Isvik (40 page)

I was straightening up with the intention of checking on the chain-plates, remembering what Captain Freddie had said about the installation of aerials and electronics, when my eye was caught by a movement on the ice below me, right close under the bow overhang where a heavy rope anchor cable hung down. A figure lay huddled close against the ship's side, the feet so buried in slush ice that it looked at first sight like a discarded anorak. But then I saw the hands stretched out towards the hull. The head, in its fur cap, lifted slightly, the fingers scrabbling at the black paintwork. A tremor ran through the body, the legs kicking out in a nervous reflex.

It was Carlos. I recognised the clothing and I called down to him. But there was no movement now, his body lying still. He must have pitched over the bows. But the drop was only a dozen feet at most. Not enough to knock him out. ‘You all right?' My voice sounded strangely disembodied in the lonely stillness of the icebound ship. ‘Carlos! Are you badly hurt? What happened?'

No answer, no movement, the young man's body lying there as though he were dead. I straightened up and made my way back aft, calling to Iain. My voice remained a solitary and disembodied sound, as though I was a ghost on board a ship that wasn't real.

I didn't like it. No sound anywhere. It was as though I were the only sentient person alive. And the sun shone with unreal brilliance in a sky that was powder blue, almost green, the visibility infinite, an endless vista of ice that sparkled like crystal. ‘Iain!' There was a note of panic in that cry for help and I got a grip on myself, shutting my mouth and making for the rope ladder, hurrying down it, out on to the ice and round the stern of the ship to get to the bows on the starb'd side where that body lay.

It was still there, just as I'd first seen it, and it was Carlos all right. He hadn't moved, his hands still stretched out towards the black of the hull planking, his head face downwards in the ice. ‘What happened?'

No answer, and I reached down and tried to turn him over. But in the shade there his clothes had already frozen to the ice. With an effort I managed to get his shoulders free and turn his head. There was blood at the corner of his mouth, the skin of his face gone pallid and his eyes closed. ‘Carlos!' I shook his shoulders. ‘Can you hear me?'

I felt a tremor run through him. It was as though he had the shakes. And then his eyes flicked open, a vacant stare that had no recognition in it. ‘It's Pete,' I said. ‘From
Isvik
. Remember?' His lips moved and I bent closer. ‘What was that?'

He seemed to be trying to say something, his body shaken and a froth of pink blowing like bubblegum from his mouth. There was a gurgling sound and I bent closer to hear a horrible stuttering whisper of urgency – ‘I w-would – n-not have – t-t-tell anyone. You – know – th-that.' The voice died to a liquid gurgle in the larynx, then suddenly quite loud – ‘Why? Why you d-do it? Why you –' But that was all. His words were stopped by a gout of blood that burst from his mouth.

How do you know, instinctively, a person is dead? I had no real experience of death, and his eyes had been blank all the time. Yet I knew. I muttered something to myself, a prayer maybe, then I rolled him right over on to his back and saw the wound. It was a gaping, bloody hole where the wall of his chest had been blown clean out.

‘Shot in the back, the poor wee laddie.'

Iain was leaning out over the bulwarks above me.

‘Ángel?' I asked.

‘Ah'm no' sure.'

‘What do you mean?'

He leaned further down towards me. ‘He was tryin' to say somethin'. Did ye hear what?'

‘I think he mistook me for Ángel.
I wouldn't have told anyone
. That's what I think he said. And then he asked me why I had done it.'

‘Why ye had shot him? Is that what ye mean? Believin' ye were Ángel?'

‘I think so. But why? What was it that he wouldn't tell anyone?'

Iain straightened up. ‘Come. It's not a pretty sight, mind, but Ah'll show ye all the same.' And he added, ‘Just ye watch it, that's all. There's the tae of us, and there's that murdering bastard. As for the rest …' He gave that Gallic shrug. ‘There's others, ye see, on board of this dreadful vessel.' He banged his dummy hand on the iced-up remains of the bulwarks. ‘Christ! The fuckin' bastards – their own people, too.' His head disappeared. ‘Come on up an' Ah'll show ye.'

TWO

The only way for me to get back on board was by the rope ladder, which meant traipsing half round the ship. It was slow going, for the ice was very broken. The gun ports were just above the level of the ice and most of them were open. I was conscious again of that smell. I had forgotten about it in my excitement at exploring the ship and then finding Carlos lying there under the bows, but now it was so strong and all-pervading that it was no longer possible to ignore it.

