The Bone Seeker (3 page)

‘How odd,' Edie said. She pointed out of the side window but all he could see were a few thin strings of cirrus.

‘What?' Derek undid his belt and twisted his neck around, though it made his head swim to do it.

‘A bear. They're usually on their way north to the floe edge by now.'

‘You want me to swing back?' Pol asked Derek.

The policeman nodded and prepared himself for the stomach lurch. Ahead, the rows of tents and prefab units of Camp Nanook stood on the tundra in incongruous straight lines, as though on parade. The plane rose higher then banked sharply and wheeled round, retracing their route through a patch of cloud. Coming through into clear air they caught sight of the bear. Spooked by the sound of the aircraft engine, it was running for the safety of the sea.

The surface of the pool where the bear had been appeared to be bubbling and seething. Derek first supposed it was a trick of the light, but as the slipstream from the plane passed across it, the western bank seemed to expand, as though it had suddenly turned to gas. He realized that he never seen anything like this before. He turned back, leaning over Edie to get a better view.

‘What the hell is that?'

She curled around and caught his gaze. There was something wild about the way she was looking at him now, the muscles in her face taut, her black eyes blazing.

‘Mosquitoes.'

He began to speak but she cut him off. ‘They're feeding on whatever attracted the bear.'

On the flight back to Kuujuaq Edie tried desperately to stop herself from imagining the worst. As they descended, a memory surfaced in the odd way they sometimes do when you least expect it, or perhaps when you need it most. This one was from when she was seven or eight, a year or two after her father had left. Every year the annual supply ship brought up two or three films in cans. People sat in the church and watched them projected onto a roll-up screen. One year they showed
The Red Balloon
. The dazzling, crimson purity of the balloon against the stark black and white of the film. How often she'd seen its equivalent. The dark winter sky, blood sitting on snow. Nature red in tooth and claw. Years later, she read that a newborn baby recognizes red before any other colour. This came as no surprise. Somewhere inside her the child was still reaching for that red balloon.

After Pol dropped them at the landing strip, they drove their ATVs to the nursing station and picked up Luc Fabienne, the nurse, and the gurney trailer and headed out along the muddy track towards Lake Turngaluk. For long stretches on either side of them the rock was bare, or loosely laced with brilliant red and yellow lichens, but as they moved further from the coast and the ground dipped, the slick rock was replaced by pucks of muskeg tufted with cotton grass and mountain sorrel and eventually they found themselves on a desert pavement which stretched all the way to the mountains. In the past week, the summer heat had alchemized the tundra, transforming the cold, dark, peaty substrate into a bright, living carpet. The high sun, shining from the south in the day, from the north during the bright night, had exposed
the carcasses of half-eaten animals entombed by the ice through the long winter and brought them to the attention of foxes and ravens. All around them there were freeze-dried body parts, racks of antlers, remnants of fur and hoof. Before the summer was out, whatever remained of the flesh would be picked clean and new plants would spring up: snow buttercup, polar chickweed and moss campion, blooming around the bleached bones like grave flowers.

For all that, though, the tundra smelled sweet and freshly vegetal and from time to time the scent of Arctic heather blew up on the prevailing northwesterly breeze. It was only as they moved out of a hollow and up a slight incline that the unmistakably abrasive, sour tang of decomposition hit her and Edie felt herself slowing, a feeling of hollow dread holding her back. Derek came up alongside, pointing to his nose.

‘What's up?' This from Luc.

Edie swallowed. ‘Blood.' A scent as individual as the grooves in a fingerprint.

There was nothing for it but to press on. Bumping across rocky scree, they descended into a soggy hollow then up another low incline. The smell grew stronger and they found themselves on a patch of slick rock overlooking the pool where the bear had been. They keyed off their engines and sat for a moment looking out. In her mind's eye Edie could see Martha Salliaq, sunny-faced and smiling, chatting in the breaks between classes, the flash in her eyes suggesting that there was more to know. She thought back to that Friday afternoon, to the girl she'd half hoped to recruit as a friend. Then she heard herself whisper,
If it has to be someone, don't let it be Martha.

She was right about the mosquitoes. They were dancing and dipping, trying to work their way further in towards the water. Derek and Edie exchanged glances. Mosquitoes didn't usually bother cadavers, which meant that the blood must be in the water, along with whatever had supplied it. They walked on, more carefully this time, their progress slowed by the curtains of mosquitoes which flared up from the muskeg beside them and by a heaviness of heart that made each step drag. They descended to the water's edge in silence. The liquid lapping
at their feet was greasy and terracotta-coloured, a bloody soup. Edie glanced at Derek who blinked grimly in return.

