The Bone Seeker: An Edie Kiglatuk Mystery (Edie Kiglatuk Mysteries)

by M. J. McGrath

  ‘Maybe,’ Derek said. ‘But that doesn’t make the fella guilty of trying to poison his father.’

  Edie drifted back to Toolik Pitoq’s bed. Lizzie was sitting beside her grandfather. She registered Edie’s presence momentarily and by the movement of her shoulders, angled away, Edie got the sense that she wasn’t wanted. The girl had already made plain that she wasn’t interested in talking and now that Willa and Lizzie had gone public with their relationship, she no longer had the hold over them she once did. All the same, it seemed more important than ever to Edie to try. She drew up a chair.

  ‘Your sister and her uncle spent a lot of time together, didn’t they? When she was a little girl and then, maybe, later.’

  The girl blinked. She looked away for a moment as if collecting herself.

  ‘Why do you ask that?’

  Edie could sense that she was close to something now. All she had to do was press it home, just a little. ‘You ever catch a thaw pocket, Lizzie?’

  Lizzie hesitated, not sure where this was going. Kids learned about thaw pockets from the moment they could first walk. Formed when temperatures rose, causing the surface ice to rot and liquefy, then freeze again, leaving a thin layer of new ice crusted over the rot, they were hard to spot and dangerous. If you weren’t careful you could find yourself breaking through the thin crust into deep freezing water.

  The girl glanced at her grandfather, then looked at her feet. Silent tears began to spiral down her face. When she spoke her voice was the sound of icicles cracking.

  ‘OK,’ she said, ‘but not here.’

  37

  They moved to the nursing station’s waiting area. For what seemed like a long time Lizzie sat with her hands in her lap, her eyes flickering at the edges, jaw working, from time to time opening her mouth to speak, then thinking better of it.

  Beside her Edie waited patiently, hardly even blinking, a hunter at the breathing hole of a seal. For ten days she’d been asking Lizzie Salliaq questions and for ten days the girl had offered only partial answers. Now, she sensed, they were at the door to somewhere new. All Edie had to do was wait for the girl to push it open.

  ‘You think my uncle gave my grandfather those pills, don’t you? No one else does, but you do.’

  ‘I’m good at thinking bad things. It’s not a skill I’d recommend but it seems to be one I’m stuck with. I think your uncle was afraid your grandfather might give him away. All families have secrets. They can be toxic.’

  For the first time Lizzie looked Edie directly in the face. She was weeping openly now.

  ‘My mother was Charlie’s second wife – did you know that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He didn’t have any children with his first wife. Her name was Elizapee. She had two babies, but they couldn’t hold on to life. We’d been moved to a new place, so people said that their spirits weren’t ready to come down from the stars yet. They were afraid of getting lost. That was how people accepted it.’

  ‘Inuit are good at accepting things. We need to get better at not accepting them,’ Edie said.

  Lizzie wiped a hand across her eyes. ‘Something happened to Elizapee. She got sick and died. My father married my mother. She got pregnant and had a boy who died before I was born. Then nothing happened for a long time and by the time I came along they had more or less given up.’

  ‘They must have been excited to have you.’

  Lizzie cocked her head. ‘I guess. I wasn’t an easy baby. I had some problems for a while. But I lived. My hanaji named me nerriungnerk, hope. No one thought that my parents would have any more kids so when my mother became pregnant again with Martha they thought their troubles were over.’

  ‘Were they?’

  ‘In a way. In another way, though, they were just beginning. Martha wasn’t sickly like me. She was the healthy one, everyone’s favourite.’ Lizzie turned away. ‘Not that it matters now.’

  ‘It matters now more than ever.’

  Lizzie nodded. ‘Maybe. You saw the pictures of my uncle Markoosie, and his wife, Nora, with Martha. They couldn’t have children of their own. There were many other couples like them but I guess that didn’t make it any easier. Nora was like Elizapee. She gave birth to two children but they both died. People began to say Lake Turngaluk had stirred up bad spirits. They thought about moving to Autisaq or to one of the other settlements but there wasn’t enough game in those places for everyone to eat. They wondered if it was their fault. They wanted to go back home, down to the Hudson Bay, but the government wouldn’t take them.’

