White Heat

by Melanie McGrath

  Derek took his vehicle through the path he had cleared back in January when the ice had finally settled. As he picked up speed, he felt first the freezing of his eyelashes, then the hairs in his nose. Even with his snow goggles on, tiny ice boulders began to accrete in the corners of his eyes. He enjoyed the feeling of encroachment, of being willingly and haplessly besieged by nature. A raven flew across his Night line and for the first time that day he felt content, even happy. Out on the land he forgot the radio conversation he'd had with Joe Inukpuk, the small-town stir-ups. He forgot Stevie Killik's well-meaning but humiliating pity, forgot Misha and best of all, he forgot he was a cur, a mixed blood, someone fashioned at the borders out of the scraps no one else wanted.

  He reached the edge of the floe that marked the start of the open water of the polynya. Here the ice began to feel wetter, not quite yet unreliable, but deserving of caution and, leaving his snowbie, he proceeded on foot across patchy floe running between leads. It was dangerous ground, but Derek had enough experience to know when to take particular care. The conditions required his total concentration and he thought of nothing more until he reached the edge of the ice, where it gave out to clear, moving water, the restlessness of the currents beneath ensuring that it stayed ice-free all year round and, as a result, attracted zooplankton, then char, seal, orca and beluga, all the way up the food chain to polar bear. He wanted just to take a look at the beluga.

  Derek hadn't hunted whale himself in a very long time. There was a good reason for that. Some years back he'd set up camp on the beach at Jakeman Fiord. Exploring the immediate area, he'd come upon a stretch of temporarily opened water at the foot of a fiord. Mistaking the water for a polynya, where the water was open all year round, a pod of young, inexperienced beluga had gathered. As the water had begun to solidify, they had taken it in turns to swim about and edge away the ice with their noses. As the ice crept further and further in, so their attempts to clear it became more frantic. The splashing eventually attracted a large male bear. Each time the beluga rose from the water to breathe, the bear harried them with his paws. By the time the bear had managed to drag a young beluga out onto the ice, the others, wounded and weak, were completely trapped as all around them the water turned to bloody ice.

  Derek had never been able to see beluga again after that without something in him reaching out to them. It was this feeling of protectiveness that had brought him out to the polynya today, though the likelihood of this lot sharing the fate of those others was small, because the polynya opened out to deep-sea waters way out from the shoreline. Not so long ago, bears would have followed their prey out that far, part swimming, part jumping from floe to floe, but in the past four or five years the breakup had come so early that the great white hunters could no longer rely on their old ice routes and were wary of getting themselves stranded out in the open ocean. In the short term this was good for whales, bad for bears. In the long term, it was just bad.

  Derek reached the edge of the water and waited a while but nothing stirred on the surface and it was with a sense of relief that he realized the belugas had moved on. Returning to Kuujuaq he was overcome with a feeling of melancholy. Not for the first time in his life, he wished he'd had the opportunity to go to college and study some aspect of Arctic zoology. He would have been happier as a naturalist than he was as a policeman, he thought, as he stuck the kettle on.

  He looked around the little apartment and thought about Stevie's invitation. Next time he'd go.

  After supper of canned beef stew, Derek went back to his office computer to work on his lemming project. The conventional wisdom in the scientific community was that the four-year lemming population cycle was somehow independent of the chief lemming predators, the fox, the snowy owl and the stoat, but, from his own observations in the field, Derek had begun to suspect that the predator population actually drove the cycle. It was a whole new angle on the relationship between predator and prey and he knew he'd have to be extremely careful to get his facts right before approaching anyone with a view to publishing his findings. His email popped up. He scanned the messages, saw none from Misha and buried his feeling of disappointment by getting up and making himself a cup of tea. He sat down and typed Arctic fox population' into Google, then, on a sudden, sickening impulse, deleted it and tapped in Misha's name instead. He'd done this so many times, hating himself, but unable to stop. Some people got addicted to internet gaming or porn, but with Derek it was Googling Misha. The only comfort to be had was the fact that the intervals between each trawl had grown longer. It had been three or four months since he'd last Googled his ex.

