’t worry about him,’ Ottesen said with a smile. ‘We have quite a lot on him now. When we freed him from the armchair yesterday he was screaming and shouting about the murder and mutilation of Aqqalu. He’s denying everything now, but several of us heard him so he’ll get his just deserts once we get some people up here to gather technical evidence.’
‘And Najak?’
Ottesen shook his head. ‘We found nothing out there. The shipping container had been clinically cleaned and torched with petrol. It reeked to high heaven. But forensics will be taking samples of every inch of that warehouse, so who knows.’
Matthew nodded. ‘Ulrik killed Aqqalu—you know that, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’ Ottesen nodded grimly and looked past the bed and out through the window behind Matthew. ‘Jakob said it was an accident.’ He shook his head and looked up at the ceiling. ‘It’s a real shame we didn’t work that out before Ulrik lost his mind. There was no need for it to go so wrong.’
‘My guess is that Abelsen was putting pressure on him, and he probably had many more skeletons in the cupboard that you’ve yet to discover.’
‘I’m sure you’re right,’ Ottesen said, exhaling heavily between his lips. He followed Matthew’s gaze, which was fixed on Tupaarnaq.
‘Listen…’ Ottesen hesitated. ‘Is there anything else you’d like to tell me about the murders in ’73 and the mummy?’
‘The Faroe Islands man?’ Matthew asked, glancing up briefly.
‘Yes, and the other dead men. I’m starting to realise that you have a better handle on this case than I thought.’
‘If you know that he was Faroese, you know just as much as I do. Abelsen appears to be using his son, Bárdur, as his gorilla now.’
‘The son has vanished without a trace, but we’ll find him. No, I was thinking more about the other men. I want to know who killed them, because their killer might still be alive.’
‘I don’t know,’ Matthew said wearily, burying his face in his hands.
‘I think you do.’
‘It’s in the notebook.’
‘But the notebook is gone.’
Matthew raised his head and looked at Ottesen, while his hands slipped slowly down the sides of the chair. ‘Gone? How can it be gone?’
‘You said you gave it to Jakob, but he thinks you took it with you when you ran down to Abelsen, so… well, it’s gone.’
‘That training top you’re wearing,’ Matthew said. ‘Does it mean that anything I say will stay between the two of us, just like when we had pizza?’
‘I’m Karlo’s son, and I would like to know if my father… I would like to know if the killer from back then is still alive. Especially now that Jakob has resurfaced.’
‘The killer is dead,’ Matthew said.
‘Are you sure?’
‘The killer died a few years ago, yes.’
‘Funny, that was about the time that…’ Ottesen drummed his fingers on his trouser leg. ‘Oh, okay. I get it now.’ He shook his head. ‘But they knew where she was all along. Everyone just thought that she had decided to move back to her village.’ He smiled and shook his head. ‘I think you might be right… Anyway, I’d better get going. Now, you won’t forget to drop by the station, will you?’
Matthew nodded. His eyes began to close as he heard the door to the corridor open.
‘Hey?’
Ottesen’s voice made Matthew look up.
‘I hear you lost your job at the newspaper,’ the police officer said. ‘We’re still looking for a consultant, if you’re interested.’
Matthew’s eyes were focused on the green pulse, but he was staring without seeing. He nodded slowly.
‘I would actually prefer to hire you as a kind of investigative assistant.’ Ottesen smiled broadly. ‘An external consultant, I mean.’
‘I don’t think I’d make a very good Sherlock,’ Matthew said, shaking his head.
‘Never mind… We’ll talk about it some other time.’ Ottesen drummed his fingers on the door. ‘Take care, Matt Cave,’ he said, and left.
Matthew’s mobile had started vibrating in his pocket during Ottesen’s visit. Now he took it out and looked at it. He was startled when the phone started buzzing again. He checked the number and rejected the call.
The room fell silent. Tupaarnaq lay locked in a faraway world of her own. The fluorescent tubes above them crackled faintly.
Matthew’s mobile beeped again, but this time only briefly. He got up and walked to the window, opening the new text message.
Please drop by the office for a chat, Matthew. We’ll work something out. Everyone wants to talk to you. KNR, Nuuk-TV, DR, TV2, CNN and CBC. Also Norway’s TV2. You get the picture. It’s gone viral. It’s not every day that a country is hit by such extreme and overlapping scandals. See you soon. Ideally now. It’s your story, all of it. Nothing is off-limits. We’ll print everything.
There was a second text message. Matthew hadn’t noticed it arrive.
Hi, this is Arnaq. Are you really my brother or are you taking the piss?
The light in the ward was so bright that he could see Tupaarnaq in the window. He pressed his forehead against her reflection. It was cold and she disappeared instantly in his shadow. He replied to Arnaq that they shared a father, and that he was indeed her half-brother. And that he was twelve years older than her.
As soon as he had sent the message, he put his mobile on the bedside table and went to turn off the light. The room didn’t grow very dark but it was more peaceful. Almost without making a sound, he slipped down onto the chair beside the bed and took out a small, black notebook from his jacket.
‘I’m going to read to you,’ he said softly, without looking at Tupaarnaq. He wanted to hold her hand but he didn’t have the courage. Instead, he placed his left hand on the sheet, close to hers. He held the notebook in his right hand. ‘Perhaps you’ll hear it.’
‘I’ll climb to the top of the mountain and let the serenity, the air and the loneliness enter my thoughts. Even though it might be the very loneliness and longing I’m trying to escape. But I think that’s the beauty of the mountains and their peaks. Becoming one with loneliness. My soul is old. The mountain is its body, the brook its blood and the fog its breath. I can feel its breath. Its life. Its soul in me. And then I realise that there’s no such thing as loneliness. We are all alive in the same world.’
The tears welled up in his eyes and rolled down his cheeks as he read on.
‘If I stand still, I’ll turn to stone. If I stand still, life can reach me and touch me. My deepest fear and longing are encompassed in the same thought. One day I will flee so high up the mountain that its pulsating stone heart will take me in and let me feel what it means to be still. So still that I can’t hear anything. But feel everything. While turning to stone.’