The Bone Seeker (7 page)

‘A moment?' She lowered her voice. ‘Between us, do you know of anyone who'd want to hurt the Salliaq family?' she said.

Gutierrez looked puzzled.

‘I found a
tupilaq
on the steps to the Pitoqs' house this morning. A curse object.'

Gutierrez grimaced. ‘Charlie Salliaq can be abrasive but he's very respected.' She paused, as though recognizing the importance of the question. ‘I guess there
was
some opposition to the plan to clean up Lake Turngaluk. Something about stirring up bad spirits. Superstition.'

‘From?'

The lawyer gave an exasperated sigh. ‘You know how it is. No one actually said anything openly. It was just kind of in the air.'

‘If it comes down to earth, you'll let us know,' Derek said.

Gutierrez grunted a yes, then stood and, brushing herself down, made for the door. Derek waited until she was gone before wheeling about to face Edie, his face blush with anger.

‘Why didn't you tell me about the
tupilaq
beforehand? Dealing with team Salliaq is enough like wrangling a pair of wounded walruses without my VPSO withholding information from me.'

‘I'm sorry, D. It won't happen again.' There was a pause. ‘How's about I make myself useful and go see Sam Oolik at the store?'

Derek swung around on his chair so that his back was to her.

‘That
is
the general idea,' he said, irritably.

•   •   •

A blast of lukewarm, damp-smelling air hit Sonia Gutierrez face on. In all the years she'd been flying up to Kuujuaq to work on the land-rights claim she'd never noticed just how awful the hotel was, more like some kind of overpriced homeless shelter than guest accommodation. A
cleaner was supposed to come in daily whenever there were guests but it was rare that anyone showed up. On one occasion she left an empty bottle of shampoo in the bathroom and it was still there on her next visit four months later. There were no permanent staff. You checked in at the mayor's office, where they gave you a room key and, if you were lucky, a towel and a roll of bathroom tissue. At the end of each visit you'd take the phone log to the mayor's office, they'd tot up what you owed for calls, add on some insane sum to cover non-existent ‘administration' and charmlessly send you on your way. The whole experience was less pleasant sojourn, more organized extortion.

Palliser's indifference to the clean-up programme was frustrating but hardly surprising. She, however, had put more than a decade of her life into pursuing first the land claim then the decontamination programme and she wasn't about to see her efforts stymied, even by something as terrible as a murder. Her fee was dependent on the works being completed and, though she was fond of Charlie Salliaq and sympathized with the Salliaq family, she had family too, back in Guatemala, and they depended on the money she sent them every month to get by.

She moved out of the hallway to the communal area where the phone sat, perched on a shabby plastic chair, and picked up the handset, flipping through her notebook for the number. Then, abandoning the call and marching back outside to her ATV, she keyed the engine and buzzed along the track that led out to the river and across the sedge meadows to Camp Nanook. Some things were better tackled face to face.

The security detail at the camp kept her waiting while they called through to Colonel Klinsman, then escorted her along the boardwalks past the lines of prefab units and tents to the administrative block, where Klinsman smiled her into his office. The camp commander's name and physique both suggested Germanic origins. He was a tall, angular man with watery-brown hair running to grey, and remote, disciplined eyes; mid- to late-fifties but fit and with no discernible paunch. She'd seen him once at the Defence Department's offices in Ottawa and
a couple of times since he'd arrived on Ellesmere Island, and had found him polite but professionally formal.

Klinsman's office was a perfect reflection of the man: ordered, authoritative, if a little bland. Or perhaps elusive. It was hard to tell which. She'd known men like Klinsman back in Guatemala with offices more or less like this. Men who, despite the lawless and outrageous violence of their natures, operated on a day-to-day level every bit as though they were calmly invincible rationalists. You saw them on golf courses all the time, she'd noticed, pretending to relax in their $300 shoes.

Sonia guessed that Klinsman, like Palliser, wouldn't care too much if the clean-up job got done or not. His primary responsibility was to direct the SOVPAT exercises up on Ellesmere. The decontamination programme was a side show funded not by the military but by the Defence Department. A man like Klinsman might even resent having to play second fiddle to the bureaucrats. She didn't expect the colonel to take sides – he was too clever for that – but she did hope to be able to persuade him to put pressure on Derek Palliser to reopen the Glacier Ridge site for the clean-up crew.

