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

by M. J. McGrath

  ‘Ex-Ranger,’ Willa said, with some regret. Klinsman continued to look at him for a moment.

  ‘My stepson,’ Edie said. She felt proud of him. ‘He helped bust us out of Camp Nanook.’

  Klinsman smiled and, raising his glass in a toast, said, ‘From one ex-soldier to another.’

  Willa glanced at him for a moment then looked away. Klinsman took this in. He replaced the glass on the table. The mosquito that had been bothering him flew close. He reached out and clapped, leaving a tiny smear of blood on his palms.

  44

  Summer rapidly gave way to the short, High Arctic autumn. Lake Turngaluk froze and the sea bloomed with frost flowers. Nights drew in and the stars made their annual reappearance. A month had passed since the flight to Iqaluit.

  It was crazy how quickly the time had gone, the days swallowed up in a blizzard of meetings with police and politicians, and press interviews. She was ready to return home to her old familiar life in Autisaq, and hunker down for the imminent arrival of the winter.

  The waiting room of the nursing station was busier than she’d ever seen it. A week after Chris Tetlow’s series of articles on covert nuclear testing had appeared in the Arctic Circular, an embarrassed federal government had introduced an extensive screening programme across the region. Each man, woman and child on Ellesmere Island was being tested for a range of radiation-related health problems, from sterility to leukaemia and thyroid disorders. The government had promised free and comprehensive medical care and were in the process of considering a compensation package, though the tests had been encouraging so far. The taboo on visiting the area around Lake Turngaluk, where radiation levels were highest, turned out to have been life-saving. Only Joe Oolik showed signs of recent contamination, and the specialist team who helped him were confident they’d caught it in time.

  Some traditionally minded Inuit like Charlie Salliaq had already begun to talk about this as proof of the power of the old ways. Here was evidence, they said, that in the ancient customs there was a kind of unfailing and mysterious wisdom. To others, the incident was evidence of the work of good in the world. Whatever chaos the evil spirits of the lake might try to stir, the spirits of the ancestors would always rise up to protect the living. Edie didn’t know whether any of this was true, but she wanted it to be, and maybe that was enough.

  In four short weeks, the story of Canada and the USA’s joint secret nuclear testing programme had travelled a long way from the Great North. Hundreds of emails of support continued to land in the mayor’s inbox every day, from places most of the Kuujuamiut had never heard of. It was true what they said. The world really was a smaller place these days.

  No one had been more surprised by the level of support than Charlie Salliaq. The last month had opened his eyes, even though he couldn’t see much out of them any more.

  ‘I always thought that nobody in the south cared what happened to us up here. Turns out I was wrong. I was wrong about a lot of things.’

  The blood transfusion had given him a few more weeks of life and, as far as anyone could tell, it hadn’t yet turned him into a qalunaat. But the old man had decided not to put himself down on a list for a bone-marrow transplant. The procedure would have meant staying in Ottawa, and he’d had enough travelling. All he wanted now was to die at home in Kuujuaq.

  Edie found him propped up on pillows, singing into a digital recorder.

  ‘I’m writing my life story, the Inuit way.’ He chuckled and flipped off the machine.

  ‘I brought you blood soup, elder,’ Edie said, pouring the contents of a flask out into a mug.

  The old man smacked his lips.

  ‘You sing like a guillemot, Edie Kiglatuk, but you make a good blood soup.’

  ‘I’m glad to know there’s some point to me,’ she replied.

  She helped him lift the mug to his mouth. In the last week his appetite had shrunk along with his frame.

  ‘How’s that clean-up getting along?’

  ‘Pretty well. They’re covering over the lake.’

  ‘Good,’ he said, with a nod of satisfaction. ‘Put a lid on all them dark spirits. Markoosie Pitoq, he’ll be in there now. Better than any jail.’ He paused and took another sip of soup.

  ‘You know, I see Martha most days. In spirit anyway. Tell the truth, I’m looking forward to the time we gonna be together. What Markoosie did to Martha, that was a terrible thing. I try not to think about it too much. But in a way I feel sorry for him. Most people would die for their kids but it takes a particular kind of fella who would die for lack of them. It drove him crazy that Martha would always belong to me and Alice.’ He handed the mug back to Edie. ‘Course, there are oddballs like you who don’t want kids, but that’s a different net of fish.’

