The Bone Seeker

by M. J. McGrath

  It was the landfill site to one side of the lake that was of particular interest now. From her scrutiny of the plans she believed the area marked the position of what would once have been the underground bunker and it was the bunker that was somehow key. There were too many anomalies surrounding its construction; the fact that it had been commissioned by the Department of Defence and not by the Canadian or US military who were jointly responsible for the site, then left off the plans and only made reference to once it had been stripped of its original purpose and filled in. Why would you keep anything in a bunker unless you wanted it hidden? And why would you leave it off any plans unless at some point you wanted to be able to deny it was ever there?

  The track edged around the site and dipped down and around the lake but from her vantage now she could see there was a more direct route to the landfill area, down the rocky scree. Shouldering her backpack, she picked her way through and twenty minutes later found herself standing at the spot. It was larger than it had looked from the top of the ridge and she could see now that there was considerable subsidence, which had been disguised from further away by a sparse covering of low sedge. She picked a stem and crushed the leaves between her fingers but, unusually for sedge, the leaves smelled of nothing and left a sticky residue which she wiped off on her shirt. Pulling out her camera, she walked the circumference and took a few pictures, then knelt down for a closer look. The ground had been filled in with ballast and poured concrete. She tested a foot on the ballast but was not confident that it would take her weight. The place was dangerous but there were no notices, no warning signs or other structures around it.

  She started to make her way back to the ridge. The wind picked up, whistling across the tundra from the northwest towards the sea. About halfway up the incline, she spotted half-a-dozen men in military uniform busying themselves unloading several rolls of razor wire and what looked like fencing from a utility vehicle. A jeep sat off to one side. She stopped for a moment, breathing in the sweet Arctic air, trying to figure out what was going on. She hadn’t heard them arrive – the sound of the engine and their voices must have been obscured by the wind – and it was a shock now to see them there. Could it be that the clean-up had been given the go-ahead after all? It surely looked that way. A pulse of adrenalin tapped her temple and she moved ahead, picking a path along the loose scree towards the truck, waving and shouting. As she ran, a needling thought ran through her. Neither Klinsman nor Palliser had been courteous enough to update her with this latest development. Well, that hardly mattered now. She found herself grinning, her foggy mood burned off in the fierce light of relief. This was Canada after all, not some chaotic and impoverishing military dictatorship. Here, of all places, the law was king.

  As she approached, the officer in charge left his spot beside the jeep and came over to meet her. She held out a hand. ‘I’m Sonia Gutierrez, the attorney for the hamlet of Kuujuaq.’ If he had heard her name before, it didn’t seem to register now. She went on. ‘How long are you expecting this to take?’

  He raised his eyebrows as though surprised by the question. She thought she detected a little impatience too.

  ‘We should have it all wrapped up by this afternoon, ma’am. Is that your ATV over there?’ He pointed.

  ‘I meant for the whole programme?’ The agreement included an estimated time frame but it didn’t hurt to check with the people on the ground.

  ‘Like I said. A few hours.’

  A soldier bustled up, saluted and asked his boss where to begin setting the fence posts. The officer pointed along a line marked with yellow pegs, and told the soldier he’d be along to advise in a few minutes. As the soldier saluted again and walked away, the officer turned his attentions once more to Sonia.

  ‘I’m gonna need you to leave the area now, ma’am.’

  ‘Oh no,’ she said, ‘I’m the attorney for the settlement of Kuujuaq.’ She began to sketch out her role. The officer waited politely for her to finish before repeating his request. She told herself not to get riled, the legal training kicking in. Remain calm and reassert the position.

  ‘What I’m saying, officer, is this is Inuit land. It belongs to the people of Kuujuaq.’

  The officer stiffened and took a step back, an implacable expression on his face. ‘No, ma’am. I guess you were not informed correctly. This land has been requisitioned. As from 9 a.m. this morning, this area legally belongs to the Department of Defence.’

