The Winter Trap by Christoffer Petersen

Author:Christoffer Petersen [Petersen, Christoffer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aarluuk Press for Arctic Noir, Action Thrillers and Greenland Crime
Published: 2021-01-30T16:00:00+00:00

Part 14

“It’s late,” Innaaq said, as I let him into my room.

“I know.” I shut the door and gestured at the papers littering the floor. “But I had to call. Look.”

“Your papers fell out of your bag?”

“Someone went through my bag. They swept the papers off the desk.”

“What are they about?”

I took a breath, thinking as Innaaq worked his way through the papers, like crossing a minefield, to the other side of the room.

“Venus Manumina.”

“Venus?”

“She went missing,” I said.

“I know who she is.” Innaaq swore, then pointed at the papers. “That’s what this is about?”

“Letters,” I said, bending down to collect them. “Articles. Some photos. Everything from the last few years of her life, 1971 to 1975, before she went missing.”

“She’s dead,” Innaaq said, stooping to help me. “She went hiking, got lost, got cold, slipped into the fjord. Gone. Dead.”

“Missing.”

“True, they never found her body. But she’s dead, Constable. Believe me.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m a police officer. Because I know the case.”

“Not that. Why do you think she’s dead?”

“It’s in the files.”

“At the police station?”

“Aap. In Qaqortoq.”

“Who filled in the reports?”

Innaaq straightened his back and stared at me. “You’re calling me a liar?”

“No. I’m saying you’re just a few years older than me. It wasn’t your case. Venus went missing before you were born. So, it was someone else’s case. Someone else filed the reports.” I sighed when Innaaq didn’t answer. “You know I just gave a talk about digital Greenland, only not everything is digital. Old files, records, they haven’t been scanned. Maybe one day, but not…”

“It was ataata, my father, Sergeant Aksili Paniula. He closed the case on Venus Manumina.”

“The press didn’t believe him,” I said, shuffling the articles in my hand until I found one that Tuukula had translated for me. “They said the search was called off.”

“What search? No one knew where she was, or who she was with. The papers lied. The journalists made stuff up to make ataata look incompetent.”

I said nothing, just watched Innaaq, curious that he should be so passionate about this case, how it seemed to distress him. I thought of Kiiki Anguupisen – her face, her scream, back in the residential home. Everything about Venus Manumina seemed to cause people distress.

“Okay,” I said, interrupting a sudden bout of silence. “Suppose the papers lied. Suppose she is dead. Why did someone break into my room? Why did they go through my stuff? What were they…”

“Looking for?” Innaaq knelt down to pluck a small card from the floor. “Or what did they leave behind?” He handed the card to me.

“I haven’t seen this before.”

“No?”

I glanced at Kiiki’s scrapbook on the desk. “It wasn’t inside the pages, or the envelope.” I looked at the card – a cheap business card. It looked and smelled old. “Pannapa Photography.”

“Pannapa Imaakka.” Innaaq nodded his head. “That fits.”

“What does?”

“Nikkuliit must have talked to him. You can’t trust her. She’s like a sieve.” He reached out to pluck the card from my fingers. “Pannapa is an old man now. Sentimental.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.