Killer

“Vi otkuda?”

“Whence you?”

“We were wrecked east of here. Plane crash.”

“Skolko vremeni vi uzhye na Idu?”

“How long on ice?”

“A week.”

“Yeshyour ostavshiyis v zhivich?”

“Any survivors more?”

“There were four more. They’re dead. And we’ll be dead too if you don’t bloody hurry up!”

Pjotr Picatel obviously translated all of this when he whispered to the second officer, because Sergei Antonovich shrugged and said, “Nash vrach budyet vas osmatrivat.”

“Our doctor examine you,” said Pjotr, grinning cheerfully. “We take you on ship now.”

The buzz of the idling engines snarled a little louder. The boat moved slowly forward until the fat black rubber bows nestled against the ice. Kate and Colin picked themselves up stiffly, and, suddenly very weak indeed, staggered towards the boat. Pjotr Picatel leaped on to the ice and stood, holding one end of the boat-hook in his left hand keeping the boat in place, ready to help them on board. The second officer held the other end of the boat-hook. Another of the crew was shaking out heavy grey blankets, ready to wrap them round their frozen shoulders.

Kate went first, stepping carefully over the plump bulge of rubber on to the slatted wooden grating in the bottom of the boat. The second officer helped her aboard. The other sailor wrapped the heavy blanket round her and courteously turned to support her down the fifteen feet of the boat’s length to a seat. Her knees gave out. Two more crewmen leaped up to help her. Only the man controlling the outboard motor did not move.

“Now, Ross,” said Pjotr, his right arm thrown back invitingly.

Colin glanced round what was left of the floe. It had served them well after all; it would have supported all of them, had they survived. Suddenly it was like leaving an old friend. His eyes flicked over the mottled white, slightly uneven surface, then up into the fog as though he expected to see the other five of them there: the pilot, Hiram, Warren, Job and Simon. And indeed there was something . . .

“LOOK OUT!” he pointed.

The ten fins cut the water, one, nearly seven feet high with a great bite taken out of it. With steady, silent power, they were coming towards the boat. Pjotr let go of the boat-hook and the boat surged back away from the ice. The ten fins closed, the water folding back from their leading edges. Then they began to sink. In perfect arrow formation they dived under the boat, surfaced on the far side, and vanished into the fog.

“Delfin kasatke,” Pjotr Picatel said in a conversational tone. “Killer whales.”

“I know what they are,” snapped Ross, and, turning to face the Russian he stumbled. Pjotr Picatel was not a tall man – he stood perhaps five feet ten – but he was solid as a rock. He caught Colin and held his weight without flinching. The boat began to move back in.

“How did you find us?”

“Signalu raketi . . . we see your flare above fog.”

The boat was close to the ice now. The second officer leaned forward, holding out the boat-hook towards Pjotr’s reaching arm . . .

Something burst out of the water between the flat black rubber bows and the ice. Slowly turning over in the quiet, dark water was Simon Quick, buoyed up by his yellow lifejacket, the axe still clutched in his dead hands, the rope still wrapped around his waist, its end still firmly anchored by the steel peg buried in his chest.

Desperately, Colin tried to fight free of Pjotr’s arm, no clear idea in his mind other than to try to tempt the killer away from the boat, before it rose up the fifty feet of rope which would separate it from Simon’s corpse. “What are you doing?” the Russian shouted.

An answer exploded out of the ocean like doom.

Although it had been terribly wounded, the whale had not died. Simon had struck six blows in all before the steel peg had slammed into his heart, but such was the structure of the killer’s skull that they had not killed it immediately. At the back of its head there were two huge reservoirs which contained large quantities of blood, designed to keep its brain supplied with oxygen during long dives. The blows from the axe had cut through the outer walls of bone on each side, partially rupturing each reservoir, but never entering the brain cavity itself. So the killer, dazed, had swum into the depths of the sea, dragging the assorted jumble of net, ropes and corpse behind it.