The Ice House

by John Connor

  He was making a line to get down to where he remembered the perimeter fence might be, when he heard something off to his right, back in the direction he had come from. He stopped and crouched low, letting his breathing settle. The forest floor was almost bare of undergrowth here, so there was no chance of cover. The big padded coat he’d taken from Viktor’s cloakroom, however, was predominantly off-white, with a big black stripe running diagonally. So when he was sure he couldn’t see anyone near, he dropped down to his belly in the snow and listened. He had thought he was making too much noise to hear anything. Since starting he had seen movement twice, out of the corner of his eye, but both times it had been crows taking off for the treetops, and he had seen them before he heard anything.

  He let his eyes focus in the general direction of the sound. What had it been? Someone talking, maybe even laughing. As his breath fell to normal the forest seemed very silent. He got back to his knees, pulled the binoculars from beneath the coat. They were a powerful set he had taken from the house in Gumbacka, not the cheap pair Liz had brought with her.

  He scanned carefully, slowly, methodically. Within seconds he saw he was much further forward than he had thought. Through the lenses he could clearly see the perimeter fence, about one hundred and fifty metres to his right through the dense mass of tree trunks. As he watched he picked out movement on the other side of it, and at the same time a voice floated over to him.

  Because of the folds of the land he could only see the head and shoulders. He got to his feet, braced the binoculars against a tree trunk and watched. It was a man, walking just the other side of the perimeter fence, perhaps two hundred metres distant, heading up the hill Carl had just descended on the blind side. He had his hand to his ear and was talking either into a mobile or a radio. Carl started to move at a forty-five degree angle from him, closing on the fence. He paused frequently to check he could still get a visual on the man.

  Within a few minutes he was at the fence. It ran right through the forest at head height in a dead-straight line, overlapping layers of chain-link suspended on concrete posts. The top strand was electrified, but there was no razor wire and considering its general condition Carl had a feeling the electric circuit wouldn’t be working. This fence had been there when he was last here, if he was remembering properly. He followed the line and saw many places where trees grew directly through it, or over it, branches crossing the top strand. He could see no CCTV fixtures.

  Mikhael Ivanovich had given this place to Viktor, the story went, a couple of years after Zaikov’s son tried to hang him here. After that he hadn’t wanted to ever set foot in the place again. The expectation had been that Viktor would sell it. But Viktor had set it up as some kind of hospitality package instead, a place he could fly prospective business partners during the summer months for luxury weekends in the middle of nowhere. Viktor rarely visited himself, and when he did there would usually be the standard security entourage at his side. The function of this fence, then, was just to mark the boundary of the property. Carl put a gloved hand out and gripped the top strand. It was dead.

  He forced the chain-link down about midway between two posts and pulled himself over with ease. As he came off it he heard it twang with a metallic vibration that would run the length of it. He got down low and kept still, watching to see if the man walking alongside it in the distance would hear anything. He didn’t react. Carl was close enough to see him without the binoculars now, on a path that had been cleared beside the fence. He was about a quarter of a kilometre from the stable building. He had a rifle slung over one shoulder.

  He got the binoculars up again and followed the fence round the back of the stables. He could see no sign of Liz. But if she was waiting in the car then she was only about two hundred metres back from where this man was going to walk, assuming his role was to cover the perimeter. He would be there in about ten minutes. That made Carl nervous. It would have been better to have got her to drive the car back down the road, well out of range.

  He got his phone out – a new one taken from Viktor’s office – and saw there was a signal. But he had neither of her numbers. He had spent some time much earlier, whilst she had done a spell of driving, trying to extract the numbers from the phones, without any luck. Calling his phone from them hadn’t worked either – somehow, the number hadn’t been communicated: one of them had come from Viktor, the other from an employee of Mikhael Ivanovich, a man called Drake. Either it was the models or they had set them up like that, as a precaution.

  He turned his attention from the man and examined the land ahead. The forest fell into a small valley where he remembered there was a stream in summer. From the other side he would come out into the gardens to the rear of the main building. From there he would have a good clear view of the property. He could get there in a couple of minutes, check out as much as he could, get back to Liz twenty-five minutes after that. It was either that or follow the guy walking the perimeter, make sure he didn’t come into contact with her.

  He got the binoculars up again. The guy had his head down, and he was still speaking to someone, on a mobile, Carl thought. It was a risk to ignore him. But if Liz did what he had asked her to do then the guy wouldn’t see her. He was pretty sure she wouldn’t be pacing around in the woods exposing herself to unwanted attention. She was more frightened than he was. And he was frightened. He could feel his heart, the sweat across his forehead. This wasn’t something he was good at. It involved getting in close. He liked to keep away from danger, use a long range sight. That was what he was trained to do, not sneaking around on his belly with a gun that he probably wouldn’t even be able to shoot straight.

  He checked the time on the mobile again. He would take the risk. He stood and started to hurry towards the frozen stream bed.