  There was no point in telling him about the daughter she’d given birth to then buried in the snow, Edie thought. No point in going back over the years of drinking, the regret. She put down the mug and held his hand between both of hers.

  ‘I won’t forget you, Charlie Salliaq, even though sometimes I’ll want to.’ She leaned in and rested her nose against his and for a moment or two his old, soft breath and hers mingled with the scent of blood soup. When she pulled away she saw that there were tears in his eyes.

  ‘Goodbye, Edie Kiglatuk,’ he said. ‘When I’m in the spirit world, I’ll keep an eye on you from time to time. But only if you promise not to sing. The dead deserve a little peace.’

  The conversation turned to going home. Toolik Pitoq had moved into the Salliaqs’ house and Charlie was looking forward to spending more time with him.

  ‘We two elders gonna walk the same road awhile, swap stories about the old times, keep each other company. We’ll talk about fetching up on that green gravel all those years ago, those first, hard months and years on Ellesmere Island. And maybe we’ll chew over our days at Glacier Ridge and the time we lived off beluga for the whole winter.’ He smiled weakly at Edie. ‘There’ll be plenty to say.’

  • • •

  From the nursing station Edie rumbled out along the track towards Lake Turngaluk. The area was now busy with decontamination teams, spraying dry ice and pouring concrete, and in the midst of the vehicles and the chemical tanks and pumps stood Sonia Gutierrez in her pink hazmat suit, directing the proceedings.

  In the weeks following the revelations about Glacier Ridge, Gutierrez and Klinsman had been the principal focus of media interest. In interview after interview Gutierrez spoke about sacrificial populations and nuclear guinea pigs, about the federal government’s neglect of its fiduciary duty and, of course, about decontamination. One of her statements had been so widely quoted that Edie knew it by heart.

  ‘The government’s strategic initiatives in the High Arctic should be less about national ownership and more about stewardship. Who wants to own a junkyard or a nuclear dump?’

  Through all this the Defence Minister, Kirsten Sinden, had managed to cling on, just, by claiming ignorance and offering promises to root out the perpetrator or perpetrators of the cover-up. The government had launched a commission into the historical events surrounding the nuclear test at Glacier Ridge and promised to leave no stone unturned.

  Neither Edie nor Sonia believed any of it.

  After the noise had dimmed, and the press moved on, Colonel Al Klinsman had quietly taken early retirement and was in the process of buying himself a fishing lodge in upper Ontario where he planned to pass the remainder of his days. The military police came to an agreement with Skeeter Saxby that they would not press charges against him for dealing stolen drugs from the Camp Nanook pharmacy in exchange for Saxby’s agreement not to sue for wrongful arrest on the murder rap. He was released from the infantry under item 2a, unsatisfactory conduct, and moved back to his hometown of Halifax, Nova Scotia, with the intention of opening a tattoo bar. Jacob Namagoose had gone back to active duty. Last Edie heard he was about to be shipped off on a tour of Afghanistan.

  Edie waved and Gutierrez came bustling over, pull
ing off her gloves and tucking her face mask under her chin.

  ‘You leaving?’ Edie noticed then that, under her hat, Gutierrez had twisted her hair up in braids. It suited her.

  Edie nodded. ‘Going back home. How about you?’

  ‘Well, they’ll be working here until freeze-up, then again next summer. Looks like they might finish a couple years from now. But I’m thinking I might as well stay. Toolik Pitoq offered me his old house. I guess I could get it fixed up some. Never been here for a winter before. Might be an experience.’

  ‘How does sixty below sound?’

  Gutierrez waved a hand in the air to signify how little bothered she was at the prospect. ‘I’m hot-blooded,’ she said.

  They laughed.

  ‘And, anyway, I’ll bet it’s beautiful.’

  Edie’s heart swelled.

  ‘The most beautiful place on earth,’ she said.

  • • •

  On the way back she drove past the mud and pools of Lake Turngaluk then banked round and went up the slope towards the place where Rashid Alfasi had left flowers for Martha Salliaq. The building where they’d met had been one of the first to be torn down in the clean-up works and now on the site there were only a few cotton grasses and a pile of rubble. She thought about Martha and Rashid in love and planning their lives together, the energy on Martha’s face that Friday when she’d spilled the contents of her purse in her eagerness to get out of school to meet him, the sly smile on her face as Edie had asked her where she was going.

