The Ice House

by John Connor

  ‘Nothing is OK,’ Viktor said quietly. ‘I wanted to kill you, Liz. I wanted to kill all of you.’

  She nodded frantically, her brain racking up the possible moves. What did she do now? What could she do?

  ‘I looked for you for years,’ he said. ‘I was thinking there must be a mistake, that you must have been mistaken to leave me. But I couldn’t find you. I couldn’t find you anywhere.’ He looked up at her. ‘I can hardly look at you, Liz.’ He started to cry. He was standing like a helpless, grief-stricken little boy, just standing there crying, the tears running down his cheeks. ‘I couldn’t find you,’ he repeated. ‘But Mikhael Ivanovich found you. He wouldn’t tell me where you were, but I paid a lot of money to find out.’ He looked up, wiped his eyes again, using the hand holding the gun. ‘You had a daughter. I couldn’t believe it. When I first saw photos of her …’ he pointed through Julia, towards Rebecca, cowering behind her, ‘I thought she must be ours. I thought she had to be our child.’ He gave a short, bitter laugh. ‘I paid one of her teachers to get a drop of her blood, had it tested, because I thought she had to be mine. Almost my DNA they told me. Almost. It took me a while to put it together, a few more samples, a few more tests, because I couldn’t get myself to believe it. She was my fucking brother’s child.’ He was silent for a long time, not looking at either of them. Julia could see his jaw working away. He shook his head, as if confused. ‘I thought it would work, put things right. I thought it would be a kind of justice if that bastard killed his own kid. Justice for me. But that all went wrong. And here you are in front of me. He’s dead and here you both are.’

  ‘You don’t have to hurt anyone else,’ she said quickly. ‘We can talk about all of it. I can tell you why I left, I can explain it all …’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he said.

  ‘If Alex is hurt we should help him,’ she tried. ‘He’s your brother—’

  ‘He’s dead,’ he said, flatly. ‘Forget him.’

  ‘You can tell me what you want, Viktor,’ she said, her voice so strained, so high-pitched with stress that it sounded like someone else talking through her. ‘We can talk, Viktor. That’s what you said you wanted …’

  He shrugged his big shoulders. ‘I don’t need to,’ he said. ‘Not now. I’ve seen you, seen your face again.’ He brought the free hand up and rubbed it through his hair. ‘You don’t know how much my life has depended upon seeing your face again.’ He tried to smile, but it didn’t work. ‘You don’t understand,’ he said. ‘You don’t understand any of it. What I feel here …’ He took a huge breath, then smacked his clenched fist against his chest. ‘What I feel for you, Liz. What I felt then, what I’ve always felt. I told you it would never go away and it hasn’t. It’s still there, Liz, still massive inside me.’

  She didn’t know what to say. She opened her mouth to apologise, to start to try to explain something, to plead with him again, but he held a hand up, stopping her.

  ‘Shut up,’ he said. ‘You’re only going to lie. You’re frightened of me, right?’

  She nodded, biting her lip, desperately keeping Rebecca pushed behind her. She thought this was it, that he was going to start shooting, right now. She took her hand off Rebecca and held the shotgun with both hands, brought it up and pointed it at him, pulled her finger through the first empty trigger so that it was resting against the second. He shook his head, did something to the pistol in his hands, pulled the slide back so that it clicked, then looked up at her as if he had only noticed for the first time that she was armed. ‘What are you going to do?’ he asked quietly, staring at the shotgun. ‘Shoot me? Do you feel nothing at all for me, Liz? Is that what it’s like?’

  She put the stock into her shoulder, tried to hold it firmly, the little iron sight right over his chest. ‘I don’t want to shoot you,’ she said. ‘I want this to stop.’

  ‘But you don’t love me, do you?’

  ‘That’s not what this is about.’

  ‘Tell me the truth. Last chance. Did you ever love me?’

  All she could hear was her heart and a scream of fright that couldn’t get out of her mouth. She pulled the trigger.

  The blast took her off her feet, the recoil forcing her back into Rebecca, sending the gun flying out of her hands. She went over her and down to the ground, then spun round and got her hands over her daughter’s head, trying to protect her. They were both on the ground. She thought he would start shooting, thought he would somehow roll through the snow and come up with the gun. There was nothing she could do. The shotgun had only two cartridges – Alex had told her that – and she had fired both.

  In the silence that followed, crouched over her daughter, waiting, the sequence ran through her mind several times before it all sank in.

  He was not going to just roll, get up and start shooting at them. Because she had seen him take the blast in his chest and head, seen what happened to his chest and head, seen the gun flying off, seen his arms in the air, seen his body driven backwards in a hail of shot discharged at near point-blank range. The mess, the torso slamming off the ground – she had seen it all as she tumbled backwards over her daughter. And now, when she forced herself to open her eyes, move her head and look, she could see the body lying there trembling.

  56

  They sat for minutes in the snow, hugging each other, rocking back and forwards, crying, Julia stroking Rebecca’s head, Rebecca’s face buried into her chest.

