Cold, Cold Heart

by Christine Poulson

  The Mystery Man even in that, Katie thought. She had tried to get in conversation with him, but she had learned nothing except that he liked country and western music – which she already knew – and oh yes, he had once had a holiday in Nashville and gone to the Grand Ole Opry. When she had decided on the direct approach and asked him outright why he had come to Antarctica, he had just shrugged and said, “Oh, you know…”

  They began to play. There was something strangely reassuring about it. It was such a family game, associated for Katie with Christmas. Here they were playing it in the middle of the Antarctic, hundreds of miles from any other person, while outside it was perpetual twilight and forty degrees below zero. They were following in the footsteps of generations of earlier winterers. The cards for Chance and Community Chest were soft and grubby from long use. The thimble wasn’t the only token missing; the wheelbarrow had gone, too.

  Alex opened a can of beer and shook the dice. “Great. A double six. That takes me to Marylebone Station. I’ll buy it to go with the station I’ve already got.”

  Rhys said, “Remember the last time we played this? Kevin got all the stations and cleaned up.”

  It was Katie’s turn. She landed on Park Lane. She’d already got Mayfair. “Hey, I can start building houses.”

  “Jammy beggar,” Justin grumbled.

  “Funny,” Rhys said. “Some winters nothing happens – other winters… well, Kevin and Justin, that’s two accidents, one really bad, the other pretty bad and both in a matter of weeks.”

  “It’s a hostile environment,” Alex said. “You could say it’s surprising that things don’t go wrong more often, when you think how dangerous it is out here. Some countries don’t even allow their guys to go off base.”

  “Remember when they managed to fly that guy out of the South Pole?” Nick said as he shook the dice. “It was the beginning of April. The doctor got ill – gallstones, wasn’t it? Whitechapel. Not worth buying.”

  “Pancreatitis. 2001. Ron Shemenski. They said he wouldn’t last the winter,” Rhys said. “Graeme happened to be wintering over that year. He was telling me about it. They flew Twin Otters down from Canada and landed them at Rothera. At the Pole they worked thirty hours straight to make a runway. They were only just in time and it was touch and go whether they’d get the sick guy out.”

  “You really don’t want your doctor to be taken ill,” Craig said. Miracle of miracles, he had actually spoken. “Or your heating and plumbing engineer. Whose turn is it?”

  “Mine,” Justin said. “That’s right. Without them we’d be in deep do-do. And personally I wouldn’t want to get through the winter without Ernesto. Whereas we mere scientists are expendable.” He moved his piece and landed on Chance. He picked up a card. “Advance to Pall Mall,” he read. “If you pass ‘Go’ collect £200. Great, and I’ll buy Pall Mall, too.”

  “Lucky we’ve got Katie here as a backup,” Alex said.

  “I only finished my medical degree. I didn’t do GP training or anything like that,” Katie reminded him.

  “Sure, but on the other hand how hard can it be, removing someone’s appendix?” Nick said.

  “Yeah, you’re right. Piece of cake. There’s bound to be a demonstration on YouTube. Just as long as I don’t have to remove my own,” Katie said, remembering what Sara had said.

  Or treat my own breast cancer, she thought, as had happened to an American doctor wintering at the South Pole. They’d had to airdrop chemotherapy supplies to her. Perhaps it wasn’t a good idea, from the psychological viewpoint, to dwell on possible disasters. Or was it better to get them in the open and defuse anxiety with black humour?

  “I’m sure Ernesto would be happy to remove your appendix if you asked him nicely,” Justin said. “Apparently he’s done a course on butchering. He was telling me all about it the other day.”

  “Oh, thank you,” Katie said. “That makes me feel so much better. Luckily Sara and I are in excellent health, so hopefully we won’t need to take him up on that.”

  “My pleasure,” Justin said. “Oh and by the way, you’ve landed on Regent Street. You owe me twenty-six quid.”

  Craig rolled the dice and moved his token to Community Chest. He picked up his card, read it, and laid it on the table without speaking.

