‘Well,’ repeated Ridley quietly. ‘A woman – all too obvious. But that’s about all that bloody well is obvious. That tall, that strong – left dents all over my poor old car –’ He gave a short sharp laugh. ‘Knew I should’ve taken a patrol car. What do I put on my insurance claim form?’
‘How about Act of God?’ muttered Hal.
‘Not my idea of God, that. More like the other fella.’ Hal smiled thinly, but saw no answering amusement on Ridley’s face. The policeman rubbed his hands, mottled with cold, and then looked down at them again as if they reminded him of something. ‘Remember her skin?’
Hal grimaced. ‘I would hardly forget. Horrible. Black. Or leaden, rather – as I thought leprosy must look, when I was a child.’
‘Right. With streaks and patches of a sort of dirty yellow here and there – the forearm, right? And the thigh?’
Hal nodded resignedly. ‘What of it?’
‘Plenty. You can check me with the doctors if you like, but I remember that from path. class – pathology to you. That yellow, that’s fat decaying, turning liquid, beginning to seep through the skin.’
‘It sounds horrible. What sort of illness causes that?’
‘Don’t ask me! Heavy bruising, maybe. But all over like that? Decomposition. After you’re dead. I don’t know of anything else.’
‘After – Satans, man, talk sense!’
‘Well, suppose you try and explain it?’
Hal snorted angrily. ‘I thought that was your job!’
Ridley sat back, looking completely unruffled. ‘Not any more, it isn’t. Remember what I was saying yesterday?’
‘Ah – they are sending you some help then, your bosses?’
‘Help be damned!’ said Ridley crisply. ‘Taken it right out of my hands. Bound to happen, really, once the papers got hold of that little mess on the cliffs. Special squad set up, couple of CID big bugs brought in from Leeds, the lot. They’re busy setting up a mobile incident room outside town right now –’
‘Outside town?’
Ridley gave a cold chuckle. ‘It’s a sort of bloody great mobile home thing, they can’t get it down the hill into town in this weather. Anyway, my face doesn’t fit, it seems – not enough experience or something. I get the local knowledge jobs – protect outlying villages and farms, see nothing more happens, that sort of thing.’
Hal nodded. ‘The dirty jobs, huh?’
‘That’s it. Oh, and while I’m about it, find Colby – who by their brilliant deductions is the boy to blame, of course …’
‘But –’
‘Ah. But we know different, don’t we now? So what’re we going to tell them?’
Hal started to speak, stopped, frowned and knotted his fists slowly. The policeman nodded, as if acknowledging something unspoken. ‘So explanations have become your job now too, haven’t they?’
Hal breathed in a great gulp of the icy air and sat for an instant as if it had frozen him solid. ‘But what – how? What I saw, you saw. I cannot account –’
‘And I’ve been pining for a university education all these years! Some bloody good it must be! Not a single idea? Not one tiny –’
‘Nothing you would believe.’
‘Try me.’
‘It is stupid, it could not be – I could not believe it myself!’ He jumped to his feet and began stalking off towards the car park, with Ridley padding after him like an angry bull terrier.
‘Why? Because it’s something supernatural?’
Hal glared down at him. ‘You said that, not I! So you can save your sneers. Whatever you think of academics, I am a practical man – I cannot go believing in spooks and spectres, any more than a policeman can!’
‘Can’t he? Think about it a moment. Who’s more likely to run into the supernatural than a cop? It’s a funny job this – day in, day out, you’re being asked to find answers, explanations for all kinds of questions, problems, mysteries even. And then one day, you run right into a mystery that doesn’t have any answer. It’s about then you begin to wonder …’
Hal stopped dead. ‘You are not serious!’
‘I’m deadly bloody serious! Listen. Back when I was new on the beat in Brum, I got called into a house, grotty little council affair it was, because things were being flung out of an upstairs window. In I go thinking it’s just another domestic. Husband and wife tiff, that sort of thing, dead easy to sort out – just lace into one, and half the time the other gets all protective. Anyway, I go in, and the whole family’s running about like wet hens, and nobody seems to be doing the throwing. So I open my mouth to say something and this bloody great rug just comes snaking up like it’s alive and wraps itself around me, wup! Moment I get free, I’m out that door and running, I don’t mind telling you.’
