Black Ice Read online

  At some secret signal, discernible only to people under the age of twenty, the kids there had changed from skin-tight clothes to floppy, crinkly bags four sizes too big - just like the kids everywhere in the Western world. They lolled in the pale sunshine and tried to feel Mediterranean while they read each other's tee-shirts. Yet they still nibbled the hardfiskur they bought from the pavement stall with one hand, while drinking

  Coke with the other.

  On the hillside opposite, the little toy-town houses in their bright coats of paint looked daintily impermanent. Dress it up how you like, Reykjavik still has the air of the Yukon about it. Only they didn't find gold here. This is a fish-rush town.

  I had a coffee in a smart cafe overlooking the square and wrote a card to Sally. In a doomed attempt to impress the nuns, I'd bought one with a picture of one of the spouting geysers. But I'd spoiled it by writing on the back: 'As you can see, the plumbing here is an absolute disgrace. And guess who's here? � Uncle Ivan.'

  Then, in one of those coincidences we deride on the telly but never question in real life, I looked down into the square and saw Ivan. He was sitting on a low wall surrounding a flower garden. Next to him was Christopher Bell.

  I was so surprised that when I paid for my coffee I hardly noticed that it cost only slightly less than the down-payment on a five-bedroomed house in Kensington. Icelandic prices rate high on the wince scale.

  'Here he is,' Ivan said, as I walked over to them. 'My favourite diurnalist.' He was the pal who'd done the writing on my office window.

  'How did you two find each other?'

  'Simple really,' Christopher said, a smile breaking out beneath his banana nose. 'I heard this gentleman asking for you at the desk of the hotel.

  It wasn't all that amazing. If you had an expense account and none of my funny twitches about dormitories, the Saga was the place to stay.

  'What the hell are you doing here?'

  Ivan ignored the question. With an exaggerated roll of his eyes, he replied: 'Never mind that, dear boy. Do you realise I'm missing Sussex at home to Yorkshire?'

  'I say,' Christopher intervened with boyish excitement, 'are you keen on cricket?'

  'Keen? I adore it.'

  'He thinks it's the perfect evocation of man's eternal soul, don't you, Ivan?' I said, just to annoy him.

  He rewarded me with a petulant blink. 'I still find it impossible to believe that such a bland race as the English could invent a game so rich in yearning. It's a very Russian emotion, yearning.'

  'Ah, yearning. Yes.' Christopher didn't look too convinced, but then he'd probably never met anyone quite like Ivan before. He was an original.

  In Fleet Street, he was known - affectionately, I hasten to add - as the Gay Red. His parents, one Russian, one English, were academics and he'd split his childhood between the two countries. For years now he'd been based in London for one of the Russian agencies. It was generally assumed, as with all Russian journalists, that his real job was to post bits of information back to the boys at home: this, together with his discreet but clear use of eye-liner, gave him the nickname- and a sort of raffish glamour.

  I'd always liked him. When I was married he quite often came back for dinner. He used to entertain us at obscure and grubby East European restaurants which always seemed to be above men's hairdressers in Muswell Hill where the food was invariably a delight. After my divorce, we became good boozing mates.

  I knew him as well as anyone, and even I was never sure how much was affectation and how much genuine. The one thing we didn't have in common was cricket. For all it meant to me, it might as well have been Russian. But he used to love to get out to the county games and install himself in a deck-chair among all those elderly couples, tartan rugs around their knees, making faint marks in large scorebooks as they ate damp egg sandwiches.

  'And how is the wondrous Sally?' he inquired, with his usual reproving note. He was her godfather. He took his duties - including checking up on me- very seriously.

  I showed him the card. 'You'll make the girl into one of those giggly creatures who work in dress shops in South Ken. Tell me it's not true that you are working for the dreaded Grimm- oh my God, it is.'

  'What's in it for your Moscow masters, Ivan?'