  The story was familiar to Edie, to every Inuk living on Ellesmere Island. The government had taken them to this impossible place promising them a better future. When the better future didn’t materialize the government forgot they’d ever made the promise. Edie had heard that emotion or some variation of it expressed so many times in Inuit dealings with qalunaat that she’d lost count. The helplessness, the loss of confidence, the feelings of unease.

  ‘Did anyone ever mention a link between Lake Turngaluk and the fire at Glacier Ridge?’

  Lizzie shrugged. ‘I don’t know about any fire.’

  ‘But people didn’t talk about Lake Turngaluk?’

  ‘No. People said the bad spirits would get tired of being ignored and go someplace else.’

  ‘But they didn’t?’

  Lizzie shook her head. ‘You know how Inuit are. We share everything. My father began to say that he and my mother would share their children with Markoosie and Nora.’ She turned to look at Edie. ‘You remember how it was.’

  Edie did. The custom ensured there were never too many mouths to feed in one family and never too few in another to help hunt or gather food. It still happened sometimes.

  ‘Qalunaat like to say that blood is thicker than water. But up here in the Arctic, blood is thicker than ice. Your parents didn’t have any more children?’

  ‘No, but they’d already promised Markoosie and Nora that they would share Martha so when she was eighteen months old my sister went to live with our uncle and aunt.’

  ‘They must have doted on her.’

  ‘They did,’ Lizzie said, with a hint of bitterness. ‘My aunt especially. But when my mother realized she wasn’t going to have any more children she started to want Martha back. Eventually my father went and collected her. That broke my aunt Nora’s heart.’ Lizzie’s face crimped at the remembrance. ‘She went out one day in a blizzard and never came back. They found her body later under the bird cliffs. I think Martha blamed herself. That’s why she was always round at my uncle’s house, cooking lunch, tidying up, sewing his clothes.’

  The young woman shoved her hands in the pockets of her summer parka. ‘You’ve asked me if Martha wanted to leave. And I’ve told you the truth, which is I don’t know. But I do know that too much love can smother a person just as easily as too little can starve them.’

  • • •

  Back outside it had begun to rain. Some instinct made Edie go back towards the studio. Markoosie’s ATV wasn’t outside and the door was still locked. She picked open the lock and found herself inside. The studio was a small, soundproofed room, the desk and broadcast equipment taking up the majority of the space. Beside the desk was an office chair, dented with use, and she noticed that the headsets sitting on the desk itself were old and greasy-looking. Along the back wall a shelving unit bulged with files and discs arranged by date. Scanning along the disc boxes, she found one marked Show #1437 7/24, the Saturday Martha died, pulled it out and checked it over. She was about to push it back in its place when curiosity moved her to switch on the player and slot it into the tray. The machine hummed and the disc disappeared inside. Pulling out the chair and reaching for the headphones, she waited for the familiar opening jingle followed by Markoosie’s introduction – ‘It’s eight p.m. on Saturday 24 July.’ She checked the player’s time and date screen for confirmation. 7/24 10.17. She looked again. Then she pushed the open button and the disc tray buzzed forward. Thinking sh
e’d got something wrong, she scooped up the disc, checked the label, then matched it to the writing on the box. She steadied herself for a moment then checked everything again with the same result. The timecode on the machine was insisting that Markoosie Pitoq had recorded the Saturday evening show on Saturday morning.

  Which meant that on the Saturday evening, as his show was going out, Markoosie Pitoq could have been anywhere.

  She dropped the disc into her pocket. Her hands were trembling as she went back over to the shelves to close the gap she’d left so that Markoosie wouldn’t notice anything missing, but as she rearranged the discs, she could feel something catch at the back, as though there was some kind of impediment there. She pushed a couple of fingers into the space but whatever it was eluded her. Her curiosity fully aroused now, she went back to the door and flipped the inside lock. Returning to the shelf, she began removing the discs either side of the space until she could finally insert her hand. Her fingers waved about in space for a moment then came to rest on a thin circular object. When she pulled back her fingers it came with them, made a thin scratchy sound against the plastic of the CD cases. A long skein of blue-tinted, black hair, braided into an amulet.

