White Heat (50 page)

    And
yet, knowing now, as she did, that Patma had been behind Joe Inukpuk's death
didn't solve the mystery entirely. His absence from the community during that
first blizzard, when Felix Wagner was shot, had been real enough, even if he
had fabricated the reason for it. Robert Patma could not have killed Felix
Wagner because he wasn't in the vicinity when it happened. So if Patma hadn't,
who had? There wasn't much to go on: a footprint, committed to memory. She
thought again about the stone and the trouble it had caused. Whoever had killed
Wagner wanted it and there was no reason to suppose he or she wasn't still out
there. Her uneasiness extended back to the feeling that the house had been
broken into, then back further still to Martie's warning that whatever she had
got herself into
may be bigger than you think.
Did Martie know something
about Koperkuj's disappearance she wasn't telling?

    Edie
checked that Derek's breathing was coming soft and regular through the darkness
of her bedroom, then she pulled on her parka and hat, pushed her feet into her
shit- kickers and went outside. She headed for the little coffee shop at the
back of the Northern Store where Martie was often to be found when she was in
town, but she wasn't in there today. As she was making her way to the front of
the store, Mike popped up from behind the Doritos stand.

    'Edie,
thank God. I always had that nurse down as a good kid. What happened? I heard
he was a drug addict.'

    'News
sure travels.' Edie smiled with the shutters down. She knew Mike well enough to
recognize when he was fishing for more gossip and she really didn't want to get
into anything now.

    'Nicky,
the air-ambulance nurse, came in here for some coffee. She said Dr Urquhart
told her Patma got his drugs from Russia. What's that all about?'

    Edie
had no wish to add her voice to the gossip mill. 'Listen, Mike,' she said. 'I'm
kind of in a hurry. You seen Martie?'

    Mike
looked momentarily taken aback at the abrupt change of subject.

    'She
was here earlier, but I guess she left already.'

    Edie
thanked him. From the store, she went back home, packed a few things, left a
note to say where she was going, and headed out. In a day or two it would be
possible to travel on the sea ice but there still wasn't quite enough snow for
the snowmobile, so for now she would have to use Derek's ATV. In three weeks'
time the dark period would close in on them completely. If there was a black
spirit somewhere around Autisaq, she would need to find it while there was
still light to see it by.

    She
pulled the ATV onto the rocky tuff beside Martie's cabin and stood before it
for a moment, calling her aunt's name. For a while she listened at the door but
no sound came from inside. She tried the handle; the door was open but instead
of going in, she went around the back, to a small cluster of outbuildings: a
shed that served both as a store for equipment and for drying sealskins, an
abandoned dog kennel and an open-sided port where Martie kept her vehicles. The
ATV was not in its usual place.

    A
couple of summers ago a construction team had built a rough gravel path from
Autisaq all the way to Martie's cabin in the hope that it would help her get to
the landing strip without losing her flight slot, since she was so often late,
but the path had broken up in the first frost and all but the kilometre or so
section nearest the cabin was now impassable. Martie often took her ATV out to
where the path ended and hiked from there up into the low hills to hunt hare
and to pick the tiny cloudberries that appeared on the southern slopes after a
good summer. Since it was cloudberry season, she was probably there now.

    Edie
took off her outerwear inside the cabin and made herself a brew, thinking to
wait for her aunt to return.

    Sitting
at Martie's broken-down old table, she reached over and absent-mindedly picked
up an old spoon lying there to stir the sugar in her tea, thinking about what
she would say to her aunt when she came back. The act of stirring raised all
sorts of questions in her mind, and she began to wonder why she'd come, whether
the events of the last few days had made her a bit oversensitive, if not
paranoid. She pulled out the spoon, noticed that the back was covered in some
kind of soot, and tossed it to the other side of the table. Hygiene was never
Martie's strong suit.

    As she
drank her tea, the feeling grew that she would have done better to have
remained in Autisaq and found out who had been responsible for searching her
house. She felt bad, too, leaving Joe's body to be opened up without her being
there. It was almost as though she'd abandoned him again. And then there was
the policeman. It dawned on her that she was worrying about Derek more than was
strictly necessary but there it was. He was just one more reason to be back at
Autisaq.

    She
grabbed her parka and her pack. As she was about to shut the door, her eye was
drawn to a hook fixed to the frame. On the hook was a padlock key. It aroused
her curiosity partly because she'd never seen it before and partly because
she'd never in all her life known Martie to lock anything. None of the
outbuildings were locked as she recalled, and since Auntie Martie didn't even
bother to lock her plane, it seemed odd that she would think to attach a
padlock to anything else she owned. On an impulse, she removed the key.

    She
looked about the mess of cans, animal skins and fishing and hunting equipment
strewn around the cabin for some kind of padlock, then she went back outside
and checked the doors to the outbuildings. Martie's snowbie was in the port,
with its key dangling from the ignition. Edie put her head around the door to
the shed. Inside was the usual clutter of cans of creosote, antifreeze and oil,
along with a few harpoons, baffles, lures,
ulus
and other pieces of
outdoor equipment. In one corner there was stacked a pile of sealskins, but no
padlock and nothing to which a padlock might be attached. She closed the door
to the shed again and told herself she had no right to meddle in her aunt's
business. She should put the key back on the hook before Martie came home or
she'd be obliged to explain herself.