At one moment it seemed to come from the interior of the ship. I caught a whiff of it from an open gun port. But when I reached the stern, which still had some of its gingerbread intact, the gold paint of the carving protected by a thick layer of ice, I realised where the stench was coming from. A little wind had sprung up from the north-west, and from the far side of the ship a beaten track stretched out in that same direction to where a fire-blackened mound of garbage had been built up on the ice. And beyond it was a white adobe of ice like an igloo beside a round pool of open water.

‘What is it?' I asked Iain when I had swung myself up the rope ladder on to the afterdeck.

‘The smell, is that what's worryin' ye?' He nodded towards the pile of garbage. ‘It's what archaeologists would call a midden.' He looked at me sharply. ‘Tell me, dae ye remember when the people at Ushuaia said this ship had sailed?'

‘They weren't sure,' I said. ‘They thought it was two, two and a half years ago. That's what Iris said.'

He nodded. ‘That's about right, Ah reck'n, fur one man livin' here alone. Mebbe tae, but not more than tae.'

‘What are you talking about?'

‘Ah'm talkin' about that pile of shit and bones and putrid meat. Out there on the ice there's no way ye can get rid of the filth ye produce. Give him his due, he's tried. He's had fires down there. Looks like he burned a hole in the ice first go, then built a hide in the hope that seal, or somethin' even bigger, would use it as a blow-hole.'

A midden, he had called it, and I stared at it, fascinated by the thought that somebody had been living here ever since the ship had become icebound. ‘Who is it? One of the Disappeareds?'

He nodded. ‘Or one of the guards.'

‘And he's on board – now?'

‘Look around ye. There's nowhere else he can be.'

‘And Ángel?'

But he had turned away. ‘Come below and Ah'll show ye how he's been living this past tae years and more.' He led me down the companion ladder to the gun-deck below, moving cautiously, a step at a time, probing the gloom with the powerful beam of his torch, the machine pistol ready in his hand. All the time we had been talking, I had been conscious of his eyes fixed on the long sweep of the ice-encrusted deck, watchful for the first sign of movement.

At the bottom of the ladder the smell was very noticeable and I made some comment about it seeming to have followed us. He laughed. ‘That's not the midden ye're smellin'.'

‘What is it then?'

‘Bodies,' he said.

‘Bodies? D'you mean dead bodies?'

‘Aye. Dead bodies.' And he added, ‘Dead sheep, dead humans. Carcases rottin' in the hold.' There was a note of sadness as well as disgust in his voice. ‘Ah'll show ye in a minute. First Ah want to check again how this man's been livin'.' He turned aft then, away from the half-light of the open gun ports. There were doors here, officers' cabins with wooden bunks. He pushed open the central door just aft of the thick rudder post. There was sunlight here, slanting rays pouring in through the cracked glass of five big stern windows.

The place was lived in. So much was obvious at a glance. There were clothes draped over the back of a chair, the table laid ready for a meal – plate, knife, fork and spoon, a dirty brown lump of something that looked like bread. A big iron stove stood just behind the door jacketed in asbestos with a pile of sawn pieces of the ship's timbers in a basket beside it. The bunk was also on the starb'd side and had several dark skins spread over it; fur seal, by the look of them, and one that was bigger and might be leopard seal.

‘What's he hunting with?' Looking around the cabin I couldn't see any sign of a weapon.

For answer Iain took me over to a big wooden chest in the corner and lifted the lid. Inside, neatly resting in their racks, were all sorts of weapons – rifles, machine pistols, a revolver, several automatics, two shotguns. ‘Quite an arsenal.'

He nodded. ‘Ye'll notice there's one of the racks with nothin' in it.'

I had noticed. That, and the single place setting at the table, suggested it was just one man on board, one man, besides Ángel, prowling about somewhere in the ship, and he was armed. ‘Dae ye no' sense a weird feelin' here?' Iain's accent was more pronounced and there was a nerve twitching at the side of his jaw. ‘If it weren't fur the fact that he's got a weapon wi' him, Ah'd be worryin' me head about ghosts an' sich like. Och aye, Ah would that. But a man wi' a gun is summat Ah understan'.'

