The Polar Bear Killing by Michael Ridpath Page A

metres away.
    He lowered the window. ‘Jump in, Anna!’
    The girl opened the passenger door and climbed in.
    ‘What do you think you were doing?’ Halldór said.
    ‘I wanted to speak to the polar bear,’ she said.
    ‘Those animals are dangerous!’ Halldór said. ‘He’s come a long way and he’s hungry.’
    ‘He’s not dangerous. Egill told me about polar bears. They are friendly. They help people.’
    Egill was the old man who lived in the run-down farm barely visible at the base of the cloud on the slope on the other side of the river. He was about eighty and had long ago lost his marbles.
    ‘They are not friendly, Anna; they attack people, believe me. Now where is your brother?’
    ‘Back in the farmhouse,’ said the little girl.
    ‘Good.’ Halldór looked at the bear, which was staring at the vehicle. ‘OK, sit tight, Anna.’
    Slowly he climbed out of the car and went around to the back to take out his rifle. The bear watched, but the girl couldn’t see him. Once the gun was loaded, Halldór made his way around the car, rested his elbows on the bonnet and aimed at the bear.
    It was smaller than he had imagined it would be, and thinner; he could see its ribs. But it was still a magnificent animal.
    It was also a hundred metres away, and had turned its rump towards Halldór.
    A .22 bullet in the arse would do nothing to a polar bear apart from make it really angry.
    ‘You’re not going to shoot it!’ shouted the girl.
    ‘This is a dart gun,’ said Halldór. ‘I’m going to put it to sleep.’
    ‘It’s not a dart gun,’ the girl said. ‘My dad has a gun like that that he uses to shoot foxes. I’m not going to let you kill the lovely bear.’
    What happened next would be etched in Halldór’s brain for the little time that remained of his life.
    The girl jumped out of the car and ran towards the bear, shouting: ‘Look out, polar bear!’
    The bear turned and, after a second’s thought, ambled towards the girl.
    Halldór’s instinct was to run after the girl and pull her back. But if he did that, the bear would escape, run off into the mist. Sure, it would be shot eventually by one of the professional hunters. But not by him.
    The girl stopped, suddenly aware that a very large animal with teeth and claws was approaching her. She was only a few metres from the police car. There was still time for her to turn and run. There was even time for Halldór to drag her back. But she froze.
    Halldór took careful aim. The bear was coming directly towards him, its eyes two round black holes staring straight ahead.
    At last the girl screamed and turned. The bear was nearly on her, only twenty metres away.
    Halldór took his time. He could make this shot ten times out of ten as long as he kept his nerve. He inhaled, then exhaled slowly and squeezed the trigger. The bear dropped to the ground as the bullet tore through its eye and into its brain.
    The two young men, a German and an Icelander, breathed heavily as they climbed the hill. The sky was a pale blue, and there was no sign of the thick low cloud that had settled over the area during the previous five days.
    The Icelander, a thin man with straggly long hair, wearing jeans and an ‘Extinction is Forever’ T-shirt, paused and raised the binoculars that were hanging around his neck to scan the ponds and marshes of the Melrakkaslétta – the ‘fox plain’ that stretched out to the north of the town.
    ‘Nothing,’ he said.
    ‘She must have drowned,’ said the German in English. He was a few years older than the Icelander, a few years neater.
    The bear that had been shot four days before was not yet fullygrown, and the theory was that its mother may have landed as well. But now that the weather had cleared up and it was possible to see more than a couple of hundred metres, that seemed increasingly unlikely.
    ‘I’m afraid you have wasted your trip, Martin,’ the Icelander said, turning back up the hill.
    ‘Yeah,’ said Martin, following