Within seconds, she found a file labelled 'Hunting Permits' and pulled it out. The two men's duck permits were listed by date. R. Raskolnikov and P. Petrovich. No addresses, just mailbox numbers. There was something vaguely familiar about the names. Edie tried to recall where she'd come across them before. In the Arctic Circular? Then, in a rush, it came to her. For the only time in her life, she found herself thanking the Canadian government for her ridiculous, southern-curriculum education. Of course she knew. Raskolnikov and Petrovich were characters in Crime and Punishment, the murderer and the detective sworn to bring him down. She kicked herself. The clues had been under her nose all along: the pseudonyms, the green plane, the men's keener interest in Craig's geology than in its ornithology. The drink had scrambled her so badly she hadn't been able to put it all together. Joe must have been right. A green plane had come over Craig the day Andy Taylor disappeared. And Edie was now pretty sure that she knew who'd been in it.
She allowed herself a triumphant little air punch, then she went back to the files, searching for the flight log, and found it, right where it should be. Sheila Silliq didn't know just what a treasure she really was. On the date in question, a Twin Otter, registration XOY4325, had landed from direction Iqaluit at 10.28 a.m., carrying one pilot and two passengers. Edie committed the details to memory and replaced the flight log.
Out of interest she flipped through the remainder of the files in the cabinet, until she reached a file marked 'SI, personal'. She pulled out the file and found a sheaf of bank statements in Simeonie Inukpuk's name. Following the list of transactions with her finger, she lighted on nothing more interesting than a few sums relating to a womens-wear emporium in Ottawa. The mayor often flew in to the capital to attend local government meetings. Either he had a mistress down there or a transvestite habit. Neither of which was of any interest to Edie.
The next page seemed to be from a different account, and listed a number of regular deposits of CA$5,000 each from a numbered account, made in favour of the Autisaq Children's Foundation. Very touching, or it would be, if Edie could conjure a single thing it had ever done for the children of Autisaq.
The door to the mayor's office was locked, so she took out her Leatherman. The locks in the prefabs were all of a kind. In common with most folk in Autisaq, she'd removed most of hers, so she knew exactly how they worked.
Swinging open the pick attachment, she slid it into the keyhole and felt for the lock, which gave way very quickly She went round to the back of the desk and switched on the computer. While it was booting up, she looked about, not sure what she was hoping to find. The screen glowed then resolved into the screensaver: an image of an iceberg. Computers weren't her thing but she'd had to learn the basics for her teaching. She went into Explorer and clicked on History, running her eye down the list until, unexpectedly, the words Zemmer Energy came into view. Edie took a loud breath. Of course Zemmer wasn't a pizza joint. It was an energy company with something to hide and Felix Wagner, Andy Taylor and now, she realized, Simeonie Inukpuk, were all familiar with it.
She clicked on the URL and immediately a pop-up window appeared requesting a password. She was about to tap in some possible combinations when Bonehead started barking. Racing to the door, she remembered that she hadn't turned off the computer, lunged forward, grabbed the cable and pulled. Then, closing the door quietly behind her, she made her way back along the corridor. Seeing her, Bonehead began whining and coughing, straining against his leash.
From the steps of the Town Hall she saw what it was that had set him off. Immediately in front of her, not five metres away, stood a polar bear, a young male. For a minute or two Edie and the bear watched one another, then the animal turned and trotted away.
Dawn found Edie bumping up and down on rough, ice- ridden breakers in her skiff, on her way to Martie's cabin. If anyone could help her find out more about the green plane, she figured, it would be her aunt.
She found Martie asleep on top of a pile of skins, an empty bottle of Mist beside her. As well as the stench of alcohol there was something else, a smoky, slightly sour aroma. Edie went to the primus to mug up but Martie didn't wake when the kettle started singing.
