The Ice

by Laline Paull

  Tuesday, 28 November 1893

  Farthest North: The Norwegian Polar Expedition 1893–1896 (1897)

  Fridtjof Nansen

  37

  In Court No. 1, Mr Allan Thornton studied the man on the stand.

  ‘I have to say, I’m very concerned by your physical state. Are you both mentally and physically fit enough to testify?’

  ‘Of course he’s not, look at him!’ Sawbridge called out.

  ‘I am.’

  Ruth Mott nodded, her eyes never leaving Sean. Beside her, Angela Harding and the family were like stone. On the press bench, the keys tapped like rain. And then moments later, a great boo rose up from the street.

  ‘Ignore it,’ said the coroner. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Everything happened as I said,’ Sean continued. ‘But I left certain things out. When we went up for the eclipse, Tom discovered that we – my other partners and I – had a wider agenda for Midgard Lodge than he knew about. Ruth was right, he did find weapons.’

  ‘Yes!’ she said, and he saw in her eyes she was willing him on.

  ‘I tried to explain they were for the good – because I was allowing Midgard to be used as a base to help Norway gather intelligence on Russia—’

  ‘Intelligence gathering?’ The coroner leaned forward.

  ‘Not personally. But I enabled it.’ Sean avoided Martine’s burning glare. Sawbridge had his hand over his mouth. Mrs Osman sat calmly as her two aides made rapid notes. The only person in the room he felt connected to was Ruth. Her clear gaze steadied his freefall. Don’t stop now. He nodded to her.

  ‘I agreed to use the cover of our in-house security to host a small private militia, which I arranged through Joe Kingsmith and which would be available to the Norwegian government should they need it. Tom was furious. He was going to publicly denounce it and withdraw his name.’

  He saw Martine whisper in Sawbridge’s ear and Sawbridge push her back, intently focused on his client’s self-destruction. Mrs Osman put up her hand.

  ‘Absolutely not – Mr Cawson, please go on.’

  ‘Ruth Mott met Joe Kingsmith when we all went to the restaurant in Longyearbyen. Greenland came up, and his business interests – his mining, and they got in an argument. Next day, Tom saw the strong room and he thought the worst.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘He thought I’d deceived him. But we didn’t get to that because we never got to talk properly. We went to the ice-cave and …’ Sean stopped and wiped a hand over his forehead.

  ‘Mr Cawson, your face is bleeding. You need medical—’

  ‘Afterwards.’ Sean touched his lip where it had opened again. The clerk passed him a few tissues and he took them. ‘I found out last night about the Zheng He being in trouble near Midgard Lodge.’ He stopped on the brink.

  You always were a greedy little bastard.

  ‘I believe it’s carrying arms.’

  ‘Darling, stop! You’re not well!’ Martine stared at him in disbelief.

  ‘Shut up.’ Ruth Mott looked at her with such fury that Martine sat back out of her eyeline. Mrs Osman put her hand up again and the coroner allowed her to stand.

  ‘Mr Cawson, this is very courageous of you. But are you telling us that the ship … the Zheng He …’ and Mrs Osman looked at her phone, ‘which has just been confirmed … as sunk, was connected with Midgard Lodge?’

  ‘I believe my backer Joe Kingsmith was using it to transport weapons to the Central African Republic and South Sudan, via the port of Bissau.’

  ‘PTSD, you know,’ Sawbridge said, to anyone who’d listen. ‘Terrible cross.’

  ‘I believe it loads in the Chinese port of Dalian.’ Sean looked over to the press bench. He felt a grim satisfaction at meeting their eyes. Let them have at him.

  ‘Dalian is where our other partner, Radiance Young, owns a wharf, and I believe Joe Kingsmith uses it in the supply of weapons and their components, including 3D printers, to several end users. One is Radiance and I believe another is a man from the Central African Republic called Benoit. I believe Joe Kingsmith’s main business is private militias, supporting Chinese corporations as they expand in certain African countries where he has interests. The Central African Republic for one, South Sudan another. I believe he might have been involved in Guinea Bissau when I first met him, in 1988. Because of my own greed and stupidity, I’ve been his unwitting assistant since that time.’ Sean forced himself on. ‘I think Zheng He was carrying chemical weapons.’

