The Ice

by Laline Paull

Ruth hesitated. ‘No. He’d signed a confidentiality clause. And he was honourable.’

  Mr Thornton had no more questions for Dr Mott, and he allowed Sawbridge the first opportunity to question her. Sawbridge gave her his eyebrow-flash smile as he rose.

  ‘Thank you, Dr Mott. Given your relationship with Tom, this must be an extremely sensitive process for you.’

  ‘I want the truth. I’m fine.’

  ‘Very good.’ Sawbridge narrowed his eyes. ‘We’re talking here about the tragedy of Tom’s death, and your belief that it was “no accident”. This raises very serious questions. First of all, the matter of your judgement.’

  ‘Ah, the ambush.’ Ruth Mott looked back at Sawbridge. ‘Would that be about the reason my survey in East Greenland was shut down?’

  ‘I did wonder if we might touch on that—’

  ‘No, please, let me, I was actually there. Mr Thornton, the court, reporters, everyone: I believe my survey in Qarrtsiluni was discredited in order to close me down, so that Sean’s partner Joe Kingsmith could push ahead with his mining assay. They used the fact that I was in a relationship with my Inuit guide to press for me to leave.’ She was breathing hard. ‘Does that touch on it enough for you?’

  ‘Oh, and the drinking,’ said Sawbridge.

  Sean felt ashamed.

  ‘Sure,’ Ruth Mott dug in to endure it. ‘Plenty of it, at the time. But I still know that Joe Kingsmith of Midgard Lodge is the same Joe Kingsmith of Prism Exploration in East Greenland, and the same Joe Kingsmith of Prism Mining in the Central African Republic – before Ebola closed him down there. That was one of the things Tom and I talked about, overnight. The last time I saw him.’

  ‘Mmm.’ Sawbridge rubbed his chin. ‘Thing is, that’s neither here nor there, is it? Because Tom died when the ice-cave collapsed, very possibly because of a lake of meltwater on the ice cap feeding through and destabilising the glacier, as we have heard. The cause of this tragedy is not because of what happened to you, a long time ago, in another country. Or who does what in which developing nation, filling you with moral outrage. Though I can understand why, at some level, you might want to connect it all together.’ Sawbridge looked around the courtroom. ‘Perhaps you need to damage my client Mr Cawson’s good reputation, because you need to make someone, anyone, responsible for your loss. But you are misguided and your reasoning is specious.’

  He looked back at Ruth Mott with a pained compassionate smile.

  ‘So there we are, a few bugbears unearthed – but for now, can we go back to your autopsy of the actual bear, in the hangar at the airfield at Longyearbyen? Am I right in thinking that, were it not for that random accident, of a polar bear being killed on that particular day, and requiring someone – anyone – with the credentials to do it, to perform the autopsy, you would not have met Mr Harding that day? Because neither of you were aware of the presence of the other.’

  ‘Longyearbyen is still small.’ She was white-faced. ‘There was every chance we would have seen each other.’

  ‘But you were not staying at the Polar Dream, were you? Where Mr Cawson’s party had rooms? You were far downhill at the Radisson, where you were booked to have dinner with holiday guests and afterwards to talk to them about the Arctic and polar bears and eclipses and so on. Those hotels being some distance apart, you were not intending to eat at Amaruq that night – which was not only fully booked, but extremely expensive and an unlikely venue for a single diner on a modest lecturing fee, let’s put it like that. Not to diminish the importance of highly qualified after-dinner speakers – it sounds like a very good tour company! And Mr Cawson’s party certainly had no plans to go out bar-hopping later, so it’s fair to say the odds were slim, of a chance meeting with Mr Harding.’

  Sean watched Ruth Mott’s face as Sawbridge let the black powder burn towards her. The room knew the explosion was coming. Go on, Ruth. Let rip. You’re really upset, no one will hold it against you, and I will publicly forgive you. But she listened calmly and Sawbridge pressed on.

  ‘The dead polar bear was the random agent that brought you into contact with Mr Harding again.’

