‘What are you talking about, Kate?’ He takes a step closer, then stops as he spots the knife in my hand.
‘You can’t be serious.’ He stares at it, horrified. ‘Kate, tell me you’re joking. You can’t possibly believe I would do anything like that.’
I study the confusion in his features. It’s so convincing I almost fall for it. Almost drop the knife onto the snow and go to him.
‘Listen to me, Kate.’ Arne moves towards me and I back away, maintaining the distance between us. ‘I can prove it,’ he says, his tone urgent, ‘I can prove I had nothing to do with that woman’s death. I emailed Kristin before the power went down and she sent—’
‘Stop lying!’ I shout, brandishing the knife to keep him away. ‘There’s no point. I don’t believe a single word you say.’
Arne frowns, miming bewilderment. Suddenly he lurches forward, knocking the knife from my hand.
‘Kate, for fuck’s sake,’ he yells, grabbing my arm. ‘You have to—’
A loud crack reverberates through the darkness.
I stand there, uncomprehending, gazing right into Arne’s eyes in that split second before he crumples before me. Instinctively I drop the torch and try to catch him, but he’s too heavy. He falls onto the ice with a heavy thump.
I stare down at him, frozen with shock and surprise.
What the fuck just happened?
Someone shot him, I realise, mind reeling with disbelief.
That sound was a gunshot.
Arne is lying face down in the snow. I kneel beside him, whimpering with panic, trying to heave him onto his back, but I can’t grip properly in these bulky gloves. I take them off and try again.
Behind me, the crunch of ice as someone approaches. I spin around, shining my torch into the endless night. See a figure looming towards me, features obscured by the high rim of his jacket and wide goggles, a large fur hat covering his hair.
All I know is it’s a man, obvious by his bulk and stance.
In his hand, a small black pistol.
‘You all right, Kate?’ Drew sounds concerned.
‘Yes …’ I turn back to Arne, and feel inside his necker for a pulse. Detect the faint beat of his heart.
He’s still alive.
‘Quickly,’ I say pulling my gloves back on. ‘We have to get him inside.’
But Drew doesn’t move. Just stands there, staring down at the pair of us.
‘Help me,’ I urge, ‘or he’ll bleed to death.’ I frown up at Drew, but he’s shaking his head.
‘He was going to kill you, Kate, like all the others.’
‘None of that matters,’ I insist. ‘I’ll treat him, then we’ll put him somewhere safe, where he can’t hurt anyone else. We’ll let the police deal with this. We can’t simply leave him to die.’ Already the snow around his temple is staining red – the bullet must have hit his skull.
But Drew still doesn’t move.
‘Drew,’ I urge, desperate, ‘for Christ’s sake, help—’
‘Shut up,’ he snaps. ‘I need to think.’
I frown at him, bewildered. There’s something wrong here. He’s just shot someone, and yet Drew’s acting as if … as if it’s nothing.
And why has he got the gun? Did he find it in the station?
Or did he know where it was hidden all along?
The ground beneath me tilts and spins, and suddenly I’m back there, emerging from that little plane after my long journey to Antarctica. A man extending his hand in greeting.
‘Andrew,’ he says. ‘But everyone calls me Drew.’
Andrew.
‘A’.
‘Y-you,’ I stammer, trembling with shock and the sudden, certain conviction I’m right.
‘Me what?’ he asks.
‘You were at McMurdo, weren’t you? When that woman died. Naomi Perez.’
Drew tilts his head. Though I can’t see his eyes, I’m aware all his attention is fixed on me. ‘What sort of question is that?’
There’s a hardness in his tone now, a change in his manner I can’t put a finger on. As if he’s dropped some kind of act.
Plausible. Never betraying his real nature.
My predecessor’s words ring in my head as I scramble to my feet and find my voice. ‘You killed Naomi, didn’t you? And Jean-Luc, when he started to become suspicious. Alex and Sandrine too.’
I wait for Drew’s indignant reaction, his shocked denial. But nothing happens. We stand there in the dark, the almost perfect silence, only the faint sound of our breath freezing, the tiny ice crystals tinkling as they fall to the ground.
An eternity before he speaks.
‘I wish you hadn’t said that, Kate. I really do.’
