The Dark

by Emma Haughton

  ‘Was that why you had a problem with him?’ I ask, pushing the feeling down. ‘Not only the drugs, but because Jean-Luc was unfaithful?’

  Arne shifts in his seat, trying to get more comfortable. ‘Yeah. My dad carried on an affair for years behind my mother’s back. I guess I’m not keen on people who want to have all the cake.’

  ‘Have all the cake?’ I echo. ‘You mean have their cake and eat it?’

  ‘Yes. I felt it was unfair on Sandrine, too, and it had a destabilising effect on the whole base. Their relationship was an open secret during the summer, but we all had to pretend we didn’t know.’

  I think about this. Jesus, Sandrine must have been devastated when Jean-Luc died. How on earth had she managed to keep going? Despite everything, I feel a flicker of sympathy for the station leader.

  ‘Thing is,’ Arne continues, ‘Sandrine didn’t want their relationship to end when they went back home. She was very jealous of his wife, apparently. Even threatened to contact her and tell her what was going on.’

  ‘Really?’ I gape at him, trying to take this all in. But was this affair really true, or merely station gossip? I make a mental note to ask Caro about it in the morning, along with the whereabouts of Alex’s phone. But it fits with what Jean-Luc said in his video, the casual way he referred to her as Sandy. I’ve never heard anyone else call her that.

  I picture Jean-Luc’s belongings, crammed in that locker in Beta. Is that why Sandrine’s hanging on to them? Is she afraid they might somehow give away her secret?

  Or is she simply reluctant to let them go, that last part of him. It could also explain why his laptop and computer went missing – she must have known either might contain evidence of their affair. Same for that letter, the one he wrote to his wife.

  In the event of my death.

  Did Jean-Luc know his life was in danger? I wonder. Did he realise the killer might go after him?

  ‘Sandrine was on that trip to the crevasse, wasn’t she?’ I check with Arne.

  He nods. ‘Most of us were. It was kind of a team exercise for those staying over the winter. A … what do you call it – binding experience?’

  ‘A bonding experience. And none of the summer crew went?’

  Arne shakes his head.

  I try to work this through, but my head aches with exhaustion. I lean back and close my eyes. What feels like a moment later, the touch of a hand on my cheek.

  Arne is staring down at me. ‘I’ll leave you to sleep,’ he says. ‘Now I’m certain you’re okay.’ He picks up the mugs and heads for the door. ‘Goodnight.’

  I stay in bed, but sleep eludes me. My head is too full of questions, of possible connections. Not least of all how someone broke into my clinic and the meds cabinet without leaving any trace.

  The same way I did, I decide.

  They got hold of the master keys somehow.

  I try going through it all again from the beginning, sticking to what I can be sure of: Jean-Luc dies on the ice, and Alex is convinced it was murder. His laptop and notebook disappear. Alex insists Sandrine investigate, and she refuses. Then someone deletes Jean-Luc’s video files, and Alex dies, after being drugged and tied up on the ice.

  I’ve no proof, however, that their two deaths are connected. Jean-Luc’s might simply have been an accident, a fault with his equipment. Someone might have killed Alex for a totally different reason.

  I think back to what Caro told me, that Alex believed the doctor’s death was related to some woman who died out here in Antarctica. I remind myself to check into it online, see if I can pin down more details.

  As I reach for the sleeping pills I’ve hidden under my mattress, another explanation occurs to me. Is it possible Sandrine sabotaged Jean-Luc’s equipment? Out of jealousy, perhaps, or anger that he refused to end his marriage. Then took his laptop and notebook to hide any evidence of their relationship?

  I chew the pills, then swallow them. As I wait for sleep to kick in, an image of the station leader fills my mind. The anger in her small wiry frame as she confronted me yesterday. No, it’s preposterous to believe Sandrine killed Alex – there’s simply no way she could manhandle someone of his size and bodyweight, drugged or otherwise.

  Despite her obvious contempt for me, I feel a lingering sympathy for her after Arne’s revelation. No doubt about it, Sandrine’s had a rough ride on this mission. I should put aside our differences, I think. Tell her about those missing sleeping pills, insist she reports Alex’s death as suspicious.