A handful of cold water thrown in the direction of the sleeping platform had the effect Edie was looking for; pretty soon a face appeared above the skins, squinted across for as long as it took to establish who was fixing tea, then disappeared back under the covers.
Ah, Little Bear, it's you.' A muffled sound. A hand appeared, rubbing her head. 'What the hell you doing this time of day or night or whatever it is, you crazy creature?'
Edie poured the tea. She'd left in too much of a hurry, hadn't dressed right and felt stupid. The trip had frozen her bones. By the time she was stirring in the sugar, Martie had already noticed her niece's shivers and was holding both arms out and waving her over.
'Don't let yourself get so cold.' She pressed her fingers into Edie's face to gauge her temperature then took hold of her, transferring some of her still sleep-soaked body warmth. Edie sucked on her mug of tea until the lump in her throat went away.
'Martie, I need something.'
Martie said: 'I feel like shit.' She began rubbing at her skin, which was mottled and sprinkled with small lesions.
'You ill?'
Martie followed Edie's gaze. 'Oh, these?' She wafted a hand at a raw patch on her lower arm then slid her arms back under the caribou skin. 'Uh nuh, just allergies.' She put on a smile. 'Now, what do you need?'
Edie drew out the paper on which she'd written details of the plane and read them out. 'You know this plane?'
Martie gazed at the numbers until her double vision cleared, then shook her head. 'Nope, but the registration's out of Greenland, that any help. What you wanna know for?'
'The flight log said the plane came in from the south, from Iqaluit. Any way to know that for sure?'
Martie gave a little hum to indicate she was concentrating. 'What direction was the wind that day?'
Edie reconstructed the scene in her mind, working out where the wind was blowing in from and in which direction the plane landed.
'Either the person who wrote the log doesn't know the difference between the four compass points or someone was lying. That plane is registered in Greenland and came in from Greenland.' A pause while Martie finished her tea. 'Should I be feeling better yet, because I can't help noticing that I don't.'
'Martie, you ever heard of the Autisaq Children's Foundation?'
Martie went back under the covers. 'Is it connected to the Auntie Martie Needs to Sleep Foundation?'
By the time Edie got back home, there seemed no point in going back to bed. She went to the fridge, found a bowl of seal-blood soup, smelled it to check it was fresh, then set it in the microwave to heat. She took a deep breath and held the bowl to her lips. The liquid was thick with granules of congealed, cooked blood. She was conscious of being hungry, though she couldn't feel it in her belly, but the smell made her faintly nauseous. Pinching her nose, she raised her head to open her throat and poured it down. Thoughts flurried about in her mind but the only idea that really settled was the notion that Joe had been murdered. Who'd done it and why remained a puzzle, but she was pretty sure that Welatok's meteorite lay at the heart of it. If Mike Nungaq's theory was right, then the meteorite was a necessary route map to the Craig Island astrobleme. Wagner, Taylor and now it seemed most likely the Russians had all come in search of it.
Why the astrobleme might be of interest, she didn't know, but Wagner had noted some connection with salt, which the Quebecois article seemed to confirm, and both Wagner and Taylor were talking with Zemmer Energy so it made sense to suppose that the crater marked something of interest to them. She couldn't quite figure where the diary pages came in, unless they gave some description of the locale; and whoever was looking for the astrobleme would need the stone to make a match to others in the area and establish the scatter pattern of the impact. So the diary and the stone must be inextricably linked.
Together they comprised a map which would allow scientists to bypass years of geological exploration.
What little she knew so far pointed to the possibility that the two Russians were also behind the death of Andy Taylor. It made sense that it was they who'd been in the green plane Joe saw on the day Taylor disappeared. Maybe he'd reneged on some kind of deal, or perhaps it was simpler than that: he was near to finding the astrobleme and they couldn't allow that to happen. If it was they who had killed him, they must have done it from the plane. No one could have landed in the blizzard conditions Joe had described. In which case, it was still a puzzle who had butchered and scattered Taylor's remains.
