“Didn’t she want to see the ice cap?”
“I’m pretty sure she’d rather have talked politics. There were two Greenlandic politicians along, one of whom I’ve spoken to, and she tells me they were laughing up their sleeves at the minister’s disappointment. Who knew the chancellor would be such a keen student of glaciology? Not too long ago the Minister for the Environment hosted a bunch of US senators on a similar mission but they viewed the guided tour almost as a pleasure trip. One of them even asked if he might be able to shoot a reindeer—possibly in jest—but our local press was very indignant about it, and naturally none of the visitors was keen to see more of the ice cap than strictly necessary.”
Simonsen brought him back on track.
“But the chancellor did?”
“Yes, like I said. The helicopter flew low and everyone was equipped with binoculars, which no one except the chancellor and the glaciologist used after the first half an hour. The Danes napped and the Germans worked on their computers, my source says.”
He smiled and Simonsen interjected, “So far, so predictable. What happened then?”
“Nothing at all for a good hour . . . hour and a half. The chancellor got her climate lesson, and the others minded their own business. Until she and the scientist suddenly started calling out because they had seen the corpse on the ice. So after a little discussion the pilot got the helicopter turned around and they flew back and found it here.”
“Did they land?”
“No, they just hovered in the air for a couple of minutes while the pilot reported the coordinates. Someone had the presence of mind to direct the journalists’ helicopter away from the scene before the representatives of the world’s press could slug it out for a photographic scoop. I mean, who’s going to cover a climate-change conference when there’s a juicy murder to write about instead? But they couldn’t contain the story completely. Word got out, after the group reached Nuuk, and a couple of photos taken from the security helicopter are in circulation. It’s front-page news all over Europe. Chancellor Sherlock Holmes—that’s Bild-Zeitung. The London Times’s lead article is a much more staid Chancellor Finds Murdered Girl. The Danish newspapers are featuring it big-time, and CNN has had the story as ‘breaking news’ since last night. Do you need any more on this?”
“No, for God’s sake, that’s more than enough.”
“Well, looks like . . . whoever he is . . . your colleague . . . was right. Now I’ve forgotten his name again, God help me—I have a thing about names, they get away from me. But he also said you probably wouldn’t be too enthusiastic about the coverage. Don’t you like the press?”
“If you mean in theory, then yes. I don’t especially care for crime reporters, though.”
“But the press made you famous, I understand.”
“Famous? Nonsense. I’m not famous.”
“Well known then.”
“That’s rubbish. I am neither well known nor famous.”
Simonsen stamped lightly on the ice to emphasise his words and almost toppled backwards when his foot slid out from under him.
“If you say so, but somehow or other you must have made yourself really unpopular in Germany, since it’s said the German Chancellor herself sentenced you to a spell in the freezer instead of letting you take your Caribbean holiday.”
Strangely enough Simonsen found he didn’t mind being teased by the Greenlander, maybe because the little man radiated so much friendliness once he had opened his mouth. And maybe because Simonsen secretly felt a little proud of the way his presence had been formally requested.
“All complete nonsense,” he asserted, unconvincingly.
They stood there in a silence broken only by stifled laughter from Egede. Simonsen decided it was time to change the subject.
“I understand you’ve had the opportunity to see the victim?”
“Yes, yesterday, as I said. We had to make sure of what we were dealing with, but I haven’t done anything out here other than look at her and then put up the barricade.”
He nodded over towards a circle of iron spikes hammered into the ice around the body. Red and white striped crime-scene tape had been wound between them.
“It took us about half an hour to get those in. The ice is like stone, and they are clearly unnecessary out here, but I had strict orders to cordon her off.”
“Is she a Greenlander?”
Egede’s cheerfulness vanished abruptly. “Why do you ask that? Does it make any difference?” he asked sharply.