by L. A. Larkin
‘The lemon meringue’s all yours.’
Wolfe plonks her bag on the floor and her coffee cup on the circular side table, and sits. She’s almost swallowed up by the sofa’s squishy pockets. She’s wearing head-to-toe black: drainpipe jeans, T-shirt, leather jacket and boots. Her only colour is a gash of pink lipstick and the hideous aubergine discolouration on her left cheek.
‘You look like shit,’ says Cohen.
‘At least I look alive,’ she replies.
Cohen nods. They can agree on that.
‘Great feature. Well done. Online hits and copy sales are up. For once.’
He chucks the paper at her. Leaning forward, his tone suddenly changes. ‘So what the fuck were you doing? Haven’t you learnt anything from me?’
Wolfe doesn’t reply immediately. She studies his face. Bushy grey eyebrows protrude like ceiling cornices over his deep-set brown eyes, but she thinks she sees a hint of amusement in the corner creases.
‘And don’t give me one of your penetrating stares,’ Cohen continues. ‘My soul was damned the day I took up journalism. You’ll find nothing’s changed.’
She slouches back into the soft sofa pockets, looking like a bruise on a banana. ‘Thanks for your concern, Moz.’
He throws his stick-thin arms into the air. ‘I am concerned! Look! This is me being concerned.’ He jolts forward. ‘I mean, fuck! Look at your face. You’re a mess.’
‘Moz, I’m fine. Nooria Zia isn’t.’ Wolfe stares at the grey flecked carpet. ‘I talked her into it. The poor girl died because of me.’
Cohen places his knobbly elbows on his desk and clasps his hands together. ‘No, no, no! Stop this, Olivia. Now listen to me.’ He waits for her to look up. ‘You got too involved. Way back, when you covered her rape and trial. You spent too much time with her. She got under your skin. And I understand, I do. She had a terrible life. But it’s your job to expose the truth, to tell the story. It’s not your job to get involved. You must never change the story. What’s my rule, huh? Rule number one?’
‘Report and move on,’ she mumbles.
Moz slams a bony hand on the desktop. ‘Exactly. Otherwise, you’ll burn out. You can’t put yourself through the wringer like this. Look at you!’
‘I don’t normally get involved and you know it. I was foreign correspondent for four years, remember? I’ve been to war, I’ve witnessed massacres, seen children butchered, people blown to bloody pieces.’ She pauses. ‘It’s just this one girl.’
‘Why this one?’
‘I don’t know. After all she’d been through, to have enough guts . . . I could never be that brave.’ She shakes her head. ‘One second, she was talking to me; the next, I watch her die. She was just a child.’
‘You have to move on, Olivia.’ He cracks the knuckles on his left hand and then the right. ‘I need to know you can do that.’ He pauses. ‘Well? Can you?’
‘I must find Kabir Khan. I owe her that much.’
Moz shakes his head, clearly disappointed. ‘Wrong answer. This is not about what you owe her. It’s about uncovering the truth and printing it.’
Wolfe wishes she’d gone home first, had a shower and something to eat before facing Cohen.
‘Had a call from your best mate, DCI Casburn.’
She frowns and the shooting pain it causes reminds her of her battered face. As her editor knows only too well, she and Detective Chief Inspector Dan Casburn don’t see eye to eye. She co-operated with Counter Terrorism Command, otherwise known as SO15, during their hunt for Colonel Lalzad, who’d fled from Afghanistan to London on a fake passport, wanted for war crimes. With Wolfe’s information, Casburn tracked down Lalzad to a North London flat and arrested him. Lalzad is now serving twenty years on seventeen counts of torture and hostage-taking at a roadblock he commanded on a main route into Kabul.
‘What did he want?’ she asks.
‘Lalzad’s got wind you’re after his 2IC here and he’s using his network to take you down.’
‘Does Casburn know about Kabir Khan?’
‘He never gives anything away. You know that.’
‘Why’d he call you? You’re not my mother.’
‘Fuck knows. Maybe because a dead journalist is a bloody useless one.’
‘Look, Moz. There’s a long line of people who want me dead. That’s what happens when you expose criminals and corrupt—’
‘Yes, yes,’ says Moz, cutting her off with a flick of his wrist. He starts typing. ‘I’m emailing you your next assignment.’
