At Once Splendid and Fierce: A Greenland Missing Persons short story by Christoffer Petersen

Author:Christoffer Petersen [Petersen, Christoffer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aarluuk Press for Arctic Noir, Action Thrillers and Greenland Crime
Published: 2024-08-13T00:00:00+00:00

8

I flew to Saattut because Satuk asked me to take her father home.

“I don’t want him to see me like this,” she said. “He’s seen it once already. He doesn’t need to go through it again.”

“Through what?” I said, but the nurses interrupted us, suggesting there was a chance Satuk might pull through, but not if they waited a minute longer. I stepped out of Satuk’s hospital room and joined Atii in the corridor, where she sat next to a small man who seemed to grow smaller by the second.

“I’ve tried offering him coffee,” Atii said, as I joined them. “Hot chocolate. Even a beer.” Atii shook her head and said, “He doesn’t want anything.”

“She wants me to go home,” he said, in Danish, lifting his head to look me in the eye.

“Yes,” I said. “She asked me to take you.”

Kakitsoq Poulsen nodded and said, “I am ready.”

Atii cleared it with Duneq and social services, and I grabbed an overnight bag from my apartment before Atii drove me to the hotel to pick up Kakitsoq. We checked out of Hotel Hans Egede, and I watched Kakitsoq sign two forms that stated his room and the rooms of the guests not resident in Nuuk had been paid for by The Krætzmer Foundation.

“Not Fabricius?” Atii whispered when I told her.

“Apparently not,” I said.

“Wasn’t Krætzmer…”

“Mette Fabricius’ family name,” I said, teasing Atii that even after a box of cheap red wine, I was still sharper than she was.

“Not fair, P,” she said.

We stopped talking when Kakitsoq said he was ready, and not a word was passed on the way to the airport. I hugged Atii just before we boarded our flight, and she whispered something about me keeping an eye out for trouble.

“I’m just taking an old man home,” I said, and Atii giggled. “Yeah, okay.”

I could hear how it sounded. But regardless of Atii’s cheeky insinuations, I was more concerned about the fact that Kakitsoq had accepted his daughter’s wishes not to sit by her side in the hospital, and that he was ready to fly home.

Kakitsoq Poulsen had effectively lost two daughters on the same day, although ja should easily be able to afford regular flights home to Saattut now that she was married to a millionaire. And Satuk wasn’t dead.

“Not yet,” I whispered as we boarded the plane.

Kakitsoq slept, and I burned through several levels of Candy Crush as my brain chewed over the stranger details of the case, not least the lyrics of Satuk’s song, her mysterious illness, and the cheapskate millionaire who used his late wife’s foundation to pay for his father-in-law’s hotel bill.

“Unless he doesn’t have any money,” I said, letting my smartphone slip into my lap as I thought about it.

Satuk had called Fabricius the Moon, and I wondered if ja was supposed to be the Earth, around which he orbited until he was able to…

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