Soon they had arrived at her citizen, and the nurse leaped out of the car.
“This one will take fifteen minutes at most. If I’m lucky I can make up a minute or two. I’m only going to change a dressing.”
When seventeen minutes had passed, Pauline Berg began feeling stressed.
On the drive to Viby they had time to talk. Pauline asked, “Were you a colleague of Maryann Nygaard in 1983, at the American base in S?ndre Str?mfjord?”
According to the woman’s schedule they now had twenty minutes of driving ahead of them, so there was no reason to force the conversation. For that reason Pauline started with the fundamentals.
“Yes, we were both nurses there. The base rules were that there should be double staffing, even if there wasn’t enough work for a part-time position. The US Air Force is a strange mixture of admirable efficiency and exceptional waste.”
“How long were you employed in Greenland?”
“From 1980 to 1984.”
“Was it difficult working there?”
“Not particularly, not if you were a nurse. You had to speak a reasonable amount of English and be sociable. There were rumours that you must not be politically suspect—a communist, that is—but I don’t know if that was correct.”
“Do you know what happened to Maryann Nygaard?”
“Of course I do. She was the one the chancellor found out on the ice. I try not to think about it too much. It’s not that hard. It was a long time ago, almost another life.”
“How did you get along with each other?”
“Not very well, we were constant competitors.”
“To be the best nurse?”
“To score the best men. And she won by a landslide there.”
“Did she have a lot of them?”
“Maryann basically had the men she wanted, but if you mean did she hop into bed with just anyone, the answer is no. All things considered we were no different from many girls in that age group. Though in our cases you need to factor in a lot of free time and parties with endless quantities of cheap alcohol, not to mention the ratio between men and women being extremely favourable, if you know what I mean.”
“Hmm, I think I get your point. Can you remember whether Maryann had any female friends? Or friends of either sex for that matter. I mean, someone she would confide in.”
The woman answered without a pause.
“Yes, she did. There was a girlfriend who was half Greenlandic and half Danish. She was if possible even prettier than Maryann, a tall, good-looking girl. She was studying at Aarhus University and had taken a year off, but I can’t remember her name, only her nickname. Almost everyone had nicknames. It might seem a little strange, not to mention stilted, but today that’s often what you remember.”
“And her nickname was?”
“Six Feet of Love.”
“And you don’t know where I can find Six Feet . . . I mean, the girlfriend now?”
“No, not at all. I remember that she was always reading, so it’s a given that she did something with books. Librarian, book dealer, translator, editor—”
Pauline Berg interrupted.
“Thanks, I get it, something with books. Tell me, what did you think when Maryann Nygaard disappeared?”
“That it was terrible and also hard to understand. Most people thought she had deliberately gone out on the ice. That is, committed suicide. It happened, and fairly often too. Sometimes people were never found again, but no one had suspected Maryann of harbouring such suicidal thoughts, so in her case it was a shock. That was actually why I went home when my contract ran out.”
“Her disappearance happened in connection with a visit to a place called DYE-5, a radar station on the ice cap as I’ve understood it. Have you been there yourself?”
“Twice. I’ve been to all five DYE stations, but only once to DYE-4. It was all the way over on the east coast. Unfortunately I have a hard time differentiating the various visits from each other twenty-five years later, so I can’t remember my trips to DYE-5 in particular. All the stations more or less resembled each other.”
“Try to tell me about a typical trip. How did you get out there?”
“We were flown, either in a plane or a helicopter. To DYE-4 always by plane, it was too far away for a helicopter.”
“Was the flight just for your sake, or were there others along on the trip?”
“Just for us. A few times there were packages too and always letters, but otherwise it was just us.”
“So you were alone with the pilot?”
“Yes, that’s how it was.”