Chapter 19

________________________________

 

Just as Daniel coasted to a stop in the black Dodge RAM, the sodium lamp above the fishing trawler that was idling at the far end of the quay extinguished with a soft thump. He turned off the engine and leaned over the handbrake to tighten the knot of rope binding Nivi Winther’s wrists. He winked at her as she followed his every move, her gaze glued to his face. He reached up and tugged at a corner of the duct tape covering her mouth. It was still secure. Daniel leaned back in his seat and tapped a beat on the steering wheel, rising in tempo as a crewman from the trawler walked down the gangplank and onto the quay. The crewman stared through the windscreen, first at Daniel, and then at his passenger. Daniel waved and lowered the driver’s window.

“Everything all right?” he asked.

“We’re ready to go,” the man said. He looked at Nivi and lowered his voice. “Will this come back to us?”

“No,” Daniel said, “of course not.”

“I’m not so sure.”

“I will take care of it,” Daniel said. “Just get me to Ilulissat.”

The crewman looked at his watch. “The captain says we’ll be there before dawn, if we go now.”

“Then let’s go,” Daniel said, and opened the door. He jogged around the front of the big American car, and made a theatrical bow before opening the passenger door. “First Minister,” he said and reached over to unbuckle her seatbelt, “your cruise starts now. If you would be so kind as to…”

Nivi kicked Daniel in the knee as he pulled her out of the passenger seat. He buckled and she aimed another kick at his body, but her leg bounced off his side, and she stumbled. Nivi’s smartphone skittered onto the quay, as Daniel recovered. He grimaced as he marched past Nivi to pick up her phone. He tossed it over the side, the tiny splash of water barely audible, as he grabbed Nivi by the arm and dragged her up the gangplank and onto the deck of the trawler.

“Hey,” the crewman called out from the quay, “what about the car?”

“It’s not mine,” Daniel said. He opened the door to the wheelhouse, pulled Nivi up the short ladder and thrust her onto the bench. Nivi’s coat caught on the corner of the table and he wrenched it free. The captain turned at the commotion and tensed at the sight of Nivi.

“Is that who I think it is?” he said, his voice coarse like the seabed.

“Yes,” Daniel said. He slapped at the dirt on his trousers and looked at the captain. “What? Is there a problem?”

“There could be.”

“Only if you don’t get a move on. Listen,” Daniel said, “if you want us off your boat before it gets light. I suggest you get going.” He turned at the sound of the crewman drawing the gangplank onboard the trawler. “He has the right idea.”

“You never said it would be her.”

“That’s right, I didn’t.” Daniel waved his hand at Nivi. “I ask you again. Do we have a problem?”

“No.”

“And the money?”

“Now the money makes sense.” The captain turned on the trawler’s lights and the crewman on the deck looked up at the wheelhouse, shielding his eyes with his hand. The captain opened a window and gave the order to cast off the ropes.

The diesel engines vibrated through the deck as the captain reversed a short distance, before levering the trawler into gear and pulling away from the quay. Daniel pressed his face against the window as they passed two more fishing trawlers and an adventure cruise ship pushing the limits of the Greenland sailing season. He started to relax as the captain pulled away from Nuuk and increased speed. If the weather did not change drastically, as it often did in Greenland, Daniel knew that they would make good time along the coast, and that his own modest powerboat would have no problems sailing north from Ilulissat and around the Uummannaq peninsula. The First Minister didn’t know it yet, but he was taking her home, to see her daughter.

Daniel sat down beside Nivi as the captain changed the interior lighting to a red glow, and the crewman entered the wheelhouse.

“Everything’s stowed,” he said to the captain. He ignored the passengers.

“Good.” The captain pointed at the coffee machine. “Make a fresh pot, and then go below. I’ll call you when I want to be relieved.”

“Right, boss.”

Daniel leaned close to Nivi as the crewman prepared the coffee. He whispered in her ear, “You might want to rest. It’s been a busy day, and you have another long day ahead of you tomorrow.” He kicked off his shoes and stretched his legs beneath the table, propping his feet up on the opposite bench. The trawler rose over a gentle wave as they cleared the mouth of the fjord. Daniel waited for the crewman to go below and then closed his eyes.

Nivi fidgeted beside Daniel, but he did his best to ignore her. He had given her every opportunity to take a step back, to take it easy. But she had chosen to make life difficult. He teased at the thought as he clicked through his actions over the past week. Everything was fitting into place, exactly as he had imagined it would. He had planned every move, every detail, all the way back to the last day of the school term in June, before they broke up for the long summer holiday. Daniel almost smiled at the ease with which he had walked into the school and picked up Pipaluk Uutaaq’s winter clothes, carrying them over his arm like any other parent.

The trawler lifted over the crest of another shallow wave. Daniel opened one eye, watched the captain as he casually sipped at his coffee, and then glanced at Nivi, who was wide-eyed, frantic.

“Go to sleep,” he said, and closed his eyes.

His masterstroke, he felt, was Aarni Aviki’s suicide. It had been difficult to wait until Tinka Winther’s body had been found to make the connection between Uutaaq and her death. There had been a time, he recalled, when he had worried that she would never be found. And so, he had to put Aarni Aviki in the spotlight, and a suicide note was the perfect solution, perhaps the only solution.

Of course, the irony was not lost on Daniel Tukku. All this work, all this effort, his machinations as he liked to call them, was ultimately going to be for nothing. Any success he might have achieved, any power he might have gained, was lost the moment he abducted Greenland’s First Minister. He could sense a feeling of regret. But that regret was easily matched with the feeling of power far sweeter than political leadership, the power over life itself.

