The Bone Seeker

by M. J. McGrath

  There was nothing like being told you couldn’t leave to make it seem all the more imperative that you did.

  ‘Any other way of getting off the island?’

  ‘You had a boat, Resolute Bay’s about three hundred and fifty kilometres that way,’ Oolik said. He tipped his head to the southwest. ‘But you’d need to know all the currents and get lucky with the ice.’

  Somewhere inside her chest a dark bud of panic began to swell. She thought about Charlie and the Ellesmere Police and, most of all, about Camp Nanook, and suddenly felt very alone.

  ‘I need a weapon.’ She heard the words before she realized they were hers.

  Oolik was staring at her, part baffled, part bored. ‘We don’t keep any guns in stock. You have to order them up.’ He reached around to a shelf behind him and heaved a huge and tattered catalogue onto the cashier’s desk.

  ‘A knife then?’

  Oolik tutted. ‘We’ve got a moratorium on those. Out of respect for the family.’

  ‘Pepper spray?’

  Oolik threw back his head and laughed.

  ‘Bear spray then.’

  The laugh became a hoot. ‘Ha, lady, I like your sense of humour. Polar bears are mean. They freshen their breath with bear spray.’

  As she left, a damp grey fog of resignation began to pick at her bones. She wanted desperately not to go back to the hotel but her legs seemed to carry her there as if she had no choice in the matter. A part of her still needed to believe that the Department of Defence lawyers would return her calls and the matter of Glacier Ridge would be handled in a civilized manner through the courts, but the larger part of her knew this for what it was. A wishful fantasy. Whatever she had touched on had gone too far for the polite processes of the courts. She had crossed over some boundary into the terrain not of the law but of realpolitik and in that territory anything was possible.

  The hotel foyer was surprisingly cool now. She stopped a moment to listen for the sounds of intruders and hearing nothing went up the stairs and turned into the corridor. As she approached her room she saw that the door was slightly ajar and through the gap there was some movement. She moved forward, propelled by some sense of destiny, then caught herself, too late to leave but not too late to overstep the bedroom door and tiptoe to the bathroom. She slid her backpack behind the door and walked back to meet her fate.

  The door to her room swung open and two men in military police uniforms stepped out and came towards her.

  ‘Sonia Gutierrez?’ The older of the two, a man of Hispanic origin like herself, reached out and took her arm. She felt herself tense, the rush of adrenalin a welcome relief from the numb, animal resignation of before. A cuff closed around her wrist.

  The policeman said he was arresting her for trespass on military property, but that hardly mattered. She felt a hand on the small of her back, pushing her forward.

  26

  Rashid Alfasi’s boss at the meteorological office in Ottawa hadn’t heard from him in a couple of days. The stats from the various outlying met stations were collated once a week on Mondays and the staff were only contacted if there was something unexpected in the figures.

  ‘Is he in trouble?’ the man asked.

  Derek switched the phone to speaker to allow Edie to listen in. She’d watched him become increasingly preoccupied over the last twelve hours. He hadn’t said as much, but Edie was sure he was regretting focusing all his energies on the two unataqti in the early stages of the case. It made the work of broadening the investigation more difficult, not least because they were now having to do it without alerting Klinsman. But, in the absence of firm proof against any of the other suspects, the link between Alfasi and Martha Salliaq was too important to ignore.

  ‘You ever have any problems with Rashid? Skipping off, going AWOL, that kind of thing?’

  ‘No, sir. The kid’s reliable.’

  ‘Did he volunteer for the Ellesmere posting?’ Southerners who chose to spend time in the High Arctic were usually trying to escape something or other.

  ‘Well, yes,’ said the man in a wary tone. ‘Rashid could be a bit of a loner.’

  ‘Isn’t it right that the met service seconds some of its workers to the military?’

  There was a pause. ‘That is correct, yes.’

  ‘Is Rashid Alfasi one of those?’

  The man cleared his throat. ‘I can’t answer that question, sir. You’d have to go through the proper channels.’