‘A poltergeist,’ said Hal musingly. ‘I have heard of similar cases. But surely some natural explanation –’
‘Any explanation’s natural once you find it. Seems this house was well known on our patch – the station sergeant just rang up some Father O’Malley and told him to get down there on the double. So after last night I’m keeping an open mind – and I suggest you do the same, Prof. But open needn’t mean empty …’
‘You need not labour the point,’ said Hal drily. ‘One thing – whoever, whatever, was solid enough to be burned. So –’
‘I get the idea. Put out the word to watch out for severe right-arm burns, that sort of thing. Just in case.’
‘Just in case.’ They had reached Hal’s car, and he began searching abstractedly for his keys. ‘But opening my mind – Herre Gud, once you admit the supernatural, anything is possible, ideas are not the problem. The trouble is, they are all crazy. Except–’
‘Aye? Spit it out –’
‘I don’t know. But the things that were taken were solid enough, too – they had to go somewhere … And there’s something I seem to remember, some legend … It might be worth searching – ah, fanden i helved!’
The hospital’s front door popped open, and Wilf Jackson shot out. He came trotting down the steps, gesturing urgently to them.
‘God damn it to hell,’ Hal muttered, ‘I was hoping –’ He didn’t finish. He’d been hoping he could avoid Jackson. He wasn’t in a fit state to face the inevitable questions about what he’d been doing up there with Pru, not just yet. He felt like jumping into his car and roaring off, but he knew he’d only be making it worse. Jackson came scurrying between the cars, and he braced himself for the worst.
But when Jackson arrived he was breathless and not in the least hostile. ‘Whoof! Glad I caught you!’ he panted. ‘Lift back to town – the Museum, if you’re going that way?’
‘Well, it’s easy enough to drop you –’
‘Thanks! Meeting Tom there – quarter past – just on the phone and he said he wants to make an early start, with the weather like this –’
Ridley blinked in mild astonishment. ‘You – er, were seeing Miss Ravenshead off?’
Jackson looked startled, then smiled. ‘Oh hello, Inspector, you coming back with us too? Yes, I saw her go – not that she knew I was there, poor girl.’ He sighed, and shook his head. ‘A frightful business! Who would want to – well, that’s your job, of course. You’ve still no idea –’
‘We’re pursuing a particular line of inquiry,’ said Ridley calmly, looking at Hal, who was fumbling nervously with his pipe. ‘That’s all I can say for now.’
‘I understand. Well, there’s not much more I can do for her, besides worry. Couldn’t go with her in the copter, after all; she’s in the best possible hands, they won’t want me hanging about till she comes round – if then. So –’ He shrugged. ‘Life goes on. Hal, we’d better hop it …’
‘Er – yes, sorry,’ Hal stammered, hastily opening doors. ‘So you are, er, going out filming, then?’
‘I can’t just sit around all day chewing my nails. And Tom’s been pestering me to do this for a while. As part of a pilot, for Timescape.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Hal drily, looking over
his shoulder to reverse the Range Rover out of the narrow parking space. ‘Your project on barrow burials, wasn’t it? Actually I was just thinking of having a word with you on that –’
Jackson writhed a little on the back seat. ‘Well, actually it’s not entirely barrows. Tom felt that might be a little too – too intense, you know? Too academic? It’s more an overview of the whole archaeology of the area – a general piece –’
‘But including barrows?’
‘Oh yes,’ Jackson chuckled. ‘As many as possible, in fact. There are all kinds of different types in the area –’
‘Yes, I read your thesis. But listen, Wilf, there is something else you can be doing –’
Jackson leaned forward in instant protest, but lost his balance as the big car bumped out onto the snow-covered road. ‘Now, come on, Hal, you don’t own me, you know – and there’s nothing doing on the dam, and this is the only time Tom’s got –’
‘No, no, Wilf,’ Hal said soothingly. ‘It need not interfere with your filming, and it is something you should know about anyway. The inspector and I were just talking over all this theft business, and we reckoned there is half a chance that the stolen stuff might still be stashed away in the area –’ Ridley looked sharply round at Hal, but said nothing. ‘Now, the usual places, the sheds and barns and so on, the inspector’s men can cover. But these swine obviously had some kind of archaeological knowledge – and they might just have chosen some of the open barrows around here, the ones that nobody ever goes near –’
‘God, yes,’ whispered Jackson, ‘that would be brilliant!’