‘I haven’t finished this one.’
Cohen sighs loudly, his bony fingers hovering over the keyboard. ‘Your source is dead and you have a price on your head. For now, you can’t go back to Afghanistan. It’s up to Casburn to find this Kabir Khan and prove the Isil connection. Not you. And Soames can keep our investigation ticking over while you’re away.’ That explains why the rookie crime reporter was looking sheepish. Wolfe opens her mouth to object but her editor raises a long finger to silence her. ‘I need you on another story. Something right up your alley.’
‘Happy to take on another feature, Moz, but nobody touches the Lalzad-Isil story. That’s mine.’
‘Hear me out and then we’ll decide.’ Cohen leans back in his chair.
She takes a deep breath. ‘Go on.’
‘How does murder in Antarctica sound?’
‘Chilly.’ Wolfe gives him a closed smile; she’s never been one for toothy grins.
‘Yeah, very funny. Now listen. British and Russian scientific teams in Antarctica are competing to be the first to discover new life in underground lakes that’ve been sealed beneath ice sheets for millions of years. As our mob drills Lake Ellsworth, the Russians, headed by a Dr Trankov, are drilling Lake Vostok.’
‘I thought the Russians succeeded a while back.’
‘Ah, so you do know something about it. Good. Well, the Russians cocked it up. They reached the lake, all right, but the contaminants they used in their drill polluted everything and killed the fucking organisms. It now looks like our chaps at Lake Ellsworth will be the first to succeed. If they do, they could discover ancient life, never before seen by man, that can survive in complete darkness beneath three kilometres of ice.’
Wolfe squints at her editor, wondering if her jetlag has caused a temporary misunderstanding. Cohen has never shown any enthusiasm for the environment or science, giving those editors more leeway than others because these topics bore him ‘shitless’.
‘You mean microbes?’ Wolfe can’t prevent her lip curling.
‘And what’s wrong with fucking microbes?’
‘Nothing, Moz, but I don’t do science.’
‘Let me finish. An old university pal, Professor Michael Heatherton, is heading up the Lake Ellsworth project. He contacted me because he believes his chief drilling engineer has been murdered.’
He pauses for dramatic effect, knowing that murder in Antarctica is virtually unheard of. Until two years ago, when six Australians and one Finnish man were butchered by mercenaries. Wolfe remembers the global news coverage.
‘Why does he think it’s murder?’
‘It’s more than murder. He believes there’s a traitor, trying to sabotage the project.’
‘What? Sabotage bug exploration?’ Wolfe can’t keep the incredulity from her voice. ‘To use one of your sayings, “Who gives a fuck?”’
‘According to Michael, the Russians.’
‘Oh, of course. Silly me. Putin the radioactive poisoner has turned his evil eye to a bunch of bug researchers.’
‘I’m saying if the engineer was murdered, then perhaps these “bugs”, as you so disparagingly call them, might actually be worth killing for. Go find out why.’
‘Where are you going with this, Moz? Seriously, bugs?’
Cohen flings his arms wide. ‘I smell a conspiracy, or at the least, a cover-up. Come on, Olivia, think about it. Or has that blow to your face affected your brain?’ Cohen rips a Post-it note from the desk surface an
d dials the phone number scrawled upon it. ‘I’ll get Michael to explain.’
‘Heatherton? What time is it there?’
‘No fucking idea,’ Cohen replies, dialling.
5
Heatherton answers Cohen’s call immediately and is put on loudspeaker. He’s clearly been waiting by his satellite phone. Cohen introduces Wolfe, who now sits on the edge of her boss’s desk.
‘Michael, can you tell Olivia why you think someone is sabotaging your project?’
Heatherton clears his throat and begins.
‘Certainly. On a mission of this complexity and magnitude, at such a forbidding and cold location, I expect there to be problems. But nothing like we’ve experienced.’
Heatherton clears his throat again. His accent is fascinating: plummy, yet Wolfe thinks she detects the hint of Yorkshire.
