Cold, Cold Heart

by Christine Poulson

  Katie went cold. To think that someone could become so obsessed with revenge that they could kill the people they thought had wronged them. But now that she knew, it seemed almost that it should have been clear all along that it was Alex. Who after all was better equipped to deal with the ferocious blizzard on the day that Sara disappeared? She understood why he had been so disconcerted when she had caught him out over the plaster cast. He had done it before as part of his medical training – the training he hadn’t wanted anyone on base to know about, the training that had enabled him to wield that scalpel with such speed and precision.

  Alex went on. “We didn’t know who the readers of our paper had been. I thought for a long time about how I could find out what had happened – why it had been turned down – and in the end it was just luck. I was at a party and this woman had had a bit too much to drink and told me that she’d been one of the readers for our paper. She’d recommended publication and been overruled. She didn’t know who the other reader had been, but mentioned one or two people who had the clout to do that. I looked them up online and one of them was Cameron. He and Flora Mitchell had just got married. So then I knew. It was obvious. He’d passed on our ideas to her and had made sure that our paper didn’t get published. I tracked her down the day before I flew out here. I thought of killing Cameron as well, but this way is better. I want him to know what he’s lost and I want him to be exposed for what he is. I want him to really suffer.”

  Everyone was staring at him now, struck dumb by his admission.

  Katie was lifted up on a wave of incandescent fury. At the same time her eyes filled with tears. She wanted to hurt him, to hit him, to slap his face, to pull his hair, to knee him in the balls.

  “But Alex, Sara! Why did you kill Sara? She didn’t know! She didn’t have anything to do with stealing your research. She was completely innocent.”

  Alex stared at her. “Of course she knew! How could she not? She was working with Flora. Her name was on the paper.”

  “Sara hadn’t a clue. I’m sure of that. She thought it was all Flora’s idea. Flora came in one day and suggested that they try something new. She told me that it was down to Flora’s generosity that they both had their names on the paper. And she told me all about Kieran coming to their lab and accusing them of stealing his research. She wouldn’t have talked about it the way she did if she’d thought for a moment that what Kieran said was true!”

  The lights flickered. Katie realized it wasn’t just that she felt cold. It was cold. The heating must have gone off.

  They heard footsteps in the corridor. The door was flung open and Adam appeared in the doorway, flushed and breathless. “Graeme, can you come? Now, please? We’ve got a problem with the generators.”

  And then the lights went out.

  CHAPTER 36

  Graeme cursed and fumbled in his desk for a torch. His fingers closed around it just as the emergency lighting came on.

  He sent Adam back to the monitoring room and told Justin and Craig to take Alex to the quiet room and keep him there until further notice. He caught up with Adam at the door of the monitoring room. They went in and Adam explained that the generator in the office block had apparently overheated and switched itself off half an hour ago. He’d thought that it might be a blocked pressure release valve or a faulty thermostat, but now that a second generator had gone, the one that served the living quarters…

  Two generators failing at the same time! Graeme had never known that happen before. Four separate generators provided heating as well as all the rest of the base’s electrical power needs.

  A loud bleeping began. Adam went over and switched the alarm off. He turned to Graeme.

  “Flaming Nora! Number three’s gone! That’s the one that feeds the workshops and the garage! That only leaves the one for the summer quarters.”

  This was crazy, totally unprecedented in Graeme’s experience. What on earth could have happened?

  “OK,” Graeme began, “the first thing we need to do is –”

  The bleeping began again. Adam swung round to look at the monitor and turned back to Graeme, his mouth a perfect O. For a few moments he seemed lost for words, then he darted across and switched off the alarm.

  “That’s number four gone! That’s all of them! What are we going to do?” There was panic in his voice. “With no heating – it’s fifty below outside – what will we do? We’ll freeze!”

  Graeme assessed the situation. The emergency lighting would last for only a few hours and already the temperature was plummeting. With the generators gone, everything was gone – heating, lights, running water, sewage system. Communication, too, very likely. It was vital they isolate the fault and fix it as soon as possible – and for that he needed Adam.

  He put his hand on the younger man’s arm. “Listen to me, Adam.” But Adam wasn’t hearing him. He was breathing hard and his eyes were unfocused. “Adam? Adam! No one is going to die. OK? Even if we can’t restore the power, we’ll survive. There’s enough fuel and food to last until the winter’s over. Do you understand?”

  Strictly speaking this was true. They had basic survival equipment of the kind that field parties used when they went on trips: tents, camping stoves, heavy-duty sleeping bags. They weren’t going to meet the fate of Scott and his companions. But they were in for a difficult and dangerous time with the margin of safety reduced to a narrow edge – not to mention the psychological impact of having to survive for months in such conditions. And what the devil was he going to do about Alex? But one thing at a time. Focus on the present, on the immediate problem. And that was Adam. He was their plumbing and heating engineer and he was on the verge of losing it, poor kid. And no wonder! Appendicitis. A murder on base. Graeme felt like losing it himself.

  He took a deep breath. He gripped Adam’s arm and looked into his face. He spoke sharply. “Look at me, Adam. We’re going to find out what’s wrong. And we’ll sort it. OK? We can do this. I need you to focus, Adam.”

