Out of the Ice (22 page)

Entering the room behind the chapel I stopped, astonished.

I was in a library. Books lined every wall, rows and rows sitting at right angles on low-slung shelves around the room. There were thousands of leather-bound volumes and also hardbacks and paperbacks. A vast collection. I filmed the room, careful to record everything, and then turned off my camera and picked up a few books. They were in Norwegian. And then I came to several in English. The whalers must have also come from America: Nantucket, judging by a leather-bound biography I picked out, written by Captain Erling Halvorsen, who had dedicated the book to his father Captain Lars Halvorsen and mother Ingerline. I flipped through, entranced. It was a history of Fredelighavn, as well as Erling’s exploits on the high seas and his emigration to Nantucket. I sat on a small wooden chair and was quickly absorbed.

The book had been published in 1954. And to my astonishment, Ingerline was still coming to Fredelighavn at the time. Another son, Olaf, was running the whaling station. The Halvorsens were a dynasty, the directors of Larvik Fishing Company, who owned the entire operation. Here was the history that I’d craved.

‘What’s the book?’ Georgia leaned in close.

‘A history,’ I said, unable to wrench my eyes from the book.

‘Fair enough.’ Georgia walked away.

I flicked through the chapters, searching for photographs. In the middle was a glossy page of black and white images. At the top, Ingerline stood with her sons, both in neat captain’s uniforms – Erling, the proud author, and Olaf, whose caption read
, Fredelighavn Station Manager, Larvik Fishing Company
. Ingerline was older, stouter, and the photo had made her eyes eerily pale. Her sons were upright and handsome with neatly clipped beards. Their eyes, too, were pale and seemed to look right through me. A shiver ran down my spine. I couldn’t resist looking around, in case they were all here.

‘You okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost,’ said Georgia from across the room.

I grinned. ‘Nah, we’re the only ones here.’ But I couldn’t shake the feeling that wasn’t true. Thankfully all I could see were the mellow-coloured books lining the walls of this most inviting library.

‘We should be heading back,’ said Georgia. ‘The wind’s letting up.’

‘Just a little longer,’ I implored.

‘Take the book. You can put it back later.’

She was practical as always. I was keen to see what else was on the shelves before we left, so I placed the book in my backpack and went quickly in search of others while Georgia jittered from side to side to keep warm.

The books in English were mainly novels and hobby titles, from knitting and cooking to building kit ships.

There was a swag of books on Nantucket, Erling’s adopted home when he wasn’t stationed on South Safety Island. I wanted to sit and look through them.

‘We’re out of here,’ said Georgia. ‘Now.’ She hauled me off by the elbow, just as a scrap of blue material caught my eye. It had been shoved between books in one of the smaller bookshelves in the middle of the room.

‘Hang on.’ I went over. Carefully parting the books – two nameless, leather-bound volumes – I lifted out a cotton T-shirt. It was plain and worn and sported no manufacturer’s tag. It could have been here from the 1950s. But it was an odd place for it to be. A thought occurred with such force sweat pricked my brow: was the boy leaving a trail for me? Like Hansel and Gretel?

‘What is it?’ said Georgia.

‘A boy’s T-shirt.’ I laid it out on the library table. ‘About the same size as the other one.’

Georgia grabbed it up, inspecting it closely. She held it to her nose. ‘Sweat. I don’t think this is old.’

‘Do you think he’s deliberately leaving them for us?’

Georgia nodded slowly. ‘I wouldn’t discard that theory.’

‘What are we going to do?’ I desperately hoped Georgia could find an answer.

She sat heavily, her face lined with worry. ‘I hate it when kids are involved.’

I felt a sudden, deep yearning. This boy could have been Hamish. ‘We must find him,’ I said.

‘I just have no idea how. They could have already left by boat.’

‘Or be underground. If he’s leaving a trail, maybe he’s written something somewhere.’ I went to the books where the T-shirt had been. The first was a diary, hand-written in Norwegian in loopy writing. On the front page the author’s name was proudly stated:
Ingerline Halvorsen
. My heart thumped against my chest. I flipped through the pages but nothing fell out; no loose note from the boy. I couldn’t understand anything, other than dates, and
Lars
,
Olaf
and
Erling
– and more names that were perhaps other children of Ingerline, or just people at Fredelighavn.

