White Heat

by Melanie McGrath

  There was a small set of steps sitting in the far corner, so she pulled these over and clambered on. She was about to slot the box back into place when something right at the back of the shelf caught her eye. There was nothing remarkable about the package except that the writing was in Russian. She pulled it out and opened it up. Inside were leaves of foils, each holding a dozen tablets.

  She gave Derek the Vicodin without mentioning her find.

  'Wanna rest up the night at my place?'

  Derek looked unsure, unhappy about imposing.

  'It's my bed or that freezing bunk in the office, listening to Stevie snoring. Or you can lie nice and cosy next to the fella who tried to kill you.'

  'When you put it like that,' Derek said. He looked embarrassed. 'But Edie .. .' Their eyes met. Edie mustered a smile.

  'I said you could sleep in my bed, Police. That's S.L.E.E.P.'

  She helped him limp home, then fixed some soup for the two of them. Within moments of his head touching the pillow, Derek Palliser was sleeping deeply. She waited a while, until she was sure he would not wake, then slunk back out into the night.

  The door to the nursing station was on the latch, as she'd left it. Sammy was sitting outside Robert Patma's room, rifle in his lap, fast asleep. She went back to the safety-deposit box, found the key to the morgue and let herself in. For a long time she just sat with Joe, running over their happy times together in her mind.

  Then she said: 'I miss you, Joe,' left the room, went back to the safety-deposit box and fished around among the keys. She tried each in turn, but none fitted Patma's apartment's lock so she reached into her pocket and drew out her Leatherman.

  Inside the apartment, the blinds were drawn. She flipped on a lamp on the table by the sofa.

  The first thing that struck her was how incredibly neat the place was. The living room was laid out symmetrically, with matching side tables and identical lamps. The open- plan kitchen looked completely unused. Fine white crockery was stacked in soldier-like rows on shelves in the glazed cabinets and pristine steel utensils hung from hooks on the walls. All the usual cheerful mess of cooking - scarred pans, greasy oil bottles, and novelty drying cloths - had either been hidden away or did not exist.

  The living room had the same show-home look. The two black leather sofas were eerily immaculate, as though they had never been sat upon, and were flanked by black occasional tables, on each of which stood identical cream- coloured lamps. A series of black-and-white chrome-framed prints of Arctic scenes lined up along the back wall, presenting the sanitized, picture-perfect, people-free Arctic fantasy beloved of southern photographers and artists. In the corner was a telescope, set to look out across Jones Sound.

  Two further rooms with a bathroom sandwiched between them lay beyond the living room down a corridor. One served as a bedroom; Robert Patma had converted the second into a study. Both far corners of the room were occupied by matching wooden filing cabinets. On the desk in the office there was an envelope postmarked Tallahassee, Florida with a date of a week ago. Inside was a handwritten letter addressed to 'Dear Bobby' and signed 'Mom and Dad', along with a photograph of two elderly people arm-in-arm beside a swimming pool. She turned the photo over. Someone had pencilled the words 'Jerry and June Patma' with the date on the back.

  Hadn't Robert told her his mother had died? There was some muddle over it, she recalled, a bit of embarrassment when she'd got confused about which parent he'd lost. Now it looked as though he'd made the whole thing up.

  She tried the filing cabinets. They were both locked, but the locks gave way surprisingly easily to the file attachment on Edie's Leatherman. In the first cabinet, Edie found nothing of interest, but the second Patma reserved for his financial dealings. These files were marked on the covers only by a long string of numbers. Edie picked out a file at random and sat at the desk to read it. Inside there were a couple of certificates marking completion in some aspect of nursing training, the odd bill for household goods and services, and a few bank letters. The file appeared to follow no particular order or system, which was odd given how picky Patma seemed in other aspects of his life. Edie picked another file, but it was the same story, an odd assortment of bills, financial statements and guarantees for electrical products.

  Then it occurred to her that this wasn't random at all. To an outsider, the files seemed disorganized and undifferentiated but Robert Patma knew exactly what document was where. The codes on the files enabled Patma to retrieve them at any time, but they made it extremely difficult for any outsider to locate any one particular paper trail.