Exactly how all this was connected to Joe's death she didn't yet understand, yet she knew in her bones that it was. She looked about her. The door to Joe's room continued to dominate the space.
She thought about what Sammy had done with Joe's credit card. If she'd still been drinking, she would have reached for a bottle of Mist, then gone round to his house and started a fight.
She remembered her mental note to check with Robert about Joe's gambling. There was a puzzle, right there. The nurse had seemed so sure of his suspicions, but she didn't understand how Joe could have gambled online without a credit card. Maybe she was missing something. Flinging on her summer parka she stepped out into the street.
Robert was in his office, sorting condoms. A pile of musk-ox wrappers lay to his left, the others, seal, walrus and Arctic hare to his right. He signalled for Edie to wait.
'Some dumbass screwed up the musk-ox batch so I'm having to waste my time separating them all out.'
'I can suggest an alternative.'
'You can?' he said.
'You could stop wasting your time and talk to me.'
Robert looked up in surprise, sighed, and put down the condoms.
'Sorry. What can I do for you?'
'You've probably noticed I'm quite stupid.'
Robert nodded to signal he was listening, then checked himself and shook his head.
'What I can't work out is how Joe owed money for online gambling.'
He shrugged. 'I guess he just got hooked. People do. Get hooked on things, I mean.' He went back to his condoms. 'Do you mind if I carry on sorting these?'
'No, I mean, I don't know how he owed anything. To play online you need a credit card, right?'
Robert shrugged again. 'I guess so.'
She told him what she knew.
Robert stopped his sorting, reached over to the computer and clicked through with the mouse, then swivelled the monitor around to show Edie the password window with the username 'Joelnukpuk' on a splashy portal announcing itself as the Gaming Station.
'This is the site.'
'Put the password in,' she said.
Robert looked taken aback. 'I don't know it.'
'But you knew Joe owed money?'
Robert swivelled the monitor back.
'Yeah, when I first clicked on it the site let me in but when I tried to get back into it later, it was blocked. Some kind of password-protected time lock, I guess. It was weird.' He returned to his sorting. 'You're upset, Edie, we all are. You know - and this is hard to say, I feel really bad I didn't see it coming - looking back I can see Joe had a heap of reasons to want to end his life.'
'He had a heap of reasons to want to hang on to it.'
She heard herself telling Robert about the deaths of Wagner and Taylor, how they were connected. It surprised her to be confiding in him, but there it was. 'I think Joe somehow got wrapped up in it.' She considered carrying on, confessing her theory about injectable pills, but caution intervened and told her that as Edie the woman she was impetuous, impulsive even, but now she needed to be Edie the hunter.
Robert sat back for a moment, thoughts scrolling across his face. Then he got up and taking her hands said very kindly, 'Edie, are you still hallucinating?'
'No,' she lied.
Later, in the shower, she opened her mouth, allowed the water to run in then spat it out again. It was soft, blood-warm and tasted unpleasantly of chlorine. Before they'd always used water pumped directly from the Autisaq lake up beyond the glacier. Now it all had to go through some supposed purification process. Another one of Simeonie's 'modernization' schemes. She turned off the shower and reached for a towel, then decided against it. In the grip of some unfamiliar feeling, she padded out naked into the living room. Outside a pale sun threw sparkles across the sea.
One spring, back when she and Sammy were together, and their drinking was particularly bad, they had taken it upon themselves to go ice fishing up at the Autisaq lake. The lake had been fished out years before, but back when there were still char living there, Elijah Nungaq had returned from a fishing expedition one day claiming to have seen a huge fish, almost as big as a beluga, lurking in the depths of the lake. A hunting party had gone out immediately afterwards but the fish had disappeared. All the same, the creature was spoken about frequently, growing in size and reputation each time, and groups of fishermen and women would periodically go out to the lake to try to catch it.
