Black Ice

by Colin Dunne

  shivers were almost making my limbs kick out. What I wanted most of all was to see what was going on, instead of this imprisoned feeling from the blindfold. But the minute my hands went up to the binding, Oscar's snapped warning was enough.

  'Why worry?' I heard Palli say to him, quietly. 'Shit, he knows who we are.'

  'Because he stays blind, that's why.'

  If that was Palli's preparation for a getaway, it hadn't got very far. That made me think of Christopher. If he was Batty's man, I thought, where the hell was he now? And the thought that someone else out there might have some idea of my plight gave me a chance- remote, but a chance. I felt I had something left to play for.

  'I don't get it.' Even to me, my voice sounded bold. 'You know about me and you know about Kirillina .. .'

  'Who?' He sounded sharp.

  'The Russian.'

  'Oh.' He relapsed. For a moment he thought there was yet another man and he was all set to fire up again.

  'You knew she wasn't a faithful little wifey waiting for you to come back. It doesn't make sense. Why come back?'

  'Because of things.' He sounded like a petulant child.

  'What things?'

  'I told you. Things I was told by friends. Anyway, that's none of your business ...'

  'Why're you tying that to the car, Oscar?'

  I was trying like mad to piece the scene together. Oscar's voice had strangled a little as though he was bending over. And Palli did sound alarmed this time.

  'Don't worry, Palli. He'll tell me, then we'll be pals. Anyway, look at him, he's wet already.'

  I knew then what he meant to do and I still didn't believe it. He was right in front of me again. His breath smelt like a stable at dawn. I held a cold nylon rope in my hand.

  'Hang on to that, cutie, you're gonna need it.'

  'Christ, Oscar!' Palli was up close too, now. 'You can't do that. No more killings. You promised no more killings.'

  'He ain't dead.' He said it in the steady, reasonable tone of a man who is raving mad.

  Then he gave me a push in the chest with his finger-tips. Any other time it wouldn't even have dented my shirt-front. Here, on the edge of an unseen cliff, soaked and frozen, with all my black terror trapped behind a blindfold, I rocked wildly. And all the time I was winding the stiff rope around my hands and wrists.

  'Course you can always take a shower .. .'

  'You don't have to do that to him. Let me push him around a bit. I know a few things . . .'

  'One quick dip under there and he'll talk. If he comes up again.'

  The two of them were talking in raised voices above the noise of the water and all I could do was listen. I bent towards their invisible figures and raged: 'I don't know. I tell you, I don't know.'

  It silenced both of them. In a quiet tone, Oscar merely replied: 'Tell me that again in a couple of minutes.'

  Then he pushed me backwards.

  For a moment, I dreamed it was one of those kid's party games where you trick a blindfolded victim into thinking he's standing on a chair, and get him to jump. He's really on the floor, of course, so when he expects to fall two or three feet, he only falls an inch.

  It's that old trick, I thought, as my foot went out backwards feeling for the ground. Only there wasn't any ground. I was falling.

  38

  In my time, I've done my share of falling. I've fallen out of bed, I've fallen out of love, and I've fallen out of a few pubs with a little help from the landlord.

  But this wasn't the sort of fall where you come off a ladder. I'd come off the whole damned earth. It was spinning away from me, leaving me behind, and I was left like a traveller in space who's missed the intergalactic bus.

  I couldn't see. In a way, it didn't matter now. I could feel the echoing emptiness of the universe all around me. I was back to being a babe-in-arms with that first and most primitive of fears -the fear of falling. There was a timeless moment when I hung out in space as though nothing had really happened, then the rush of air as I dropped. The thick spray of water that I'd ceased to notice suddenly turned into a torrent as I swung under the edge of the waterfall. The force of it caught the right hand side of my body, then my head and chest, as it turned me more inwards, pummelling me down, down, down.

  Like a leaf in a hurricane, I was tossed and tugged as the force of the water threatened to yank my arms from their sockets. I'd run out of rope. For the moment, I was at the end of my fall. Then the force of the falling water doubled and doubled again as I failed to move with it.