  53

  Julia waited fifteen minutes in the car, then had to get out. The anxiety was like a worm in her brain, screaming at her, telling her she had to get to Rebecca. She got out the phone many times. She needed to make the call to Viktor – she had told him she would call when they were near – but there was no signal in the car. She had told Rebecca she would be five hours but it had been a lot longer than that. She needed Rebecca to know she was here, that she was coming. It was absurd that she had arrived, that her daughter was only a few hundred metres away from her, yet she could do nothing but sit here fretting. If she called Viktor then he would bring Rebecca to the phone. She needed to hear her voice, to know for certain that she was still unharmed.

  But what if Rebecca had done what she said, what if she had actually managed to get away from him? She cursed the advice she had given. It was reckless, ill thought out. Or not thought out at all. Where could Rebecca possibly hide? If she got out of the building then there was nothing but forest and sub-zero temperatures. If she tried to hide inside the place they would find her, do something to her. The advice had been insane.

  But what else could she say? She had no idea if Viktor intended to wait until she arrived. Maybe he had planned to kill Rebecca once he knew she was coming, in which case it was essential that Rebecca not just sit around waiting for her, waiting for Viktor to end her life.

  She started crying again, gagging in her throat, but nothing came out of her eyes. They were red and swollen and sore. She had cried so much there were no tears left. She felt utterly ­stupid and helpless. The despair was like a massive weight inside her, pulling her into the ground.

  So she got out and walked towards the house, following the road, phone in her hand, watching for a signal. Alex had left the shotgun on the passenger seat, beside her, loaded and ready, ‘safety off’, as he said. He had even showed her what to do with it – point it and pull the triggers, one at a time. There were two triggers – that was the only complication. But she had barely listened, and she was cautiously approaching the bend in the road – the point where it crested the slight ridge and started downhill – before she realised she had left the gu
n on the seat.

  Like Alex had done, she cut away from the road, into the forest, then crouched and crept closer to the edge. She needed to see what was going on. If something went wrong and she could see things happening, then maybe she could react, do something about it. She couldn’t just keep out of it, sit there blind and helpless.

  It was only when the house came into view again that she got a signal on the phone. The house was the same as it had been twenty minutes ago, still and silent. She couldn’t see Alex anywhere. She rolled sideways, onto her back, and put in the number Viktor had texted her. She pressed to call and held it to her ear, held her breath. She was already shivering violently.

  ‘Liz,’ he said. ‘Are you here?’ The same calm voice. She bit down on her knuckles to stop herself from sobbing aloud. ‘Can you hear me, Liz?’ he asked.

  ‘I can hear you,’ she said.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I’m near. I need to speak to Rebecca.’

  ‘Are you on the road? How did you get here?’

  ‘Let me speak to her. Please. Let me speak to her.’ She had to stop herself screaming it.

  ‘I’ll get her. She’s sleeping.’ There was a pause, then he said, ‘I’ll call you back.’ The line went dead. Had there been a different tone in his voice?

  She waited, then turned onto her stomach again and stared at the building. He was in there, moving from one room to another, going for her daughter. But she could see nothing.

  Suddenly, she heard something from below her, from down near the old stable block, a crackle and a voice, high-pitched, mechanical, like over a radio set. It came to her very clearly through the still air. She could hear words being spoken, but in Russian, or some other language she didn’t understand. She twisted in the snow and looked off to the left, then froze. There was a man standing there, not fifty metres from her. He had a long gun in one hand, a handheld radio in the other, pressed against his mouth. He started to speak into it as she was looking. She squirmed back a little, pressed herself flat. The crackle came again across the snow, then the same voice over the radio, very loud. Was it Viktor? She felt the breath catch in her throat. The man said something curt, then lowered the radio into his pocket. He seemed to be looking straight at her. She kept still, paralysed with indecision. Wait, or get up and run? He had a gun, but as soon as she moved away from the edge she would be out of sight, unless he ran up and over it, after her. Then it would be a race to the car. There were many trees to cover her.

  She let a breath out, pressed herself even lower. Maybe he would walk away. At that moment the phone in her hand began to ring.

  Rebecca was facing backwards, hanging onto the inside edge of the window sill, one knee still inside the frame, the other leg outside and feeling against the wall with her toes, trying to find the ledge. She got her foot against it and brought the other leg down, still hanging on. She stood as best she could on the ledge, straightened her arms, without looking down, and looked past the open window pane to where the ledge led along to the flat roof. It was about three metres away. But to get there she would have to get past the open window pane. She could take one hand off the sill, she thought, get it around the central window strut, then shuffle nearer to the pane, lean out and close the window so she could get past it. But would she then be able to reach to the next window ledge?

  She didn’t think so. She started trembling, her knees shaking so much she could feel her feet starting to slip. She bit her lip and a little squeaky noise of fright came out of her throat. There was no way she could move along the ledge without hanging onto something, and past her own window there was a two-metre gap before she could get her hand on the next window. So she couldn’t do it. She looked down and gripped the sill even tighter, forcing her knees against the stonework. From her feet to the ground was further than she had thought, but still less than a three-metre drop. She could do it. But she didn’t know how deep the snow was, or what was beneath it.