He reached down into the chest and picked up one of the machine pistols. It was an Uzi, he said. ‘The magazines are over here.' He went to another, smaller chest, that was full of ammunition. ‘Put those in yer pocket.' He handed me several mags, fitted one of them on to the pistol and thrust it into my hands. ‘Just in case.' He smiled, but the nerve was still twitching along the left side of his jaw. ‘Now Ah'll show ye what this is all about. Better prepare yerself fur the worst, because it's no' very nice.'

I followed him and we went for'ard, past the rudder post and the ladder to the deck, past what appeared to be the stowage for hammocks and bedding, out into the long, open run of the gun-deck. No torch was necessary here, enough light coming in through the open gun ports in low, slanting rays. The guns themselves were not run out, of course. In fact, they were not real guns at all, but made of some black plastic that looked real enough so that the whole deck had an air of waiting, as though at any moment the call for action stations might ring out. The breeze was blowing a draught of air from one side to the other across the deck and it was bitterly cold.

‘Down here.' He led me to a grating in the centre of which was a lift-out section with ropes attached to the four corners. It was roughly spliced into a single strand, which ran up to a block in the deck beam above. He hauled on the tail end of it, swinging the section of grating aside to reveal a black hole. ‘That's where the East India Company's merchandise was stowed in the long passage from London to Bombay. But the hold has a different cargo now. Take a look.' He shone the beam of his torch down into the darkness, moving it slowly across the ice, first for'ard, then aft.

‘My God!' I murmured.

‘Aye, an' ye can thank him also that the water there is frozen solid.'

For'ard, the bodies were all human, lying just as they had floated up when the ship struck and water flooded the hold, a horrible jumble of cadavers, the outline of their bodies blurred by the thickness of the ice that had virtually mummified them. Amidships there was a partition wall of timber, a sort of half bulkhead, and aft of that the iced-up hold appeared to be full of sheep. It was one of these that was the cause of the smell. The surface of the ice had been hacked into broken fragments, and as I stared along the beam of the torch, I saw that there had been a method in the way the ice had been broken up, one of the sheep chipped out, dragged towards the partition, where it lay on its back, its upthrust legs standing like matchsticks, the stomach, no longer in the deep freeze of solid ice, bloated with trapped wind.

I was moving closer, peering down at the ice-glazed huddle of human bodies, when I felt that gloved hand of his grab hold of my arm. ‘Ah wouldn't go any nearer if Ah were ye.'

‘Why?'

He shook his head. ‘How many dae ye reck'n there are down there – thirty, forty? What did they die of, all together like that? Ye don't know, so we'll get the hatch cover on again.'

‘And what about you, do you know?'

He didn't answer, and I stood there, utterly appalled, half petrified with the horror of it. To see death like that – it reminded me of pictures I had seen of Belsen and Auschwitz, or of death in the Ethiopian desert. Except that this wasn't a picture, this was the real thing. ‘Why?' I asked him again. ‘And the sheep – why sheep? What did they all die of?'

‘That we'll find out in due course. At least, Ah hope we will.' He hauled on the rope and I helped him swing the heavy section of grating back over the hole, lowering it into position. He switched off his torch, his eyes searching the gun-deck, adjusting to the change of light. ‘We'll go back to the main cabin now an' await developments.' But he didn't move immediately, his head cocked a little on one side, listening. ‘Did ye hear anythin'?'

‘No,' I whispered, my nerves tensing as I realised how exposed we were. Was this what Carlos had seen? Was that why Ángel had killed him, shooting the poor devil in the back as he stood there on the foredeck?

Iain had turned his head to face the fore part of the ship, still listening, his eyes watchful. ‘Wonder why he's got that hatch open?' The beam of his torch flashed out, the gun in his hand levelled at the for'ard end of the deck.

‘What is it?'

He shook his head, puzzled. ‘That's been raised since Ah came on board.' The light was shining on a section of the deck that had been swung up into the vertical by block and tackle. It wasn't a grating like the one we had just lifted. It was a solid section of decking so that it had the appearance of an over-sized trap door. ‘Why would he want it open?' He was voicing his thoughts aloud, the question rhetorical. He switched off the torch again and turned to me. ‘D'ye think that's what he intends to dae? Fittin', don't ye think? Very fittin'.'