  Somehow I'd set my arms ready for the brake of the rope, and my feet - acting on no instructions from me- had managed to find a protruding rock and instinctively kicked me out of the heaviest flow of the river. Even so, I was left hanging there, face up, feet against the rock, while the vast solid weight of the water avalanched down upon me. The rope burned across my hands. Every whisper of breath was battered from my body by the hammering waters, and there was no air, nothing to breathe. Only the water, crashing ceaselessly on to me.

  Seconds. I only had seconds. Then I would be choked and swept away in the torrents.

  I bent my knees so that I sank further into the sheets of water, then sprung myself outwards. I felt the water spew from my lungs and sucked in streams of clean sweet air. And, blind as I was, I could've sworn I heard larks sing in the bright blue skies as I felt the relief, away from that pounding crushing power. Then, as quickly, I was back beneath the hammer of water again.

  Knees bend, press, spew, breathe. Again. I don't know how many times I did it. To my surprise, I suddenly felt myself rising up through the edge of the cataract. I couldn't think why. I'd forgotten there was a world above me, and people on it. I hung on to the rope and rose through the water like a gaffed salmon.

  Face down on the rock, I pumped up quite a few waterfalls of my own. Someone sat astride me, working my back. I didn't know who. It wasn't important.

  'I think he'll be okay ...'

  'Sure he'll be okay, I told you ...'

  'Jesus, I thought he'd been blown off .. .'

  'He's a cutie, you said so yourself .. .'

  There was plenty more. I didn't listen. I couldn't take it in. But, between the eruptions of my own body, one tiny frail thought was beginning to take shape. I had to cling hard to it.

  A hand turned my head sideways. 'Where the fuck is she?'

  'For Christ's sake, he doesn't know, he said .. .'

  'He knows. I can tell. So where is she?'

  'He's damn near dead, Oscar. The guy can't even talk if he wants to. He's only just breathing.'

  'He's in great shape. Anyway, I think I'll give him another shower. Shake him up a bit more.'

  'Don't be dumb, Oscar. You said no more killing. He can't take any more. Look at him.'

  'He looks fine. One last time, feller, then it's bath-time again. Come on, tell me all about it.'

  'He can't even hear you. He doesn't know we're here. Let's drop him off at the nearest house we can find-if we can find one at all in this goddam wilderness- and if they get a doctor right away maybe he won't die.'

  Hands went under my arms and began lifting me. I was sitting up. Apparently.

  'Let me try then, Osc. Let me talk to him.'

  'Okay, but if he don't talk, he's over the edge.'

  A hand slapped my face, both sides. 'Sam? It's Palli. Can you hear me? Shit, Oscar, I think he's dead already. Can you understand me? Try to open your eyes, Sam. Come on, open up. Where's Solrun? He's dying, Oscar, I know it. He's dying.'

  In a last spasm I threw a gutful of water all over Palli.

  As I sank back, the words came in a hollow rumble all the way up from my belly. It sounded like a belch, no more.

  'What's he say? Bush something?'

  'What was it? Once more. Tell me again. Where is she?'

  I belched and groaned and spewed another bubble of water.

  'The Pushkin? The trawler in the harbour?' I groaned again.

  I could hear them talkin
g. Boat? What boat? Russian. Spy boat. What'd I tell you. Said he knew. Knew he knew. Take him somewhere. Doctor. The hell. Live. Die. Out here, who cares? Let's go. Doc. No doc. Finished. Waste of time. If he gets back. Laughter. Nowhere. Going nowhere. He's going nowhere.

  Peace covered me. Pleasure like I have never known filled me. If only they'd said what they wanted. Good old Palli. He knew all along. I lay there, going nowhere, finished, and the only sound was the hiss and crash of the falling water.

  39

  Nature woke me just in time to be principal witness at my own death-bed scene. Or so it seemed to me.

  It was the cold that snapped me into consciousness. The stiff mountain wind had almost dried my trousers, shirt and jacket, and driven the aching cold of the waterfall deep into my bones. I could feel my whole body shaking. My teeth weren't chattering- they were taking burger-sized bites out of the air. Yet my mind was diamond-sharp. I felt as though I could solve the mystery of the world's creation and still go on to do the Daily Mirror crossword. I was that good. I was so amazingly alert that I even knew the alertness itself wasn't real.

