Arctic Blues
Chapter 2
Detective work

written by Martes The Arctic Express arrived at the station with three cargo cars less. The doors opened and the platform was flooded with a tide of animals. A tall, white figure cut through the crowd, followed by smaller antlers: the tips barely reaching his neck.

“Alex, wait!”

“You’ve got the wrong man, miss.”

“Stop it, I know it’s you.”

The reindeer threw her suitcase to the ground and ran to halt him by the arm. Kay turned around, imposingly, and the girl took a step back. Her eyes fixed on the ice arm.

“What happened to you?”

Kay’s face remained emotionless.

“Don’t you remember me?”

“These are not good times to be lost, miss. I recommend you find a good place to sleep tonight.”

“And how do you know I’m a foreigner?” The girl crossed her arms as if she had caught him in a slipup.

Kay just gives her an indifferent stare.

“The wood of your suitcase comes from the rural villages of Hibernia. Your accent is strong, your coat is out of fashion and you just arrived on an express train to the capital.”

The girl looked down, embarrassed, and when Kay turned, she didn’t make a gesture to follow him. She only watched him until he got lost in the hustle and bustle of the station.


“For God’s sake, Kay, cover up!” cried the raccoon.

“You know the cold doesn’t affect me,” the detective replied, leaning over so as not to scratch the ceiling with his antlers.

“Yeah, yeah, but that’s no excuse to show off to the world.”

They had met a few months ago, when he was investigating the case of the emerald murder. Oleg came from a long lineage of jewelers. That gloomy, low-ceilinged workshop had belonged to his family for generations. Kay didn’t blame him though: after the revolution, it was a miracle that traces of royal opulence still remained.

The workshop, already wider than tall, was crammed with boxes and piles of junk: rusty metals, unfixable clocks, boxes and display cases, however, it was only a matter of good eye to find treasures. For example, the clock that at midnight sang a musical story or even ineffable automatons. There should still be a mechanical bird haunting somewhere around the rafters.

The reindeer slumped into one of the chairs at the back, next to the work desk and a small fireplace. Not that it made a difference: he couldn’t feel the heat either. Oleg sat down and immediately jumped up as if there had been a nail on his chair when Kay placed the egg on the table.

“Where did you get that?”

“It’s not just jewelry, is it?”

“It’s a bomb and it’s still active,” the raccoon sighed, pulling out a magnifying glass to take a closer look. He noticed the alarm on Kay’s face. “Don’t worry: it won’t explode unless you activate the mechanism with its key. Do you have it?”

He shook his head. “Are there really people rich enough to make such expensive bombs?”

“The gems are fake, it’s just well-polished glass. And it is made, in past tense. They used to be made during the revolution to attack royalty, so that they would look like gifts and...

“… be themselves the ones to detonate them on their palaces,” Kay completed. “Are you sure they don’t make them anymore? If they were able to do them then, it’s surely easier to do them now. The revolution was less than 50 years ago.”

Oleg hesitated.

“I could examine it for a few days and-”

“No. They’ll be following me these days, so I’ll have to disappear for a while. Take care of yourself anyway, and thank you.”

Before the raccoon could say anything else, Kay walked through the workshop without even creaking the wooden floor, and stepped outside like a snowy sigh.


“What’s the Baroness up to?” thought Kay.

Everything was blue and yellow at that hour: dusk against the thousands of city lightbulbs. The detective walked down dark streets, his fur reflecting the same hue as the snow around him, so that at times he seemed transparent.

He had been hired to investigate some records that didn’t add up: missing shipments and diversion of funds, small enough not to raise alarm. Not the important one, that is. At first he had imagined it was a simple thief or even some kind of ineffable creature that ate the provisions. However, his investigations led him through false names and ghost companies until he sniffed something in the Baroness’s mansion.

He hadn’t intended to confront her, even making sure to go on the day she was supposed to be out. But he was caught snooping around her house and she turned out to be a short-fuse woman. Literally.

In spite of his best attempts at deception, the woman ordered her butler to liquidate him on the spot, and when he was engaged in battle, she pulled a cannon from who knows where, exploding him out of the window. It wasn’t a matter of revenge, though he added rematch to his task list.

There was something, something big about this whole thing. But what? He looked at the egg and the bottle.

Leaving the crowded streets behind, he arrived at the slender apartment buildings area, with their warm porches and homey avenues. The snow had only been trampled by automobiles, and the wind could be heard rustling through the tree branches. He liked that neighborhood: it was quiet and didn’t have many curious eyes. Any disruption, such as a change in domicile or an accident, was easily spotted.

So when he saw snow piled up by the door, he knew someone was waiting to kill him.