She got through and saw what the policemen were seeing as they crouched round it, trained lights on it, took photographs of it and wrote about it in notebooks. Now she was a tearful, hysterical wreck who was going to heave at any minute. Eric didn’t want through. He knew what was in there. The head patroller had told him. Well, more or less. Enough to know he wanted to stay on the trail, well away from the action. Eric was just here watching, taking stock, grateful that the porridge that was an eighteen-year-old kid hadn’t been found until the end of the day when the resort was closed and all those curious happy skiers had gone home to soak in a hot tub. Eric knew his skiers. They were attracted to incident tape like flies round shit. Keeping them from tragedy was pointless. They loved it. But luckily they were gone. At least those who got off their mark sharp were gone. The rest were being held by the roadblock McGee had set up at the exit road from the resort. Even now, the Trans-Canada was sealed off in both directions by the highway patrol. That, if nothing else, would guarantee the media would be here in a matter of hours. Eric took a few careful steps on the precipitous trail towards the huddle in the trees. He didn’t want to go ass over tit in front of all these Mounties. It was bad enough for the company that their managing director was coming on like Fay Wray. They didn’t need any more childish displays of weakness.

It was practically dark now, and the ski patrol were setting up halogens on the trail and in the pines for the RCs to continue their grim work. McGee looked up, saw Sindon pick his way over the bumps to the edge of the wood and went out to greet him.

‘Don’t come in, Mr Sindon,’ he said from the tree side of the tape. ‘It’ll live with you a long time.’

Eric looked past Craig into the forest, lit now like a Spielberg movie, the beams from the halogen lamps making fans and girders of solid blue light between the trunks.

‘I wasn’t thinking of it. Believe me.’

Craig nodded towards Pasqual. ‘Is she okay?’

Eric smiled. ‘Sure. How’s it going in there? Anything?’

Craig ignored the question, since it was asked the way a householder asked his gardener how the hedge trimming was coming along. ‘Was it snowing up here this afternoon?’

Eric shifted his weight, felt himself slip and shifted it back again. ‘I couldn’t say. It was certainly snowing at the base lodge but as you know, it can be chucking it down up here and sunny down there, so that doesn’t mean much. Why do you ask?’