  But I still couldn't see. Easy. Rip off bandages. I said it again: rip off bandages. No one did anything. Right. Hand, I said, with more severity this time, rip off sodding bandages. Slowly, lazily, hand plucked at them. Fortunately, the soaking and the drying had weakened them and eventually they fell in a thin rolled collar around my neck.

  My eyes flinched from the light. I clapped my hands over them, massaging them slowly as they became accustomed to it. I'd no idea how long they'd been bound. My watch had gone, ripped away under the waterfall.

  As my eyesight cleared, I looked around. The sky was a uniform pale grey and the light was the pearly dream light of the northern night. It was still night then.

  They'd dropped me fifty yards or so from the waterfall. I'd heard it for so long now that its thunder was a perpetual background. The river came down from my left in a wide smooth sweep which broke up when it hit a series of stepped falls, each ten or twenty foot deep. There the water whitened among the first rocks, fell into a deep pool where it slowed and circled, recovering its dazzling blue, then gradually inched up to the cliff-edge where it crashed in one unbroken cascade. From where I was, it stretched out in a pretty lace curtain that had nothing to do with the boiling spitting mass which had pounded me. Around it rose the spray, in glittering clouds. After the falls, the river ran off unseen in a chasm across the wide flat lava field, whose perimeter was ringed in the far distance by saw-edged, white-tipped mountains.

  Around me were bare rocks, every shade from black to bright rust red. Beyond that, a few yards away, was a long sloping incline of springy moorland grass, with deep tyre marks showing where the car had gone. The nylon rope was on the ground beside me. It must've been fastened to the bumper of the car- which explained why I'd risen so swiftly.

  That was the way they'd gone. That was the way I'd have to go, too. Somewhere down that track there must be a road, and a road meant tourists and traffic.

  So. All I had to do was to get up and go.

  Up we go, wobble for balance, step forward, one two three four, crash, down. Damned legs withdrawn labour. Sit up. Try again. Stand. Slowly this time. Better. Straighten, right foot, left foot. Knees like broken hinges, legs go again. Christ. Down again. In the mud.

  Stay here. Lie here. Till they come. Aha. Trick. No one coming. No one knows. No one cares. Unwanted orphan. Always alone. Dying, on cold rock on top of world.

  Legs, I said, move. Up again. Right foot, left foot, right foot.

  Again and again. Brow of hill. At last. View across lava field. Oh, my God! Miles and miles of it. Thin brown track runs in long straight line to base of mountain range. Road at foot of range. How far? Three miles. More. Hours of walking. Can't make it. Never. Never.

  Next time, it was the heat that awakened me. Before my eyes opened I felt the hot stable breath around my ear and neck and thought that Oscar had come back to give me another shower.

  I turned my head and half-rolled over. A pony, its black rubber mouth and nose nuzzling my neck, swung its head round and trotted off. Then I saw I was surrounded by them. There must've been nearly twenty of the rough-coated ponies that run in herds there and come down to the road for salt.

  As I sat up, swords of pain cut into me and my diamond sharp mind felt about as brilliant as a bucket of mud. I knew where I was all right. And I could see the line of the road under the mountains in the distance. It must be another two to three miles away still. Two or three yards I could manage. Miles, never.

  Some of the clouds had shifted now and pale sunlight was painting the lava field in moss-green patches. The night was over. I squinted again at the distant road and saw a cloud of dust moving jerkily along its course. A car, probably taking tourists up to the waterfalls at Gullfoss.

  I looked at the ponies again. What's good enough for an Icelandic shepherd is good enough for a Fleet Street hack, that's what I always say. You never know: they might be on a good mileage rate.

  But first I had to see what shape I was in. Christ! I lurched up, feeling terrible. The journey in the boot of the car and the hammering I'd taken under the water had beaten every ounce of strength out of me. I felt like a cut-out-paper man- I had the general shape, but none of the substance. Still, I was- for the moment at any rate- upright.

