Anarchy (10 page)

• • •

She'd have felt guiltier about taking her break when something was actually going on for a change if it hadn't been for two things: first, it would be her turn soon enough, all that evening and on call overnight as well, and second, Jonas knew as well as she did that she needed it. She wasn't much help to him in her current mood. He talked people down, told them he'd see what he could do, reassured everyone it was just a computer glitch and the bank would have it sorted out by tomorrow, while she prowled around the office hoping someone would lose their temper and become aggressive. He shooed her out of the station on the stroke of eleven.

She got changed, threw life vest and helmet and paddle in the car, and loaded her kayak onto its rack on the roof. Instead of driving the four blocks down the slope to the town landing, she steered out of town and headed up 30, rolling the windows down a finger's width to let in soggy pine-scented air. The couple of times she'd gone paddling since she'd arrived in Alice she'd explored the inlet. It was perfect. Sheltered as a swimming pool, bordered on one side by sheer slopes like a picture postcard fjord, it was a good ten kilometers of kayak utopia before it bent westward and became the wider, wilder sound. On her first trip out there she'd had it all to herself apart from the birds and a single otter moseying along on his back, peering around like a whiskery old bachelor in his private bath. Today, though, she wanted currents, wavelets, wind, a stretch of water she could fight against. At least that was her excuse. If there was another reason she'd pointed the car over to the east side of the island, she wasn't going to admit it to herself.

She drove down into Rupert and stopped by the fenced-in cemetery with its gaudily cross-cultural assortment of totem animals and crosses and plastic flowers. A couple of guys came out from their houses, waddley dogs in tow, while she carried her boat over the mottled pebbles. She guessed she was on her way to becoming a celebrity hereabouts. Not just the new girl cop who'd earned Margaret's seal of approval but a blonde in a wetsuit too. Elderly men who probably wheezed going upstairs offered to help her with the kayak. She smiled as best she could—she'd never had a talent for it—and managed on her own.

It never failed to amaze her how quickly things changed when you were afloat. One minute she was dealing with the equipment and trying to be friendly to the old guys and stopping dogs peeing on her kayak and thinking about when she'd have to get back and worrying about police work and her reputation and why hadn't she spoken to Annie for was it three days now, and the next minute . . .

The next minute her world contracted to the simplicity of effort and motion. Everything fell away apart from the pure dominant rhythm,
tlatch tlatch tlatch tlatch.
She always thought animals must live like this, deciding what they'd do next moment by moment, sniffing the wind. It was cold on the water but she was warm within a couple of minutes. Her shoulders began to ache pleasantly. The stray flicks of spray on her bare hands and face became stings of relief, ocean acupuncture. Back straight, head still, she punched alternating puddles in the sea, leaving them behind her like short-lived footprints.

She followed the left side of the bay, past the big empty vacation houses sitting back under the cedars, until the shore beside her became the familiar mess of spiny trees over their fringe of rock. They breathed out their clammy forest smell, exchanging it with the salt air. To her right the islands at the mouth of the bay fell into their proper perspective, the gaps opening between them to disclose increasing slices of the grey expanse beyond. After forty-five fierce minutes she'd slid past the last of them. Her arms were pleading for a rest, the southerly wind was raising steeper ridges in the sea around her, and the full breadth of this section of the Inside Passage swept across her view. She eased down, panting, and then let the rhythm go, laying the paddle across her thighs.

In two months' time these would be busy waters. The clouds would rise, the sun stride northward, and the hundreds of kilometers of the Passage would be transformed into a platform for viewing the acceptable face of the northern wilderness. There'd be shiploads of gawpers and adventurers and idlers passing one way or the other every day. Goose looked left and right and saw a smudge with a long brown tail: a tug dragging one of those implausibly gigantic log booms. Apart from that, hers was the only boat in sight. Across the Passage the mainland mountains walled in the horizon. For a while longer, this was no-man's-land. There were islands in the strait, clumps of darker grey hovering at unspecifiable distances, their treetop profiles softly bristled; crouching sea-beasts with wet fur. She was tempted to set her bow toward one of those clumps and paddle however many kilometers it was, without stopping, turning herself into a vanishingly small speck in the trackless and featureless sea.

