White Heat (47 page)

    Warmer
now, they gathered their things, leaving the sat phone, primus, a lightweight,
portable gurney and a few other bits and pieces behind on the beach. While
Derek and Willa heaved shovels, lights, tents and rifles onto their backs, Edie
picked up the thermos, Derek's video camera, a crowbar and her Remington, and
the threesome began to make their way along the shingle.

    The
path to Joe's grave lay at the other end of the beach, via a moraine meander up
onto the cliff and along the bluff. Filled with the sense of what lay ahead, no
one spoke. The cairn was covered with hoarfrost now, but already the morning
sun was beginning to heat the rocks beneath and the delicate frost filigree was
shining wet.

    They
kneeled in the ice and Willa said a prayer. Then, while Derek mounted the
camera on its tripod, Edie and Willa unfolded the lights, set the generator
running and readied the tent. The plan was to remove the rocks over the cairn
until the pelts covering the body appeared. Then they would erect the tent over
the site to protect the corpse from the elements and work with lights inside
the tent. The camera would be witness to the whole event. Derek had already
insisted that what went on inside the tent would be men's work. Edie had no
inclination to argue.

    Once
the equipment was ready, Derek switched on the camera and they began, slowly,
so as not to break sweat or disturb the position of the body. They removed the
stones from the cairn, one by one, starting with the smaller ones at the top of
the pile. As the rocks grew larger they worked as a team, Derek levering with a
crowbar while Edie and Willa manipulated each rock in turn onto a piece of tarp
then rolled or dragged it to the side, stacking it into an orderly pile with
the rest. They worked steadily and in silence and as they levered and rolled
and heaved, the pile of boulders and rocks covering the body of Joe Inukpuk
grew smaller and smaller and the pile beside the grave larger, until,
gradually, the caribou skins covering the body became visible. They cleared the
area and erected Edie's tent around the site, and the two men disappeared
inside and began the grisly work of clearing the last of the stones, and
heaving the body of Joe Inukpuk from the ground.

    For a
while Edie busied herself rearranging the rocks on the tarp, but when that
became too much, she sat back on the pile she'd made and waited. From inside
the tent she could hear Derek murmuring instructions. The wind came up, rushing
along the tundra and tumbling with a slicing whistle from the cliff. A gust
caught at the tent flap, and for a split second she could see the two men bent
over the caribou-skin shroud. Over one side of the skin, stiff and petrified,
she saw an arm and a hand, shrunken, brown, the skin scaly as a hoof. Then
Derek reached over to zip the flap and she turned away. Some strong force rose
up in her and she began to whisper,
isumagijunnaipaa, isumagijunnaipaa,
forgive
me, for all the times she had failed the boy who had treated her as a mother.

    A
long time later - she had no idea how much time - she heard Derek's voice
calling her. He came up to where she was squatting, leaned down and enveloped
her in his arms. He was smiling and the warmth of his breath spread across her
face. He'd seen it, a tiny shining fragment of plastic trapped almost in the
bridge of Joe's nose. They would have to take the body back to Autisaq for
examination by a pathologist for confirmation, but this was what they were
looking for and each part of the procedure had been captured on camera, so
there would be no chance for any lawyer to claim that the evidence had been
tampered with.

    They
had wrapped the body back up in its caribou shroud. Willa was still at his
brother's side, saying his prayers. Derek would go down to the beach, call the
pathologist in Iqaluit on the sat phone and bring back the gurney. They'd carry
Joe wrapped in his burial pelts. He suggested Edie stay with the body. When
Willa was done, he'd be in need of her. The experience had hit him hard.

    Edie
watched his wolf-fur hat disappear over the moraine. For a while she could hear
the soft squeal of his boots on the stones, then there was only the wind.
Standing beside the tent, she thought about what she had said to Derek, about Joe's
story needing an ending, and realized she'd been wrong. Joe was Inuit and Inuit
lives were like sundogs or Arctic rainbows, they ran not in lines but in
circles. Even now, as they exhumed his body, Joe's spirit was in the sky, a
star waiting to be reborn. It was she, with her
qalunaat
blood, who
demanded resolution. It was she who could only find her way to a singular
truth.

    The
cloud had come down now and the wind had stilled a little. Willa appeared from
the tent, his rifle in hand, alert, and with the intense muscular concentration
of the hunter in the path of his prey. He checked his ammunition and flipped
off the safety. There was an eager look in his eye.

    It
had been a very warm summer and the birds had remained to raise second broods.
These must be the juveniles from that final hatching. Edie had never seen them
stay so late. As the flock rose and fell, swooping across a gust, banking into
the weak thermals, she was struck by how much it behaved as a single entity, a
vast, fluid, kinetic essence.

    The
sound was almost deafening now, a great raucous clamour, rising up then
bouncing back onto the water. As the flock approached, from what now appeared
to be a great duck cloud, snow seemed to be falling. Willa had seen it and dropped
his rifle to his side. Cottony wisps of feathers caught in the wind and whipped
towards them.

    Soon
the shadow of the birds was directly over them and the air so thick with their
moult that Edie could hardly see Willa for the storm of feathers swirling about
and piling like snow at their feet. And all of a sudden the air was dark in
their shadow, the clanking of the birds so loud and the smell of guano so
overwhelming that they could do nothing but stand in awe, dumbfounded by the
spectacle. Only when the last of the stragglers had passed did Willa bend down,
scooping up an armful of the feathers and flinging them into the air. Then Edie
joined him and soon they were laughing and playing like children in snow, so
lost in the game that it took Edie a second or two before she fully registered
the sharp crack of a discharged bullet, followed shortly by another, then a
third from a different direction. Her body jerked upright so quickly that for
an instant she imagined she had been hit.