  Alex leaned over and read it: “Go to Jail. Move directly to jail. Do not pass ‘Go’. Do not collect £200. Oh dear, what have you been up to, Craig?”

  Katie happened to be looking at Craig and saw his eyes shift.

  There was a moment’s silence, enough to tell Katie that she wasn’t the only one to speculate about what had brought Craig to the Antarctic.

  * * *

  Two hours later and Katie had got to grips with the playing style of her companions. Nick was extremely cautious. She knew now that one pile of money was for buying properties and the other for paying and receiving rent. Rhys had noticed Nick’s strategy and had quietly rearranged his money to copy it. Alex was the most reckless and the most competitive. He had already nearly gone bankrupt, before coming back from the brink. She hadn’t really noticed what Craig was up to until everyone suddenly saw that he had completed the second most expensive set of properties – Regent Street, Oxford Street, and Bond Street – and was starting to build houses. Justin was somewhere in the middle: methodically collecting what he could, and not taking too many risks. He’d managed to get two stations as well as the Water Works and the Electric Company and they were nice little earners.

  And what about her? She had Mayfair and Park Lane as well as Trafalgar Square, Fleet Street, and the Strand and she might very well win. She wasn’t taking it as seriously as the others. As she watched Alex’s furrowed brow as he threw the dice and heard him groan when the wrong number came up, she couldn’t help feeling that some of them were taking it too seriously. He handed over a wodge of money to Craig – and not with good grace. She could tell he hated to lose, though he was trying not to show it. For goodness sake, it was only a game. Luck played a big part in it – as in life generally. She found herself yawning and glanced at the clock. It was eleven o’clock.

  “Shall we call it a day?” she asked.

  Reproachful eyes were turned on her.

  Rhys said, “We used to pull all-nighters last year. All the time. Running on from one game to the next.”

  “Sorry, guys, I won’t be spending the next six months playing non-stop Monopoly.”

  “Just this once,” Rhys pleaded.

  “Well…”

  She was still hesitating, when the fire alarm went off.

  Instantly Craig and Rhys were on their feet. Almost before Katie had registered the alarm they were out of the door and heading for the Comms room where the firefighting equipment was kept. Everyone had received basic safety training, but these two had enhanced training in dealing with fire. It was probably just Graeme putting them through their fire drill, but it had to be taken seriously.

  Nothing was feared more than fire on the base, especially during the winter. If the base were destroyed, there was nowhere else to go. True, there were emergency rations and fuel dumps located out on the perimeter and on the other platforms. There were tents too, buried out there in the ice. The odds were that they would survive the winter one way or another, but it would be desperately hard. Katie had no desire whatsoever to relive the experiences of Scott and Shackleton.

  Justin grabbed his crutches and the four of them made their way to the mustering station in the corridor outside the kit room and next to the exit. Graeme and Ernesto were already there, waiting for them. Sara appeared in her dressing gown, yawning and pushing her hair back. She’d obviously been asleep.

  The alarm stopped, leaving a silence that tingled in their ears. Just a drill then, thank goodness.

  “Where’s Adam?” Graeme said, frowning.

  They all looked around, as if they might somehow have overlooked him.

  “I thought I saw him going to his pit-room earlier,” Sara said.

  Jus
tin said, “He was hitting the sauce at supper time.”

  “I’ll go and look for him,” Katie said.

  Surely, she thought, as she headed off down the corridor, no one could sleep through this, however drunk they were.

  But somehow Adam had. He was sprawled out on his bunk, face down, still fully clothed, snoring, and he stank of beer.

  She shook him awake. He moaned and muttered and opened his eyes.

  “The fire alarm!” she said. “Didn’t you hear it? Everyone else is at the mustering station.”

  “What?” He stared blearily at her, struggling to focus his eyes and work out what she was saying. “Wha’s that you say?”

  “The fire alarm! Come on!” She pulled on his arm.

  He half-rose and fell back on the bed with a groan. “Not well.”