She took a seat and declined his offer of coffee.

‘I'm sorry we've both got caught up in this,' she said.

‘It's unfortunate,' he replied carefully.

‘My concern is that the case could drag on. And get pretty sticky. The local feeling is very anti-police. To be frank, they're not particularly keen on Camp Nanook either. An in-built suspicion of southerners.' She gave a brittle laugh. ‘I should know. Took me a decade before I got my party invite.'

Klinsman glanced at his clock. ‘I'm not sure where you're taking this, Ms Gutierrez.'

A thin needle of anxiety pricked her. She couldn't let him lose interest until she'd got what she came for.

‘What I'm saying, colonel, is that the clean-up works mean a lot to these folks. It would really improve community relations to get going
on them. Take people's minds off this terrible killing. Show them who the good guys are.'

‘I see,' Klinsman said impeccably.

Sonia leaned in. ‘I'm not sure that Sergeant Palliser shares our priorities. He's a small town man, has trouble seeing further than his own nose. A call from you, colonel . . .'

‘Perhaps you're right,' Klinsman said enigmatically, checking the time again. Something inside her fell away. She'd lost his interest. Whatever she said from now on, he'd only be going through the motions. It would just be humiliating to continue. She stood and, thanking him for his time, swept out of the door.

On the drive back to Kuujuaq she allowed herself to feel discouraged. The sun had poked through some early morning cloud, sending motes of creamy sunlight onto the huddle of decommissioned buildings at Glacier Ridge. From a distance they looked like an abandoned movie set.

At the split in the track she peeled off left towards the waters of the lake. At one of the muddy banks, far from the pool in which Martha's body had been found, she dipped in a hand and splashed at the greasy water. Turngaluk,
the Lake of Evil Spirits.
Tirigusukut
, taboo. How odd, she thought suddenly, that in all these years she'd never thought to ask why.

•   •   •

On her way to the Kuujuaq Northern Store to question the manager, Sam Oolik, Edie passed a handful of soldiers working off their hangovers on the beach. A young Inuit woman sprawled beside them, half clothed, mouth open, snoring lightly. Edie was reminded of what Luc had said last night, that Martha Salliaq had probably gone willingly with her killer. But the girl Edie knew was nothing like that luckless, discarded creature on the beach. It pained her to think of Martha following some strange white man from the south for the money in his pocket and a mouth full of promises. Martha had wanted more than Kuujuaq could offer her. Edie supposed the question was: what lengths
had she been prepared to go to, what risks had she been prepared to take, in order to get it?

The store wasn't officially open yet but Sam Oolik was standing at the back with a bottle of syrup in his hand, organizing the stock.

‘Hey,' he said enquiringly.

‘Edie Kiglatuk.'

‘I know who you are.' He was tall, strongly built, with the kind of eyes that tell two stories at once. ‘You're working with the police.'

She confirmed this with a blink. ‘I have a couple questions.' She carried on without waiting for him to say OK. ‘Martha Salliaq came into your store on Saturday.'

Sam Oolik put a hand on his back and rubbed at some stiffness there.

‘Yeah, around lunchtime,' he said warily.

‘Was she with anyone? Did she seem any different? Upset?'

He shook his head then corrected himself. ‘Hung-over, maybe.' He began rearranging the syrup bottles.

‘Hung-over?' The word sat between them. Edie wondered whether she'd got Martha wrong after all.

‘Yeah,' Oolik said. ‘You know, quiet, rough, a bit spaced out.' He carried on stacking bottles. Edie got the strong sense that there was more to say but he had decided to make it tough for her. She guessed this was how it was going to be. From now on, every move she and Derek made would be scrutinized, chewed over and likely found wanting.

‘You remember what she bought?'

‘Aspirin. A soda.' Sam continued to fix up the shelves.

‘Did you guys talk about anything?'

‘Not much, just the weather,' Oolik said, finally. It had begun raining on Saturday morning. By Saturday afternoon, a thick summer mist had settled over the tundra which hadn't lifted till late Sunday.

‘She say where she was heading next?'

Oolik considered this for a moment. ‘She told me she was thinkin' about going egg collecting, only the wet made the cliffs slick.' He stood up. That back again.

‘Alone?'

