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.
Retracing her steps, she reached
the spot where the shooter had stopped and began the slow crawl upwards. Here on the northern incline snow had been swept in and clung, easing her progress. The sky was deep grey in foggy cloud. The wind had stopped gusting and a thin rain had begun. She moved gingerly, careful not to lose either her purchase on the shale or her breath. There would be less wind noise on the other side and she was anxious not to alert the wounded man to her presence. At the crest she lay still, well out of sight, her parka hood pulled across to obscure her face. She looked into the sky and silently called on the spirits, then, bit by bit, she inched forward until the top of her head protruded from the edge of the esker and waited, making slow fists with her fingers and toes to stave off the cold. She was vulnerable in this position, not simply from the shooter, if he was there, but from the wind that whipped the crest, pushing gravel down the slope.
The thin rain made it impossible to see what lay below. She waited. After a long while she heard a crunching sound and, looking down through the fog, saw a faint light flash on and off. The man was there and it seemed he was looking at his wristwatch. She considered shooting at the position of the light, but decided it was too risky. But the man had just given her some valuable information. If it was a watch, then the shooter could only be qalunaat. No Inuk would take a wristwatch hunting. She sat back and allowed herself to absorb this. It was good. If the shooter was qalunaat he would have an Achilles heel. Up here, they all did.
Very carefully, she advanced along the ridge, checking the shale on the southern incline. It was looser there and devoid of plant life. One sharp kick in the right place and she might be able to cause it to avalanche downwards. Most likely, the avalanche wouldn't kill him - the stones were small and not very sharp - but it would certainly stop him from going anywhere. She thought about what could go wrong, the gravel not moving, or worse, sending her tumbling down with it, and quickly decided it was worth the risk.
Raising both feet she swung them with all her strength into the shale. At first nothing much happened; a few fist- sized pieces of rock began to shift, then the whole incline became fluid, shifting and sliding until a critical mass was reached and the stones began to clatter down the esker onto the man below, raising a great cloud of dust. Edie heard a sharp cry, then nothing. The fog made it impossible to see what lay below.
For what seemed like an age, she waited, allowing the shale to settle, then she began, with patient care, to clamber down until she could just make out a man's form. It looked as though he had taken a defensive position on his knees, with one hand curled over his head and the other on his rifle. The avalanche had knocked the weapon from his hand and it now lay a few feet from his outstretched right arm. He was buried up to his shoulders in shale.
She called out but he did not answer. Slowly step by step, her feet set parallel to the ground, and with her rifle at the ready, Edie edged her way towards him. Still the man did not move. Reaching the ground, she went with caution towards the rifle, and with her weapon still trained on the man in front of her, she squatted down and removed the clip, putting it in the pocket of her parka. Slinging the rifle over her shoulder, she moved towards the shooter, pinned in his pile of shale. The realization hit her that he might have died. Blood seeped from the pile.
Piece by piece, she began frantically pulling off the rocks, flinging them out onto the muskeg. Before long, the man's parka appeared under the rubble. She reached out and touched him, but he made no attempt to free himself. His face remained obscured by a balaclava, and he was still too weighed down with shale for Edie to be able to drag him clear. Quickly, she began to scoop at the sides of his burial cairn, tossing handfuls of shale out into the darkness.
Finally, when the body was clear enough to move, she bent down and rolled him over. He was a big man, tall and muscular, his body type and clothing identifying him immediately as qalunaat. Derek's bullet had hit him in the wrist, severing the radial artery and partially amputating the hand. Red crystals had formed across the surface of his parka. Running her hands under his outerwear, she checked him for weapons and found none. In any case, he was unlikely to be a threat to her now. In the period since he'd checked his watch, he'd lost consciousness - perhaps as a result of the shale fall. His pulse was very weak. She knew she wouldn't be able to lift him on her own, but she could fetch Willa and together they might well be able to pile him onto the gurney they'd brought to take down Joe's remains. Pulling off her scarf she made a crude tourniquet and pulled it tight around the forearm above the partially amputated wrist. Then, gingerly, she removed the balaclava.
