Until the Night

by Giles Blunt

  “That’s Loach,” Delorme said.

  No, I was talking with their backroom boys—they’re seriously considering getting me to run.

  Drexler grinned. “Hasn’t changed, right? But watch—sorry about the quality. Guy who took this was hammered, obviously. Interesting thing from your point of view is, it’s not Loach …”

  The image blurred and swung once more, coming to rest on a bulldog of a man in a houndstooth jacket and cap.

  “That’s Chuck Rakov. Bit of a clown, Chuck, but a solid investigator. Definitely someone you want watching your back.”

  Rakov put a phone up to his ear. That’s right, honey … The Prime Minister … I know … Yeah, me personally. Gotta go.

  “Great mimic,” Cardinal said, getting up. “Guy should be on late-night TV. Listen, Art, is there a desk I can take over for a few hours?”

  “Hang on, hang on. You gotta see this.” Drexler was fast-forwarding in jerks and hops. “Here we go.”

  A lot of shouting and then Rakov, still wobbling on his chair, launched into a new voice. I’m tell you the troot—for shore! We get to de address and dis lady, she and ’er ’usband are sitting side by each on da porch swing. And da guy, he’s got no clothes on—nudding!

  Cardinal and Delorme looked at each other.

  “That’s the guy,” Delorme said. “He’s the damn caller.”

  Drexler froze the image. “Loach annoyed everyone he worked with. As I’m sure you know.” He pointed the remote at the screen. “But I guarantee you, nobody hates him like Chuck Rakov.”

  Drexler found an empty desk for Cardinal to use, and Cardinal stayed there after Delorme had gone back to the hotel and Drexler had gone home. He looked at the brochure he had purchased from the eBay brothers: the four young men and their prototype robot. Eventually the clatter and hum of the big-city police station vanished and he focused on the task before him.

  He began working the search engines, beginning with Arctic, crime, 1992. With each response he narrowed it down a little more. LARS research, robotics. That didn’t get him anything useful. Finally, he typed in murder, Axel Heiberg Island, and that brought up a JPEG of an old clipping. RESEARCHER ACCUSED OF MURDER IN DRIFT STATION DISASTER.

  The article was brief, but a quick scan of it gave Cardinal enough names and dates to hone his search even further. What the bizarre story boiled down to was this: an enraged researcher’s murder spree had been foiled only by the sudden disintegration of their camp on an ice floe. Cardinal had a dim memory of the events—very dim indeed, because that summer he had been working on an extremely difficult case of his own. And yes, Catherine had been hospitalized at the time. He had had no spare attention for cases thousands of kilometres from his jurisdiction.

  Axel Heiberg Island was in the northern territory of Nunavut. He would have to wait until morning to call their corrections department. He switched off his desk lamp, left a note of thanks for Drexler and headed for his hotel.

  It had been snowing for the past fifty or sixty kilometres. Big lazy flakes in no hurry to hit the highway. They swirled in the headlights and around the side windows and stuck to the windshield, except for the smeary arcs left by the wipers.

  The traffic had thinned and he hadn’t seen a single patrol car since Toronto. The girl was silent in the back and appeared to be in no distress. His main concern was catching the turnoff. Many of the signs were obscured by clinging snow. Eventually it came up on the right, and he saw it in enough time to signal and slow and make the turn.

  Different road, different journey. Narrower—thick trees pressing up close—darker. No ploughs had been through, and the snow was falling more heavily now. Visibility dropping.

  It would be fifteen or twenty minutes on this road, then one more turn. Beyond his headlights, blackness. No other headlights anywhere. He switched on the dome light and looked back at the girl. Still out cold. The sharp turn hadn’t woken her, nor the new roughness of the ride.

  He didn’t know what hit them when it hit. He didn’t even hear it. As he turned back from looking at the girl, the windshield came in on him and the van went into a spin. He couldn’t see through the shattered glass and the wheel was slick with blood. Chances were good they were going to flip, but somehow the wheels held as they turned and turned.

  Durie’s eyes were blind with blood and he had no idea which way they were headed as the van spun or, when it finally came to a stop, which way they were facing.

