Chapter 21

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The dark interior of the cabin was a conjuring pit of demons, an evil womb, pulsing on the outside with the rush of water along the hull. Inside it was fetid, with the premonition of death. Nivi could hear the clump of Daniel’s boots on deck as he moved around, and, in between, she thought she heard him talk to himself, and sometimes shout. Gone was her shrewd assistant, the devious operator, a force of reckoning on the Greenlandic political stage. Gone was the thirty-something career-driven man, hungry for power, and in his stead was the deviant. She knew that, but she hadn’t been prepared for the change, had not seen it grow and consume him. It was as if the devil drove the demon inside. The worlds had been bridged, lines of communication established, serviced with a constant stream of hellish impulse and desire.

Nivi tugged at the tape glued across her mouth. Her skin around the edge of the tape was sore, swollen, an allergic reaction to the glue. An abstract thought reminded her of a similar allergy Tinka had to the tubes of glue they used in schools. And, if she dug farther back into her own childhood, she could trace the same irritation and skin rash when helping her father patch a hole in his boat.

Fibreglass, that was it. She recalled the feel of the fibres, like strands of hair sprayed with a fixing agent, pliable but strong. She had watched her father prepare the formula in the shade cast by his boat. His face, sun-engraved with weather-beaten lines and wrinkles beneath a saggy cloth cap. His hands, rough, the pads of his fingers scored by rope, knife, and hook. The smell of his hands tickled Nivi’s nose, as she remembered dark blood in the creases, seal blood, rich and liver-like, fishy. That part of her brain that was detached from her situation was amused that she would find comfort in the memory of her father. What were Tinka’s last thoughts, she wondered. Did she think of her father? The man who was supposed to make her feel safe, to protect her?

Nivi shifted her focus to a more immediate concern – breathing. She tugged at a corner of the tape, closed her eyes as she felt her skin around her mouth begin to lift. She tasted blood as the tape tore at her lips, and then it was free, and she gulped the fetid air of the cabin into her lungs. Nivi rolled onto her back, saw the shadow of Daniel’s boots through the smoked-glass door, and froze, eyes transfixed to the one part of her captor that she could see, although his demonic face was foremost in her mind.

It appeared then, the face of the demon, as Daniel bent down to peer through the glass door. He stared at Nivi, squinting as he gauged her status, her level of consciousness. And then he saw it, she realised at once, the minute his body stiffened and he stood up. He could see she had removed the tape. Nivi’s body reacted with a flood of adrenaline, charging through her veins, pulsing at the tips of her fingers. Her breath changed to short pulses, in and out of her lungs, as Daniel unlocked the door and dropped down into the cabin.

He sat on his haunches, his neck hidden as the thick padding of the suit swelled over his torso. The image of an ape flashed through Nivi’s mind, fitting as it was with the primal fear flooding her body. She remembered a wildlife programme on television, primates hunting, branches crashing above the jungle floor, leaves and vines twisting down to the lowest and darkest levels, furthest from the sun. She was on the jungle floor, she realised, where the air was thickest, the odour rankest. She had fallen from the upper levels, she had cascaded. She was prey, to be toyed with, and disposed of. She held her breath, and the hunter spoke.

“You’re awake,” he said. Daniel removed the fleece hat from his head and stuffed it into the thigh pocket of his overalls. “That’s good, because we are close, and I want you to see everything.” He licked a bubble of saliva from the corner of his mouth.

“What do you want me to see, Daniel?”

“Ah,” he said and wagged his finger, “wonderful things, things that can only be seen with the certain…” He paused to search for the appropriate word. “Stimulus. That’s it.”

“Daniel, I need to know,” Nivi said, her words measured and slow, as she compensated for the rush of chemicals in her body, urging her to flee. She had projected her worst fears onto Malik Uutaaq, in anticipation of the truth that he killed her daughter. Now, faced with the man she believed murdered Tinka, it was almost anticlimactic. She had to know, even if the truth would strip away her last vestige of defence, and she would succumb to the fear. She still had to know.

