Whiteout by Ken Follett

water flood into him. The sooner he drowned, the sooner the agony would be over.
    Daisy pulled his head out again.
    He spewed water and drew in a precious gasp of air. Then his head was submerged yet again.
    He screamed, but no sound came out. His struggles weakened. He knew Harry had not intended for Daisy to kill him, for then there would be no robbery—but Daisy was not very sane, and it seemed she was going to go too far. Kit decided he was going to die. His eyes were open, showing him only a green blur; then his vision began to darken, as if night were falling.
    At last he passed out.

10 A.M.
    NED could not drive, so Miranda took the wheel of the Toyota Previa. Her son, Tom, sat behind with his Game Boy. The back row of seats had been folded away to make room for a stack of presents wrapped in red-and-gold paper and tied with green ribbon.
    As they pulled away from the Georgian terrace off the Great Western Road where Miranda had her flat, a light snowfall began. There was a blizzard over the sea to the north, but the weather forecasters said it was going to bypass Scotland.
    She felt content, driving with the two men in her life, heading for Christmas with her family at her father’s house. She was reminded of driving back from university for the holidays, looking forward to home cooking, clean bathrooms, ironed sheets, and that feeling of being loved and cared for.
    She headed first for the suburb where Ned’s ex-wife lived. They were to pick up his daughter, Sophie, before driving to Steepfall.
    Tom’s toy played a descending melody, probably indicating that he had crashed his spaceship or been beheaded by a gladiator. He sighed and said, “I saw an advertisement in a car magazine for these really cool screens that go in the back of the headrests, so the people in the backseat can watch movies and stuff.”
    “A must-have accessory,” said Ned with a smile.
    “Sounds expensive,” said Miranda.
    “They don’t cost that much,” Tom said.
    Miranda looked at him in the driving mirror. “Well, how much?”
    “I don’t know, just, but they didn’t look expensive, d’you know what I mean?”
    “Why don’t you find out the price, and we’ll see if we can afford one.”
    “Okay, great! And if it’s too dear for you, I’ll ask Grandpa.”
    Miranda smiled. Catch Grandpa in the right mood and he would give you anything.
    Miranda had always hoped Tom would be the one to inherit his grandfather’s scientific genius. The jury was still out. His schoolwork was excellent, but not astonishingly so. However, she was not sure what, exactly, her father’s talent was. Of course he was a brilliant microbiologist, but he had something more. It was partly the imagination to see the direction in which progress lay, and partly the leadership to inspire a team of scientists to pull together. How could you tell whether an eleven-year-old had that kind of ability? Meanwhile, nothing captured Tom’s imagination half as much as a new computer game.
    She turned on the radio. A choir was singing a Christmas carol. Ned said, “If I hear ‘Away in a Manger’ one more time, I may have to commit suicide by impaling myself on a Christmas tree.” Miranda changed the station and got John Lennon singing “War Is Over.” Ned groaned and said, “Do you realize that Radio Hell plays Christmas music all the year round? It’s a well-known fact.”
    Miranda laughed. After a minute she found a classical station that was playing a piano trio. “How’s this?”
    “Haydn—perfect.”
    Ned was curmudgeonly about popular culture. It was part of his egghead act, like not knowing how to drive. Miranda did not mind: she, too, disliked pop music, soap operas, and cheap reproductions of famous paintings. But she liked carols.
    She was fond of Ned’s idiosyncrasies, but her conversation with Olga in the coffee bar nagged at her. Was Ned weak? She sometimes wished he were more assertive. Her husband, Jasper, had been too much so. But she