  A familiar batch of thumbnails began to collect themselves together on the screen. He scrolled through until he reached one he hadn't seen before. Misha standing next to a man; they looked to have their arms around one another. Some overwhelming impulse drove Derek to click on the 'enlarge' command and he found himself staring directly into the eyes of a tall, blue-eyed, well-built qalunaat man with tremendous cheek bones. From the man's stance and Misha's defiantly happy gaze there could be no doubting they were a couple.

  Derek felt his stomach turn and his head grow light, as though he'd just been launched from a rocket. Beneath the image he read: 'Tomas and Misha in Copenhagen'.

  Derek reached out and pressed the off button on the computer. The screen froze then went dark, leaving the image of the couple burned on his retina. For a moment, he wanted nothing more than to smash something. He stood up, went back into the apartment and forced himself to lie on his bed until he felt more composed.

  He was woken from his reverie by the sound of the detachment door bursting open and a man's voice shouting: 'Palliser? Come out, you uhuupimanga.'

  The reek of cheap vodka followed the sound of the voice. Derek had been called a lump of sperm before, but never on his own turf. He opened the door into the office. In the light still streaming through the closed Venetian blinds he saw Tom Silliq and Jono Toolik standing none too straight.

  'I hope this is some kind of emergency.'

  'Emergency, eh?' Tom shouted and, tottering forward, threw a poorly aimed punch. 'It will be.' The man was cataclysmically drunk.

  'Now then, fellas, go home,' Derek said, scouring the room to make sure neither he nor Stevie had left a weapon on view.

  Silliq and Toolik looked at one another. Silliq began to giggle. Taking advantage of this momentary distraction, Toolik took another swipe at Derek but he managed to dodge it.

  Figuring it was probably safer to be outside, he headed for the door, only to be grabbed on his way out by Silliq. As Derek pushed him away, Silliq swung his fist randomly and, as luck would have it, it slammed into Derek's left eye. Shocked as much as hurt, Derek felt himself stumble as

  Toolik took another punch of his own, socking the policeman in the nose. Blood from the nose wound sprayed onto Silliq's parka, and for a moment or two everyone froze, uncertain what was supposed to happen next.

  Dimly recalling snatches of the morning's grievances, Toolik opened his mouth and said, approximately: 'Stay out of our business.'

  Then, whirling about, he headed unsteadily for the door, belched and, with the blustering dignity of the paralytic, made his way outside. Tom Silliq stood a little while in the constabulary office, as if awaiting instructions, before staggering silently after his neighbour.

  Derek rushed for the door and locked it behind them. They'd be back sometime in the morning, red-faced, semi- sober and deeply apologetic. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand and was surprised at the amount of blood. His eye hurt too, he realized, and since he couldn't see out of it he assumed it had closed up.

  He made his way to the bathroom in the apartment and was busy washing away the ooze from his face when he heard a buzzing coming from the office. At first he imagined Silliq and Toolik were back. Then, with some relief, he remembered that Edie was supposed to be calling on the radio. He quickly washed his hands of blood, picked up a hand towel and made his way into the comms room.


  'Edie?'

  'Hey, Derek. How are you?'

  Derek opened his good eye wide and stretched his mouth a few times to make sure he could talk.

  'Just dandy.' He didn't ask why she had chosen to call so late. He reckoned she had her reasons.

  'Is this a bad time?'

  Derek pressed the towel against his eye and felt something pop.

  'Couldn't be better.'

  There was a pause, which Derek felt incumbent upon himself to fill.

  'This isn't about the hunter fellow, the one who died, is it?'

  There was an awkward kind of a sigh. Derek's head throbbed and his mouth felt dry, his tongue brittle. He felt his brain sinking back.

  'You're not sick, are you, Derek?'

  'No,' he said. 'Not sick.' He liked it that she'd asked.

  'I'm sorry,' Edie said. Her voice grew serious. 'I know this isn't exactly going to make your day.'

  'Oh, don't you worry about that, Edie,' Derek said. He raised his fingers to his right eye. It was already swelling. 'I'm having a super time. Any case, you might have noticed, the day ended a while back.'