  The press bench was so stunned that for several seconds they did nothing – and then their fingers clattered and raced. Some got their phones out and started making calls. One journalist – Sean’s old enemy – raised his hands and clapped slowly.

  ‘I haven’t finished.’ Sean gripped the stand, the riptide of adrenaline making him dizzy. ‘I thought Tom was naïve and he thought I was corrupt. We were both right, but now I realise I was naïve as well. We were so angry with each other that we missed the signs in the cave. I said I helped him, but it was the other way round. It always was.’

  Sean and Tom hear the groan and creak in the ice before they feel the sliding planes around them. With one long ripping sound the floor of ice splits apart, the two sides peel away from each other, and from above stalactites plummet and shatter against the sides of the chasm as they fall. Sean is on one side, Tom the other. A great chunk of ice drops, wedging across the top of the break.

  ‘Quickly,’ Tom whispers, shining his head torch on it. ‘Crawl over now, while you still can.’ Sean stares as the bridging block slowly begins to slip.

  ‘Don’t look down, look at me,’ Tom calls to him. ‘Over here—’ He reaches out and they grab each other in the hand-to-forearm boat grip. Tom pulls Sean across. They haul themselves back towards the passageway – but everything has changed.

  ‘You’re still a lying shit,’ Tom pants to him as they go, ‘don’t think you’re not. Nothing’s changed when we get out.’

  Sean stopped speaking. His hands were freezing. His legs shook and he could feel the surge of the drug breaking down in his brain. Then he saw Gail’s face at the back of the courtroom. She was looking at him steadily, as if she had come to his execution and would not look away. He would die properly then. No half-measures.

  ‘We started to go back,’ he said, ‘and we knew we had to be quick because there was water coming in from somewhere, it was flowing, and I couldn’t believe it because Tom started asking me about the Lodge again, and what else I was hiding, and what was Kingsmith hiding, he wasn’t letting go of it even when we might both die – that was what he was like.’

  The odd sound was Ruth Mott clapping, standing up, her face wet with tears, nodding at him. Keep going.

  ‘We were both so angry with each other, even in this situation, but we kept going on, Tom kept saying “Fram” like we used to, Forward, like he wasn’t frightened at all. He said we were going to get out, he was going to get out because he wanted to get back to Ruth.’

  He saw her put her arms around herself and close her eyes.

  ‘We felt one of the plastic grip tiles and we knew we were closer to getting out and then everything goes sideways, the whole thing collapses again and Tom’s shouting where he’s wedged so he doesn’t drop, and I’ve found a rope in the wall, I grab hold of it with my left hand and I reach for him with the other.’

  ‘Here, Tom,’ Sean reaches out his right hand, but not quite far enough. His wavering head-torch beam is on Tom’s face. ‘But first promise not to say anything. Give me your word. When I explain it to you—’

  ‘Give me your fucking hand!’

  ‘I will, just promise me—’

  Tom falls. Sean’s beam arcs down into blackness. He calls out. Again, again, louder. There is no reply.

  Sean fixed his gaze on the back wall of the courtroom, unable to meet a single pair of eyes. His right hand was tingling. Not from frostbite, he knew that now. From what he had not done. He felt about to burst into flames. ‘I killed Tom. Not de
liberately. But I did.’

  In the silence in the courtroom Granny Ruby slowly got to her feet. ‘Shame on you,’ she said, and her voice was small but as piercing as her eyes. Outside, the booing started again. A mob sound.

  ‘Silence! Everyone!’ The coroner stood and addressed Sean. ‘Mr Cawson, you are telling the court, you are telling me, that you delayed rendering aid to Mr Harding, in order to attempt to elicit his promise not to say what he had witnessed at Midgard Lodge?’

  ‘Yes.’ Sean closed his eyes a moment. ‘Tom would not have got involved if he’d known the true scope of what we were doing. And had I known the extent of Joe Kingsmith’s other activities, I would not have accepted his investment.’

