White Heat

by Melanie McGrath

  As she drank her tea, the feeling grew that she would have done better to have remained in Autisaq and found out who had been responsible for searching her house. She felt bad, too, leaving Joe's body to be opened up without her being there. It was almost as though she'd abandoned him again. And then there was the policeman. It dawned on her that she was worrying about Derek more than was strictly necessary but there it was. He was just one more reason to be back at Autisaq.

  She grabbed her parka and her pack. As she was about to shut the door, her eye was drawn to a hook fixed to the frame. On the hook was a padlock key. It aroused her curiosity partly because she'd never seen it before and partly because she'd never in all her life known Martie to lock anything. None of the outbuildings were locked as she recalled, and since Auntie Martie didn't even bother to lock her plane, it seemed odd that she would think to attach a padlock to anything else she owned. On an impulse, she removed the key.

  She looked about the mess of cans, animal skins and fishing and hunting equipment strewn around the cabin for some kind of padlock, then she went back outside and checked the doors to the outbuildings. Martie's snowbie was in the port, with its key dangling from the ignition. Edie put her head around the door to the shed. Inside was the usual clutter of cans of creosote, antifreeze and oil, along with a few harpoons, baffles, lures, ulus and other pieces of outdoor equipment. In one corner there was stacked a pile of sealskins, but no padlock and nothing to which a padlock might be attached. She closed the door to the shed again and told herself she had no right to meddle in her aunt's business. She should put the key back on the hook before Martie came home or she'd be obliged to explain herself.

  As she walked around the side of the shed, resolving not to pursue the matter any further, she noticed that the dog kennel had been moved recently, disturbing the imprint of lichens that had grown around its previous position. She went closer. From the scrape pattern on the rock it looked as though the kennel had been swung around a number of times. She pushed it experimentally and noticed as she did so a hatch in the shed wall, corresponding to the space behind the pile of skins inside. It was here, neatly inserted so that it lay flush with the wall, that Edie found the padlock. Inserting the key, she flipped the lock off in one move of the wrist. The hatch door gave way to reveal a small metal box, like a safe. There was nothing inside. As she shut the door a sour smell hit her that was familiar from somewhere, though she couldn't put her finger on it. She locked it back up. For the second time that day she felt shabby, contaminated. Martie was her kin and she had no business messing with her stuff. She pushed the kennel back against the side of the shed, replaced the key on the hook inside the cabin door and left.

  It wasn't until she was out in Jones Sound that she remembered the odd burn marks on the old spoon she'd used to stir her tea. And it wasn't until she remembered the spoon that she recalled she'd left her tea mug lying on Martie's table.

  Derek was sitting on the sofa as she walked into her house. He was in a considerable state of agitation. In his hand was the clipped picture of the members of the Arctic Hunters' Club that Qila Rasmussen had given her back in August.

  'Why didn't you show me this before?' There was a pained look on his face and he was biting back his anger.

  'I don't know,' she said, bewildered. 'I mean, I told you, about Felix Wagner and the Belovsky fellow.'

  'We have to leave,' he said. He launched the picture at her. 'Now.'

  'Leave?' She felt confused. 'Why?' She'd never heard him sounding this crazed; his voice had become almost hysterical. She wondered whether it was the effect of the drugs he was taking. 'Listen, Derek, I really, really don't know what you're talking about,' she said. 'And in any case, you can't go anywhere with that leg.'

  Holding the photo out to her, he said: 'Which of these men have you seen before?'

  She looked carefully and pointed to Felix Wagner, then to Belovsky.

  'No one else?' Derek invited her to look again. Her eyes scanned the rows but there were no other familiar faces. She shook her head.

  Derek pointed to a tall, distinguished man with a beard and a large, aquiline nose, standing at the back. 'You don't know him?'

  'Uh nuh.'

  He took in a breath and gave a little bark of comprehension.

  'That explains a lot,' he said, his voice less aggressive now. 'I guess I assumed you would have come across him.'

  'Why?'

