I cleared the round and gave Greta a smug look.

‘Can you do it again?’

I could and I did, half an inch to the right.

‘Most British scientists hate guns,’ she said.

‘There was a time in my life when shooting rabbits was the only way I could afford meat.’

Most people laugh when I tell them that, as if it’s a joke they haven’t quite worked out. They cringe when I explain it’s true. They don’t like to be reminded how close we all are to the survival line.

Greta acted as if it was perfectly normal. I liked her better for that.

‘But you always aim for the body on a bear,’ she told me. ‘Too many bones in the head. And if you have to shoot it, make sure you kill it.’

I took out the magazine, made it safe and shouldered the weapon.

‘If a bear comes too close, fire a warning shot. If he keeps coming, fire more — but count your shots. You don’t want to be out of bullets. Also, the regulation is that you can’t shoot to kill unless he’s closer than ten metres.’

‘Do bears know the metric system?’

I thought it was pretty funny. She just shrugged it off.

‘How fast can a bear move?’ I said.

‘Eleven metres per second.’

‘So I’ve got a bit less than a second to load, aim and fire the gun at a charging polar bear.’

She shrugged. ‘That’s the regulation.’

‘Has anyone at Zodiac ever been killed?’

‘Someone has to be the first.’

A throbbing noise rose behind her. A red-and-white helicopter swooped over our heads, almost low enough to touch. I watched it descend to Zodiac while Greta collected the target. A handful of people scrambled out and hurried towards the Platform. From that distance, all in their standard-issue cold-weather gear, I couldn’t tell which one was Hagger.

‘Movie night,’ said Greta brightly.

By the time I’d struggled out of my layers, the others had already sat down for dinner. The new intruder, Quam had called me, and I certainly felt like it when I opened the mess door. Conversations stopped; a couple of dozen faces looked up from their food. One or two looked friendly.

There were two tables to choose from, and no free seats at either. I looked for Hagger, but didn’t see him. I opted for the table where Quam and Greta were sitting.

‘Room for one more?’ I asked brightly.

No one moved. Fridge, the Viking I’d met in the corridor earlier, gave me a bullish look.

‘Staff and PhDs only on this table. Grads and techs are over there.’

I should have accepted it. I didn’t want to make enemies my first night there. But when you’re as low down the pecking order as I am, you cling to what you’ve got.

‘I’ve got a PhD.’

‘I heard you were Hagger’s lab rat.’

I stood my ground. Fridge tried to stare me down. The others mostly looked at their plates.

Except one. ‘Let’s show the fella a little hospitality.’ An Irishman, older than the rest, stood up and ushered me into his place. ‘There must be space if Martin’s not here.’

Chairs squeaked on the floor as everyone shunted along to make room. Quam, at the head of the table, made the introductions. I gave a plastic smile, forgetting the names almost as quickly as he said them.

‘And Greta you know,’ Quam concluded.

Danny laid a plate of food in front of me.

‘Where’s Martin?’ I said.

‘He didn’t come in.’ This from an athletic, trim-bearded blond with an Australian accent. The helicopter pilot, I seemed to remember.

‘Is he OK?’

No one rushed to answer that one.

‘Has he radioed in or anything?’

‘Radio protocol is for check-ins at oh nine hundred and twenty-one hundred,’ Quam said. ‘He hasn’t missed one yet.’

Twelve hours seemed like plenty of time for things to go wrong. ‘Who’s he with?’

Quam stared down the table. ‘Annabel?’

I remembered Annabel from the introductions. The only other woman besides Greta: tall, Asian and almost painfully slim, in a ribbed black turtleneck and hip-hugging black trousers. Her long black hair was pulled into a glossy ponytail down her back. Among all the beards and the baggy jumpers, she looked as though she’d dropped in from the pages of Vogue.

‘Hagger wanted to get some data up on the Helbreen,’ she said.

‘And?’

‘I didn’t stop him.’

‘You mean he went alone?’

‘It’s a serious breach of procedure,’ Quam scolded.

Annabel’s cheeks flushed under the dark skin. ‘I didn’t go anywhere alone.’

‘It’s not like Hagger ever plays by the rules,’ said one of the scientists, an intense American whose beard didn’t hide the fact he was younger than me. He was obviously sympathetic to Annabel. Most men on that base were.

‘Hagger’s not the only one who has a problem with the rules,’ said Fridge. He and Quam exchanged a look.

‘He’s fine,’ said Annabel. ‘He’s probably fucking a polar bear.’

From the far end of the table, I heard the crash of cutlery going down hard on to a plate. I didn’t see whose it was. It came from Greta’s direction.

I started to wish I hadn’t shotgunned my way in with the scientists. Behind me, the grad students had a party going on; our table was like open day at the Asperger’s clinic. Short, dull conversations that ended as mysteriously as they began; lots of chewing; not much eye contact.

I couldn’t concentrate on my food. I couldn’t stop thinking about Hagger. I was relying on him, my ticket out of the wasteland where my career had stalled for nearly ten years. If anything had happened to him …

‘You settling in OK?’

I looked up. The man opposite — the Irishman who’d taken my side in the table dispute — was waiting for my reply. The patient look on his face said it wasn’t the first time he’d asked.

‘A lot to take in,’ he said. ‘You’ll get used to it. I’m Sean, by the way.’ As if he’d read my mind — or the embarrassment on my face that I couldn’t remember his name. ‘Sean Kennedy, base doctor. Most people call me Doc, which is about as much imagination as you can expect from this lot.’

He smiled collusively. The words ‘genial’ and ‘Irishman’ have an almost magnetic coupling, and they certainly stuck to him. About forty, with salt-and-pepper hair and a squashed-up face that you’d never call handsome, but open and cheerful.

‘Are you used to the cold yet?’

‘I think I’ll need all the jumpers I brought.’

‘You will if you go out in the field.’

‘Most of what I do is in the lab.’

‘And what is it you do?’

‘Molecular biology. I work on the artificial assembly of DNA.’

‘Where do you do that?’ He jerked a thumb out the windows, where the setting sun had turned the mountains across the fjord a peachy pink. ‘In the real world, I mean.’

‘I work in Cambridge.’

‘That’s a coincidence.’ He turned to Torell. ‘Fridge here’s at Cambridge, too.’

Fridge gave me a suspicious look. He hadn’t brushed his hair; it still stuck up like a pair of horns. ‘Which college?’

I could see where this was going — and no way to get out. ‘I’m at the Sanger lab.’

It didn’t put him off. ‘Doesn’t everyone there have to be on the faculty of another institution?’

‘I’m on the science staff.’ My last line of defence, and it wasn’t enough. He leaned forward on his elbows, tilting the table towards him.

‘What exactly do you do there?’

‘I’m a technician.’

If it hadn’t been for the grad students, you could have heard a snowflake drop in the room.

‘Well, it’s great to have another biologist here,’ said Kennedy brightly, as if he’d completely missed the academic pissing contest going on. Though I caught a shrewd look in his eyes that said he’d missed nothing.

‘Hear hear,’ said one of the men down my side of the table. He was the oldest one there, a pot-bellied man with a white beard. If it had been December, he’d have been a shoo-in for Father Christmas at the station party. ‘More biologists is what we need.’