The Stranger on the Ice

by Bernadette Calonego

  ALSO BY BERNADETTE CALONEGO

  Stormy Cove

  Under Dark Waters

  The Zurich Conspiracy

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2016 by Bernadette Calonego

  Translation copyright © 2018 by Gerald Chapple

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Previously published as Die Fremde auf dem Eis by Edition M in Luxembourg in 2016. Translated from German by Gerald Chapple.

  First published in English by AmazonCrossing in 2018.

  Published by AmazonCrossing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and AmazonCrossing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503904255

  ISBN-10: 1503904253

  Cover design by PEPE nymi, Milano

  For Rosa and Peter

  CONTENTS

  MAP

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

  WORKS CONSULTED

  CHAPTER 1

  It caught his eye at once. Just off the Ice Road.

  A tiny point at first. He drove several feet closer. Dark blue. Couldn’t mistake it in this white wilderness. He certainly wouldn’t. His eyes picked up anything unusual here.

  He was constantly on the ice in winter. Day after day. Him and his truck. A powerful machine that could lug sixty tons. Today he was pulling a trailer with housing for the new foreign workers. Those guys from the south get on Skype to their families back home and say they’re drilling for gas in the Arctic Ocean. Not that people three thousand miles away have the slightest idea what that means.

  Must be a blue pickup. Probably did a pirouette on the ice. Sure didn’t mean to, unless the driver was just playing around. He already knew what to expect. The hood plowed into a snowdrift. Wheels pulled away like dislocated shoulders. Seen that all too often.

  The usual yahoos, for sure. Goddamn amateurs. City types with giant egos inflated like a frog’s throat and with an even bigger lack of experience. Highway cowboys out of Calgary. Or Vancouver.

  Maybe an engineer from LRLS Gas & Oil. Or some jerk of a globe-trotter from Italy. Even worse, an American from Texas. Last year it was Brits wanting to film musk ox. Not here, on Banks Island. Of course they just had to race down the Ice Road. Instead of musk ox they got themselves a broken axle.

  Those idiots haven’t the foggiest idea how to drive a vehicle on glass fifteen feet thick. They’d laugh him out of court if he told them, “That glass is alive. It’s called ice.”

  He knew where those big-city babies get their crazy ideas from. TV, of course. Ice Road Truckers, a reality show. He’d never have watched anything like that himself. But his wife, Judy, talked him into it. “Just so’s you see how they do it,” she’d said.

  His eyes almost popped out of this head. Those TV people really lay it on thick: “Polar Sea Adventure! Only for the boldest and most daring drivers. They risk their lives on the winter road over the frozen delta of the mighty Mackenzie River. They drive to beat hell, and with a sixty-ton load. They could fall through the ice at any moment.”

  His pal Poppy Dixon had dropped in with a case of beer, and they’d howled with laughter. Poppy pounded him on the back so hard that he almost fell off the sofa.

  “Wow! We’re big, fuckin’ heroes, eh, Todd? And we didn’t even know it!”

  Adventure? Bullshit! Last year Poppy’s truck had gone through the ice. Eighty tons went down. Rebar for a gas company way out there somewhere. A couple of Helvin West’s men hoisted him out with a crane. Poppy hadn’t laughed at the time. His face was white as snow.

  Now he could clearly make out the blue pickup. Nose first, deep in the wall of snow bordering the road. What a mess. And what was that in the snow? A reddish-brown shape. A dead moose. Or what was left of it: the head. The long tongue hanging out of its mouth. Red streaks all over the place. Red as Judy’s nail polish.

  His foot tapped on the gas pedal. He couldn’t risk going more than thirty with that heavy load. End of March and sun already—sun, sun, sun. Nothing but sun for four days. Four damn days in a row. The ice was still holding. But who knew for how long? Only Clem Hardeven, the ice master. If he said the ice road was closing, then it would be closed. Even Helvin West listened to Clem. And Helvin was Clem’s boss.

  He geared down. Slow, slow, slow. Todd, my friend, enjoy the spectacle of this idiot who dug his own grave in the snow. The blockhead braked too hard on the ice when he saw the moose’s head, I’ll bet.

  You gotta learn how to brake on the ice. A rookie, was all he could say, a beginner. Maybe the guy had had a few beers too many in the Crazy Hunter. Big mistake. You don’t play with fire on the ice.

  Suddenly, even before he’d stopped, a lightbulb went on in his head. Blue! The pickup was a shiny dark blue! With white lettering. He didn’t even have to read it. Holy shit!

  He put on his gloves and fur hat and zipped up his down jacket. He climbed down from his truck and waddled over the sparkling ice like a curler. It was easier for him to drive than walk. The Ice Road was slippery as wet glass.

  Axle wasn’t broken. He could see that right away. He adjusted his sunglasses. Too much sun and too much white around for his liking. Nothing moved inside the car. He tried to open the door. Couldn’t. He tried the other side. He pulled and twisted until the door popped open, and he almost fell over. He peeked inside. Nothing. Not a soul. The bird had flown the coop.

