The Ice: A gripping thriller for our times from the Bailey’s shortlisted author of The Bees. Laline Paull

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      Sitting in 1F, crammed against the plastic wall, the smell of his neighbour’s duty-free aftershave in his nose, Sean remembered Tom’s grim prediction that Svalbard would become the Ibiza of the north. The midnight sun, exotic locale, and public awareness of the fragility of the region had created the strongest driver for tourism the Arctic had ever seen. Now Longyearbyen even had its own club scene, a Mecca for outward-bound hen and stag parties and rich kids bored of skiing.

      Sean watched the stewardess and her cart coming closer. The clink of ice made him swallow in anticipation. He must reframe the shock as closure. A stone – a literal heavy headstone, could be laid on Tom’s recovered body in its grave, and on the hope he would return.

      ‘Sir, any drinks or snacks?’ the stewardess repeated, with an economy-class smile. She passed him his two miniature vodkas, tin of tonic and a plastic cup with a single ice cube and moved on quickly before he could ask for more. He didn’t bother with the tonic, just poured in both vodkas and knocked it back. No matter what Kingsmith and Martine said, in his heart he knew this was anything but closure. He’d learned to live with the idea of Tom lost in pristine obscurity – that was how many Arctic heroes ended their story. His reappearance was unscripted, as if the glacier itself had moved against him.

      Another shadow fell on his thoughts, provoked by Gail’s reference to his still-imminent knighthood. The New Year and Birthday honours had come and gone three times, but there was always a good reason he had to wait – bit of a backlog, wheels within wheels, don’t worry—

      He guessed why it hadn’t yet materialised: there were questions about the accident. All right then, let the inquest lance that boil of suspicion. He’d tell them whatever they wanted to know and as he publicly cleared his name, he would also remind the world that risk and danger were at the very heart of exploration and even to this day the fittest and best-prepared polar adventurers still sometimes died. Surviving was not a crime, nor was making a fine living from Midgard Lodge, where the beloved Tom Harding had died. An aggrieved journalist, turned down for membership at Sean’s other clubs, had written about Midgard and called it ‘Dirty Davos’. This was not entirely untrue. Sean Cawson’s group of membership clubs around the world catered to a global elite, but Midgard Lodge was different. The northernmost hostelry in the world and converted from an old whaling station, it was inaccessible to all but its guests, and provided for those who valued discretion, whose reputations were not the holiest, but who wanted to improve their standing in the world as well as their profits. These were the people about whom the World Economic Forum felt squeamish, who would never be invited to actual Davos, but whose decisions were of great economic and political import. If they were excluded from the best business society – publicly, at least – they were welcome to meet, and talk, and explore different business models in the stunning environment of Midgard Lodge. Sean believed and Tom had agreed that it was pointless preaching to the converted; also that honey caught more flies than vinegar. A luxury retreat in a uniquely inspiring location, security assured, was part of the realpolitik of environmental progress.

      The stewardess was at the rear of the plane. Sean felt anxiety coursing through him but he didn’t want to arrive blunted by alcohol. A delicate thing, for a CEO to re-establish the chain of command after so long an absence – but Danny Long was slipping up as general manager if he was reporting to Kingsmith first. Kingsmith might have recommended him, but he was only Sean’s sleeping partner in Midgard, not an official shareholder like Martine and her clean-tech investors, nor Radiance Young and her friends in Hong Kong. Sean always smiled at the thought of Radiance and her bare-faced insistence she was investing all her own renminbis, not those of the People’s Republic behind her. Fine, if that was what she needed to say. But she certainly brought the Party with her.

      It would probably be a few days before details were released to the press and then the news cycle and the eulogising would start up again. ‘Glacier gives up the ghost’, or more soberly, ‘Body of missing British environmentalist discovered’. As if Tom Harding were Franklin’s lost expedition, the subject of national mourning for decades. And then, of course, there would be the pictures. Tom shaking hands with indigenous protestors at the line of jungle they had saved. Tom swimming with that bloody whale shark, as if he were the only person in the world ever to do that. Tom with actors draped on his shoulders, celebrity trading for rugged moral virtue.

      The prospect of reliving the cult of Tom was as irritating now as it had been while he was alive, but the worst of it was, Tom had disliked it too. Sean couldn’t even call him on his ego – or his looks, which were not his fault. Women adored him, men admired him, and this idolisation was a large part of why Sean had so doggedly courted him for Midgard, refusing to take no for an answer. But it wasn’t the whole of it. Despite their years of distance, Sean knew that if Tom believed in Midgard, then he had truly created something of real value to this world. His old friend’s approval had really mattered – and Kingsmith was right, he must get out in front of all this and use the drama positively.

      ‘Up in our country we are human! And since we are human we help each other. We don’t like to hear anybody say thanks for that. If I get something today, you may get it tomorrow. Some men never kill anything because they are seldom lucky or they may not be able to run or row as fast as others. Therefore they would feel unhappy to have to be thankful to their fellows all the time. And it would not be fun for the big hunter to feel that other men were constantly humbled by him. Then his pleasure would die. Up here we say that by gifts one makes slaves, and by whips one makes dogs.’

      A hunter, to Peter Freuchen

      Arctic Adventure: My Life in the Frozen North (1936)

      Peter Freuchen

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