  'Edie, the man in the photo is Professor Jim DeSouza.'

  It took a moment for her to register the name. Of course, DeSouza ran the space science station on Devon Island.

  'You think he knows what happened to Wagner?'

  'It would seem something of a coincidence if he didn't, don't you think? Fairfax, Wagner, Belovsky, all in this mess, and DeSouza just an innocent outsider? Last couple of times I saw him he seemed real edgy. Any case, I think we should pay him an unexpected visit.'

  Edie gestured at the policeman's injured leg. 'I'll go.'

  Derek gave a bitter laugh. 'Oh no, you don't get to write me off that easily, Edie Kiglatuk.' He fixed her with a look that made her pulse thud.

  While he'd been waiting for her, he'd formulated a plan. They would need to confront DeSouza when he was least expecting it, before he had time to construct some rationale for himself. If he had nothing to do with Wagner's death, he'd have nothing to hide. Flying was no-go. They'd have to get advance permission to land at the science station and it would be impossible to fly in without everybody knowing about it. The approach would have to be by sea. Jones Sound was only very newly frozen and still unreliable, the ice thin and sappy in places, and turbulent, as slabs of new ice churned in the currents. The more even weight distribution of dogsleds made them safer on such ice but snowmobiling would be faster, and they were in a hurry.

  Derek had it all worked out. On the north Devon coast, not far from the station campus, but out of sight of it, to the east of Cape Vera, there was a thin finger fiord, protected from the prevailing easterly winds by a small island at its foot, where the ice usually stabilized early. They would pull up there, where their lights couldn't be seen, and camp out the night. Just before dawn, they would make their way overland to the station. If they were lucky, they would surprise DeSouza at his breakfast.

  Edie said: 'When do we start?'

  Derek got to his feet. 'How about now?'

  It was a rough crossing. The snowbies bounced from the curdling ice like punchballs swinging from a fist, and they had to stop over and over again to make their way around open leads. Beyond the multi-year ice foot, the wind picked up and for a while their ears were filled with the alarming sound of newly forming ice heaving up from the pressure of the swell beneath. Derek had refused any painkillers for his leg, saying he needed his wits about him, but Edie could see that he was all washed out and relying on his Lucky Strikes to get him through. For all that, though, they made it past Craig Island just as twilight fell. A thin red sun hovered across the horizon like a bloodied eye for a moment, then was replaced by a glaucous moon.

  They continued in a southwesterly direction towards Devon, zig-zagging across loose-forming pan into Bear Bay. After another three hours, Sukause Island appeared in the moonlight. The fiord lay just ahead. The wind died and the air began to curdle with frost smoke.

  They decided to set up camp, eat something and catch some rest. Anyone who saw their lights or heard their snowbies would assume they were a hunting party.

  Without speaking, they transferred the equipment from the snowbies to the beach. Not long afterwards, they had the tent up and were sitting inside, eating caribou jerky and drinking hot tea. Outside, it grew misty. Derek ate very little and said less, though from the way he was sitting, injured leg held out stiffly, a taut expression on his face, Edie could tell he was in a good deal of pain. The doctor, Urquhart, had given him some Vicodin and Xanax to help relax the injured muscle and she suggested he take them both. He could sleep, while she watched for a change in the weather
. If visibility improved, she promised she'd wake him. The look of gratitude and relief on his face told its own story.

  For a while she listened to his breathing, allowing herself to be reassured by its soft regularity, then she went out and took a short stroll along the shingle. The twilight had long since passed, and the sky had deepened to a fierce, uncompromising black. Though the mist had cleared somewhat, the remnants of frost smoke still hung in the air. She would let Derek sleep a bit longer. A few hours wouldn't make a difference one way or the other. It was the middle of the night. So long as he didn't get wind of their arrival, DeSouza wouldn't be going anywhere.

