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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.
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    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.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜Martha?’
    At her nod his shoulders fell and he reached out an arm.
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜It’s the least I can do.’
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    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 Canadiangovernment 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.
    She let herself into the snow porch without knocking, as was the custom, and slid off her shoes. There were voices in the room next door, seemingly oblivious. She took a breath and walked in.
    The family had gathered to wait for news. All except Charlie were sitting in the front room. Alice Salliaq was on the couch. Edie had got to know her well enough to pass the time of day with. She was a soft-spoken, self-effacing and delicate woman in her mid-forties, the perfect foil to her gruff, firebrand older husband, and it would be easy to imagine she lived in his shadow were you to miss the quietly determined cast of her eyes. Beside her sat Lizzie, Martha’s elder sister. Edie had seen her at the store with her mother. The siblings were physically alike, taller and plumper than their mother, with high cheekbones and generous, uneven mouths, but the difference in their characters made them seem less so. Though she had never really spoken with the girl, Lizzie had struck Edie as a kind of pale