Cold, Cold Heart

by Christine Poulson

  She decided to put the New Testament close to Sara’s heart. She unzipped the parka and was surprised by what she saw. That was strange, very strange. Sara wasn’t wearing a fleece underneath, just a white cotton T-shirt. Whatever had possessed her to go out without one? That would certainly have hastened her death. Did this cast doubt on her state of mind?

  She placed the New Testament on Sara’s chest and was about to pull the sides of the parka back together, when she noticed something on the T-shirt. Some kind of stain. She examined it closely: a small rusty patch around a slit in the fabric. It couldn’t be, no… surely…

  A wave of dizziness swept over her and she groped for support. She leaned against the shelf, trying to compose herself, hoping that she was somehow mistaken. But she knew that she wasn’t. Sara had been stabbed. She had been murdered – and it had to be someone on the base. It seemed impossible that it could be one of these men, someone she’d laughed and chatted with, that she sat next to at meals, no, more, someone who had actually cooked dinner on Ernesto’s day off. But it had to be. Who could she be sure of? Could she be sure of anyone? She hadn’t known a single one of them until two months ago.

  A flutter of panic stirred in her belly. She took a deep breath. She couldn’t let fear and claustrophobia get a grip on her.

  The door opened behind her and she spun around. Justin was standing in the doorway, holding a bunch of roses.

  She stared at him.

  “Katie? Are you alright? You look – well –”

  “As if I’ve seen a ghost?” she suggested.

  Justin’s eyes strayed to Sara’s body lying partly exposed. He quickly looked away. “What’s going on?”

  “Wait a minute.” She went over and glanced up and down the corridor. There was no one else around.

  She closed the door behind her. “Come across to the surgery.”

  “Why? What’s the matter?”

  “Just come!”

  He stepped over the threshold and she shut the door behind him. They stood looking at each other. Justin laid the bunch of flowers on the desk. Roses? But where – then she saw that they were made of pink tissue paper, so beautifully constructed that at first sight they had seemed real.

  Justin said, “I got Rhys to make these. It didn’t seem right, just leaving her there with nothing…”

  “I know. They’re beautiful. Sit down,” she said. They both took seats at the desk.

  “Katie! What is it? Why are you looking like that?”

  “Just wait. I have to think.” There was a bottle of brandy in one of the cupboards. She got it out along with a glass and poured herself a healthy measure. She sat down and took a swig. The warmth spread through her and steadied her.

  Justin was staring at her. She would have to phone headquarters and she would have to tell Graeme. But what was she going to say here and now to Justin? Should she tell him?

  He reached over and got a second glass out of the cupboard. Awkwardly, he scooped up the brandy bottle in the crook of his right elbow and held it to his chest. He took the top off with his left hand, leaned forward, and put it on the table. Still using just his left hand, he now tipped the bottle and slopped some brandy into the glass.

  And watching him struggle, she realized that he was the one person on the base who couldn’t have killed Sara. And not only did that fact clear him, but it was something she could use.

  “We’ve got a problem,” she told him. “I need to have a better look, but –” She hesitated, but there was no way to wrap this up. She went on. “Sara’s been stabbed.”

  Justin’s jaw dropped. He stared at her, speechless.

  “I want you to be a witness,” she said.

  “Witness? Witness to what? And why me?”

  “If I’m right about what’s happened, you couldn’t have done it. You’re right-handed,” she explained, “and your right hand is out of action.”

  At that point, his gaze shifted and she saw that his rational mind was taking over. “Couldn’t I have done it left-handed?” he asked.

  “Not unless you’re ambidextrous and I’ve seen you struggling over the past few weeks and I know you’re not. I want you to come back in there with me. I’m going to have to cut her T-shirt away and have a better look.”

  She got up to look for a pair of scissors. Justin was looking down at his clasped hands and she couldn’t quite make out what he said next.

  “What was that?” she asked.

  “I said, I’ve never actually seen a dead body before.”

  “Oh. I see.” She’d taken it for granted that he’d be able to cope. He was a scientist, after all, but as an astronomer, he was more used to dealing with heavenly bodies than dead bodies. The awful pun came into her head from nowhere and she recognized it as a symptom of approaching hysteria. Any minute now she’d either be crying or laughing her head off – or both.

  “You’d better knock back that brandy. It’ll help.”

  They sat sipping in silence.

  Justin put the glass on the table with a decisive gesture. “OK. Let’s get it over with.”

  Katie pulled on a pair of surgical gloves. They went back to the freezer. Very carefully, Katie slipped the blade of the scissors into the neck of Sara’s T-shirt and slit it open. She peeled it back from the body. Just under Sara’s left breast, aligned with the slit in the T-shirt, there was a small wound. Justin, standing beside and a little behind Katie, made an inarticulate sound.

  Katie said, “She’s been stabbed through the heart.”

  “Is that – I mean, is that enough? It looks so small.”

  “Yes, the damage’ll be mostly inside.”

  Already Katie’s fingers had gone numb, but there was something else she had to check before they went back to the surgery.