  She flipped through the files and pulled out a couple of bank statements detailing half a dozen money transfers into Patma's account. The transfers were for relatively large amounts but there seemed to be no pattern or consistency to them, except that they were all from the same source, a name in Russian script. She checked through the files and found two more recent statements, but the payments appeared to have stopped. Folding three or four of these transfer notices into her waistband, she returned the files to the cabinet and left the room.

  Next she turned her attentions to the medicine cabinet in the bathroom, which was filled with the usual assortment of Tylenol, shaving foam and ear buds. Next she tried the bedroom, but there was nothing in the bedside tables, or under the bed. None of the half-dozen pairs of outdoor boots lined up in the shoe rack in the wardrobe bore the same polar-bear tread as the one she had found after Felix Wagner's shooting.

  Drifting back into the study, convinced, still, that she had missed something, she yanked out one of the drawers of the second filing cabinet. The force of the pull shifted the cabinet slightly on its castors and as it rolled forward, one of the floorboards moved beneath it. As she pulled the cabinet out a little more, she could see that the board had definitely been loosened. She reached down and with one finger of her right hand pulled it open, a little at first then more swiftly as her finger curled underneath. What lay there sent a terrible pain racing up her spine. She tried to take it in. Her head reeled and for a moment she thought she would pass out.

  Stacked in neat rows, ten by ten, were dozens of empty pharmaceutical blister packs, aligned crosswise, one foil lying one way, the torn covering over the plastic capsules so neatly pressed back into place you would almost think it untouched, the next foil, its capsules also neatly covered, stacked on top of it in the other direction.

  It was not the usual way a person might stack used and discarded blister packs but Edie had seen precisely this arrangement before. There was no doubt about it. The person who had stacked these foils was the same person who had arranged the Vicodin packs in the drawer of Joe Inukpuk's bedside cabinet.

  Robert Patma.

  She turned the foils over in her hand. The lettering matched the Russian script on the box in the pharmacy. She found a piece of paper in Patma's printer, and noted it down. Then she replaced the blister packs, and put back the loose floorboard.

  From the office she went directly into the kitchen, flinging open the drawers and cupboards, until, eventually, she found what she was looking for. On a shelf so high up she had to stand on the worktop to reach it was a catering-size roll of Saran Wrap. She pulled it down, knocking over a salt grinder. Leaving the grinder where it was, she turned the wrap over in her hand. The label seal was missing and some of the plastic had been torn from the sheet using the neat little row of metal teeth. The cut edge was almost perfectly even, with hardly any broken serrations or stretch marks, the work of an exceptionally neat person. Edie already knew where she would find its match.

  Sammy was still sleeping in his chair outside the medical room. So long as she was careful, she wouldn't wake him.

  Working as quietly as a hunter stalking its prey, Edie pulled the box of Russian pills from the shelf in the pharmacy cupboard and took out fifteen foils, then she crept past Sammy and tiptoed to the door. She twisted the lock until it clicked open and slipped inside.

  * * *

  Chapter Ei
ghteen

  Edie watched Robert Patma breathing, with the hypodermic on the table beside him. Her mind zoned in and out, the thoughts like lichens stuck in willow thicket; dense, livid stains competing for air. She scrolled through the events of the past months, thought about Wagner and Taylor, about Derek and the puikaktuq. Mostly she thought about Joe.

  In the few minutes since she had found the Saran Wrap in Robert Patma's kitchen, it was as though she'd been inhabited by some other, unfamiliar, self. It was this other person who had taken the box of Hydal from the shelves, who had sneaked past the sleeping Sammy into Robert Patma's room, then crushed the tablets, one by one, into a tiny avalanche of white powder and drowned it in saline. This alternate self was sitting with her now, watching Robert Patma breathing, while the real Edie conjured up happier times with Joe.

  A head appeared around the door, startling her out of her thoughts. It was Sammy.

  'Edie, what are you doing in here?' He was blinking away sleep.

  'I don't know,' she said. It came to her then, in a rush, like meltwater breaking over a dam. She was contemplating murder.

