The Ice Warden: A Constable Petra Jensen Novella (Greenland Missing Persons Book 31) by Christoffer Petersen

Author:Christoffer Petersen [Petersen, Christoffer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aarluuk Press for Arctic Noir, Action Thrillers and Greenland Crime
Published: 2024-11-07T00:00:00+00:00

8

In the red glow of the lamps in the wheelhouse, Malik Ajortoq looked nothing like Unatsiaq, and I understood that my brain had been jumping to conclusions, looking for connections, and even creating them when nothing else seemed to fit. It was, perhaps, a result of being kept in the dark and drip-fed morsels of information as the operation progressed. But when the wind finally abated and Malik looked ready to begin his part of the tale, I realised Taatsiaq was about to hear something for the first time, and, at last, I was not alone in the dark. That Malik was about to give us an inside look into a very dark world was another matter.

He made fresh coffee, strong enough that the scent of it beat back the fishy tang in the air. There were even ship’s biscuits, and when Malik shared the packet around, I thought of Constable David Maratse, and Tuukula, Luui’s father, and the ship’s biscuits they carried in their sledge bags. Taatsiaq whispered something about the biscuits being better than body armour, and then Malik pressed a mug of fresh coffee into our hands before settling in the captain’s chair, turning it around so that he could see us.

“My son is a bad man,” he said, pausing for his first sip of coffee. “I know this, because I made him that way.”

Taatsiaq unclipped the MP5 from the sling around his chest and tucked it between us on the bench seat. I blew on the coffee, sending wisps of steam into the nightglow of the wheelhouse, and remembered the scene in the horror movie Atii and I were watching before the power went out in my apartment.

The scene was set, and, if the situation hadn’t involved a missing girl, I might have commented as such. But Malik had only just begun.

“I made him bad,” he said. “I turned him, because I drank too much, and I got angry. When he did something stupid, and even when he didn’t, I hit him, and I hit him hard.”

Malik paused, as if waiting for the two police officers sitting in front of him to react. We didn’t. The trawler continued on its course, rolling with the somewhat gentler seas, and Malik took another sip of coffee.

“Palu got stronger as he got older, and he got wiser. He took the beatings I gave him, and he took them for his stepbrother too. Unatsiaq is the son of my second wife. She brought her own baggage into our unhappy family, and it was Unatsiaq who took the blame for it.” Malik looked at Taatsiaq as if it was his turn to add something to the story.

“Unatsiaq’s anaana is my aunt,” he said. “On my father’s side. We knew she had problems…”

Malik snorted when Taatsiaq didn’t finish his sentence, and then, after another sip of coffee, he finished it for him.

“The problems got worse,” he said. “You can say it. I know it already. But I never laid a finger on your aunt.

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