He opened his eyes and looked at Nivi, searching for the fear that flickered across her cheeks in tiny muscle twitches. He felt aroused, all of a sudden, even at the tiny blister of red skin tracing the edges of the tape sealing her mouth. An allergic reaction, perhaps. He lowered his gaze to look at her hands, titillating himself at the sight of the blush of irritation where the rope scratched at her wrists. He looked at her eyes last, and was almost lost in the exhilaration that rushed through his body at the sight of pure, naked fear, the terror of not knowing one’s fate.

He knew then that he could not sleep. But he would close his eyes, because there, in the darkness, he could replay and rerun his first exploration of true power, when he pinned and penetrated Nivi’s daughter in the fear-stoked cabin of his motorboat. And soon, he realised, he would do it all over again, with the mother.

Such thoughts, replayed over and over, entertained Daniel all the way up the coast from Nuuk to Ilulissat, and it was only when the captain shook his arm that he realised they had arrived. Everything was going to plan. He was but minutes away from satisfaction, and he intended to enjoy it. But the gun in the captain’s hand confused him, and he was suddenly alert.

“What’s this?”

“A handgun,” the captain said. “Empty, of course, but,” he said, and shrugged, “I just wanted you to see it.”

“It’s illegal to have a handgun in Greenland,” Daniel said, and took the gun when the captain offered it to him.

“Yes,” the captain said, with a nod at Nivi, “but then, present circumstances…”

Daniel raised his eyebrows and handed the gun back to the captain. “It’s nice.”

“It’s insurance.” The captain slid a pen through the trigger guard and dropped the gun inside a plastic bag.

“Wait,” Daniel said. He looked at the captain, and then at the long fillet knife in the crewman’s hands, as he climbed up the ladder and into the wheelhouse. “What are you doing?”

“You haven’t paid us yet,” the captain said. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the Ilulissat marina. The sky was a hazy blue and pink as the sun strained at the limits of its early winter zenith, lighting the snow-clad mountains as it began a slow circle on a low horizon.

“I have the money on my boat. Take me there, and I will pay you. Just as we agreed.”

The captain nodded at the crewman and crossed the wheelhouse floor to steer the boat the last hundred metres inside the marina. “Where’s your boat?” he asked

“It should be alongside the quay. I paid extra to have it moored close to where you can pull alongside.” Daniel stood up and walked to the stand next to the captain. “There,” he said, and pointed at a large motorboat with a lighting flash painted on the hull. He glanced at the pistol inside the plastic bag before the captain tucked it into a cupboard to his right.

“If I need to,” the captain said, “I can say you forced me to do this, with my own gun.”

“An illegal gun,” Daniel said.

“Given the scale of things,” the captain said with a look at Daniel, “I hardly think that will matter.”

“You’re probably right.”

A sudden pang of fear threatened to spoil everything, but he wouldn’t let it. He looked at Nivi, her head trembling, and felt a charge of excitement once again. It threatened to consume him, and he searched again for that fear in his gut, that things might not go to plan, and he found the balance, the focus he needed to execute his plan with a clear mind. And then, he realised, it was time, as the crewman opened the door of the wheelhouse, and lowered fenders on a long rope between his boat and the trawler.

The fresh air roused Nivi, and the captain idled the boat, clicking the gears into neutral.

“Make it quick,” he said, as he scanned the docks for signs of activity. He saw only ravens and a single light in the office of the harbour master, partly obscured as it was by a stack of shipping containers.

Daniel gripped Nivi’s arm, dragged her onto her feet and pushed her down the ladder. The crewman had a long gaff, hooked around the railings of Daniel’s boat, and a ladder hanging over the side of the trawler. Nivi’s shoes skittered on the icy deck, and she would have slipped if the crewman had not reached out and caught her with his spare hand. He let go just as quickly, as if she was a disease and he was now infected. Daniel slid his shoes across the deck and forced Nivi down the ladder. He felt the muscles in his arm tremble as he clutched the rope between her wrists and lowered her onto the deck of his boat. He let go and she crashed onto the deck, too dazed to run. Daniel slid down the ladder, grabbed Nivi by the hair, and pulled her to the covered cockpit. He fumbled with the lock of the cabin door, and then thrust Nivi inside as soon as it was open.

“Hey,” the crewman called out. “You’re forgetting something.”

“Just wait,” Daniel said. He ducked inside the cabin, and kneeled on Nivi as he pulled a small holdall out of a storage space and carried it onto the deck. The crewman used the hook of the gaff to take the holdall from Daniel’s hands and lift it onboard the trawler. Daniel tapped his leg as the crewman unzipped the holdall, nodded at Daniel and gave a thumbs-up to the captain. Daniel had barely acknowledged the crewman before the captain clicked the trawlers engines into reverse and backed away from the dock.

Daniel reached inside the cabin and grabbed an insulated floatation suit and a pair of thick rubber boots. He pulled on his sailing gear, tossed his city shoes inside the cabin, and locked the door. Daniel sat in the captain’s chair, primed and started the engine, and let it idle as he untied the ropes and slipped his boat free of the quay. He grinned as his boat bobbed in the wake of the trawler.

The icefjord in Ilulissat might have made the town famous, especially in the fervour of interest in global warming, but Daniel was about to put the town on a very different map, as the starting point of a most wicked and deeply satisfying act of cruelty. His only regret, he realised, was not knowing what he would do after he was finished with Nivi Winther. The twinge of excitement he felt, combined with the flush of adrenaline in his body, reassured him that he didn’t really care.

Daniel clicked the motorboat into gear and pointed the nose out of the harbour towards the open sea. The pink glow of the sun was fusing with the blue sky above the gargantuan bergs of the fjord, but Daniel was far too focussed on the thoughts of what he had hidden in the cabin of his boat to worry about the start of a beautiful Arctic day in Greenland. The long winter dark might be another month or two away, but for some people, the darkness had already descended, and the world had turned black as death.