What the fu—

It was the fear sweat, chasing a rolling shudder across his body. A feeling he’d left behind a decade ago in his early duels. Pure, existential terror, distilled down so clear it could not be pinned on any single identifiable thing. Fear of death, fear of life, fear of everything in between and what it would do to you in time. The terror of inevitably losing your grip.

‘Oy, are you getting in or what?’

The driver was leaning out, thumb jerked back to where the door of the black cab had hinged open of its own accord. There was a tiny light on inside, seats of cool green plush.

Liz Linshaw stood watching him, face still unreadable.

The sweat cooled.

He got in.

Chapter Twenty

Westward, there were mountains spearing up grimly under gathered blue cloud. Weak ladders of late afternoon sun fell through at infrequent intervals, splashing scant warmth where they hit. Carla shivered slightly at the sight. There was no darkness yet - this far north, daylight held the sky as it would for another full month, but the Lofoten skyline still looked like the watchtowers of a troll city.

‘Cold?’ Kirsti Nyquist glanced sideways from the jeep’s driving seat. Her ability to pick up on her daughter’s moods and feelings sometimes verged on the witchy. ‘We can close the hood, if you want.’

Carla shook her head. ‘I’m fine. Just thinking.’

‘Not happy thoughts, then.’

The road unwound ahead of them, freshly carved from the bleak terrain and laid down in asphalt so new it looked like liquorice. There were none of the luminous yellow markings as yet, and they kept passing raw white rock walls that still had defined grooves where the blasting holes had been sunk. A sign said Gjerlow Oceanic Monitoring -15 kilometres. Carla sighed and shifted in her seat. Kirsti drove the big Volvo All-Terrain with a care that, to Carla’s London-forged road instincts, seemed faintly ridiculous. They’d seen five other vehicles in the last hour, and three of those had been parked outside a fuelling post.

‘Tunnel,’ called her mother cheerily. ‘Mittens.’

Carla reached for her gloves. This was the second tunnel of the trip. The first time, she’d ignored her mother’s warning. They were less than two hundred kilometres inside the Arctic circle, and the weather had been pleasant since she got off the plane at Tromso two days ago, but tunnels were another matter. Deep in the mountain rock, an Arctic chill hit you in the lungs and the fingers before you’d gone a hundred metres.

Kirsti flipped on the headlamps and they barrelled down into the sodium yellow gloom. Their breath frosted and whipped away over their shoulders.

‘Now you’re cold, hey?’

‘A bit. Mum, did we really have to come all this way?’

‘Yes. I told you. It’s the only chance we’ll get to see him.’

‘You couldn’t invite him up to Tromso?’

Kirsti made a wry face. ‘Not any more.’

Carla tried primly not to laugh. Kirsti Nyquist was well into her fifties now, but she was still a strikingly handsome woman and she changed her lovers with brutal regularity. They just don’t grow with me, she once complained to her daughter. Perhaps that’s because they’re all young enough to be your children, Carla had retorted, a little unfairly. Her mother’s choices often were younger men, but not usually by more than a decade or so, and Carla herself had to admit most of the options in the fifty-plus male range weren’t much to look at.

The tunnel was six kilometres long. They made the other side with teeth chattering and Kirsti whooped as she drove into the fractured sunlight outside. The temperature upgrade soaked into Carla’s body like tropical heat. The chill seemed to have gone bone-deep. She tried to shrug it off.

Get a fucking grip, Carla.

She was already missing Chris, a lack for which she berated herself because it felt so pathetic alongside her mother’s cheerful self sufficiency. The anger at him that had driven her out of the house was already evaporating by the time her plane took off, and all she had by the time she arrived in Tromso was maudlin drinking talk of distance and loss.

Now, out of the mess she had laid out for her mother the night she arrived, Kirsti had snatched the possibility of meaningful action. Carla wondered vaguely what you had to do to attain operational pitch like that - have a child, write a book, lose a relationship? What did it take?

‘There it is.’ Kirsti gestured ahead, and Carla saw the road was dropping down to meet one side of a small, stubby fiord. On the other side, institutional buildings were gathered in a huddle, lit up shiny in a wandering shaft of sunlight. It looked as if the road ran all the way up to the end of the inlet and then back round to the monitoring station.

‘So this is all new as well?’

‘Relocated. They were based in the Faroes until last year.’

‘Why did?’ Carla remembered. ‘Oh, right. The BNR thing.’

‘Yes, your beloved British and their nuclear reprocessing. Gjerlow reckons it’s contaminated local waters for the next sixty years minimum. Pointless taking overview readings. None of the tests they do will stand the radiation.’

Not for the first time, Carla felt a wave of defensiveness rising in her at the mention of her adoptive home.

‘I heard it was just heat exchanger fluids - not enough to do much damage.’

‘My dear, you’ve been living in London too long if you believe what the British media tell you. There is no just where nuclear contaminants are concerned. It’s been a monumental disaster and anyone with access to independent broadcasting knows it.’

Carla flushed. ‘We’ve got independent channels.’

‘Does Chris buy off the jamming?’ Her mother looked interested. ‘I didn’t think you could do that effectively.’

‘No, he’s exempted. Under licence. For his job.’

‘Oh, I see.’ There was a studied politeness in Kirsti’s voice that didn’t quite shroud her distaste. Carla flushed again, deeper this time. She said nothing more until the wheels of the Volvo crunched across the gravel parking lot beside the monitoring station. Then, sitting still in the passenger seat as Kirsti killed the engine, she muttered, ‘I’m not sure this is such a good idea.’

‘It was a good idea when we had it on Friday night,’ said her mother emphatically. ‘It’s still a good idea now. One of my best. Now, come on.’

Kirsti’s Tromso University ID got them in the front door, and a quick search of the building’s locational database at reception told them Truls Vasvik was up on the top floor. They took the stairs, Kirsti leading by a couple of steps on every flight. Good for the buttocks, she flung over her shoulder in response to her daughter’s puffed protests to slow down. Only five levels. Come on.

They found Vasvik in the staff cafe. He was, Carla thought, a classic Kirsti type — gaunt and long-limbed, radiating self-sufficiency like the effects of some drug recently injected. He wore a crew-neck sweater, canvas work trousers, walking boots and an uncared-for heavy black coat that he somehow hadn’t got around to removing. The clothes hung off him, incidental drapings on his lean frame, and his silver-threaded black hair was long and untidy. He looked to be in his early forties. As they approached, he got up and offered a bony hand.

‘Hello Kirsti.’

‘Hello Truls. This is my daughter, Carla. Carla, Truls Vasvik. It’s good to see you again.’

Vasvik grunted.

‘Have you seen Gjerlow yet?’

‘About an hour ago.’

‘Oh, sorry. I didn’t realise—‘

‘Shall we all sit down. There’s machine coffee over there, if you want it.’

‘Can I get you one?’

Vasvik indicated the cup in front of him and shook his head. Kirsti went off to the bank of self-service machines across the cafe and left Carla stranded. She offered Vasvik an awkward smile and seated herself at the table.