A body was floating in dark water not far from the bank, naked, face down with the arms spread on either side like a cross. The swelling, the shadowy patches on the skin suggested that it had lain in the water some time. The hair was short, exposing the neck, and for a moment Edie felt a rush of relief. She moved forward, her legs propelling her towards the lake, and before she really knew what she was doing she was stumbling through the mud in the shallows, the mosquitoes whirling up around her like black hailstones in a thick wind, yelling, ‘It's not her, it's not her!'

Then there were splashes behind her and a shrill voice. A pair of hands landed on her shoulders, pulling her back towards the waterline. She felt herself being whirled around, caught up in Derek's arms and unable to move.

‘Stop!'

She froze. For an instant nothing happened then she felt Derek begin to drag her from the water, his arms squeezed so tightly around her that there was nothing she could do to resist him. They stood at the water's edge, panting a little, the policeman's face etched with anger.

‘If you behave like that again, Edie Kiglatuk, so help me I will arrest you for interfering with an investigation.' He let go of her and stepped back, leaving his frustration draped between them.

Luc was standing at the water's edge staring at the body. ‘If it's not Martha, who the hell is it?'

Derek stood with his arms hugging his chest. ‘Whoever it is, we're gonna have to bring them in. I hate to do it. Procedurally, we should leave the body at the scene until the medical examiner and the forensics team get here but it's a three-hour flight from Iqaluit, and that's assuming they can leave immediately. If we don't get the body out of the water that bear'll be back before you can blink. Then I'll have to shoot it and the damned Wildlife Service'll be all over me. Not to mention the elders for depriving them of one of their hunting tags.' He ran a hand across his face but the anguish in his expression remained. ‘But
let's not jump to conclusions. We don't yet know a crime has been committed here.' His lips tightened into a thin line. To Edie he said, ‘Luc and I will get the body. I need you to check around this pool here then the boundary of the lake.' He reached into his pack and took out a camera. ‘Look for prints, tracks, objects, anything that might be useful.'

Edie hesitated. She felt sidelined, and she didn't like it. ‘But . . .'

Derek shot her a dark look, his brow furrowed, hands on hips. ‘Please, Edie, just do as I ask and try not to be such a pain in the ass.'

•   •   •

The lake consisted of a series of pools linked by slow-running channels. To walk around them all took some time. By the time she returned, empty-handed, the men had already removed the body. It was lying on the gurney zipped inside a bag. They were now fixing wooden stakes around the immediate area. Derek passed her a roll of crime tape and motioned to her to help him string it around the stakes. Before she had the chance to ask whose body it was, Derek said,

‘What'd you find?'

‘Not much. Some newly broken willow twigs. Looks like a vehicle came this way, but nothing you can follow.' The weather had been rough over the weekend, with squally rain. Any tracks had long since disappeared back into the willow and the mud.

‘Any drag lines? A blood trail?'

‘Uh nuh.' She knew he trusted her hunter's eye to have picked up anything like that.

They finished with the tape. She jerked her head in the direction of the body.

‘You know who it is?'

Derek nodded. Something on his face made her heart quicken and a dull dread fill her belly.

‘I want to see the body.'

Derek shook his head. His voice cracked a little. ‘I don't think that's a good idea. It's been in the water a while.' He scraped a hand across his forehead. ‘In this heat.'

But he was too late. Edie was already striding towards Luc's ATV.

Luc glanced across at the policeman, who shrugged.

At the gurney she stood for a moment to gather herself. Then she took hold of the zip on the body bag and pulled. In an instant, Martha Salliaq's face appeared from under the plastic, as if in some terrible hallucination, puffy, the skin mottled, a greenish-purple web already creeping across its surface. Edie heard herself give an involuntary cry, more animal than human, like the moan of a gull. Her hand was shaking, her whole body electrified. Something fluttered uncontrollably in her chest but she barely recognized it as her heart.

The girl's eyes were still part open, the mouth slack and watery, the lips blue-tinted now to match the hair, which had been cut crudely into a short bob. But there was nothing on the face to suggest anything other than a kind of calm and remote unreality, as though the skin had only ever contained an impression of life, a reflection perhaps. As she stood an implacable sadness came over her, as though she'd reached a vast wall at the end of a dark track.

She reached for the zip again and the nightmare disappeared under the plastic.

