Minds of Winter

by Ed O’Loughlin

  Peake opened the door of his truck, his back half turned so they couldn’t see his face. ‘Sure you are.’

  ‘Okay. Have it your way. I’m Albert Nilsson. In that case, I want to make a missing person report for my kid brother. His name is Arthur.’

  ‘Yeah?’ The policeman got into the truck but held his door open. ‘You want to make a report?’ He started the engine. ‘Okay. If you think it’s urgent, come and see me in Inuvik. I’m heading back there now. But please: if it’s not urgent, leave it until the day after tomorrow.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because we’re flat-out busy right now. There’s this search for poor Moses, and then we’ve also got the festival tomorrow. It’s all hands on deck. There’s always a few people who get a little too drunk the day before.’

  ‘The day before what?’

  ‘The Sunrise Festival. Tomorrow’s the day when the sun comes back. The place goes a little crazy.’

  They watched him drive off.

  ‘Well,’ said Nelson, ‘you can’t say I didn’t try.’

  The mailman had done a bad job of posting the envelope. It protruded from Bert’s mailbox by two or three inches, so they couldn’t miss seeing it when they came through the hall. They wouldn’t even need to fish out the key to open the mailbox: they could just grab the letter and pull it out of there. Otherwise they’d probably have left the letter where it was. They were both done now, finished, having come back from Aklavik.

  Nelson made coffee while Fay looked at the white A4 envelope. It was marked with the logo of the Royal Museum in Greenwich. Several pages were nested inside it, giving it heft.

  I don’t care, thought Fay. But she opened it anyway.

  The cover letter was from the curator of the horological workshop, the department which maintained and catalogued the precision clocks and marine chronometers that had been the stock-in-trade of Greenwich for hundreds of years.

  Dear Dr Nilsson

  It was very kind of you to send me an advance copy of your draft paper offering a solution to the mystery of the Franklin chronometer, Arnold 294. I read it with great interest and not a little scholarly admiration. If your paper were intended as a work of fiction I would have no hesitation in endorsing it. As historical research it may well contain many fine and novel parts – although I have not been in a position to check your rather esoteric sources for myself, I trust your reputation. But as a solution to the mystery of Arnold 294 I am afraid to say it is wide of the mark.

  Since Arnold 294 returned to Greenwich several years ago we have been doing our own detective work to determine how such a delicate instrument survived a lost mission to the Arctic. As it happens, we arrived at our own conclusion around the same time that we received your paper. Our solution is sadly less romantic than yours but rather more straightforward: we believe that the chronometer never left Britain at all.

  According to our surviving records the instrument in question, having been built in 1807, was probably in need of refurbishment by the time HMS Erebus was due to sail for the North West Passage in 1845. It might therefore have been sent back to the Arnold workshop in London for a last-minute overhaul. However, this would have been a mistake: old Mr Arnold himself had died in 1843 and his workshop was in chaos, so the navy had just ordered that its Arnold chronometers should thenceforth be sent elsewhere for repair.

  Had Erebus’s navigation officer gone back to collect Arnold 294 on the eve of sailing, and found that it was not ready, he might have quietly resolved to come back for it after Erebus returned from her voyage – no one would miss it, as the ship already had several other working chronometers on board, some of them issued by Greenwich, others the private property of officers. But of course, the ship did not return.

  In the meantime the Arnold business was taken over by another clockmaker, who stated at the time that Arnold’s paperwork and affairs were in disarray. If the chronometer had not been labelled as Royal Navy property it would have been regarded as part of Arnold’s own stock and sold off with the rest of it. At some point thereafter it was converted into a carriage clock, probably to make it more saleable, and re-engraved with the name of the clockmakers who presumably altered it, Reynolds of London. There was, therefore, nothing underhand or criminal about the alteration of the chronometer’s original appearance. It was simply a matter of commercial practice.