  She let herself back into the tent. Derek slept on. The wind crept up and began whooping along the cliff overhead before tumbling onto the shingle. Then there was another sound on shingle, something heavier and rhythmic and not propelled by the wind. It came again, the same, unmistakeable rattle of something living moving, a fox perhaps. On second thoughts, the footfall was too heavy for fox, too heavy even for wolf or caribou. Instinctively, she tensed, her breath held fast in her throat, listening for animal sounds while the crackling of the shale came closer, then slowly began to retreat towards the cliffs.

  Most likely it was musk ox or bear but, remembering the missing Koperkuj, Edie decided to investigate. Reaching for her hare-fur mufflers, she tied them around her kamiks then, grabbing her rifle and ammo belt, screwed on the night sight, brushed aside the canvas, zipped up the tent flap behind her and set off alone.

  * * *

  Chapter Nineteen

  The rifles's night sight illuminated the deep, dead dark of the shingle and picked up some indentations in the shale mass, leading off up towards the slopes at the west. It wasn't as easy to see as Edie had anticipated. Everything around seemed in motion. The footprints were diffuse and the wind was already blowing them away, but they looked as though they'd come from two legs, not four.

  They'd not told anyone except Stevie where they were going, so whoever was out there, it couldn't be DeSouza. Stevie wouldn't have told a soul. A hunter most like, perhaps even Koperkuj himself, though it seemed unlikely.

  She took a breath, put all thoughts and words out of her mind. From now on, she would rely only on the evidence of her senses: the sound of the wind, the indentations in the shale and the bitter tang of crushed caribou moss as she trod through the light snow. Moving softly, almost soundlessly, psyching herself for an encounter, she followed the line of footprints as they stretched into the darkness. She made her way across the beach, alert, her heart pounding, until she reached the slickrock below the cliffs. There she stopped, crouching low, waiting. More cautious now she was sure the source of the prints was human. Pretty soon she heard a low groan and moved forward, silently, with her knees bent, using the night sight to see her way through, her trigger finger at the ready.

  At a stepped ledge where the rock fell away, she lowered herself so that she was sitting with her feet dangling onto the surface below. Tapping with her toes, feeling for a step, she eased herself onto the rock. The groaning grew louder. Unmistakeably human, it seemed to be coming from around the side of a large boulder. Staying low, she called out, but got no response. The wind brought a scent to her nostrils, a smell so familiar it felt like a friend. Blood.

  Moving forward, slowly, leading with her rifle, she called, 'Kinauvit?' Who are you? Nothing. At the boulder she rested for a moment, picked up a stone, threw it to attract fire then, when there was no response, mustered her courage, raised her rifle, readied the sights and leapt round the rock.

  Through the night sight she could see a bundle lying at an odd angle: a human being, either dead or unconscious. She reached out and pushed the barrel of her Remington against the body. Nothing. Flipping on her headlamp she saw what she immediately thought was the victim of a bear attack. Though the body seemed untouched, the face was mashed, a dense slub of flayed skin and clotted blood, the features all but erased. Slinging her rifle around her shoulder, she reached down and placed two fingers on the carotid. There was a pulse. As she removed her hand, her fingers made contact with metal. A familiar gold chain glinted in her headlamp. It was Old Man Koperkuj and he was still alive. Just.

  She took his shoulders and turned him over then took off her fur hat and laid it under his head. As she did so, his arms flopped across his body and she saw that he had been tortured: his hands were meat stumps from which the fingernails had been ripped out.

  He lay completely still now, the bloody hocks of hands bunched against his face. Everything in her Inuk soul went out to him. To violate an elder this way was as obscene as violating a child.

  She stroked his head. 'It's OK.'

  Koperkuj was in no state to move. It couldn't have been his footfall she'd heard in the shale. Immediately, she clicked her headlamp off and was reaching for her rifle when the dazzle of a powerful lamp blinded her. It took a moment for the red sparks behind her eyelids to clear, but when they did she could see standing before her the craggy outline and aquiline nose of the man in Qila's photo. Professor Jim DeSouza. He was pointing a rifle directly at her.