  'You coming out now?' He hadn't noticed the Hydal.

  'Give me a moment.'

  Sammy raised his eyebrows just enough to let her know he considered her behaviour strange. 'A minute, then,' he said.

  The instant he disappeared round the door, she picked up the hypodermic and, rushing to the medical waste-only bin, threw it in. Then she piled the blister packs in after it and, grabbing a pack of lint dressing, tore open the wrapper and threw it on top to disguise the contents.

  The patient lay beside her, sleeping peacefully. A wave of nausea passed through her body. She retied the tourniquet she'd put around his wounded arm, then, for the last time, she turned her back on Robert Patma and tiptoed out.

  Sammy was sitting in his guard's chair, an anxious expression on his face.

  'Sammy, don't mention this to anyone, eh?' She put a hand on his shoulder, then slipped away.

  Back home, she made herself a cup of tea and lay down on the sofa, dazzled by a magic lantern of thoughts. She tried deep breathing to relax, but after a few minutes sat up, too wired to settle. There was a DVD lying on the table. Without looking at it, she slotted it into the machine. The screen flickered for a moment then the familiar face of Harold Lloyd appeared. Only then did Edie feel the tears come.

  Martie found her on the sofa a few hours later.

  'Robert Patma, eh, who knew?' Her aunt shook her head in disbelief. Her voice lowered into a conspiratorial rasp. 'There's a dark spirit living in Autisaq,' Martie said. 'I seen him, Edie, a dark, dark spirit.'

  'I thought you don't believe in bad spirits, Auntie Martie,' Edie said, yawning. 'Only bad people.'

  'I don't know, Little Bear,' Martie said. 'I don't know.'

  They continued the conversation over a breakfast of tea and bannock bread with syrup. Martie shook her head sadly as Edie told her all that had happened. When she'd finished her bread and syrup she stood to leave.

  'Don't get dragged into this any further, Little Bear,' she said. 'It might be bigger than you think.'

  'It's too late, Auntie,' Edie said.

  She was in the shower when the air ambulance announced its arrival with a loud overhead whine. By the time she dressed, the medics would be arriving at the nursing station. She hoped they'd find Robert Patma alive. She knew now she didn't want him to die. She was convinced in her own mind that Robert Patma had killed Joe Inukpuk on the orders of the Russians, who were supplying his addiction. Maybe he'd started out as a paid informant. What if the gambling debts he attributed to Joe were actually his own? Maybe it was no more than that for a while, but everything changed when he got hooked on painkillers. At first, she imagined, he'd supplied himself from the pharmacy and when he could no longer keep his habit fed that way, the Russians stepped in to provide him with what he needed. Maybe he was connected to Zemmer, too, though there was nothing to suggest it. The Russians extracted a price from him and that price was Joe.

  For what seemed like an age she allowed the warm water to cascade over her body. Then she scrubbed herself once more and oiled her hair. By the time she got out of the shower, Derek had left. There was a note in the kitchen by the kettle, saying that he and Stevie had gone to get Derek's injured leg sorted out.

  It was only when she was returning from the hospital with Derek several hours later that she sensed someone had been inside the house. There were subtle differences in the position of certain objects. She could see immediately, for example, that her pile of DVDs had been picked up and put back at an ever so slightly different angle and a few of the books on her shelf had been taken out and slid back in. It was the same in the bedroom and kitchen, tiny hints that cupboards had been opened, fingers slid into nooks, boxes searched, corners inspected.

  It wouldn't serve anyone right now, she thought, to mention this to Derek or to Stevie. Most likely it was nothing. Willa had been in, perhaps, or Minnie, hoping to find some booze. She thought of Koperkuj, still missing. The timing troubled her.

  She waited until Stevie was gone and Derek was asleep to check for the stone at the bottom of the sugar barrel. It was still there. She put the barrel back in its place, licked her fingers clean and chastised herself for being paranoid.

