Zodiac Station

Seventeen

I hadn’t finished breakfast next morning when Quam called me into his office. He sat behind his desk, fingers working a rubber band fit to snap.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ he demanded.

‘I was hoping to finish my cornflakes.’

‘You know damn well what I’m talking about. I’ve had reports — from more than one of my staff — that you’re putting it about Hagger was murdered.’

‘You asked me to find out who was leaking data to DAR-X. I’m pretty sure it was Hagger. He even did a little unofficial work for them on the side.’

‘Hagger’s project had nothing to do with that.’ The rubber band was wound so tight it had cut off the blood to his fingertip. ‘I authorised it myself.’

‘And they were up by the glacier the day Hagger died.’

‘So were half the Zodiac personnel, for God’s sakes. You can’t be suggesting that DAR-X would do … that.’

‘No one ever accused oil companies of playing by the rules.’

I didn’t mention Annabel. I guessed she’d already told Quam what I thought of her.

‘This has to stop,’ Quam said. ‘We’re all living close to the edge. Hagger, Anderson, now the crash. More major incidents in a week than we’ve had in twenty years.’

‘Still, it’s three,’ I said flippantly.

‘Three what?’

‘Bad things come in threes. Maybe that’s the end of it.’

Quam didn’t see the funny side. ‘One man’s dead, two more nearly followed him. With the Twin Otter gone we’re cut off, probably for at least a week. If you ratchet up this paranoia any more, someone’s going to crack.’

‘Don’t you see the connection?’ I insisted. ‘First Hagger, then his assistant — and then the plane they were both on. The leak in the fuel tank — you think that was an accident too?’

‘Hagger was a busted flush. Shall I tell you a secret? His reputation, the big Nature paper — all built on lies. No one can replicate it, you know why? Because he doped his samples.’

‘He couldn’t have,’ I protested.

‘They emailed last week. They’re retracting the paper. We can’t have that kind of fraud here: the funding bodies would hit the roof. I told him to his face I was sending him home.’

That set me back. I knew he’d been having trouble with his work, but this was something else. A third of scientific articles, even the peer-reviewed ones, turn out to be wrong, but no one ever says anything. They’re swept under the carpet and forgotten. For a major journal to publicly disown a paper is almost unheard of. Even the fellows who faked cold fusion back in the eighties didn’t have that happen to them.

‘You sacked Hagger?’

‘That very morning.’ He stretched the broken rubber band. There was a nick in it: I could see it would snap again soon.

‘You think I’m proud of it?’ he said. ‘If anyone’s responsible for his horrible death, it’s me. I must have driven him to it.’

‘I still think we should look into it. If Hagger committed suicide, it doesn’t explain Anderson. Or the plane, or—’

‘Enough!’ Quam stood. His face had gone as red as his fingertip, as though someone had wound a rubber band around his neck. ‘You’ve got to stop spreading these rumours — I’m ordering you. You can’t go around making people think there’s some kind of murderer on the loose.’

Too late, he realised the door was open. Danny stood there, a dishcloth draped around his neck and his eyes wide. He’d started to shuffle back into the corridor, but Quam’s furious gaze brought him to a guilty stop.

‘Just wondered if Doc had finished his breakfast,’ he mumbled.

I’d lost my appetite. But back in the medical room, Anderson had woken up. He sat on the little bed, staring around like an abductee taking his first look at the spaceship. His face was grey, his hair was a mess, and five days of beard growth made him look like a tramp.

‘Where am I?’

‘Wednesday morning. And still at Zodiac.’

He rubbed the back of his head. ‘I’m not sure …’

‘Some short-term memory loss is normal. You mustn’t fret about it. It’ll come back in good time.’

‘I need to talk to Luke.’ He glanced at the clock on the wall, panic spreading. ‘He’ll be at school.’

‘Greta’s spoken to him. He knows you’re OK.’

‘Right.’ He lay back, wincing as his head touched the pillow. I put two paracetamol in a cup and popped it on the table next to his bed. He stared at the ceiling.

There was something I was dying to know. ‘Up on the Helbreen — when you fell. Do you remember that?’

‘I didn’t fall.’ Behind those eyes, the clouds parted. ‘Someone came at me.’

‘There wasn’t anyone there,’ I told him. ‘Except Annabel.’

He frowned. ‘She’d gone behind the rocks. For a wee. Someone hit me from behind.’

