Black Ice

by Colin Dunne

  'And have you been faithful to me?' I demanded, not altogether seriously.

  When she answered we both burst out laughing. I'd forgotten the way Icelanders say the word for Yes on the in breath - and the way Solrun liked to string them together.

  'Yow yow yow yow yow yow,' she went, like a clockwork cat that needs winding up. It took us over the two-year gap without embarrassment.

  We hadn't stayed long up at Thingvellir. Just long enough for me to suck in some of the magic of the place, and to see again how the pearly light swirled around the plain, as real to the eye as the water in the lake. Back home, Solrun had vanished to the sound of splashing taps and re-emerged about five seconds later, damp, pink, fresh and snug inside her silk robe liberally decorated with scarlet lips. From somewhere she'd also produced two small, strong and bitter coffees.

  We were both past the pleasure-shock of seeing each other again- and the discovery that all the old feelings were warming up again. It's always nice to know you weren't mistaken. We talked the old nonsense we always did, but I couldn't help but notice the black scimitars of strain beneath her eyes. Her usual playfulness kept failing as a strange unease broke in. Inevitably it reminded me of why Batty had sent me.

  'They say at the office that you wish to interview me for one of your wicked London scandal papers?'

  'That's right.'

  'That is terrible.' She giggled and clasped the front of the robe together to fake respectability. 'Do you think I am scandalous?'

  'I was hoping you might remind me.'

  She laughed again, a brittle tinkle of sound that died too soon. She slipped down on to one of her squashy cushions and curled up in a way that exposed her legs to potential frostbite.

  Or, with any luck, guest bite.

  'They tell me you're going to be a star.' I was perched on the edge of the sofa, by her right shoulder.

  'Oh, that will not happen,' she said, shaking her head.

  That surprised me. She'd gone international since I'd last seen her. She'd been picked up by one of the agencies who fix models for the top glossies. Once or twice I'd been surprised to find her staring up at me from an airport bookstall. She'd done well on the glamour circuit too, and there was talk of her having a go at the Miss World nonsense- and also a few whispers that she'd win it if she did. But she dismissed the whole thing in a way that had nothing to do with modesty.

  'That's a shame,' I said. 'I was hoping one day you'd throw me a krona as your Rolls swept past.'

  'Only so you could sell your story to that awful newspaper of yours,' she protested.

  'You've heard of cheque-book journalism -we do joke-book journalism,' I said.

  'Anyway,' she let her head slump back and closed her eyes, 'it will not happen.'

  'What?' I said, trying to sustain the jokey tone. 'Not even for the honour of your country?'

  I always used to tease her about the way Icelanders almost snapped to attention when you mentioned anything to do with national pride.

  'No,' she sighed, not moving. 'Not even for that.'

  'Serious?'

  'Serious.' After a pause, she added: 'You know that if l could do something- even something as silly as a beauty contest- to help my country, I would do it. But I cannot. Honestly, Sam, it is not possible.'

  'I believe you. Why not?'

  She scratched her fingers deep into the carpet as though it was a rival's face. I was about to repeat my question when she opened her grey-blue eyes and, in a finish-it voice, said: 'I cannot. That is all.'

  Unexpectedly, after another short pause, she asked: 'And how is your little girl? Sally? Am I right?'

  Not only did she remember her name, she even knew her age, her birthday, and that she used to have her hair in bunches. At some time, I realised with growing shame, I must've hit her with a walletful of snaps and a bellyful of maudlin-dad rubbish. It was a wonder I ever saw her again.

  'Do you love her and are you a good father?'

  'Yes and no, in that order.'

  'Why?'

  'You know why. They shouldn’t'-t let people like us have kids. Hell, they shouldn't let us have goldfish. Not without passing exams first, they shouldn't.'

  I looked down into her gleaming eyes. 'Don't include me in this,' she said, nipping my leg. 'I think I will be a marvellous mother. Don't you?'

  'Well, you won't be short of applicants for daddy, that's for sure.'

