The Polar Bear Screen: A Constable Petra Jensen Novella (Greenland Missing Persons Book 16) by Christoffer Petersen

Author:Christoffer Petersen [Petersen, Christoffer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aarluuk Press for Arctic Noir, Action Thrillers and Greenland Crime
Published: 2023-01-18T13:00:00+00:00

9

I was right about the blood, bones, and hair. But whether Freydís Stefánsdóttir had been murdered or simply eaten was difficult to tell. I parked Marinó on a flat rock about ten metres from Freydís’ remains. Jonas said he needed a minute, and he walked five metres in the other direction. He had the rifle slung across his chest and his hand rested on the butt of the Glock 20 pistol holstered around his waist. He nodded that he was okay, and I took a step closer to Freydís and crouched beside what was left of her body.

However aloof I might have pretended to be, and however uninvested I wanted to be, everything changed when we found Freydís. Suddenly, the sixteen-year-old was very real. No longer just another pretty girl in an Instagram feed, or a faceless username on a chess site. Freydís was real and her life had been cut short. The only questions that remained were how and why?

I didn’t want to, but forced myself to take photos with my smartphone to document the current state of the body in case a bear forced us back into the boat when it returned to finish the rest of its meal. I took different angles, and closeups, particularly around the head as what remained of Freydís’ neck had some interesting marks on it where the skin might have been bruised.

Of course, bears were not dainty or fussy eaters, and there was a significant amount of damage that would prove challenging for the forensics team to determine exactly how or when Freydís had died. But until they arrived, the scene had to be preserved as a crime scene, or at the very least, the scene of a horrific accident.

“Petra?”

“I’ll be back in a moment,” I whispered, resisting the urge to pat Freydís’ hand when Jonas called me over to the waterline. If I hadn’t been before, I was now personally determined to find out what happened to the young Icelander.

Jonas stood close to the water. He watched me as I walked over to him, but flicked his gaze back and forth across the low ground rising to modest sized mountains behind me, and then up and down the beach.

“You think the bear will come back?” I asked as I joined him at the water.

“Either the same bear or another one,” Jonas said. “But let me show you this,” he said, crouching for a second to point out scrape marks on three larger rocks just below the surface of the water. “This isn’t us,” he said. “Sirius has no reason to come here. We’re too close to Daneborg to put a depot here. There might be the occasional hunter in the area. But then again, this far north of Ittoqqortoormiit, it’s unlikely.”

“But you think a boat made those marks?”

“A small boat,” Jonas said. “If it was a hunter in a metal hulled boat, then I would expect a wider spread. A fiberglass boat would leave paint on the rock. So I think this was a small inflatable with a strip or two of metal on the bottom of the hull for protection.

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