Oolik shrugged. ‘Maybe, or maybe she was fixing to show that fella.' A sly almost-smile played around his lips. He'd been biding his time for this moment. Relishing his little game of hide and seek.

‘A fella?' She knew enough to sound grateful for the tip-off without coming over as desperate.

‘Yeah, fella she was talking with outside the store.'

‘You get a look at him?' The coolness in her tone disguised the banging in her heart.

‘
Unataqti.
Tall, built like a bear. First Nations. Cree if I had to take a guess. I couldn't hear them talking but from what I saw, it didn't end too well.'

•   •   •

She ran all the way back to the detachment. Derek listened with growing interest. When she was done, he said, ‘This might turn out to be a whole lot easier than we'd imagined.'

Then he reached for the phone and dialled Colonel Klinsman's number.

While Derek and the colonel were speaking, Edie went into the kitchen to get something to eat. The run back from the store had brought home to her how depleted she was. She hadn't eaten properly since Monday morning and her body was starting to flag. There was tea in the kitchen cupboard and a pile of raw fish heads in the fridge. She threw the heads into a pan to fry and brewed up some tea. By the time the food was done, Derek had finished his call and was in the communications room talking to someone on the radio. She left a mug of tea and a plate of fish on his desk and went over to Stevie Killik's spot. Derek reappeared, took a sniff at the food and made an appreciative humming sound.

‘That was Larsen on the radio.' He picked up a head in his fingers and sucked. ‘Supplies coming in on Thursday. Timing couldn't be worse.'

It was Derek's job to oversee the docking and de-cargoing of the annual supply ship. The ship's arrival was usually a celebratory time, with families coming in from summer camp to pick up the piece of hunting or fishing equipment they'd ordered last year or to collect new supplies of medicines and food. There were barbecues and races and movie screenings. In the circumstances, it was hard to see the celebrations going ahead this year, but there was bound to be a frantic day or two when even a murder investigation was liable to get lost in the general chaos.

Edie wrinkled her nose. ‘Can't you put it off?'

‘Let me see. Oh yeah. Why don't I just launch an iceberg or drum up
a quick blizzard?' Derek wiped his hands on his shirt. ‘I may seem like a god to you, Edie, but the truth is I'm just a police.'

‘Stop, you're breaking my heart.'

He fought back a smile. ‘You have one?' They could go on like this for hours. A version of the old Inuit song duels, without the singing.

Derek finished his food and lit a cigarette.

‘Klinsman said he'd get a camp personnel list together in the next hour or two. They got some wargame thing going on over there today. If the guy Sam Oolik saw turns out to be our man then we might be able to get this thing sewn up pretty quick.'

‘Klinsman not worried about the bad publicity?'

‘Seems not. I think he's been told to play nicely with the locals.'

‘It might have helped if he'd passed on that message to his men.'

Derek frowned. ‘We don't know for sure that the killer is
unataqti
. Though it does seem like one hell of a coincidence.' He reached out for the pen on his desk and began spinning it between his fingers. ‘By the way, Klinsman told me that Gutierrez went over there first thing. She's worried I won't release the crime scene till it's too late to begin the clean-up works, apparently.'

‘And?'

‘And nothing. I'm not having some southern lawyer playing politics with my case.'

He put his pen down and flipped on the old radio he kept on the windowsill behind his desk. A singer was halfway through ‘Amazing Grace'. Afterwards, Markoosie Pitoq's voice appealed for anyone with information as to Martha Salliaq's whereabouts over the weekend to call in on the phone line, or if they weren't near a phone, on the red radio, saying he'd patch them through.

Derek drained his tea. ‘You taught the girl. Notice anything different about her?'

‘She seemed pretty keen to get out of class on Friday, I guess. That was unusual for her. I asked her if she had plans, but she sidestepped me. There was some lipstick in her purse. Not many Inuit girls wear make-up.'

‘Not many Inuit guys like it.'

‘That might suggest she was seeing someone outside the community. She was more outward-facing than most Inuit girls her age,' Edie said.

‘My guess is, we find whoever took that picture of Martha down at the bird cliffs, we'll have our killer.'

‘What can we usefully do while we're waiting to hear back from Klinsman?'

Derek picked a speck of fish from his teeth. ‘Why don't you go visit Martha's friend, the one in class? See if she knows anything. If Martha
was
involved with someone, my guess is she would have kept it from the family.'

