Sam looked back at the red, flickering embers and the old man disappeared into the night, betraying his proximity with the sounds of branches breaking and the crunch of feet on ice. He looked into the low fire, took a shuddering breath and his shoulders slumped in weariness. His eyes were sore and heavy with crying and he closed them and put his head on his knees, letting the heat from the glowing wood warm him.

The cold. It was so very cold.

So cold.

Colder than Hell.

Cold because the fire was out.

Sam’s head arced up off his knees and his eyes blinked in the dark. Not even a tiny red glow lit this deep velvet blackness. Because the fire was out and had been out for a long time. Because the man who had slept alone beside it, for God knows how long, hadn’t noticed its embers cool and die.

‘CALVIN!’

He leapt to his feet and screamed into the darkness. An echo threw it back at him like a punch.

Sam stumbled towards the entrance, the arch only dimly described by the reflective white snow outside. He staggered out into the snow between the tracks and yelled again.

‘CALVIN!’

The falling snow caught his frantic shout and wrapped it in a thick deadening silence. There was no echo out here.

Worse.

There was no reply.

‘Where’s McGee?’

Constable Bell looked up from the computer with distaste at Becker and the two new guys in suits.

‘I think Staff Sergeant McGee has gone back to the Hunt house.’

The reinforcements from Edmonton that flanked Becker caught that heavily barbed reminder of Craig’s rank and exchanged looks.

Becker was tired, but his energy was quickly rekindled with irritation. ‘Why?’

‘Mrs Hunt called. Left a message that he was to call her back. Guess he just went straight there.’

Becker walked back towards his office without response and the two men followed him.

Jeff Bell muttered asshole under his breath and resumed his two-fingered typing. The sooner they pulled in this bastard Hunt the sooner these goons from Edmonton would be gone. He looked up from the screen. Then, maybe, they could get back to normal. Maybe bury Joe and Dan decently, instead of letting them lie there in the morgue. Maybe get that travelling circus called the press out of Silver and back under the stones they crawled out of.

He sighed, took a gulp of cold coffee from a styrofoam cup and got back to the dull routine of typing in statements.

Inside his office, Becker was sitting on the desk with his hands out wide, gesturing to the two other men. ‘I can’t stop him. Not if she asks to see him.’

The younger man looked at him coldly. ‘The reason you’re here is because officers aren’t supposed to investigate cases in which they have personal involvement. You wouldn’t call this personal?’