  His head was a sphere of black cloud and he couldn’t think. He held his eyes closed against the blood, and when he tried to wipe them, his arm was stopped by something. There was no pain, but he considered that might just be a matter of shock. He was over on one side, something pressing heavily on his hips and legs. The driver’s seat was totally disarranged, he could feel that much. Tilted way back so that he was nearly falling into the back of the van.

  There was a snuffling sound from somewhere. He craned his neck to see forward. Windshield shattered and dark. Strange shapes bulging over the passenger seat. Antlers. That snuffling sound the beast’s dying breaths.

  The pressure on his side was the airbag.

  He thought the girl should be all right, he had strapped her down pretty well. He forced his left arm free and wiped some blood away. Yes, she was twisted around a little and the blanket had been thrown clear, but otherwise she looked okay.

  He reached for the passenger seat and pulled but didn’t get anywhere. His fingers found the seatbelt buckle and released it and he managed to drag himself nearly free. Blood all over him, but that could be the animal’s. The snuffling had stopped.

  Slam of a car door.

  Durie reached for the glovebox, opened it and pulled out the Glock. He freed the last of himself from the airbag and opened the passengerside door and crawled out of the van hands first, snow a cold bracelet on each wrist.

  “Ho-ly Christ,” someone said, “are you all right in there?”

  Durie heard no footsteps. He grabbed the door handle and pulled himself up, breathing hard. He pushed the gun into his coat pocket but kept his hand on it. The grip was sticky with blood.

  Leaning against the van, he hobbled to the back end of it and shielded his eyes against the man’s headlights, and now his flashlight.

  “Holy Christ,” the man said again. He stood still, shining his light. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re covered in blood.”

  “Moose blood. I’m okay.”

  “The moose ain’t. That’s the third one this year.” He gestured with the flashlight. “There anyone else in there?”

  “No.”

  The man moved toward the van. It was on the side of the road, at an almost perfect right angle, with the dead moose half sunken into it.

  Durie gripped the Glock in his pocket. His head was clearing a little, but even so, he was not seeing a wealth of alternatives.

  “Not that big,” the man observed, “as moose go. Van’s a writeoff. Tell me what you need outta here.”

  “Leave it,” Durie said. “Just take me somewhere.”

  The man pulled at the side-door handle.

  “Leave it,” Durie said.

  The man pulled again and the door slid back. “What in the hell?”

  He stepped back and looked over at Durie standing in the headlights.

  He leaned back into the van, and when he came back out he said, “Girl looks okay, but she’s out cold. You must of incurred a head injury, mister—you said there was no one in there. Shouldn’t let people sleep in the back like that, even if they are strapped in.”

  He reached into his pocket.

  “Don’t.”

  “I gotta call an ambulance.”

  “We don’t need an ambulance.”

  “I’m gonna call.”

  “Just help me get her into your car.”

  “No way. I’m not gonna risk moving an unconscious person.” The man he
ld his phone out at arm’s length to shade his eyes. “Okay? Why don’t you go siddown in my truck, eh?”

  He held the phone to his face to dial. The screen lit up his features—doughy, harmless, middle-aged—and a surrounding nimbus of falling snow.

  From the Blue Notebook

  The headwind had driven us closer to the shore of Axel Heiberg, an island rich in glaciers and one I knew well. It provided the dedicated researcher with everything the Arctic offers: desert, ice cap, meltwater ponds and icebound lakes. Mountainous in the centre, much of it is also just above sea level. Not so many years ago I had taken cores from the Midden Ice Field, walked the Crusoe Glacier to its terminus and observed its new meltwater stream, which had only just started flowing. I discovered vast deposits of dead ice that had lain hidden for centuries beneath layers of tundra and soil—evidence of a previous glacier, and a glimpse into the far recesses of planetary time.

  Rebecca and I were now drifting south of Iceberg Glacier, the only one on Heiberg that reaches the sea. But we were staring at thirty metres of open water that separated us from the pro-glacial gravel of Heiberg. Thirty metres we had no way of crossing.

