Chapter 8

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The tramp of boots up the steps and onto the deck, followed by a heavy knock on the door forced Maratse to open his eyes and start a new day in Inussuk. He lifted his legs over the side of the sofa and wiped the sleep from his eyes and the dried saliva from the corner of his mouth, as Karl opened the door and kicked off his rubber boots in the hall. Maratse could hardly see Karl’s face for all the things he carried in his arms. Karl dumped the gear on the coffee table and wished Maratse a good morning.

“Coffee?” Karl said.

“I haven’t got any.”

“I have.” Karl picked up the plastic bag that was laying on top of the pile of clothes and walked into the kitchen. “Get dressed,” he said.

“Where are we going?”

“Fishing.”

Maratse reached out to tug at the pile of clothes, separating warm layers from a tough quilted overall that was greasy to the touch. “I need a shower,” he said.

“When you get back.” Karl filled the kettle, spooning two heaps of instant coffee into two mugs, as the water boiled. Maratse began to dress, exchanging the layers of clothing on the pile for his own sweaty shirt and police jogging trousers. He lifted his legs into his overalls, pulling them slowly up to his knees. “Need help?” Karl asked, as he put the mugs of coffee on the table in front of the sofa.

“Iiji.” Maratse pushed himself into a standing position. He held onto Karl’s shoulder with one hand and pulled the overalls into position with the other. “Where are we going?”

“I have a long fishing line running deep from the coast just north of Inussuk. I want to check it.”

“Okay.”

“I can show you a couple of good places along the way. For your own line.”

“I need a boat.”

“Edvard has a boat he wants to sell.”

“And fishing line, gear?”

“I have enough for both of us.”

Karl walked to the window and tapped the glass with his cracked thumbnail and smiled as the puppy lifted its head.

“It’s been there all night,” Maratse said.

“And been sick on the steps.”

“That would be the fish.” Maratse zipped the overalls to the collar and then back down to the waist. “I need to pee,” he said.

“Edvard empties the buckets twice a week, but you’ll have to register with the council.”

Maratse nodded. “So, I have to register before I can pee?”

“Yes,” Karl said and laughed, and then, “Pee outside, before we get in the boat.” He handed Maratse a coffee, and pulled a packet of biscuits from the deep pocket of his overalls.

“What else do you have?” Maratse asked, as he took a handful of biscuits.

“Coffee and cigarettes.”

Maratse grunted, dunked the biscuits in the coffee, and ate as Karl leaned against the window. The temptation to sit down nagged at Maratse, but he decided that now he was up he should stay up. He gauged the distance to the hall, looked for his sticks, and then decided to shuffle to the door without them. He put the mug down on the table and moved his right leg. A burst of pain streaked down his leg only to disappear a second later. Maratse gritted his teeth and ignored the pain in his legs, as he worked his way to the hall, shaking his head as Karl offered to help.

“Your boots are the ones with orange caps,” Karl said, as Maratse rested against the door.

Maratse nodded, placed his hand against the door and grabbed a fistful of overall, lifting his leg and pushing his foot into the rubber boot. He rested for a second and then pushed his other foot into the second boot.

“Ready?” Karl asked, as he pulled on his own boots.

“Iiji,” Maratse said and opened the door. The puppy bounded to its feet and nearly pushed Maratse off balance. He growled a quick command and the puppy retreated. Karl laughed as he closed the door behind them. “I used to have dogs,” Maratse said.

“You will again,” Karl said. “Starting with that one.”

“We’ll see.”