  'Perfectly obvious, surely. The beauty business is the classic example of the exploitation of the innocent by the grasping capitalists. Don't you know anything, dear boy? But I hear you have mislaid, if that's the word, the lady in question.'

  He caught my quick glance at Christopher - I van didn't miss that sort of thing- and explained: no one had been indiscreet; he'd picked up that information from the Russian Embassy. Not that it would matter, he added.

  'I'd no idea you chaps co-operated so much,' Christopher said.

  'Believe me,' Ivan replied, 'whether he's in London or Moscow, a boss is a boss is a boss. There is surprisingly little to choose between Sam's ghastly Sexy Eskies and my dreary little pieces of propaganda. Our principal problem, I fear, will be finding exquisite gifts for the wondrous Sally in this desolate dump.'

  I thought we might give her one of Bell's musical loo fittings?'

  Ivan's eyes rolled to the skies. 'I declare that out of bounds immediately. Now I must go in search of a vast g and t, and you, Sam, will no doubt wish to have a gallon of that appalling slop you drink.'

  'Not here. You can't get beer and there aren't any boozers.’

  ‘We'll have to go to a restaurant.'

  'They are a bit restrictive with the old firewater,' Christopher said, apologetically.

  'In that case, let us waste no further time.' Ivan rose, a tall stick of a man, his greying hair falling in curtains on either side of his bony face. 'Good Lord!'

  At that moment, through a bunch of kids playing around, came a boy with a wad of newspapers under his arm. He looked maybe eleven or twelve. He stopped in front of us and gave a weird funereal wail that was presumably the Icelandic for Three Hurt in Polar Bear Horror. But that wasn't what made us stare. His flat, expressionless face was the one that had become an international symbol for suffering. And you don't expect to stumble upon a Vietnamese at the other end of the world.

  'One of the boat people,' Christopher explained. 'About two dozen of them fetched up here.'

  'Have a care then, Mr Bell,' Ivan said. 'These people are ingenious entrepreneurs, I am told. They may well have plans in the general direction of the stuffed-puffin market.'

  We watched the boy with the biscuit-coloured face wander off through the crowds, and then Ivan turned to me, slipping a silver-backed notebook from his pocket.

  'Tell me,' he said, flipping it open, 'does the name ... now where is it ... does the name Oscar Murphy mean anything to you?'

  'Not a thing.'

  'Truly?'

  'Hell, Ivan, I've only been here one night. Why? Who is he?'

  He put the notebook back into his pocket. 'I'm not quite sure. One of our embassy people mentioned him. He wouldn't say any more. You know what those awful Intelligence people are like ... they won't tell you the time except in code. Come along, my children, Uncle Ivan is ready for drinkie poohs. Lead the way, Master Bell, you're the nearest we have to a native guide.'

  13

  In a tight corner, I can eat guillemot without complaint. Pushed, I can listen to a conversation about the art of bowling leg-breaks. What I cannot do - cheerfully, anyway- is both at the same time. So before the coffee came, I left Christopher and Ivan and took a taxi back to Vesturbrun.

  My plan was quite simple: get back into the flat and have a good snoop around, particularly at the photo of Solrun's handsome boyfriend. If Petursson had the place staked out, as he almost certainly would, I could always say I'd nipped back to get my razor, and exit smartly.

  At first I didn't think I'd get past the foyer. Petursson's man was taking it easy, thumbing through a magazine as he sprawled on a low chair in the small lounge area just inside the door. All that registered on me was his light chamois jacket they must pay
their cops well around here. After that it was eyes ahead and straight towards the lift. I knew he was watching me, and any minute I was expecting to be called to heel.

  But not one word. Up I went, and the same god that had installed short-sighted policemen downstairs had arranged for the door to Solrun's flat to be left open.

  He'd also arranged for a whirlwind to go through the place. I couldn't believe it. Furniture was tipped over. Clothes were scattered everywhere. Drawers had been ripped open and emptied, books had been swept from their shelves, and even the mattress had been pulled off the bed.