Derek came towards her with his hand outstretched, a pained look on his face. She pulled her arms tight around her body. Last thing she needed right now was sympathy. She thought about the girl's firebrand father, Charlie, then about her fragile mother, Alice; how this news might crush the life from them both.

‘When?'

Luc gave a little shrug. ‘Hard to tell. The condition of the body suggests a while ago, maybe a couple days, but I'm no expert. I'm guessing from all the blood that she was alive when she went in.'

Edie suddenly felt numb and useless. ‘Her hair. Someone cut it. Why would they do that?'

‘A trophy maybe? I don't know, Edie.'

She heard herself give a low moan. ‘You're sure she was murdered then.'

‘It looks that way,' Luc said.

‘Do you know how?'

For a moment no one answered. She saw Luc cut a sideways look at Derek, seeking permission to speak, then bite his lip and avert his eyes.

‘It looks like a stab wound. We can't confirm anything yet. There will be tests, an autopsy,' Derek said.

There were no signs of injury on the girl's face or neck. None on the body, at least what she had seen of it.

‘A stab wound where?'

Derek threw a glance at Luc and braced himself.

‘
Utsuk
.' The vagina. ‘It looks like the knife went a long way inside her, most likely severed the uterine artery, Luc thinks, which led to the blood loss. But it's not inside her now.'

Edie felt something inside her melt. An ill vapour spread through her body.

‘At this stage it's hard to say whether or not she was raped, other than with the knife of course,' Luc added hastily.

A steadying hand landed on her arm but she didn't need it. Part of her felt strangely energized. She guessed it was the shock, or the adrenalin, or both.

‘We should tell the Salliaqs,' she said.

‘I think that might be best coming from you,' Derek agreed. ‘Before the gossip starts. You know how it is up here.'

She did. Her own home settlement of Autisaq was exactly the same. There were only two kinds of secrets in the High Arctic: the open ones and the ones you took to your grave.

‘Don't say anything specific about where the body was found if you can help it. It'll be hard for them to hear that she was in Lake Turngaluk. The Kuujuamiut go out of their way to avoid coming here. They say it's evil.' He arced a finger in the air. ‘You'll notice all the
inuksuit
point away. If they ask how she died just say she was stabbed. Right now, it's important to keep the information to a minimum. For the investigation as well as for their sanity.'

Turning to Luc, Derek said, ‘You and I need to get the body back to the nursing station. I'll call the forensics unit and make sure the folks at Camp Nanook are kept informed.'

Edie felt Derek's eyes searching her out. ‘Can you do this?'

It was a question that didn't deserve an answer.

•   •   •

An hour later, she was making her way on foot in the direction of the Salliaqs' house. At the shoreline track, just south of the store, a voice called to her. In her daze she found it hard to place. She swung round and saw it belonged to Chip.

‘Hey,' he said, throwing her a quizzical look. ‘You OK?'

She blinked away the film in her eyes, pressed her lips hard and shook her head.

‘Martha?'

At her nod his shoulders fell and he reached out an arm.

‘I'm sorry.'

She nodded but didn't touch him. ‘The family don't know yet. I'm just on my way to tell them.'

‘Don't worry, I won't say anything.' He crossed his arms. ‘No one round here speaks to me anyway. You wanna come see me afterwards, you know where I am.'

She met his eye. ‘Thank you.'

‘It's the least I can do.'

•   •   •

The Salliaqs lived in one of the identikit boxes that had been hastily erected parallel to the shore in the seventies and eighties to replace a row of canvas tents and rudimentary cabins constructed from bits of old packing cases insulated with caribou hair and heather. The houses represented a victory for the Kuujuamiut. The Canadian government, who had removed them from their homeland on east Hudson Bay and brought them to Ellesmere, had been promising to provide housing for twenty years. Ellesmere was so dry there was rarely enough snow for snowhouses. A whole generation had grown up surviving in tents lined with caribou skins in winter temperatures that frequently dipped to –50C. They'd begged the government to return them home. To make the journey on their own, two thousand kilometres on dogsleds across the harshest terrain on the planet, was impossible. But the Canadian
government refused to take them. It needed Canadians on Ellesmere to strengthen its claim on the territory. So they had no choice but to accept that they were on Ellesmere to stay. They'd done what Inuit are uniquely gifted at doing: they'd made the best of it.

The houses were drab and overcrowded but functional and, most importantly, warm. Over the years those who could afford to had added on little personal flourishes. In Charlie's case, a small outhouse, heated with overhead pipes diverted from the main house. Martha had once told Edie that her father went there to escape from the women of the family. Ironic that seemed now.