The Ice House (25 page)

But it wasn’t Alex. It was Michael.

43

Carl had been out for hours. He had a red swelling across his left cheek, where he’d hit his face on the floor when he went down. The knee was still stiff, from the boat, but he could walk. He could not have been unconscious that long, he thought, or his memory would be scrambled worse than it had been before. Instead he could remember everything with clarity. He must have passed out for only a few seconds. But unlike the first time he hadn’t returned to wakefulness when it was over. Instead, it seemed, he had remained there, flat out on the floor, for nearly five hours.

Doing what? Sleeping? Semi-conscious? It must have been something like that, his body giving him no choice over it. He had come round five hours later and started panicking about the time lost. How far away could Rebecca be now? The thought made his heart race, and he didn’t need that. He forced himself to be methodical, to pick up with what he had been doing when he had blacked out – searching for a method of locating Viktor. There was no other way of finding her.

He was looking at a phone he had found in a room off the kitchen when he glanced out of the window and saw the figure. Whoever it was, they were about thirty metres away, on the drive leading down from the security gates: a figure about his own height standing off to the side of the track, just outside the halo of light cast by the tungsten lamps lining the driveway at ten metre intervals. Just standing there.

The only reason he noticed was because the light in that room was dim, a single weak bulb in the ceiling behind him, so there was less glare across the glass than in other rooms. He reached back and switched the light off, cancelling the remaining reflections across the window pane. But that far off from the house it was impossible to make out details. A man, he decided, watching the front of the house, not obviously armed, but standing so that he wasn’t illuminated very clearly. He would be able to see Carl clear as day. If there were others then Carl might be in their sights already. He stepped back, went through the kitchen door, dropped to the floor. His head spun a little with the movement, but not too badly. His heart was steady.

The figure would be merely covering the gate, he thought. There would be more than one. So he would have to deal with it, get away from here altogether. It would be people sent by Zaikov – that was his best guess – either for him or Viktor or both of them. He had been careless, leaving the gates open, all the security systems off, as he had found them on his return.

He crawled across the floor quickly, trying to listen at the same time. The gun he had was in the top box of the bike, which he had left outside the house, so that was out of the question. But in the past Viktor had kept guns in the cellar – shotguns he used for hunting trips. He went to the cellar door on his knees, the damaged one very sore, opened it, stood and went quickly down.

Concentrating on noises from the level above, he switched the lights on and found the bolted metal gun case. It hadn’t moved since he had last looked at it. It was secured with a chain, no sign of a key, so he took a discarded section of piping and used it like a crowbar. The chain held but not the hoop it was fed through. It came away with a bang, the pipe clattering across the floor. He paused for any sign of a reaction upstairs, then opened the doors to a selection of shotguns and ammunition. He picked an expensive Purdey double-barrelled model and stuffed a box of cartridges into his pocket, feeding two into the barrels and snapping them shut.

There was a door and steps that led directly to the rear gardens from the cellar. He opened the door quietly, crept up, then slid quietly into the chill night and crouched low, letting his eyes adjust, scanning for movement. There was plenty of light coming from the house to assist. He would move carefully to the front, he thought, clear the area there so he could get on the bike, then get out.

The ground from the corner of the house to the front drive was clear of foliage, so before he got anywhere near it he cut into a section of garden where there were trees and bushes, a little further off from the house. Then he went low and picked a route through the cover, sometimes on his belly, pine needles pricking into his hands. He could smell the pine resin, feel the cold air on the back of his head.

Up until now he had been thinking he would get a visual on the one at the front and shoot, from as far away as would guarantee accuracy, then get to the bike. But now he thought it might be better to get a closer look at the man, take him down without firing the gun if possible. He could then try to identify who he worked for, find out for sure if it was Zaikov.

So he went a bit deeper into the ornamental trees and came back towards the drive from a position a little behind where he guessed the man would be standing. But when he parted the grasses obscuring his view he saw nothing. He dragged himself forwards and saw the guy had moved closer to the house.