  ‘Irrelevant, irrelevant, irrelevant!’ Sawbridge had had enough and was on his feet as well. ‘Your Honour, I move that it is impossible to know if my client could or could not have saved Mr Harding’s life, despite his desire to throw himself on his sword, and that because of my client’s post-traumatic stress disorder—’

  ‘Mr Sawbridge, sit down—’

  ‘—he is incapable of distinguishing truth from paranoia and is completely delusional. He is suffering from a psychotic disturbance!’

  ‘Must I have you removed?’ Mr Thornton shouted it, and Sawbridge sat down. Mrs Osman raised her hand and the coroner permitted her to stand.

  ‘Mr Cawson,’ she said quietly. ‘I admire your courage. And I am legally bound to tell you that, if you answer my questions, those answers might cause this inquest to be moved, in the public interest, to a criminal trial.’

  ‘I understand. I accept.’

  ‘Are you financially involved with the ship the Zheng He, now sunk off the coast of Svalbard, and which you believe is carrying chemical weapons across the TransPolar Route?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You also said you are complicit in allowing Midgard Lodge to be used for intelligence gathering by Norway on Russian activity in the Svalbard archipelago. Are you willing to expand on this?’

  ‘Yes. It was with the approval of Philip Stowe, the British Defence Secretary, and Skadi Larssen, Assistant Minister for Defence, in Oslo. She said Norway was very concerned about Russian expansionism, she said many countries were. We met at the arms fair in London in November, three or four years ago. I brought Kingsmith in on it, but he and Stowe also know each other. I believe I was the go-between.’

  He wondered how he could still be standing there, alive. Mrs Osman held his eyes, and he felt her support.

  ‘Do you also have a theory about the cause of this shipping disaster?’

  Mr Thornton appeared to have forgotten what was relevant and what was not, and leaned forward for the answer. Sean nodded.

  ‘I believe it ran into trouble in a storm, but, Joe preferred to let it sink rather than report it in distress and have the cargo exposed. He wanted me to think it would cause a massive diplomatic incident. But it was to protect himself.’

  The tapping of the press bench went out almost live, online. Outside on the street a hundred smart phones picked it up and the chant rose, loud and angry in the courtroom.

  Eco-cide! Eco-cide!

  Sean felt the liberation of self-destruction. There was nothing more to hide.

  ‘My meeting with Philip Stowe was arranged by Rupert Parch, his private secretary. He implied I’d get a knighthood for my trouble. At one time, I wanted it.’ He found Gail’s face at the back. ‘I wanted stupid, empty things.’

  ‘Sean!’ called Martine. ‘You’re delirious! Look at me!’ She twisted round to see what he was looking at, and saw Gail. ‘Did you ask her to come?’

  ‘No.’ Sean looked at Martine as if seeing her for the first time.

  ‘You’ve got no business here,’ she called out to Gail.

  ‘Miss Delaroche, you will please leave the court,’ said Mr Thornton. ‘Now.’

  ‘Fine. But there’s something I need to do first.’ Martine stood up and turned to Osman. ‘You wanted this to happen. You’re evil.’ She flung the contents of her water glass in the barrister’s face and strode towards Gail. ‘And you did too, didn’t you? You’ve always wanted to destroy us.’ Martine’s face tightened. ‘Answer me!’

  Gail didn’t look at her, but nodded to the stewards who held the doors open. As they took a step forward, Martine’s eyes burned hatred at Gail – then she stormed out before the stewards could touch her.

  Everyone’s eyes returned to the extraordinary spectacle of Mrs Osman carefully slicking down her wet hair and standing up straight. The hunch was gone, and her face, though still unusual in its stark bone-structure, was rather beautiful. Nor was she as old as Sean first thought. Meeting her eyes, he saw the amusement in them, before she turned back to the coroner.

  ‘Your Honour, I believe we have heard enough to request a verdict of unlawful killing, and that it is without question in the wider public interest that this inquest be moved to a criminal court.’ She looked around. ‘I don’t expect Mr Kingsmith is available today? No, I rather thought not.’

  Sawbridge, slightly recovered, did a half push-up.

  ‘Your Honour, might I cross-examine my own client? As everything is so highly irregular?’

  ‘Please.’

  Sawbridge waited until Mrs Osman sat.