  ‘I told you: the bear was from East Greenland. Its lip tattoo proved it. What could be less random?’ Ruth Mott made sure the press bench was paying attention. ‘It travelled about eight hundred miles. So it either swam, which would be extraordinary, or it went the whole way around the North Pole clockwise, or the polar currents are already so disrupted by climate change that it came counter-clockwise. All sorts of marine species are found where they’ve never been known before; it’s like all the ocean currents are scrambling, invasive species travelling in ship bilge water—’

  ‘Bravo! Bravo!’ Professor Kelly stood up at the back of the court, clapping. ‘Exactly what I’ve been saying! When are people going to listen? Does no one understand England has a monsoon season now? Oh, another rainy June – NO! Wake up!’ He sat down quickly before the clerk could get to him, and vigorously gestured to Ruth Mott to go on.

  ‘So yes,’ she said, her voice stronger now, ‘yes, it might be random that a bear comes from East Greenland to Svalbard. It might be random that Joe Kingsmith wrecks his way around the world but I end up opposite him at dinner. And it might be random that before I got sacked in East Greenland I was studying reproductive anomalies in female bears, which is exactly what the eclipse bear in Svalbard was full of. Undeveloped blastocysts with evidence of pollution at the deepest cellular level. So, Mr Thornton, before you pull me off this witness stand because a dead bear has nothing to do with why Tom died, let me say that I believe she did, at a causal level. And another bear led the way to the ship finding his body.’

  The journalists pattered away. Sawbridge waited for quiet again.

  ‘Thank you, Dr Mott – a fascinating perspective on the facts. You’ve said to ask you anything, so I will. It’s clear you and Mr Harding shared the kind of passionate feelings that, frankly, make me rather envious. A great love. A – primal bond?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But turbulent, in the past?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you and Mr Harding arrange that he would visit you, after the dinner?’

  ‘Absolutely not. He persuaded a colleague to tell him my room. I’d talked to her about him. So she knew what he meant to me.’

  Sawbridge sighed in sympathy.

  ‘You said you, um, talked all night. Did Mr Harding get any sleep? I won’t insult your intelligence, you’ll know what is at the root of my question. Was he – perhaps – in a state of emotional exaltation but physical fatigue that next day, due to lack of sleep? We of course have no way of knowing, but you do.’

  ‘To a man like Tom, a sleepless night would make no difference. He had great endurance, he was very strong.’ She leaned forward. ‘He said he felt reborn.’

  ‘Marvellous. I can completely understand why you would want to believe it made no difference – because it would be unbearable, would it not?’ Here Sawbridge gathered up Angela Harding and Granny Ruby in his compassionate glance. ‘Quite unbearable to think that a night of passion had cost Tom vital energy when it came to the physical ordeal he was unwittingly about to face. To be just that crucial bit below par. To be … tired.’

  Ruth stared at him in shock. So did Sean. To lead people to blame Ruth – he couldn’t bear it. Sawbridge shook his head gently, as if he too, could hardly bear to think it. ‘No further questions.’ As he sat, she spoke again, but her voice was weak.

  ‘He didn’t trust Kingsmith.’

  Sawbridge half-rose, as if to be polite to a lady. ‘If I might respectfully suggest, Dr Mott, it was you who did not like Mr Kingsmith, but in your grief, to protect yourself from the possibility of culpability, no matter how innocently, in his death – you now project that fear posthumously onto Mr Harding. Who was, I remind you, quite happy to be in business with Mr Cawson, Mr Kingsmith—’

  ‘He wasn’t! He was full of doubt! And I believe something happened inside the glacier or before,
I don’t know what—’

  ‘Dr Mott, you’ve led research teams in the Arctic on a number of occasions, been a senior scientist in your field – yes? Have you never doubted yourself? Never had a moment of wondering if you’re doing the right thing, right time, right team? Never made a decision, then gone over your reasoning again before implementing it? A sort of safety routine?’

  ‘I think things through very carefully, so that I trust myself. You can’t lead a team if you’re indecisive.’

  ‘Or if you’ve lost your job.’

  ‘No. Don’t use that.’ Sean said it impulsively, and the court turned to stare. Sawbridge held up his hand and nodded soothingly.

