The Bone Seeker

by M. J. McGrath

  ‘What do you need to know?’ he said.

  She dived into the pocket of her summer parka, pulled out the picture of the dead girl and passed it to him. He took it and looked shaken for a moment, then he gave a small, sorry smile and passed the photo back.

  ‘I heard about that. It’s horrible.’

  ‘Did you know Martha?’

  ‘Kuujuaq’s a small place.’ He rubbed a hand across his face. ‘But most of the time I’m on my own up at the weather station or I’m fishing at the trout lake. I like to go up on the cliffs sometimes. I wouldn’t say I really know anyone.’ He tailed off. ‘That was kind of why I took the Shack job. To stop myself becoming a hermit.’

  ‘Susie told me you were working the evening shift on Friday.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Rashid said, ‘but I only take the money, wash up, that kind of thing.’

  ‘I heard Susie’s a great cook,’ Edie said.

  ‘I’m Muslim, so I prefer to handle halal food. Which up here means I’m pretty much restricted to fish.’ He peered inside the teapot, stirred the contents and put the lid back on. Edie looked about. She was suddenly struck by how different his world was, how completely alien to everything she knew. Yet here they were, in her world, drinking tea together.

  ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘I was born in Vancouver,’ he began, ‘but my parents came from Morocco. I hope you like it sweet.’ He began to pour the tea, using a swinging motion, almost as though he were conducting. It had an unfamiliar herbal taste. Mint, he said. It reminded him of home.

  She sipped a little more tea to be polite then took out the mugshots of Namagoose and Saxby that Klinsman had given her.

  Rashid peered at the pictures and swallowed, hard. Yes, he said. Martha had come into the Shack with the two men on Friday evening around 7.30.

  ‘Did she seem distressed at all? Anything to suggest she might have been under some kind of pressure, maybe that she didn’t want to be with those fellas?’

  He took a sip of tea. ‘No. They were all drunk but I got the impression she was right where she wanted to be.’ Something in his tone caught Edie off guard.

  ‘You don’t approve of drinking?’

  His voice was suddenly animated. ‘You see what alcohol does to people up here and have to ask me that?’ He shrugged, warming his hands on the tea glass and bringing them up to his temples. ‘Look, all I meant was, it seemed like she was having a good time.’

  ‘You notice where they went when they left?’

  He lowered his hands then shook his head.

  ‘How’s about on Saturday?’

  Rashid looked up. ‘I was off sick on Saturday night.’ He pointed to his head.

  Edie left Rashid’s house surer than she’d ever been that there was something they’d missed. Derek had been too keen to accept Charlie Salliaq’s view of Martha as the helpless victim of two predatory men but the Martha Edie knew was both smarter and more worldly than this version of the story suggested. The Martha she knew was an actor in her own life, a woman with a plan. Namagoose’s story had got closer to the real Martha. And Rashid had corroborated it.

  As she walked back down the path a group of unataqti were standing at the shoreline daring one another to walk into the water. She hesitated for a moment or two, watching them, then she made her decision.

  • • •

  The skinny husky cross that Markoosie kept as a birder was lying in the dust under the porch. It looked up at her approach and rumbled menacingly, but made no attempt to confront her. She walked up the steps, hesitating at the door into the snow porch. The blinds were open and through the window she could see Alice hunched on the couch with her daughter’s arm around her. They appeared to be talking. On the other side of the room, Charlie was at the table with his head in his hands. Markoosie sat beside him. As she reached for the door handle, Lizzie seemed to catch the movement in the corner of her eye and wheeled around. She came to the inner door and cracked it open.

  ‘This isn’t a good time.’

  ‘It’s you I want to talk with. It won’t take a moment.’

  The girl looked put out.

  ‘Lizzie, this is really important. Are you sure your sister didn’t have a boyfriend?’

  Lizzie folded her arms defensively across her chest and tipped her head towards the broken fragments of her family. ‘Look at us, Edie Kiglatuk. Do we look sure of anything right now?’