The second book was another diary – also by Ingerline. I checked the dates. The first diary went from 1915 until 1938, the second from 1946 to
29.3.57
. Ingerline had been here seemingly until the end, with a large gap during the years of the Second World War. Or perhaps there was another diary. I looked around but couldn’t find one.

Without understanding the content, I could see that Ingerline only wrote occasional entries each year, and all from November until March – the months when the ships were able to sail into Placid Bay after the sea ice had broken up.

I longed to have the diaries translated, but foremost in my mind was why the T-shirt had been left here. Why did the boy think I’d be looking for Ingerline? Or was it just coincidence, a random space where he could tuck his T-shirt when the man wasn’t looking? My stomach twisted into a painful knot. What was the relationship between the boy and the man?

Georgia dusted the shelf for fingerprints, but there were none. This made sense: I was wearing gloves in the freezing air; it was logical the boy – if it was the boy – had done the same.

Georgia then dusted for footprints, and found my boots and hers – and smudges.

‘Someone’s going to a lot of trouble to leave no prints. I don’t think it’s a coincidence,’ she said grimly.

‘Do you think Connaught is involved?’

‘Or Snow,’ she replied firmly.

‘But the more I think of Snow, I don’t think he could be involved,’ I said, wanting to defend him, feeling guilty I’d placed him as a suspect in Georgia’s mind. ‘He’s an internationally renowned scientist. A top one.’

‘That doesn’t put him out of the picture. The whole base is in awe of him and I’m guessing would do anything for him.’ She sucked in her breath. ‘And our mate Rutger could well have been sent to watch over us. Well, you in the first instance, and now me too.’

I shuddered, wondering if Travis could be part of whatever was going on down here.

I forced the thought away and went to the bookcase where I had found the T-shirt, and pushed with my full weight.

‘What on earth are you doing?’ said Georgia.

‘Seeing if this is concealing a way down.’

The bookcase was on coasters and after a moment’s resistance moved easily. The boards beneath were smooth and unbroken, like everywhere else. ‘There must be an entrance somewhere,’ I muttered as I put Ingerline’s diaries in my backpack. Georgia came over to look, and as the wind moaned outside we spent the next hour covering every square inch – and found nothing. Georgia stood with her hands on her hips, glaring at the room, deep in thought.

‘Time to head back,’ she said.

In the church, we picked up our skis and hoisted ourselves up the pile of ice to the gap in the doorway. The wind had dropped: it was an acceptable gale now rather than a blizzard. We tossed our skis onto the snowdrift and jumped after them. I found the blast of salt air soothing, and there was a great deal more visibility. A wild sea heaved in the bay, and to my left the penguins hunkered, draped in snow, on their rocky nests.

We put on our skis and whooshed off down to the bay. A glimmer of sky was peeking out, pale blue against the grey. I was warmed at least by the weight of the book and diaries in my backpack. The history of Fredelighavn. Perhaps somewhere I might find a record of tunnels built when the whaling station was operational. Tunnels that were now hiding a boy.

14

I
n clear morning light we set off investigating the village, looking everywhere for an entrance underground, and for more signs of the boy and man. I tried to stay focused, but my mind was full of awful possibilities of what could be happening. What if the man wasn’t his father? Was he abusing him? But why here, on a remote Antarctic island? And if he was from Alliance, what was Connaught’s involvement, if any? And could there be more than one boy down here, and more than one man? The man I’d seen in the orange house, and the one I’d seen in the blubber cookery, had seemed different heights, but I couldn’t be sure.

Kate had gone off with Rutger, and on Georgia’s instruction wasn’t mentioning either the tunnels or the boy to him, although Kate herself was looking for anything leading down beneath the ice.

I noted everything on my tablet, in a grid, and filmed the sheds and outbuildings, and the houses with their possessions. The lives of vanished whalers.

I showed Georgia the cinema, where a drift of snow lay through the doorway and seals were again in residence, sleeping, sprawled on chairs and the floor. The film looked the same, but I didn’t dare go in to make sure. Georgia stared at the screen, and then cast her eyes down to the stage.

