‘It’s a plausible theory, but we can’t prove it. Besides, if I kick you now, it doesn’t give you the right to kick me in twenty years, does it?’
‘So the Inuit arrived in Greenland after the Norsemen, and then they wandered down and into the land of the Norsemen?’
‘Yes, that part we can prove. It’s just the business with battles and wars which is dubious, even though the Historia Norvegiae states that Norse hunters came across small men in the north, whom the Norsemen named skrællinger, and that these small men got “white wounds” if they were slightly injured, but would bleed violently when fatally wounded.’ He gave a light shrug. ‘You might well ask yourself why it was so important to pass on to posterity the bit about superficial and fatal injuries, unless it was because it related to battle, especially if we bear in mind that the same passage states that these skrællinger used walrus tusks and sharp stones for weapons.’
‘Hello, Ottesen?’ The pilot’s voice could be heard over the headsets, and attracted everyone’s attention. ‘Ottesen, could you come over here and take a look? I think we have a problem.’
The three Danish archaeologists started to look around the cabin, whispering and nodding.
‘Is something wrong with the engine?’ Matthew wondered aloud.
‘It’s not that,’ Malik said quickly. His face was pressed against the window, his eyes aimed in the direction they were flying.
‘Then what is it?’
‘Look down.’
Matthew was aware of the curator leaning over him to get a look too, and moved his head close to the window. They were near the edge of the glacier. Beneath them the sea was dense with pack ice. In front of them the endless whiteness stretched out as far as the light and the eye could reach. It hurt his eyes. Millions of white crystals. Except in one place. One spot. Right where the Norseman mummy had been found and Aqqalu had kept watch. There the ice was glossy red.
There was silence in the cabin. The only sound was the chop-chop of the rotors.
‘Is that…’ Matthew’s voice trailed off. ‘Is that Aqqalu?’
‘I know Aqqalu,’ Malik stuttered. ‘We were at school together.’
‘But—’
‘I don’t know, but who else could it be?’
The curator sank back into his seat. ‘Do you think it’s him? But what happened?’
‘Nanook,’ Malik whispered. He didn’t take his eyes off the ice beneath them. ‘I kept saying I should have played my drum before anyone slept here. You can’t just pull an old, dead soul into the light like that.’
‘We’re landing,’ Ottesen’s voice announced. ‘You all need to stay inside while I get out and secure the area. A Sikorsky will take off from Nuuk in ten minutes and fly here to meet me. You’ll stay in this helicopter and be sent back straightaway. Understand?’
Matthew leaned close against the window. The ice was glistening. The red was glistening. Growing. The body of the helicopter turned and prepared to land on the spot where Aqqalu should have been waiting for them. Matthew didn’t know whether to look, but when Malik very slowly raised his camera and started pressing the shutter release, he too fixed his eyes on the ice beneath them.
Aqqalu was naked. His clothes had been dumped in a pile not far from his body. He was lying on his back with his arms stretched out to the sides. He had been gutted from his groin to his breastbone. The sides of his stomach had been pulled apart, and were hanging over the ice. His abdominal cavity was black from dried blood, as were his skin and flesh, which were exposed. The bottom of his rib cage shone white amid the darkness and the red. His organs had been ripped out of him and were lying on the ice, while his intestines seemed to be missing completely. There was blood spatter a metre away from the body. In one place several metres.
Malik gulped. ‘This was no polar bear.’
The helicopter hit the ice unexpectedly hard, and they all jolted. Matthew’s head bumped against the windowpane.
Ottesen jumped out and immediately signalled for the helicopter to take off.
Matthew’s gaze settled on the small camp. He turned to the three archaeologists. ‘Did you move the mummy yesterday?’
One of them shook his head. ‘No.’
‘It’s gone now,’ Matthew said, turning his face back to the cold glass. The red spot underneath them grew smaller and smaller. Aqqalu lay gutted in the middle of it, and Ottesen was kneeling close to him on the red crystals, which only yesterday had been Aqqalu’s warm blood.
8
Matthew was at his desk at Sermitsiaq, scrolling through Facebook without taking anything in. Less than twenty-four hours ago he had held a global scoop in his hands, only for it to slip through his fingers as it turned into a violent murder.
His iceman article was open on the big screen, while Facebook was up on the smaller screen on his laptop in the docking station, where his mailbox was usually open. The article was ready to be uploaded, but it was impossible now. They had orders not to release any information about the two bodies. Not a single word, no photographs, about the iceman or the murder of Officer Aqqalu. These orders had come from on high, and his editor had stressed that they mustn’t compromise the police investigation.
Matthew would still have liked to send his article about the Norseman mummy out into the world, and he had defended his position by saying that the archaeologists and the museum curator could all vouch for the discovery, but it made no difference to his editor. It’s out of my hands, Matt, he had said. This is a small community. We have to listen to one another, and right now I’m listening to the people who are trying to find a police killer. If you leak anything, he had added with a weary look, then you’re finished here.
Matthew sighed and closed the document with the article. Someone had left a plate with a piece of cake on his desk. A large, stale raspberry slice. The pastry was pale. Just like him. He rubbed his cheek. The stubble scratched his palm. Who the hell would gut a police officer and run off with a mummy? And in a town like Nuuk, of all places. Matthew pushed aside the plate.
Nor could they write about Aqqalu until his family had been informed, and that would apparently take some time, given that his older brothers had gone reindeer hunting somewhere out the back of beyond and wouldn’t be home for days.
‘Cheer up—it might never happen.’
The editor’s voice made Matthew look up. His boss had a habit of pacing up and down between the desks and striking up conversations here and there.
‘We’ll find a solution, I promise. I’m sorry I came down so hard on you. It’s just that… well, when we get orders from above, we tend to listen to them. It’s the way things are done around here.’
‘It’s all right,’ Matthew said, looking up at him. His boss was a short man around fifty. Fair-skinned, blond hair and at least twenty kilos heavier than his shirts could easily accommodate. ‘What happened to that police officer was just awful. It… he had been gutted.’
‘I know. I’ve never experienced anything like the last twenty-four hours here.’ The editor arched his back. His second-last shirt button had come undone, revealing a patch of white skin. ‘We’ll be able to publish something soon. We just need to wait for the right moment.’ He turned to leave, but then he stopped. ‘Listen… if you need to talk to a psychologist, I can get hold of one.’
Matthew shook his head. ‘No… no, but thank you. I just need to find another story, something else to focus on for a while.’