  Then her brain started to work again. She told Rebecca to stay where she was, then walked quickly over to Viktor’s body. She didn’t want to look, but she forced herself, then turned away, retching. She moved back to Rebecca. ‘Where’s Alex, Becky?’ she asked. ‘Do you know where he is?’

  But Rebecca just frowned, shook her head.

  ‘The guy you called Carl?’ Julia tried.

  That worked.

  They walked slowly through the field, following Rebecca’s footprints in the otherwise pristine snow. They came to the huddled body of another man first. Rebecca said it might be someone who had worked for Viktor, someone who had been in the car with them. But they couldn’t see his face. He was dead.

  Alex was just past him. He was lying near the start of the trees, at the other side of a broken wall, the ground disturbed all around him. Beside him Julia could see blood, very red against the bright, white snow. His arms were stretched out, the legs together. He was on his side. Rebecca started to sob. Julia stopped about five metres back and put her hand in her mouth, bit down on the gloved knuckles.

  ‘He tried to get them off me,’ Rebecca said, her voice faint.

  Julia nodded. She couldn’t see his face, and didn’t want to. She didn’t think she could bear it. She had been here once before and thought he was dead. That time she had been wrong. It had been Michael hanging on the rope. But she had still run from him, tried to put it all behind her. That had just delayed it, it seemed. Now it had caught up.

  She edged cautiously around him, not wanting to see his eyes, if he had been shot there, if he looked like Viktor. She was still two metres back when she realised his chest was moving. He was breathing.

  57

  She found Alex’s phone and used it.

  It took Michael Rugojev almost three hours to get to her, but the military helicopter he arranged to pick up Alex was hovering overhead within forty minutes. Forty desperate minutes trying to keep him alive. She had no idea how to do it, no real medical training aside from a first aid course.

  Rugojev connected her to a doctor, in a hospital somewhere, a man who spoke bad English, who had no sympathy. Rebecca held the phone whilst Julia followed his instructions. At one point they had to take a film of the wound and mail it to him. There was only one wound – the ‘entry point’, he called it – in Alex’s chest, to the right of where she guessed his heart was. It was small, gently pulsing blood when she first uncovered it. She had to stop that, by compres
sing the injury and moving his body to another position. She held her hand there until it ached, then was told to stop – too long was dangerous, because if he was still haemorrhaging internally the pressure would build and collapse his other lung. One lung, the doctor decided, was already punctured and collapsed. But he could live if they could keep his airways clear. It was possible.

  She heard the helicopter but didn’t see where it landed. Four very young Russian soldiers appeared from the back of the house. They had a stretcher, no guns. They spoke no English. She assumed this was the kind of favour Michael Rugojev could call up.

  They took over from her, took him away. She held his hand on the stretcher and hung on to it all the way round the house until they got to a helipad she hadn’t seen before. There was a painful, percussive clatter as the helicopter came into view – a huge, military black and green thing.

  She held her bloody hands over her ears and watched them load him on board, then ran back as it took off, fleeing the ­vicious downdraught. She watched it disappear over the trees, then went back to where she had left Rebecca, sitting in the snow, too cold, too shocked, too frightened. They went into the house to wait for Rugojev, to warm themselves. They sat in the kitchen she had once worked in. She could see the place in the floorboards where she had hidden. It was still there.

  Alex had said nothing to her. She had spoken to him all the time she was doing what the doctor said. With Rebecca listening she had talked about them, about their past, about what they had felt for each other ten years before, about how that feeling had been with her ever since. She had begged and begged him to just hang in there, to stay with her. She had even promised that if he did then they could start again. At the time she had meant it all. But he had said nothing, hadn’t even opened his eyes. She wondered if he heard any of it.

  58

  In the days that followed, Michael Rugojev took control. It was what he was good at. The man whose life Julia had accidentally saved. He looked just the same as she remembered him. He had the same patronising tone, the same oddly disturbing, myopic eyes. She suffered him because they had few options, but she hated every minute and felt the same contempt for Rugojev that she had experienced ten years before. She knew what he was.

  She tried to hide it, to keep her feelings to herself, and he didn’t seem to notice. Or maybe most people were like that with him and he either didn’t care or thought that it was all just normal. To be disliked, in secret, to be never told the truth. There were plenty of people around him radiating a kind of awestruck respect, of course; all the entourage: the assistants, organisers, managers, hangers-on.

  There were things to take care of and they took care of them. Julia rarely had to do anything. They were driven in an armed convoy to St Petersburg – Rebecca and herself. They were put in a luxury apartment with armed guards on the door and down on the street. Michael came to give personal assurances that they would be protected, personal apologies for the actions of his family. They were given a PA called Arisha Vostrikova to cater for their needs. Julia quickly grew to detest her. It was Arisha who told them what was happening outside the apartment.

  Alex had been flown to a military hospital, then to another clinic in Moscow. He was lucky, they were told. Julia could believe that. She tried to think that it didn’t matter how he was doing – whether he was crippled, brain-damaged, in a wheelchair, but lucky to be alive, or whether he was exactly as he had been, fully recovered. It didn’t matter because she didn’t want anything to do with him. She had made that decision – the right one – ten years ago. But she found it difficult to keep her thoughts off him. He had saved Rebecca’s life. And Rebecca spoke about him every day. Rebecca wanted to see him.