  * * *

  Without asking Justin went over to the desk and poured out two more glasses of brandy. He sat down heavily. Katie sat down beside him. He reached over and took her hand and squeezed it.

  Katie said, “Her parka’s not damaged or bloodstained. I’m quite sure she wasn’t wearing it when she was stabbed. Even if you could have –” She hesitated, not wanting to put it into words. “I mean to say, even if you could have done… it, and I know you didn’t… you certainly couldn’t have dressed her in her parka and carried her outside one-handed.”

  “She was killed here on the platform then? That’s what you’re thinking?”

  “She wasn’t wearing anything over her T-shirt, so she must have been indoors when it happened.”

  “It’s crazy. The whole thing’s crazy. Katie – sorry, but are you really sure? Why wasn’t there more blood?”

  “When a major blood vessel or organ is damaged, internal bleeding can lead to loss of consciousness fairly rapidly. There doesn’t have to be very much to show on the outside. She’d have died very quickly.”

  They contemplated that awful thought.

  The wind had got up again. Katie went over to the window. Justin joined her and together they looked out at the flying drift and the darkness beyond. There was no need to say anything. Katie knew that Justin too was thinking of the hundreds of miles of frozen wasteland that stretched away in all directions, the seemingly endless night, the almost ceaseless winds that swept across the Antarctic plateau.

  “How did they think they could ever get away with it?” Justin said. “What am I saying? How did he think he could get away with it? Because it has to be a man, doesn’t it? I mean – it wasn’t you, Katie.”

  “Wasn’t it? I mean, yes, it wasn’t. But can I prove that?”

  “I don’t want to be sexist – equal opportunities and all that, but Sara was a tall woman and I don’t see you hoisting her over your shoulder and heading out into a blizzard.”

  Katie was glad to see that the colour was coming back into his face. She took a gulp of her brandy. “I can’t believe we are having this conversation. I really can’t.”

  “How could something like this have happened? Was it spu
r of the moment? A quarrel that got out of hand and then he had to cover up the best he could?”

  “I don’t know.” But there was something about that wound, just in the right place, the economy of it, exactly what was needed and nothing more, that didn’t seem like a blow struck in anger. She said, “I don’t think he ever meant the body to be found and it could easily not have been. I think he was caught out by the blizzard and he hid the body near the vehicle depot, planning to get rid of it later on. Then the direction of the wind changed and shifted the drift, so that her hand came to the surface.”

  Justin thought about that. “If he had managed to get her away from the base, he could have tipped her down one of those deep crevasses and that would have been that.”

  “We’d have gone on thinking that she’d got confused and wandered off base. Someone must be cursing their bad luck right now.”

  They were silent. “I’m frightened,” she admitted.

  He didn’t say that it would be alright, and that was good, because she wouldn’t have believed him. But he did take her hand and squeeze it.

  “Come on. Let’s go and see the Boss.”

  A horrible thought occurred to her. “But what if it was him, who… I mean, I can’t imagine for an instant that it was, but –”

  “You’re not thinking straight, Katie. The Boss was the one who spotted the body. He didn’t have to do that – and he wouldn’t have done that, if he had killed her. All he had to do was wait for a chance to go back out and cover her up again until he could move her off base.”

  Katie heaved a sigh of relief. “Of course. Yes, he’s in the clear. It was unthinkable in any case.”

  “But is it any less unthinkable that it is one of the others? We’ve got to face it, Katie. It has to have been one of us, and we can’t wait until the police arrive in six months’ time. We have to find out who did this.”

  CHAPTER 30

  “The line’s gone dead,” Graeme said, putting the phone down. “I’ll have to try again later. They got as far as telling me to secure the crime scene.”

  Katie and Justin were in his office. If Katie had ever thought that calling Graeme “the Boss” was a bit of a joke, she wasn’t thinking it now. He had taken in the news with a calmness that was impressive. He hadn’t questioned it, hadn’t asked her if she was sure, or expressed disbelief. There was nothing showy or dramatic about it, he had just quietly taken charge. He and Katie had gone together to look at the body and Katie had shown him the wound.

  “What crime scene?” Justin asked. “We don’t know where it happened.”

  “We know where it didn’t happen. It didn’t happen outside,” Katie said. “She wasn’t wearing her parka when she was stabbed, just her T-shirt.”

  “Could she have been out at the caboose?” Graeme asked.

  “No. She would have been wearing more, not just her T-shirt and the parka, but her fleece as well. It was somewhere on the platform. I’m sure of it.”

  Justin shook his head. “How could it have happened without anyone seeing anything? How could you murder someone and get them off the platform? It’s incredible.”

  “It is incredible. But it happened,” Graeme said. “And there are a lot of places we could rule out – like the dining room where Nick and Craig were playing Scrabble most of the afternoon. The kitchen too where people must have been coming and going all the time.”

  Katie found herself thinking of Adam’s beloved Cluedo: Miss Scarlett with a dagger in the library. For a moment she thought she wouldn’t be able to hold back hysterical laughter. I’ve got to keep a grip on myself, she thought. Justin and Graeme are focused on the problem, seeing it as a puzzle to be worked out. I must see it that way too – at least for now. I’ll try not to think of Sara actually being dead, of someone actually killing her. I’ll try and think of it as if it is a game of Cluedo: a matter of elimination and logistics.