  The terror of hypothermia welled up in me. The fact is, few of the nineteenth-century explorers who came to grief did so by freezing to death. They were killed by scurvy, by malnutrition, in some cases by lead poisoning brought on by faulty canned goods. They had the assistance of Inuit hunters who knew the landscape intimately, whose hand-drawn maps may still be used to advantage, and whose clothing has never been bettered, except in terms of weight, for keeping the cold at bay.

  The temperatures Rebecca and I faced were by Arctic standards not severe. As far as I could judge, the temperature swung from perhaps minus ten Celsius to a few degrees above freezing. But we were improperly dressed. Even so, the human body maintains its warmth very well until other factors come into play—wetness, which we had so far managed mostly to avoid, hunger, exhaustion. We had been walking for hours, without food. Our core temperatures were moving downward, and hypothermia, despite the layers we had salvaged from the dead, was imminent.

  There’s a promontory just above Strand Fiord, I said. Pack ice tends to jam up there—we may be able to make it to shore. If we can do that, we can make the LARS camp.

  Rebecca’s face was grey and there was a blue tinge to her lips—not a good sign. She nodded silently.

  I pulled out the radio and scanned for transmissions. Nothing but the gasp and crackle of solar storms. I pulled the aerial out full and pointed it in the direction of the LARS station. It is sometimes possible to reach receivers normally out of range by doing a cloud skip or strat skip. There was small hope of success, but I put out another mayday all the same.

  I don’t know how long we walked after that. Polar conditions do nothing good for your sense of time. The fog had gone, but without time, one has no idea of distance. I knew we must be near Strand Fiord, but not how near.

  Eventually, yes, there came a moment of luck. We were jammed, not against the shore, but up against another floe. The fit was not perfect, but we found a place where the gap was about four feet, perhaps a little less. That may not sound like much, but the surface was slush and we were ragged and worn.

  How’s your long jump? I said.

  We can’t. The edge will snap.

  It’s multi-year ice—you can tell by the blue. It’ll be a couple of metres thick right up to the edge. Do you want me to go first?

  I don’t care.

  She was shivering violently, her body becoming less able to generate heat.

  I decided to go first. That way I could grab hold of her if she had trouble on the far edge. We both knew that even a few seconds of exposure to that water would mean death.

  If I fall, she said, hold my hand if you can, but don’t pull me out.

  You’re not going to fall.

  We moved back a few metres and without preliminary I took my run. Landing on the far side, I stumbled forward and my hands and forearms plunged into slush—a sure sentence of maiming by frostbite. Then Rebecca ran toward me and leapt the gap and I made sure she crashed into me so she couldn’t fall.

  We tore Ray Deville’s shirt into pieces to wrap my hands and forearms, and set off again. We made landfall in less than an hour. The tabular floe had been forced well up onto the rocky shore, and it didn’t take long to find a spot where the drop to the gravel beach was not too high.

  If we can make Strand Fiord, we can make LARS, I said. This time of year there’s bound to be someone there. Even if there isn’t, it’ll mean shelter, supplies.

  Rebecca said nothing.

  Did you hear me?

  What? Yes, I heard you, she said, but she remained still, staring at the gravel. She was shivering again, and I held her close and rubbed her arms. My own arms, particularly the left, were going numb. Heiberg is a forbidding landscape—from our present vantage point it was nothing but gravel and bald rock—but the feel of dry land under my boots was encouraging.

  Come on, then. Let’s move. You go first. And I want you to talk to me.

  I’m going to die, Kit. I’m going to die and I don’t feel like talking. I don’t feel like walking either. I just want to lie down.

  I made her walk ahead of me and browbeat her into talking. She told me about some places she had lived—a farmhouse in Saskatchewan’s Qu’Appelle Valley, a small room in a house she had shared with five other people. She spoke of the colours of fields, the million hues of green and gold, and she told me of a split-log cottage she and Kurt had rented one summer on Georgian Bay, and about the white sparks that seem to fly off Lake Huron in certain seas, certain lights.

