A small crowd had gathered to watch the interview and they stood around, leaning on their ski poles, looking at Pasqual as though she were going to tap dance. She smoothed her jacket nervously and cleared her throat as the guy in the camel coat and red scarf, who was called Ritchie or Roger or Raymond or some damn thing, spoke to the cameraman as though she didn’t exist.

‘Give me a wide for three or four questions, then zoom in to her for a tight, okay?’

The cameraman with a neat beard and bored expression nodded, then winked at a good-looking company groomer in shades, who was leaning on her shovel and smiling with a big white grin. Pasqual glared at her and made a gesture with her hand and eyebrows to get back to work. The girl raised a hand, palm out in surrender, mouthed sorry and wandered back to the closed quad station where she was shovelling snow on the worn run-up.

The newsman turned to Pasqual. ‘So, you ready to roll?’

‘Sure. Do I look at you or into the camera?’

‘You just look right at me. I wouldn’t ask anyone without a welder’s mask to look directly at that ugly son of a bitch.’

The cameraman smiled a smile that said he heard that gag every time he took the lens cap off. He bent to look in the eyepiece of his locked-off camera, both hands in his pockets.

Her interviewer shook his shoulders and made a choked coughing sound in his throat. ‘Okay. Running?’

The cameraman took one hand lazily out of a pocket and turned his camera on. A little red light winked on at the top and Pasqual realized that she was nervous. Her mouth was dry and her heart was beating too fast, betraying her by the rapid clouds of vapour that puffed from her mouth as she waited.

‘In ten.’ He turned his back to Pasqual as he waited for the sign from his companion. A lazy hand again from the pocket. Ritchie, Roger or Raymond was off. ‘A week ago, Silver, Alberta was just a sleepy ski town in the Canadian Rockies where the biggest event was a moose on the road.’

Funny guy, thought Pasqual. Ha fucking ha.

‘But now, following the horrific death last week of Constable Joe Reader and only the day after the murder and mutilation of tourist Sean Bradford …’

Yeah that’s right, you bastard, she thought, angry now. Play up the dead tourist bit. God, why was she doing this? No publicity is bad publicity. Remember?

‘… the town is on the world’s map as the home of a possible serial killer. Here, they’re calling it the ski-riel killings.’

You mean you’re calling it that, you shit. She frowned.