Walk up the tunnel, look at the size of it, it’s huge, it must lead somewhere. We can get out that way.
‘Stop it, all of you.’
Like chastened children, the voices hush.
‘Glaciers are my thing,’ she tells them. ‘I’m in charge.’
Knowing she has to keep out of the water, she spots a boulder of ice and heads towards it. She finds that by edging her way around the shaft’s wall, she can keep her feet out of the wet. When she reaches the ice block, she climbs onto it and pulls off her backpack.
She has barely managed two bites of chocolate before the world around her trembles and a fresh fall of snow flutters down the shaft. Above her, the dawn sky is the palest shade of blue and she wonders at the irony of the man she has feared for so long being the one person who might save her.
As the sun gets higher, light creeps down the moulin until she can see it properly. About twenty metres in diameter it is an almost perfect circle; white, of course, but gleaming silver in the light and streaked throughout with flashes of blue.
The tunnel, too, is as huge as she first thought. A great deal of water has travelled this way very quickly to carve out both the tunnel and the moulin.
The water’s getting higher.
This is Bamber’s voice, but Felicity too has noticed that the milky blue stream of meltwater running through the base of the moulin has swollen even in the brief time that she has been here.
The world quivers again, unleashing a blizzard of snow. She looks at the ice blocks around her, most of them already partly submerged, and knows that if a boulder falls from the top, she will be crushed.
‘This is how the lake drains,’ she says. ‘Meltwater around the glacier accumulates over the summer and the ice starts to break apart. The plug at the bottom of the lake gets dislodged and the water empties through this drainage system. I’ve solved it.’
I’m really happy for you, Bamber grumbles. Tell me something, is this about to happen now?
Felicity doesn’t reply, but Bamber can see as well as she that the water level is rising. The plug probably hasn’t broken yet, or the stream would be a torrent, but it can’t last much longer.
84
Joe
Stromness Bay is calm after the heavy swell of open sea. Through water as clear as glass, Joe can see kelp swaying like underwater forests in a gentle breeze. Shadows dart here and there, too fast for him to make out what is swimming below. A powerful smell of guano hits the back of his throat as Ralph steers them through the seals and penguins to the slipway at Husvik. They haul the RIB out of reach of the tide and then both Ralph and Jack arm themselves with boat hooks to fend off aggressive seals.
‘Stick to the path and take care,’ Jack tells them. ‘In fact, stay in single file behind me. This place isn’t safe.’
They head inland, watched by a thousand pairs of eyes. They pass a penguin colony amid the grass. The birds are small, a little over two feet in height, with black heads, shoulders and backs and white breasts. They have bright-yellow feathers above each scarlet red eye. Their beaks are orange and hooked.
‘Macaroni penguins,’ Ralph tells them. ‘They’ll be gone in a couple of weeks. The young are almost ready to go out to sea.’
‘Mum would have loved this,’ Joe says.
‘I’ll stop off with her on the way back,’ Ralph promises. ‘Can’t have the lovely Delilah going home without a proper look at the place.’
They steer their way through the derelict buildings of the whaling station and then Jack opens the BAS facility and leads them inside. He makes immediately for the radio in the office while the others look around.
‘No sign of her,’ Ralph says, unnecessarily, when they’ve searched the building.
‘Would she have stayed in one of the other buildings?’ Joe asks.
‘Not if she’s half a brain,’ Jack replies. ‘They’re riddled with asbestos and completely unstable. I reached base, by the way. There’s another RIB about an hour away.’
‘Any news on Freddie?’ Joe asks.
Jack shakes his head. ‘They haven’t found him.’
Skye says. ‘Where would she go from here?’
‘The glacier,’ Jack says, after a moment’s thought. ‘There’s a cave where we keep stuff. And an equipment hut on the way. She could get everything she needed in there.’
Joe looks at him carefully. ‘Is there something you’re not telling us?’
Jack seems to be thinking for a moment. Then, ‘Nigel mentioned something else on the radio,’ he says. ‘It may be nothing, but…’
They wait.
‘We’ve been monitoring a glacial lake for some weeks.’ He glances, uncomfortably, at Ralph. ‘We put some equipment in it a couple of days ago to monitor the water levels.’
‘Starting to drop?’ Ralph asks.
Grim-faced, Jack lets his head fall and rise.
‘What does that mean?’ asks Skye.
‘It means the glacier will be very unstable,’ Jack tells her. ‘Not a good place to be.’
For a moment, no one speaks.
‘You need to contact your mum,’ Ralph tells Joe. ‘I’ll show you.’
‘Skye and I will set off,’ Jack says. ‘We’ll wait at the equipment hut.’
It takes Joe no time at all to reach his mother on Bird Island. The signal isn’t great, but his mum has been using radios her whole adult life.
‘I’m going to tell you in snippets, Joe. I need you to confirm you understand or request that I repeat. No unnecessary chat.’
‘We got here safely, thanks for asking,’ Ralph mutters.
‘Understood,’ Joe says into the transmitter.
‘The business man from Strasbourg, you know the witness from the night Dora was murdered? He’s arrived and was interviewed first thing this morning. You’ll recall that the UK is two hours ahead of us.’
‘Understood.’ Joe looks at his watch. Half past nine in the UK.
‘His hotel room on the night in question was on the third floor, directly overlooking the river and an area of public open space. He claims he saw a young woman with long blonde hair wearing a white dress.’
Joe glances up at Ralph and sees him mouth the word, Felicity.
‘He’s quite specific about the time, and even wrote it down. It was twenty-three-ten hours. Are you getting all this, Joe?’
‘I am. Carry on.’
‘He saw Felicity being attacked by another person. I repeat, Felicity was attacked. He saw the two of them fighting for several seconds and while he can’t be sure about this, he though the other person had a knife. He—’
‘Was this Dora?’ Joe asks.
‘Don’t interrupt me, Joe. He tried to call down but the window only opened a couple of inches. Health and safety regs. While he was wondering what to do, a third person appeared, this one answering the description of Dora Hardwick. Dora appeared to be trying to intervene. At this point, our witness decided to run outside, but by the time he got there, all three of them had vanished. He saw what he thought might be the woman in the white dress some distance away and ran after her but he lost track. When he got back to the place where he’d seen the fight, there was no sign of anyone. Are you still with me? Over.’