Edie slumped back. The man was Robert Patma. For a moment she thought she'd made a mistake, then it occurred to her that perhaps Patma was mistaken and the whole episode had been one terrible error, a genuine accident in which Robert had shot at what he thought was game, then panicked when he realized it wasn't; but even as she thought this, her heart told her that it wasn't true. She felt winded, confused, thoughts careening recklessly round in her mind. Grabbing her pigtails she tugged hard to bring herself to her senses, then, slinging Patma's rifle around her shoulder and rounding the esker, she made her way as fast as she could back to the beach, calling out that everything was OK. There Willa was by Derek's side, pressing the wound on the injured leg to staunch the bleeding. There was an anxious pall on his face. Fonder of the policeman than he'd let on, Edie thought.
'Did you get him?' Derek asked. When she did not answer, he said, 'It's not as bad as it looks. I don't need putting down.' He smiled thinly. 'Not yet, anyway.'
Edie said, 'Willa and I will have to lift him out to the launch on the gurney. He's alive but only just.'
'Well?' Derek said, his mouth bunched in pain.
'Well what?'
'Well, who the hell just tried to kill me?'
Edie felt breathless, the after-effects of the adrenaline kicking in.
'It looks like Robert Patma.'
'The nurse?' Derek was as floored by the news as she had been when she first peeled away the shooter's balaclava.
For a moment they looked at one another, thinking the same thought.
'He alone?'
'I hope so.' There had been no other footprints.
'We'd better get him to some help,' Derek said.
Willa took a breath. 'Are you crazy?'
For a second Derek didn't answer, as though he was considering the possibility, then in a resigned voice he said, 'I guess I'm just police.'
Edie and Willa approached the esker cautiously, on foot.
Robert Patma was lying where Edie had left him, trapped in shale. Willa moved towards him slowly and lifted his head, which fell back. Edie took the pulse on the unsevered wrist. Robert Patma was just about still alive.
'Let's start digging,' Edie said.
It took a couple of hours to extract Robert Patma from his rocky prison, then they lifted him onto the gurney and slowly manoeuvred him into the launch, cuffing his one good hand to the guard rail. Then they went back for Joe.
They stacked the corpse between the two wounded men. Willa took the wheel while Edie found some Vicodin in the first-aid kit. Robert Patma remained unconscious. She called Stevie on the detachment sat phone and told him what to expect.
'Patma, the nurse guy? What the hell?'
'Your guess,' Edie said.
Stevie undertook to call in medics in Iqaluit. They could probably be in Autisaq within a few hours. He offered to patch in a call so Derek could speak to them directly, but Derek didn't think much of the idea. It was just a muscle wound, he said, painful but not life-threatening. The bleeding had stopped and once the Vicodin kicked in, he'd be fine. Edie protested, but for a man whose right leg was out of action, Derek was pretty good at digging in his heels.
By the time they got back it was already dark. Stevie was waiting for them at the quay with Sammy Inukpuk and Mike and Elijah Nungaq. The men carried Robert Patma and Joe Inukpuk, Edie followed behind with Derek on an ATV and Willa went off to brief Simeonie on the day's events.
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While Stevie returned to the police office to check on the likely arrival time of the medics' plane, Edie cleaned and bandaged Derek's wound.
Robert Patma had been put in one of the medical rooms. The door had been locked from the outside and Sammy sat beside it with a loaded rifle.
'Didn't see that one coming,' Sammy said.
Stevie reported that the medics had been weathered out and wouldn't be arriving till tomorrow morning. They'd left detailed instructions on how to deal with the two patients and someone would call every hour to check on their progress. Meanwhile, Robert Patma was to be kept guarded.
They moved back into the waiting area.
'We should check Patma's apartment,' Edie said.
'I've told Stevie to apply for a warrant.' Derek winced. The painkiller was wearing off. 'We're doing this the official way, Edie. My way. Patma dies, I don't want to find myself at the end of a lawsuit.'
Edie scanned the medics' instructions, then reached out and patted his arm. 'I'll get you some more Vicodin.'
In the matter of Robert Patma's apartment, she had her own ideas.
The key to the safety deposit box was in Robert Patma's office desk. She opened it up and took out the pharmacy key. Running her eyes over the rows of medicines, she came across a box of Vicodin sitting high up in a corner. By jumping and grabbing she managed to wrest a pack off the shelf, but in doing so knocked a box beside it off. Luckily, it didn't break.
White Heat Page 31