  A part of her wanted to run, to get away from the awful realization, but the greater part knew there was no running away from this. The evidence backed up what she already in her heart knew: that not only had Markoosie Pitoq killed his niece but that, on the morning of Saturday 24 July, he had sat down in his studio to record his alibi. Perhaps he’d planned it to coincide with the arrival of Camp Nanook, knowing that the soldiers would provide him with cover. That was conjecture. What was certain was that by the time Martha came around to pick up her schoolbook and offer to cook his lunch, he had already planned to kill her that evening. The man who had for part of her life brought her up as his own daughter and with whom she must, at least as far as any woman ever feels completely safe with any man, have thought of herself as being safe. Edie had to hope that he never told her what he intended to do. That he spared her that terror, at least.

  Now she knew why he had disappeared, all she had to figure out was where he was likely to be. In her mind she went through everything she knew about the man and thought it was all pointing one way.

  She dialled the detachment. Derek answered.

  ‘Drive around to the town hall building. Bring your service weapon and a rifle.’ The authority she felt must have translated into her voice, because for once he didn’t question her.

  Then she pulled open the radio station door and tripped down the steps, her breath coming fast and shallow, the adrenalin chasing though her veins, every sense intensely focused. She knew this feeling. It came to her when she was hunting.

  38

  They approached from the west along the coastal road, keeping an eye out for any movement from the cliff edge in case Markoosie had anticipated their arrival and was up there somewhere with a gun. The cliffs were much less busy now. Most of the birds were spending their time out at sea, feeding to build up their strength for the long flight south. A few late-born fledglings still remained on the ledges, nestling among the moss and guano, dimly anxious, waiting for parents who might not return.

  They brought their ATVs to a stop where the track divided, keyed off the engines and grabbed their backpacks. From there they decided to split, Edie heading up on top of the cliff while Derek investigated the series of small caves and hollows that gave out onto the beach.

  A late summer coastal fog had begun to form, rising with Edie as she clambered up the path and obscuring the view below. The wind had almost ceased now, the solemn quiet punctuated only by the cries of seabirds. She listened for the sound of footsteps, a telltale clink of metal, the swish of a parka, testing the air for the scent of human fear, but there was nothing. Slowly the mist began to creep skywards. She could see Derek moving like a ghost at the foot of the cliffs. Steeling herself, she crept upwards, her feet sliding on scree, until at last she reached the cliff edge. A handful of gulls whirled up on the air currents. She rolled her shoulders, unsheathed the pistol Derek had given her, took a breath and slunk up and over onto the clifftop, crouching in the willow like a cat.

  There was no sign of Markoosie. The thought of him getting away created a rush of hot anger in her veins. There was nothing more she wanted now than to make him pay, not just for what he’d done to Martha, though that was terrible enough, but for what he’d taken from the family, from Kuujuaq, for the gap he’d left in all their futures. But anger was a useless emotion for a hunter. A hunter had to be calm and confident of her instincts. Her instincts were telling her she was right. Markoosie was here somewhere and she would keep looking until she found him.

  The rocky ledges of the plateau stretched before her, lichen-jewelled, and behind them, sheltered a little from the wind, were patches of sedge meadow and clumps of dry, battered cotton grass. Beyond that lay the new containment fence enclosing Glacier Ridge. From where she crouched, she could see the tops of the abandoned radar towers, ruins which had seemed forlorn when she’d thought of the place as an abandoned radar station, but which had taken on a darker, more sinister aspect now she had guessed at the site’s real purpose.

  The mist was curling over the clifftop and stealing through the low willow and sedge. She stood and crept to the edge of the cliff. A few rock ptarmigans flustered from their nests, disturbed by the sudden fall in temperature, and rose in a great whirl of wings into the blank sky. Looking down she could just make out through the mist a shadowy figure clambering up the till at the base of the cliffs. From his height and the graceful movement of his body she knew this to be Derek. From the speed at which he climbed she could tell that he had seen something and was going to investigate, using the pile of rock spill at the base of the cliff to gain access to the lower reaches of the cliff ledges and overhangs.