  What to do? Best hightail it to Inuvik. Wasn’t far. The cops would certainly know what was up. He’d lost enough time as it was.

  As he drove on, the pickup gradually disappeared in the rearview mirror. Too bad the wreck didn’t vanish into thin air. He didn’t want anything to do with it.

  One more long curve, and he could almost smell Inuvik.

  But there was something else. A dark heap beside the road. What the fuck! He knew it wasn’t a moose. His truck skidded to a halt. Out into the cold again.

  It took some effort to work his way over. A woman. Lying right on the ice. Curled up like a fetus. Not moving. Her head lying on one arm, eyes closed. Her cap still on her d
ark hair. Her hood flipped back. Like she was asleep. He bent down and shook her. Shouted, “Hello, hello!” But he already knew. So stiff and ice-cold. She was young. And she was dead.

  He didn’t know the woman. Just the pickup. And he couldn’t make any connection.

  Penguinlike, he waddled over the ice back to his truck and reached for the satellite phone.

  CHAPTER 2

  A tight steel band was wrapped around Valerie’s head. At least that’s how it felt. Her stuffed-up nose almost made breathing impossible. Her body shook with fever. She’d finished the tea hours ago that her neighbor Faye had made. She tried to get up to go to the kitchen—but as soon as she did, everything went black before her eyes. She helped herself to an herbal lozenge, then she gasped for air.

  If only her sleepless night would just disappear and the pain in her head and limbs with it.

  But she was secretly happy. In two weeks she’d be guiding six clients from Whitehorse to Inuvik and then to the Arctic Ocean. Her flu was sure to be over by then. It had better be. A sick tour guide would mean the death of a company that consisted only of a single person.

  She tried once more to lay her head down flat. An evil hobgoblin was hammering on the top of her skull. Her long brown hair clung to her temples. Her heart was pounding as if she’d just sprinted a mile. She wasn’t up to taking her temperature yet again.

  Suddenly, her tootling cell phone woke her up. She must have finally dozed off. The light was still on. Everything was blurred, but she could still make out the Accept button on the phone. She hit it, robotlike.

  “Hello?” Her voice sounded as rough as sandpaper. Words swam toward her ear from far away.

  “Val? Is that you?”

  She squeaked out a yes.

  “Val, it’s me, Sedna. I need your help. It’s urgent. Do you understand?”

  Sedna, wouldn’t you know it. Her new friend who wasn’t a friend anymore. They’d had a falling-out, and Sedna had taken off to who-knows-where five months ago.

  “No. I don’t.”

  “You’ve got to help me, Val. I’m in serious trouble. Where are you?”

  Where do you think?

  “I’m in bed. I’m sick.”

  And it’s the middle of the night.

  “You’ve got to get help, Val. I need help—right now!”

  “What? But . . . I’m in bed with the flu.”

  Her head was pounding, her pulse racing. She had a hard time thinking.

  What she really wanted to say was: Sedna, call somebody else. I can’t help you. Not this time. I warned you, but you wouldn’t listen.

  “Val, pull yourself together! It’s an emergency. Somebody’s trying to kill me!”

  What did she say? Valerie’s nose was dripping. Where was that damn box of tissues?

  “Where are you, Sedna? Why don’t you call the . . .”

  There was a loud crackle at the other end of the line.

  “Sedna, call the police.”

  “I can’t, I . . .”

  More static. Then the line went silent.

  Valerie sat there as if struck dead. Red lightning flashed through her aching head. She closed her eyes to shut out the bright light coming from the lamp on her night table.

  She waited. No point trying to sleep.

  Sedna would call back. Or she really would call the police.

  What did she say? “Somebody’s trying to kill me.”

  Typical Sedna. Dramatizes everything. The queen of conspiracy theories.

  She’d warned Sedna. You do not simply walk into a gold mine where people have guns and alcohol under their cots. And absolutely not if you’re a woman all by yourself. The mines are a magnet for crazies and misfits who have nowhere else to go. Nobody’s going to protect an innocent woman there, even if the mine owner’s her friend.

  Maybe Sedna wasn’t in a camp at all. It was the middle of March. No mining for gold in March. Every place in Northern Canada was still snowed in or iced over. And Sedna liked to make things up.

  Maybe that’s why she was so fascinating. Valerie thought eccentrics were exciting.

  When they first met two years ago, she discovered that Sedna was different.

  Her hair color, for starters. Valerie was sitting across from her on the Horseshoe Bay ferry from Langdale. A fashionably dressed woman, maybe midthirties or a bit younger, with unconventionally short, colored hair that Valerie secretly called “that precious-metal look”: hair streaked with silver, copper, gold, and cobalt blue.

  They struck up a conversation on their way to Vancouver, and after twenty minutes the woman said, “My name’s Sedna.”

  Valerie knew the origin of her name, and Sedna was impressed. If that’s not a coincidence, she thought, then it’s Divine Providence.

