Dead of Winter (48 page)

Her breathing slowed infinitesimally on each breath, so gentle, so calm, no panic or fear.

That man was calling her again. Why was he so insistent? Couldn’t he just leave her alone? She was at peace here under the stars, her father only feet away on the other side of the fire. Though
her eyes were closed she could sense him there, a solid comforting presence in an otherwise uncertain world.

Was he awake and looking at her through the flames? Wondering whether she was dreaming or just faking sleep? The thought made her smile. Of course she was asleep but at the same time she was with him. Issie sighed and it was a long time before her chest rose again on a shallow intake of breath.

That wretched man. He was so loud now. Why wouldn’t he just go away? Perhaps she should tell him, explain that she wanted to be left alone. Yes, that’s what she would do. She would open her mouth; swallow, lick her dry lips and just tell him. Except that her jaw was so heavy and her tongue was like lead. It lay there as if held between her teeth by a thick elastic band. She strained but it just would not move. She tried focusing on the small muscles of her mouth and lips: open, shape, speak – she told them but they wouldn’t obey.

Issie relaxed back into herself. There was no point worrying. She didn’t really want to speak to him anyway and he would go away eventually. He’d never find her. She was so good at hiding when she wanted to.

Seconds passed and then minutes. His voice rose and fell on the wind, sometimes close, sometimes distant, as if he were on the far side of a valley that was impossible to cross. At some point she must have fallen into a deeper sleep because she could no longer hear him, though she sensed that he was still out there.

The sound of church bells almost roused her. They were insistent, demanding her attention, so that she half opened her eyes in wonder. How beautiful, she thought and held her breath in ecstasy. She was briefly aware of the cold, of the bitter chill rising from the ground; of the fire at her feet dwindling to ash. It needed more fuel. She should do that … put on another branch … now really, before it died down too far.

Yes, she should do that … in just a moment … but the cold receded again and faded with the sound of the bells to become a vague memory … Issie knew it was important that she did
something … for a reason she couldn’t remember … What was it she had to do? The action hovered at the edge of her mind as she sank back … It had been something … but what? Issie sighed.

Oh, that man was back; his insistence was almost sweet … the way he kept on looking for her. So kind … just like her father … and then she realised … of course … her father … Who else would be so determined to find her? … Why else would she feel no fear? … Just the opposite … she was cradled by a sense of security so absolute that she knew she was safe … Safe … in the right place …

It was her father’s voice … there … again … his voice and behind it his music! Issie was suffused with a warm inner peace. Deep, deep in her dream Issie opened her eyes and with sight that could no longer see rested her gaze on the beloved face of the man sitting cross-legged on the other side of the fire, his head tilted to one side in that way he had; curious, alert, amused. Loving. Her father was smiling at her, waiting for her.

Fenwick could only just hear the brothers searching for Gyp now. In heading north away from the Way his path was diverging from theirs. He had to climb a hill and steeled himself for the blast of the gale at the top but it didn’t come. The storm was passing. He looked around to gain his bearings and noticed that his tracks stood out black on the purity of the snow. There was light from somewhere. He looked up and noticed that the eastern clouds were slightly lighter than those overhead. As he walked on, the fallen snow slowly started to glow blue as the clouds thinned and moonlight filtered through.

‘Issie!’

He knew the chances of her being alive were remote but perhaps she had found some shelter. And people could survive extremes of cold; he’d read about it. She had been outside at least five hours now in weather that could kill a healthy man in a fraction of that time but she would have found somewhere to wait out the worst of the storm: a barn with straw to keep her warm; or a stable among horses or cows whose animal heat could have saved her. Or she had made it to someone’s house, and would be tucked up snug and warm right now, unable to let her parents know because the phone
lines were down. There were plenty of reasons to hope and keep searching.

If he couldn’t find her he would make a note of places to check, of ideas to follow, but for now he needed to keep focused. His mind was wandering and that wouldn’t do anyone any good. He realised he was surprisingly hungry and that his legs were tiring quickly.

‘Issie! Come on, love!’

He pushed forward and slipped on a patch of ice beneath a drift. He wobbled and almost fell. Pulling his leg free was hard but he managed it and then concentrated all his effort using his weight to crunch through to find a safer footing. He would have to watch every step this far away from the path, sometimes in snow above his knees, but he paced on and in that fashion made his way to the crest of the hill.

The countryside was silent. He could smell smoke from a chimney somewhere. Otherwise he could have been alone on the planet. His feet hurt, particularly one heel where the unfamiliar boot was rubbing but he welcomed the distraction to keep his mind from the cold.

There was a wooden bench on a viewing point twenty yards further on, thick with snow. By the time he reached it he needed to rest and paused, leaning on the back, breathing deeply, head down. He didn’t know how long he stood like that but when he looked up again the moon was peeking from behind the clouds.

He forced himself to walk on, though it was more of a hobble now and his pace was slow. At least he could see a little better.

‘Issie!’ He realised that he hadn’t been calling and was ashamed at his defeatism.

