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

London, four years earlier

Sean had found out about the Midgard sale, put together the proposal and finance, and fought to stay in negotiations. He was at the decisive final round of talks when it looked like Tom’s puritanical ego would destroy the whole venture.

‘I don’t want to do this.’ Tom hadn’t even waited for the meeting to officially start. The Pedersen family agent, Mogens Hadbold, their lawyer and their accountant, stared at Sean in confusion.

‘Wait.’ Sean felt like he was in a bad dream. ‘Tom, what is this?’ They were in a penthouse suite at Claridge’s, and Tom was holding up Sean’s bid proposal in its embossed leather cover.

‘I do not want the Pedersen family to sell their property,’ he said, ‘because it’s in such an environmentally sensitive location. The Arctic ecosystem is already massively stressed by warming seas. There is no more summer ice. Politicians pay lip-service to bringing the temperature down while quietly drawing dividends from their fossil fuel investments. We’ve got government ministers on the boards of oil companies. I don’t want that either, but that’s reality.’

Sean consciously relaxed his hands so they did not make fists. What an absolute fucker, telling him one thing and waiting until now—

‘But,’ Tom continued, ‘we’re here because someone is going to be chosen as the new owner. Someone is going to become responsible for that corner of the Arctic, at a most critical moment for its safety. I’m here to tell you that, if this sale is going to happen, I stand with this man to buy it. We’re here because the numbers are right.’

‘Certainly in the correct area,’ confirmed the family agent. ‘But above a particular threshold that Mr Cawson has passed, the family are even more concerned to select the correct buyer.’

‘I led Greenpeace for two years,’ Tom said. ‘I’ve been involved in environmental issues my whole life and I will continue to be. I’ve known Sean since we were at college together. I’ve learned a lot from him, and as I’m now in this room, I hope it’s become a two-way street. I used to turn my nose up at people whose main interest was money, because they didn’t seem to care how they made it. Now I’m less naïve. The only way the world will change for the better is if it is precisely those people who start thinking differently about profit.’ He looked at each of them in turn.

‘Last year’s coup in the Maldives cost every hotel group there untold sums as well as several lives. Many people saw it coming, the hotels were warned, they absolutely knew what was going on, but profit blinded them. Climate change means the poorest people suffer first – people who don’t buy organic or vote for liberal democracy. The Maldives is happening all over the world, in every poor country where the sea level is rising and the land is flooding.’

‘Mr Harding,’ Mogens Hadbold smiled patiently, ‘we all care—’

‘Caring is meaningless without action. We must stop the economic apartheid that is killing this planet.’

‘Tom, for pity’s sake!’ Sean was on his feet too. It was appalling, Tom was like a mad man, he hadn’t seen him like this before.

‘Sit down, Sean. You wanted me here, you wanted me on board, so let me continue. I’m nearly finished. Look at the world – a great big band of drought or flood that just happens to coincide with mineral resources, with political instability and then with foreign intervention by the very powers that benefit from the extractive rights. Powers that do not give a shit about the cost, human or natural, of that resource exploitation. What we’re looking at is a global environmental sacrifice zone – and the Arctic is just the latest part of it.’

Sean sat there, his face burning. Tom’s ego was out of control. How could he not have seen it? What was he doing now, with the mineral water? Holding it up to the big mirror on the mantelpiece. He looked mad, speaking to the flowers.

‘Bottled at source in the Alps. Where the shrinking snowline means only the highest resorts still exist, and their prices make even the rich feel poor. And if they’re starting to think about climate change, you know we’re in the last-chance saloon.’ He turned and came back to them. ‘When that chunk of Venice collapsed into the lagoon, the dead included guests at the Cipriani, as well as refugees.’

He drank again.

‘So if you’re not worried, you’re not paying attention. And if you are, then it is your moral and civic and patriotic duty to either keep your property and be vigilant stewards of the Arctic, or, ensure that you only sell to a buyer who will use it to be a vigilant pain in the arse to any and everyone who is trying to make a killing up there. I don’t know, you might be those people yourselves. I don’t know you, but I do know this man.’ He pointed to Sean.

‘Arctic obsession started our friendship. We’ve gone our separate ways, but that’s still our bond. He might have become a capitalist pig – but he’ll never do anything to destroy the Arctic, in any way. I know that. He’s clever or crazy enough to invite me to be a board member, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that people hear you better if you’re in the room, not yelling through a loudhailer from the street. That’s why I’m in with Sean: he knows the very people I want to reach, the brokers between governments and mining companies, the shipping people, the people who make things happen, or make things disappear. I’ll be in the room with them on this.’

He laid down the bid proposal on the table. ‘How can people say what they really think at places like Davos? It’s about being seen to do good, and someone with a vested interest in the outcome is always playing the host. Sean’s plan takes that layer away. A luxurious private retreat in Arctic grandeur – who doesn’t want to go there?’

Sean had to admire him. He was such a showman. No – that wasn’t fair. Protecting the environment was Tom’s life’s work, he had the broken bones, scars and jail time to show for it – as well as the adulation of thousands of people. He’d put all his money into it too, though his family had tried to stop him; Sean remembered hearing that.

‘Enough with the bleeding-heart liberals crying over the polar bears. I want the greediest, ugliest-thinking, most short-sighted, ego-crazed politicians and plutocrats we can find to stay in the place Sean will build on the shore of Midgardfjorden. There’s a reason men have risked their lives again and again for the Arctic; it shows you your soul, even if you think you don’t have one.

‘I’m naïve: I still believe you can reach people through their hearts. But I’m battle-scarred: profit speaks louder. Sean’s plan combines both those things. So that’s why I say that my first position is still no more development in the Arctic. But as it is happening, from all sides, as the summer ice has gone – twenty years ahead of government projections, and as it is a free-for-all, no matter what people say, then let us be there, let us try to guide development to do the minimum harm, and protect the life of this fragile, sublime, vulnerable environment. You can only lose it once.’

Tom walked round behind Sean and put his hands on his shoulders. ‘I know my friend and I trust him.’ He took his seat again.

No one spoke for a long moment. The atmosphere had shifted. The lawyer and the accountant were staring at Tom with that star-struck look Sean had seen on people’s faces before. Mogens Hadbold’s laptop pinged, two, three, four times, breaking the spell. Hadbold looked across to the mantelpiece and waved. Only then did Sean spot the tiny camera in the flower arrangement.