Maratse used the railings to climb down each of the four steps to his house. He moved slowly, deliberately, and, when both his feet were on the beach, he shuffled towards the waterline, and Karl’s dinghy, which was tethered through the eye of a large rusty piece of iron drilled into a boulder on the beach. The puppy danced just half a metre in front of Maratse, all the way to the dinghy, acting as the carrot leading the way, as well as the role of the stick that could trip Maratse onto the beach. If he had thought about it, Maratse might have given the puppy some credit for encouraging him to walk without help. But Maratse was preoccupied with reaching the dinghy. Once there he leaned against the gunwales, lowered his hand, whistled once, and made a fuss of the puppy as it bounded towards him. The puppy’s soft fur tickling the coarse skin of Maratse’s hand made him smile, and he thought about other dogs and teams that he had run on the east coast, before he met Konstabel Fenna Brongaard, before the Chinese man.

Maratse looked along the beach and waved at the fishermen preparing their gear, fixing lines, and stripping outboards. Just four men and not one of them younger than Karl. All of them were at least ten or fifteen years older than Maratse.

“Where are the young men?”

“At school, or in town,” Karl said and waved in the direction of Uummannaq. “Inussuk is dying,” he said. “We get a little trade each summer, when the cruise ships send passengers in to visit and buy cakes, and try Greenlandic food. But people are leaving Inussuk. One day it will be no more.”

Maratse waved at the fishermen one more time and then shooed the puppy away. He used the gunwale to push himself to his feet as Karl pushed the dinghy down the beach and into the water. Maratse shuffled in his wake, following the shallow trench in the sand from the dinghy’s hull. The sea lapped at his boots, as he clambered over the gunwales. Karl grabbed his arm and helped him onto the seat spanning the centre of the dinghy. Maratse zipped the overall to the collar and watched the puppy fret at the water’s edge, as Karl lowered the outboard motor, pumped fuel from the plastic petrol can into the engine, and pulled the starter handle. Maratse felt the weight of the boat shift as Karl sat down, and again when he handed Maratse a lit cigarette. Maratse rolled it into the gap between his teeth, tugged the collar of the overalls around his neck, and puffed a cloud of smoke into the wind, as Karl increased the throttle and they motored along the coast. Small clumps of ice skidded against the hull, thumping along each side until they were clear of the debris field from a small iceberg calving close to shore.

Karl slowed at various points along the way to his long line, pointing out rocks that were good for attaching one end of the line, high water marks, and the spots that he had used to place stone traps to catch Arctic foxes.

“Buuti cleans the pelts,” he said, “and then sells them to the tourists.”

“Are they allowed to buy them?”

“Maybe?” Karl said, and shrugged. “We don’t ask, and neither do they.”

Karl slowed as they neared a point on the peninsula that opened into a large bay. He steered the dinghy at a right angle to the point, and tapped Maratse on the shoulder. A large cube of polystyrene, with a faded flag pressed through the centre bobbed a hundred metres in front of them. Karl let the motor idle, and then clicked it out of gear. He cut the motor a second later and they drifted onto the fishing marker. Karl snagged the thick rope attached to a plastic buoy, hidden behind the marker, and tied a line from the dinghy through the buoy. He sat down and tapped Maratse on the back, gesturing for him to turn around.

“Coffee,” Karl said, as he pulled a thermos flask from the satchel at his feet.

“Iiji,” Maratse said, and grinned. “You think of everything.”

“I think of the essentials,” Karl said, and handed Maratse a packet of cigarettes.

“You’ve been generous.”

Karl shrugged. “You’re my neighbour. You can bring cigarettes next time.”

Maratse nodded and leaned forwards to reach the flame from Karl’s lighter. For the next ten minutes they didn’t speak, just enjoyed bobbing in the swell of the water, their eyes cruising the surface of the sea in anticipation of a seal coming up for air. Maratse cast a glance at the ropes and gear strewn about the dinghy, spotted the rusted barrel of the Sako .22 and smiled. Karl patted the breast pocket of his overalls and lifted the flap to reveal a plastic box of ammunition.