This is what she and Sammy were doing that day but, of course, within a short while of reaching the lake they were both so drunk they forgot all about the fish, and didn't notice the low clouds and the breeze coming in from the north that signalled a blizzard. The first snow was already beginning to fall when Edie felt a tug on her arm and, starting awake, looked up to see Joe standing above her.
Later, she and Sammy had laughed off the event because they couldn't bear the idea that they owed their lives to a ten-year-old boy.
She was standing in the warm stream of sunlight, playing the memory back in her mind when an idea cut in. Suddenly it seemed very clear what she needed to do next. She dried herself off, dressed and went round to Sammy's house. He was in his usual position on the sofa, watching a rerun of The Wire. She noticed that the Bible was face out on the shelf.
'I'm going to Greenland,' she said.
'You're going where? Why?'
'Those two Russians, the duck hunters, they came in from Greenland on a Greenlandic plane. I think they might know why Joe died.' She considered telling Sammy about the astroblemes and about Zemmer Energy then decided against it. There were some people who couldn't take too much reality. Her ex-husband was one of them.
Sammy shook his head and tutted disapprovingly.
'Only one person knows why my son died,' he said. 'You want to find out, you have to ask Joe's spirit.'
'You think I haven't?'
'Then maybe he doesn't want us to know.'
'No, Sammy, I think you're wrong. I think he wants us to find out for ourselves.'
* * *
Chapter Twelve
'Nuuk in Greenland?'
Edie gave a thumbs-up to the Inuk man at the airport information counter to let him know she'd got through, then she turned her attention back to Derek Palliser.
'Did those lemmings tunnel through your brain?' she asked.
'What the hell are you doing in Nuuk?' He seemed genuinely dumbfounded. 'Edie, do I need to worry?'
'About me?' She snorted. 'Of course not.'
'Why didn't you mention this before?'
'Because I knew you'd interfere,' she said.
The Inuk man began making hang-up gestures.
'But we had a deal,' Derek said.
'Didn't someone tell you yet? People break deals all the time.'
He sighed. 'At some point I'm going to have to get involved.' She heard a rustle of papers. 'You know how it is, nothing stays secret for long around here.'
'You'd be surprised.'
Another silence. 'I guess you're not going to tell me what that means.'
'Uh nuh. Not yet anyway.'
She'd decided not to mention her new theory until she had something more to go on. Her plan was to find the plane and through that the two Russian hunters who came looking for rocks on Craig.
'Anything happens, there's a letter.'
She described whe
re he could find the key to her old booze cupboard, empty now but for an envelope containing the pages she'd found in the ice cave plus four more written in her own scruffy hand.
'Promise me you'll find out what happened to Joe.'
'Edie, we've been through this. You know what happened.'
'I mean, why. I want that to be a promise, Derek, not a deal.'
There was a pause, but this time it felt full and potent, like the silence between lovers.
'I promise,' he said, finally; then, in a lighter tone, 'How's Nuuk?'
All she'd seen of the town so far, aside from the airport terminal, was on the approach from the air.
'Awful,' she said. 'Too many roads, not nearly enough ice.'
The man at the info booth began signalling to her again. Derek was still laughing when she cut him off.
'Sorry, we're not supposed to make international calls,' the man at the info booth said.
He had a disc-shaped face with a mouth that looked as though it had got stuck in a permanent turndown. When she'd first spoken to him in Inuktitut, he hadn't understood her. They were speaking in English now, but even then she found it hard to pick her way through his accent. It had unsettled her to discover that not all Inuit spoke the same version of the language.
'I haven't finished,' she said.
The man looked up. His eyes narrowed then he swivelled round, following a sudden commotion. Four uniformed men rushed by, making for the terminal door. The Inuk watched them go.
'Trouble?'
'Protestors.'
'Oh.' The idea seemed strange. Anyone had anything to protest about in Autisaq, they walked into the Town Hall and spoke directly to the mayor.
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