“Yes,” Daniel said, “it was here. She was right here, laying where you are, actually.” He swept his hand in the air between them, as if caressing her body.

Tinka’s body, Nivi realised, not mine.

“Whatever power Uutaaq might have had over your daughter, I took away when I had her here. I stole it,” he said, and reached into another pocket. He pulled out a pair of topaz panties, stretched them between his fingers, and sniffed the length of them. Nivi watched him, and he caught her eye. “These were hers,” he said. “Of course, she had already left the nest, a young woman, independent. I bet you never saw these in the wash basket, never hung them on the line.” Daniel leaned forwards, and said, “You never knew your daughter like I did, Nivi.”

“You’re an animal,” Nivi whispered.

“I suppose I am,” he said, and bunched Tinka’s underwear within his fist. “And animals,” he said, as he knelt in front of Nivi, “have needs.” The punches came at her again and again, until the blood spluttered from her mouth.

The boat spun slowly in the water, and he looked up through the open door as the mountains of the peninsula came into the view, and the witches’ hat peak of Qilertinnguit stood tall and proud above Inussuk.

“Look, Nivi,” Daniel said and beckoned for her to look out of the door. He grabbed her by the hair when she didn’t move, dragging her onto his knee. He pulled her head up, stuck one hand beneath her jaw and lifted her chin. “Do you see that? Do you see the antenna? You can just see the white picket fence. That’s the graveyard where your daughter lies. I have brought you home, to bring you together. It’s time for you to be reunited.”

Nivi tried to turn her head, gasping for breath, and snorting blood from her nose. The top of her left ear creased within the folds of his overalls, but her right ear was unhindered, and free to hear the sound of a motor, and the screech of feedback through a set of speakers, before a voice cut across the surface of the water.

“Daniel Tukku. This is the police.”

“No,” Daniel whispered. He thrust Nivi to one side, and lifted his head to peer over the lip of the cabin door. He ducked down again, as the voice on the loudspeaker called out his name once more. “No,” he shouted.

Nivi watched as Daniel closed and locked the cabin door from the inside. She curled away from him, looped her arms over her knees, stretching the ropes binding her wrists. Daniel stooped to look out of through the glass again, ducking down as a shadow passed the cabin door. He kneeled on the floor and opened a storage panel. It was shaped in a V and Nivi could see lengths of ballast shaped to fit in the bottom of the compartment, flush with the keel. Daniel removed the ballast, heaved it to one side, lips moving as he muttered, and grabbed an axe with a short metal handle. He raised it and struck at the fibreglass at the bottom of the compartment.

“No, Daniel,” Nivi shouted. She moved, as he swung the axe again and again, chipping away at the hull of his boat. He stopped at the sound of her voice, turned and swung the axe, catching her on the side of her head with the flat of the adze, a hammer blow that sent her sprawling against the far wall of the cabin. Daniel struck at the hull again as Nivi lifted her hands to her head. Her breath caught in her throat as she felt and heard the shift and crackle of bone beneath the skin just above her ear. Daniel raised the axe again, and again, until the first spray of icy sea water splashed on the front of his overalls.

“Yes,” he shouted. “We are going to be all right, Nivi.” He turned to glance at her, frowning for a second at the blood pulsing from the side of her head, and then he grinned. “I will take to your daughter.”

Daniel looked up at the sound of a motor in the water, looping around his boat. He raised the axe and chopped at the hull until the water plumed through two holes. He jammed the edge of the axe into one of the holes and prised at the tear, twisting the axe in all directions until the hole was bigger, and water swelled into the storage compartment and flooded into the cabin. He stood up as the water reached his knees, and stared at the hole, at once pleased and frightened that he had succeeded, and that his boat was sinking.

Daniel heard the police call his name once more, knelt in the water and lifted the axe, splashing with each swing. Nivi felt the water on her face and tried to move towards the cabin door. Daniel reached out to catch her arm and held on, swinging the axe with the other hand. If he heard the impact of boots on the deck above, it didn’t register on his face.

“Nivi,” he said, the words trembling as the cold water seeped into his overalls, rising over his knees to submerge his thighs. “Do you know what I called your daughter, just before I pushed her over the side of this boat?”