  Finally she got him on his feet and out into the corridor. He made his unsteady way towards the mustering station with Katie following behind to make sure he didn’t veer off somewhere en route.

  Graeme would be annoyed. It was one of the few things he was really strict about. He didn’t mind people having a drink or two, but it was vital that they were “fit to muster”. Otherwise, they imperilled not only themselves, but everyone on the base.

  * * *

  They went back to the game of Monopoly but it had gone off the boil, and they agreed to finish it the next day.

  But Katie was never to know whether she would have scooped the pool. When Graeme, who was on night duty, went into the dining room around two o’clock, he found the board overturned and the money, the tokens, and everything else scattered all over the floor.

  When he’d tidied it all up, he found that the little penguin was missing.

  CHAPTER 12

  NORTH NORFOLK

  The journey from Cambridge railway station to the flat Michael Cameron shared with Flora was scarcely half a mile, but twice in the taxi he fell briefly asleep and woke with a start. I’m getting too old for this, he thought. Three weeks of back-to-back lectures, receptions, dinners, followed by the long, long flight from Sydney. It would have been sensible to have stayed a few days longer, relax, have a holiday, but he had been desperate to get back to Flora. He had no illusions. It was like that French saying: there is always one who kisses and one who offers the cheek. Flora was the one who offered the cheek. Yes, Flora did love him – and was appreciative of everything he had to offer her – but there was an element of the pragmatic in it, he knew that. He, on the other hand, adored her. He was afraid to let her know how much and was careful not to crowd her. He hadn’t been able to believe his luck when she’d agreed to marry him. He would do anything for her. Sometimes he lay awake at night, thinking about what he had done for her. But there was no danger really: only the two of them knew…

  The taxi pulled up outside the flat. The driver helped him to heave the suitcases into the hall and Michael gave him a generous tip.

  He was surprised to find the flat empty. He’d expected Flora to be here. She’d planned to return from the cottage the previous day as she’d had a meeting with important investors in London that morning. He looked for a note, and checked his phone to see if she had texted him, but there was nothing. Probably she had just popped out to the shops. Or maybe the meeting had run over and she was on a later train. He sent her an affectionate text.

  He decided to lie down – just for half an hour while he waited for her. He woke up three hours later. He had been sleeping open-mouthed and had drooled on the pillow. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He hoped Flora hadn’t seen that, but no, he could tell from the stillness that she hadn’t returned. The bedside clock said five o’clock and he wondered for a moment if it was morning or evening. He felt a twinge of anxiety. She surely should be here and something else was nudging his thoughts, warning him that something wasn’t right. What was it?

  The phone rang. Ah, that would be her. He reached out for it and, as he did so, realized what was bothering him. If Flora had arrived back yesterday, then where was Marmaduke?

  It wasn’t Flora on the phone. It was Lyle. Flora had not turned up for her meeting. He wanted to know what on earth was going on? Was she there or did Michael know where she was?

  It took Michael a while to get to grips with what he was saying. Jet lag had slowed down his thought processes and he was having difficulty putting things in order.

  “Flora’s not here,” he told Lyle. A thought struck him. Had she ever been here? “Just hang on a moment,” he said.

  He put down the phone and went into the bathroom. None of Flora’s paraphernalia was there. So she had not been there the previous night. His heart lurched. She had left him and had taken Marmaduke with her. The next moment he realized that even if this were true, this wouldn’t explain why she hadn’t shown up at such a crucial meeting. He felt the first cold trickle of apprehension.

  He went back to the phone.

  “When did you last hear from her, Lyle?”

  “Not for – what? – three weeks, maybe, something like that – not since she went off to the cottage anyway. And neither has the departmental secretary. I rang her after Flora didn’t show. And she’s not answering calls or text messages.”

  “Just let me check my phone.” Michael thumbed through the messages. Nothing from Flora. And no reply to his earlier text.

  “No, and I haven’t spoken to her since she arrived at the cottage,” he told Lyle. “There’s no landline or Wi-Fi there. No signal either.”