  For a moment they both stood their ground, then, sighing, Lizzie said, ‘Come back another time, OK?’

  With that she swung the door shut, leaving Edie standing at the top of the steps, unsure what to do or where to go.

  She decided on Chip Muloon’s house. It was late now, and the air was thick with insects and the summer smell of tundra honey but every so often freezing wind gusted off the sea as a reminder, if any were needed, that up here on Ellesmere Island the ice was never far away.

  Her lover was up, listening to music and drinking bourbon. She went over and kissed him on the lips.

  ‘You get a kick out of keeping a fella guessing?’ He was teasing but there was an edge to his tone.

  She kissed him again, longer this time.

  ‘That answer your question?’ she said.

  He pulled her towards him. ‘I’ve given up trying to get answers from you, Edie.’

  14

  Sonia Gutierrez woke from her nap feeling anxious. After Charlie called she’d planned on shutting her eyes for twenty minutes to be fresh for her meeting with the family. She thought she’d set her alarm but something told her that it was later than she’d hoped and her watch confirmed it: 8 p.m. All that staring at plans had fried her brain.

  She sat up and swung herself off the bed. If she hurried she could be at the Salliaqs’ by 8.15 as she’d promised. Not that they were particular about clock time. Inuit tended not to be. Guatemalans weren’t either, generally, but Sonia had been long enough in Ottawa for something of its quiet orderliness to have rubbed off on her.

  She removed her clothes and went down the corridor to the bathroom without bothering with a robe. A thin, brown trickle emerged from the showerhead. She stepped in all the same. Charlie hadn’t said why he wanted to see her so late in the day but over the years she’d learned that refusing to meet with him out of office hours only frustrated his sense of entitlement and made things more difficult.

  The old man wasn’t always easy to like but Sonia had built up a solid respect for him. She appreciated the trust he put in her. They were the same, she and he, two survivors. These last days she’d seen some of the fight go out of him. After his initial shock and rage at Martha’s fate, he appeared to have sunk into a kind of resigned depression, as if his daughter’s death was simply confirmation of something he already knew: that no matter how hard he fought, the world would continue to heap injustices on him. She could hardly blame him if he’d finally decided he’d taken one punch too many. He was old and he was tired and she was pretty sure he was sick too.

  The cool water helped clear her head. She reached for the shower gel and began working up a foam. From what she could deduce by coupling together the information from police and settlement gossip, the murder investigation had come on a long way in the last twelve hours and rumour had it that Derek Palliser was only waiting for formal confirmation from forensics before he would be able to make arrests.

  Her thinking on the matter of the clean-up was beginning to shift in unexpected ways. Professionally, she wanted to be able to draw a line under the last decade or so of claims and counterclaims. Under the terms of her contract, her fees wouldn’t be released until the first stage of the clean-up had actually been signed off. There were debts to clear from a problem she’d made for herself a few years back. The thing still weighed her down. Every now and then in the middle of a wakeful night she imagined that someone would get hold of the details
and use them against her, and she yearned to be able once and for all to file it away in the drawer labelled past.

  Years of dealing with the vagaries of the Guatemalan authorities, long before she’d arrived in Canada, had taught her that there always had to be a backup plan, a trump card to be flourished in the event that the other side’s hand proved unexpectedly strong. Until now such a trump had eluded her but the threat of yet another delay had in the end produced a surprising opportunity.

  She stepped out of the shower and, wrapping herself in a towel, wandered down the corridor into her bedroom, squeezed the water from her hair and switched on the dryer. What she’d discovered about the environmental impact report and the anomalous layout of the station was potentially explosive. Even a hint that the government negotiators might have been less than open in their dealings on the case might be enough to force the Defence Department’s hand and initiate a claim for compensation. It wasn’t just the money. If the department had developed the site in ways that adversely affected the inhabitants of Kuujuaq they deserved restitution. She was shocked sometimes at how tough their lives were. She would sit Charlie down and ask him what he remembered from his days employed as a handyman at the site. It might all come to nothing but then again there was nothing to lose.