•   •   •

Edie knocked on the door of her old school classroom. Her role had been taken over by Les Ferguson, the lean, bustle-faced
qalunaat
head teacher. Only the boys were in attendance now. Kuujuaq had emptied of all the young women with family who gave a damn. Including Lisa Tuliq. A cousin of Lisa's told Edie where she'd be likely to find the girl.

On her way out, she knocked on Chip Muloon's door.

‘Hey,' he said, flashing her a sorrowful smile. ‘Les told me you're gonna be helping Palliser out.'

‘For a while,' she said. Could she detect jealousy, or just curiosity, in his voice? One thing about Chip, she'd noticed, he was good at making all the right noises while keeping his real feelings to himself. Like most Inuit that way.

‘Any suspects?'

‘I can't really talk about it.'

Chip pressed his lips together. ‘No, of course not.'

She offered him a smile of gratitude, then went on. ‘Did Martha ever say anything to you about a boyfriend?'

Chip steepled his hands. ‘Not that I recall, but she did come to see me a couple of times, wanting to know stuff about life in the south.'

‘Stuff?'

‘Yeah, you know, whether it was as hot and crowded as everybody said. Whether Inuit living down there had a hard time. That kind of thing.'

‘What'd you tell her?'

‘I told her she was better off up here.' His eyes reached for Edie's face and rested there a moment. Then, looking away, he said, ‘I was wrong about that.'

•   •   •

The journey to the Tuliqs' summer camp took Edie along a thin part-willow-covered track, then out across the desert pavement towards Jakeman Glacier. It was a route Edie knew from guiding hunters, though she'd never used it in the summer. Break-up coming early now, summer hunting parties usually relied on boats. For good reason. The ground was boggy and hard going, the wheels of the ATV sliding across mud slicks and throwing up sprays of meltwater. A group of snow geese flew over, cackling.

The camp itself consisted of three duck canvas tents surrounded by the usual midden of fire rings, ATVs, equipment boxes and fishing gear. A man in his forties with hair cut in a spiked flat top came out and stood, squinting, waiting for her to key off her engine.

‘You the summer teacher?'

Edie clambered down from her vehicle, took off her goggles and put on her friendly face. The man introduced himself as Mattie Tuliq, Lisa's father. He didn't want Lisa in Kuujuaq right now, he said, leastwise not until Martha Salliaq's killer had been found.

‘I'm not trying to get her to come back to school,' Edie said, ‘I'd just like to talk to her for a few minutes.'

The man tipped his head in the direction of one of the tents.

‘She's sleeping.'

‘I'll wait then.'

The tent cracked open and Lisa's face appeared, looking washed out, eyelids red and swollen. It looked as though she'd had a bad night. She registered Edie, then transferred her gaze to her father, waiting for his permission to come out.

‘You heard the news,' Edie began.

Lisa nodded grimly.

‘I'm sorry. I know you and Martha were good pals.'

The girl pulled her T-shirt tight around her body like armour. ‘Not so much. Only really at school.'

‘Is that why you didn't see her over the weekend?' Edie asked.

Lisa pursed her lips. Her eyes flicked across to her father. ‘I guess maybe Saturday morning I went around to her house to visit, but she said she was hung-over.'

Edie left a pause in the air. This tallied with what Sam Oolik had said.

‘Any reason you didn't tell me this when we spoke yesterday?'

Lisa frowned. She crossed her arms, balling each fist under the opposite armpit. ‘I didn't know someone had killed her.'

‘Ever see her with a tall
unataqti
, First Nations maybe?'

Lisa shrugged. Edie couldn't work out whether she was just teenage sullen or actively holding back. ‘Was it a regular thing? The drinking I mean.'

‘I have no idea. Martha was kind of secretive about what she did outside school.' The girl began shifting on her feet, anxious to be gone.

Pulling out the picture of Martha at the bird cliffs, Edie said, ‘You know who took this?'

Lisa shook her head. For some reason the question appeared to irritate her. For a moment she turned away, until Edie reached out and touched her elbow.

‘She have any boyfriends? Drugs problems, anything like that? Any other friends you can tell me about?'

‘Not really. Look, I don't know, OK? I mean she had friends but she sort of stopped really hanging out with them much.'

The girl pressed on the corners of her eyes and began to move towards her father. ‘I really, really don't know anything, OK?'