  Sedna, the goddess of the Alaska and Greenland Inuit. The mighty goddess of the ocean, who lost her fingertips in a tragic boating accident. They were transformed into whales, seals, and other denizens of the deep. Valerie’s stepmother, Bella, had often read to her from a book of myths of the Arctic people, childhood stories that were as familiar to her as Alice in Wonderland. Valerie loved the character of Sedna. By contrast, another goddess, who created the fish but sacrificed her own children so that others might live, she found scary.

  She told her new acquaintance this as the ferry sailed by small wooded islands with frame houses. Sedna made no reply, merely staring at the water where the wind billowed the sails of a few boats.

  Then she suggested having something to drink in the cafeteria.

  The snow-covered peaks of the coastal mountains came into view. Valerie asked, “How did you come by that name?”

  Sedna sipped her cappuccino.

  “My parents were hippies. They hunted around for an out-of-the-way name. My mother found Sedna in her oracle cards, under ‘goddesses from ancient cultures.’” She rolled her eyes, which said it all.

  Valerie smiled.

  Sedna emptied her cup.

  “Well, there are worse names than mine.”

  “For instance?”

  “Edna.”

  They giggled like teenagers.

  Not long afterward she bumped into Sedna at the farmers’ market in Gibsons, a peaceful port village crowded with yachts and a few fishing boats. Shortly after her divorce, Valerie had moved a few hours away from Vancouver, to the Sunshine Coast, to start a new life. Her plan was to concentrate her travel business on hale and hearty seniors. And in the rural idyll of the Sunshine Coast, with its mild winters, there were hordes of them.

  Sedna convinced her to volunteer for the neighborhood watch. This meant driving along the streets and keeping an eye out for suspicious characters. At the time Valerie would have done anything to make friends, even joining a hula-hoop club and marching through town in the annual parade with a fluorescent hoop around her waist. Patrolling in Sedna’s red Mazda was fun at first. Sedna knew almost every house and every person in the neighborhood. Many of her stories rang too good to be true, but being with her was never boring. She changed her hairdo every few weeks. Valerie, on the other hand, would simply do up her long chestnut hair in a ponytail every day because it was so practical. She cut her bangs herself. Sedna experimented with makeup and sometimes wore false eyelashes. Her pretty face would turn into a thousand tiny lines when she laughed, but it was completely smooth when she was serious.

  She had these wonderfully crazy conspiracy theories. For example, she believed that the village authorities were deliberately polluting the drinking water, which was long recognized as the best drinking water in the world: it always took first place in international competitions. For generations anybody could fill canisters of it from the community well for free. When the local authorities suddenly slapped a fee on this, Sedna and many fellow citizens were enraged. Their anger boiled over when pathogens were discovered in the water, and people had to buy mineral water at the store.

  “They did that on purpose,” Sedna said. “The authorities contaminated the water
to get back at us.”

  “Don’t you think that’s a bit farfetched?” Valerie inquired.

  Sedna shook her head like a parent dealing with an unreasonable child.

  “Maybe your take on the world is a bit naïve, Val. You probably believe what the newspapers say about who destroyed the Twin Towers?”

  Valerie was smart enough to keep quiet.

  She continued to consider Sedna a friend. She took an exploratory trip the following summer to Inuvik, a village in the Arctic, and Sedna came along. Valerie normally took tours on the Ice Road and to the Arctic Ocean at the beginning of April, but they were so successful she decided to plan a summer tour to the Arctic as well.

  The trip with Sedna didn’t work out. The problems began as soon as they reached the Yukon Territory. In Dawson City she disappeared for a whole day and didn’t turn up until that evening, without a word to Valerie about where she’d been. In Inuvik it was worse. Valerie found a hastily scribbled note one morning telling her not to worry, Sedna would be back at the hotel in three days.

  Valerie was furious. Sedna accused Valerie of treating her like a toddler in a playpen, arguing that they hadn’t agreed to do everything together. That was the beginning of the end of their friendship. Valerie knew it, but for some reason, she kept going on the neighborhood patrols with Sedna. The death knell finally sounded when a friend of Valerie’s saw Sedna in Cardero’s Restaurant in Vancouver. With Valerie’s ex. The friend didn’t have any idea who the woman flirting with Matt Shearer was. But her account didn’t leave any room for doubt: a woman with a dozen colors in her hair and silver earrings shaped like Indian canoes. Earrings like Sedna’s.

  Valerie phoned her ex.

  “Are you alone?” she asked—and immediately regretted her awkward gambit.

  Matt said nothing.

  She sighed. “That didn’t fly. Can I start over?”

  “Sure,” he said, sounding surprised. And wary.

  She was twenty-one when she’d accepted Matt’s proposal of marriage. Ten years later she didn’t want to be married anymore. Not to Matt, not to anyone. She wanted to be free and try out all the potential roads that life was supposed to offer her. The thought that she’d be intimate with only one man for the rest of her days terrified her. She wanted a life that would spread out before her like an uninhabited prairie, where she could choose several different paths to take. Not just the one she’d traveled until then; to her mind it was completely predictable.