  “Moving the body would be the problem. Somehow they got it off the base that afternoon,” Graeme said.

  “Do we know that for sure?” Justin asked.

  “Yes. I know it wasn’t here at six o’clock. I searched the platform from end to end.”

  And then Katie knew. “The surgery. That’s where it must have happened. It’s well away from the rest of the communal rooms.” It had been planned that way, so that confidentiality could be maintained.

  “Makes sense,” Justin said. “That’s where he could have found her alone.”

  “Even so… How long would he have needed?” Graeme asked.

  “You mean…?” Katie’s voice trailed off.

  “To kill Sara and get her body off the base.”

  Katie saw Sara sitting in the surgery. Someone coming in. Did they speak to her or did they just – do it? All it would have taken was one swift blow. “Not long,” she concluded. “She’d have died almost instantly. But if the killer had to dress her, that’s what would have taken the time.” She couldn’t believe she was having this conversation.

  “Why did he waste time doing that?” Justin asked. “Why not just take her as she was? The important thing was to get her out of the building, surely?”

  Katie said, “I think I know the answer to that. He was setting it up as an accident. He needed it to look as though she had gone out of her own accord. That’s why the radio went too.”

  “He had some nerve,” Justin said.

  “I thought that at first,” Katie said. “But actually, was it all that risky? No one comes to that end of the building unless they are going to the kit room or the surgery or the generator – or leaving the building, and no one was planning to do that on the afternoon of Sundown day. He only needed to be in the corridor for maybe, I don’t know, thirty seconds. And the fire doors cut off the view from further down the corridor.”

  “We’ll have to time it,” Graeme said. He caught the expression on Katie’s face. “I know it’s a grisly idea, but before I start to question people I need to know how long it would take. And there’s something we need to get out in the open first.” He looked at them in turn, held their gaze for a moment. “Are we absolutely sure that the three of us are in the clear?”

  There was silence, then: “I am satisfied that it couldn’t have been Justin,” Katie said. “The burn on his hand rules him out. No one could have got that coat on her with one hand out of action. I don’t think he could have stabbed her either. He’s right-handed and it’s his right hand that’s out of action.”

  “And it couldn’t have been you, Katie,” Graeme said. “Because you weigh – what – fifty kilos wringing wet? You might be wiry, but you are still only five foot five. I can’t see you carrying a big woman like Sara down those steps in a blizzard. No, I am ruling you out.”

  “And it wasn’t you, Graeme,” Justin said. “You’d have kept quiet about seeing Sara’s hand. Katie and I had already worked that out. Not that we’d have thought it was you in any case,” he added hastily.

  “Alright then,” Graeme said.

  Katie and Justin nodded.

  They went down to the surgery. No one spoke a word on the way. They went inside.

  “Yes, I think it must have been here,” Katie said, looking around. “Anywhere else on the base and the chances of being seen would have been so much greater. If it’s a crime scene perhaps we’d better not touch anything.”

  “Your fingerprints are going to be everywhere anyway,” Justin pointed out. “And plenty of other people’s too. Just about everyone was at Doc School, remember.”

  “How could he be sure of finding her here – that is, if it was premeditated?” Graeme asked.

  A thought so horrible occurred to Katie that she went cold. For a moment she couldn’t speak.

  Justin put his hand on her arm. “Katie, what’s the matter?”

  “There is a way he could be sure of finding her here alone. She was a doctor. He could have made an appointment to see her. Consultations are confidential so she wouldn’t have said anything to anyone.”


  “But he couldn’t be sure that no one would see him coming here,” Justin objected.

  “No problem,” Graeme said. “He’d just abort the plan. He’d have made up a reason for seeing her – and he’d have waited for the next opportunity. Would she have written the appointment down?” he asked Katie.

  “Probably wouldn’t have bothered. It’s not as if she was seeing dozens of people. But she would have made notes about the consultation on the computer.”

  “The computer wasn’t on when we came looking for her,” Graeme said. “He could have closed it down.”

  “I doubt if there was time to make notes,” Katie said. She hesitated and then sat down in Sara’s office chair. “She’s sitting here. There’s a knock on the door. And she tells whoever it is to come in.”

  “So he does,” Graeme said, walking over to the door. “And then … does he sit down?”

  “No,” Justin said. “He won’t waste time. He wants to get back to the rest of us as fast as possible.”

  “Wait,” Graeme said. “We don’t know it was premeditated. What if it wasn’t? What if it was done on the spur of the moment? What if he – well, what if he wanted to have sex with her – what if he did have sex with her – against her will. What if he raped her?”

  Katie said, “I didn’t see any signs of that, no bruises or anything, but I didn’t undress her completely and I’m not a pathologist. All that will have to wait until the body’s flown out. But there’s something about that wound – so precise, clinical even. It didn’t look like something done in anger or in a panic.”

  “So he walks up to her…” Graeme said, positioning himself in front of Katie. “Like so.”