  21

  Edie was in the kitchen trying to rustle up something delicious from half a walrus head and a caribou ear – not so easy, it turned out – when the sound of the door slamming and Sonia Gutierrez’s voice sent her back out into the detachment office. The lawyer was standing in the middle of the room, with her face as dark as seaweed and a mad cast to her eye, shrieking what sounded very much like a string of Spanish expletives. Derek was there too, sitting frozen behind his desk like a cornered animal.

  ‘Jesus, Edie, you tell her to calm down. I tried and look what happened.’ Displays of emotional intensity left Derek floored. It was the Inuk in him, Edie thought.

  ‘You can carry on bellowing like a wounded musk ox all you like, Ms Gutierrez, but it won’t do you any good,’ she said.

  Derek flashed Edie a grateful look then cleared his throat.

  The lawyer shuffled deeper into her skin and rearranged her features.

  ‘OK, Ms Gutierrez, I’m guessing this isn’t a social call, so how’s about we start over?’ He waved the lawyer to a chair.

  Gutierrez parked herself, sweeping her hair back over her shoulder and crossing her legs elegantly.

  ‘This is not a performance, Sergeant Palliser.’ Her accent was thicker when she was angry.

  ‘All the same, Ms Gutierrez, you seem to be the only one with the script.’

  The lawyer took in a deep breath.

  ‘Since you are partly behind this, I’m relying on you, Sergeant Palliser, to tell me what the hell is going on.’

  Derek threw up his hands.

  ‘The Defence Department instructs Joint Forces North to take back the Glacier Ridge site and you expect me to believe you know nothing about it. Hardly likely is it, sergeant?’

  Derek frowned then grabbed his chin between his fingers. ‘I agree. All the same, it seems to be what has happened.’ He looked across to Edie, who shrugged.

  Gutierrez muttered something in Spanish then gestured to the pack of cigarettes lying on Derek’s desk. He picked it up and held it out. She took a cigarette and allowed him to light it for her.

  ‘One of my contacts at the departmental counsel’s office said there’s some legal ambiguity in the land claims agreement. In other words, I screwed up one of the subclauses. But that’s bullshit.’ She pronounced the word ‘bollsheet’.

  ‘What is Klinsman saying?’ Derek asked.

  ‘Colonel Klinsman isn’t answering his phone. I already put a call through to the Nunavut premier and to the parliamentary legal counsel challenging the basis of this decision. I don’t think there’s any question that the department is in breach of its agreement, let alone its fiduciary duty.’ Her eyes were wet rocks sparkling in the sun. ‘It’s too much. My contracts are always immaculate. Immaculate. It’ll take time but I will drag anyone and everyone who had anything to do with this through every court in Canada if I have to. People think they can screw me, they need to know who’s got her fist around their balls.’ She cast a glance at Derek then at Edie.

  ‘You really didn’t know anything about this, did you?’

  They shook their heads.

  Gutierrez’s eyes narrowed. ‘Then you don’t understand what this means for you.’

  Derek and Edie swapped blank looks. ‘The land belongs to the Defence Department. You no longer have jurisdiction over the case.’

  Gutierrez stubbed her cigarette out and stood to leave. At the door she turned, wrapping her coa
t more tightly around her body and addressing herself to Derek.

  ‘You might feel like doing a little screaming yourself.’

  • • •

  The area around Lake Turngaluk was wired off with electric fencing. Defence Department signs warning trespassers hung from the fence posts. Here and there, remnants of crime tape rustled in the wind but the area behind the wire had been indiscriminately churned by the tracks of military vehicles, effectively destroying the crime scene.

  Derek slowed his ATV right down. They were outside the Camp Nanook perimeter fence now.

  ‘If they think we’ll just roll over . . .’

  The guard at the sentry gate made a phone call and told them Colonel Klinsman wasn’t available.

  ‘We can wait.’ Derek folded his arms.

