Chapter 2

________________________________

 

Constable David Maratse grunted as another rod of pain shot through his legs and lit his lower back in what he imagined to be a wall of fire. It was the same every time he lifted his left foot, with another flaming rod of pain pressing through his nerves when he placed his sole flat on the treadmill. Maratse paused to catch his breath, white-knuckling the handrails as the physiotherapist made another note on his clipboard.

“It’s not getting better, is it?” he asked.

“Eeqqi,” Maratse said, and shook his head. He took a breath, breathed out, once, twice, three times until the pain subsided. “Again,” he said, and lifted his foot.

“You’re sure?”

“Iiji,” he said. “Yes, I’m sure.” His nerves flamed and Maratse crumpled, cursing as he fell onto the treadmill’s rough rubber surface. The physio turned the machine off and helped Maratse onto his feet.

“Let’s get you sat down,” he said.

“I’ve been sitting down for a week.”

“And before that you were lying down,” the physio said, as he helped Maratse into a chair, “for three weeks. This is progress. You have to take it slow.”

“Progress?” Maratse grunted. He patted the pockets of his jogging bottoms, and then realised his cigarettes were in his jacket pocket, beside his hospital bed.

“Smoking won’t help.”

“It helps me.”

“Seriously,” the physio said, “with the damage your nerves have been exposed to…”

“Smoking helps,” Maratse said, and dared the physio to suggest otherwise. The young man shrugged and made more notes on his pad. Maratse thought about nerve damage. He could almost smell his own charred flesh, as the Chinese man had pressed the ends of his improvised torture device into Maratse’s chest, his legs, his testicles. Maratse shoved the image from his mind and calculated the distance to his bed. “I need a smoke.”

“I’ll have someone take you back to your ward,” the physio said. He put down his pad and walked across the training room to where Maratse’s wheelchair was parked alongside the wall. He started to push it across the floor, stopping when the door opened. He smiled at the policewoman as she entered the room, let go of the wheelchair, and said, “He’s all yours.”

“He’s done?” she said, and brushed a loose strand of long black hair behind her ear. The movement reminded Maratse of another woman who did the same, a Danish Konstabel in the Sirius Patrol, the same woman who had rescued him from the Chinese man.

“I need a smoke,” Maratse said and nodded at the wheelchair. “One of you needs to help me.”

“Still grumpy, eh?” The policewoman said. She sighed and tucked the envelope in her hand inside her jacket, gripped the handles of the wheelchair, and positioned it alongside Maratse’s chair. The physio helped her lift Maratse onto his feet, switching the chairs as the woman supported Maratse. She smiled and caught Maratse’s eye. “Forgotten my name again?”

“Hello, Piitalaat.”

“My name is Petra,” she said. “Constable Petra Jensen.” Maratse winced as he felt the physio push the seat of the chair against the back of his legs. Petra helped him sit. “Why do you insist on calling me that?”

“I like it,” Maratse gripped the circular bars on each side of the wheels. He backed away from Petra and nodded at the door. “I need a smoke, Constable.”

“I heard you the first time,” she said. “Oh, and it won’t be Constable for much longer.”

Maratse turned at the door. “Sergeant’s exam?”

“Yes,” she said. “It went well. I should get the official confirmation by the end of the week.”

“Is that what’s in the envelope?”

“No.” Petra’s lips flattened, and she brushed at an imaginary strand of hair. “That’s something else.”

“For me?”

“I’m afraid so.”

Maratse sighed and nodded at the door. “Let’s go,” he said.

Petra opened the envelope as she walked beside Maratse towards the elevators. “Do you want me to read it?”

“Iiji,” he said and let the rubber tyres scuff his palms, “but just the highlights.”

“All right,” Petra said. She traced her finger along the closely-spaced print. “They are going to give you early retirement, on a full pension.” She paused as Maratse grunted. “But you won’t be a police officer anymore. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Maratse said. He stopped at the elevators and pressed the call button. He had expected as much, and the morning session of physiotherapy had confirmed what he already knew, he would never be a policeman again.

“Are you still going to Inussuk?”

“Iiji.”

Petra folded the letter as the elevator doors opened. “I don’t understand why. You could go home.”

Maratse went into the elevator first, turned, and waited for Petra to enter and push the button for the first floor. “I’ll always be the policeman,” he said. “It’s better to start somewhere new.”

