Killer

Warren had hardly been listening to any of this. He was a mild agoraphobic, and he had been totally absorbed in controlling the fear which had welled up inside his stocky body at the terrible sight which surrounded him: over a thousand square miles of nothing. The ice, clacking, cracking, echoing, glistening away to impossible distances, mocked him. His fear was nothing to do with his daughter, nothing to do with his work. All his life, even in the far-flung corners of the world where he had pursued his research, had been spent in the small safe boxes of his laboratories. How he ached for them now, the solid walls hidden by ranks and rows of equipment.

He turned desperately, and saw the tents. The tents! Walls, confined spaces. Salvation. Sanity. He began to stumble towards them, over the orange net, driven by the pain in his belly towards the latrine tent. Kate called something to him, reached out, but he could not stop now. Could not. He stumbled on to the side of the tent, flung it open, crawled in. Laced the flap shut behind him. Stripped down his trousers. Nearly threw up. Shivered. Let the proximity of the walls calm him.

“Sweet Christ,” he muttered, wiping his mouth, “you’re a grown man. Get a hold of yourself.”

Job saw the way Kate’s hand fell after her father had pushed rudely past her, and compassion moved his face into a slow, unaccustomed frown. He started forward towards her, but Colin pre-empted him, sliding a comforting arm round her sagging shoulders. They walked towards the orange net and set about picking up the fire tray and relighting the fire. The Eskimo’s eyes moved back to the golden sea. None of the others had said anything since Hiram Preston’s terrible death, but he assumed that their minds were, like his own, still full of it. It seemed distant now, for so much had happened since, but he could still see the horror of those madly twitching legs heaving out of the water with nothing above them except the dark empty cave of a belly from which all the intestines had been torn. And that huge insolent head coming back up to collect them.

He was deeply disturbed by the fact that no words had been said over the poor boy’s body. As Kate had guessed within minutes of their first meeting, he was a deeply religious man. Religion had been drummed into him at the Methodist school he had attended on the shores of the Hudson Bay as a boy, and another religion by his grandfather in their village. Now he stood between two worlds, torn between gods. He didn’t know whom to pray to for salvation: to the Methodist God of houses and cities, or the gods of the wilderness who had protected Innuit from time immemorial. The words for the boy should be Christian at least; but his prayers for them and for their salvation might be better addressed to Aipalookvik the Render and Destroyer, god of the Icebergs and the deep waters; or perhaps to Torga­soak, protector of Innuit, of the People.

He walked slowly away towards the top of the floe, as near as he dared to the edge beyond which the old camp had been sited, where Hiram Preston had been torn in two. As he moved, he cried in a deep voice which echoed hollowly over the lapping ocean: “I would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope.” He had come near the edge now and, although there was more than a yard of ice ahead of him, it was dangerously cracked and far too unstable to be trusted with his weight. He stopped, threw wide his arms and declaimed over the sea, closing his mind to the terrible memory of Hiram’s death, of the stark thrust of his spine pushing out of the thick cut muscles of his back, of the fat white worm of his spinal cord . . .

“O Lord Jesus, who by thy burial did sanctify an earthly sepulchre; vouchsafe, we beseech thee, to bless and hallow this grave, that it may be a peaceful resting place for the body of thy servant; through thy mercy.” He closed his eyes, opened them slowly and gazed over the golden-green ocean, as though expecting to see Preston himself walking on the water there. Then he turned and went back: there was nowhere else to go.

Warren came out of the latrine tent, pale, shaken, shamefaced but calm. The size of the ocean sent a shiver through him, but he controlled his panic and went towards Ross and Kate who had a fire burning on the tray. Quick stood a short distance off, separate. Kate glanced up, and even though her face was half hidden by the ridiculous rounds of her dark glasses, he could see hostility in it. A stab of anger went through him – after all, he couldn’t help his fear. She turned, and spoke quietly to Ross. Warren realised that he had driven his daughter into Ross’s arms. Unreasoning jealousy rose in him as Ross asked, “Are you all right?”