His voice was a croak but he kept crying her name as loudly as he could, turning three hundred and sixty degrees. There was an excited yelp from behind him and his heart leapt but it was only the missing Gyp, a black and white sheepdog with grey about the muzzle but a puppy at heart, judging by the way she ran towards Fenwick barking.

‘Gyp, is that your name?’ Fenwick called and the dog barked in
reply, ran up to him and then backed away. ‘I can’t play now, Gyp.’

The dog was insistent, circling once around him barking insistently before bounding away. Fenwick followed her paw prints; it was a plan. The dog’s barking had broken into the emptiness at the centre of his thoughts, leaving room for the pain of his imagining. If he could only find her, even dead, maybe he would be able to think straight again.

There was a slight dip ahead of him and beyond it a copse of trees, almost buried in the snow. The dog was running towards it, barking. Fenwick watched absently, noting the way it had found the biggest pile of snow to fight with, yapping fiercely. It ran in a circle around the copse, no doubt looking for a stick to play with.

Gyp’s barking intensified as he walked closer. She must have found that stick she’d been looking for. Fenwick paid the dog no heed, not until he was almost level with a mound where she was standing rigid. It was no longer barking, it was howling. The hair stood up on the back of Fenwick’s neck.

‘Oh God, no; not so close all this time.’

He skidded down into the hollow and lumbered the remaining few yards to where the dog was staring at a scrap of black plastic beneath the hedge. As he approached the dog turned its head and whined, clearly scared.

‘All right, Gyp, let me see, good dog.’

Fenwick patted her on the head as the dog carried on its
high-pitched
yelping. There was a mound of snow, almost like an igloo that had built up around the hedge. Poking out from it was the edge of a bin liner.
Please God, let her be alive
. He brushed some of the snow away to reveal more of the sack. It was pinned to the hedge, perhaps blown there? But that was string looped around one corner. He pushed the snow to either side and beneath was another mound, rigid, curled up tight beneath yet more black plastic.

Barely breathing Fenwick shuffled around until he found a hole on the far side with the remains of a fire extending from it that was still smouldering, melting the snow about it.

The dog’s barking had reached a frenzy and he could hear in the distance the voice of its owner approaching.

‘Over here!’ he shouted. ‘Quickly; I need help.’

He started to clear the snow from the entrance to the mound, keeping his torch pointed into the widening hole. He bent down to ground level and looked inside. The first thing he saw was the purple corner of a sleeping bag. Poking from the top was a tuft of auburn hair.

‘Issie!’

There was so much snow above her he was worried it would collapse and smother her. He needed to be careful. Kneeling up, Fenwick scooped snow away to the sides as fast as he could, careful not to let if fall on top of her. His fingers were numb but he didn’t notice as the snow covering the black liner was scraped away leaving only the sack between him and the silent girl. He managed to get a finger into the string holding one of the sacks in place and ripped it to make a hole. After several tugs the thing split and opened. He bent down and unzipped the sleeping bag a fraction … to reveal the pure, pale face of a child, resting as if asleep on the cushion of its hand.

Her eyes were closed, framed by the perfect arc of eyebrow, delineated by long eyelashes on which ice crystals were slowly melting. A snow angel.

‘Issie, oh Issie.’

Fenwick bent his head and wept. The world faded around him, irrelevant, pointless.

‘Gyp, what are you doing? Leave that alone. Come here. I said come here!’

David’s voice returned Fenwick to the moment as the dog carried on whimpering behind him.

‘What have you found then, girl? Oh my Lord! Fred, get over here; it’s the girl. Is she alive?’ He asked Fenwick.

‘No, I don’t think so. She’s not breathing.’

‘Let me look at her,’ Fred pushed past his brother and Fenwick and bent down. He took in the fire, the remains of the little snow cave, the foil, her sleeping bag in one glance.

‘She might still be alive even though she’s not obviously breathing,’ he said. ‘In these conditions she could have cooled slowly and her body might have shut down enough to protect her vital organs from damage.’

Fenwick looked at him in disbelief.

‘I’ve seen dead bodies before, she’s icy to the touch, her lips are blue …’

‘But in this cold that doesn’t mean death. In the TA when we did our Arctic training the one thing they told us was: “not dead until warm”. We can’t give up on her.’

The rush of emotion Fenwick felt almost destabilised him. He made to start CPR.

‘No! Don’t do that. If she is alive giving her heart massage now could kill her. We need to be very careful.’ Fred knelt down beside her and put his fingers gently against her neck. After what seemed to Fenwick an eternity he said, ‘There’s a carotid pulse. It’s very faint but it’s there, which means we are not dealing with cardiac arrest. But it’s so weak she’ll need to be stabilised before there’s any attempt to move her.’

‘Tell me what to do.’ Fenwick recognised an expert.

‘Breathe into her mouth hot, moist air, only a few breaths a minute – six to ten to start with, then increase up to twelve – but not with force. Just keep that going. But we need to get you kneeling on something dry or you’ll be our next victim. Pull that sack down, Davey, and see about restarting the fire.’