‘Well, there you are. We thought you would not mind keeping an eye open for us, maybe even looking over some of the likely ones, and calling us in the moment you see anything suspicious …’
‘Aye,’ said Ridley, picking up Hal’s cue. ‘You’d be doing yourself some good, after all –’
‘Yes …’ breathed Jackson. ‘If we found something, it’d be one in the eye for them, from Pru … and a magnificent hook for the film –’ His face fell. ‘But there are so many potential sites, and most of them not very close to each other. We couldn’t possibly cover them all in this weather …’
Hal thought for a moment. ‘Suppose you and Latimer cover half? I can manage the rest, with the inspector if he is willing.’ Ridley nodded. ‘Right then – if you could mark them on a map …’
Jackson pulled off his beret to scratch among his curly ‘hair. ‘Better than that, I can run you off a map on the computer at the Museum – if someone’s there to operate it …’
Somebody was –Jess, looking pale and thin-lipped, with smeary shadows under her eyes. She said little or nothing to any of them, but followed Jackson’s instructions crisply enough, calling up an image of the standard road map of the area from the database onto the big screen of the main terminal and helping him to superimpose details of the various sites. When that was done he called up a duplicate map and scattered a second set of glowing green points over the coloured background of the map. Jess, still silent, fed the two map images to the colour printer, and they came rolling out bit by bit, the screen colours duplicated by minute electronic ink sprays. Jackson ripped the first one free the moment it was done and handed it to Hal, but folded the other gingerly to avoid smearing the ink and stowed it away in his pocket.
Ridley looked at him dubiously. ‘Now remember, Mr Jackson, these people are dangerous, as you very well know. I’m grateful for your help, I’m chronically short of men at the moment, but I’m making this an official warning. The first suspicious thing you see anywhere near any of these barrow places, the first sign of any recent disturbance, you don’t hang around, you run like hell and call the police, and they’ll call me. No poking around, not even for a moment, and no heroics – none! And don’t so much as go near a barrow after it gets dark.’
‘He’s right, Wilf!’ said Hal. ‘That is when these thugs seem to move around. Not even a second look – just high-tail it out. We will be doing exactly the same thing, don’t you worry. In fact–’ He glanced down at the crowded map, and sighed. ‘We had better be getting on with it –’
‘On with what?’ Latimer’s tanned face, discoloured by touches of red around nose and ears, peered around the door of the dig office. ‘Don’t tell me you bastards’re going out to that bloody dam in this weather? Jeez, what a summer, I thought I was just getting used to this climate –’
‘Well, I did tell you to wrap up warmly, Tom,’ smiled Jackson. ‘Come on, we’d better be on our way too – I’ll tell you on the way out to the car …’
Ridley moved to follow them, but Hal lingered a moment, looking at Jess. She turned to face him with a stare so bleak it was like a slap. He looked quickly away, but walked out evenly enough, and shut the door softly behind him. It was only his car door he slammed.
‘There goes a man with troubles,’ chuckled Latimer, sitting in his car and watching the Range Rover sweep out down the drive in a spray of gravel and slush. ‘Still – if you will screw around with ball-breakers you’ll end up losin’ your nuts. Speakin’ of which, Wilf, you might at least have used your nut a bit when you were doing those maps! Christ, I mean, what a bash if we were the first to find the stuff, we’d scoop the flamin’ pool, the evenin’ news headlines even – You could’ve sent them harin’ off after all the dud sites and kept all the likely ones for us, couldn’t you?’
Jackson’s moustache twisted as he smiled his largest, smuggest smile. He tweaked the map out of his anorak pocket. ‘What makes you think I didn’t, Tom my old mate?’