All my suspicions about Annabel came back in a flash — her and Hagger, her and Anderson. But I couldn’t make myself believe it. She’d brought Anderson back to Zodiac, after all. Rescued him. If she’d really wanted to kill him, she’d gone about it all wrong.

‘You fell in a moulin,’ I corrected him. ‘Didn’t watch where you were going — banged your head.’

‘Someone hit me from behind.’ His eyes narrowed, focused on something far away.

‘Must have been a dream. You’ve been asleep for two days, head stuffed full of bumps and drugs. It’s normal you’re a little confused.’ I got my ophthalmoscope and shone the light in his eyes to check for concussion.

‘I found a notebook,’ Anderson said. ‘I was reading it.’

So much for short-term memory loss. I wondered what to do. I still wasn’t sure if Anderson was on the level. At that stage, I didn’t trust anyone.

If you ratchet up this paranoia any more, someone’s going to crack. Maybe Quam was right. My body was already starting to tell me it wanted another diazepam.

I opened my cabinet. As I took out the notebook, I saw the burnt corner of the other notebook I’d found at the cabin. Does Ash know where it’s going? I hid it under the prescriptions book.

‘I had a flick through. Couldn’t make much sense of it,’ I said casually.

He turned a couple of pages and raised an eyebrow. ‘“Fridge will kill me,”’ he read aloud.

‘A figure of speech. Martin did some work for DAR-X. Fridge thought that was sleeping with the enemy.’

‘And all this about “X”. “Concentration of X”, “dispersal of X” … Do you know what “X” is?’

‘I was hoping you could tell me.’

I thought about what Quam had said. Hagger was a busted flush. Did it make any difference what he’d written in his notebook — or was it all fiction?

I excused myself to check on the pilot, Trond. Halfway down the corridor, I ran into Jensen.

‘Can I have a word, Doc?’ I nodded. ‘In private?’

‘Of course.’

There was no privacy in the medical room; we went to the pool room. It used to be a store cupboard, but one winter some bored technician made a half-size pool table out of old packing crates and crowbarred it in. The cues were flagpoles that had been machined down; the felt from old boot liners. I can’t imagine where he found the balls.

There was barely room for two people to stand either side of it, let alone to wield a cue. But it was tolerably private, and no one ever went in there outside the annual pool tournament. I leaned against the door to keep it shut, while Jensen spun a ball on the table.

‘There’s a rumour going around,’ he said. ‘Hagger — they’re saying it wasn’t an accident.’

I didn’t need to ask how the rumour had started. If Danny had heard me in Quam’s office, everyone on Utgard would know by now. Eastman’s instruments had probably picked it up from space.

‘Ask Quam,’ I told him.

‘Do you know who’d have done it?’

‘No.’

With a flick of his wrist, he sent the ball rolling towards one of the pockets.

‘I think I do.’

The ball dropped in the pocket. Lost in my thoughts, I almost missed what Jensen had said: I was too busy thinking about Annabel and Anderson and Fridge and Quam.

Then it registered.

‘You know who killed Hagger?’ I said stupidly.

‘That day — when Hagger died. I said I was flying Dr Ashcliffe all day looking for polar bears.’

I nodded.

‘It’s not true. Not all true. We were out there, but we didn’t have much luck. Mid-morning, he told me to drop him off. He thought he’d have a better chance watching and waiting on the ground.’

‘Where was that?’

‘The Russian mining town. Vitangelsk. I went off by myself, restocked a few of the fuel depots.’

‘How long were you gone?’

‘Two hours. Maybe three.’

‘Can you check the flight log?’

He picked at the felt on the table. ‘Ash said I should write it up as if we’d been flying all day.’ He saw the look I was giving him. ‘It didn’t hurt anyone. The company bills the scientists for the time they book. They have to pay even if they don’t use it.’

‘You falsified the flight log? To hide the fact that Ash was on his own all afternoon?’ Vitangelsk is the other side of the mountain from the Helbreen; no distance at all. Ashcliffe could have skied it easily. If DAR-X hadn’t given him a lift.

Jensen looked miserable. ‘I didn’t think it mattered.’

‘Hagger died that afternoon,’ I reminded him.

‘Jesus, you think I don’t know? But we all heard it was an accident. I didn’t think it could’ve been anything else, until today.’

I backtracked. ‘How did Ash seem when you picked him up.’

‘That’s the thing. He looked pretty shaken up, said he’d had a close encounter with a bear.’

‘A bear?’

‘But that’s not all.’ Jensen glanced at the door and leaned over the pool table. ‘He had blood on his coat.’