  We ourselves recognized the little ‘carriage clock’ as a former Royal Navy chronometer when we saw it in an auction catalogue several years ago, and we duly bought it for our collection. It was only after we opened its case that we realized what a very special chronometer it was. Since then we have been able to trace its previous ownership back to the 1970s, when it appeared in an antiques dealer’s catalogue. How they came by it we do not know: antiques often change hands on a cash basis without any records being kept.

  A full account of our findings is included in our catalogue of all the marine chronometers issued by the Royal Observatory. This is not yet available online, so I shall make copies of the pages relating to Arnold 294 and put them in the post for you.

  May I just say again how fascinated I was by your theory, which is quite enchanting. Let us hope that the mathematicians and physicists are correct, and that a universe exists where it is also the correct one.

  Yours, etc.

  Sitting at the desk, Fay turned to the other pages in the envelope, colour photocopies of the catalogue for Arnold 294. There were several photos of the clock itself, shown from the front and then partially disassembled. It was the first time she had seen it pictured in high-definition colour, the soft glow of the brass, the white-silvered clock face. It looked so simple inside, almost austere – a scalloped case for the spring, a fine wheel for balance, a neat little chain like the chain of a bicycle. There must be more to it than that, she thought. How she wished that she could hold it in her hands again.

  ‘This cover letter,’ said Nelson, somewhere behind her. ‘It’s a copy of an email that was sent two weeks ago. The curator must have printed it out to include it with the photocopies.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So Bert never got that envelope. But he got the email . . . It must have killed him to find out his theory was wrong. Whatever it was . . .’

  She turned the chair around. He was sitting on the couch, the letter held in his lap, looking into the light which leaked through the curtains. His desolation moved her.

  ‘You don’t know that it was wrong . . . Why would he believe them anyway? Their solution is full of supposition. And don’t you think it’s a coincidence that they only came up with it after he’d already sent them his paper?’

  ‘You don’t really think that. If you really didn’t believe in coincidence, you’d have to believe in conspiracy instead.’

  Once again, he was proving smarter than she’d imagined. Once again it angered her. ‘Why not? Someone called us on the phone, remember? Someone else who’s looking for Bert.’

  ‘Maybe it was just the credit-card company. I didn’t see what number it was. You did.’

  ‘So I’m deluded. And so was your brother.’

  ‘He was always half crazy. You I don’t know.’

  She turned away from him, stung. This wasn’t fair. She’d been starting to like him. Their share in this mystery had made her less lonely. And now the mystery was gone. Because whatever she said to Nelson, she too had to privately side with the experts in Greenwich.

  Had Bert Nilsson believed in his mad quest himself, or had he been making it up for his own amusement? Maybe he’d been writing a story, or crafting a hoax. Or maybe both at once. So many of Bert’s clues were presented in his handwriting, including the mention of her grandfather . . . As for the clock in her grandparents’ wedding photograph, why did she ever think that it was Franklin’s lost chronometer? It was an old black-and-white picture. There must be other such clocks . . .

&nbs
p; Nelson was right: if she wasn’t prepared to believe in coincidence she might as well go crazy and believe in a Room 38.

  She put her elbows on the desk and her chin in her hands. Her eyes, when she opened them again, were caught by something on the wall, one of the many notes and photocopies pinned above Bert’s desk.

  This particular page was a printout of a web article about the Distant Early Warning Line. At the top was an account of how the North American Aerospace Defence Command had upgraded and modernized the DEW Line in the late 1980s. Many of the smaller stations were shut down and most of the rest were automated. The name was changed too: from then on the Distant Early Warning Line was to be known as the North Warning System. No sense of poetry: she could see why nobody used the new name.

  There followed a list of the fifty-four surviving stations, a chain stretching three and a half thousand miles from Alaska to Labrador.

