Some days his eyes were slate-blue, other days more green, and others again just grey. It depended on the weather, but he had noticed that they were blue more often in Nuuk than at home. He had never seen the blue in his eyes in Denmark in quite the same way. Close to his left pupil was a black dot, which made it look as if his eye had two pupils. He had never seen a doctor about it because his mother had told him that his father’s eyes had been the same—it was nothing but a pigmentation error. Tine had called it an extra well in his eye. A place to hide his thoughts.
He had trouble hiding from his thoughts—couldn’t hide from them anywhere—but since he’d come to Nuuk, they seemed to come together more easily. He’d started to feel like a human being again, for the first time since the accident. Or something close to human, anyway. He still had trouble sleeping, but it wasn’t as bad as it used to be. Last night he’d managed five hours in total, which only six months ago would have been impossible due to the pain in his neck and the gloomy thoughts that refused to leave him alone for more than a few minutes. All that remained were the violent nightmares, some occasional pain and night sweats.
The sound of angry knocking roused him.
‘Coming,’ he called out and made his way to the front door. ‘Malik! What—’
‘I’ve been burgled.’
‘Eh? What are you talking about?’
‘My studio has been burgled. Everything is gone. The whole bloody lot!’
‘Come in,’ Matthew said. ‘God, I’m so sorry to hear that. I didn’t even know that you had a studio.’
An agitated Malik pushed past him and flopped down on the sofa. ‘They’ve taken everything. All of it. My camera, computer… Everything.’
‘How is that possible? I thought you kept your gear at home?’
‘I do, but I spent the night with my girlfriend, and when I came home this morning… Bang. Gone.’
‘Are you insured? I know that’s not the point, but having the money for new equipment would be a start.’
‘Yes, yes, everything’s insured. What I want to know is why it was stolen in the first place. They also took all my USB sticks and every single memory card I had lying around. Why would anyone do that?’
Matthew shrugged. ‘Have you spoken to the police?’
Malik dismissed the suggestion with a wave of his hand. ‘Not yet. Listen to me, Matt, you can’t sell stolen goods in Nuuk. Everyone would know it was my camera and my computer, so to get rid of it you’d have to leave town, which means sailing or flying, and you’d have to go a bloody long way to find somebody who doesn’t know that stuff belongs to me. Forget it. I’ll never see it again.’
‘But why would someone take it if they can’t sell it? I don’t understand.’
‘Neither do I. It makes no sense.’
‘And the pictures really are gone?’
‘Yes, it’s all gone. My camera, my computer, my memory cards, photos. Everything.’
‘Shit! The story’s going up today.’ Matthew slowly slid his hands over his face. ‘I’ll call the editor—there might be time for us to return to the ice and take some new pictures. And you need to call the police to report the theft.’
‘Okay,’ Malik said. ‘Let’s just get going. I’ll stop off at the police station later.’
7
With a heavy drone from its whirring rotor, the Bell Huey helicopter from Air Greenland chopped its way to the edge of the ice cap.
Apart from the pilot, the passengers were the same four archaeologists, Malik, Matthew and Officer Ottesen, who would be replacing Officer Aqqalu, who had been guarding the mummy overnight. Matthew was sitting on the starboard side of the angular helicopter body, and he could feel the sun roast him through the large, square windows.
Grey-black mountains glided past underneath them in long, serrated, undulating rows. There were still several large patches of snow hiding in the darkness and cold of a gorge, while in other places the mountains were covered by green summer growth. The sea was a brilliant bright blue, speckled with white and turquoise growlers that had broken off the edge of the ice cap at the heart of the fjord.
The helicopter banked to the right, and Matthew’s gaze was drawn down towards the shimmering surface of the sea.
‘Do you see those two traces in the water right there?’ Malik exclaimed, pointing.
‘Where there’s a little bit of foam?’
‘Yes, that’s it.’ Malik nodded enthusiastically. ‘Two whales just came up for air. Humpbacks, I think. They had broad, speckled tails.’
‘So they won’t be coming back up for a while—is that what you’re saying?’
‘No, I think they’ll reappear a little further down, in the direction of the foam. There aren’t any boats around to disturb them.’
The sea turned into sky when the helicopter straightened up. Then mountains and sea once more. They had followed the arm of the fjord most of the way, but now they changed course and were flying across a broad expanse of dark mountains. In front of them the patches of ice grew bigger and more frequent, and the bright white light from the ice cap began to intensify.
‘Did you know that the ice cap is bigger than France and the UK together?’ Matthew said, without taking his eyes off the window in the side door.
‘Really?’ Malik said. ‘No, I’ve never heard that.’ He had a camera borrowed from the newspaper around his neck.
Matthew turned his attention to the museum curator. ‘Do you have more information about the guy who was found? The Norseman?’
The man shook his head. ‘No, sadly. We still don’t know if he’s a Norseman, but I fail to see how he couldn’t be. When you find a naked, mummified Scandinavian wrapped in reindeer skin at the very edge of the ice cap, what else could it be?’
‘But I thought the ice cap was larger back when the Norsemen were here?’
The curator looked up. ‘Yes, it was, and that’s what’s bothering me. My theory is that there might have been a mountain cabin somewhere nearby.’
‘But that doesn’t change the fact that he was found naked and wrapped in fur in a crevasse…’
‘You’re still fishing for a violent death?’
Matthew nodded. ‘He could easily have been killed fighting an Inuit, or been chucked into the crevasse as a sacrifice, couldn’t he?’
‘A human sacrifice that late in the Middle Ages would be atypical, but living conditions were probably extreme in the last few decades the Scandinavians were here, so we can’t rule it out.’ He combed his dense beard with his fingers. ‘When times are hard, people sometimes throw morality and ethics overboard.’
‘But what about a battle?’
‘You’re suggesting he might have been killed by an Inuit?’
‘Yes.’
‘It just so happens there were no Inuit anywhere in south-west Greenland when the Norsemen arrived, so it was actually their country rather than the Inuit’s, but the Norsemen’s many trips to the north attracted the Inuit, who began coming south, and so in that respect the Inuit came closer. It’s possible that the Inuit developed a taste for the Norsemen’s sheep, which were easy to catch and very tasty… so different from the fish and seals which the Inuit had lived on for generations. And yes, it’s also possible that it might have been the Inuit who expelled the Norsemen from their settlements.’
‘Hang on,’ Matthew said, taking out his mobile. ‘Let me just make some notes in case we go for that angle… great. Okay, so you’re saying that the Danes, who came later, didn’t take the land from the Inuit, seeing as the Inuit had themselves stolen it from the Norsemen three hundred years earlier?’