“Retired,” Petra said.

“Same thing. It won’t make a difference.”

“So, you’re going to give up the bright lights of the city, and leave me all alone in Nuuk?” Petra leaned against the side of the elevator and composed her best pout. Maratse almost laughed, and she seemed content with the wrinkle of skin around his eyes. Petra straightened her back as the elevator slowed to a stop. Maratse waited for her to get out before following her into the corridor.

“What about Gaba?”

“We don’t talk about him,” she said.

“Since when?”

“Since last Saturday night.” Petra walked behind Maratse and gripped the handles of the wheelchair.

“What happened?” he said and let go of the wheels. He caught the smell of alcohol gel as an orderly cleaned his hands outside the men’s bathroom, but it was soon gone as Petra picked up speed.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Okay.” Maratse took a breath as Petra spun him around to back into his room. She wheeled him to the bed and Maratse reached for his jacket. Petra walked to the window, leaned against it, folded her arms and glared at Maratse. “What?” he said, pausing as he pulled the packet of cigarettes from his jacket pocket.

“You didn’t ask me.”

“You said you didn’t want to talk about it.”

“I don’t.” Petra turned away and then pointed at the cover of the newspaper on the bedside table. “That doesn’t help.”

“I haven’t read it.”

“That idiot from Seqinnersoq is mouthing off again. Using Greenlandic as a campaign promise, as a weapon. It’s the only qualification he has.” Petra picked up the paper.

“When is the election?”

“Next May.” She frowned. “You don’t watch the news?”

Maratse shrugged. “I don’t vote.” He pulled a cigarette from the packet and stuffed it into the gap between his teeth. He gripped the lighter in his fist. “I’m going outside.”

Petra turned the cover of the paper towards Maratse and stabbed her finger on the photo. “She wasn’t much older than her.”

“Who?”

“The girl Gaba slept with Saturday night.” Petra held the paper to one side and stared at the image of Malik Uutaaq, standing beside his wife, with a gymnasium-aged girl in the background. “The girl Gaba slept with is about her age, about seventeen or eighteen.”

Maratse grunted and wheeled himself to the door. He heard the thwack of the newspaper landing on the bed as he turned into the corridor and continued on to the elevators. Petra followed him. She didn’t say a word until they were huddled in the shed for smokers outside the main entrance to Dronning Ingrid’s Infirmary. She waited until Maratse had lit his cigarette and then said, “Why don’t you vote?”

Maratse took a long drag on his cigarette and then nodded at the front page of the same newspaper a patient was reading while she smoked. He lowered his voice, and said, “I don’t trust politicians.”

“But you are employed by the government – a government of politicians. We still have self-rule,” she said. “You should have a say in who gets to employ you.”

“You’re forgetting something, Piitalaat,” Maratse said. Petra frowned and he continued, “The Greenlandic police force answers directly to Denmark. They,” he said and nodded at the newspaper, “don’t tell us what to do. Besides, I’m retired.” Maratse raised his eyebrows and took another drag on the cigarette. He imagined his nerves relaxing as the smoke filled his lungs. For a moment, at least, he thought he had found peace.

“I hate it when you call me that. It’s like you have to remind me I am Greenlandic.”

“You are Greenlandic.”

“I know.”

Maratse puffed a cloud of smoke towards the ceiling of the shed. “I call you that because I like the name.”

Maratse finished his cigarette and reached for another. He sighed when he realised he had left his jacket in his room, again. He rested his hands on his thighs and closed his eyes, opening them for a moment when the patient got up to leave. He nodded at her and closed his eyes once more. Petra sat down on the bench beside him.

“What will you do in Inussuk?” she said.

“Fish and hunt.” Maratse opened one eye as Petra took his hand.

“But you can’t even walk.”

“Not yet,” he said, and closed his eyes.

Petra squeezed his hand and he curled his fingers into hers, listening to the wind licking at the dust along the street, the caw of the raven scratching on the hospital roof, and the distant peel of a church bell. Maratse felt the wind prickle at the thin hairs on his arms and he was suddenly grateful that the Chinese man had only scarred the skin he did not show, and that the pain was hidden on the inside of his body. He almost laughed at the thought, wondering at the sudden twinge of vanity, curious if it had anything to do with his thirty-nine years and the twenty-something who was holding his hand.