“No,” Nivi whispered. She tried to move out of the water. Daniel pinched her arm in his grip. She looked through the glass door, and stared into the barrel of a submachine gun, as the policeman moved to the left and the right, searching for a clear shot. Daniel lifted the axe again, and lost his balance as the axe plunged through the hull. He let go of Nivi, recovered his balance, and pulled the axe out of the water.

“I called her a Greenlandic bitch,” he said, and reached for Nivi. “No, wait,” he said, and frowned. “I said she should speak Greenlandic, bitch. That’s what I said.” He pulled Nivi close and she saw the blue tinge to his lips as the cold gripped his body. “I was being Malik,” he said. “You understand? Don’t you?”

“Yes,” Nivi said. She looked up at the tramp of boots on the roof of the cabin. A shadow appeared above the skylight window, and then a masked face, and the barrel of another gun.

“It was an act,” Daniel said. “Of course it was.” The twitch of muscles in Daniel’s face settled and his cheeks smoothed as he exhaled. He stroked the side of Nivi’s face. “You’re hurt?”

“Yes,” she said. “Let me go, Daniel.”

“Let you go?”

“Yes.”

Daniel rested his hand on the butt of the axe handle. He stroked her face again, and said, “You have your daughter’s eyes.”

“Let me go,” Nivi whispered.

Daniel nodded, and said, “Yes. Why not? I could do it.”

“Please.”

“I could do it for Tinka,” he said, and shrugged, “to make amends.”

“Daniel,” said a voice from the deck of the boat. “You need to come out now.”

Daniel shivered. He reached around Nivi and unlocked the cabin door. He stumbled in the water as he grabbed Nivi by the hair at the back of her head, and said, “Up.” He pulled her to her feet and pushed her up the steps to the deck, forcing the masked policeman to take a step back, towards the railings. Daniel held the axe tight in his right hand, shoved Nivi forwards, propelling her into the policeman’s chest as he raised the axe and roared.

The policeman let go of the submachine gun attached to his chest, and wrapped his arms around Nivi. The force of Nivi’s momentum pushed the policeman over the side of the boat, and he pulled the First Minister with him. The weight of his equipment dragged them below the surface as his partner took aim from the cabin roof, and fired a burst of three bullets into Daniel’s back. The axe clattered across the deck as Daniel crashed into the railings, reaching for Nivi as she disappeared within Gaba’s grasp into the black sea flecked with ice.

“Gaba,” Miki shouted from the cabin roof. He pulled the mask from his face and leaped onto the deck of the boat. He flung his body at the railings, looking up as Maratse tossed his utility belt onto the deck of the hotel boat, threw his jacket to one side, and dived into the water.

Maratse ignored the cold clamp around his chest and grabbed at the clothes on Nivi’s back, pulling the First Minister free of Gaba’s grip, and propelling her to the surface. He took another stroke downwards as the SRU leader clawed at the equipment on his chest. Maratse grabbed Gaba’s vest and kicked. He kicked through the explosion of pain firing through the nerves in his legs, ignored the vice of cold pinching his head, and kicked for the surface. Gaba fumbled with the clasp of his helmet, cut the sling of his weapon with a knife and kicked with Maratse until they breached the surface, grasping each other with stiff fingers as Petra and Miki stretched over the side of the hotel boat, beneath the railings, and hauled them to safety.

Miki peeled the equipment and clothes from his boss, wrapping him in a blanket, as Petra did the same for Maratse. The paramedics triaged their patients, treating them in turn for trauma and exposure. Petra helped Maratse into a chair next to the First Minister. She kissed him on the forehead and made room for Gaba.

Nivi slid her hand out from beneath her blanket to clutch Maratse’s fingers. She turned her bandaged head and looked at him. “Thank you, Constable.”

“Iiji,” Maratse said. “You’re welcome.”

“I’m not going to hold your hand,” Gaba said, and nudged Maratse from the other side, “but thank you.”

Maratse bit through the pain in his legs and nodded.