He stood carefully, brought the Purdey up to his shoulder, holding it ready, pointed at the man’s back. Then he stepped onto the drive, paying attention to any movement in his ­peripheral vision, and slowly moved forwards.

The man was facing towards the house, right in the light from one of the lamp-posts now. Then he went down onto his haunches and something about the movement made Carl think, immediately, that it wasn’t a man at all. He kept going forwards, then decided. It was a woman. That made him pause.

He was behind her. She had short hair and was squatting on the ground, one knee down, the shoulders shaking. Like she was laughing. Or crying. Or maybe just shivering badly with the cold. He could see no weapon at all. He waited until he was only five metres behind her, the gun still aimed directly at her head, then spoke quietly: ‘Get up. Turn slowly.’

She sprang up so quickly he had to move the gun to keep it aimed. He kept his eyes on her hands, looking for weapons, but there were none. As she spun to face him the light from the nearest floodlight, off to the left, came directly across her face.

His jaw dropped. He moved the gun off to the side and heard himself cry out. ‘Liz,’ he said. ‘Christ. Liz.’

She was looking at him with something like horror. ‘Alex,’ she said, almost shouting it. ‘Where’s your fucking brother? What have you done with my daughter?’

44

In the back of the Range Rover Rebecca stared through smarting, bloodshot eyes at the narrow band of road visible in the powerful headlights. She was so tired her eyes kept rolling up into her head. Then she would be gone for a few minutes before another jolt in the motion woke her, head lolling, neck sore, and she was back in the car, the same, featureless, narrow road lit by the beams, the same wall of jagged shadow towering either side.

They were passing between dense ranks of briefly illuminated pine trees, so high it sometimes felt they were driving through an endless tunnel. The road surface was buried beneath compacted snow and ice which made a weird rumbling noise as the chained wheels went over it. If she looked out of the window by her seat she could see nothing but vague, looming shadows ­sliding by; only very occasionally was there a gap allowing a glimpse of brilliant white stars in a clear sky.

They had stopped twice for her to go to the toilet and she had tramped through knee-deep snow and squatted shivering in the intense cold, frightened she would freeze to death before she could get back to the safety of the vehicle.

There were two men she didn’t know in the front – men who worked for Viktor, one of them his driver. They spoke only Russian, and not very often. Viktor mostly acted as if they weren’t there, and to help him there was a glass screen between the front and back of the car which he could close, like in a taxi in London. When it was shut, even if they were speaking to each other, you couldn’t hear them in the back.

Viktor sat in the back with her. They had travelled in a small, four-seater helicopter first, then another helicopter that had been larger, with two people who looked like soldiers flying it – at least, they had on some kind of uniform and helmets. After that, in darkness, in some freezing place Viktor had told her the name of, they had got into this car. How long ago was that? She had no idea. The entire journey had been the same whenever she opened her eyes. She hadn’t been able to sleep for the first part of it – up to the second toilet stop – but after that it had been hard to stay awake.

Viktor had said hardly anything to her throughout the helicopter trips – just a few words every now and then to convince her everything was OK. Then for the first hour in the car he had been working on a laptop on a shelf that came out of the partition in front, typing on the keyboard, speaking into an earpiece with a mic in some language she didn’t understand.

She had asked him if he had spoken to her mother, or Carl, many times, and always he had replied politely, gently, with a smile. But he hadn’t spoken to them. They were moving from Finland, he had said, because they were going to where her mum was. The people that had got her mother out of Spain had brought her to Russia, because they were connected to Viktor, and because that had been easiest. It was just a ‘slight change of plan’.

After the last toilet stop he had looked tired. He had put the laptop away and started talking to her, just at the point she most needed to sleep. ‘Did you ever love anyone?’ he had asked her. She told him she loved her mother, frowning, but too tired to wonder why he was asking that. Then he started to tell her about someone he had loved and whom he would have given his life for but she had betrayed him in the worst possible way, and now he couldn’t do anything properly, he said, it was like she had broken something in him, something that had made him able to appreciate the world and other people. ‘Now I hate everything,’ he said. ‘The truth is I hate everyone. All these ­people around me …’ He waved his hands as if there were hundreds of people standing around him. ‘I couldn’t care less whether they live or die.’ Then he laughed, as if she wasn’t there. ‘I need to rewind the clock. Go back. Undo what she did to me. You understand?’