  ‘Now, Sean,’ he said gently, ‘you’ve been having psychiatric treatment for PTSD, haven’t you? You’ve suffered hallucinations. Remember? In that restaurant? And panic attacks on the Underground—’

  ‘I never told you that.’ But he had told Jenny Flanders.

  ‘Memory lapses, confusion – fact is, you’re not a competent witness. I think His Honour and even my learned friend Mrs Osman can see that. Survivor’s guilt is one of the most pernicious burdens facing our returning armed forces. Who here hasn’t put a note in the bucket for Help for Heroes? In his own way, Sean Cawson has served his country and paid the price. Shouldn’t we respect his sacrifice? Let’s remember both Sean and Tom shared a lifetime’s obsession for the Arctic and both knew the risks. That was part of the appeal! Yes, they had political differences; yes, they argued, but at the end of the day even heroes can die, and that’s what’s so hard for Sean to accept. That’s why he’s trying to make himself responsible for everything that ever went wrong. Survivor’s guilt.’

  Sean looked to Mrs Osman.

  ‘I stand by everything I said.’

  In the silence, the coroner drew a deep breath.

  ‘The court will recess for fifteen minutes.’ As he walked out, the courtroom burst into noise.

  Sean couldn’t hear anything as he walked down the aisle; he felt half dead but it was not unpleasant. The stares no longer bothered him. Gail stood up as he reached her. They regarded each other in silence. He saw the delicate lines around her eyes, her mouth, he saw her neck, her breasts, the small knots of gold in her earlobes – he saw the girl inside the woman.

  ‘You haven’t changed.’

  ‘You have. Well done, Sean.’ Her smile broke his heart. Before he could answer, Sawbridge took him by the arm.

  ‘Terribly sorry, but the moment is critical – Sean, you must come now.’

  ‘Wait,’ he said. She nodded.

  He stood with Sawbridge in the small room. The angry chanting floated up. Eco-cide! Save the Arctic! He forced open the window, peering down into the street where police had arrived to manage the situation.

  ‘Something far more urgent here, old chap.’ Sawbridge held up his phone. ‘Let’s see: don’t believe anything until it’s been officially denied twice – we’re way past that. Denials flying in all directions, official rebuttal of all your “specious claims” from Stowe’s office – already online so you know it’s serious. Yep, google-translated in every country in which you’ve got us into the deepest diplomatic excrement. Ah, here we are, British trade talks with the Sino-Arctic Alliance suspended – aren’t you clever? Just from one, stupid, undisciplined, outburst. All this fuss. I’m your counsel, did you even think how it would reflect on me?�
�

  Sawbridge wound up with a quick, pained grin. ‘Never mind, worse things happen at sea, don’t they just.’ He glanced at his phone screen, flashing with incoming emails. ‘And completely par for the course, the Sysselmann’s office in Svalbard has questioned the legality of your ownership. Midgard personnel in altercation with Russian search and rescue from the Arktik Dacha – all Greek to me, but maybe means something to you? – yes, and here we go, links to more outrage – you’re trending, Sean! All the fame you can handle. Nobody’s cared for years about the flouting of the Svalbard Treaty until you show them up as a bunch of hypocrites. You didn’t mean to, I know; you were just playing geopolitics with your Lego, and now you’re in all this trouble.’ Sawbridge squinted at the screen. ‘Aha. Someone I think you know.’

  He turned his phone to Sean, where a YouTube clip played: a furious Skadi Larssen denying everything in Norwegian, with English subtitles. He winked. ‘Honey trap, was it? Must say, I’d probably fall for it too—’

  Sean knocked the phone from his hand. A tiny angry Skadi spun on the floor. Sawbridge picked his phone up and examined it sadly.

  ‘I’ll add it to the bill. Be a good chap and pay me before the deluge of all your other costs comes in, won’t you? Much obliged.’ He peered into the crazed screen. ‘More emails, oh dear, so many from our mutual friend Rupert Parch – you seem to have greatly upset him. But he really shouldn’t cc me.’ Sawbridge brushed a few invisible specks from his jacket. ‘Shall we agree that I’m not the best representation for you going forward? Excellent.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Tell you what, we’ll stop the clock yesterday. Do excuse me, and the very best of luck with everything.’