  Her instincts told her she was dealing with someone very sick. 'This man is an elder,' she said.

  'That's not my fault.' DeSouza moved closer, kicked her rifle away and picked it up. His voice grew quiet and conspiratorial.

  'You know what I want, if you hadn't taken it from him, this wouldn't have happened.' He must have sensed her revulsion because he drew back a little. 'He was more protective of you than I'd imagined he would be. It took a lot for me to get it out of him.' He nudged at the old man's hands with his boot.

  'He doesn't like qalunaat,' Edie said.

  'I don't blame him.' DeSouza's face was as contorted and brittle as the branches of an ancient, wind-whipped willow. 'People should stick with their own kind. We'd all be much happier that way.'

  'I can tell you where the stone is,' she said.

  'Yes,' he said. 'I know.'

  'Please,' she said. 'We have to get the old man some help.' The word 'please' sounded odd coming from her mouth. It was not an Inuit word. But then the professor was not Inuk.

  DeSouza clicked his tongue against his teeth.

  'Forget him, he's gone.' He had lost weight since the photo was taken, and his face looked drawn. 'For a moment there I thought you might be interesting, intelligent even, but now I see you're just as dumb as all the others.'

  'The others?'

  'Natives,' he said. She felt the contempt leaking from him.

  The moment to reach him was lost.

  He picked up her rifle and with one hand cracked it open and took out the clip. Then he flipped his chin, indicating the space behind her. As she turned he pushed the barrel of the rifle into her left hair braid and raised it. The gesture was intimate, violating, as he had intended it to be. 'You go first.'

  They scrambled down onto the beach. The first intimations of nautical dawn, a browning of the night around the southern horizon, had picked out the contours of the tent. There was no light on inside and none came on when they approached. Derek Palliser was still asleep.

  Edie felt DeSouza's rifle nudge her pigtail.

  'Wake Palliser.'

  She called but there was no answer.

  'He's hurt. He took a Xanax, some painkillers.'

  DeSouza's face clouded over. He nudged Edie in the back with his rifle then passed over some rope.

  'Tie him up and do it properly. You try to get away, I'll do to him what I did to the old man. Then I'll come for you. Open the tent flaps so I can see you.'

  'We're further ahead than you think,' she said, binding Derek's wrists. 'We know exactly where the stone was found. We can take you to the source.'

  Behind her, Edie could feel DeSouza's body tense.

  'We're all the same to you, aren't we?' he said. 'Qalunaat. ' He coughed up the word as though it was some kind of infection. 'Just after the money. That was Wagner, Fairfax too. Small men with petty dreams. I couldn't be less intereste
d in that.'

  For a moment Derek seemed to rouse himself, then he fell back into a stupor. Edie shut up and kept tying her square knot.

  'You think I've taken leave of my senses, don't you?' he said. He began to inspect her rope work, pulling on the knots a couple of times. 'Maybe I have.'

  They moved back onto the beach, leaving Derek trussed up in the tent. DeSouza made Edie kneel on the shale and had her put her hands on her head, execution style, while he stood close by, rifle in hand, scanning the sky. The stones bit into her knees. She considered the possibility of flinging a handful of them in his face, but she sensed that by the time her hands even reached the stones, he'd have killed her. They waited.

  So long as she hadn't yet given DeSouza the stone, he would keep her safe. After that, he'd take her out onto the tundra somewhere and get rid of her. Apart from Derek, who would go out of their way to discover what had happened to her? Mike? Stevie? Martie? Neither Mike nor Stevie would stand up to Simeonie. As for her aunt, she didn't know any longer.

  The thin cuticle of the sun had circled a few degrees further round the horizon, too weak to haul itself into the sky. A terrible bleakness came over her. She struggled against it, but it was like the great dark period, omniscient, ineluctable. This won't do at all, she said to herself. Edie might be feeble, but Kigga doesn't give in. She looked to the horizon once more. The sun was rusting, falling away into the darkness, but not quite gone yet.

  Not quite gone.