While the brothers concentrated on the fire, Fenwick followed instructions. They managed to get a small blaze going and he shifted so that the heat could reach Issie. Gyp lay down gently on the girl’s feet.

‘Right, we need help on site. Give me your phone, Davey. Meanwhile, you stay close to her so that the air is warmer around her but
don’t
touch her or try and rub her to get her warm. Treat her as if she is made of the most fragile glass you have ever known.’

Fenwick heard Fred giving instructions to someone on the phone and then he passed it to his brother to give a precise location.

For the next ten minutes they took it in turns to breathe into Issie’s mouth. Kneeling for too long directly on the snow was too much for one person to do alone.

‘Is there any way we can lift her further off the ground do you think?’

‘It’ll be very dangerous to try and move her at all. Her core body temperature is very low, maybe down as far as thirty or even twenty-nine degrees. So we should only move her once. I’ve asked for a tarpaulin, more sleeping bags or blankets and rope, plus some cushions of some sort to make a raised bed for her. As soon as they arrive we can wrap her up in a cocoon and put her on top of the cushions. Meanwhile, warm moist air is the best thing for her.’

Bernstein was at the front of the rescue team, followed by Nesbit and ten officers, each carrying something. They used spades to clear an area for a groundsheet, on top of which they arranged a bed of sunlounger cushions. Fred laid out the tarpaulin and blankets to make a nest ready for her. Then they needed to raise Issie.

Fenwick and David automatically bent down to do so.

‘No, you two will be weakened by the cold. We need fresh strength for this.’

Fenwick wanted to protest but stepped back to make room, surprised at how wobbly his legs were.

Issie was lifted and placed with great care in the centre of the nest, then Fred wrapped towels around her feet, put two quilted hats on her head and layered the blankets over her before wrapping the tarpaulin firmly about her whole body from head to toe, leaving only a small hole for breathing. As he was working, others built up the fire with dry wood they had brought, lit two gaz stoves and deployed hurricane lamps around the copse.

‘Put those two kettles on to boil,’ Fred instructed.

‘Are we going to give her a warm drink?’ someone asked.

‘No way, anything by mouth will kill her. No, I’m about to improvise something I saw our medic use on exercise. Did you bring that length of hosepipe I asked for?’

Bazza passed over a three-foot length of pipe. As soon as the kettle
boiled Fred had it brought close to Issie’s head and placed one end of the tubing over the spout and the other close Issie’s mouth, with a dip in the middle so that the steam could reach her lips without the risk of water condensing and running into her mouth.

‘Heat the other one and we can recycle them; they’ll cool quickly.’

‘For how long?’ Fenwick asked, trying to mask his violent shivering.

‘We’ll need specialist advice on that.’

‘Now that the wind has dropped, Sussex air ambulance is seeing if they can send a helicopter,’ Bernstein advised, ‘and there may be one coming from HMCG at Lee-on-Solent as well. They have the most experience of treating hypothermia victims in the south-east, apparently. If they’ve been able to fly, the first helicopter should be here shortly.’

Ten minutes later the air ambulance arrived but couldn’t land at the scene because of the difficult terrain and deep snow. They found a suitable site a mile away and the doctor was with them at the same time the vicar arrived with thermoses for the rescuers but nobody touched them as they waited expectantly for the doctor’s diagnosis.

‘You’ve done well,’ he said at last. ‘What was her pulse when you first found her?’

‘We didn’t think to count, sorry, but it was very slow and weak.’ Fred looked embarrassed at his oversight.

‘Well, it’s still a long way from normal but there is at least a little strength in it now. I need to consult an expert colleague on how long we should wait to avoid the risk of an after drop in temperature.’

The doctor made his call and was on the phone some time while the rescue party helped themselves to soup and warm drinks.

‘We should give it another fifteen to thirty minutes. Hopefully the coastguard helicopter will be close by then. They will be better equipped and they have an expert flying with them. Who invented the respirator?’

‘I did.’ Fred looked sheepish.

‘Well done. We shouldn’t give her too much, not until we know she’s warmer inside but my colleague says we can keep it up, a
minute in every five say, but with the tube as you have it – well away from her lips so that we don’t risk her gagging. It’s going to help to stabilise her. Meanwhile, let’s make sure none of the rest of you ends up in hospital. Fred, you’ve been out how long? An hour? Let me look at you.’

The doctor took the brothers off to one side and told them they had to get back at once or would risk being taken to hospital themselves. Fenwick stayed quiet at the edge of the group. He wasn’t going anywhere until he had seen Issie safely into the helicopter. He noticed Bernstein looking around for him and crouched down next to a fire.

The wait was long and uneventful. Other than refilling the kettle with steaming water there was little to do. Bernstein sent all but three of the officers back to the village. With more space in the clearing she spotted Fenwick and walked over.

‘You should go back.’

‘I’m fine,’ and indeed he did feel better. He was shivering less and the warm drink and fire actually made him feel hot, particularly his hands and feet.