  My first thought was indignation that the cop downstairs should sit there reading up gardening tips while an intruder went through the flat. My second was that perhaps I shouldn't put in an official complaint: I was also an intruder. And the third was the photo album. It was still there, down the back of the radiator. The only surprise was that whoever had done the searching hadn't ripped the radiator off the wall.

  For the second time, I sat down and opened it. This time, I began - as they say- at the beginning.

  Overall, it tended to suggest that Solrun had cancelled her application to the nunnery. It started with boys who didn't look as if they'd ever raised razor to cheek and it ended with the Italian-looking smoothie and the rip-mark where the badge had been. In between were young blokes bulging their biceps beside swimming-pools, students trying to look tubercular and poetic, and sharpies poised with languid cigarettes and bored eyes. Men with moustaches, men with beards, men with shaggy sweaters, men with hand-stitched suits, men with bikes and motor-bikes and cars. And me, out of focus as usual, ringed in red, by a waterfall.

  I sat and thought about it for a moment. I wasn't jealous.

  You couldn't be jealous of Solrun any more than you could hate the sun for shining on other people too. She was a bit on the universal side, was Solrun.

  I turned to the last page again. I knew what the long-spiked chestnut was now. It was a few years since I'd seen a picture of it, which probably explained why I hadn't recognised it immediately. It was a model of the first sputnik- you know, the Russians' vintage spacecraft. And the only people who'd be at all likely to give pride-of-place to a junky chunk of patriotic souvenir like that would not be Italian.

  Once again I studied the man. Somehow he looked familiar now. He certainly didn't look Russian. I know it's wrong to nominate racial stereotypes but it is remarkable how many Russian men do have faces like over packed satchels, and Russians don't usually dress like him either.

  Or cops. You don't usually see cops dressed in exquisite chamois jackets. That's why he looked familiar. The man in the photograph with Solrun - Russian, Martian or whatever the hell he was - was at this moment sitting downstairs, cool as you like.

  I was going to do something about that, right there and then, only this chain saw started at the top of my head and zoomed straight through to my torso and sliced me in two at the pelvis. Either he was downstairs, cool as you like. Or he was upstairs, in charge of chain saws.

  14

  In books, they always say being knocked out gives you a red effect between the eyes. Well this one was a violent shade of mustard, and it swelled and heaved at the back of my eyes until I had to edge them open. Ouch. Close again. The yellow started ebbing and flowing and I realised, like it or not, I was alive.

  On the whole, I didn't like it.

  This time I opened my eyes and found myself face down on the carpet. A minute later I was face down in the bathroom, over the loo. I felt better for that. So I had a glass of water and did it all over again.

  I looked-at myself in the mirror. That was a mistake too. I'd gone the colour of candle-fat and I could swear there were sparks coming out of the top of my head where he'd hit me. Chamois jacket. While I was sitting there carefully working it all out, he must have coasted up in the lift and coshed me with a sputnik.

  I had another glass of water which, after some difficult negotiations, my stomach decided to accept. Then I turned to go back into the living-room when I saw him.

  He was framed in the doorway. Handsome, of course. Elegant, in the fine soft leather. But very very surprised. He should've been running away, I should've been catching him: instead we stood there trying to hypnotise each other.

  Then it broke. I shouted something; he turned and fled, and I was so unsteady that I crashed over the sofa as I tried to race after him.

  I got to the door in time to see the lift go. I got to the lift in time to see it had reached the ground. And I got back to the flat window in time to see a van tearing down the hill.

  That was when I lost my second glass of water.

  Luckily, I managed to grab the pan from the floor in time. A pan? In the middle of the sitting-room floor? Once the urgency had passed, I studied it with some interest. One large pan, orange in colour, wooden of handle, and very heavy. For smacking someone over the head, it was a lot more useful than the scatter cushions or the bits of wicker.

  While the latest attack of dizziness passed, I sat on the floor cushion and had another look at the photo album. The last page had been torn out. Surprise, surprise.