•   •   •

On the way back to the settlement, the wind came up, bringing some temporary relief from the mosquitoes. Across Jones Sound, at the tender selvedge where the shore-fast ice met with the yearly pack, a commotion of sorts was going on in an area of clear water where the current
came through. A pod of orca it looked like, thrashing about in the water. The animals had only started coming up this far north in the last year or two, one more manifestation of climate change, and they hadn't yet established a migration route. She watched them for a while. Behind her the tundra yawned wide and seemingly still, but to think of it that way was a mistake. The Arctic was all about movement, the transformation of ice into water then back again, the arrival and disappearance of vegetation, the vast annual migrations of birds and marine mammals, the ceaseless wandering of bears and caribou and wolves. Up here, the longer you stood still, the less likely you were to survive. She wondered if Martha Salliaq had understood this and it was why she had wanted to get away.

At the town hall building, she made her way down a corridor by an empty vending machine towards the radio station studio. Ellesmere Island Community Radio occupied a small room near the administrative offices. Outside, the red on-air button winked a warning. Markoosie spotted her and held up a finger. He'd extended the morning show to allow anyone who wanted to call in to get themselves to a radio or a phone. It was just winding up. A few moments later he flicked a switch then waved her in.

‘Anyone call in?'

His mouth twitched. ‘Not with any information. There's a bad feeling about Camp Nanook though. Folk already talking about a cover-up. People say the
unataqti
won't give up the killer in a hurry.'

‘We don't yet know who the killer is.' Markoosie raised his brows and cocked his head. ‘We're still trying to work out Martha's movements. Are you sure you didn't notice anything unusual when she came by Saturday?' she asked.

He rested his chin in his hand and gazed into the middle distance as though reimagining the scene. He was looking at her now, his eyes bright with tears. ‘She was my
hanaji
. You know that? We were connected in here . . .' He went on, tapping his head. ‘And in here . . .' A finger on his heart.

She blinked sympathy, then backtracked to the subject in hand. Right now, what Martha meant to them could wait. They had a killer to catch.

‘After Martha left, what did you do?'

‘I watched the game with Toolik then I came here, did my Saturday evening show. After that, I went back home and got some sleep.' He shot her a look she couldn't make out and swivelled his chair back to face his mixing desk. ‘You wanna check, ask Toolik. Now, I'm sorry,' he went on in a businesslike manner, the tearful softness of a moment ago quite gone, ‘but I got to finish up an insert for tonight's show.'

•   •   •

Markoosie's father, Toolik Pitoq, sat by himself on an old La-Z-Boy staring at an NFL game between the Maple Leafs and the Jets. It was hard to say how old he was exactly, but he had the look of someone who had survived many High Arctic winters. A querying expression weakened by the blare of the sun on ice, unsure whether the visitor was someone he should recognize. The skin on his face was brown and hardened, stretched over bones sharpened by the winter wind; his hands as calloused as an old bull walrus. She introduced herself as Sergeant Palliser's deputy.

Toolik grunted and went back to the game. ‘They're with the
qalunaat
woman, the one with lotsa hair.'

‘I've come to see you.'

The old man looked up in mild surprise.

‘I was hoping you could tell me when you last saw Martha?'

‘I don't keep track of the days too well,' the old man said, inspecting the rough terrain of his hands. ‘Saturday, was it? Yeah, maybe then.' When he looked up again his expression had changed. ‘This is
iktuariik
, young lady.' Taboo. He began wagging his index finger. ‘We don't talk about this.' He seemed a little bewildered. She wondered how much he'd really been able to take in.

‘I respect the old ways,
avasirngulik
, but we need to find whoever took Martha away before he does it to someone else's granddaughter,' she said.

‘Them men at the base took her. The way those
qalunaat
are. Think they have a right to anything they like the look of.' His eyes, clouded over with cataracts, became suddenly beamy and intense. ‘It was up to me, I'd take the culprit to those cliffs at the back and push him off. But that won't happen. Nothing will happen.' He shrugged, defeated, his eyes moving back to the screen. ‘I don't know, I don't like to talk about
tariaksuit
.'

Edie went into the kitchenette and put some water on to boil for tea, using the break to begin on a different tack.

‘Martha seem any different on Saturday? As though she'd been drinking, maybe?'