“Maybe I will visit,” she said, and squeezed his hand once more, “if I may?”

“Iiji,” he said, and opened his eyes.

“Will you be all right?”

“I will.”

“And you’ll stay out of trouble?”

Maratse thought for a moment before answering. From a career point-of-view he had emerged unscathed from his involvement with Konstabel Brongaard and the collateral damage she incurred in her private war with the international intelligence community. It was a wonder he was alive, and he wondered if she was. He admired her guts, her drive, and her moral code, and, for a while at least, he had enjoyed the excitement, the rush of adrenalin so different from his normal policing duties. It had nearly killed him, a fact he was all too aware of, but in the moment – some of the moments – it had fulfilled him somehow. And now, he just had to stay out of trouble.

“I will be good,” he said, and let go of her hand.

“Okay,” Petra said, and stood up. She tugged a strand of hair from the Velcro at her collar, reached inside her jacket, and gave Maratse his discharge papers. “I’d better go.”

“Thanks for coming.”

“Anytime.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Let me guess, you need a ride to the airport?”

Maratse raised his eyebrows, yes.

She nodded and looked at the door. “Can you make your own way back?”

“I can.”

“Okay.” Petra brushed the tips of her fingers across Maratse’s shoulder, turned and walked away. He waited until she had turned the corner before stuffing the envelope under his leg and wheeling himself out of the smoker’s shed and along the side of the hospital to the ambulance workshop. He nodded at the mechanic working on one of Nuuk’s three ambulances and stopped beside a long rusted bar screwed at hip-height into the garage wall. Maratse applied the brakes to the wheelchair, reached for the bar, and pulled himself onto his feet. The mechanic looked up as Maratse cursed the bar to hell and back, before cursing his feet, one after the other, as he inched his way along the wall, and back again.

When the pain was at its worst, just when he thought he might faint, he pictured the Chinese man and his electroshock paddle, and he spat at the wall and cursed the man beyond the white man’s hell, and into the frost-burning realm of Greenland’s darkest spirits, where seared flesh was a delicacy, and pierced eyes nothing more than an inconvenience before the real torment began.

Maratse paused to pick the flakes of rusted metal from his orange-stained palms, and then gripped the bar again, heaving himself along the wall, spitting at the Chinese man, and cursing the fire in his spine, and the white-hot nails in the soles of his feet.

“I will walk again,” he said, and took another step.

He heard the crash of metal as the mechanic downed his tools, and he watched as the man wiped his hands with an oily rag and walked across the workshop to stand behind Maratse’s wheelchair.

Maratse gritted his teeth and said, “Just one more.”

The mechanic nodded and walked to the row of lockers at the back of the workshop. He returned with a bottle of vodka and two dirty shot glasses, placing them on an upturned barrel as Maratse slumped into his wheelchair. The mechanic poured two glasses and gave one to Maratse.

“Skål,” the mechanic said and clinked his glass against Maratse’s. He waited until Maratse had downed the first glass, before exchanging his full glass for Maratse’s empty one.

“Qujanaq,” Maratse said and downed the second glass of vodka. “Thank you.”

The mechanic took the empty glasses and placed them by the side of the vodka. He reached for the cap and screwed it back onto the bottle when Maratse shook his head.

“You push yourself too hard,” the mechanic said.

“Maybe.”

“Yeah, you do.” The mechanic cocked his head and stared at Maratse. “Why?”

Maratse pulled the envelope out from beneath his leg and gave it to the mechanic. He wiped the sweat from his brow as the man opened the letter and read it.

“That’s why,” Maratse said as the man whistled.

“They’re going to give you a full pension.”

“I don’t want it.”

“You don’t have to work again.” The mechanic waited as Maratse took a deep breath. When he exhaled he said, “You want to be a policeman?”

“You want to be a mechanic?” Maratse said and looked around the workshop. He gestured at the man’s oily hands, sniffed at the heavy taint of diesel.

The mechanic shrugged and said, “I’m good at it.”

“So am I,” said Maratse. He nodded at the bottle. “Will you leave that when you go?”

“Sure.”

Maratse nodded. He turned away from the mechanic, reached out for the bar, and pulled himself to his feet. The pain lit his spine like a firework and he cursed and spat, until the flame became a rod of lightning, as Maratse raged back and forth along the bar until the sun dipped low in the late autumn sky, and all the vodka was gone.