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accident, she might begin.
        Out
of the corner of her eye, Edie saw Sammy glaring at her.
        'Sure,'
she said, 'the event.' Thinking, toe the line.
        Till
the moment the shot echoed out across the sea ice, the day had in fact been
pretty uneventful. In the morning, the party had gone after hare,
unsuccessfully as it turned out. They'd had lunch and in the early afternoon, a
couple of hours before it happened, she had left the two hunters on the leeward
side of the esker at Uimmatisatsaq on Craig Island, within sight of the char
pool. The men said they wanted to try their hands at ice fishing and promised
to start putting up camp. Since the party was low on drinking water and Edie
knew of a nearby berg, she left them to go and fetch freshwater ice. Both men
were carrying rifles, she hadn't seen any bear tracks en route and when she
left them the weather was clear, so she wasn't worried for their safety. She
took her bear dog, Bonehead, with her and, in any case, she reckoned she'd be
gone no longer than an hour or so.
        Edie
paused momentarily to check the expressions on the faces of the men sitting
round the table but Inuit were brought up to be good at hiding their feelings -
you had to be, living in such small communities, where each was so dependent on
the others - and no one was giving anything away. She took a steadying breath
and carried on.
        Afterwards,
Simeonie congratulated her on her recall. She sat back, expecting questions,
and was bewildered when the mayor merely summarized her account, added in a
couple of editing notes for Sheila Silliq then moved on to Joe. Already, then,
she sensed the outcome. Nothing she or Joe could say would make any difference;
the elders were just going through the motions.
        Joe
began to run through his version of the day. He had been in the mayor's office
picking up a consignment of Arctic condoms that had come in on the supply plane
a few days before. The condoms were wrapped in cute packets made to look like
seal or musk ox or walrus, some well- meaning but patronizing southern
initiative to encourage Inuit in the eastern Arctic to have safe sex, as though
everyone didn't already know that the only way to make sex safe In the region
would be to decommission the air-force bases.
        Sometime
in the early afternoon, Sammy had called him through to the comms office. He'd
found his father standing by the radio and doing his best not to look anxious.
Sammy outlined what had happened on Craig, or the bare hones of it. While he
went to check the weather forecast, Joe skimmed down the planned flights log
book to see if any planes were likely to be in the area and could pick up the
party, but there were no flights listed. In any case, when he met Sammy again
briefly in the corridor and exchanged information, it became clear that the
weather was going to make flying out to Craig impossible. That was when Joe
first suggested he head out to the scene by snowmobile.
        The
journey out to Craig had been tough because the winds were gusting and every so
often a blast caught the snowbie and threw it off balance, but the new snow was
at least dry and Joe had ridden the route only last week so he knew where most
of the drifts and open leads were likely to be. When he got near, his
stepmother's dog met him and led him directly to the camp. Edie was calm and
purposeful, clearly in control of the situation. By contrast, Andy Taylor
seemed withdrawn and shaky. Joe described Wagner's condition in some detail. He
was keen to emphasize that Edie had already taken appropriate action, stemming
the flow of blood and covering the wound with plastic to prevent air filling
the thoracic cavity and collapsing the lungs. The bullet had shattered part of
Wagner's collarbone and shredded the flesh beneath and there was what looked
like an exit wound through the scapula. His pulse was racy and weak and it was
clear that he had lost a great deal of blood. More worrying