‘Pretty quick,’ says Miller. ‘We don’t like to waste time.’ He shakes his head. ‘Why’d you come out here unarmed? I thought you were better than that. I offered you a job, man. Christ Almighty. I’m disappointed.’
‘My mother often says the same,’ says Thurston, weighing up his chances of disarming the Axe. ‘You sound exactly like her. Although she’s got a better beard than you.’
‘OK,’ says Miller. He waves the barrel of his auto towards Thurston. ‘Take this guy’s fucking head off,’ he tells the Axe.
Thurston slips off his backpack and lets it fall to the ground as the giant approaches. He backs away until he feels his heels hanging over the edge of the trail. Thurston looks over his shoulder at the racing water. He unzips his jacket and lets it fall and Miller laughs.
Thurston reaches his hand around his back into the waistband of his waterproof trousers. He closes his fingers around the handle of his knife. In a smooth movement he flips the knife over and hurls it at the advancing Axel. The blade glances off the guy’s temple, slicing through his woolly hat and taking a chunk out of his ear. Axel bellows in pain and comes at Thurston with the axe swinging. Thurston dodges left and right and then his feet find nothing but cold thin air.
There’s a moment of electric realisation and then he falls.
In the split second before he hits the water he gulps down a last lungful of oxygen before he is greedily sucked down into the Hvítá’s icy depths.
CHAPTER 21
THE COLD ALMOST stops Thurston’s heart but the thick drysuit he’s wearing underneath his clothes keeps him operational.
Just.
The power of the water is astonishing. In zero visibility he feels himself being dragged downwards as though in the maw of some giant beast. He slams hard into a rock wall and then another. It’s only pure luck he hasn’t been smashed into pulp inside the first ten seconds.
He gets drawn into a comparably quieter zone and takes the chance to shrug off the trousers which have been acting as an anchor. He strikes for the surface and then realises.
The falls.
In almost the same moment, some accident of the current brings Thurston to the surface. He gets a brief glimpse of the night sky and registers a noise like a jet engine before he is hurled over the first great stone step and down the Gullfoss Falls.
There’s nothing he can do except hold his breath and hope.
He wraps his arms around his head as he tumbles down. He hits the bottom and comes to a brief stop. A monstrous weight of cascading water is pressing him flat against the rock. He inches forward, blindly, fighting the force pulling him down. He will likely die anyway but if he stays at the bottom of this eddy he will die sooner. It takes Thurston several agonising minutes before he feels the river take him again. Once it does, he is moving faster than ever.
Quite suddenly, he tastes fresh air as the falls spit him over another ledge. He spins and sucks in more air. This time when he hits the water he manages to keep his head above the surface. He feels a fractional easing of the speed of the current and kicks as hard as he can for a spar of snow-covered rock jutting out at an angle. As he gets closer he tries to grab hold of something but his fingers won’t work properly. The rocks are slick with ice and water.
‘C’mon!’ grunts Thurston and he kicks again, finding strength from somewhere.
The river flicks him into a tiny eddy nestling in an elbow of rock. He digs his hands into the shale and hauls himself clear of the water, lungs burning and ice already forming on his hair and face.
He permits himself a few brief seconds before he gets to his feet.
Do nothing and die.
The cold is so intense, so all-consuming, Thurston almost laughs. He feels a drowsiness begin to descend and knows this is hypothermia showing its face. He climbs up a short bank and out across an endless white plain disappearing into the darkness. He has no way of knowing how far he’s come from the point where he entered the water but he’s guessing it’s more than two kilometres.
He flashes on the Land Cruiser parked back by the tourist office. Warmth, shelter, life. He turns back along the river and begins to run.
It’s all he can do.
CHAPTER 22
THURSTON’S BEEN MOVING as best he can for ten minutes when it dawns on him he’s not going to make it back to the Land Cruiser. He’s been dragged too far downstream and the cold is slowing him down too much. If he doesn’t get to shelter in the next few minutes he will die out here.
He reaches a relatively high point of land and climbs, trying to ignore the stabbing pains shooting down his arms and legs as he slithers on the snow. At the top of the rise, his breath coming hard, Thurston scrapes ice from his eyes and rubs his hands while he turns 360 degrees.
He’s looking at a wilderness. A blasted snowscape bounded on one side by distant black mountains. There isn’t a single visible light. The pointlessness of his situation, and the inevitability of his death, hits him hard. His breath hurts his lungs. His limbs are heavy and sleep tugs at his eyelids. It would be so good to sit down, so easy to rest on the soft snow, to close his eyes and forget all about Miller and Sofi and Barb.
And then he sees it. About two hundred metres away. An electric thrill runs through his nervous system. A chance.
A roof.
It’s a farm building of some sort. A cattle shed.
There’s no sign of the farm it belongs to and Thurston can’t risk trying to find it. It’s this stinking hole or nothing.