  The man who had killed her beloved Joe in exchange for a few pills was being moved into the air ambulance right now. A police pathologist was examining Joe's body at the morgue, looking for needle marks. In another hour or two, the evidence that Robert Patma had murdered Joe Inukpuk and the murderer himself would be on its way to Iqaluit and she would never have to see Robert Patma again. As she'd sat beside him last night, listening to his breathing, and contemplating putting a stop to it, the idea had come to her that he was nothing, an addict, but then Sammy had come into the room and she'd thought of herself, of her ex and of Willa. At some point in our lives, hadn't all of us been the same? Whatever Robert Patma had done, he wasn't so different from the people she loved and she could no more put an end to his life than she could kill Sammy or Willa.

  And yet, knowing now, as she did, that Patma had been behind Joe Inukpuk's death didn't solve the mystery entirely. His absence from the community during that first blizzard, when Felix Wagner was shot, had been real enough, even if he had fabricated the reason for it. Robert Patma could not have killed Felix Wagner because he wasn't in the vicinity when it happened. So if Patma hadn't, who had? There wasn't much to go on: a footprint, committed to memory. She thought again about the stone and the trouble it had caused. Whoever had killed Wagner wanted it and there was no reason to suppose he or she wasn't still out there. Her uneasiness extended back to the feeling that the house had been broken into, then back further still to Martie's warning that whatever she had got herself into may be bigger than you think. Did Martie know something about Koperkuj's disappearance she wasn't telling?

  Edie checked that Derek's breathing was coming soft and regular through the darkness of her bedroom, then she pulled on her parka and hat, pushed her feet into her shit- kickers and went outside. She headed for the little coffee shop at the back of the Northern Store where Martie was often to be found when she was in town, but she wasn't in there today. As she was making her way to the front of the store, Mike popped up from behind the Doritos stand.

  'Edie, thank God. I always had that nurse down as a good kid. What happened? I heard he was a drug addict.'

  'News sure travels.' Edie smiled with the shutters down. She knew Mike well enough to recognize when he was fishing for more gossip and she really didn't want to get into anything now.

  'Nicky, the air-ambulance nurse, came in here for some coffee. She said Dr Urquhart told her Patma got his drugs from Russia. What's that all about?'

  Edie had no wish to add her voice to the gossip mill. 'Listen, Mike,' she said. 'I'm kind of in a hurry. You seen Martie?'

  Mike looked momentarily taken aback at the abrupt change of subject.

  'She was
here earlier, but I guess she left already.'

  Edie thanked him. From the store, she went back home, packed a few things, left a note to say where she was going, and headed out. In a day or two it would be possible to travel on the sea ice but there still wasn't quite enough snow for the snowmobile, so for now she would have to use Derek's ATV. In three weeks' time the dark period would close in on them completely. If there was a black spirit somewhere around Autisaq, she would need to find it while there was still light to see it by.

  She pulled the ATV onto the rocky tuff beside Martie's cabin and stood before it for a moment, calling her aunt's name. For a while she listened at the door but no sound came from inside. She tried the handle; the door was open but instead of going in, she went around the back, to a small cluster of outbuildings: a shed that served both as a store for equipment and for drying sealskins, an abandoned dog kennel and an open-sided port where Martie kept her vehicles. The ATV was not in its usual place.

  A couple of summers ago a construction team had built a rough gravel path from Autisaq all the way to Martie's cabin in the hope that it would help her get to the landing strip without losing her flight slot, since she was so often late, but the path had broken up in the first frost and all but the kilometre or so section nearest the cabin was now impassable. Martie often took her ATV out to where the path ended and hiked from there up into the low hills to hunt hare and to pick the tiny cloudberries that appeared on the southern slopes after a good summer. Since it was cloudberry season, she was probably there now.

  Edie took off her outerwear inside the cabin and made herself a brew, thinking to wait for her aunt to return.

  Sitting at Martie's broken-down old table, she reached over and absent-mindedly picked up an old spoon lying there to stir the sugar in her tea, thinking about what she would say to her aunt when she came back. The act of stirring raised all sorts of questions in her mind, and she began to wonder why she'd come, whether the events of the last few days had made her a bit oversensitive, if not paranoid. She pulled out the spoon, noticed that the back was covered in some kind of soot, and tossed it to the other side of the table. Hygiene was never Martie's strong suit.