  He held Adam’s eyes with his own and saw rationality return.

  Adam sighed. “Yeah. Sorry. Of course.” Something occurred to him and he brightened up. “I wasn’t really thinking. We’ve got the backup generator, haven’t we?”

  “That’s right. So we have.” He clapped Adam on the shoulder.

  He hadn’t the heart to point out that that might be as big a problem as trying to fix the main generators. Because the backup generator was a kilometre and a half away in the Dark Sector. To haul it back to the base they would need to somehow get the bulldozer out there over treacherous terrain in the pitch dark. It would take hours and hours – if it was even possible. And the man with the best chance of pulling it off, the man who had the most experience and requisite know-how, was the man he had just arrested on suspicion of murder.

  But the first task was to find out whether the failure of the generators was due to an electrical fault in the monitoring system or if there really was a loss of coolant. Fortunately there was an easy way to check.

  “Someone will have to inspect the expansion tank,” he told Adam. It was housed in a separate building next to the garage. “I’ll go. No point in both of us getting togged up.”

  “No. I’ll come, too. It’s my job.”

  “Sure you’re up to it? Physically, I mean. What about those stitches?”

  “I’m grand now. The doc said so. No heavy lifting, that’s all.”

  Graeme considered this. On balance it was probably best that Adam came too, best to keep him busy and his mind occupied – and after all it was his job.

  “Alright then,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  He and Adam got kitted up and they went out. The sky was clear. There was only a crescent moon but with the stars it was enough to light their way. Cold seemed an inadequate word for the medium in which they moved, as cumbersome in their layers of clothes as floating astronauts. Graeme heard a rustling sound that puzzled him until he realized that it was the vapour in his breath freezing as it le
ft his mouth. Even dressed as they were, in the minutes that it took them to get to the building that housed the expansion tank, his hips and shoulders began to ache. I’m getting too old for this lark, he thought.

  The expansion tank was a large pressured vessel that looked like the hot water tank for an outsized immersion heater. It was supposed to be half full of coolant with an air space to allow the coolant to expand when it got hot. No high-tech measuring equipment was needed to assess the situation. Graeme simply picked up a spanner, left conveniently to hand for just this purpose, and tapped it smartly on the side of the tank. The hollow ringing sound told him all he needed to know. His heart sank. The tank was empty – or virtually so. The coolant was no longer circulating around the generators. It wasn’t a fault in the monitoring system. There really was a leak somewhere. All four generators were linked to the same cooling system. If they were lucky, the leak would be in one of the feeder pipes that split off from the main pipe to supply the individual generators. The problem would be local to one of them and they could isolate it and then get the other ones working.

  They set about testing the pressure in the pipes of each generator and an hour later they knew the worst. The leak was not in one of the feeder pipes. There was only one possible explanation, now that all the others had been eliminated. The unthinkable had happened. The main coolant pipe must have cracked – and it was buried outside a metre down in the permafrost.

  CHAPTER 37

  Katie was helping Ernesto in the kitchen. It seemed the most useful thing she could do and besides it was the warmest place in the building. With admirable pragmatism Ernesto had set up camping stoves and was preparing as much hot food as possible while the emergency lighting held out.

  “Good soup is always necessary,” he explained, as he chopped one of their last remaining onions.

  When Graeme and Adam came in, she knew at once from Graeme’s face that the situation was serious. “I’m calling a meeting,” he said. “You stay here, Adam. I’ll go and get the others.” He went off.

  Adam’s face was thin and drawn. He slumped into a chair without taking off any of his outdoor clothes – as the temperature was approaching zero, there wasn’t much point. Katie could only hope that he had the emotional resources to survive another crisis.

  “What’s happened?” she asked.

  “Large coolant leak from the main arterial pipe. It’s a disaster. Dunno how we’re going to fix it.”

  “Espresso, Adam?” Ernesto asked. “Or a mug of soup?”

  “Ta. Yorkshire tea, please.”

  Ernesto shook his head and sighed as he got out a mug. It was beyond his comprehension that someone could prefer a teabag to a good cup of coffee. “I wonder, what Graeme will do about Alex?” he said.

  Katie shrugged. “Hard to know what he can do.”

  Adam frowned. “What do you mean? Why should he do anything about Alex?”

  Katie and Ernesto exchanged glances.

  “Graeme didn’t tell you?” she said.

  “Tell me what?”

  She made him sit down while she told him. At first he couldn’t believe it. “But Alex was with me. He was with me the whole time. We were watching Game of Thrones.” Then when she explained what had happened, how Alex had pulled the wool over his eyes, she saw comprehension dawn – and with it, she was glad to see, anger. Anger was good, anger was positive energy that could be harnessed. “How could he? How could he?” Adam kept saying.

  Yes, how could he? Katie didn’t believe that Alex had done it just for Kieran. He had done it for himself, too.

  Adam and Katie lit lamps in readiness for when the emergency lighting went off. Craig came from the Comms room and told them that the only contact with the outside world was now by hand-held satellite phone.

  Last of all came Justin and Rhys with Alex, sullen and silent, between them.