Latimer let loose a rebel yell and grabbed the map. ‘There’s more to this than they’re lettin’ on, you know that? They must have some sort of sure-fire idea that the stuffs there – and why aren’t they getting the ordinary dicks to do the searchin’? They’re tryin’ to keep somethin’ quiet, you bet! It’s all a cover-up – and we’re goin’ to blow it!’
‘You could be right, Tom,’ said Jackson thoughtfully. ‘And if it was something to do with Colby – that’d explain why Hal was so nervous …’
‘Yeah, shame ’bout him,’ said Latimer. ‘Nice enough bloke – but this is a cruel hard world, Wilfred my lad, and we’ve got our own careers to look after.’
‘Yes, we have. But still – they were right enough about Colby, or whoever this is, being a killer. We’re going to have to be rather careful …’
‘Never you worry, my lad,’ grinned Latimer. ‘Uncle Tom will look after you, yea, with this –’ He snapped open the dashboard locker.
‘Good God!’ Jackson exclaimed. ‘Have you got a licence for that?’
‘Licence?’ laughed Latimer. ‘They’d stick me in the slammer just for havin’ the bloody thing!’ He fingered the enormous revolver lovingly. ‘Smuggled it in in my camera gear. Bought it off a refugee Afghan gunsmith, little village near the Khyber Pass. Those mujaheddin boys can copy almost anything, did you know? This is a spittin’ image of a Colt Python – what most folk’d call a Magnum. It’ll rip holes in a car engine, this little lady, or stop a chargin’ elephant. Want to lay odds on your mate Colby?’
Later that afternoon Jackson was suffering cold feet in every sense. He’d cleverly decided the likeliest barrows had to be large, with open or accessible burial chambers – but they would also have to be off the beaten track. It hadn’t occurred to him what that would mean in this weather. He and Latimer had spent the whole day stumbling and scrambling through snowbound woods and hedgerows, over slippery, unstable stone walls and across endless freezing fields, full of potential pitfalls covered up by the snow. Within the first hour his anorak had proved inadequate, especially when he tripped and fell over; now it was soaked and stiffening in the chill wind. His walking boots had also begun to leak; now they were caked masses of slushy snow, and they too were beginning to freeze hard. Afraid of frostbite, he tried to keep his circulation going by waggling his toes, but they were so numb now he wasn’t sure whether he was actually moving them at all. The only time h
e felt anything was when he stubbed them. He kept his muttered complaints to himself, however; Latimer, plodding along under the weight of his camera gear, had long ago given up even pretending to be sympathetic.
‘Barrows!’ grunted the cameraman. ‘Your bloody barrows are the most bloody boring set of subjects I’ve ever bloody well run into, bar none! Just a load of fucking featureless humps, and the most interesting thing we’ve found in any of them’s two empty crisp packets and a used flamin’ –’
‘You’ll like this one better, Tom!’ Jackson panted.
‘You’ve been sayin’ that all day! And this is the first time you’ve been right! And d’you know why? ’Cause it’s the last! And after this I never want to see another useless bloody barrow again, I never even want to hear another flamin’ word about them – jeez, what’m I doin’ here when I could be back on Bondi! Barrows!’ He made the word sound obscene. Jackson bridled at the insults to his favourite subject, but he didn’t want to alienate the cameraman any further. He might still do him some good with the media – and anyway, the Australian was a lot bigger and tougher. So he swallowed his outrage and stumbled on. Latimer swore again as he caught his ankle on a snow-blanketed tree-root.
But then suddenly they were at a wall, and a gate, and at the far end of the large field was the barrow, a long low dome in the snow.
‘There!’ said Jackson helpfully.
‘I’ve got bloody eyes, haven’t I?’ grunted Latimer.
‘I mean, wouldn’t that be a good shot? The way the sun’s tinting the top pink?’
Latimer paused, stared, tilted his head on one side. ‘No. Never see a thing on the box. Just a lump. No good. C’mon.’ He thrust hard at the gate, scattering snow from its upper rim, and it hissed and skittered out across the snow, piling up a small hummock and leaving a wide fan-shaped scrape. Together the two men trudged across the field of unbroken whiteness, Jackson circling around to find the opening he remembered.
‘There were two steps down to the entrance chamber – not original, Victorian restoration – and a rusty old gate. ’
The Ice King Page 15