Authors: Melanie Mcgrath
The
two men had planned to make their way systematically across the island, flying
east-west until they reached the southern fringe. They had already agreed that,
if they spotted any sign of life on Craig, Pol would try to make
a
landing on the ice-covered plateau above the cliffs and Derek would go out on
the land and investigate. They were carrying a snowbie, a sled and a first-aid
kit and Derek had brought the police-issue sat phone.
For
over an hour they flew in long lines across the terrain at an altitude of five
hundred metres but they saw only a few birds and, once, on the western coast, a
bear moving over the shore-fast ice. There was no sign of the man or of the two
snowmobiles. They had covered most of the island when the low cloud predicted
by the weather forecast suddenly came over, blocking the view. Pol shook his
head.
'No
way we'll get under that, D,' he said.
Until
the cloud cleared there was no point carrying on. Reluctantly, Derek radioed in
to Autisaq and let them know they were temporarily calling off the S&R and
instructed Pol to head south for Taluritut. The policeman's plan was to drop in
on the Devon Island Science Station while they waited for the cloud on Craig to
clear.
For a
number of years a team from NASA and an eccentric not-for-profit outfit known
as Space Intelligences Research had, among other things, been actively testing
prototype landing vehicles for future expeditions to Mars at the science
station on Taluritut's north coast. As the most senior member of the two-man
Ellesmere native police, Derek had jurisdiction in the area and it was his job
to keep a friendly but nonetheless watchful eye on them. The team usually flew
in during March and Derek tried to make a habit of calling in on them within
the first couple of weeks of their arrival, but this year he'd been too busy.
He figured on chatting to the station director, Professor Jim DeSouza, a while,
checking out some cool space buggies and grabbing a bite to eat before taking
off for Craig once more.
DeSouza
himself came out to the landing strip to greet them. A genial, fiercely
intelligent and, Palliser suspected, ambitious man, DeSouza had taken over the
running of the station a couple of years ago. Though Derek hadn't had much to
do with him, he liked what he'd seen so far. He was less standoffish than most
of the
qalunaat
posted up here and seemed particularly keen to
understand the perspectives of local people. At the same time he never
overcompensated by pretending to hang on your every word, the way that some
bleeding-heart
qalunaat
did. He was confident, easy in his skin.
The
professor checked his watch.
'Don't
think I don't notice you two always arrive at mealtimes,' DeSouza said,
clapping Derek and Pol on the back.
They
sat inside a cosy modular unit and ate burgers and French fries. DeSouza seemed
strained, less his usual avuncular self, Derek thought, but it wasn't until
dessert came that he understood why. A stream of funding had just dried up,
DeSouza explained, and the station had been warned to prepare itself to undergo
a NASA review, which was often a polite precursor to the axe.
'These
days the focus is off pure exploration and much more on resource acquisition
and bio-sustainability,' he explained. 'We're all out of a job unless we can
come up with some new direction.'
'By
bio-sustainability you mean life, right?' Derek asked. He saw in DeSouza an
ally for his scientific research.
DeSouza
nodded. 'They want us to find them a planet we can escape to once this one's
all burned up. You gotta love those guys.' He gave a laugh that was as sharp as
a scalpel.
'That
so crazy?' Derek said.
DeSouza
pushed aside the remains of his dessert. 'Not necessarily,' he said. 'But you're
missing the point.'
'We
got a few distractions going on,' Derek said. It wasn't like the professor to
be so spiky.
DeSouza
checked himself and offered to fetch some coffee. Derek asked for tea.
'Oh,
I forgot,' DeSouza said. 'The Brits really got to you people.' He shook his
head, raised a pinkie. 'Tea,' he said, in a British accent.
He
returned with the drinks and put them down on the table.
'You
guys are police, so you do police work, right?'
Derek
and Pol glanced at one another. The professor really was a little off-kilter.
'When
they let us,' Derek said.
DeSouza's
eyes lit up. 'That's just it, see, that's exactly it. I'm a scientist. I'm a
damned good scientist. If I'd wanted to be a politician or some kind of policy
goon I woulda been. All my life, from being a small kid, I just wanted to do
science. But the fucking politicians, the funding agencies, the think tanks,
all those fucking wastes of space out there, they make it impossible. The
things we could do, the things we'd know, if they only left us alone.'
'I
hear that,' Derek nodded. He flashed Pol a look that said,
Let's get the
hell out of here.
Less
than an hour and a half after they'd touched down, they were back in the air
and heading for Craig, but the island was still shrouded in low cloud and Derek
decided there was nothing for it but to carry on to Autisaq and wait for it to
clear. Upbringing and experience had taught him not to feel frustrated by the
vagaries of the weather; it was what it was. In any case, no one had seen
Taylor alive in three days and the likelihood was that he was gone. An hour or
a month wouldn't make much difference.
As
they were beginning their descent into the settlement, Derek's gaze happened to
land on graffiti someone had scratched in one corner of the passenger window
glass. He hadn't noticed it before.
D
Palacer is a dick-sucking prick
.
He
tried not to let it bother him. Every policeman had enemies. Among a certain
crowd he was still seen as some kind of collaborator. And there were plenty of
folk up here who didn't see the need for a legal system at all, considered it
just another southern import. They didn't want to know that more often than not
Derek kept the southern legal system off their backs.