  They pulled chairs into a circle and listened as Graeme outlined the situation. They would have to dig out the whole length of the embedded pipe to find the break. They would only be able to work for very short spells because of the extreme cold. Even with a digger it was going to be back-breaking work. They would have to do the last part by hand with pickaxes so that the digger wouldn’t cause further damage to the pipe. Then when they had found the leak, they would have to repair it using the MIG welder.

  Justin put up a hand. “How can we do that with no power from the generators?”

  “That’s the other thing. We’ll have to retrieve the emergency generator from the Dark Sector. It’s air-cooled, so it should work OK. Someone – more than one person – will have to take the bulldozer out there and haul it back.”

  At that moment the emergency lights went out.

  The lamps that they had had the foresight to prepare were dim after the florescent lighting. They sat blinking in the gloom as their eyes adjusted. Katie looked round the group. There they sat, surrounded by some of the most advanced technology in the world, their breath rising in clouds around them, dressed in their outdoor gear, prevented from freezing to death by the same means that human beings had employed for thousands of years. She and her companions were no more than tiny sparks of life, flickering in the vast, dark wastes of Antarctica, sparks that could so easily be snuffed out. And the temperature was continuing to drop.

  Graeme went on. “We’ll try to keep this room warm – above freezing at least – and use it as our base – sleep in here if necessary – but I don’t think there’ll be much time for that. We’ll be working round the clock. We’ll split up into two teams, one to work on the pipe and the other to go for the generator.”

  Alex said, “Let me go for the generator.”

  There was silence. He looked round at their faces. “Oh, come on, guys. What do you think’s going to happen? You think I’m going to pick you all off one by one?”

  “You’ve killed a woman. You killed Sara,” Graeme said. “And the police want to interview you in connection with the death of another. I don’t know what else you might be capable of.”

  Alex was silent. At last he said, “Aye, well, in ordinary circumstances maybe you’d be right, but these aren’t ordinary circumstances. You need all the hands you can get. The backup generator is a kilometre away and I’m the one who can best manage the bulldozer. Not to mention that it’s more than fifty degrees below out there and no one else has got my experience of these kind of conditions.”

  Graeme said, “Even if I agreed, it’s not a one-man job.”

  “So let me take two of the guys with me.”

  Graeme looked round, inviting responses. “I can’t force anyone to work with you. What do the rest of you think? Nick? Rhys?”

  Nick cleared his throat. “I’m afraid he’s right. None of us really have the expertise or as much experience.”

  Rhys said, “Looked at logically it’s a no-brainer. I mean it is not as if he can escape, is it? Where would he go? Also he had a reason for killing Sara and that other woman.” He raised a hand to forestall indignant comment. “OK, it was a terrible reason and it was based on a false premise. Just saying that he doesn’t have a reason to murder any of the rest of us. He needs us and we need him if we’re all to get through this.”

  Graeme said, “Valid points. Anyone else? Craig?”

  Craig scowled. “Goes against the grain, but yeah. Rhys is right. He can’t go anywhere. It’s hundreds of miles to Vostok and even if he could get a Skidoo to go that distance in these temperatures – what would he do when he got there? They’re just as isolated there as we are here.”

  Justin said, “I agree. We do what we have to do to survive, doesn’t matter how we feel about it. Whoever goes out there for the spare generator has got a much better chance of surviving and getting back with Alex than without him. We’ll be shooting ourselves in the foot if we don’t use him. So, yes, I am in. Reluctantly.”

  Ernesto said, “I myself would lock him up and throw away the key. Sara was a good woman, a fine woman. So I don’t like it, it i
s all wrong, but…” he shrugged, “yes, he cannot get away, so OK. We should make use of him.”

  Katie said, “There’s also the practical stuff to consider. Even if we find a way to lock him up, we’d have to squander our resources heating another part of the base. So yes, we’d better use him.”

  Graeme said, “That just leaves you, Adam.”

  Adam didn’t say anything, but sat, biting his lip, while they waited silently for his reply. After a few moments he nodded his head in reluctant agreement. He can’t trust himself to speak, Katie thought.

  “That’s settled then,” Graeme said.

  Nick raised a hand. “I’ll go with him.”

  “And I will,” Rhys said.

  Other hands shot up all round.

  “I think it should be me and Nick,” Justin said. “We’re used to trekking out to the Dark Sector.”

  Graeme considered. “Not so much lately, Justin. It had better be Rhys. And anyway I need you here. You had plenty of experience with the digger last winter. So did Craig. Those of us left on base will take it in turns to work outdoors and get the pipe fixed. Between shifts I want Justin and Craig to work on backups for the IT systems to protect the scientific data. OK, let’s get going.”

  CHAPTER 38

  It wasn’t easy, working the digger with hands in gloves so thick and heavy that they were like bear paws, but Graeme’s stint was nearly over. Craig was up next and then Justin and then Ernesto. Graeme was allowing each man to work for only half an hour at a time. With the cloud cover the temperature had gone up a few degrees, but it was still nearly fifty degrees below. With no moon or stars and no lights from the platform it was pitch black. Lighting had to be jury-rigged from the Skidoos.