  The soldier checked his watch, uncertain as to how to proceed. ‘He’s busy all evening.’

  ‘Then we’ll stay here until he isn’t.’

  The soldier’s face contorted. He began rubbing his hands. ‘Look, he’s not going to see you guys, OK?’

  Edie caught Derek’s eye and raised a single eyebrow. Her eyes glittered. ‘They ever teach you the Eskimo roll, soldier?’

  The soldier looked puzzled. ‘The kayak manoeuvre?’

  ‘That’s the one. Basic safety procedure, right? Kindergarten stuff. The Eskimo rolls under the water and disappears. But then, just when you’re least expecting it, back he pops.’

  Derek throttled up his ATV, turned it around until he drew up alongside the guard.

  ‘You give Colonel Klinsman a message from the Ellesmere Island Police. You tell him to expect an Eskimo roll.’

  • • •

  Back at the detachment the voicemail light was winking – Anna Mackie saying that Ransom had given her orders to release the forensics in the Martha Salliaq case to the military investigator. She signed off with an apology and a contact number for her at home.

  ‘Don’t call the office.’

  Derek pushed the phone away and reached for a cigarette.

  ‘Damned if this makes any sense to me.’ He swivelled his chair around and began to bite at his fingernails then checked himself. ‘One minute Klinsman’s begging us for a date, the next he’s washing his hair. Why take over jurisdiction when we’re so near to making arrests?’

  ‘Maybe they want control over what happens to Namagoose and Saxby?’ Edie said. She was feeling shitty for Derek but another part of her was relieved. Something told her that whoever arrested the Killer Whales would wind up regretting it.

  They sat for a moment.

  ‘Maybe they’ve got new information that someone else at the camp was involved, someone higher up?’ Edie offered.

  ‘It’s possible.’ Derek sighed, slapped his thighs and stood up. ‘Either way, we’re not gonna find out tonight. It’s late and I could use a drink and some thinking time on my own. Let’s call it a day and come at it fresh tomorrow morning.’

  • • •

  At the entrance to her tent Edie hesitated. Derek’s mention of drink had kicked off the urge. The sensible move would be to step inside, creep under the sleeping skins and wait for sleep. Something about this case filled her with taulittuq, the sense of endlessly trudging in circles and going nowhere. They said that taulittuq was caused by ijirait, bad spirits, dragging the living back into the past. But what if there was nowhere else to go? She thought how much she longed for a little dark right now. To be able to see the stars and know there was something up there bigger than you, bigger than taulittuq, bigger even than the bad spirits on your back.

  Turning away from the tent, she set off along the path that led towards the Anchor Bar. Alcohol had always been a short, straight road to oblivion but at least oblivion was somewhere to go. Inside it was mayhem. A crowd of locals were making the most of the arrival of the annual supply before the community ran out of whisky or the mayor decided to declare a dry week. The blast of boozy air brought with it the familiar sourness of a previous life and right now that smelled good. Pushing her way through the crush Edie reached the bar and, throwing down a few notes, shouted above the din to the barman for a beer with a triple rye chaser. Two glasses appeared. The sight of the booze had an instant calming effect. It was funny how it could do that to her. For a while she took pleasure in watching the bubbles sliding around on the rye meniscus, the head on the beer gently subsiding into the liquid like old snow in the beat of an amber sun, and her mind faded out everything but the magic inside those glasses. Then a man with a five-toothed grin and yellow, jelly eyes sidled up and slurred a hello and the smell of his breath brought the world back in. She found herself back in the bar, looking at a girl not far off Martha’s age. A look she recognized, the same slightly defiant stance. She smiled, but the girl looked away and suddenly the conversation with Martha flooded back into her mind and she heard herself mouthing the words Going somewhere special? After that she didn’t feel like drinking any more. She stood up and began to elbow her way back through the throng of people. At the entrance she turned, hoping for a last look at the girl. Instead she saw the yellow-eyed man clasping the rye to his breast as you might a sleeping baby.

