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imitation of her younger sister, a moon to Martha’s sun, more conventional, less ambitious, the kind who would marry early, have babies and lead a life that was essentially the same as her mother’s. Alice’s elder brother, Markoosie Pitoq, sat in a chair beside the sofa. He was leaning forward, his hand on a mug on the coffee table, but his head shot up when he heard her come in.
    She greeted them.
    â€˜Take a seat,’ Alice said. Edie moved towards a chair but in that instant the inner door swung open and a
qalunaat
woman with animmaculately groomed head of chestnut hair swept into the room. She glanced about without seeming to notice Edie.
    â€˜Where’s Charlie?’ the woman said. Her English was heavily accented but she spoke with the kind of unquestioning confidence Edie more usually associated with missionaries, though from her clothing and air of glamour it was clear that she wasn’t one of these. Edie had seen her around the community, often heading towards the town hall building, once or twice in an oddly customized ATV on the track to Camp Nanook, then again coming out of the hotel. For a moment she thought that the
qalunaat
woman might already have heard the terrible news and was about to blurt it, but a glance at her face reassured her. A relief. The Salliaqs should hear about the death of their daughter in Inuktitut.
    With the thin authority of a man who had unilaterally declared himself in charge, Markoosie reported that his brother was still checking out the area around the bird cliffs.
    Finally clocking Edie, the woman held out a hand and introduced herself as Sonia Gutierrez, the lawyer working with Charlie Salliaq on the decontamination of the old radar station at Glacier Ridge ‘and family friend’. Edie noticed Alice frown slightly when she said this. If Gutierrez
was
a family friend, she was no pal of Alice’s.
    â€˜You have news?’ Gutierrez asked.
    Silence fell, everyone waiting for Edie to speak. She looked between the faces gazing expectantly at her. A little crack opened up in her heart, knowing that what she was about to say would break theirs.

4
    It was now a couple of hours since Derek and Luc had carried Martha Salliaq’s body up the steps of the nursing station and into Kuujuaq’s tiny morgue, and news of the discovery was spreading fast. Someone had seen the body bag being unloaded from the gurney and before long the settlement was alive with gossip. Already people were saying crazy things, speculating that Martha had been taken by evil spirits or that she had been sacrificed or that the
unataqti
had used her in some kind of hazing ritual then dumped her body when they were done.
    Sonia Gutierrez had gone directly to the nursing station to speak to Derek while Edie stayed behind in the Salliaqs’ house, locking the doors and closing the blinds in a bid at damage control. The family didn’t need to hear that stuff. A handful of friends and neighbours had made their way over to commiserate or offer help but Edie had sent them away with promises to keep what they thought they knew to themselves. Charlie Salliaq was still making a tour of outlying camps and didn’t yet know his daughter had been found. One of his cousins had been dispatched to break the dismal news and escort him back to Kuujuaq. Until then the less that was said, the better.
    Once Gutierrez rang with news that Charlie had been located and was making his way back to the settlement, it was felt best to bring Alice and Lizzie to the nursing station to await his arrival there. Since neither woman was in any fit state to formally identify Martha’s remains that task would fall to Charlie as soon as he arrived. Derek was with Markoosie at the radio studio, launching an appeal for information, but he’d be along too as soon as he could.
    Edie thought about Charlie Salliaq hurrying back across the tundra to identify the body of his murdered daughter and of the