  She started to change position, moving her left hand to get a better grip so she could lean out and lower her right leg a little more. Then she heard a noise from within the room, an unmistakable noise – someone turning a key in a lock. She moved her weight quickly back towards the wall, thinking she would try to hide there, on the outside of the window, keeping her head down until they left, but her training shoe slipped and her left leg dropped into mid-air. There was a moment where she thought she could recover the position, get the leg back up. But her balance changed as the leg swung out and she twisted sharply, one hand automatically coming off the sill. She tried to get her fingers into the window hinge to stop her body moving further round, at the same time lifting the left leg to try again with the toe, but before she even properly knew what was happening her other leg had slid off the edge and she was falling.

  There was no time to do anything like think about how to land. Her hands were off and the next moment she was striking the ground. She felt the impact, then was rolling in snow. She didn’t even have time to shout.

  She was breathing fast. Above her she could see the open window. She was on her back, half-buried in a snow drift, her bum smarting a little, her head spinning, but unhurt. She rolled onto her side and got to her knees. She stood carefully, ­bracing herself against the house wall, just in case something was injured. There was a scraping noise above her and she turned her head up to see the window pane moving, a hand pulling at it. She flattened herself against the house wall as a head looked out – Viktor, she thought, though from the angle it was hard to tell. He shouted something very loud. There was a pause and she thought he would pull his head back, disappear, but instead he looked straight down, straight at her.

  He yelled at her immediately, his face red with anger. She pushed off the wall and tripped in the snow, fell face first into the drift. He was shouting her name as she got herself up again, swearing at her in English. She didn’t look up but half stepped, half ran towards the part of the building with the flat roof. If she got round it she would be out of his sight. Her head was very clear now. She sucked the icy air into her lungs. She could see the line of trees, the darkness beneath them. She gritted her teeth, put her head down and ran.

  A trap, a fucking trap. Viktor had hung up and rung back to give her position away. As Julia scrambled backwards, the phone stopped suddenly. She glanced back, saw the man bringing the gun up, then twisted and dived headfirst down the slope. As she staggered to her knees the phone came out of her hand and spun off, causing her to hesitate just long enough to hear the crack of a gunshot close behind. She heard a splintering noise in the branches above her, ducked her head and yelled out, forgot about the phone. She started running for the car, one hand fumbling in her pocket for the key card.

  She was quickly over the ridge and out of sight, weaving through the mass of tree trunks, panting, trying to look behind without crashing into anything. She was almost at the car before he came into view. She tumbled out of the forest onto the road and tried to sprint the last few metres, but her feet slipped treacherously on the compacted, icy surface. She heard him yell something, then a terrifying bang as he fired again. She thought she saw a spray of snow kicked up from near the driver’s door. She got to it, skidding, falling, dragging herself up, wrenched the door open and looked back. He was running full out for her, the gun at his side.

  She got in and banged the door shut, pressed the ignition and got her feet onto the pedals. It was an automatic, a diesel. It seemed to splutter to life in agonising slow motion. She saw herself engaging the gear stick into drive, yelling incoherently, heard the wheels spinning, then catching on the chains. With a lurch she was moving.

  She spun the wheel to keep to the road, flattened the accelerator and felt the whole car slip and skid. It came out of it and started picking up speed. She saw him stop, off to the left, still deep in the trees. There was a flash and the next second the windscreen erupted into a rain of shattered glass.
The screen collapsed and the frozen air rushed in at her. Automatically, she floored the brake, twisting the car to a halt, then screamed with frustration. She had stalled it.

  She tried desperately to start it again, her fingers fumbling with fright. She was still below the bend in the road, stopped at right angles, across the road. She could see him moving in front of her, no more than ten metres away, moving towards her through the trees. Everything was clear because there was only a broken rim of glass where the windscreen should be. With horror, she saw him pause a second time, raise the gun to his shoulder and fire. She yelled and ducked low, moving sideways across the passenger seat, so that her right arm was pressing on the stock of the shotgun. For the first time since she had seen him she remembered it was there.

  She brought it up with two hands and pushed it through the hole where the glass had been, her finger pressed against the first trigger, ready. But now he had vanished. She dropped her left hand off the gun, leaving it lying across the dashboard, resting against the broken glass, pointed straight out, her finger still on the trigger, then found the starter button and pressed it.

  The engine came to life just as he jumped into view. He had come from the left, from behind a screen of bushes. He came onto the road right in front of her, not two metres away from the bonnet, the gun held at his shoulder, pointed directly at her. She pulled the trigger.

  There was an ear-splitting bang. The shotgun leaped up and struck the top of the windscreen frame, twisting her hand. Behind it she saw him picked from his feet and thrown back. She pressed the accelerator. The car turned sideways and started grinding up the hill, the tyres spinning. She ignored the pain in her wrist and hauled at the wheel. The car righted itself slowly, but she had control. She pressed the accelerator more cautiously, felt the chains get traction, ducked her head low and prayed that he wasn’t capable of getting up.