  And if she doesn’t believe me? Refuses to act?

  I could contact UNA myself, tell them it’s possible there’s a killer in our midst. But what on earth would they do about it, even assuming they believed me? It’s not like they can send in the police – as station leader, Sandrine is, in effect, our only law enforcement.

  But at the very least I should warn the others. Though that carries an even bigger risk, I realise – alerting the killer to the threat of exposure. Who knows what that might lead to?

  Oh God. I groan and bury my head in the pillow, feeling a mix of panic and despair. I recall Arne’s alarm when he thought I’d overdosed. Remember, too, his kindness that time I got lost on the ice.

  He’d voiced his own suspicions about Alex’s death tonight, hadn’t he? But I’d been too cautious to take it further. I’m desperate to confide in somebody, to discuss what we should do. I badly need another head to help make sense of this mess.

  But can I trust Arne?

  More to the point, can I trust anyone?

  30

  5 July

  I wake feeling awful, hungover from anxiety and lack of proper sleep, my eyes achy and my mind muggy and slow. I brew a strong black coffee and take it to my clinic, resisting the siren call of the medicine cabinet – helping myself right now would be a really bad idea, after Arne caught me with those pills last night.

  Steeling myself, I fire up my computer and bring up the video logs, having come to a decision in the night. But the moment I navigate to Alex’s file and click it open, I already know that I’ll find it empty.

  Sure enough, all his videos have gone. Whoever stole the drugs from my clinic evidently took the opportunity to delete any evidence Alex might leave behind.

  I feel a lurch of anger and disappointment. For a second or two I contemplate going straight to Sandrine, insisting she take a look at the empty file, but it’s pointless: the computer records will show that the person who deleted those video logs was me. If I’m going to get her onside, I need something more convincing.

  Instead I log onto the internet and check reported deaths in Antarctica. For such a dangerous place, there have been surprisingly few over the years, and even fewer are women. Most notable is Yvonne Halliday, the climate scientist at Mawson whose snowmobile accident made all the newspapers. A female technician called, improbably, Wanda, who died of suspected blood poisoning on a British base. Much less information is available, oddly, on Naomi Perez, the twenty-eight-year-old admin assistant found dead on the ice two years ago, not far from Scott’s Discovery Hut at McMurdo. I’m overcome by a wave of sadness as I study the face shot of Perez in the news story. Pretty, with long brown hair tumbling from beneath a thick knitted beanie.

  Could this be Jean-Luc’s ‘pauvre fille’?

  His poor girl?

  No suggestion, though, that the incident was anything other than an accident. The cause of death was exposure – it was assumed she got lost in the darkness, failed to find her way back to the safety of the station before succumbing to the sub-zero temperatures.

  I flash back to that overwhelming panic when I found myself alone and disoriented after the aurora. I can well imagine how terrified she must have been as the cold closed in on her, freezing the blood in her veins.

  A horrible way to die, alone in that merciless night.

  I check for other recent deaths in Antarctica, waiting minutes for each search to load on our impossibly slow internet. Two men in an explosion at one of the Ar
gentinian bases. A guy who died in a fire in the generator hut at a Russian research station. A cook crushed by pack snow at McMurdo. Another two men in an aircraft accident on a German base.

  I give up, feeling stymied. But what was I hoping to find?

  Gulping down the rest of my coffee, I consider returning to the canteen for more, but know it’ll make me wired and jittery. Instead, I navigate to the files containing the medical records; I’d glanced through them when I arrived, but it’s pretty much a given that everyone here is in a state of rude health. The odd broken limb or bout of gastroenteritis in their history. Nothing of any consequence.

  But in the absence of better ideas, I decide to take a closer look. I check for Jean-Luc’s first, hoping they’ll tell me which of the seventy Antarctic ice stations he’d spent time at. But like his video logs, his health records seem to have been removed from the system.

  Is that suspicious? I’m not sure. Maybe it’s protocol in the event of someone’s death.