    As
she walked around the side of the shed, resolving not to pursue the matter any
further, she noticed that the dog kennel had been moved recently, disturbing
the imprint of lichens that had grown around its previous position. She went
closer. From the scrape pattern on the rock it looked as though the kennel had
been swung around a number of times. She pushed it experimentally and noticed
as she did so a hatch in the shed wall, corresponding to the space behind the
pile of skins inside. It was here, neatly inserted so that it lay flush with
the wall, that Edie found the padlock. Inserting the key, she flipped the lock
off in one move of the wrist. The hatch door gave way to reveal a small metal
box, like a safe. There was nothing inside. As she shut the door a sour smell
hit her that was familiar from somewhere, though she couldn't put her finger on
it. She locked it back up. For the second time that day she felt shabby,
contaminated. Martie was her kin and she had no business messing with her
stuff. She pushed the kennel back against the side of the shed, replaced the
key on the hook inside the cabin door and left.

    It
wasn't until she was out in Jones Sound that she remembered the odd burn marks
on the old spoon she'd used to stir her tea. And it wasn't until she remembered
the spoon that she recalled she'd left her tea mug lying on Martie's table.

    Derek
was sitting on the sofa as she walked into her house. He was in a considerable
state of agitation. In his hand was the clipped picture of the members of the
Arctic Hunters' Club that Qila Rasmussen had given her back in August.

    'Why
didn't you show me this before?' There was a pained look on his face and he was
biting back his anger.

    'I
don't know,' she said, bewildered. 'I mean, I told you, about Felix Wagner and
the Belovsky fellow.'

    'We
have to leave,' he said. He launched the picture at her. 'Now.'

    'Leave?'
She felt confused. 'Why?' She'd never heard him sounding this crazed; his voice
had become almost hysterical. She wondered whether it was the effect of the
drugs he was taking. 'Listen, Derek, I really,
really
don't know what
you're talking about,' she said. 'And in any case, you can't go anywhere with
that leg.'

    Holding
the photo out to her, he said: 'Which of these men have you seen before?'

    She
looked carefully and pointed to Felix Wagner, then to Belovsky.

    'No
one else?' Derek invited her to look again. Her eyes scanned the rows but there
were no other familiar faces. She shook her head.

    Derek
pointed to a tall, distinguished man with a beard and a large, aquiline nose,
standing at the back. 'You don't know him?'

    'Uh
nuh.'

    He
took in a breath and gave a little bark of comprehension.

    'That
explains a lot,' he said, his voice less aggressive now. 'I guess I assumed you
would have come across him.'

    'Why?'

    'Edie,
the man in the photo is Professor Jim DeSouza.'

    It
took a moment for her to register the name. Of course, DeSouza ran the space
science station on Devon Island.

    'You
think he knows what happened to Wagner?'

    'It
would seem something of a coincidence if he didn't, don't you think? Fairfax,
Wagner, Belovsky, all in this mess, and DeSouza just an innocent outsider? Last
couple of times I saw him he seemed real edgy. Any case, I think we should pay
him an unexpected visit.'

    Edie
gestured at the policeman's injured leg. 'I'll go.'

    Derek
gave a bitter laugh. 'Oh no, you don't get to write me off that easily, Edie
Kiglatuk.' He fixed her with a look that made her pulse thud.

    While
he'd been waiting for her, he'd formulated a plan. They would need to confront
DeSouza when he was least expecting it, before he had time to construct some
rationale for himself. If he had nothing to do with Wagner's death, he'd have
nothing to hide. Flying was no-go. They'd have to get advance permission to
land at the science station and it would be impossible to fly in without
everybody knowing about it. The approach would have to be by sea. Jones Sound
was only very newly frozen and still unreliable, the ice thin and sappy in
places, and turbulent, as slabs of new ice churned in the currents. The more
even weight distribution of dogsleds made them safer on such ice but snowmobiling
would be faster, and they were in a hurry.

    Derek
had it all worked out. On the north Devon coast, not far from the station
campus, but out of sight of it, to the east of Cape Vera, there was a thin
finger fiord, protected from the prevailing easterly winds by a small island at
its foot, where the ice usually stabilized early. They would pull up there,
where their lights couldn't be seen, and camp out the night. Just before dawn,
they would make their way overland to the station. If they were lucky, they
would surprise DeSouza at his breakfast.

    Edie
said: 'When do we start?'

    Derek
got to his feet. 'How about now?'

    It
was a rough crossing. The snowbies bounced from the curdling ice like
punchballs swinging from a fist, and they had to stop over and over again to
make their way around open leads. Beyond the multi-year ice foot, the wind
picked up and for a while their ears were filled with the alarming sound of
newly forming ice heaving up from the pressure of the swell beneath. Derek had
refused any painkillers for his leg, saying he needed his wits about him, but
Edie could see that he was all washed out and relying on his Lucky Strikes to
get him through. For all that, though, they made it past Craig Island just as
twilight fell. A thin red sun hovered across the horizon like a bloodied eye
for a moment, then was replaced by a glaucous moon.

    They
continued in a southwesterly direction towards Devon, zig-zagging across loose-forming
pan into Bear Bay. After another three hours, Sukause Island appeared in the
moonlight. The fiord lay just ahead. The wind died and the air began to curdle
with frost smoke.

    They
decided to set up camp, eat something and catch some rest. Anyone who saw their
lights or heard their snowbies would assume they were a hunting party.

    Without
speaking, they transferred the equipment from the snowbies to the beach. Not
long afterwards, they had the tent up and were sitting inside, eating caribou
jerky and drinking hot tea. Outside, it grew misty. Derek ate very little and
said less, though from the way he was sitting, injured leg held out stiffly, a
taut expression on his face, Edie could tell he was in a good deal of pain. The
doctor, Urquhart, had given him some Vicodin and Xanax to help relax the
injured muscle and she suggested he take them both. He could sleep, while she
watched for a change in the weather. If visibility improved, she promised she'd
wake him. The look of gratitude and relief on his face told its own story.