Black Ice (10 page)

Right  now it was nice and quiet. Sun was streaming through the windows  and  glancing off the copper  top of the horse-shoe bar. Behind  it, a young woman in a scarlet waistcoat examined her finger-nails. For a gin and two martinis, she'd just taken the equivalent of a small  pools win.

I looked at Ivan and Christopher with the sort of warm glow a mother must feel when she brings  home a little playmate  for her son and  it works. Any minute  now they'd  be nicking their thumbs with  a penknife and  becoming  blood  brothers. I was glad.  It wasn't often we had a chance  to pick up a new recruit for our  rich gallery  of English  eccentrics,  but Christopher Bell was a definite candidate.

He was even winding  Ivan up. My old chum had brought out some wretched  cricket game that I vaguely remember from schooldays. You each  picked  a team,  and  then  rolled dice to decide the progress of the game. It went on for hours if you were sufficiently  masochistic to let it - rather like the real  thing,  I suppose. Anyway, Christopher had annoyed him by choosing a side  that  consisted   of  luminaries  through  the  ages.  At  the moment,  Meryl  Streep  was 38 not  out,  although Honore de Balzac had been something of a disappointment earlier. He was vulnerable to the rising ball, apparently.

'Another four,' Christopher chortled.

'It reduces the whole thing to a farce,' Ivan protested. 'Meryl

Streep  can't  play cricket.'

'She's batting rather well, I thought.' Christopher fired a sly wink in my direction.

Ivan  was also  a  bit  miffed  that  I'd  asked  him  about  the Russian ship in the harbour. 'How do I know what a trawler  is doing  there? Trawling, I assume.'

He didn't like being appointed champion for his country. At least  if he was British,  he said  with  a roll of those expressive brown  eyes,  he could  say  Queen   and  Country. Particularly Queen.

'Wouldn't you ever  want  to live in  Moscow?'  Christopher asked.  I'd  heard  his answer  before,  but  I  still  listened   with interest.

He pushed  back the wings of grey hair with both hands  first of all, so that his face looked even leaner and more aristocratic.

'In Moscow,'  he said,  with  a deliberate shudder, 'I would simply dry up and die. It's an awfully grey place full of awfully grey people. I wouldn't wish to embarrass anyone  but  Russia simply isn't  the place for someone with my somewhat colourful tastes.  And of course  this is greatly  to the convenience of my employers. They know I will do anything- absolutely anything - to  stay  in  the  West,   and   they  also  know  that   my  own preferences do take me to some rather interesting places. You'd be amazed  who one bumps  into in some of those rather maley clubs.'

'Gosh,  you really are a spy then?' Christopher was wide-eyed at this revelation.

'Oh, I shouldn't think so, dear.  What  would you say, Sam? No,  no,   my  little   pieces  of  tittle-tattle  help   to  keep   the computers busy in Moscow  but I don't suppose for a moment they  tip  the  balance  in  the  great  conflict  between  right  and wrong- whatever they may be. Isn't that so?'

'I wouldn't know,'  I said.  I didn't either.  You couldn't be sure  with  Ivan. He always seemed  to be telling you too much until  you thought about   it later  and  realised  he'd  told  you nothing. I was even less sure since my talk with Batty. Perhaps we were both spies.  Perhaps that's all there was to espionage: tittle-tattle and  words in ears, games of table-cricket  in empty cocktail   bars.    Perhaps  spies   were   ordinary  people   with ordinary lives.

'By the way,'  he said, fishing out his silver-backed  notebook again,  'I have some news for you about  your chamois-wearing friend.'

Now that  did  surprise me. I had  to be careful  what  I told Ivan:  even as a friend,  I was always aware of the fact that he must  have other  loyalties.  I hadn't told him about  the badge with  the  winged  AC and  I hadn't told him about  the second man  in the kitchen.  On  the other  hand,  I had mentioned  the trawler and  the man in the photograph because of the possible Russian connections. Even so, I was surprised  when he opened his notebook  and  began reading.

'His  name  is  Kirillina. Nikolai  Kirillina. He's  one  of the naval  people at the embassy, although they don't have proper military  attaches because  Iceland  doesn't have any military.' Ivan  could only be telling me this because someone wanted me to know. Why? 'You  traced  him through  the sputnik?'

He put  his fleshless hand  to his forehead.  'Ghastly, isn't  it? Apparently he has this wonderful  flat with a gorgeous display cabinet bursting with silver and  porcelain. Bang in the middle of it he puts one of those horrid little plastic sputniks. Not unlike the sort of artefact you might sell, Christopher.'

