“I didn’t know there was a word for that. But I guess you’re right—I couldn’t be sure for a moment.”
“It can be pretty disconcerting.”
Simonsen nodded and relaxed. With difficulty he fished out his cigarettes, ignoring all the health warnings, lit up and inhaled with pleasure. The silence didn’t seem so oppressive with a cigarette in his hand. When he’d smoked it to the last shreds of tobacco, he bent down and meticulously stubbed it out on the ice, after which he stuck the butt in his pocket. The Greenlander observed him closely throughout. Simonsen tried to start a conversation again.
“Tell me, do you come here often?”
The other man’s face reluctantly squeezed itself into a grin that made him resemble a mischievous troll. Simonsen could not help smiling back.
“Arne thought that too . . . your partner, I mean. I’ve forgotten his last name,” said Egede.
He nodded his head towards the plane instead of pointing.
“Arne Pedersen. His name is Arne Pedersen,” Simonsen told him.
“That’s right. Well, he had this idea that I often go trekking about on the ice cap. Five hundred kilometres out, a quick walk around the old neighbourhood, then hike home again with healthy red cheeks.”
The man’s irony was more cheerful than sarcastic.
“Okay, I get it. You haven’t been here before. Of course you haven’t.”
“That’s not quite correct because I was here yesterday,” said Egede, straight-faced, “but otherwise it’s not somewhere I’d choose to visit. Why would I?”
They both nodded, and for a moment Konrad feared that they’d lapse back into silence. But the other man said, “Pedersen mentioned you don’t like discussing a case before you’ve seen the victim. That it’s a kind of principle you have.”
“Principle is a bit of an overstatement, I’m not quite that rigid, but it is correct that I prefer to wait, if that’s all right with you? There are a couple of things, however, that we might as well deal with now. It’s probably no secret to you that I’ve been thrown headlong into this case.”
The other man stopped smiling.
“Yes, I heard that. Pedersen said that you were about to leave on holiday. To somewhere more southerly and a whole lot warmer.”
He gave his troll’s grin again.
Konrad liked him more and more.
“Thanks for reminding me! Yes, I should be on my way to Punta Cana—it’s in the Dominican Republic, by the way—where I was going to doze under a palm tree with my . . . my girlfriend, before being picked up by the good ship Legend of the Seas from the Royal Caribbean Cruise Line, and . . . Well, it hurts too much to think about the rest.”
“You’re welcome, it was nothing.”
“Anyhow, there hasn’t really been time to brief me about what happened yesterday, or maybe nobody I’ve talked to knows the full story. Was it really the German Chancellor who found the girl?”
“No, it wasn’t, but almost. It was a glaciologist who discovered her first and pointed her out to the chancellor.”
“Were you there when it happened?”
“No, but I got the story from someone who was. They were in a helicopter. In fact, there were three of Air Greenland’s big Sikorsky S-61s. You know, the red ones they call Sea Kings.”
Konrad had no idea what he was talking about, but courteously replied with a white lie.
“Yes, they’re impressive.”
“I think so too. Well, there was one machine for the chancellor and the Danish Minister for the Environment plus aides and hangers on, one for security people and subordinate German staff personnel, and the last one for journalists. The chancellor’s helicopter led the way. The route was roughly circular, over the ice cap from Ilulissat at Disko Bay and down to Nuuk, from where they were scheduled to take commercial flights back to Copenhagen and Berlin respectively. She—the chancellor, that is—insisted on going all the way to the middle of the ice, possibly based on a misunderstanding that the melting is worst there. But that was what she said she wanted, and no one raised any objections.”
“But what is there to see?”
“Nothing of any significance. Once you’ve seen the first puddle of meltwater, of which there are lots on the Ilulissat glacier within a ten-minute flight, there’s no point in looking at the next hundred. Besides, they actually become less frequent the farther you go over the ice, and as you can see for yourself, there’s not much else to look at out here.”
Simonsen answered him diplomatically.
“It’s fascinating, but perhaps a trifle monotonous.”
“Yeah, you could put it like that. All the same, the chancellor found the tour extremely interesting, and the glaciologist thought the same. He was sitting beside her, lecturing away throughout the whole trip. To the Minister for the Environment’s great irritation.”