She didn’t. ‘You don’t mean that,’ she said. ‘About hating everyone. You can’t mean that. What about your brother?’

He had looked quickly at her then, the laughter all vanished from his face, his mouth so miserable and hard that she had started to get frightened. She must have reacted in some way that gave that away because he took a breath and smiled again. ‘Nah. You’re right,’ he said. He reached a hand across and patted the back of her hand on the seat between them. ‘How could you hate your own family, your own flesh and blood?’ Then he stared at her for a very long time, so hard she had to look away.

‘We should all sleep,’ he said. But she couldn’t close her eyes then, and kept her head facing the other way, so she was looking out of the window, away from him.

‘I envy you,’ she heard him mutter. ‘You have been with your mother all your life.’

She didn’t ask him what he meant because she didn’t like the way he was talking, and just wanted him to stop, but she guessed that he meant that his own mother had died.

‘Some people are one of a kind,’ he went on, a bit louder.

Was he talking to himself? She closed her eyes, trying to pretend she was asleep, hoping he would stop.

‘They light you up,’ he continued. ‘So that you really live, really see things. Nothing else means anything. The money is all worthless. But then if the light goes out, what do you do?’

She kept her eyes closed but he said her name, three times, to get her to look at him, and when she did, finally, he just shrugged. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘This is down to them.
Their
fault.’

She had no idea what he was talking about. ‘When will we be there?’ she asked.

He smirked. ‘In fifteen minutes. Then no more travelling for you. I promise.’

‘And my mum will be there already?’

‘I doubt it. But you can call her. Tell her where you are. I think she will want to know. And once she knows, I’m sure she’ll get there as quick as she can.’

‘You said she would be there already.’

‘I made a mistake. But she will come. You can call her, and she will come to you.’

‘When?’

He picked a mobile up from the seat beside him. ‘When we get a signal. There’s a mast nearer the house. You can do it when I get a signal. I need you to do it.’

45

‘Rebecca is your daughter.’ He said it again, head still reeling with confusion. ‘She’s
your
daughter …’

‘And you’re this guy Carl Bowman?’ She looked like she couldn’t believe it. She was calling him ‘Alex’, which was what she had always called him, the Anglicised version of the name on his birth certificate, which was Aleksi, the name his mother had given him. No one had called him either Alex or Aleksi for many years.

He had told her he was Carl Bowman, told her several other things to calm her. This was when they’d still been outside, because she had been flailing at him, trying to hit his face as he staggered backwards, too astonished and dismayed to defend himself. Because he couldn’t take it in – Liz Edwards right there in front of him, telling him her daughter was the child he had been trying to help, the child he had been paid to kill.

Eventually, he’d had to grab her arms, hold her and almost shout it at her, telling her that he had tried to protect Rebecca, had tried to save her. He told her that over and over again until she got it. Then she collapsed onto the ground in tears. When he could catch his breath he told her more things, talking quickly, keeping his eyes on the gateposts and the road beyond, watching for headlights or movement. He told her almost everything that had happened, the rapid version, starting with how someone had hired him to kill a ten-year-old. He could see her struggling with disgust as she half knelt, half sat on the gravel outside the front entrance, head in her hands. Some of the details flew straight past her but enough connected to ensure she came inside when he asked.

He needed to get her quiet enough so he could ask her questions. He had another piece of the jigsaw now, but he needed more. Viktor had sold him to Zaikov, tried to get him killed, then he had fled with Rebecca. So there
was
a connection. There had to be. Liz could explain, then they could work out what to do.