    Checking
her rifle was loaded and the infra-red scope was working, she motioned Willa to
stay down and remain where he was, then, grabbing her pack and crouching low,
she edged her way along the moraine towards the beach. Reaching the cliff line,
she dropped to the muskeg and scanned about the tuff and tundra. Below her, on
the beach, she could see the pile of supplies outlined against the shale, but
there was no sign of Derek or of whoever had fired the shot. Edie began to pull
herself forward on her elbows along the cliff line towards the path leading
down to the beach. Reaching it, she lifted herself into a low squat and began
making her way along the moraine, weaving between the larger boulders. Half way
down, where the path disappeared behind an outcrop of rock, she risked stopping
to look about.

    The
outcrop terminated in a ledge over the beach itself and, dropping to her belly
once more, Edie edged herself across until her head and shoulders were clear of
the rock altogether. From here she could look down to the foot of the cliff
where it joined the beach shale. Derek Palliser was pressed close to the
rockface, scanning the low hills to the northeast of the beach, his rifle
grasped in both hands, one leg, clearly injured, sticking out stiffly to one
side. An image sprang to her mind, of Felix Wagner's body bleeding out in the
snow, and she realized how much she needed Derek to live.

    Gathering
herself, she reached out for a large handful of feathers and flung them out
over the ledge onto the shale. Derek registered the cascade, and looked up. His
body relaxed a little. Pointing to the injured leg, she gestured a question
mark. He shook his head to say he couldn't move it but indicated he was OK. She
pointed to her rifle and raised her hands but he shook his head violently, not
wanting her to go after the shooter. Again she indicated the rifle and made as
if to start up and he conceded, gesturing across the shale and using his hands
to indicate that the shooter had clambered up into the fold of low cliffs on
the other side of the beach.

    The
first two shots had issued from the other side of the shale, the last was
Derek's reply. The shooter had taken off into the low rocks and hummocky tundra
to the northeast, in the opposite direction from Joe's grave. Most likely,
given the pattern of the shots, the shooter was alone, but in this situation,
the safest course of action was to assume nothing.

    Weighing
up her options she decided finally to descend to the beach, making her way
along to its far end, then clamber up into the low cliffs using a small finger
cliff as cover. If the man was wounded, there would be a blood trail to pick
up. She might be able to tell something about the gravity of the injury from
the trail. That would give her some clues as to how long he was likely to be
able to keep moving before he went down.

    Creeping
along the moraine path, keeping low to the ground, she inched her way down onto
the shale until she was standing in the lee of the cliff. It seemed that,
wherever he was, the shooter either couldn't see her or that something -
physical injury or strategy - had stopped him from taking a shot at her. She
stopped then and listened for sounds, but the wind was keeping up its steady,
camouflaging whistle. She moved forward along the beach's edge, her footsteps
softened through the piles of eider moult. Towards the northeastern edge, where
the beach gave way to a low rising bluff, she caught sight of a series of red
beads, livid against the snowy ground cover. Mouthing a few words to honour the
spirits of the birds for their intervention, Edie then bent to inspect the
trail. From the pattern of trampled feathers she could see that the man's right
arm was bleeding heavily. She guessed that the bullet had severed an artery. He
wouldn't be able to keep walking for long. The movement would pump blood from
the injury and weaken him further. He would most likely try to hide out
somewhere until he felt it was safe to break cover. She wouldn't have to follow
this ribbon across the feathers far, she thought, until she found his hiding
place.

    She
made her way to an outcrop of low, flat rock only a few metres from the edge of
the bluff, but hidden from view, her rifle grasped in both hands, approaching
it at an angle, with her right leg swinging out to the side so that she would
make contact with the rock with her foot before she could trip over it and
injure herself. At the rock's edge, she squatted down and scanned the trail.
She didn't want to have to shoot the man, but if he threatened her, she was fully
prepared to do so.

    Once
she had convinced herself she was in no imminent danger, she followed the trail
leading northeast. There were fewer feathers here, and the blood splatter
became more erratic. The injured man had been trying to run, but the footfalls
were too short. He was growing weak, she thought, and possibly confused.

    Taking
a breath to calm herself, she picked up a piece of shale and, flinging it in
the hope of attracting fire, ducked back behind the rock and waited for a
response. Nothing. The man either hadn't seen her or was in no position to
engage. Shuffling forward with her rifle held to her face, she skirted around
the rock then out from behind it into the open towards the trail.

    The
shooter was still bleeding badly and leaving bloody crush marks in the willow
from his footfalls. The prints were large, she noted, made not with kamiks but
most likely with commercially manufactured snow boots; and he was leaning to
the left, no doubt to compensate for the weakness in his right arm. Judging
from the degree to which the blood had already coagulated, he had left the
scene immediately after the shots rang out. A professional hunter, someone for
whom the kill was absolutely the centre of his focus, would have tried to get
another shot at his target, she thought. Whoever this guy was, he was an
amateurish kind of assassin.

    As
she advanced, the blood became more plentiful and fresher too, the rusty spots
of the earlier trail replaced by a thick red rope. Not far on, the trail ran into
a long esker which she and Joe had always called
uvingiajuq akivingaq,
because
it looked like a huge bull walrus. Instead of going over the top, which was the
quickest way, the trail stopped. Here, there were crush marks and more blood
where the shooter had hesitated.

    It
was quite possible, she thought, that the shooter was no more than a few metres
from her on the other side.

    Protected
from view by the gravel slope Edie followed the trail with great caution, as it
hugged the contours of the gravel pile, then disappeared. She was about to
round the shorter, easterly edge of the ridge when she thought twice and
halted.