  'Swine,' she said. She patted the carpet and I slipped down beside her. 'What do you remember best about me?'

  'Let me think. I know. You are the only woman I have ever met who doesn't sneak a quick look in a shop window to see how big her bum looks.'

  'Do women do that? Really? You understand that all women really believe they are ugly- that's why you are so dangerous.' She nipped me again, so I had to put my palm over my coffee.

  'Do you think we would have been good together?'

  'We were good together.' I knew what she meant. No matter how adept you are at keeping emotions locked up in the attic, you still wonder what it would be like if you let them out to play.

  'You know what I mean,' she replied. 'Properly.'

  'I don't think I'm a very proper sort of person.'

  'Have you found a wife then?'

  'Yes.'

  'You have?' Her tone was just too uncaring.

  'Yep. But then her husband found me .. .'

  She laughed, more naturally this time. Then she snuggled up, the low lamps buttering her legs with yellow light.

  'You know I was saying how sorry I was that I cannot win those beauty titles and things for my country?'

  'Yes.'

  'Well. Tell me, you read books and things ... who was the famous Englishman who said about choosing between friends and country?'

  'I think it was a gent called Forster.'

  'Who was he?'

  'Not your type for a start.'

  'Ah. And is that what he said? If you must choose between friends and country, you must choose friends?'

  'About that.'

  'Is he right?'

  'I don't know. If I had to choose between the two, I think I'd emigrate and find new friends.'

  Even as I answered, I thought it was odd. In my entire life I'd had exactly two conversations about patriotism and they'd both been in the last twenty-four hours. Statistically that was a clear concentration.

  Gently, I held her to me and breathed in the subtle Solrun scents that were being funnelled out of the top of her robe.

  'What's the problem? What's all this serious talk about? You're not going intellectual on me, are you?'

  She gave a small sigh. 'No. Not really.'

  'A man?' With her, that was always a fair guess. I felt her nod her head.

  'Two,' she whispered, sinking deeper into the silk. 'Two men who say they love me. Two men who want to take me away.'

  'That's what free enterprise is all about- choice. And your choice not to go if you don't want to.'

  Then, in a voice no louder than the soft brush of my fingers on her skin, she said: 'I think perhaps they will kill me.'

  Her pretty, sing-song voice faded and left a black chasm of silence. I didn't say a word. Even though I was sure it was Solrun overacting, the moment was still as delicate as porcelain, and I feared my own clumsiness.

  Still in a whisper, still half-buried, she said: 'That was why I thought you'd come, Sam. To take me away.'

  I coughed. The frightened man's mood-changer. Then I made my speech. 'You can't go away from things, Solrun, you know that. It doesn't work. You can only go towards things. And I haven't got anything to take you towards.'

  Even as I said it, I hated myself.

  This time the silence didn't last a second, and it was Solrun who smashed the mood. She sprang up, grabbing me by the hand and failing to hold the robe together as modestly as she might.

  'You haven't? You have a very bad memory. Before you always took me towards the bedroom.'

  There didn't seem much I could
say to that. Not with the way that robe was falling open.

  Suddenly, it was the old Solrun, outrageous, extrovert, shaking every last ounce of fun out of every day. And if that seems a bit much, you've got to remember that they were road testing sexual freedom in Iceland when the English were still putting skirts on piano legs. And she was an exquisitely crafted specimen of the non-shaving half of the human race. And it was late. And I didn't need any excuses. That's the truth.

  Later, bleary with sleep, I remember her lips touching my forehead and hearing her say 'Bless'. Funny, I thought, through the mists of sleep. 'Bless' doesn't mean goodnight. It means goodbye. Then when I woke all there was beside me was the scented dent she'd left.

  The chance had gone. The chance I had to save her. There aren't any excuses to cover that. And that's the hard and bitter truth.

  8

  When I got back upstairs, I tried to search my misty thoughts for any reason why she'd taken off like that. I'm sure I'm lousy in bed but it doesn't usually drive people to move house.