  I put together the bits of my brain that were still undamaged and pointed them at this chaotic scene. They didn't do too well. Young Chamois wishes to retrieve photo of self so as not to be linked with Solrun. Yes? Well, possibly. So he sneaks in, smashes up the flat, sneaks out, sits reading Harpers until I arrive, sneaks back, wallops me over the head with pan, grabs photo and goes.

  On balance, I thought not.

  I decided to discard the theory that he carried large pans on his person on the off-chance of meeting a diurnalist in need of treatment. On wobbly legs I went through to the kitchen. Aha. One row of pans, orange with wooden handles. Mummy Pan, Baby Pan, but Big Daddy Pan was missing from the end hook. So, I tried that one. As I sat admiring his photograph, he tiptoed past me into the kitchen, selected the senior pan, tiptoed back, and panned me. He then threw it down, grabbed the photograph, made his escape ... and then popped back to see how I was. Little as I understand human behaviour, this didn't sound too convincing either. And if it didn't sound too good to me, how would it sound to Petursson? The flat suddenly looked a very good place not to be. I went.

  15

  What you do in Britain when you want to play bloodhounds is to start off at the local sub post office. There, when they eventually dig out the electoral roll from under the bacon slicer -invariably covered in potato dirt and still warm from the cat - you can find out who lives where and with whom.

  In Iceland, it's the Hagstofa. The official records office is in an old building opposite a green hillock where a statue of Eric the Unsteady, or one of his chums, leans on his axe. With his rat's-tail hair, staring eyes and straggly beard, he looks like a sixties' folk-singer.

  I'd nipped back to Hulda’s and had a quick shower and change when I realised I could just catch the Hagstofa before it closed. It had struck me that- apart from personal toe-curling information- I knew very little about Sol run's background. I'd been taken there once before by a local journalist and I knew it was definitely the place to start.

  The manager- if that's what the three-foot word on his teak door said - wasn't sure. He was a pink hairless man with rimless glasses and a face like a hamster after a three-course meal, and he was torn between their tradition of open government and suspicion of unannounced strangers.

  Two things did it. The sight of my Metropolitan Police Press Pass, with my thumb over the last two words as it wafted across his line of vision, and the words Petursson and Kopavogur in the same sentence.

  With mumbled apologies, he took me through to a room where the walls, from floor to ceiling, were lined with shelves of metal files.

  He reached for one, then froze with his hand up, like a schoolboy wanting to leave the room.

  'Allow me,' I said, reaching past him and taking the file down.

  'Thank you,' he murmured. 'So difficult. The office girls are

  always
taking away my steps. I think they do it for a joke.' Naturally, since this was Scandinavia and not Britain, there was no potato dirt and cat warmth. Only sheet upon sheet of computer print-out. Hamster gave a little hop over to the table and began to flick rapidly through the thin skins of paper. Suddenly he stopped. With one small sausage finger, he pushed his specs up his nose and gave me a shifty look.

  'For the police?' I don't suppose he'd seen many cops in crumpled old corduroy suits.

  I nodded towards the grey telephone. 'Ring Petursson.' He gave me a quick nervous smile and turned the file towards me.

  'This is her, I think. Is that her date of birth?'

  I looked at his finger. That made her twenty. That would be her.

  He slammed that file shut and pushed it away, and brought another one through from the next room. .

  'In this file there is just the standard information.' He had it open and his finger on her name again. He began to read of her address, occupation, parents' names, father dead ... 'What exactly are you looking for?'

  I was listening but I was watching him too. His lower lip was

  shaking. His eyes were all over the place. For reasons known only to himself and the computer, my little hamster was telling whoppers.

  'Let's have a look.' I turned the file round towards me. When computers first came out I recognised them for what they were, a passing fad, and ignored them. The result is that I still experience deep panic at the sight of those square-shouldered letters. But I made him show me the letter code which followed every name, and what each letter meant. And it was all exactly as he had said: except he'd missed out one letter- a capital C.