Drew grabs my arm, glancing down at Arne’s body. ‘Forget him,’ he says. ‘He’s not worth it.’
I wrench away, suddenly furious. Oblivious to the danger I’m in. ‘Why?’ I spit into his masked face. ‘Why did you do it? Why did you do any of it?’
Drew doesn’t respond. After all, what could he possibly say? All pretence between us is now over. There’s no rational explanation for his actions. The answer lies deep within his soul – as obscure, probably, to himself as to me.
‘Let’s take a walk.’ Drew grasps my arm again and drags me across the ice. I try to resist, but it’s impossible – he’s so much bigger and stronger than I am.
‘What are you going to do?’ I ask instead. ‘How are you going to explain any of this?’
‘Oh, that’s easy,’ he replies, his voice terrifyingly matter-of-fact. ‘I came across Arne here,’ he gestures back at the body behind us, already covered with a light smattering of snow, ‘about to attack you. I managed to wrest the gun from him, but accidentally shot him in the struggle. Sounds plausible to me.’
Plausible. I glare at him in revulsion. ‘So you put that activity band in the garage? To point the finger at Arne?’
Drew grins but says nothing.
‘And what about me?’ I ask quietly, bracing myself for the answer. ‘What are you planning to tell everyone about me?’
He stops, turns. Shrugs. ‘You ran off in a panic, dropped your torch and got lost in the darkness. I searched for you everywhere, but found you too late. Your little body collapsed into the snow, in a foetal crouch perhaps, a desperate attempt to keep warm. Poor terrified Kate.’
I reach up with my free hand and rip away his goggles. I want to see him. And I want him to know I see the person inside.
‘It was you, wasn’t it, who took my torch? While I was watching the aurora.’
Drew grunts, reaches down to retrieve his goggles, checking them over to make sure they’re not broken. ‘You pissed me off, Kate, messing me around like you did. So it occurred to me, why not teach you a lesson?’
‘Like taking those pills from my room?’
Drew grins again but doesn’t bother to confirm it.
‘And you broke into my clinic, didn’t you? To steal those pills and delete Jean-Luc’s video logs.’
He sniffs, replacing his goggles. ‘Careless of me not to think of them sooner.’
‘Careless of you too, not to remember to lock the clinic door after you left.’ The thought is oddly reassuring. He’s not as clever as he assumes. Even if by some miracle Drew gets away with everything that’s happened out here on the ice, sooner or later he’ll slip up and betray himself.
Gripping my arm again, Drew drags me along in his wake, deeper into the night. I imagine him pulling off my protective clothes, holding me down until the cold invades every part of me.
The same as he did with Naomi – and Alex.
And I find I don’t even care, not really. I’m too exhausted. Too overwhelmed by the futility of it all. By my own failure to see what was right under my nose until it was too late.
‘Promise me something,’ I say, stumbling on the snow. ‘You won’t hurt Caro, will you? Or her baby?’
His fingers dig tighter into my arm. ‘I would never hurt that child.’ His voice is fierce
as he spins me to face him again, shining his torch into my eyes. ‘She didn’t tell you?’
I blink, half blinded. ‘Who? Caro?’ I stammer. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘She isn’t Alex’s child,’ he hisses. ‘That little girl is mine.’
‘Yours?’ I repeat, incredulous.
Then I recall Caro’s hesitation when I asked her about the father, back when she first revealed her pregnancy. I hadn’t pushed her to explain – it was her business after all. When she told me later that Alex fathered her baby, I didn’t think to question it further.
‘So Caro never mentioned our fling?’ Drew snorts. ‘Before she fell for that Irish moron.’
I hear the hatred in his tone. Is he secretly in love with her, I wonder? Is that what Alex’s death was really about? Was Drew’s motive simply jealousy?
‘And what about Naomi?’ I ask, hoping to divert Drew from what he’s intending to do. At least buy myself a bit more time. ‘Why did you kill her, if it wasn’t because she was pregnant?’
He pauses. Releases my arm. ‘Naomi was a bitch. Shouting and threatening to sue me for child support. I didn’t believe her about the pregnancy. I thought she was simply fucking with me.’