  I lifted one of the blinds to let in a little light. The living room had somehow lost its mysterious hot-eyed intimacy of the night before. The coffee cups were still on the table where we'd left them when she took my hand. I looked at my watch. Five minutes past four. In the morning.

  Remember, remember, remember. There were the things she'd said about the two men. There was the nonsense about them killing her that I'd taken for wild talk. After all, she was a hell of a drama queen, was Solrun.

  So. So let's have a look round.

  For some reason I could no longer remember, my clothes were all over the bedroom floor. I opened the wardrobe and immediately regretted it. Anyone who believes that women belong to the same species as men should look inside a woman's wardrobe. You could've taken away six train-loads of clothes without making any impression on it. I was just going to close the door again when I saw the photograph albums. There were a stack of them, and I took them all through to the half-light of the living-room.

  I was going to flick through the last one first - the theory being that recent history was more likely to help me- when the book automatically fell open at the last page. It fell open because jammed between the pages was a metal badge. I took it out and looked at it. It was gold-coloured metal, about an ih and a half across; in the centre was a circle bearing the initials AC, with eagle wings on either side. It had been pinned through the page, but had ripped loose.

  Immediately above it was a photograph of Solrun playing at proper grown-up ladies. She was wearing an off-the-shoulder number, which, together with the glitter at her throat and ears, made it something of a special night.

  The bloke next to her certainly thought so. Cats which had got the cream would've looked suicidal alongside him. If his smile had got any wider, it would've met around the back of his neck.

  And why not? He had his right hand, in light but unmistakeably proprietorial fashion, resting on Solrun's bare shoulder. And if he lost her he could always spend the evening looking in the mirror: he was quite something.

  He was cowboy-shaped: wide-shouldered and narrow waisted, in that way that few men ever achieve outside Hollywood. He had a carefully coiffed collection of black curls and an open confident smile that stopped just, but only just, this side of vanity. With the sweet cut of his dinner-jacket, and the general air of a man who'd be handier with a cocktail shaker than a pick, he looked more Italian than anything else. Only an Italian can carry that much style without going bow legged.

  He was wearing evening dress. An official function maybe?

  Not necessarily. He looked as though he'd wear a dinner-jacket to bring the coal in.

  It was a head-and-shoulders picture so there wasn't much

  background to go on. All you could see was a display cabinet immediately behind them. As far as I could see, it contained the usual collection of silverware that you find in low-class golf clubs and pretentious suburban homes.

  Then I saw the horse-chestnut on top of the cabinet. Only it wasn't a horse-chestnut. It was round, with spikes sticking out, but the spikes were much longer than a chestnut. And it as set up on a small stand - the whole thing looked like plastic- as though it was flying through space.

  I knew what it was. I'd seen photographs of it before. I knew exactly what it was, but I couldn't remember. Not just then, anyway.

  Any chance there was of remembering then vanished when I heard the ping of the lift. I wasn't ready to do any entertaining. I nipped to the window and when I saw what was standing outside I experienced a small but unpleasant heart-leap.

  One white Volvo. One Harley Davidson motor-bike. Even when they choose vehicles for their police force, the Icelanders try to show no favouritism between their American and their Scandinavian friends.

  I heard footsteps and voices. With the sort of cool reflexes that we spies develop after years of training, I went into a blind panic and jammed the album down the back of the nearest radiator.

  9

  At Kopavogur I had two hours to sit and contemplate what the descendants of the Vikings might consider a suitable punishment for someone who'd misplaced one of their women. None of the possibilities sounded much fun, so I sat on a plastic scoop in a long empty corridor hoping that Christopher Bell would get my message.

  I didn't understand any of it. I didn't understand why I'd been brought to a brown three-storey box of a building in what looked like an industrial estate. The police headquarters I knew was down in the middle of the town.