  Point Lay. Wainwright. Point Barrow. Point Lonely. Okliktok. Flaxman Island. Barter Island. Komakuk Beach. Stokes Point. Shingle Point. Storm Hills. Tuktoyaktuk. Liverpool Bay. Nicholson Peninsula. Horton River. Cape Parry. Keats Point. Croker River. Harding River. Bernard Harbour. Lady Franklin Point. Edinburgh Island. Cape Peel West. Cambridge Bay. Sturt Point. Jenny Lind Island. Hat Island. Gladman Point. Gjoa Haven. Shepherd Bay. Simpson Lake. Pelly Bay. Cape McLoughlin. Lailor River. Hall Beach. Rowley Island. Bray Island. Longstaff Bluff. Nudluardjk Lake. Dewar Lakes. Kangok Fjord. Cape Hooper. Broughton Island. Cape Dyer. Cape Mercy. Breevort Island. Loks Land. Resolution Island. Cape Kakiviak. Saglek. Cape Kiglapait. Big Bay. Tukialik. Cartwright.

  Do we believe in these places? she wondered. Was that it? Does it matter so long as we can say their names?

  Bert had circled several of these names in red ballpoint: Tuktoyaktuk, Cape Parry, Lady Franklin Point, Gjoa Haven, Hall Beach, Loks Land.

  There was a footnote at the bottom of the printout, in type so small that Fay hadn’t noticed it before. It informed her that on 24 December each year the North Warning radar picket, posted far out in the polar night, was tasked with a very special mission: the detection and tracking of Santa Claus as he emerged from the North Pole to deliver gifts to the children of the world. There was a link to NORAD’s website where you could monitor Santa’s progress on the map.

  Fay wondered if Bert Nilsson had noticed this tiny footnote when he printed out his handy list of radar stations. She remembered her childish notion of her grandfather, a Santa Claus lost in the ice. Had Bert Nilsson also understood in the end, as she did now herself, that in his search for Room 38 he’d been looking for something magical, a hole in the map, an escape from dull causality, though he knew very well that it didn’t exist?

  ‘We should go for a drink,’ she said.

  The whole town was out and about that night. There was to be traditional dancing and drumming in the high school, and people arrived on foot or in cars, double-parking on Mackenzie Road. It may have been the dancing in the high school, or all the preparations under way for the next day’s events – the snowmobile parade, food fair, firework display, lantern procession, concerts and bonfires – but the pub was still almost quiet when they went in. Mike sat at the bar with a beer and a shot. He pointed to an empty stool beside him. ‘You two can share that one. I’m too old to stand.’

  He waved his hand around the dimly lit room. ‘I don’t normally belly up to the bar here, but it’ll be crazy in an hour or so. On the night before sunrise it’s a good idea to keep your supply lines short.’

  Mike ordered three whiskies, three beers. She tasted sweet beer cut with the sting of the whisky, felt the blood pump in her head. The band – the same one as the last time – was still setting up, but the PA played country rock music. Pool players yelled wisecracks to put each other off. Buzz of voices, click of glasses, ring of tills. Nelson bought a second round. Fay remembered that she had never paid him for the lift to Tuktoyaktuk. Maybe, she thought, as she looked around the darkened bar, I should check where I stand with him. See if I’m still on the clock.

  Nelson and Mike were now watching the television, heads cocked as if trying to hear. A man in a red diving suit floated amid the kelp that grew from the timbers of a shipwreck, pointing to an old cannon that lay in the silt. From the length of the camera shot and the movements of the diver’s hands, Fay guessed that the diver was providing a spoken commentary – they could do that, she thought, with the new kinds of diving gear. But because of the noise in the bar she couldn’t hear. Then a caption came up, too small for her to read, and the picture changed to something else – men and women in suits in a parliament.

  ‘So that’s the end of that,’ said Mike bitterly. ‘HMS Erebus. They had to go and find her. They had to solve a perfectly good mystery.’

  They both leaned on the bar – Mike on two elbows, Nelson on one – watching the bubbles form and vanish in their beer.

  Fay felt a need to comfort them. ‘It won’t be over,’ she said, ‘until they find the Terror as well. She’s still out there, remember?’

  ‘They’ll find her,’ said Nelson. ‘It’s only a matter of time.’

  Fay and Nelson went out for a smoke leaving Mike to mind the bar stools. Kids wandered happily up and down the street. Nelson wasn’t sure how cold it was – they’d been drinking for a while – but he no longer felt that he needed his coat. Maybe he was warmed by the glow from the town; it hid the stars, obscured the aurora, if there was one tonight. Fay shivered. ‘It’ll be alright,’ she said. ‘We’ll sort everything out the day after tomorrow.’

