Out of the Ice (18 page)

Taking Kate’s hand, I moved towards the warm glow in the kitchen at the back of the house. I rose up and looked in, anticipation building. But again it was empty. Two candles sat burning on the kitchen table. A chill ran up my spine. Someone had lit them. Someone was here. The shrill creak of the front door made me duck down. Footsteps crunched out onto the ice, heading towards us. A beam of light from a torch played in front of a large, thickset man. Was it the same man I’d seen on my first day here in the blubber cookery? This one seemed taller. As he came closer, Kate rose like a shadow and fled. I was tempted to wait, to confront the man. I could hear Kate running away. In a split second it would be too late for me to leave, he’d be too close. I pointed my camera and snapped off several shots as I stood, then I ran as fast as I’d ever gone, my boots slipping and sliding over the ice as I cursed myself that I hadn’t stayed. But every instinct in my body was telling me to get away.

I saw Kate disappear into the purple house and I followed. It was already getting lighter. We ran to the kitchen and hid under the table, behind chair legs. I looked at my watch. Travis was due in ten minutes. Would that be soon enough? My ears were attuned to the slightest sound. I found the knife in my bag and gripped it. The wind was strengthening and the house was groaning and wheezing in a full vocabulary of unearthly howls. I waited, terrified, for the creak of the front door opening. After what seemed like an eternity but must have been minutes, the roar of the Hägglunds sprang out of the dawn, growing louder. We raced out, jumping in before Travis had stopped.

‘Drive!’ I cried and he turned the large cabin around and accelerated away.

‘What the hell happened?’ he asked, horrified. ‘I knew I should have stayed.’

‘Someone’s here,’ I said.

‘And they knew we were,’ said Kate. ‘They knew
exactly
where we were.’

‘But they didn’t follow us,’ I said. ‘Maybe they didn’t know for sure. Perhaps they just sensed something.’ I wasn’t even convincing myself. Did they have thermal imaging? Deep down I knew Kate was right – they seemed to have known precisely where we were when we crouched outside their house.

11

I
looked at the images on my camera as Travis took us back to Alliance. The torchlight pierced the darkness, and behind was the unmistakable figure of a thickset man; he was shrouded in black and could have been anyone. There were no features visible at all. My flesh crawled, but at least I had incontrovertible evidence that someone was down there, unauthorised. It was a breakthrough. Adrenalin surged.

‘Stop,’ I said. ‘I want to go back.’

‘No way,’ said Kate.

‘With Travis we’ll be okay. Won’t we?’ I looked at him.

‘Are you sure?’ he replied. ‘We don’t know who that was.’

‘Are you saying you won’t do it?’

He slammed on the brakes and turned around, roaring the Hägglunds back towards Fredelighavn.

I smiled. He said nothing. Kate gazed furiously out the window.

As the village came into view, the sun was already fully in the sky. It was another beautiful day.

‘Just for the record, I think you’re mad,’ said Kate as Travis parked by the purple house. ‘And we could all be killed.’

‘Don’t be so dramatic,’ I replied, hopping out. I marched off, slinging my bag over my shoulder. Having silenced my initial fear, I wanted nothing more than to come face to face with whoever was down here. I was the controlling person at Fredelighavn. They were accountable to me. I was, however, more than grateful to have Travis walking briskly at my side.

When we reached the orange house I looked down the side and at the front. The ice was hard; there were no footprints. I raced up the stairs to the front door and barged in. Travis was so close behind I could feel his hot breath on my neck.

The lounge room was empty. Ingerline stared down from the wall; the sea captain scowled from his portrait.

The two bedrooms on the ground floor were empty. We arrived in the kitchen. There was no one there, and the candles had been taken.

‘We’re here!’ I yelled angrily.

Silence.

Travis leaned against the table and Kate settled in the far corner of the room. ‘We’re alone,’ she said.

‘
Now
,’ I replied furiously. ‘They were here and they’ve gone.’ I strode down the passage and went up the stairs at the front of the house, two at a time.

In the first bedroom, I hurled off the bedclothes. The sheets smelled freshly laundered, but there was no indent, nothing to indicate anyone had lain there recently.

In the master bedroom at the end of the passage I tore off the pink eiderdown and top sheet – and stopped. Between the bed linen, a small brown T-shirt lay stranded. Left behind. And on it was a logo for Stands, a popular sports product. A brand that only started in the last decade.