  ‘I see,’ Derek said. ‘Well, call us if he gets in touch. We’re concerned for his safety.’ Derek left the detachment number. ‘I’d rather this was between us for now. I don’t want to concern the family.’

  ‘Of course, the family.’

  Derek ended the call and sat staring at the phone, wondering if the whole goddamned island hadn’t been converted into a single vast military installation, with the locals, people like him and Edie, serving unwittingly as guinea pigs in some giant defence experiment. Sure it was paranoid, it was probably all-out insane, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t true.

  He picked up the handset and listened to the dial tone. Then he opened his desk drawer and pulled out the multitool he kept there and began unscrewing the phone. Halfway through he stopped himself. The regime of no sleep, too much caffeine and irregular meals was getting to him. He was having irrational thoughts. His outlook on the world was becoming paranoid.

  He turned to Edie. ‘I need a break.’

  Then he went outside and did what he always did when he needed to reassure himself that he wasn’t going crazy.

  He fed his lemmings.

  • • •

  Edie watched him drift out of the office and down towards the lemming shed. Derek’s lemming thing was one of the few things about him she didn’t understand. Years ago, when she was still a kid, after her father had left but before they’d closed the school and left the children to get a tundra education, a well-meaning qalunaat teacher introduced a dozen lemmings into the classroom in a tank. A boy called Isaac volunteered to take the lemmings home during the summer recess and his mother cooked them into a stew. That pretty much reflected the general Inuit view of lemmings.

  What Edie did understand, though, was that Derek had to be feeling pretty bad. It was a feeling she shared. Back in the spring she’d got lost in the forest in Alaska. The trees seemed to muddle her senses and she’d been overwhelmed by the disconcerting sense of being blocked on every side and unable to move forward. That same feeling had returned.

  She heard the back door swing open and the sound of Derek’s footsteps through the kitchen. At the comms room he stopped and she heard the sound of his voice requesting radio contact. A while later he came back into the office, his breath smelling heavily of tobacco.

  ‘I just spoke with Larsen on the Piquot. He’s gonna search the ship. Alfasi’s not likely to have gone out on the land with no vehicle.’

  He reached for his jacket on the hook by the door. ‘I’m gonna check around. It’s possible he’s hiding in plain sight.’ The settlement was thickly strewn with old fishing sheds, abandoned stores, dog kennels and outbuildings and the overturned mounds of broken and unused boats.

  ‘Want me to come?’

  Derek shook his head. ‘I’m familiar with the terrain. If you’d like to be helpful, you could go find out what Klinsman’s said to the Salliaqs and, while you’re at it, ask them if they know anything about Alfasi. But go lightly. We don’t want Klinsman to know that we’re investigating the kid as a suspect. Especially not if he’s working for them.’

  • • •

  She left a few minutes behind him. Rain spilled from a raw dough sky. The supply plane buzzed overhead and gradually disappeared south into low-lying cloud. Moments later, disturbed by noise, the jaeger that had made its nest around the back of the detachment flew up and over the wire towards the sea. Momentarily curious, Edie
skirted the detachment building and stood on an old packing crate to get a look at the nest. There were only two chicks now, their flight feathers beginning to come through. Most likely the weaker of the two would become food for the stronger and only one would survive to adulthood.

  Leaving the birds, Edie wandered up to the track and turned northeast towards the cliffs until she reached the Salliaqs’ house. Charlie and Markoosie were sitting on the couch staring at an ice-hockey game on TV. Lizzie was sitting in a chair by the window, sewing beads onto a sealskin parka.

  ‘That’s beautiful,’ Edie said.

  ‘It’s for Martha. My mother is doing most of the work, but she’s sleeping right now.’

  Charlie looked up from the game. ‘I suppose you’d better come sit at the table. Lizzie’ll fetch us tea.’

  Charlie pushed up to standing, shuffled over to the table and lowered himself very carefully into a hard-backed chair. Markoosie returned to the ice-hockey game.

  The deterioration in the old man’s health was shocking. A week or so ago, just after the discovery of Martha’s body, he’d seemed tired and physically weak but now he was barely able to haul himself about. His eyes were cloudy and there were livid red patches on his face and hands.

