There were only two seats in the cab. Greta and I and the man who’d rescued us sat in the passenger cabin mounted on the back. It was almost more luxurious than the Platform back at Zodiac, complete with folding bunks, a table and even a stove. Our host — the name on his coat said Malick; he introduced himself as Bill — brewed up coffee. We took off our coats in the heated cabin and cradled the mugs to stop them spilling over the bumps. Even the mugs said DAR-X.

‘What is DAR-X?’

‘We say it “darks”,’ he corrected me. I’d pronounced it to rhyme with ‘Daleks’. ‘Deep Arctic Exploration. Oil and gas.’

That explained the high-end equipment. ‘Aren’t there easier places in the world to drill oil?’

He laughed. ‘I guess. But a hundred million years ago, Texas was under an ice sheet too. The majors figure it won’t be long before this place goes the same way.’

I looked out the window at the desolate ice field, and tried to imagine cactuses growing there.

‘I thought oil companies didn’t believe in global warming,’ said Greta.

Bill gave her a look as if she’d started to smell. ‘Even a Prius needs gas.’

‘Well, I’m glad you were around,’ I said emphatically. ‘How did you find us?’

‘Your boss from Zodiac phoned Echo Bay. Said you’d had a breakdown. We were out here anyway, so we thought we’d drop by.’

Greta’s eyes narrowed. ‘Aren’t you supposed to stick to the coast?’

Bill smiled. He smiled a lot. ‘Tourism. Little R & R. We did some skiing over on the Wendel, then stopped by Vitangelsk on the way home. You been to Vitangelsk, Tom?’

‘He just arrived,’ said Greta. ‘He hasn’t been anywhere.’

‘Freaky place. Old Russian mining town—’

‘Soviet,’ Greta corrected.

‘—abandoned in the eighties when Gorby couldn’t afford to keep it open. Spooky as hell. Lenin, Stalin — all the shit that came down with the Wall everyplace else, it’s still there. Commie time capsule.’

‘I’d like to see it,’ I said.

Bill jerked his thumb out the back, where you could just see Hagger’s feet bumping along behind us. ‘What’s the story with him?’

‘He fell down a crevasse,’ I said.

Bill grimaced. He was older than me, probably in his fifties, grey hair and beard, but still wiry, someone who spent a lot of time outdoors. ‘Tough. We lost a guy last year.’

‘How?’

‘Rock fell on his head and knocked him flat. He was frozen solid before we found him. Not so far from here, actually.’

He stared out the window. ‘You look at this place and you think it’s some kind of winter wonderland. But it’s a killer.’

I couldn’t disagree.

The DAR-X camp was a few shacks and cabins sprawled around a huge gantry, on the edge of a bay on the west side of the island. Red lights flashed a warning from the top of the rig. We slept a few hours in the Sno-Cat’s cabin — I could have gone much longer — until a man at the door announced that the helicopter had come.

The Platform was silent and sullen when we got back to Zodiac. I lay down on my bed, but my thoughts wouldn’t let up, so I went to Hagger’s lab. I had a vague idea of packing things up, but the sheer volume of equipment defeated me before I began. Outside, the sun dazzled on the snow; inside, a crippling darkness gripped me. I’ve had it a few times in my life, and this was as bad as any of them. I sat on a stool and stared at the mountains until I had spots in front of my eyes.

Of course I was sad for Hagger. But — I’m ashamed to say — I was also angry, and the more I thought about it, the angrier I got. He’d been my one shot at redemption, after five years as a lab slave, and now he’d ruined it before I’d properly begun, because he couldn’t look where he was going.

Years of injustice seethed out of me: not just what was, but what might have been. The papers I’d have got my name on, the conferences, the seminars. The association with Hagger would have opened so many doors — and maybe one of them would have had a proper academic job behind it. Now I was just the man who’d found the body, a footnote to a piece of academic gossip. I could imagine the conver-sation playing out in the senior common rooms over glasses of sherry.

Hagger fell in a crevasse. One of his old students found him, you know.

Are they sure the student didn’t push him in, ha ha?

Self-pity takes a lot of concentration; I almost didn’t hear the knock. I looked, and saw Dr Kennedy peering round the door.

‘I thought I’d find you here. Quam wants to see you.’

I didn’t move. Kennedy gave me a searching, professional look.

‘Hagger’s death hit you hard, I’m sure. It’s a terrible thing. So … unlikely.’

He advanced into the room. He looked as if he was about to take my arm. I didn’t want to be touched, so I got off my stool and crossed to the door, keeping the lab bench between us.

‘If you need to talk about it …’

‘I’ll be fine.’

I didn’t want sympathy from these people I hardly knew. Luckily, Quam wasn’t the man to give it. He sat behind his computer and his papers, a silver-balled executive toy click-clacking on his desk, and waved me into the chair opposite. The picture of a bureaucrat. He looked cross. Hagger’s death affected us all in different ways: for him, it was a tragedy of paperwork.

‘You’ll have to write it up, of course. Can’t be helped — but keep it brief. There’s nothing anyone could have done. Terrible accident.’

‘And me?’

He looked surprised. ‘The plane’s coming for Hagger tomorrow. You’ll go too.’

‘But what about his research? There must be experiments in progress — I could finish them up. So it doesn’t go to waste.’ It’s what he would have wanted, I almost said. But that would have been too trite.

Quam shook his head. There was a picture on his desk I’d just noticed — two girls, about secondary-school age. No sign of their mother, and no wedding ring on his finger. I guessed long seasons at the poles took their toll on any marriage. Not that I was in a position to judge.

‘I don’t think there’s any profit carrying on his work. My understanding is that he’d run into a bit of a dead end.’ He winced. ‘Unfortunate turn of phrase. But, frankly, it’s probably for the best.’

‘For the best,’ I repeated. ‘Are you saying—’

‘Of course not.’ He rowed back in a hurry. ‘Martin Hagger was a great scientist who made valuable discoveries.’ The words sounded so pre-baked I thought he must be reading them off his computer screen. ‘But he’d had his fifteen minutes of fame. Between you and me, he was a busted flush.’

I didn’t need to hear this. ‘Was there anything else?’

‘That’s it.’ Quam smiled, as if there were no hard feelings. Then remembered something as I reached the door.

‘Don’t forget to return your ECW gear before you go.’

I stepped into the corridor and almost ran straight into Greta. She must have just come in from outside: her face was red, and the frost on her eyelashes had just melted, so it looked like tears. She barged through the door and slammed it behind her.

‘She’s upset,’ said Kennedy, loitering a little further down the hallway. Clearly a psychologist.

‘They’re sending me home,’ I said. I didn’t want to talk to him, and I couldn’t bear to go to my room, so I went back to the lab. Perhaps I’d find something to take with me, some crumb of Hagger’s experiments I could work up into a paper. It was the least he owed me.

Quam’s warning echoed in my mind. He was a busted flush. But that couldn’t be right. Hagger had been on a roll, at the top of his game. The Nature paper on sea-ice evolution had catapulted him to the head of his field. And he’d been working flat out. There had to be something worth publishing.

His notebooks would be the place to start. I looked on the workbench next to the fumes cupboard, where I’d seen them all lined up the day before.