He
licked his finger and rubbed it across the engraving. The dampened letters
faded momentarily, gradually resuming their previous form as they dried. He
reached in his pocket for his Leatherman, glanced over at Pol to make sure he
wasn't being watched, flipped open the hoof pick attachment, made a few
adjustments to the lettering, scratched out the middle section and read the
sentence back to himself.
D's
Palace is brick
.
After
that, he put away the Leatherman, closed his eyes and braced himself for
landing.
Simeonie
Inukpuk was waiting for them in the tiny terminal building, looking like a hare
who's just realized he's gone down a fox hole by mistake. Derek met the
expectant shine in his eyes with a shake of his head. He took out his pack of
Lucky Strikes and offered the mayor a cigarette.
Derek
said: 'We got round most of the island before the cloud came down, but there
were no tracks, nothing. Till that cloud clears it's impossible.'
'Ajurnamat
,
that really is too bad,' Simeonie grumbled. He sucked on his cigarette.
Derek
said: 'I'd like to talk to Joe; maybe he can give us a better idea of where he
last saw Taylor.'
Simeonie
grunted. 'We'd all like to talk to Joe.'
The
news of the young man's death hit Derek like a musk- ox charge to the spleen.
For a while he just stood rooted to the spot, shaking his head, mumbling 'Ah
no, ah Jesus, no,' helpless in the maw of some terrible stupefaction. Of all
the young men. Joe Inukpuk was a beacon of hope in what was otherwise a fog of
drink, boredom, unwanted pregnancies, low expectation and educational
underachievement. He took out another cigarette, lit it, sucked up the smoke
and tried to gather his thoughts.
'How's
the family holding up?'
Simeonie
shrugged as if to say,
How do you think?
'The
body's at the nursing station.'
Derek
crushed the remains of his smoke under his boot and told Pol to radio Kuujuaq
detachment and update Stevie. Then he followed Simeonie to the nursing station.
He was
aware that the number of suicides in Nunavut and Nunavik, the two principal
Inuit districts of Eastern Canada, had doubled in the last decade. Inuit were
now eleven times more likely to kill themselves than their fellow Canadians
living in the south. Eighty-three per cent of suicides were of young people
under thirty and eighty-five per cent of them male. Down in the south, it was
often assumed that the majority of suicides north of the 60th happened when the
suicide was drunk, but this was just another way in which the south absolved
itself from responsibility for the fate of its northern peoples. Sure, the
Arctic had its share of boozers, but the connection with suicide was much
looser than the sociologists, politicians, health advisors and policy makers
imagined. Take Joe. Derek knew the boy well enough to know he barely drank:
he'd seen what drink had done to his parents.
He
followed Simeonie up the steps to the station, hauled off his snow boots, and
swung open the inner door. As he went in he saw Edie Kiglatuk sitting at one
end of the waiting room. She looked up and acknowledged him but without her
customary smile. On the opposite side of the waiting room sat the boy's blood
family. Joe's mother Minnie had fallen asleep with her head resting on Willa's
shoulder. Derek went over to offer his condolences. As he drew near he could
see that Minnie was sleeping off the results of a heavy drinking spree and
Sammy had a glazed look on his face. The smell of weed drifted up from the
bench on which they all were sitting. Derek said how sorry he was.
'I
was sitting with him.' Sammy's voice was subdued but there was something
hysterical lurking just below the surface. 'I was sitting with him but then I
went to tell his mother he was safe. Safe! Can you believe? When I left he was
sleeping, you know? I had no idea he was going to do anything, no idea at all.'
His body lurched forward and his voice broke.
Derek
left a pause before turning to Willa, but Joe's brother continued to stare at
his feet. Shock or simple misery, Derek didn't know. Either way, it was clear
there was nothing Derek could do for him.
Next,
he went over to Edie and just sat beside her. At one point he noticed she was
shaking.
Then
Robert Patma directed him to the body. The young man was lying in a bag on the
morgue slab. Robert slid the zipper down far enough for Derek to be able to see
Joe's face.
'Who
found him?'
'Edie.
She's pretty cut up. I just checked the pharmacy,' Robert said. 'One hundred
and fifty Vicodin missing, fifteen blister packs. He must have taken them while
Sammy and I were in the other room.' The nurse sucked his teeth. 'He had the
keys to the pharmaceutical cabinets. Shit, maybe I shouldn't have given them to
him, but he helped me out round here, you know? I can't tell you how bad I
feel.'
Derek
acknowledged the nurse's feelings with a nod. 'You took some samples?'
Patma
gestured towards some specimen bags and bottles lying on the counter.
Derek
said: 'I'll get them down to the police lab in Ottawa.'
He
signalled the OK for Patma to zip up the body bag.
'Any
chance of finding the other guy alive? Andy Taylor?'
'Not
much chance of finding him, period. If he's dead or dying, we would have
expected to see some wolves in the area, maybe foxes. If he's alive then he's
keeping very quiet about it. Either way, no clues.' Derek looked towards the
door to check it was closed and, seeing that it was, continued. 'You knew Joe
well, right?'
'Pretty
well.'
'Anything
different, suspicious?'
Patma
handed over a bag of labelled samples and asked Derek to sign for them. 'Joe
usually kept his feelings to himself but he was pretty shaken up about the
death of that hunter guy, Wagner, was it? This latest thing just made it worse.
When he got back here yesterday, he was a mess: hypothermic, confused, out of
his mind. He kept saying he'd left the guy to die.'