The trick, Maratse knew, was to startle the seal with the first shot, pushing it back under the water with little or no air in its lungs, while speeding towards its last location, and then firing again, and again, until the hunter could shoot the seal in the head, or the eye, and hook it with a gaff on a stick before the seal sank. The seal would supply meat for Karl’s family for a few weeks, and the skin, depending on the time of year, could be sold for a little money, or sewn into gloves or a smock to be sold to the tourists for a lot more. The blubber was for the dogs over the winter, and the bones were a treat for the pack as soon as the carcass was stripped of everything else.

Maratse caught himself salivating at the thought of seal meat on the bone, sizzling in its own fat on a flat rock on the mountainside, with a fire of twigs and driftwood beneath it.

“Ready?” Karl asked, as he stood up. He placed his hand on Maratse’s shoulder as he clambered over the centre seat and lifted a wooden stand from the bow of the dinghy. He slotted the base of the stand into two rectangular holes made of fibreglass fixed in position at the bow of the boat. Karl lifted a wooden wheel of fishing line into position. A length of wire with a metal clasp was tucked into a cut in the wood. Karl took it and reached over the gunwales for the fishing marker. He lifted the marker, snapped the clasp onto another clasp attached to the bottom of the flag, and released the marker, letting it bob at the end of a short line attached to the buoy. Karl straightened and slapped his hand on the wheel. “You or me?”

“Me,” Maratse said, and prepared to move to the bow of the boat. He waited until Karl sat down on the stern seat. Maratse gritted his teeth and moved forwards, kneeling on two coils of rope in front of the wheel. He gripped the handles on both sides and began to turn. Behind him, Karl pulled a shallow plastic box from beneath the centre seat. He placed it in front of him and hooked the gaff around the fishing line as Maratse reeled it in from the depths of the sea. The boat turned and Karl let the line glide through the rubber glove he was wearing. When the first flat halibut broke the surface, Karl called for Maratse to stop, as he unhooked the fish and tossed it into the plastic box at his feet.

They continued like this for another five minutes, and seven fish, until the handles slipped out of Maratse’s hands. The line started to sink back into the sea. Maratse stood up, ignoring the pain in his legs, gripped the handles and slowed the unravelling of the line. He grunted at the weight of the line as he began to turn the handles. He stopped to unzip his jacket with one hand, the fishing line trembled through the handle and into the palm of his other hand. The abrasions in the creases of his palms from the rusted bar of the ambulance workshop opened, and a smear of blood coated the handles as Maratse sweated with the weight.

“A shark, maybe?” Karl said. He peered over the side of the dinghy, as Maratse turned the handles, one slow revolution after another.

“Can you see it?” Maratse said during another pause.

“I can see something.” The dinghy dipped to the port side as Karl gripped the fishing line and tugged at it. “Just a little more, and I can get it with the gaff.” Maratse turned the wheel another three full turns until he heard Karl gasp.

“Can you see it now?” Maratse waited for a response, but Karl said nothing. He found a length of rope with a loop at one end. It was attached to the legs of the fishing wheel, and Maratse hooked the loop around the opposite handle, locking the wheel in position. He turned around as Karl retched over the side, spilling the coffee from his guts into the water. Maratse stared beyond the contents of Karl’s stomach floating on the surface, and saw the slow twists and curls of long black hair moving in the water with the current.

“Do you have a mobile, Karl?”

“Yes,” Karl said and tugged his mobile from his pocket. He handed it to Maratse and then moved along the stern seat to the starboard side of the dinghy.

Maratse crawled over the centre seat, ignoring the trim of the boat as he leaned over the side and stared into the glacial white face of a dead girl at the end of the line. He reached into the water and turned her head upwards. The eyes were gone, and the girl’s skull felt soft on one side. She was young, Maratse reckoned, and dressed in winter clothes, which was strange, he realised, as the body was well-preserved and perhaps only a week or two old. Despite the damage, she looked familiar, and he remembered the photo he had seen on the news the night before. He let go of the girl’s head, and worked his way onto the centre seat.

“Karl?” he said. “Have a cigarette.” Karl nodded as Maratse unlocked the keypad on the mobile and dialled the police station in Nuuk.