  ‘We thought you might be Sonia. She usually comes by about this time,’ he said.

  Edie told him she thought the lawyer had business in Iqaluit. ‘She was probably on the supply plane that just went over.’

  Charlie took this in without comment. ‘We got a call from that colonel fella about them unataqti. Seems your Lemming Police friend just handed over the case like it was an old sack.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that, avasirngulik.’

  Just then Lizzie appeared with a plate of muktuq with the tea and sat down at the table beside her father. She eyed Edie warily.

  The old man picked up a piece of muktuq and began rubbing it between his fingers to warm the fat. ‘Oh, we’ll play along, but underneath me and my family won’t have nothing to do with that colonel fella. You understand? Maybe Sonia can figure something out but I’m not holding my breath. Them two unataqti won’t ever come to justice now.’

  Charlie raised the piece of muktuq to his nose, decided it smelled good, popped it into his mouth and began chewing.

  ‘You know Rashid Alfasi, avasirngulik?’ Edie began. ‘Works at the met station, been helping Susie Silliq out at the Shack some weekends?’

  Charlie’s eyes narrowed. ‘That Arab kid?’

  ‘Canadian. His parents are from Morocco.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘He’s gone missing.’

  Charlie shrugged, helped himself to a piece of muktuq and pushed the plate towards her as though nothing had been said. The kid wasn’t his concern.

  To be polite, Edie took a piece of muktuq and put it on the table beside her.

  ‘Why are you asking us about him?’ Lizzie said.

  Her father stopped chewing, spat out his muktuq and rested it next to his mug. He sighed and folded his arms across his chest. He really did look very frail.

  ‘Don’t take it personal, Edie Kiglatuk, but I think it best if you just left. You’re no good to us. Not you nor that Lemming Police.’

  • • •

  On the way back she ran into Derek. He was with his old dog, Pie Crust. The animal lived with Stevie most of the time now, but Derek used him every so often when he went hunting or out on patrol.

  ‘I’ve just come from Alfasi’s house. No one’s been back there.’ He patted the dog. ‘You get anything from Charlie?’

  ‘He’s got it into his head that we just let the military march in and take over. Feels betrayed.’

  Derek raised an eyebrow.

  • • •

  The next couple of hours they focused on the hunt for Alfasi, poking into sheds and dog kennels, breaking open the locks of outbuildings, tearing up their hands lifting the shells of old boats, but at the end of it they came up empty. Not long after they returned to the detachment there was a knock and Klinsman appeared, a tall fellow in shades and an immaculately pressed military policeman’s uniform beside him. Edie could tell that Derek was as surprised as she was by the visit.

  ‘Do you have a minute?’

  ‘For you, always, colonel,’ Derek said drily.

  Klinsman took a breath in and stepped inside. He didn’t appreciate the police sergeant’s tone. ‘This is a courtesy call, sergeant, and I needn’t have made it, but I figure we’re all professionals here.’

  ‘I know you are, colonel, but to be honest I don’t like the look of your sidekick,’ Derek said. ‘Something of the rookie about him. New to the Arctic, is he? Just shipped in?’

  There was a small pause during which the MP stared impassively ahead and Klinsman rearranged his features.

  ‘When we took over the case I requested military police backup, sergeant. But, really, I’m not here to go over old ground. Just the opposite. I’m on my way to inform the Salliaqs of a development in the investigation.’ He was looking at Derek directly now. ‘For logistical reasons we weren’t able to move over the weekend but you should know that this morning we formally charged Privates Jacob Namagoose and Skeeter Saxby with the murder of Martha Salliaq.’

  Derek sat back and frowned. ‘On what evidence?’

  Ignoring the question, Klinsman went on, ‘I am glad for the sake of the family and for the success of the ongoing SOVPAT exercises that we are going to be able to draw a line under the case and I want you to know how much we have appreciated the cooperation of the Ellesmere Island Police.’ Klinsman was going through the motions. He was that most dangerous kind of man, Edie thought, someone for whom any real engagement with human beings had been replaced by strict adherence to form. Men like that were capable of anything.