  Alex’s are still here, however. I go through them again, alert for anything unusual. But there’s nothing, apart from a case of chickenpox when he was seven. Up until his death, Alex seems to have been exceptionally fit and active.

  Who next? My mind immediately turns to Arne. I open up his records and read them from the beginning. An ear infection as a baby. A broken wrist in his teens. A bout of food poisoning in his twenties. A case of contact dermatitis, during his stint at McMurdo. Nothing particularly significant about that, but the date catches my eye – six months before the death of Naomi Perez.

  A knot in my stomach as I gaze at the entry.

  Could this be coincidence?

  It doesn’t mean anything, I tell myself firmly. Arne has talked openly about spending time on the US base, after all. Luuk too. And quite a few of the summer team, I seem to recall. Plus several of the winterers have been to Concordia as well, though I can’t remember who; after a while I tuned out all the stories of various high jinks and adventures at other stations, suspecting most were highly embellished or even fictional.

  I hunt through the medical records for the rest of the base, but turn up nothing. Massaging my forehead, I try to work it through. How could I pin down what it was that so concerned Jean-Luc? And why he wanted those DNA tests.

  Only two ways I can think of: ask Sandrine outright, or try to find out from his personnel file. But I can’t access that area of the IT systems, and she keeps the hard copies in her office under lock and key.

  Hell. I remember I need to get hold of that key again, to close up the locker in Beta. I’ll have to figure out some way of getting back into Sandrine’s office when my mind’s less foggy – perhaps I’ll get a chance to peek into that filing cabinet at the same time.

  Really, Kate?

  I take a deep breath, wondering when I became the sort of person who seriously considers breaking into someone’s office and stealing keys and sensitive personal information.

  How can I possibly justify any of this?

  But what’s the alternative? Risk this situation escalating further? Wait out the rest of the winter, hoping for the best?

  I glance at the time and decide to check in on Caro. But there’s no response when I knock on her door. I give her a minute, then poke my head inside. She’s lying on the bed, beginning to stir.

  ‘Sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you.’

  ‘Hey, Kate.’ Caro sits up and rubs her eyes. ‘It’s okay. I overslept.’

  ‘Can we do an antenatal check? We could make it later if you like.’

  ‘No, let’s do it now.’ She gets up and follows me back to the clinic, climbing on the scales without me even having to ask. I note down the reading, reassured to see that despite all the pain and drama since Alex died, she’s gained nearly two pounds. Next I measure her uterus – exactly where it should be. I check her blood pressure – not in the danger zone, but slightly on the high side of normal. Given the circumstances, that’s probably to be expected.

  I get out my stethoscope and listen to the baby’s heartbeat. Nothing amiss there.

  ‘Everything seems fine,’ I assure Caro, making notes on the antenatal record sheet UNA emailed over. ‘You’re both doing really well.’

  She musters a wan smile.

  ‘How are you?’ I ask. ‘In yourself.’

  Caro shrugs. ‘Shit.’

  Her honesty touches me. ‘It’ll get easier,’ I say gently.

  ‘You reckon? At best I’m going to return home a single mother.’

  There’s no answer to this. ‘Does Alex’s family know? About the baby, I mean.’

  I guess it fell to Sandrine – or perhaps someone from UNA – to inform them of his death. What a pall it will cast over his sister’s marriage, I think, feeling awful for everyone.

  ‘Not yet. Alex was planning to speak to them; he wanted to make sure everything would be all right first.’

  ‘Are you going to tell them?’

  ‘I was debating whether to send an email,’ Caro says. ‘Or call them. I can’t make up my mind.’

  ‘Perhaps an email would be better. It will give them time to digest the news before you talk to them.’

  ‘I just don’t know what to say … I can’t work out if it’ll help or make things worse.’

  ‘I’m sure it will help. They’ll want to have a relationship with their grandchild.’

  ‘Their second grandchild – Louise is due before me.’

  ‘Is that Alex’s sister?’

  Caro nods. ‘He talked so often about them I feel I know them already.’

  ‘Did he tell them about you?’

  ‘Yeah. His mother asked if I knew how to do the haka – she thought it might scare the rabbits away from her veg patch.’