  They went back inside. Fay swayed on the edge of the floor, watching the dancers. Who else might still be out there, she wondered? Who else might come in from the dark? The couples held hands and swung round in close orbits, inclinations set by their relative heights. They flashed in and out of her sight, in and out of her momentary existence.

  She remembered how her mother used to take her up the steep hill through the park to the Greenwich Observatory. She would skip from one side of the prime meridian to the other, from east to west in a leap, in a heartbeat. It was like that tonight. Nothing had changed, not herself, not the light, not a flicker, and yet there was her mother, still young and pretty, still smiling down at her, a world away and close enough to touch. Who draws these lines for us? East/West. North/South. Go/no go. Living/dead.

  She hadn’t studied mathematics – another gift from her grandfather that hadn’t been passed to her – but she liked to read articles about quantum physics. They talked about particles – which she had to visualize as tiny points of light, like the crystals that rained from the sky here – flitting instantly from one place to another, millions of miles away, as if to say to space and time, ‘We’re not the ghosts – you are.’ She had always found a kind of comfort in that.

  The music changed to a fast country waltz. She took Nelson by the hands and pulled him onto the floor. He didn’t know how to dance but after a few turns he had learned not to step on her feet and they could hold each other closer. She smelled cigarettes and sweat and whisky, but she didn’t know if it was his smell or hers. Opening her eyes, she watched the world turn around her like clockwork. A stocky, whiskery man danced with a dark-haired young woman who seemed delighted by his skill. A young man with short hair and calm grey eyes limped across the dance floor, heading for the door. Up at the bar, talking with Mike and watching the dancers, a thin old man with a big hawk nose polished his glasses on his silk scarf. Fay thought she saw children in the shadows at the back of the room – how did children get in here? Maybe, on the night before the sun came back, such things were let slide. She closed her eyes and let the music move through her.

  ‘This is perfect,’ she said.

  They stopped turning in circles, stood on the edge of the floor. ‘But it’s time to go,’ Nelson said.

  There was a sign where the highway diverged from the road to the airport. Nelson was sure it must be new.
It was big and square and luminous, shining in the headlights: an arrow pointed left for the airport, right for the long lonely road to the outside. He couldn’t have missed a sign like that if it’d been there a few days before, when he’d gone by mistake to the airport. It would have steered him away from all this. But now here it was, guiding them both to the end of the road.

  Out here, beyond the edge of the town, there was no artificial light apart from their low-beams and the glow of the dashboard. The Northern Lights played their ageless games in the sky, indifferent to anyone who watched them. Would it have made any difference, Fay wondered, if I’d had children of my own? Would they have watched me from outside the circle of light in which the old drunkards were dancing?

  The engines roared, yellow-tipped propellors became yellow-edged discs, the earth pushed away from the undercarriage. There was the highway, there the white slash of the river’s east channel, glowing in the starlight. The forest became a dark stain on the snow. They were flying due north ahead of the sunrise. The town briefly appeared like a childhood beneath them, all red, green and yellow and Christmas trees and snow. Then it was gone and they were drifting with the stars, those flitting points of light, holding hands in the warm darkened cabin, already falling asleep.

  Epilogue

  Confidential

  Royal Canadian Mounted Police

  Inuvik, North West Territories

  On January 26th last I was contacted by a senior RCMP officer in Ottawa who asked me to prepare this confidential report on the death of Dr Albert Nilsson, the former government scientist whose body was found in the snow on the outskirts of Inuvik two weeks before.

  The officer in question hinted that the report was for the information of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and/or one of its partner agencies in the United Kingdom. He also asked that his own name be kept out of it.

  I must state now that I found his request highly irregular, and am only complying with it because I also regard it as harmless: there is nothing that I can add to the existing official case files, which I gather have already been shared with elements outside the force – itself a highly irregular state of affairs.