The Bone Seeker Read Free Page A

profiting from the new arrivals, setting up impromptu bars to cater to their desire to drink and even, rumour had it, establishing a brothel, though none of the locals seemed to know where it was or who was working there.
    â€˜Listen,
avasirngulik
,’ Edie said – she was careful to use the respectful ‘elder’ with him – ‘you want help looking for your daughter, I’ll come along. I’ve hunted this way a few times, though I don’t know the land around here real well. Either way, I think it’s best if we go see Sergeant Palliser at the police detachment. Maybe he’ll organize a search plane.’
    Sergeant Derek Palliser was the more senior of the two members of the Ellesmere Island Native Police, who between them were responsible for policing five hamlets and a couple of weather stations scattered across a frigid desert of mountains, fjords and rocky scree the size of Wyoming. Right now, Derek’s deputy, Constable Stevie Killik, was on a computer course in the south, so Palliser was on his own, but he knew the land, he knew the people and, more to the point, he was Edie’s friend. They’d solved a couple of tough cases and she trusted him to know what to do.
    â€˜The Lemming Police got nothing to say that I want to hear,’ Salliaqsaid. The local people found Derek’s scientific interest in lemming population dynamics quirky at best. Salliaq had nothing but contempt for it. For Palliser himself too. Edie wondered if it was because Derek was half Inuit and half Cree. Charlie made no secret of the fact that he didn’t trust Indians or
qalunaat
. There were exceptions, of whom Edie was one. He’d heard about her going after her stepson Joe’s killer and seemed impressed.
    â€˜They tell me you’re half
qalunaat
, but you don’t play by
qalunaat
rules,’ he’d said when he’d first met her.
    â€˜Only set of rules I know is mine,’ she’d said. ‘And I don’t have any.’
    That tickled him.
    Now, though, his mood was more sombre.
    Edie picked up her bag and made a move towards the door.
    â€˜Well, I don’t suppose you have any objections to my talking to him?’ She’d already decided she was going to do just that whether the old bigot liked it or not.
    â€˜You can try. Won’t do anyone no good, though.’ Salliaq shrugged. For a moment their eyes locked.
    â€˜You do what you like,’ the old man grumbled, finally. ‘What I heard, that’s what you always do.’
    â€˜I’ll take that as permission granted,’ Edie said. As she followed him out into the corridor, Martha’s face reappeared as it had in her dream and a rush of foreboding rolled towards her like a low, dark wave.

2
    Derek Palliser lit his seventh cigarette of the day, put down his empty coffee mug and returned to plugging the hole in the window frame of his lemming shed. He was making slow progress, though, on account of the stiffness in his fingers, which had continued to plague him long after his hands had healed from the frostbite he’d suffered last spring. He’d planned to spend the morning working out a route for the summer patrol, but the weekend rain had swollen the window frame and busted out the glass. Once Constable Stevie Killik returned from his combined computer course and summer leave, Derek intended to start a programme of exterior renovations in preparation for the winter, but the window on the lemming shed was one chore that wouldn’t wait. If there was one thing the rodents couldn’t stand it was draughts.
    The cigarettes and coffee were keeping him just the right side of alert. Truth was, he could have done with a few more hours in bed and would have taken them if he’d thought that there was a chance in hell he’d sleep. He had to remind himself that he’d felt this exhausted every summer since he’d first arrived on Ellesmere nearly thirteen