Christopher grinned  up. Then  his grin vanished. 'Oh damn, Meryl's out.'

'Thank God.  Well bowled.'  Ivan  kissed the dice. 'Who's in next?'

'AI Jolson.' He  slipped  me another wink. 'I've heard  he's rather useful with the bat. A lot of these coloured chaps are, you know.'

'You  see,'  Ivan  continued. 'What can  you do  with  these people?   They   have  every   opportunity,  education,  money, everything, and  they go and  put on display  a vulgar  memento like that.' He reached over and touched  my arm. 'I do hope this isn't  hurtful  in any way, but  I am  told he was something of a hand  with  the ladies.'

'Be a waste if he wasn't. He hasn't disappeared then?'

'Apparently not. Drinkiepoohs, anyone?'

As the waitress got the glasses clinking,  I walked over to the window  and  looked  out.  Poor  Solrun. Even  by  her  reckless

standards, this was quite  a mess. For reasons  well beyond  my imagination, she'd  got  married to an  Icelandic Hell's Angel who already  appeared to be the proud  possessor of woman  and child.   And  she  was  also   playing   around  with   a  Russian diplomat. It was beginning  to sound crazier  than the casting for Christopher's cricket team. Who'd  she run off with now- King Kong?

The girl came round  with the booze and  Ivan  told her to put it on his bill. I was wondering why Batty  thought I could  do anything about  all this - let alone  why  I'd  want  to- when  I heard  Ivan  ask Christopher if he was married.

'Oh, yes, Bella and  I  have  got  a lovely little  place  out  at Braintree. I've asked her to think about  moving  up to Iceland but she isn't  terribly  keen. At the moment, that  is.'

'Would  you take out  Icelandic citizenship?' I'd  been wondering about  that.

'Hope to, naturally. Course  it's not easy. You have to speak the lingo, of course, and  take a local name.'

'After  your father?'

'That's right. And since my old man was called Christopher too. I'd  have  one  of these  names  with  a  built-in  echo.  A bit much, I think. How about you, Sam? What was your father's name?'

'Oddly enough,  I don't know.'

I'm so used to it that I forget it sometimes makes other  people uncomfortable. After a second's silence,  Christopher decided not to pursue  that one, and started talking about his plans for a sales drive  in the morning.  I was sorry  to hear  that.  I'd  been hoping   he  might  come  as  interpreter  when   I  went   to  s e Solrun's mother.

'I'll come,'  Ivan volunteered. 'It will be just like being a real reporter. I shall wear a Bur berry and  look terribly  louche.'

20

When  I come  to  think  about it,  I've  never  actually known  a woman   who   rushed   off  home   to  mummy   in  moments  of emotional crisis.  My wife used to rush out and spend. To her, the  cheque-book was  a  weapon  of retaliation: it gave  her  a strike-back capability that  was awesome.

All the other  women I'd known used to go to the hairdressers.

Some of them- I'll swear it- used to seek out emotional crises if they'd got word of a classy new crimper.

But  I  liked  the  home-to-mummy  theory,   and   I  was  encouraged by the glint of doubt in Hulda's eyes when I suggested it. Shaking her head like a terrier  with a mouse, she said Solrun would never go to her mother's. Since Hulda seemed  to be the chairman of the Solrun  Defence League, that was good enough for me. I went.

Asta Arnadottir lived in a small flat-fronted terraced  house, painted black, in what they call the Stone Village- Grjotathorp -in the old centre  of the city. We had  to park at  the top and walk down. I climbed  the three stone steps and gave the heavy brass  knocker  a bang.

'Hardly  Knightsbridge, is it?'  Ivan  said,  in  his snobbiest voice.

Actually, it's got a lot of character. Two dozen or so houses, mostly old-style with steep-pitched roofs, dotted around a slope where  you could  still  see some  of the  boulders  that  gave  the place its name.

Across  the road,  a skinny  woman  in a floral pinafore  came out and  pretended to sweep  the pavement so she could  have a look at  us. There's one of those in every street:  self-appointed sentries.

I knocked again. 'It's no use,' Ivan said. 'Empty houses have a definite aura about them. This,  I have to tell you, is an empty house.'

'So it is,' I said in mock gratitude. As he spoke, there'd been a noise from inside  the house.

I called  out 'Hello,' and  this time used  my knuckles  on the dark  paintwork. In  the silence  that  followed,  I put  my ear  up against it to listen. You couldn't say quite  what sort of noise it was- a series of stifled sounds, somewhere between a whimper and  a wail.

'Oh, let's go,'  Ivan said,  moving a step or two up the street.