  A short time later she found herself on the path leading to Chip Muloon’s house. At her knock, the locks slid back and Chip’s face emerged, blinking away sleep.

  ‘It’s late, Edie, go home.’

  ‘I can’t,’ she said. Home was 70 kilometres away.

  Chip looked about, sighed and eye-rolled. ‘Come in, then. But only for a little while, OK?’

  He cleared away a bunch of papers lying on the table, offered her some hot tea and went into the kitchen to boil the water. She sat on the couch and waited. It had never struck her before how Spartan, almost lifeless, the place was and in that observation she felt the old taulittuq creeping over her and the ijirait tap tap tapping on her back.

  Chip reappeared carrying two mugs. He stopped for a second. She saw him stiffen, the cords in his neck tightening.

  ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’

  She blinked and looked away. He came over to the couch and put the mugs on the table, taking a seat on the chair opposite.

  ‘Have you been drinking?’

  Her clothes smelled of the bar. ‘Almost,’ she said.

  He frowned. When he spoke again his voice was quiet and modulated. ‘Look, Edie, we were never going anywhere, you know that. You got wrapped up in the case and I got tired of wondering whether or not you were gonna show and that’s that.’

  A small, involuntary laugh escaped her lips. It sounded more bitter than she felt. He thought she was trying to woo him back. The vanity of the male.

  ‘You spoke to Klinsman.’

  His eyes grew wider then he slumped back into his chair.

  ‘Christ, this isn’t about the fucking knife again, is it?’

  ‘No, it’s not about the knife.’

  There was a pause in which everything that needed to be said was said.

  ‘I thought you might be pleased,’ Chip said finally. ‘This way you get to go back to your teaching.’

  ‘Klinsman told you, didn’t he? He told you that the Defence Department have taken over jurisdiction in the case.’

  Muloon’s lips were parted and she saw from the implacable stare, the bunched jaw and tight neck that her hunch was correct. Her ex-lover put his mug back on the table, crossed his arms and stood.

  ‘I think you should go now,’ he said.

  22

  Derek cleared away the whisky bottle, ate two packs of ramen noodles and went to bed, relieved to be on his own. He was bilious from the booze and in desperate need of sleep, but even as his head hit the pillow and the light streamed in through his closed eyelids his mind began to spiral and after a few minutes he realized it was hopeless. The incessant light didn’t help. He got up and attempted to close the gaps i
n the blinds but moving one rung simply opened up space further down. They needed replacing but he hadn’t got around to it. One more thing to do. He tried to focus on his latest lemming observations but as he climbed back into bed his mind resumed its restless spooling so he got up again, moved to the bathroom, turned on the cold water in the shower and got in. The cold hit him like a punch.

  The truth was, he felt dumb and humiliated. Dumb because he hadn’t seen the situation coming and humiliated because he hadn’t done anything to stop it. His first thought was that Gutierrez had somehow panicked the colonel into taking action. But, as he understood it, Klinsman’s authority began and ended at Camp Nanook. The colonel had already gone out of his way to distance himself from the department. Which must mean that whoever had taken this latest decision was working above Klinsman’s pay grade.

  He stepped out of the shower and began working the towel over his damp skin. Was it possible that he’d uncovered some inconvenient truth the department didn’t want made public, something that had nothing to do with Namagoose and Saxby? What if all this time he’d been looking in the wrong place?

  Slinging the towel back on its hook, he padded through to the bedroom and clambered into bed. He had found himself at a crossroads with no signposts. An approach to Klinsman to put pressure on the department to give him back the case seemed unlikely to have any impact, though it was worth a try. A more complicated solution might be to throw in his lot with Sonia Gutierrez and openly challenge the department’s decision. He could even carry on with the investigation in his own time, though he’d need to keep that fact from Klinsman. Or he could just let the whole thing go.