  It was raining outside and the damp clung to her hair. Que vaina! she thought. It was too much. She climbed the steps to the door of the Pitoqs’ house. Markoosie was sitting on the couch beside Alice but he stood up as she entered and greeted her with a fleeting smile. He was just about to head off to the radio studio to see if anyone had left any messages. The others would fill him in on the meeting afterwards.

  Charlie Salliaq was at his usual spot at the table, looking grey and tense while Lizzie bustled about in the kitchen clearing away the remains of a meal.

  ‘I hope you’ve come to tell us that damned Lemming Police has arrested the Cree?’ he said irritably. He reeled off a list of complaints and demands. From the kitchen, Lizzie flashed Sonia a sorry smile. Eventually she held up a hand. He stopped mid-sentence, a look of irritation on his face.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Avasirngulik, we will continue with this, but I need to talk to you about something else now,’ she said in Inuktitut. She’d picked up the rudiments of the language on her various trips and brought it out when she most needed it.

  She unfolded her laptop and brought up the DEW station plans. ‘I need to ask you about what you saw when you worked at Glacier Ridge.’

  He turned and stared at her for a moment then. He’d always made it clear that he didn’t want to talk about that time and she’d eventually given up questioning him about it.

  ‘What does any of that matter?’ He swung away from her in disgust.

  She turned the laptop around so he could see it. ‘Do you remember a lot of construction works around the station? I guess this would be sometime between the mid-sixties and the early seventies?’

  The old man grumbled and looked away. The skin on his face was a network of tiny crimson veins. She’d noticed them before, but since Martha’s death they’d become more prominent. Stress, or whatever was making him sick? She had no idea and he wasn’t likely to tell her.

  ‘If I talk to you about this, will you go and see Lemming Police?’

  ‘I will do more than see him. I will tell him he has to arrest the unataqti.’

  Salliaq nodded, satisfied with the terms of the agreement. ‘I remember the trucks, but that was before they started employing any local men. In those days it was all just qalunaat. Unataqti and others.’

  Lizzie fetched over a mug of tea and placed a fresh piece of bannock on Sonia’s place, which she received politely. The seal oil in which the bread had been fried gave it an unpleasant fishy taste but she’d long since learned that to decline caused enormous offence.

  ‘You ever see any heavy weaponry there?’ she pressed. ‘I mean rockets, anti-aircraft artillery, that kind of thing?’

  Charlie shook his head. ‘What would they want that for? It was a radar station.’ He swung his chair around so he was angled towards her, and laid his elbows on the table. ‘Enough history now. I wanna talk about the Cree. Then about what they’re doing at the lake. After that, I don’t care what time it is, we’re going round to the detachment to tell that mixed-dough excuse of a policeman what we think of him.’

  15

  Derek was in the shed feeding his lemmings when the phone rang. He hoped it was Ransom; he’d left a message for him to call any time. The head of the forensics unit still hadn’t confirmed what time the medical examiner and her team would be arriving and he was getting concerned. He wiped his hands on his jacket, hurried back to the office and picked up.

  ‘This is Sonia Gutierrez.’

  Derek’s heart sank. What did the lawyer want at this hour?

  ‘Charlie wants to see you. He’s upset about the lake being drained.’

  ‘Did you tell him?’ Dammit, hadn’t he specifically asked her not to?

  ‘This is a small town, sergeant. And there’s something else.’ Gutierrez’s voice grew hesitant. ‘He’s got this notion into his head that you’re going to let Namagoose off the hook because he’s your people.’

  ‘What?’ Derek was genuinely flabbergasted.

  ‘I’ve tried to talk him out of it, but he just keeps saying that blood is thicker than water.’

  ‘I’m not even going to dignify that by getting into it.’