‘Did you check under the stage? It could hide an entrance.’

‘I didn’t.’ I tried to think back. ‘I saw the boy
after
we’d been in the cinema.’

‘Can we go in now?’ asked Georgia.

The seals were in deep and comfortable slumber. Several were on the small stage, that I now noticed was about two feet off the floor.

Carefully I took a step inside. And all hell broke loose. The huge bull elephant seal awoke and bellowed, and younger seals leaped to attention. I backed out quickly and headed towards Georgia, who had already shot to the opposite side of the street.

‘The seals come and go,’ I said. ‘We can check back tomorrow.’ I was burning to take a thorough look around the stage, but for now I had to settle for taking Georgia to the blubber cookery and showing her where the red T-shirt – I was now certain it had been a T-shirt – was sighted.

‘Do you think there might be more than one boy?’ I asked fearfully.

‘Yes,’ she said, and turned away, leaving my mind churning at greater speed, with ever darker thoughts. More than one man; more than one boy. What could a group of men do to a group of boys? I couldn’t think of anything that wasn’t deeply traumatic. I wanted to air ideas with Georgia, but she was giving the distinct impression that she didn’t want to talk at the moment.

The rusty knife was still in my bag, and I was near the wall where it should hang. With Georgia by my side, I felt I no longer needed it, and it had been troubling me to have taken an artefact. Georgia caught me as I put it back, and I explained how I’d picked it up the first day I’d seen the man.

‘What were you planning to do – give him tetanus?’ she commented drolly, trying to make light, but neither of us was in the mood.

We picked our way through the shed at the back of the flensing platform that, on its upper loft, revealed a vast array of rusted saws that would have been used to cut the bones after the whale skeleton – its head and spine – had been winched up. Below lay a double row of vats. The bone cookery.

The shed behind was a vast space where giant steel driers rose from the floor. After the oil had been separated from the whale blubber, meat and bones, any solid material left was dried, then ground up to make whale meal, or what was called guano, and used for protein in animal food, and as fertiliser. There were still sacks of powdered guano lying around.

We inspected a laboratory where the whale oil had been graded, the equipment still sitting in rows on bench tops. But there were no T-shirts, or entrances underground.

On the far side of the village, away from Alliance Point, we found an old bakery that, from its basic equipment, seemed to have been abandoned long before the 1950s. There was a large brick building that had housed pigs, and another building where they had kept chickens. A long, dilapidated shed – a barracks – had two rows of single beds, their mattresses long gone. Two adjacent buildings of communal bathrooms stood beside it, and a timeworn mess hall. A distance away, there was a butcher’s shop with a slaughter room, with all its tools in place, and a little further on a two-storey clapboard building sat alone. The hospital, its beds and equipment untouched, like the staff had just walked out for a break. Were back injuries common among the whalers? I looked at the old 1950s X-ray machine and imagined men lying in pain, and flinched knowing what they’d done to the whales to hurt their own bodies.

Near the water, there was an area where the whale catcher ships had been repaired. It was a self-sufficient settlement.

Georgia and I investigated scientifically and forensically but there were no more clues. The trail of T-shirts had ended, and there was no sign of a way underground.

In the following days the four of us mapped Fredelighavn. What had been mysterious was now being reduced to statistics and facts. The seals didn’t leave the cinema, and so, much to my frustration, we couldn’t search there again.

In my downtime I read Captain Erling Halvorsen’s book, which gave an insight into the design of the whaling station and the frantic work that had gone into constructing the village each year in the short summer seasons. But there was no mention of tunnels or anything underground.

Erling spent far too long outlining the whale hunts at sea, casting the murdering whalers as heroes and the whales as prey to conquer. He had complained bitterly when, in 1937, the International Agreement for the Regulation of Whaling had been signed by nine nations, placing a much-reduced quota on the number of whales slaughtered. And then he had crowed valiantly when, in the following year, more whales were killed than ever before, a fact also lauded by his brother Olaf. I could only imagine the celebratory dinner that Ingerline had put on for them.