  Suddenly she heard him shout ‘Pitoq, stop!’ and what she supposed was a warning shot rang out. A spray of murres detonated from the cliffs, calling in alarm, then rose up and, banking through the mist, came in once more to the cliff face. Instinctively she dropped down and lay flat on the plateau, her weapon steadied in both hands. For what seemed a long time she could see nothing, then a gust of wind seemed to blow the mist away for a moment and there, perched on a ledge twenty metres or so from the base of the cliff like an auk, she spotted the figure of a man. Again, Derek shouted. The man swung his head upward, searching out a route towards the top of the cliff and freedom. It had begun to rain now, and the wind had picked up, blowing away the worst of the mist and soaking the cliff face.

  She heard herself shout down, ‘Markoosie, give yourself up.’

  The figure froze for an instant, then began sweeping the cliff face, trying to locate the source of the voice. Both his arms were outstretched as he clung to the rapidly wettening rock. If he had a weapon, he was in no position to use it. He did not answer her, but, sensing he was cornered, began sliding his feet sideways along the ledge. A few metres from where he clung there was a dark patch in the rock marking the presence of some kind of overhang or cave, which seemed to be where he was now heading.

  She stood up and made her way along the clifftop towards her quarry, searching for an outcrop to which she might attach her rope. Finding a boulder a few metres from her starting point, she began to work steadily, lassoing the rope around the rock and fixing it with the knots her mother had taught her in the days after her father had left and they were hungry enough to go egg collecting together. There was a long wide ledge seven or eight metres down where she could crouch comfortably. If she lowered herself she would be sitting within two or three metres of Pitoq’s overhang. This way, she hoped to persuade him to give himself up. Making a loop for her feet and another around her waist, she lowered herself over the edge. The rope tensed around her. She righted her position and found a purchase for her feet on the cliff face. Her thoughts went back, first to her mother bouncing the rope from one gull’s nest to another, and then to Will
a at rappel camp only a few days before, setting both memories in the little caches in her mind to which she could return when needed, her mother’s trick for mustering courage.

  The wind blew up, flinging rain into her eyes. Pitoq was six or seven metres below and to her left, edging his way towards the overhang. She called to him again but got no answer. Slowly she went down, legs braced against the rock, the muscles in her arms tense from effort, fingers thrumming. Pitoq had reached the overhang now. She saw him lunge towards the concavity and all but disappear from view, only his feet visible from where she hung. Derek was below her now, stealthily making his way upwards.

  ‘Markoosie.’ Her voice ricocheted off the rock wall.

  From inside the cliff there came a shout. She saw the feet disappear then Markoosie’s hand appeared around the ledge, followed by his face. He looked first down to Derek then up at Edie.

  ‘There’s nowhere to go, you’re trapped.’

  He had moved into the open now, his face raised, taking in the rain. Though he was in plain sight, he didn’t seem afraid that they might shoot him. ‘My spirit and my conscience are free,’ he said. He had to raise his voice to make himself heard, but he sounded calm.

  ‘Two men are in jail for what you did.’

  ‘Qalunaat law means nothing to me.’

  ‘What about your father? What does he mean to you? He’s alive, by the way.’

  The man slumped back a little. ‘That’s too bad. It was his time.’

  ‘Is that why you killed Martha? Because it was her time?’

  Pitoq shook his head, closed his eyes as though remembering. ‘Martha was my hanaji and my punishment. Every day we had her was a day I was reminded that she was not our own and that sooner or later she would leave us.’ He was looking directly up at Edie now, blinking away the rain. ‘And when she went back to Alice she took my Nora with her and I was left with nothing. But it seemed that wasn’t enough for her. She wanted to get away from us again. Who would she have taken with her this time?’ Edie could see the cords in his neck straining from the effort of projecting his voice. ‘My niece was a bad spirit, a troublemaking spirit.’ His feet were poised over the ledge now, the hands clinging on to the slick rock. ‘The spirit is in the blood, Edie Kiglatuk, isn’t that what we say? Martha’s spirit came up from Lake Turngaluk. All I did was send her back there. She didn’t even suffer. It was like she just went to sleep.’ Markoosie was looking alternately down at the beach and out to sea now. It seemed he was trying to come to some decision.