‘Before coming out here, we tested and retested everything. Particularly the hot water drill. We prepared for every eventuality. I handpicked the team two years ago and everyone gelled. Except Charles Harvey, of course, who joined us here a few weeks ago.’
Wolfe glances at Cohen. She knows Harvey, the BBC science correspondent. This only serves to confirm in her mind that she’s the wrong person for this assignment. Heatherton continues.
‘But I can’t imagine the Beeb sending us a saboteur. I mean, can you?’ His levity sounds strained.
Cohen pipes up. ‘We know of Harvey. Go on, Michael.’
‘Right. George, Bruce, Ed and Trent got here two weeks before the rest of us to finalise camp set-up. All went well. Even the weather was good. Three weeks ago the rest of us arrived, with Charles in tow. The first problem was a hole in one of the onion tanks.’
‘Onion tanks?’ Wolfe asks.
‘Open water tanks, shaped like a kid’s circular swimming pool. Made of hardwearing nylon. Each one has to hold ten thousand litres of water at near boiling point.’
‘So not easily torn?’ Cohen clarifies.
‘Exactly. We lost all the water from that tank, and it’s backbreaking work shovelling ice in, I can tell you. The hole wasn’t repairable, so we had to order a new one to be flown in. In the scheme of things, just a minor delay, but what got me wondering was the nature of the hole. It looked like a cut. A straight line. Not a tear.’
‘Did you voice your concerns to your team?’ Wolfe says.
‘No, no. I didn’t want to add to the pressure they were already under. You see, we only have six weeks to complete the mission. Our funding runs out then. Anyway, I had no evidence, so I focused on the project. Then, a few days before Kevin’s tragic death, I was riding our one and only Ski-Doo when the brakes failed. Luckily I wasn’t going more than twenty m.p.h. I managed to roll off the vehicle and didn’t break anything, but I could have been killed.’
‘What caused the brake failure?’ she asked.
‘Good question. The brake fluid had escaped through a tiny hole. It could have been caused by sharp ice, who knows? Call me paranoid if you will, I just can’t help thinking someone wanted me hospitalised so I couldn’t lead Project Persephone any more.’
Wolfe nods at the project name: Persephone, the Greek mythological goddess of the underworld.
‘And then Kevin Knox was found dead? Tell me about that,’ she says.
‘Well, just before Kevin’s death, the circuit on the boiler failed, which meant we couldn’t heat the water in the tanks to the required temperature. It has to be scalding hot to drill through the ice sheet. Kevin and Vitaly were trying to do a temporary fix on the boiler, until we could take delivery of a new circuit. Anyway, the weather was foul and visibility poor. I probably shouldn’t have asked them to keep working, but the boiler’s housed in a converted shipping container, so they were protected from the storm. I was talking to Vitaly in the mess tent, so Kevin went outside alone. He was meant to follow the ropes that lead to the boiler room, but somehow, and this is what none of us can understand, somehow he ended up half a mile away. Poor man froze to death.’
‘Is it possible Knox got lost in the storm?’ asks Wolfe.
‘I don’t think so. Kevin might’ve been a bit unfit, but he’s worked in Antarctica three times before. He’s done survival training. I mean, he knew.’ Heatherton’s voice catches, clearly upset. ‘It doesn’t make sense that he’d wander off like that. And how did he manage to walk half a mile in a white-out? Without his boots or coat?’
‘At the extremes of hypothermia, I understand victims feel hot and disoriented. They’ve been known to strip off. Could he have done that?’ asks Wolfe.
‘Maybe. I just don’t know. But when you can’t think, and your hands are frozen and unresponsive, how do you manage to unlace boots and pull them off, unzip your coat and pull that off, and remove your gloves?’
Everyone is quiet, considering this.
‘And walking half a mile in a white-out is well-nigh impossible,’ Heatherton adds.
‘So you think he was taken away from the camp, stripped and left to die?’ Wolfe clarifies.
‘It sounds crazy, doesn’t it? But you must remember that Kevin was a critical member of the team. He helped design and build the hot water drill. There is no other like it. Now he’s gone, we have to rely on Vitaly Yushkov. If anything happens to him, we’re scuppered.’
‘So why would anybody go to such terrible lengths to sabotage your project?’