  I wanted to keep her talking so that I could judge her state of mind. She talked well and coherently over the next two or three hours. Even as she wept.

  It’s not me that’s crying, Kit. It’s just my body. It’s so cold, my body. It’s never been so cold.

  You mentioned another house you shared. Who else lived in the house? Where was this house?

  Ottawa, when I was a grad student. One night I came home late—everyone else was away for holidays or something. I came home and the landlord was there sitting in the dark. He thought I might be lonely, and I was, but he terrified me.

  Gradually Rebecca’s mind began to wander. One minute she was telling me about a cat, a childhood pet, I think, the next about a man—a fellow student?—who used to dismantle his motorcycle and bring the engine into the kitchen to clean it.

  Sounds like Wyndham, I said.

  Yes, Wyndham was there. And Kurt too, eventually. Everyone was there.

  In Ottawa.

  Well, yes. I mean, I think so. What did I say?

  Her rambling might have been just exhaustion, but I kept her talking, and it was more than that. A sign of deeper hypothermia. We had two possible sources of heat: the flare gun and the BIC lighter I carried everywhere to warm up frozen locks and so on. There was nothing resembling firewood. And Rebecca needed internal heat at this point. Using my lighter and the remains of Ray’s shirt, we might have melted some snow and heated it and drunk it, but we had no receptacle, no cup, no can, nothing.

  We were both extremely thirsty. A casual camper may eat snow for water, but that would have meant lowering our body temperatures even further. We came across some meltwater in the hollow of a rock and lay on our bellies to sip from it. It had been recently warmed by the sun and, while cold, it was far from freezing.

  Rebecca’s confusion came and went. Sometimes she thought she was alone and would suddenly stop and call for Kurt. Other times she spoke to me as if I were her father or brother.

  Remember the time Mom took the boat out and got lost? Will Nana be coming this Christmas?

  Then she would look at me, eyes aghast.

  The wind was not strong but the numbness had spread to the backs of my hands and into my wrists. We stopped in the lee of two striated ice blocks and Rebecca pulled my arms into her clothing to warm them.

  I
don’t want to steal your heat, I said.

  You can’t. It’s already yours.

  We lingered too long this time and fatigue all but devoured us. We had been walking for a day and a half with nothing to eat but a few cough drops and some pieces of Aero bar. We ate the last of them now. Then I started up the slope of a smooth rock formation and Rebecca followed. The gradient was mild, but it felt mountainous. When we reached the top, I pointed into the distance.

  That’s Little Matterhorn and Bastion Ridge, I said. We’re not that far.

  Rebecca lay face down on the rock.

  Get up, I said. The rock will leach all of your body heat.

  She said nothing. I went to her and took hold of her wrist and pulled at her. She wept and cursed me and told me to leave her alone.

  I’m not going to let you die here. Get moving.

  We moved on. My own gait was weak, trudging. But Rebecca’s legs would no longer obey her. With each degree of body heat she lost, she was entering further into a hypothermia from which recovery became increasingly unlikely. She staggered and fell, staggered and fell, and each time, as with a boxer who has taken more punishment than any human is meant to endure, it took longer for her to get up.

  I knew we would not make the LARS camp. A trio of boulders came up on our left, the closest thing we would find to shelter. Rebecca sat down on the gravel and rested her back on a rock and closed her eyes.

  You should squat, I said. Touch as little rock as possible.

  She didn’t respond.

  I pulled out the radio and spoke once more into static and silence and received no response. I ripped apart our bundle of rags and set some of them in a pile. I broke up the small collection of pencils we had salvaged and laid them on top. Using my lighter, I lit the fabric.

  I had to shake Rebecca hard to wake her. She pulled herself away from the rock and lay down, curled around the tiny fire.

  No, darling. You have to sit up.

  A small moan. Dry weeping.

  I had observed my own faculties flickering over the past few hours. For a time I had thought we were heading back to camp on Ellesmere—the memory of an event at least a dozen years previous. When I first became aware of a distant buzzing, I thought it was an inner sensation, tinnitus, and then a hallucination, because there was nothing moving in that landscape except the grey and purple clouds.