Travis whistled. Kate grabbed it and looked at me.

‘Hey, you’re not to touch anything!’ said Travis. ‘Someone really
has
been here. Sleeping here.’

There was no indent in the bed, but they could have straightened the sheets. Goosebumps pricked my arms. If a boy had been here, then it was possible he’d been in the ice cave too. As I took the T-shirt from Kate and put it back where it had been found, I could see she was thinking the same thing. The T-shirt was too small and narrow for a man, and too large for a child. I photographed it from every angle, and then picked it up myself. Holding it in the air, I could see that it was the size of the boy I’d seen. Suddenly my knees were wobbly and I sat down on the bed. If the boy had been here recently, then hopefully he was all right. If he’d rested in this bed just hours before, at least he wasn’t trapped in a cavern in the ice cave. Lifting the T-shirt to my nose, I smelled a faint, sharp odour of sweat. Recent sweat. My heart was beating so hard it pounded in my ears. I looked at the label:
Made in USA
.

But what was the boy doing here? The man who’d come at us was tall and thickset. Was that his father?

I wanted to discuss it immediately with Kate, but would that be wise in front of Travis? There was a strong possibility that the boy in the cave was real, but my instincts warned me not to talk about it just yet. I glanced up at Kate, relieved she wasn’t mentioning him either. The scientist in me was already processing the idea that there could be more than one youth down here, as unlikely as that seemed.

A teenage boy had been in this room, that much was certain. The sweat was fresh. The clothing brand was not available until this decade. They were the facts. The screaming face of the boy in the cave burned in my brain.

I pulled a clean plastic bag from my backpack and placed the T-shirt into it.

‘Are you taking that?’ asked Travis, confused.

‘This is modern. It’s evidence someone’s here,’ I said.

We went downstairs and looked around the house again but found nothing more.

I was exhausted but I was determined to go through every house in Fredelighavn; I would find whoever was here. I was about to share my plan with Travis and Kate when a static crackle made me start. Travis took out his satellite radio and Moose’s voice rang out. ‘Hey, man, where are you?’ Travis reacted, alarmed, but before he could talk Moose continued, ‘Everyone has to report for duty. Don’t know why yet. Gotta go.’

Travis, clearly concerned, turned back to us. ‘Sorry, guys. You heard Moose.’

‘I’m staying,’ I said.

‘Under no circumstances, absolutely no way. Even if we have to carry you out,’ said Kate. ‘We need sleep. We need to think about what to do. We could walk straight into real trouble. Georgia needs to know.’

‘There’s no way anyone’s staying here without the means to get back,’ said Travis. ‘I have to take the Häggie, so you’ve got no choice, Laura. We’re all leaving together.’

‘Since when do you order me around?’

‘Not an order. Standard protocol. You can’t be left in the field without transport.’

‘Please, Laura?’ Kate tugged my elbow.

‘We can come back soon. I promise,’ said Travis. ‘Now I really have to go.’ He walked off. Kate gripped me and pulled. I felt like a stubborn mule as I planted my feet.

‘Come on, Laura. I don’t want to stay here any more.’

‘I can be on my own.’

‘Don’t do this,’ said Kate. Travis came back, his face flushed.

‘I’ve helped you,’ he said. ‘Now return the favour. I have to be at base. You don’t want to blow this whole thing out of the water, do you? If Connaught gets wind you had me here, it won’t be good for any of us.’ My little brother made a potent argument; I hated losing family fights.

•  •  •

As Alliance appeared on the horizon, it was immediately apparent that something was different. Skidoos were roaring around like stung bees, speeding in and out of base. As we drove up to the Mechanics’ Shed, there was a hum in the air.

‘What on earth’s going on?’ said Kate. ‘It’s like the whole place just had an adrenalin shot.’

I sat mutely, fearful it was something to do with us and our presence last night at Fredelighavn. Beside me, Travis was as tense as a clenched fist.

‘What is it?’ I asked. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘He’s here,’ said Travis. ‘Much earlier than usual.’

‘Who?’

‘Our Chief Scientist.’ Travis stopped.

‘Does he have a name?’

‘Andrew. Or Snow. His nickname’s Snow.’

‘And a surname?’ This business of first-names-only had run its course with me.

‘Sorry,’ said Travis apologetically.

‘Come on, you’re one of us now.’