The whine of an engine broke her trance. A powerboat sped into sight from the west, the direction of Hardy Bay, bumping recklessly in the gentle chop. Just like herself and Jonas yesterday, she thought, but without the impending fog. It was the same kind of boat, and there were two people in it. They swerved out wide as they saw her, giving her plenty of room, or maybe so they didn't have to slow down. Two young guys, she now saw, both in the unvarying uniform the native kids adopted whatever the season or weather: shades, bandannas flapping crazily, tight shirts bulging in less impressive places than intended. The wake from their boat slapped noisily against the rocks. She touched the bow around to meet the manufactured waves straight on, small hills of water parting with a faintly menacing hiss around her kayak, rocking her for a moment. The guys stared as they zoomed past. It could have been the guys-together-looking-at-a-girl stare, or the young-native-men-looking-at-a-white-stranger stare, or the kids-facing-down-the-police stare. In Goose's experience there was very little difference among the three. The basic meaning of all of them was
I dare you to try to imagine how much I despise you.

Their boat slowed very abruptly and they circled around toward her. She gripped the paddle lightly.

“Morning,” she called out, and then made a show of checking her watch. “Oh. Afternoon, I guess.”

The boat came around behind her at a respectful distance. She dipped one end of the paddle again to keep herself facing it.

“You got some trouble there?”

“I'm good.”

“Just cruising?”

“Yep.”

“Funny time of year for it.”

“There wasn't any other time of year available today.”

Their boat completed its circle, the arc of froth from the outboard meeting itself in a frayed loop. It slowed down further. The one who hadn't spoken yet, the bigger of the two, lifted a bottle from somewhere down by his feet.

“Want a beer?”

She kept her eyes on them. She could just about see her own reflection in their shades, the pink blob of her kayak. Some years ago she'd made the discovery that she was immune to all forms of the Stare.

“Where are you boys off to this morning? Afternoon.”

The guy with the beer held it out, indicating the bows of their boat with the neck of the bottle. “That way.”

“You wanna come?” said the first one.

“I have to get back to work,” she said. “I'm on duty in a couple of hours.”

The bottle disappeared.

“Are you the Mountie?”

“That's right.”

“French girl.”

“I was born in Montreal. We call them ‘women' there.”

“How d'you like it out here?”

“It's nice.”

The one with the beer had slumped back down on the far side of the boat, trying to look bored and insouciant. The other, less self-conscious, his features so Asiatic he wouldn't have attracted inquisitive looks on the other side of the Bering Strait, was doing all the talking.

“There's a whale stranded out on the Mastermans.”

“A what?”

The guy waved over his left shoulder. “Right up on the beach there. On the big island.”

“Did you say a whale?”

“Killer whale.”

“You mean . . . Is it dead?”

“Dunno. Big fucker. Gonna stink up the place. You guys should check it out.”

She frowned. “Where's this?”

“Masterman Island.” He turned and pointed toward what appeared to be a relatively close clump of non-sea. “We went by there yesterday.”

It sounded like a prank. “Hasn't anyone reported it?”

He shrugged, looked at his friend, who also shrugged, necking the bottle. “We're reporting it now. Thought you might wanna know.”

“Do they do that often?”

“Huh?”

“Killer whales. Do they get stranded a lot?”

“I never seen it before.” He was losing interest. Perhaps they'd just been hoping to provoke her into reciting regulations about alcohol in boats. “Big fucker just laying there on the beach stinking it up.”

“May I ask your names, sir?”

They looked at each other. The friendlier one reached for the throttle.

“We ain't done nothing,” he said, and the boat surged away, sending a foam of turbulence around her. A pair of ravens flopped out of the trees on the shore and went grumbling after it as if to lodge a complaint. She felt a drop of cold drizzle on her arm.