  'The business with Felix Wagner,' Edie went on. 'Truth is, Derek, I shouldn't have signed that council of Elders' report.' She sounded tired and defensive. 'A week ago I went back to where it happened. I walked around the spot, kind of recreating the moment.'

  'Edie, it's late,' he said, 'and you did sign, remember?' He was hoping to shame her into going away, but she didn't take the bait.

  'The bullet entered Felix Wagner from the front, at an angle from above. At the time I found a footprint on the bluff above the beach, where the shooter must have been standing. Zig-zag with an ice bear in the middle. I told the council but it didn't make it into their report. Point is, Derek, there's no way Felix Wagner was killed by his own bullet.'

  Derek prodded his eye very gently.

  'No one's complained about the council of Elders' report. Ask me, the matter's closed.' The moment the words left his lips, he felt a bit ashamed.

  'Come on, Derek.' She had this way of appealing to his better side, to his conscience, maybe. No one else was able to tweak away at him the way she did.

  'Edie, listen to me,' he said, in a last ditch attempt to justify his inaction. 'This isn't Samwillie Brown. This Wagner fellow and his sidekick, they aren't our people.'

  'With respect, Derek, you're missing the point. Felix Wagner is dead. No one really buys the story about the ricocheting bullet and the only other person we know was at the scene didn't do it. You know how it is. No one comes or goes in or out of these settlements without everybody knowing.'

  He did know that. By God he did. You couldn't take a piss without someone having an opinion on it. One of the many ironies of northern living. The tundra had to be the only place in the world where there was everywhere and nowhere to hide.

  'So . . .' Edie continued, 'whoever killed Felix Wagner is still here in Autisaq, or somewhere nearby, most likely in one of the settlements or maybe out on the land.'

  Derek suddenly felt exhausted. He and Edie had stirred up a lot of bad will going after Ida Brown. The elders had washed their hands of this one. You had to ask, was it worth it?

  'Edie, you're forgetting something.'

  'What?'

  Derek took a long breath.

  'Nobody. Gives. A. Shit. You have nothing to gain by going over this and you have a lot to lose.' He felt a twinge of self-loathing as he said it, but he carried on all the same. 'You'll stir up a load of politics and it won't go anywhere. No one will co-operate.'

  There was a short silence, then Edie came back on and in a low, resigned voice, added: 'Including you, it seems.' The radio fizzled out.

  Derek listened to the white noise for a while. She hadn't sounded angry, he thought, only disappointed, which was worse. In any other world she'd be right, but this was the Arctic and up here, however much he and the High Arctic Police and all the other government agencies and NGOs and the do-gooders wanted to imagine otherwise, the only rules that mattered a damn were the ones the land imposed on those struggling to carve a living from it.

  He went back into the apartment and stared at his eye in the bathroom mirror. It was puffed and purple, the lid now completely obscuring the eyeball. Damn Edie, he thought, she didn't even have anything real to go on. Even if what she said was true, and Wagner hadn't been killed either by Andy Taylor or by his own bullet, some Inuk hunter out on his own probably mistook Wagner for a caribou or a bear and took a shot. When he realized what he'd done he'd panicked and scarpered.

  Derek climbed into bed and pulled up the covers but his eye was hurting and the conversation with Edie had rattled him, so he got up, pulled on his Polartec and insulated trousers, three pairs of socks, two scarves, two hats and his mukluks and went out into the annexe which once served as a coal shed but was now home to his lemmings. He flipped on the low-level lighting. The creatures were asleep in the tank he'd kitted out to simulate the subnivean space where they spent their winters in the wild. The last few years had been tough on the little critters, the snow under which they usually passed the winter, not hibernating exactly, rather sleeping and keeping warm, was beginning to rot too early. It was collapsing inwards and crushing them in their burrows. This lot would have died if Piecrust hadn't scented them out. For a few moments he just sat there, watching them sleeping, so peaceful they could almost be dead.

