Stashing one’s most personal belongings under the bed was an unsatisfactory solution, even if it was understood that the space beneath a mattress was sacrosanct. This was not to say that members of any expedition automatically distrusted one another. Trust had nothing to with it. The need for a secure private space was a deep and perhaps even irrational psychological need, and only those locked metal cabinets could satisfy it.
Gunvald used the hammer to smash combination dials from five of the lockers, one after the other. The shattered parts clattered across the floor, pinged off the walls, and the supply shed sounded like a busy foundry.
If a psychopathic killer was a member of the Edgeway expedition, if one of the apparent lambs of science was a wolf in disguise, and if evidence existed to identify that man, then the lockers were the logical—the sole—place to look. Harry had been certain of that. Reluctantly, Gunvald agreed with him. It seemed reasonable to suppose that in his personal effects, even a sociopath who could easily pass for normal might possess something revealing different from the usual items that sane men treasured and carried with them to the top of the world. Something indicative of a bizarre fixation or obsession. Perhaps something horrifying. Something unexpected and so unusual that it would say at once, This belongs to a dangerously disturbed person.
Wedging the hook of the crowbar into the round hole where the combination dial had been, Gunvald pulled backward with all his might and tore the lock from the first locker. The metal squealed and bent, and the door popped open. He didn’t pause to look inside but quickly proceeded to wrench open the other four: bang, bang, bang, bang! Done.
He threw the crowbar aside.
His hands were sweating. He wiped them on his insulated vest and then on his quilted trousers.
After he had taken half a minute to catch his breath, he picked up a wooden crate full of freeze-dried food from the large stacks of supplies along the right-hand wall. He put the crate in front of the first locker and sat on it.
He reached to a zippered vest pocket for his pipe, but decided against it. He touched the bowl, but his fingers twitched, and he withdrew his hand. The pipe relaxed him. It had pleasant associations. And this search definitely was not a high point of pleasure in his life. If he used the pipe, if he puffed away on it while he poked through the contents of his friends’ lockers, then… Well, he had a hunch that he would never be able to enjoy a good smoke again.
All right then. Where should be start?
Roger Breskin.
Franz Fischer.
George Lin.
Claude Jobert.
Pete Johnson.
Those were the five suspects. All were good men, as far as Gunvald was aware, although some were friendlier and easier to get to know than others. They were smarter and more well-balanced than the average person on the street; they had to be so, in order to have successful research careers in the Arctic or Antarctic, where the arduousness of the job and the unusual pressures quickly eliminated those who weren’t self-reliant and exceptionally stable. None was a likely candidate for the tag “psychopathic killer,” not even George Lin, who had revealed aberrant behavior only on this expedition and only recently, after having participated in many other projects on the ice during a long and admirable career.
He decided to begin with Roger Breskin because Roger’s locker was the first in line. All the shelves were bare except the top one, on which was a cardboard box. Gunvald lifted the box out and put it between his feet.
As he had expected, the Canadian traveled light. The box contained only four items. A laminated eight-by-ten color photograph of Roger’s mother: a strong-jawed woman with a winning smile, curly gray hair, and black-rimmed glasses. One silver brush-and-comb set: tarnished. A rosary. And a scrapbook filled with photographs and newspaper clippings, all concerned with Breskin’s career as an amateur weight lifter.
Gunvald left everything on the floor and moved the wooden crate two feet to the left. He sat in front of Fischer’s locker.