  ‘My client is a very generous man to feel protective towards you, Dr Mott, but I’m afraid for his own sake I must persist with this line of questioning—’

  ‘Nicholas, don’t, you’ve said enough.’ Sean was on his feet now, but Sawbridge refused to look, keeping his palm up as if stopping traffic, his eyes trained on Ruth Mott.

  ‘Nothing you could say would be any worse.’ She looked as if she were mortally wounded, but still standing. Sean wanted to go to her, but he too was frozen.

  ‘Isn’t the reason you’re now an after-dinner speaker,’ continued Sawbridge, ‘rather than a respected working scientist, because you made a fatal error of judgement in your last position? Isn’t it because of that business about the fatality with the sponsored bear? I didn’t want to bring it up, but wasn’t it to do with your responsibility for administering the wrong dosage of the tranquilliser? A case of being over-confident in your decisions, rather than having the humility to check, to question yourself, to doubt, on occasion?’

  ‘Someone sabotaged me. I know I loaded the right amount.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Sawbridge. ‘The mysterious Someone. But not a shred of evidence.’

  ‘Someone on my team. Prism paid them, I was the only one fighting to protect the denning site, the rest of them had already taken the money!’

  ‘So you blamed Mr Kingsmith’s company for the closure of your study?’

  ‘Rightly!’

  ‘And then when you met him with my client, Mr Cawson, quite by happenstance, in Svalbard, you perhaps felt every wrong could be righted in one go, if you could only separate Tom from his purpose with them. You’d lost the man and the job you loved, but here was a second chance. No wonder you wanted to hang on to him for every minute you could.’

  Sawbridge reverted to compassion.

  ‘I think the coroner will take into account that – in Mr Harding’s likely fatigued state due to lack of sleep following a highly intense reunion – we have found a strong contributory factor to his inability to save himself in this tragic accident. I thank you, Dr Mott. No further questions.’

  I once met a woman who saved her own life by eating her husband and her children.

  My husband and I were on a journey from Igdlulik to Ponds Inlet. On the way he had a dream in which it seemed that a friend of his was being eaten by his own kin. Two days after, we came to a spot where strange sounds hovered in the air. At first we could not make out what it was, but coming nearer it was like the ghost of words; as it were one trying to speak without a voice. And at last it said:

  ‘I am one who can no longer live among human kind, for I have eaten my own kin.’

  We could hear now that it was a woman. And we looked at each other, and spoke in a whisper, fearing what might happen to us now. Then searching round, we found a little shelter built of snow and a fragment of caribou skin. Close by was a thing standing up; we thought at first it was a human being, but saw it was only a rifle stuck in the snow. But all this time the voice was muttering. And going nearer again we found a human head, with the flesh gnawed away. And at last, entering into the shelter, we found the woman seated on the floor. Her face was turned towards us and we saw that blood was trickling from the corners of her eyes; so greatly had she wept.

  ‘Kikaq (a gnawed bone),’ she said, ‘I have eaten my husband and my children!’

  She was but skin and bone herself, and seemed to have no life in her. And she was almost naked, having eaten most of her clothing. My husband bent down over her, and she said:

  ‘I have eaten him who was your comrade when he lived.’

  And my husband answered: ‘You had the will to live, and so you are still alive.’

  Then we put up our tent close by, cutting off a piece of the forecurtain to make a shelter for the woman; for she was unclean and might not be in the same tent with us. And we gave her frozen caribou meat to eat, but when she had eaten a mouthful or so, she fell to trembling all over, and could eat no more.

  She is still alive to this day and married to a great hunter, named Igtussarssua, and she is his favorite wife, though he had one before. But that is the most terrible thing I have known in all my life.

  Across Arctic America: Narrative of the Fifth Thule Expedition (1927)

  Knud Rasmussen

  30

  Sean bluntly refused Sawbridge’s offer to have lunch. Ruth Mott would now believe that she might be culpable for Tom’s death. It would blight the rest of her life.

  ‘You underestimate the lady,’ Sawbridge was ever affable. ‘She strikes me as very resilient. And when it comes to reputations in a courtroom, it’s a zero-sum game. Ours or theirs, never both. You’re paying me to know this and act accordingly. So hear this: squeamishness in a client comes from one of two things. One, he’s innocent but frightened no one will believe him. Or two, he’s a coward who’ll let someone hang in his place but please don’t make him watch. Obviously, you’re the former.’ Sawbridge looked at his watch. ‘You’re confident he’ll come?’

