The Bone Seeker Read Free Page B

years ago. The constant light – and absence of anything approaching a normal ‘night’ – from March through to September always left him wired and ornery. White noise cascaded through his brain, as if a permanent avalanche had set up inside his head. He knew from bitter experience there was nothing for it except to keep himself pepped on nicotine and coffee, but this year, somehow, everything seemed even more of an effort than usual.
    Hearing something behind him, he turned to see Edie Kiglatuk,waving and trying to get his attention. He stubbed out his cigarette and went over. Her face was strained.
    â€˜Trouble?’ he said, swatting away an eddy of mosquitoes. He’d allowed himself to get bitten while he was working. Thin, braided rivers of sweat and blood made their way down his forearms.
    â€˜Maybe,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell you inside.’
    If Derek had been honest with himself, he’d have seen a long time ago that the interior of the detachment was no better than the outside. The old wooden floor was warped and the boards needed replacing and the blinds at the windows were cracked from sun and frost. He’d lived quite happily in a state of bachelor-style semi-squalor until Edie had arrived. Now he was a little embarrassed by it. Something about her presence made him want to fix the place up, make it look nice. He scouted around for a spare chair.
    â€˜Now, that trouble . . .’
    The instant she mentioned the Salliaq family, his spirits sank. Years back, when they’d been having a really bad problem with loose dogs, he’d impounded several huskies belonging to Charlie Salliaq and made the old man pay a fine to retrieve them. Ever since, Salliaq had taken gleeful pleasure in bad-mouthing him. In Derek’s mind the animosity between them had nothing to do with stray dogs and everything to do with the fact that Derek was half Cree. Inuit and Cree had never been the best of friends. The word Eskimo derived from the Cree for ‘head louse’. Just one reason why Eskimo in the eastern Arctic preferred to go by the name Inuit. These days, though, most folk had got over the old hostility and learned to rub along, conscious that both their futures depended on presenting a united front. But Charlie Salliaq was old school; he held on to grudges the way others held on to their hats in a blizzard.
    As Edie’s story unfolded, he felt a growing sense of relief. Everyone went a little crazy in the summer and it sounded very much as though Martha had just gone AWOL for a while. Ten to one she was visiting friends in some distant summer camp and, either through thoughtlessness or teenage defiance, hadn’t told her parents she was going. Maybeshe’d picked herself a boyfriend from among the soldiers. The military camp had only been up and running a week but already there were plenty of lean young
unataqti
hanging around town in the hope of meeting local girls. And succeeding. He’d seen them, half cut, clinging on to their conquests like they were life-vests. Broke his heart a little, tell the truth.
    â€˜Who saw her last?’ he said.
    â€˜So far as we know, her uncle, on Saturday morning. She went round there to pick up a schoolbook. Charlie said he’s gonna put out a message on the red radio, hope someone will call in to say they’ve seen her.’
    â€˜They won’t if she’s with a soldier.’ No one was going to volunteer to be the person who broke
that
news to old Charlie Salliaq. ‘But, look, even if she’s on her own somewhere she won’t have gone far.’ It would have been different in winter. But the polar bears had left for the north with the ice and the wolves were too busy feasting on lemmings to bother humans and he thought it was unlikely she’d come to any harm. In this weather she wouldn’t freeze.
    â€˜I wouldn’t be too worried,’ he said. ‘Even if she’s