‘So that’s why you mentioned it to Jean-Luc. You wanted to find out if it was true?’
‘Yeah. Pretty stupid, in hindsight, but I had to know. I felt shit about it, you see. Not about Naomi, but my child. I don’t believe in hurting innocent kids.’
I shiver, wondering what horrors lurk in his past – probably enough to fill a whole psychiatric textbook. While genetics plays a large part in psychopathy, it takes a pretty fucked-up childhood to turn someone into a cold-blooded killer.
And I come to a decision. I won’t tell him I know he’s not the father of Caro’s baby. I have the blood type of everyone on the base off by heart, in case I ever have to set up a person-to-person transfusion requiring compatible volunteers. Caro’s blood type is O, and the baby’s is A – I tested her right after she was born, using one of the kits in the clinic. It’s biologically impossible that Drew – blood type B – is little Kate’s father.
But if believing that will protect Caro and her child, then I’m not about to put Drew straight.
‘Anyway, I reckon here’ll do.’ He swings his torch around. The beam skims across the desolate ice, cutting through the surrounding blackness for a few seconds. There’s no moonlight, but I’m no longer scared of the dark. No thoughts now of monsters lurking in the shadows, ready to pounce.
I’ve got a real live human one beside me, possessed by his own demons – and they’re much scarier than anything out there.
‘Two ways this goes down,’ Drew says to me. ‘You fight, Kate, and make this worse for yourself. Or you simply embrace it. It’s faster that way, more peaceful.’
He’s right. So I don’t struggle as he removes my hat and gloves and jacket. Offer no resistance when he pushes me onto the ice and yanks off my down-filled trousers.
He strips me almost bare, then leans over me. ‘This is your fault,’ he says, sounding disgruntled. ‘You could have avoided this, Kate, could have kept your head down and your nose out of my business.’
‘Fuck off, Drew,’ I gasp. Already my jaw is stiff and I’m finding it hard to breathe as my body reacts to the lethal cold. I wait for him to hit me, kick me perhaps, but he’s too clever to leave a mark – not this time. Alex might have needed restraining, but Drew knows I’m no match for his superior strength.
‘Don’t be scared,’ he bends and whispers into my ear. ‘I’ll be close by, so you won’t be alone. Best not to struggle or kick up a fuss – they say it’s just like going to sleep.’
Like hell it is, I think, remembering that death-mask grimace on Alex’s face. Suddenly I’m filled with panic and desolation and regret, but I force myself not to cry out, not to plead or beg as Drew extinguishes the torch, plunging us both into blackness.
Just for a minute or so, the clouds clear, and I glimpse countless stars refracted through my freezing breath, dissolving into haloes of gold. Somewhere, impossibly far away, a meteor streaks across the sky, plunging down to earth.
Thank you, I say silently, to a god I don’t believe in. Glad, in some part of me, that the last thing I will ever see is so much beauty.
As the clouds return, I squeeze my eyes closed, feel frozen tears seal them shut. Grief washes over me now – not only for myself, but for Alex and Jean-Luc and Sandrine too.
But most of all for Arne.
He came to help me. To save me. And he died believing that I hated him, that I feared him. That I’d written him off as a monster.
I’m sorry, Arne. I’m so so sorry.
I send it out as a prayer into the darkness, along with three words I never had a chance to say to him.
Something I never thought I’d feel for anyone again.
Instinctively my body contracts into a tight ball in an effort to stay warm. But I’m shivering so hard now I can hardly breathe, and there’s no longer any sensation in my hands or feet as the capillaries in my skin constrict, and my heart diverts blood to my vital organs in a frantic attempt to keep me alive. The cold is so deep, so penetrating, so all-encompassing, that it feels like fire. I recall again those accounts of people stripping off as they die of exposure, believing themselves to be overheating.
Fireworks start to fill my dying brain, my own internal aurora. Beyond them, a gathering dark of a different kind, creeping towards me, inch by inch. In it, inevitably, my fox. It pads up to me, climbing on my chest and staring down with those wild and beautiful eyes.
‘Kate,’ it says, in a voice at once close and far away.
A vixen.
My little brown vixen.
‘Kate,’ she bends and nudges my cheek with her muzzle. ‘Wake up.’