  ‘Already landed.’ Sean had received a text message from a new number, a Kingsmith move on arrival. Too many calls, otherwise.

  Sean let Sawbridge peel off, then got himself a coffee and a ham-and-mustard sandwich and found a bench by a weir. Birdsong threaded through the sound of an open-air market and the water rushed fast and bubbling. As Sean ate, his mouth filled with wheaten mulch and long-dead meat. He forced himself to swallow then looked in the sandwich – it smelled normal, but it sickened him. The coffee was bitter and cloying. Could it be stress? Jenny Flanders came to mind. He didn’t want to see her again but he knew he would.

  Young people walked past him – pretty girls. For once he did not look carnally at their taut hips and flinging hair, but instead saw them as only just past childhood. Boys followed, young men unmarked by life. Early twenties, Sean guessed. For a moment he saw himself and Tom, and Gail and Ruth, laughing by the river all those years ago, just before they had become two couples.

  He watched the foursome pausing to look down at the weir. They seemed held in a golden glow, they were sex and youth and promise and they had all the time in the world. They moved on but he still sat there, a middle-aged man with a paper cup and a sandwich, invisible on a city bench one weekday lunchtime.

  Since Sean had saved Tom’s bacon at the Lost Explorers’ Society dinner, Tom Harding made a point of getting to know this stroppy waiter whose Arctic obsession outstripped even his own. Sean had gone to meet him at the King’s Head that first time, and was amazed and touched, that this young man of similar age but in every other way from a different planet really and emphatically did want him to go to Greenland as his expedition partner. Sean could spot those who were privileged from birth – the Abbott’s School and Oxford had taught him that – but there was nothing snobbish about Tom, and he was wildly impressed with Sean.

  When Sean was finally forced to admit that he couldn’t afford to go to Greenland, Tom immediately offered to pay. He refused.

  ‘No charity, unless I’m the one giving it. But thanks.’ Sean got up to go, but stopped at the sight of two lovely girls heading their way. One of them grabbed Tom and amorously embraced him, and Sean and the girl’s friend looked away as Tom reciprocated enthusiastically. With their friends absorbed in each other, they smiled at one other awkwardly.

/>   ‘Clearly they’re back on again.’ The girl rolled her eyes. ‘I can’t keep up.’ She touched her face. ‘What? Is it pasta sauce? Ruth cooked it in her room. It was horrible.’

  ‘It was delicious. And cheaper than going out.’ The girl called Ruth looked around, aglow with happiness. She was sitting on Tom’s lap, his arm was around her waist and he was grinning stupidly. He looked up at Sean.

  ‘You’re going?’

  ‘Oh,’ said the other girl, ‘are you?’

  Sean suddenly decided he wasn’t going anywhere. He pulled out a chair for her, and found out her name was Gail. Before he’d come back from the bar with the round he’d bought with his week’s food money, he was in love. She was studying art, her parents lived in the country, she was unfashionable and didn’t care, she followed Ruth around so that she could meet interesting people – like Sean …

  Ruth and Tom were wrapped up in each other so Gail and Sean talked, and ate crisps, and drank beer and he spent far more than he should because he refused to let her pay for anything, and it occurred to him that if he was going to be friends with Tom Harding – and this girl had sealed it for him – then he had better find a way to make more money, quickly.

  But at a painful meeting the following week his bank manager refused him a loan or an overdraft. He had no family, or at least none he could ask. The trip to Greenland would cost five hundred pounds – plus the contribution to the Lost Explorers’ Society annual funds and the membership. It was impossible, and he was a fool for thinking he could keep up with that sort of crowd. He went to Tom’s college and left him a note explaining why he couldn’t do it, and then one at Gail’s college, saying he couldn’t afford to go out with her, and he was very sorry.

  But Tom had other ideas, and so did Gail. They ambushed Sean at the Crown and Sceptre, and presented a plan. A businessman with a reputation for supporting young people was coming to speak at the Oxford Union. They must go, and ask him for sponsorship.