Wolfe is beginning to suspect there is something more than bad luck going on. But she can’t see a motive.
‘I would have thought it’s obvious. If we fail to bring samples to the surface, then the Russians might do it first. That is, if they haven’t contaminated the whole of Lake Vostok.’
Wolfe leans forward, hands clasped. This is getting interesting.
‘Who do you suspect?’ she asks.
Heatherton lowers his voice, ‘There’s only one Russian here.’
Wolfe nods. ‘If you truly believe that, then why don’t you replace Yushkov?’
Cohen chucks her a manila folder with Vitaly Yushkov’s name on it. She opens it and is surprised to find only two pages. Yushkov’s CV. Wolfe skim-reads it as Heatherton speaks.
‘I can’t,’ he mopes, ‘it’ll take too long. The new boiler circuit should arrive today. With the boiler fixed, we resume drilling immediately. I have no choice but to keep him here . . . and watch him like a hawk.’
‘Has Yushkov actually done anything suspicious? Or is it simply he’s Russian?’
‘Nothing I can point my finger at—’
Cohen interjects. ‘The information you sent us - there’s virtually nothing on him. Why?’
Heatherton clears his throat. ‘Because there is little information on him. He sought asylum in England and was granted citizenship.’
‘Yes, I see that,’ says Wolfe. ‘Two years ago. But everything prior to that is vague.’
‘Ah,’ says Heatherton. Silence.
‘Michael? Are you still there?’ asks Cohen.
‘Yes. Look, Yushkov is complicated. There’s a lot I don’t know. You see, I was asked to take him on as a favour to a friend in the Foreign Office. No questions asked. We go way back, so I helped him out, and placed Yushkov with the maintenance crew in Cambridge. But he proved to be an exceptional engineer and was soon assisting Kevin with the drill design and assembly.’
Wolfe is on the edge of the seat.
‘So you’re saying he defected, and the Foreign Office is protecting him?’
‘Look, I can’t say any more, I’m sorry.’
Wolfe chews on the side of her finger. Cohen is smiling. He senses her excitement.
‘One more question. Why haven’t you called the police if you think it’s murder? I gather jurisdictions are complicated in Antarctica, but I thought that if the victim was British, then our police run the investigation?’
‘I can’t allow anything to stop the project. We have less than a week left here.’
‘So why do you want me there?’
‘Moz tells me you’re his b
est investigative journalist . . . ’
‘I didn’t quite put it so flatteringly,’ Cohen mumbles.
‘Professor Heatherton, you understand that if I find a good enough story, I’ll publish it?’
‘I do.’
‘What do you hope to gain from me looking into this?’
‘If Trankov is sabotaging our operation, I want it made public.’
‘I still don’t understand why you don’t just wait until you return to England and contact the police then.’
‘Damn it! Are you going to make me say it?’ Heatherton pauses. She can hear his agitated breathing. ‘Off the record, okay?’
‘Okay.’
‘I’ve been told there’s to be no police investigation. It was a tragic accident.’
‘Who told you?’ she asks.
‘I’m not sure if I should say.’
‘If you want me there, you tell me who gave you that directive.’
‘The Ministry of Defence.’
Wolfe stands now. The fine hairs on the back of her neck are prickling.
‘How fast can I get to Camp Ellsworth?’
‘Forty-eight hours.’
‘I’ll be there.’
6
To get my circulation moving, I shift first one leg and then the other, careful not to lose the iPad on my lap. I blow on my numb fingers and look across the road at a house subdivided into five flats. My view is slightly obscured by two bent oak trees whose gnarled and contorted branches camouflage me, should anyone look out of the window at the park. I’ve been watching the occupants - my ‘lab rats’, as I call them - gradually leave for work. Only one remains: Daisy O’Leary, flat one, who is due at her regular yoga class. I need her gone before you arrive.
Her intercom buzzer’s label says ‘Felicia Savage’, in flamboyant cursive script, and this is how she is known to her clients. In a street of elegant Victorian red-brick houses, a conservation zone, in which each windowsill must be painted white, the wrought iron balcony railings black, and the original tessellated Victorian paving tiles cannot be removed, I wonder why your well-to-do Balham neighbours put up with a dominatrix in their midst.