  Edie made her way along the clifftop down to the shoreline where Martha and Rashid had collected eggs so that Charlie Salliaq would not suspect that his daughter’s absences from the house signalled anything other than a desire to provide for her family. A few dovekies remained on the cliffs but most of the seabirds had long since left for the south now and the cottonheads and saxifrages, which had sprung up on the rich deposits of guano, had begun to die back to their winter forms. The Pitoq family had moved Markoosie’s body and buried it under a cairn far from Kuujuaq, but if you looked very closely you could just see the indentations in the shale where he had fallen. Already the sea was soupy with frazil ice. Freeze-up wasn’t far away.

  From the beach Edie drove back into the settlement. Responding to public pressure, the government had agreed to move those families who no longer wished to remain in Kuujuaq. A few had taken them up on the offer, joining family in Autisaq or in one of the other tiny settlements nearby. But most were still trying to make sense of the news. Men and women were reliving the pain of miscarried, malformed foetuses or of stillborn children and recalling all those long nights they’d spent wondering what they had done to make the earth spirits so angry with them. Right now, Edie reckoned, spirits and people were both learning to forgive themselves.

  She passed the school but did not go inside. She’d already said her goodbyes to her students. Chip Muloon’s old office had been turned into an IT centre, giving students direct access to the Internet via the community’s satellite connection. The school had recently won funding to give twelfth graders who wanted to study for a semester outside the Arctic the opportunity to do so. Lisa Tuliq was thinking of applying. She’d asked Edie to be her sponsor. She’d never apologized for trying to get Willa into trouble but Edie was pretty sure the girl had learned her lesson.

  Stevie Killik was back from leave and he and Derek were busy making the long overdue repairs on the Kuujuaq detachment building to prepare it for winter. Sammy Inukpuk was in the front yard now, dismantling Edie’s tent. He’d borrowed his cousin’s boat again and motored in from Autisaq to see his son and take Edie back home before freeze-up. The outboard had been smoking a little on the journey out and Willa was at the dock fixing it. While Sammy finished with the tent she started packing up her pots and pans and folding her sleeping skins into a couple of small crates. They would take everything back on the launch.

  In return for his help, Edie had promised Sammy a feast of roasted goose meat. She’d frozen a couple of dozen snow geese from the beach in Bob Makivik’s cousin’s freezer and transported them back to Kuujuaq, where they were sitting in the detachment freezer.

  ‘Maybe you could fix the DVD and we could watch a few movies?’ she said to him.

  The aroma of the sleeping skins reached her nostrils and she allowed herself a moment to recall the summer. It had been days, she realized now, since she’d last seen the jaeger and its single, now almost fully grown, chick. She supposed they’d already left for the south. She scanned the sky for a few seconds, then turned her attention back to her work.

  ‘I can fix most things,’ Sammy said. ‘But I can’t make any promises. Might be you’ll need to order a new one up from the south.’

  ‘I guess I might be able to stretch to that. I’ve got my teacher pay, plus Derek owes me two months’ wages.’

  Sammy folded the guy ropes and began to stuff the tent pegs into their canvas bag. He swung his head in the direction of the detachment building. ‘Now might be a good time to get it from him.’

  Derek was nailing up a storm window at the back of the detachment. She called to him and they went up the steps inside together. She handed over her temporary VPSO badge. He unlocked the safe and slung it inside.

  ‘I guess you know that Stevie’s been offered a job in the Kitikmeot region, in Cambridge Bay.’

  ‘Good for Stevie.’

  ‘He hasn’t decided whether or not to take it yet, but if he does I’m wondering how you might feel about coming on board full time?’

  Edie’s eyes widened. ‘As police?’

  He gave her a jaunty shrug. ‘Why not? We could use a permanent staff member.’

  ‘D, we both know that wouldn’t work.’ Knowing that only made the warm rush to her heart more pleasurable.

  ‘It wouldn’t?’ He seemed genuinely surprised. ‘Why?’