The afternoon had spoiled somehow. She grimaced, looking up at the relentless clouds. She'd be against what wind there was on the way back, and the tide was running out of the bay. Plus she couldn't keep up the same pace anyway, not after nearly an hour of it. It would be a longer trip returning. Time to turn around.

She tugged her cap down, leaned forward, and attacked the ocean.

• • •

Her watch told her she had an hour before she was back on duty. She toweled the spray and sweat out of her hair, calculating whether she'd left enough time for a proper shower. It would have been nice to sit on the beach for five minutes while she cooled off, watching the eagles strut and chitter, enjoying the washed-out aftermath of intense exertion. In her experience there was nothing quite as blissful as that feeling:
Now it's over, now I can stop.
But she knew she'd better not turn up at the station stinky. It appeared she'd dodged the disciplinary bullet somehow—one of the best things about self-inflicted exhaustion was the way it stopped you thinking too much about the whys and wherefores, or indeed about anything at all beyond the tingling health of your body, a teasing hint of immortality—but she was still new in the job and not exactly in Cope's good books. She'd better always be on time and look smart.

So she lugged the kayak back up to the unmown cemetery without stopping to rest. She had it tied on the roof rack and was on her way back to collect the paddle and life vest when one of the interchangeable small round women came hurrying down the street.

“Hey. Hey. Fire. Hey, help. Fire up the road.”

Goose went straight for the radio in the glove box. The woman scurried closer, so out of breath she couldn't make more than two words at a time. “Tried calling. I couldn't. Get through.”

“Can you give me the street address, ma'am?” Goose clicked the radio on and buzzed for an emergency.

“End of. The road. Kids in. There.”

“Do you know the address?” The radio was crackly and didn't seem to be responding. Battery, she thought angrily, though they weren't supposed to need replacing for years. “Maculloch. Reported fire. I repeat, fire. Hello?”

“You gotta help.”

She was trying to. She knew the protocol. But the radio wasn't cooperating. She switched it on and off. “Maculloch. I need assistance. Who's out there?”

“Goose?” The radio jumped to life all at once, the voice weirdly clear and close in her ear.

“Janice?” It was a woman's voice, one she thought she knew, but the wrong one. She stalled in confusion.

“Goose?”

“Is that— I need to report an emergency. Fire. In Rupert.”

“Goose. It's Annie, you dumbo.”

“Annie?” She stared at the radio, waiting for her eyes to identify it as her phone instead. They didn't cooperate.

“I've been trying to call for days. What have you been doing?”

The small round woman watched with a frown as puzzled as Goose's own.

“Annie? Where are you?”

“I'm at home. You could have got me anytime.”

“I . . .”

“Young lady,” the woman said, with as much dignity as her breathlessness and urgency allowed. “There are children in that house.”

This was some kind of surreal mistake, obviously. You couldn't get your girlfriend in Toronto on the police radio. “Sorry, Annie.” She had no time for mistakes, or for guilt; there was a protocol. “I have to—”

“Goose, I'm scared.”

“What?”

“I'm scared. I went out and bought tinned stuff. I need to talk to you.”

Someone else leaned out of a window along the road and shouted to everyone or no one, “There's a fire!”

“Crap,” Goose said, and clicked off the radio.

“Goose?” it said. She dropped it with a jolt of terror.

“You have to call the rescue.” The woman thought, perhaps rightly, that Goose didn't know what to do. “Right now.”

What was the protocol? Why couldn't she remember? She was a trained officer. You called emergency services, then you went to the scene—

“Get in,” she said, starting the car, suddenly decisive, shaking Annie out of her head.
Later, later.
“Show me where.”

A few people were now appearing on the street. In the mizzly afternoon stillness Goose thought she heard the dreadful crackle, distantly. She faced the gathering crowd and shouted a general instruction to call the firehouse.

“Couldn't get through,” the woman reminded her, from the passenger seat.