He sighed. ‘It’s for your own benefit. You might slip if I told you. I’m not allowed.’

‘You weren’t allowed down at Fredelighavn,’ I pointed out helpfully.

Beads of perspiration sprouted above Travis’s upper lip. ‘Truly, it’s better you don’t know.’

‘And how’s that?’ said Kate. ‘Honestly, Travis, don’t go playing games with us now.’

‘I can’t, I’m sorry,’ he said firmly, parking the Hägglunds and jumping out. ‘See you later.’

‘Well, your boyfriend’s had a change of heart,’ said Kate, gathering our gear.

‘He’s not my boyfriend, but he’s frightened of something.’ Whoever this new arrival was, Travis was far more terrified of him than he was of Connaught. And he hadn’t expected whoever it was to be here. What did that mean?

Kate and I trudged through the ice back to our room. Moose ran past us towards the Mechanics’ Shed, but didn’t say hello.

‘That T-shirt,’ said Kate. ‘You think it’s the boy’s, don’t you?’

‘Don’t
you
?’

‘I didn’t see him.’

‘It’s the right size.’ My shoulders tensed. ‘I think he was real.’ I could barely believe it.

Kate frowned. ‘So you think they’ve got a chamber into the ice?’

‘They must have. But how will we find it?’

‘I don’t get it,’ Kate said, perplexed. ‘We searched in that cave for a long time and couldn’t see anything. How could a chamber appear and disappear like that?’

‘The light?’ Truth was, I couldn’t work it out myself, no matter how hard I tried. ‘It’s possible it was an optical illusion. Just the other way around from what we thought: the boy was real, and not seeing the chamber afterwards could have been a trick of the light. It was a wall of thick ice that he was behind.’

‘Maybe. I guess,’ said Kate, unconvinced.

As soon as we were in our room I tried to Skype Georgia but it was early and she didn’t respond, so I phoned her instead. After three tries she finally picked up, groggy with sleep. I explained what had happened, including seeing the boy in the ice cave.

‘Why haven’t you told me about the boy before?’ said Georgia, voice rising in frustration. ‘I wanted to know
everything
. What else have you kept from me?’

‘That’s it.’ I wasn’t going to tell anyone about the ghost of Ingerline, not that I believed it was a ghost anyway. ‘I’m sorry, Georgia, but I thought he must have been an hallucination. We couldn’t find any trace of the boy after I’d seen him in the ice. I thought I was just getting toasty; imagining things, you know what it’s like.’

‘I do.’ She sounded concerned. ‘Okay, you’re off the hook with that.’ She paused, thinking. ‘I’ll need to speak to Connaught. If he denies their presence down there, then I’ll have to come over. Because it could be anyone. And I don’t want you two on your own any more.’

My body went limp with relief. Georgia was an experienced detective. With her help, we’d surely unravel what was going on. ‘You’re not to go back to Fredelighavn until I’m with you or have given you permission,’ she said. ‘Is that clear?’

As she hung up, my mind was full of the boy. Was he really all right now? I couldn’t get his distressed face out of my thoughts. He’d been calling for help. A boy shouldn’t be down there. He was no older than twelve, thirteen at most. My chest tightened. What if the man last night wasn’t his father? What was he doing with the boy? I needed to get back to Fredelighavn as soon as possible.

I was exhausted, but also curious to find out more about the arrival of Andrew – or Snow. At Antarctic bases nicknames were common, but no one used a nickname for Connaught. This made Andrew–Snow intriguing. At one level there was less formality – and yet Travis and Moose seemed terrified of him. He’d certainly swung the base into action.

Kate emerged from the bathroom, wet hair hanging around her face, steam following her. ‘What did Georgia say?’

‘Hopefully she’ll come over.’

Kate flopped on the bed. ‘That is the best news I’ve heard in a very long time. Does that mean I can go back to my penguins?’

‘We’ll see,’ I said, feeling like my mother.
We’ll see
. The standard response that meant no without saying it. Kate closed her eyes and fell instantly asleep.

I turned up the heating, worried that she should have dried her hair. Then I crept out.

People were in the mess hall, hurriedly gulping down breakfast. Snow seemed to have the whole base in his grip.

‘So who is this bloke anyway?’ I asked Guy as he poured more porridge into the bain-marie at the servery.

‘The professor oversees the research down here,’ he replied, lowering his voice and looking around.