  Julia didn’t ask for other details but Arisha gave them anyway. Zaikov was being dealt with. He had been told a version of the truth – that Viktor had shot Zaikov’s son Uri ten years ago, that Viktor was dead, that Rugojev would take over where Viktor had left off, that their families were safer together, that it was time to move on. ‘Michael will probably put a contract on him,’ she had added, poker-faced, then saw Julia’s expression and smiled, as if it were – obviously – a joke. Arisha thought Zaikov was nothing to be afraid of. ‘The only man to be frightened of,’ she remarked, ‘is Michael. And he loves you as a daughter.’

  ‘He doesn’t even know me,’ Julia had replied.

  She was wanted in Spain but they had hired lawyers to deal with that. Michael thought money would solve it – Spain was as corrupt as Russia, which made life easy for him. Molina was alive and had said nothing about her stabbing him. So far the investigations in London hadn’t identified her, though she was advised to keep out of the UK. She heard almost nothing of how they were dealing with the bodies at The Ice House – though the one she had shot on the road had lived, they said. She learned nothing of Michael’s attitude to the death of his once favourite nephew. She didn’t ask and aside from his apology, Michael never once mentioned Viktor. He spoke in glowing terms of Alex, however – Aleksi, as he called him.

  All this washed over her head. She had her hands full trying to keep herself together, trying to take it all in without breaking down. A confusing life filled with alien faces speaking in a ­foreign language swam around her. She felt drugged, as if she was existing in a subtly altered reality. She stayed close to Rebecca, tried to shut it out. But sooner or later she was going to have to work out what to tell Rebecca. Rebecca had accepted her silences about Juan so far, but that news was going to hit hard when she could face giving her it.

  They were in Russia only three days, then a helicopter flew them both to Finland, to Helsinki, to a property Michael had on an island in the south harbour. Alex had been moved to a private clinic in the city, they were informed. He was doing well. The bullet had missed everything it needed to hit. He had lost a lot of blood, but not enough to kill him. The suggestion was that he would be in hospital there for another two months. They were asked if they wanted to visit him.

  She should have told Rebecca everything before they went, she realised. But she couldn’t do it. Rebecca was distressed enough as it was.

  The hospital looked more like an expensive, chic hotel, at least in the public areas. Visitors drove up to the front entrance and handed over their car keys to some uniformed flunkey who went off and parked the car in an underground garage. In the reception area there was a wall that looked more like a huge red cliff on a tropical island. And palm trees, and fountains, and designer label shops. The floors gleamed. Octogenarian women dripping tasteless designer opulence were pushed around in wheelchairs as if they had an appointment in a beauty salon.

  Once she was in the room with him the reality was undeni­able. He was propped up in bed, in a restricted space that smelled like any other hospital room, the odour of disinfectant mixing with less identifiable traces of sickness and decay. There were tubes and monitors all over, including those coming out of his nostrils. On the floor there was a big glass container attached to a device of some sort with flexible plastic pipes that ran into his side, through blood-stained bandages. It made a mechanical sucking noise and a pink, frothy liquid seemed to be moving slowly down the tubes, gathering in the jar.

  But he was awake, eyes open. And he could speak. Julia sat on the edge of the bed with her heart thundering and told him tearfully that she had asked Rebecca to wait outside. She told him she was glad that he was alive.

  ‘I need to see her,’ he said. He spoke slowly, breathed slowly. They had told her one lung had a hole in it.

  She reached out and found his hand, held it. ‘I haven’t told her yet,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t do it. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. I just want to see her.’ He squeezed her hand gently. ‘Please.’

  She nodded. ‘She wants to see you too. She has spoken about you a lot.’

  When Rebecca came in, Julia sat on a chair to one side and watched them, watched Rebecca’s
eyes light up as she saw him, watched the smile that flickered across his lips, transforming his appearance, even with the wires and drips. There was something between them – more than what they had experienced together. Or maybe only that – but it was enough.

  Rebecca sat on the bed, where she had sat, held his hand and thanked him, over and over again. He looked at her with his eyelids drooping, the daft smile on his face. Then there was silence. What could be said was too heavy, too horrible. No one wanted to deal with it while he was still plugged into drips and drainers, heart monitors and catheters. And within five minutes his eyes were closed.

  Julia stood up and touched Rebecca’s shoulder, got her to leave the room. When she was out she stood for a long while just looking at him. He was asleep, she thought, or drugged. Each breath he took brought a gurgling rattle, magnified through the tubes running out of him. But they had assured her that he would live and be fine, that his lung would work, his chest heal and his life return to normal. Normal. She no longer had any idea what that was.

  The things she had felt for him hadn’t changed at all. She had run from those emotions ten years ago and it hadn’t worked. It definitely hadn’t worked. The world had thrust him back at her. He was the father of her daughter. She had made promises to him while they were carrying him to the helicopter, and had thought afterwards that, since he hadn’t heard any of them, it would be OK, at some point, to just forget them, to say goodbye, to get her daughter away from him and away from all this. But now she thought that probably wasn’t going to be possible.