  I'd asked the cops who brought me in, but they treated me as though I was Jack the Ripper after an intensive training course with Black September. Nervous wasn't the word. They may have looked dashingly ornamental in their black-belted uniforms with white-topped caps, but they never took their eyes off me, even when I left the message for Christopher at his hotel reception.

  At Kopavogur, they emptied my pockets in plastic sacks, and then an English-speaking officer took a lengthy statement, without all the usual come-off-it-sonny stuff. He took it, and went.

  Then a door down the corridor opened and a meaty young face under a thick thatch of white-blond hair beckoned me in. Cop-shops all over the world retain mementoes of their trade in scarred woodwork or messages of goodwill on the walls. But this place, with its concealed strip lights, pale beige walls, polished wood-block floors, and laundered air, was more like the VIP lounge at an airport. Only I wasn't a VIP.

  Looking back on it now, I'm sorry I took the attitude I did to Blondie. But when I'm bullied I get skittish, and this some times comes across as impudence.

  As if I'd be impudent to a bobby ...

  He nodded me into another scoop by the door and ignored me while I had a good look round.

  It was a rectangular room. The far end, to my right, was mostly window. Through it I could see the distant mountains black against the bright sky.

  An older man- I could tell that by his thin creamed hair and his seamed neck- faced out of the window. He was making notes. He didn't turn when I came in.

  Blondie was opposite me, a couple of yards away, behind a small metal desk. He was frowning as he read through a typescript.

  Lots of people make the mistake of thinking that in relatively crime-free countries the police are not much more than an extension of the boy scouts. Don't you believe it. True, Scandinavia isn't like one of those Soviet countries where they chuck you in the loony-bin, and mark your mail Unknown At This Address, or those equatorial places where they give you a spin in a cement-mixer before river-bathing. But up there, they half-expect you to laugh at them, so they have more to prove: they're intelligent, and they can be exactly as tough as you like.

  Without glancing up, Blondie began talking.

  'Correct any factual errors. Name, Samuel Craven. Age, thirty-eight. Marital status, divorced. Height, five foot ten inches. Weight, twelve stone. Black hair, brown eyes, distinguishing mark, slight scar on left temple, result of car accident.' He lifted his eyes to check that l
ast item. He needn't have bothered. It only showed against a sun-tan.

  'Father unknown, abandoned by mother, childhood in a Dr

  Barnardo's home in Norfolk, England.'

  'Little Orphan Sammy,' I said, as I usually did when that bloodless recitation came up. He didn't acknowledge it. Perhaps he didn't like musicals.

  'Next of kin, daughter Sally, aged nine.'

  He glanced up again, then added: 'No known security affiliations.'

  He put the file down and folded his heavy, tanned hands on

  it.

  'Is that correct? No known security affiliations?'

  'I'd say so.'

  'What does that mean?'

  'Well, if they were known you wouldn't be asking me, and if I have any unknown security affiliations I wouldn't be telling you about them, would I?'

  Not traceable, Batty had said. I was beginning to see what he meant.

  At the other end of the room, the older man cleared his throat. Blondie leaned forward on beefy forearms and looked at me as though he'd like to see me taken home in a bucket.

  'You claim to be a journalist? Can you prove it?'

  'I've got a liver and an overdraft, both enlarged.'

  I don't think he picked up on all the full humorous implications of that, but he caught the tone. He gave a tough, tired smile and cracked his knuckles. He wasn't impressed with me. He wouldn't have been impressed with three of me.

  'You claim in your statement that you met Solrun Jonsdottir at Thingvellir ... why?'

  'Because it's romantic.'

  'Romantic?' He gave a laugh that was dangerously over loaded with scorn. 'You meet this ... girl, you go to bed with her, you say this is romantic?'

  'It isn't the way you tell it.'

  He gave me the laugh again: three sneers for Craven. 'Well, well, that is something very new for us. We did not realise that our famous Solrun was romantic.'

  'No? Well, I don't suppose you get much time for that sort of thing down at the Hitler Youth.'