He got her into the room nearest the entrance hall and he switched all the lights off so he could see outside, just in case. They were almost in darkness – the lights were still on in the hall but he’d closed the door so there was only a crack of light coming through. He stood at the window, facing away from her, eyes on the floodlit spaces outside. He thought it would be better to go up to the little room beneath the tower that was full of security equipment – from there he could monitor the entire perimeter using the
CCTV
cameras. There were alarm systems that he could reactivate. It would be better if he had the MP5 from the bike top box too. A shotgun wasn’t the right weapon for this, if people came. But he didn’t dare suggest any of that to her. And anyway, he was beginning to think that that wasn’t going to happen. No one was going to come here looking for him, or Viktor, or Rebecca. Because something else was going on.

She was on one of the couches, in the darkness, hunched forward, asking him question after question. He answered quickly, repeating answers until she was satisfied, waiting for his turn. And all the time his head was worrying at it, trying to properly grasp the possibilities. He turned now and said, ‘She’s with Viktor. I’m sure of it.’

‘So where is he?’

‘I don’t know where he is or what he’s doing. I don’t know why he has done this. He told me Zaikov wanted your family dead, and I believed him. He had proof – bank transfer documents, things like that – I looked at them. But they must have been forged, because Zaikov had never heard of you, or Rebecca. So there must be something else, some other reason to have sent me to Zaikov’s boat. And not just money. I don’t think that could be it. Not now. He would not have sent me there unless he was desperate, unless I was the only price he could pay. But for what? I’m thinking now I was the price he had to pay to keep Rebecca safe, to protect
her
from Zaikov. Which means there has to be something that would make Rebecca that important to Viktor, something he never told me about. I think there’s only one thing that can be.’ He turned to face her. ‘Is she his child, Liz? Is that what it is? Is Rebecca Viktor’s child?’

She started to laugh bitterly, shaking her head. He went over to the couch and sat beside her. ‘She is the right age,’ he said. ‘You were in a relationship with him. Is Viktor her father?’

She turned suddenly, straightening up. ‘So who sent you to kill her? Who did that? Who killed my husband? Who tried to kill me? Who?’ She was shouting it at him. ‘You’re being stupid, Alex, fucking stupid. Her own father wanted her dead? That’s what you want to believe?’

‘So he’s not her father?’

‘No. He is not her fucking father. And Zaikov has never heard of us – you just said that yourself. So where’s the reason to send you to Zaikov?’

She was right – it didn’t work. He knew it didn’t work. He shook his head. Even if he accepted that his own brother had sold him to seal a deal, there were still things he couldn’t under­stand. Why wasn’t Viktor here, why had he fled? And why had he taken Rebecca if the contract on her was a complete coincidence, nothing to do with the deal with Zaikov at all?

He sat forward and put his face in his hands. ‘He gave me to Zaikov,’ he said heavily. ‘He sent me there knowing they would kill me; he told them I had killed his son to make that happen.’ He took a breath. ‘I don’t understand why.’ The fact of it was a physical pain in his skull. ‘But if that’s what happened then why does he have Rebecca with him now? Why is he still protecting her?’

She stood up suddenly and walked over to the window. He saw her lean against the pane and start to shake. He went after her, put a hand out and carefully touched her shoulder. She started to cry out loud, really sobbing. He didn’t know what he was permitted to do. If he put an arm round her he thought she might start hitting him again. The lights on the driveway lit her up now. He could see her head, the beautiful, thick, red hair, see her face, twisted into a baby grimace of anguish. He opened his mouth to tell her they would find Rebecca, that she had his word on that, but she spoke first, stuttering the words through strangled sobs: ‘He is not protecting her,’ she said. ‘He is going to kill her, Alex. He wants to kill her and kill me.
He
hired you to kill her. Don’t you see it?
He
paid you,
he
sent you to Spain.’

He shook his head, frowning hard, keeping his hand there, uselessly, on her shoulder. ‘Why would he do that?’

She took a massive breath. ‘Because
you’re
her father, Alex. Because you’re her father and he has found out.’