  ‘We irritate the hell out of each other. Besides,’ she chuckled, ‘do you really see me in uniform?’

  ‘All the time,’ he said. ‘In my dreams.’

  ‘Or is that your nightmares?’

  ‘Sometimes hard to tell the difference.’

  • • •

  He came out with her to help load up the detachment trailer then travelled with them to the quayside. Out of the protection of the buildings, the air was chill with autumn. Soon the sun would dip below the horizon for the first time since April and the nights would be dark and the sky full of stars once more. How Edie looked forward to that.

  Willa was standing in the launch tinkering with the outboard but he stopped what he was doing and swung over to greet them.

  ‘Nearly done,’ he said, wiping his hands on a rag. ‘She just needed some fine-tuning.’

  They began to load up the launch, Edie and Derek standing on the quay, passing things to Sammy in the boat while Willa finished up. There was a shout from Willa and they turned to see Lizzie and Alice walking along the quay towards them. For the first time since Martha had gone missing they seemed, if not happy, then at least easier in themselves. As they approached, Lizzie even waved. Willa heaved out of the boat and went over to meet them. He slung his arm around Lizzie’s waist. Mother and daughter were smiling now. Sammy held out a hand for Edie and she stepped off the boat onto the quay after him, smoothing down her summer parka.

  ‘We came to say goodbye,’ Lizzie said. She gave her mother a look. Alice Salliaq was clutching something in her hand, which she now held out to Edie.

  ‘We want you to have this,’ she said. It was the photograph of Martha at the bird cliffs, captured in a moment of happiness, they now knew, by Rashid Alfasi. She’d given it back after the case had closed but they thought of it as hers now.

  ‘Sure you won’t come back to Autisaq with us?’ Sammy said to Willa. ‘You and Lizzie?’ The young man shook his head, smiling.

  ‘Nah. We still got Charlie to look after. In any case, no disrespect, the place got too many bad memories for me.’ He turned and smiled at Lizzie. ‘Besides, I
think the contractors up at Glacier Ridge gonna offer me a mechanic’s job. That lawyer lady put in a good word.’ His arm snaked around his girl and he laid his hand on her belly. She glanced at him and they both beamed.

  ‘I’ve got a new life right here,’ he said pointedly.

  Edie and Sammy exchanged surprised glances.

  ‘What he’s saying is we’re having a baby,’ Lizzie said, laughing. ‘We had the scan in Iqaluit. A girl. We thought we’d call her Martha.’

  For a moment they all stood together, smiling.

  Then, wiping his sleeve across his eyes, Sammy said, ‘Well, I guess we’d better get going. Wind’s coming up.’ He reached out and pinched his son’s cheek. ‘I’m proud of you, Willa. I’m proud of you both.’

  Sammy turned and clambered into the launch. Edie followed on. Willa came forward and unhitched the rope line from the cleat, Sammy throttled up and a minute later they were out on the waters of the Sound.

  The breeze slid softly through Edie’s hair. She thought about Martha Salliaq, the beady-eyed girl with the big ambitions for her life. In her mind’s eye she could still see the moment their eyes met and Martha saying Thanks for helping. Then she turned her face to the sun and closed her eyes and watched as thousands of tiny veins appeared in relief behind her lids. The web of blood. How beautiful it was, and tangled. She pictured the veins reaching out, spreading and connecting with one another. She could hear her mother saying, Never forget, panik – my daughter – that blood goes around the body but it always returns to the heart.

  The figures on the quay were growing smaller now. They were waving. She waved back.

  ‘Saimu, Martha Salliaq,’ she said out loud.

  Goodbye.

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks as ever to Simon Booker, Dr Tai Bridgeman and to Ian Jackman, who dutifully read and commented on various drafts; to my agent Peter Robinson and the team at Rogers, Coleridge and White, especially Stephen Edwards, Margaret Halton and Alex Goodwin, and to Kim Witherspoon at Inkwell Management. Maria Rejt and Sophie Orme at Mantle and Kathryn Court and Scott Cohen at Penguin USA are a formidable editing team. Thanks also to Ali Blackburn, Sophie Portas, Neil Lang, Martin Bryant and to everyone at Mantle and Penguin USA who helped see this book through to publication.