  “Well, is she still there, do you think? Did she get confused about the date?”

  “Not Flora,” Michael spoke with conviction.

  His thoughts went into overdrive. Something must have happened to her: he saw her car in a ditch, her body slumped over the steering wheel. Get a grip, he told himself. Someone would have informed him if she’d had a road accident. Instantly the picture was replaced by one of Flora lying at the bottom of the stairs at the cottage.

  “Something’s wrong,” he said. “There’s a local farmer who keeps an eye on the cottage. I’ll give him a ring.”

  * * *

  While Michael waited for Mr McGuire to ring back, he made himself a pot of strong coffee. He didn’t feel hungry, but made himself some toast from a loaf of sliced bread that he found in the freezer.

  The farmer rang on his mobile. He had checked the cottage. The front door was locked but the back door wasn’t. He had gone in and had a quick look around. There was no sign of Flora and her car had gone. Michael considered this. To go anywhere at all – even to buy a newspaper – she would have had to get in the car, so there wasn’t much in that. As for the back door, they often didn’t bother to lock it during the day. But still… his gut was telling him that this wasn’t right. It was unthinkable that Flora had forgotten that meeting: he knew how much the project meant to her.

  He couldn’t just sit and wait for her to contact him. He rang Lyle and told him that he was going to drive to the cottage.

  * * *

  Everything looked normal as he bumped down the track and parked in front of the house. He didn’t bother with the front door, but went straight round to the back. He opened the door and called Flora’s name, knowing as he did so that if her car wasn’t there, neither was she. Yet the house was warm, the heating was on, and that gave him hope.

  But that hope dwindled as he went around the house and pieced together what he saw. The teapot had not been emptied and was full of mould. The fridge was packed with food past its sell-by date. He went upstairs to the bedroom. Flora’s case lay open on the floor. She hadn’t even unpacked. Inside there was a circular depression in the clothes, lined with fur and dead leaves and bits of twig. The bed didn’t look as if it had been slept in.

  In the sitting room he saw that there had been a fire in the grate and it had burned itself out.

  Full of foreboding, he went back outside. It was getting dark now. He called her name. The sound of his voice drifted forlornly away. There was a rustling in the hedge an
d a creature emerged. At first in the dusk he didn’t recognize it. Then it ran towards him and he saw that it was Marmaduke, carrying a mouse in his mouth. When Michael bent down to stroke him, he released the mouse and it darted away. Marmaduke was beside himself with excitement, rubbing round Michael’s legs, talking to him in urgent chirrups and meows. Michael picked him up. He was so thin that Michael could feel his ribs. His fur was matted and there was a sticky, weeping wound on his cheek. He rubbed the other side of his face against Michael’s shoulder and began to purr.

  Michael carried him into the kitchen and put him down. He searched the cupboards, Marmaduke winding himself around Michael’s feet all the while, pleading for food. Michael found a tin of tuna, opened it, and tipped the lot into a bowl. He put it down and watched for a few moments as the cat ate voraciously. The poor old boy was starving. He must have been alone here for weeks. Flora would never have left her beloved cat to fend for himself. Something had happened to her, probably soon after she had arrived here and soon after he had last spoken to her. Three weeks and no one had known that she was missing.

  Full of dread, he got out his phone and rang the police.

  CHAPTER 13

  ELY

  Lyle came into Daniel’s office with a face like thunder, just behind Alison, who was bringing in a tray of coffee and biscuits. He took the tray from her with the usual courtesy that he showed towards women, but one look at his face and she made herself scarce without even thanking him.

  “How far have you got with the lab books?” Lyle demanded.

  “Almost there. Just a few very small queries.”

  The lab books were at the heart of due diligence. They recorded everything that took place in the lab: every detail, every step, every formula, every calculation, and, of course, every result. This was essential if an experiment were to be replicated and it meant too that if someone got knocked down by a bus, their work wouldn’t be lost. It was also possible to establish the date of a discovery from them, and that was vital in taking out a patent.