  ‘The man has just lost his daughter,’ Gutierrez said simply.

  With that there was no arguing. Derek swallowed a sigh.

  ‘All right, well, have the family come to the office in half an hour. But you can tell Charlie right now, I won’t have my professionalism called into question.’

  After the call, he went out into the yard, pulled open the canvas tent flap and peered into emptiness. Most likely Edie was with the lanky qalunaat, Muloon. Well, too bad. He’d just have to disturb their little love nest. If Charlie Salliaq was about to kick up a stink, he needed her around.

  At Muloon’s front door he hesitated. The blinds were drawn but he could hear noises coming from inside. Leaning to the left he took a peek through the gaps between the slats. The front room was empty but Muloon had left the door to the bedroom open. There were bodies moving around, the sheen of naked flesh just visible through the gloom. His throat tightened and his face began to burn. In the midst of everything that was going on, Derek Palliser surprised himself by being ever so slightly jealous.

  • • •

  At the banging on the front door Chip froze then pulled away. He got up, slipped into a pair of jeans and a fleece and went out, returning a few moments later, looking mildly pissed off.

  ‘It’s for you.’

  Derek was standing in the entrance to the snow porch, red-faced and doing his best to avoid eye contact.

  ‘Sorry, bad timing.’

  Edie glanced back and saw Chip in the doorway to the bedroom with one hand on his hip.

  ‘I’ve had better.’

  The policeman explained the situation.

  ‘I would have told him to come round tomorrow, but what with the forensics and the ship supply, I don’t see how I’m gonna get the time. I was kinda hoping you might—’

  ‘—be your human shield?’

  He gave a laugh that was somewhere between embarrassment and admiration. ‘Something like that.’

  Muloon had moved to the middle of the room now, a scowl on his face. She wanted to be out of there, suddenly, away from his expectations, immersed fully in the case.

  ‘Let me get my parka.’

  • • •

  On the way over Derek filled her in. While she’d been with Muloon, Luc had come through with some preliminary blood work suggesting that Martha had been drugged. The nurse was checking the stores and working through a list of sedative and anaes
thetic scripts, to see if anyone or anything leaped out.

  ‘Joe Oolik finished up at the lake,’ Derek said. ‘He didn’t find anything but he said some fellas came round from Camp Nanook and took samples.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘They didn’t say and Joe didn’t ask. Something to do with the clean-up, I guess.’

  They reached the detachment. Derek brushed himself down and took in a breath.

  ‘I’m not looking forward to this,’ he said.

  ‘You think Charlie will be mad?’ she said.

  ‘Mad as in angry or mad as in crazy? My guess is he’ll be both.’

  As if on cue, there was the sound of furious stomping and Charlie Salliaq appeared at the door. He’d barely got across the threshold before launching into a long rant about the disgrace that was the Ellesmere Island Police and, more specifically, its senior officer.

  ‘I’ll go make some tea,’ Edie said. Among Inuit, this usually helped to settle things down. By the time she returned everyone was sitting in awkward silence, either embarrassed or spent.

  ‘I’ve explained to Charlie that we had no choice about draining the pool,’ Derek said.

  The elder glared but made no move to speak. Derek shot Edie one of his pleading looks. The situation was delicate. Like most Inuit, Edie had been brought up to believe that the soul of a person was carried in their blood. It was why embalming was taboo. Any draining of human blood. What had happened at the lake was no ordinary killing. It was a killing that flipped the bird at thousands of years of Inuit culture. Draining the bloody water only made it more difficult to accept.

  ‘We didn’t want any part of your daughter to remain at Lake Turngaluk, among the bad spirits there,’ Edie said. She knew instinctively this was the kind of language Charlie needed to hear. ‘We took her blood to the sea. We gave her spirit to Sedna to look after.’

  At the mention of the sea spirit, Charlie’s eyes relaxed. ‘Why isn’t my daughter’s killer in jail yet?’