I sense her warm animal breath on my skin, her wet nose brushing ice crystals from my hair, from my cheeks, from my eyelids.
‘For God’s sake, Kate, open your fucking eyes and look at me!’
Instantly my fox vanishes into the night. A sensation of weightlessness as I’m dragged upwards and shaken hard.
I summon all my remaining strength and force my frozen lids apart. Blink into the bright light trained on my face.
‘Shit.’ Caro emits a great gulping sob. ‘Look what he’s done to you!’
She disappears for a moment, returning with my clothes. Quickly, clumsily, she forces my jacket over my rigid arms. Laying me back briefly on the ice, she drags my trousers over my shaking legs.
‘Caro?’ I croak, barely able to speak, to formulate a thought. Where am I? How did I get here?
Then I remember.
‘Drew,’ I rasp, desperately. ‘Caro, Drew is—’
‘I know.’ Grunting with the effort, she heaves me into a sitting position. ‘I heard everything that bastard said to you.’ She chokes on another sob. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t help you sooner, but you have to move slowly if you don’t want an animal like that to hear you coming.’
She swings her torch and I peer through its narrow beam. Spot a plumbing wrench lying a few metres away. Beyond it, Drew’s prone body. Just as I’m beginning to think he’s dead, his leg moves, followed by a dull moan half muffled by snow.
‘One second.’ Caro props her torch on a ridge of ice, then gets back to her feet, clutching her stomach in pain. I watch, shaking with cold, with adrenaline, while she returns to Drew. She removes several thick plastic ties from her jacket pocket, the kind I’ve seen her use countless times on loose pipes or cables in Beta. Expertly she secures his ankles and hands, trussing him like a steer, face wincing as she moves.
I guess she’s had plenty of practice, I think, recalling her childhood on that New Zealand cattle ranch.
Then I remember something else.
Something far more important. And far more urgent.
‘Arne,’ I call out hoarsely to Caro, filled with an all-consuming panic. ‘We have to find Arne.’
48
<
br /> 12 July
‘Is everything ready?’ Luuk asks, clomping into the clinic in his snow gear.
I glance around, making sure. ‘As ready as we’ll ever be.’ I push down another surge of anxiety, only too aware of the approaching danger. The odds stacked against us.
‘You coming, Kate? Sonya?’ Luuk looks from one of us to the other.
I hesitate. I should stay here, make certain Arne is comfortable. The pain where the bullet shattered the side of his temple is still troubling him, though thankfully there seems minimal damage to his brain. Plus I need to replace the dressings for his frostbite.
But I also know that if this doesn’t go right, I’ll have even bigger problems on my hands.
‘You go,’ Sonya says to me. ‘I’ll stay here and make sure he’s okay.’
‘How long will we be?’ I ask Luuk.
‘Not long,’ he replies. ‘Half an hour max? We really could use your help if you can manage it. Tom’s busy with the radio, so there’s only six of us.’
I check on Arne. He’s on the exam bed, sleeping off another dose of morphine.
‘Go.’ Caro gives me an encouraging smile from the armchair where she’s nursing little Kate, who’s proving stronger than anyone could have hoped. No harm came to her, thank goodness, from being left swaddled up in that cabin in Gamma while Caro went outside to investigate the source of the gunshot. She’s as tough as her mother, I decide.
I hurry to the boot room and kit up, adding an extra balaclava and hat for good measure. Then stand there, heart racing, gripped by another rush of fear.
You can do this, I insist to myself, trying not to think of my recent ordeal on the ice, that vice-like deathly cold. I want desperately to be there, to help make this happen, but I’m too afraid.
I close my eyes and steady my breathing. Remember Caro’s strength and courage, says a voice in my head.
Arne’s too.
If they can do it, so can you.
Taking a deep breath and checking the remaining battery life in my torch, I open the door and go outside, joining the others on the ice.
‘Right.’ Luuk hands us each a length of wood wound tightly with cloth, giving off a strong smell of gasoline. Plus a cigarette lighter each – God knows where he found all of them. ‘I’ll take the two drums at the top. Ark, you take the next two, then Rob, Rajiv, Alice, and finally Kate. Everybody clear on what to do?’
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