  ‘Spare us your gratitude,’ Derek said.

  Klinsman eye-flicked to the MP. For an instant Edie thought she saw him blush.

  ‘Well,’ he went on, as though everything had been nicely sorted, ‘now we can all go back to our lives.’

  27

  Klinsman hadn’t been gone a minute when the radio crackled. Derek went to answer. It was Captain Larsen from the Piquot to say that an orderly had come across a stowaway hiding in the laundry room. Derek felt his gut tighten.

  ‘He offered the orderly a couple hundred dollars not to give the game away, said that was all he had,’ Larsen went on. ‘Name’s Al something. Says he works at the met station in Kuujuaq. You know him?’

  ‘I sure do. We need him back here for questioning.’

  ‘That explains it,’ Larsen said. ‘The kid’s begging me to take him back to Quebec, says he’s got family problems, can’t afford the air fare home . . .’ Larsen’s voice blanked out for a moment then came back on, ‘. . . no sea legs. Otherwise he’s fine. I’ve got him under lock and key in the sickbay.’

  Larsen explained that the ship was sailing in patchy ice just off Lady Ann Strait.

  ‘I’m within my rights to drop him off at the nearest landing point, but from taking a look at him I’d say he’d survive about as long as a walrus belch out there. We got difficult ice conditions ahead in Baffin Bay and I can’t afford the time or the expense of bringing him all the way back to Kuujuaq. We could ’copter him as far as Craig if you meet us halfway?’

  Derek rubbed his face. Given the unpredictability of the weather around Craig Island, it would probably make more sense to go by sea. ‘If I take the launch, I can be at the north beach landing in a couple of hours, give or take. How’s that sound?’

  Larsen thought that sounded good.

  Back in the office Edie was deep in thought and chewing on one of her braids.

  ‘They’ve found Alfasi on the Piquot.’ Derek thought of asking her to come with him to Craig then decided against it. For her, the place was brittle with bad memories. On the other h
and, he didn’t much relish the idea of making the journey to pick up a suspect in a murder case alone.

  ‘You seen Sammy Inukpuk today?’ The man was a superb sailor. Tough when he wanted to be, too.

  ‘He’s gone to see his son at the rappel camp. But I know how to reach him. Why?’

  ‘Good,’ Derek said. ‘I could use his help.’

  • • •

  The journey out to Craig was uneventful, the launch bumping along in rough chop until they reached the agreed meeting point, a black beach flanked by lichen-covered basalt cliffs where Alfasi was standing, guarded by two volunteers from the Piquot’s crew. While Sammy stayed with the launch Derek clambered into the Zodiac and buzzed to shore.

  The kid was solemn and pale-faced. It looked to Derek as though he’d been crying and was ready to break. Derek gave him some reassurance that he wouldn’t be questioned until they were back on dry land in Kuujuaq. He felt for his cuffs then thought better of it. If something went wrong transferring him from the Zodiac to the launch and he fell in the water he’d drown with cuffs on. He’d cuff him once they were in place. He told the boy to look around.

  Alfasi scanned the sweep of naked rock and scree.

  ‘You see anywhere to run to?’

  Alfasi shook his head.

  ‘Good. If you try I will have to shoot you. Understood?’

  Alfasi nodded. The two guards dropped their grip. The boy looked up and caught Derek’s eye.

  His legs were shaking so much he could hardly lift them into the Zodiac.

  • • •

  Larsen was right. The kid was helpless at sea. He’d thrown up everything in his stomach while he was still on the Piquot, but his body continued to go through the motions once he was on the police launch, spewing long strings of mucous and stomach acids onto the deck. At the quay in Kuujuaq Sammy and Derek had to more or less drag him onto the ATV and by the time they got him back to the detachment, his face had turned the colour of old blubber. Derek cuffed the kid, thanked Sammy and told him to come by one evening and that there was a bottle of whisky in the detachment with his name on it. Once Sammy had gone Derek showed Alfasi to a seat and offered him a cigarette. Refusing the smoke, the kid bunched himself up miserably in the chair like a cornered hare, his face slicked with sweat.