  * * *

  Chapter Four

  Edie sat on her own in front of the TV, trying to cheer herself up with her favourite supper of maktaq and sea urchins. The maktaq, thick, chewy whale skin underscored with a layer of creamy, slightly sour fat, put her in mind of the scent of the sea in summertime. She couldn't remember the last time she'd eaten it.

  All the Arctic settlements were being warned off marine mammal fat, but she was in the kind of mood where she didn't care about PCB - polychlorinated biphenyl - contamination. You couldn't see, touch or smell PCB and no one seemed able to agree where it was coming from - theories varied from Russian nuclear plants, through wartime radar stations to US naval submarines - and the warnings felt abstract and nebulous. She didn't doubt that PCB caused the birth deformities scientists claimed and she commended Robert Patma's efforts to get women of childbearing age to restrict themselves to eating fish and caribou, flesh that wasn't so contaminated, but there was nothing like maktaq to make you feel at peace with the world and, in any case, Edie wasn't planning on having any kids. She'd drunk her way through her most fertile years and now that she was thirty-three and ready, at least in theory, to start a family, there was no one to start one with. She wasn't bitter about it. She'd been a stepmother to Willa and Joe for seven years and was as close to Joe as any human being could be. She just wished she felt as attached to Willa, but somehow it hadn’t worked out that way.

  The conversation with Derek Palliser had unsettled her. She knew she'd become overly insistent with him, displaying too much ihuma, the fieriness and ego that had once made her such a good hunter and later, Sammy would say, a difficult wife. The more rational part of her knew he was right. For once in her life, she should just learn to toe the line. What did it matter exactly how Felix Wagner had died? On the other hand, Joe had set some dark energy roiling in her belly and she knew she would not be content without the answer. Perhaps being sober had made her more protective of a reality she'd spent so many years avoiding. So here she was eating maktaq, despite knowing it wasn't good for her. Pursuing this Wagner business wasn't good for her either and yet, still she felt compelled to discover the truth.

  The door to the snow porch opened and Sammy Inukpuk poked his head round. Not wanting to give him an excuse to stay, she turned off the DVD.

  He said: 'Hey, Edie,' and noting the debris on her plate, 'any left?'

  'You're out of luck.' She motioned him to the seat on the other side of the TV, but he sat down beside her anyway. 'TV packed in?'

  'Ah, nope, not exactly.'

  He hovered. '
A beer'd be good.' Then, adopting a cheery tone, 'Hey, did you see the job Joe did on his snowbie? Looks like new. Phwooee. Must have cost something. Where'd the boy get the money?'

  Edie shot him a look. Her ex knew well enough where Joe had got the money. She had given Joe an advance on what she'd been owed for the Wagner trip. After Wagner died, the wife had refused to pay up, and she hadn't felt like asking Joe for the money back. Sammy wanted her to know that he was aware she was broke, which could only mean one thing: he had some kind of money-making proposition up his sleeve.

  About that beer?'

  'Sammy Inukpuk, whatever you got to say, say it sober.'

  He put on a hangdog look.

  'Aw, Edie, it's been a hard day.' He had a way of making her feel bad and it played on her that he knew it.

  She went into the kitchen and set the kettle on. While it heated up, she fetched the key to the cupboard where she kept her booze. Getting the key was a palaver. She intended it to be that way Whenever people asked, which they rarely did, she told them that she kept the booze for visitors and guests. In fact its perpetual presence was a test she'd set herself. She knew she wasn't yet strong enough to keep the cupboard unlocked but that was her goal. Only then, when there was booze around that no longer tempted her, would she know she was truly free of it. She plucked out a can of Bud, locked the cupboard back up and made herself a mug of sugary tea. Sammy popped the can and took a long slug.

  'I got you a guiding job.'

  This was good news, and unexpected. Sammy's propositions weren't usually so substantial. Edie felt a twinge of guilt at harbouring ungenerous thoughts towards her ex. Somehow when the two of them were together it always resulted in her feeling bad.

  'Fellow called Bill Fairfax, descendant of that old-time qalunaat explorer, what's his name?'

  'Sir James Fairfax? Is this the fella who was up here before?'