  The ponies had moved off when I got to my feet. Now I had to address myself to horse psychology. It was around thirty years since I'd done that with a little fat grey kept by an even fatter girl near Sevenoaks. She let me ride the pony if I kissed her in the stable. I was crazy about horses, so I did. It was my first conscious act of compromise and the first bitter realisation that nothing comes without a price. It would probably have been more acceptable the other way round.

  One thing about her pony, she didn't like being caught. So I had to learn all sorts of subterfuges.

  One thing horses don't like are creatures taller than themselves. Which is why they moved off when I stood up. But something low on the ground, like a smaller animal, often makes them curious. That's why they were giving me the once over when I woke up.

  Knees creaking, I bent slowly, agonisingly, to my haunches.

  And I inspected the opposition.

  The one that had come to have a look was the boss, a big grey, fourteen hands or more. He'd trotted off with neck arched and his tail in a proud curve. Any other day I'd have loved to ride him. Today, with no bridle and no saddle and no strength no thank you.

  What I wanted was something small, dull, placid and safe.

  Then I saw her, Doris. I thought of the name immediately. She was a little piebald, black and white, and by the look of her she'd dedicated all her waking hours to eating. The basic design was card-table, flat-backed with a leg at each corner. She was just what I was looking for. And when I moved and the others twitched their ears and shuffled off, she stayed, nose down, hunting one last blade of grass. Doris. She had to be a Doris.

  The problem was, how could I interest her? The second problem was how could I hold her? And the third was how could I mount her?

  First things first. I looked around to see what natural resources nature had given me. Answer: rocks. I could knock her out with a rock and sit on her until she woke up. Ha, ha. I checked my pockets. If only I hadn't stopped smoking ... shake a matchbox and horses are always curious. Ah, the car keys. They'd survived the buffeting.

  Doris was already having a good look at me while she ate. When she heard the keys, her ears went on red alert and she lifted her head. Then she turned her head on one side. Did she like it? Was it worth coming over for a look? Or was she far too sophisticated for all that catchpenny stuff?

  Not Doris. She came swinging over, not too quickly, but definitely interested.

  As she came I pulled my tie undone. It wasn't much more than a damp piece of string now, but a piece of string was exactly what I wanted. I looped it round into a thumb-knot and held it in my left hand.
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  Then I jangled the keys again. I made those clicking and cooing sounds that I used all those years ago. I don't know about ponies but the Sevenoaks girl always liked them. On came Doris. Good as gold. Then, a yard away, she stopped. She stood there. Come on, old girl, come on, darling, come here.

  A whinny vibrated in the air and Doris looked up. The herd was at the top of the bank now and just about to disappear over the top. The grey, acting as courier on this package, was giving her the last call. As soon as I saw he was going to whinny again, I began coughing. Not too loudly, not enough to frighten her, but enough to cover his last call and to distract her from the herd.

  Then, without any encouragement, she swung down her beautiful head and pushed her nose into the hand which held the keys.

  'Oh, you lovely big softie,' I said, and the soiled, stained, ragged neckwear officially authorised by the Groombridge

  Cricket Club slipped over her head and tightened just behind her ears. I'd got me a hoss. Question was, could I ride it now I'd got it?

  With pain springing in every move, I weaved unsteadily to my feet. Doris didn't panic.

  This is the point in all good cowboy films where the hero grabs the horse's mane, leaps astride and gallops off. With most horses, if you tried that you'd be left with a handful of hair and the dying clatter of hooves as it vanished over the horizon.

  But Doris wasn't an inch over twelve hands. Tired as I was, there had to be some way I could get on board her. I leaned against her, resting and thinking. She dropped her head and started casting about for breakfast and, when something caught her eye, she moved off a couple of steps- and down six inches.

  She'd stepped into a gulley. Still hanging on, I edged my way up a bump of rock so that I was now almost looking down on the broad, black and white back of our Doris.

  I could mount her easily from there. Except for one thing. I couldn't.

  It hadn't struck me until that moment. I was far too weakened to ride her. I couldn't even begin to sit upright on a moving horse. I'd caught her, got her in position, and now there wasn't a thing I could do about it. I could've cried.