He'd  wanted  to come in the afternoon. He kept insisting it was too early,  meaning,  no doubt, too early  for him.

'No,   there's   someone   there.'   If  there   was,   they   weren't opening   any  doors.   I  spent   fifteen  minutes   knocking   and calling,  while  the street-sweeper watched  in silence,  before I gave up and  walked back to the jeep.

'You don't think that could've been a child, do you?' I asked.

Ivan  was  adamant.  'Definitely not.  It was  a  puppy. She won't  open  the door  because  she  has a dog in there  and  you know what they're  like about that round  here. They  mow them down in the streets.'

'I'm surprised at you,'  I said,  as I picked  my leisurely  way through  the  morning traffic.  'You  mustn't believe  what  you read in the papers,  Ivan. They  don't do anything of the sort.' We were passing  the Tjornin and  the lake was as calm  as a mirror.

I stepped on  the  brake.  Marching alongside the  water,  in corduroy shorts,  baseball  cap and  boots, was Bottger,  the Esperanto-speaker who'd  been on the flight out. With  his long legs and  bony  knees,  he looked  like one  of the  rarer  wading birds.

'Have  you found  your friends over here?' I asked  him.

'No.  It is most annoying. They  have also gone on holiday.'

'Didn't you write to them  to say you were coming?'

'Yes,  but I fear there must  have been a misunderstanding.' I couldn't resist it. 'I thought  that  was what  you Esperanto chaps  were going to wipe out.'

He gave me a look loaded  with reproach. 'And  how is your friend  with the musical  lavatory?'

'He  hasn't made his first million yet.'

He pointed a long hard arm out towards the mountains. 'I go there.' He  banged  his chest  with his fist. 'Fresh air.'

As he  loped  off, knees  high,  Ivan  patted   the  lapels  of his blazer.  'I go Saga  bar.  Fresh  g and  t.'

With   a  couple  of  hours   to  kill,  I  nipped   back  down  to  the harbour to have a look at the Comrades Afloat.

The Pushkin was still there,  though  whether that  was a good thing  or  not,  I  wasn't sure.  And  I could  see what  Petursson meant. The aft-deck  was strewn  with nets: the Russians  don't usually   go   in   for   that   much   window-dressing.  Fish   too, Petursson had said.  That was altogether too much innocence.

I stood for a while watching the harbour move to the rhythms of  the  sea.  A  high-prowed steel  fishing-boat grunted  in  its chains. The  little  play-boats chattered like children. An  old wooden  warrior's engine  drummed as it pushed  out  to sea,  to where  the light sky met the dark  water.

I turned then and was looking down as I stepped through the sea's  cast-offs - the scattering of torn  tyres and  wooden crates and  plastic bottles- when I heard  another engine drumming. I looked  up.  It was Palli  Olafsson. He  had stopped not six feet away  from  me.

He was still wearing  the tee-shirt  and shorts, thin rags on the hard   pale  slabs  and  ridges  of muscle  that  looked  as  though they'd been  bolted  on to his body. The  tattoos  showed  clearly through the  thickets  of ginger  hair  on his arms.  You couldn't see his eyelashes and eyebrows, so his light blue eyes seemed  to be staring out  of a strangely naked  face.

'Palli?' I said,  wondering how the hell I was going to talk to him without Christopher.

He gave one short, pugnacious nod.

Slowly  and  deliberately, I  mouthed: 'Do  you  understand English?'

He folded his heavy arms across his chest. 'Bet your ass I do,' he  said.   And   a  hard   grin   bent   his  lips  as  he  viewed  my astonishment.

I took him to a chintzy  upstairs cafe near the lake. Among the blue-and-white   gingham   tablecloths   and    spindle-backed chairs, he looked about as likely as a water-buffalo in a dinner jacket.

He can't have been precisely  the sort of customer they were hoping would pop in to encourage mid-morning trade,  but they didn't say anything. They  didn't even say anything when  he spun  his chair  round  and  the back creaked  under  the weight of his arms and shoulders. And they didn't say anything when he flicked the ash off his cigarette on to the floor.

I don't suppose he'd  ever  had a lot of complaints about his behaviour. Menace hung  about him like a low cloud.

I   didn't  know   where   to   start    when   I   looked   at   that unnervingly hairless  face. 'So ... you're an American?'

'No.  Next question.'

I'd  no idea what  to make of that.  'You're not an American?'

'That's what  I just  told you,'  he said,  in an accent  that  was pure  popcorn  and  Budweiser. 'Anyway, I don't wanna talk about that.'