  I grin. ‘She sounds nice. Funny.’

  ‘She does.’ Caro stares wistfully at the window. There’s a faint light outside, from a nearly full moon. Then she turns back to me. ‘Did you find his activity band yet?’

  I shake my head. ‘But I did check into the data.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And nothing much … It stopped recording at 2.53 a.m. that morning.’

  A pained expression crosses Caro’s features. Her shoulders tense as she fights down her emotions. ‘Have you found out anything else?’

  I consider telling her about Luuk’s visit to Alex’s room, and the missing sleeping pills, but decide against it. No need to add any more stress and worry to Caro’s already vulnerable state of mind.

  ‘Nothing concrete, but like I promised you, I’m working on it.’

  She stares at me, clearly assessing whether I’m bullshitting her or not.

  ‘Actually, I was going to ask if you have Alex’s phone,’ I say. ‘Or know where it is.’

  Caro shakes her head. ‘I’ve looked everywhere for it. I assume Sandrine took it.’

  ‘Possibly. I’ll find out.’

  ‘Why are you asking? Do you think it’s important?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ I sigh. ‘I just wondered who has it.’

  ‘So you believe me now? That his death wasn’t an accident.’ Caro’s gaze is steady and direct. She’s a lot stronger than I’ve given her credit for, I realise; she may be young and in an awful predicament, but she’s tough.

  All the same, I decide to play this down. ‘Let’s just say I don’t disbelieve you, all right? I want to make certain we get to the bottom of it.’

  ‘Let me guess, Sandrine isn’t exactly being super helpful.’

  ‘No, she isn’t,’ I admit. ‘On which subject … did you ever hear anything about her and Jean-Luc?’

  ‘About their affair, you mean?’

  So it’s true. ‘Yes. I only found out about it yesterday.’

  ‘Who told you?’

  ‘Arne.’

  Caro sighs. ‘Sandrine may be a complete bitch, but she was obviously devastated by what happened to Jean-Luc. She barely spoke for days, and hasn’t been the same since.’

  ‘In what way?’

&
nbsp; Caro shrugs again. ‘She didn’t use to be so … unyielding.’

  ‘How come you didn’t go with them? On that expedition, I mean.’

  ‘I didn’t fancy it. Five days out on the ice, and climbing’s not my thing. Scared of heights.’ She looks at me and laughs. ‘Pathetic, isn’t it? Alex said he’d help me get over it.’

  I offer a sympathetic smile. ‘Not pathetic at all. I’m scared of the dark, actually.’

  ‘Really?’

  I nod. ‘Always have been. I still have to sleep with the light on.’

  ‘Jeez.’ Caro whistles. ‘No wonder you were shitting yourself when they found you out on the ice with no torch.’

  I grimace, not simply with embarrassment, but with the knowledge that either Drew or Arne told everyone what a state I was in.

  ‘Yeah, silly, isn’t it?’

  ‘We all have something. Alex was terrified of snakes. Said that was why we were made for each other – wherever we lived, we’d be okay. No snakes in Ireland or New Zealand.’

  She falls silent again. We sit there for a minute or so, both thinking, no doubt, of that lost future, the one where Caro and Alex get to live happily ever after.

  I know all too well how much that hurts.

  ‘I’d better go,’ Caro sighs. ‘I promised Ark I’d take another look at the boiler feed. Luuk swears there’s nothing wrong with the electrics, but I need to make sure he’s checked them properly.’

  ‘Don’t you trust him?’ I ask.

  Caro pulls a face. ‘I do – when he’s not high.’

  I think back to the igloo, my conversation with Luuk. He’d seemed pretty together to me, despite the joint they’d been smoking. But then I haven’t known him as long as Caro.

  ‘Has he given Alex’s vaper back?’ it occurs to me to ask. Perhaps Caro has it somewhere in safekeeping.

  ‘His what?’ She looks puzzled.

  ‘His vape pen. Luuk said he borrowed it.’

  Caro frowns. ‘Alex never owned a vape pen. Like I said, he didn’t smoke a lot – even before Jean-Luc talked him out of it.’