Well, running for it was out of the question. Unless the cops gave us a minute or two to bundle up first, we would be ice sculptures before we got two blocks. Plus, where would you go? Godthab is sort of in a bowl, because ten months a year they push the snow out of town and pile it up. There is sort of a road out, but I had never seen anything but dogsleds get past the docks, which is how everything and everybody came to town. No way out.


The cops walked over. Two were natives, and one was a standard issue blond and blue-eyed Dane, and, of course, he was the boss. Predictable here. He stood two feet from my nose and started yodeling at me in Danish, sort of politely.


He might as well have been speaking Martian, but I let him sing on until he stopped and tried to stare an answer out of me. I finally shrugged, in the universal sign language for, "I don't have any thoughts at all". This was unacceptable. He started in again, not very politely.


One of the other cops started the upwrap process on the woman on the floor. Her last layer was soaked in blood. What looked like a piece of rusty iron or bone rod stuck out maybe two inches from the middle of her chest. It had a hole in the end.


We all stared, and even the boss cop stopped wearing me out. The cop on the floor looked up. "Unaaq," he said, looking at the boss. "What?", said I, letting him know what he would have found out anyway, sooner or later. He looked at me sharply, and said, in perfect English, "Harpoon". "Please give me your passport and any other identification you have with you." "All of you, please."

Before the policeman had the word "please" all the way out of his mouth, Rommell kicked him in the knee, hard, threw open the door, and disappeared instantly into the incoming blast of snow like a good Vegas magic trick. The blond cop grabbed his leg, hopped once and slipped on the bloody beer, then fell hard, face down, on the dead woman.

Mother of Ice Caps, were we ever very fucked now.