Dead on his feet, he stumbles the last few metres to the door, lifts the wooden crossbar lock and pushes himself inside.
A wave of beautiful, stinking, animal warmth hits him and Thurston almost faints with relief. He can’t see a thing but inside the stock shed the temperature feels positively tropical by comparison with outside. His arrival is greeted with relative calm and a few disgruntled moans, as though Thurston is a late arrival on an already overcrowded commuter train.
He feels his way round, bumping into the animals as he does. One stands on his foot and he pulls it away, trying not to spook the beast. He has no idea what the animals are apart from the fact they don’t seem to be cows.
In a corner of the shed Thurston comes across a stack of large thick plastic bags scattered on top of a heap of straw bales. Moving as quickly as he is able, and shivering violently, he fills one of them with loose straw. There are only minutes left before he succumbs to the cold, even in here. He stuffs his wet snow boots with straw. If he’s going to survive this he’ll need to walk out of here. Without the boots he won’t stand a chance.
He places his boots on a hay bale and bends to fumble in the straw on the floor of the shed until he finds what he’s looking for: a warm heap of fresh dung. He smears it over his skin as thickly as possible, paying particular attention to his feet and hands. When he judges himself well covered he slides into the straw-stuffed plastic bag. He finds a gap between the hay bales, drops his drysuit under him, and wedges himself in the space above, stuffing handfuls of straw to plug any gaps. He pulls another bale over the top until he is encased. He curls into a foetal position and jams his hands between his thighs.
Agonisingly slowly, stinking to high heaven, he begins to thaw, hoping he hasn’t been so exposed his fingers or toes become necrotic.
After a time, unconsciousness comes.
CHAPTER 23
THURSTON IS WOKEN by a rough wet tongue energetically licking the top of his head – the only part of him not inside the straw-stuffed plastic bag.
Feeling like death, he groans and lifts his face free of his makeshift sleeping bag. As thin early-morning Icelandic light dribbles in through the cracks in the shed wall, Thurston finds himself staring directly into the disdainful hooded eyes of a white-coated llama.
‘Fuck me,’ he croaks. ‘Llamas.’
The llama regards him curiously and then turns away.
Thurston creaks upright and promptly vomits onto the hay bales as his stomach gets rid
of the river water forced down his throat the night before. After the vomiting stops he carefully checks his hands and feet. All seem to be intact, if wracked by cramps. He hopes the cramps don’t indicate irreversible damage but he doesn’t dwell on it: time will tell and there’s no benefit in thinking about what might happen.
He unravels his drysuit and spreads it across the straw. As the llamas gather round to inspect, he puts on the drysuit. It’s like climbing into a discarded bag of ice but he hopes his body heat will warm the moisture. Eventually.
Shivering, he fastens the zips and finds his snow boots. The straw has dried them a little but they are still too wet. For the second time since he got out of the river, Thurston feels the seductive tug of capitulation. Without boots he’s finished. He sits down heavily on a bale and tries to force his mind to concentrate, to think.
And then, from somewhere outside, he hears a noise: an engine.
He puts an eye to a crack in the wall.
Coming slowly over the rise ahead is a snowmobile pulling a sled piled with straw bales. It turns in a wide semicircle before pulling up outside the shed.
The farmer’s arrival causes excitement amongst the llamas. Their noise reaches the farmer because he calls out something in Icelandic.
Thurston positions himself behind the door and waits.
After a few seconds the shed door swings open and a heavyset man swaddled in thickly padded winter workgear walks in staggering under the weight of a bale of straw. He takes a few steps before he stops dead and slowly turns to look at Thurston over his left shoulder.
‘G’day,’ says Thurston and raises his hand.
The farmer looks impassively at him, as though finding a shivering, shit-covered Australian in his remote llama shed is an everyday occurrence.
‘Am I glad to see you, llama farmer,’ says Thurston.
As he speaks, the farmer puts down the bale, reaches into his jacket and comes out with a short-barrelled shotgun.
‘I haven’t got time for this,’ says Thurston. He takes two quick strides forward and in one smooth motion twists the gun free of the farmer. ‘If you’re going to point a gun at least look like you mean it, brother, OK?’
The farmer nods.
‘You speak English?’ says Thurston.
‘Yes. A little.’
‘OK, good. I need clothes, boots, food and a car. If I don’t get those things I’m going to kill you. You understand?’
The farmer understands.
CHAPTER 24
THE FARMER LIVES alone, which is a bonus since Thurston doesn’t have to deal with the complication of a wife or family. He ties the farmer securely to a radiator and then takes a long, hot bath in the surprisingly clean bathroom. He borrows clothes and raids the farmer’s kitchen, cooking a gigantic plate of eggs and washing it down with a gallon of coffee.
Less than an hour after arriving at the farm, with the farmer’s confiscated shotgun nestling in a holdall on the passenger seat, he bundles the farmer into the back of his ancient truck, blindfolded and gagged. He could simply leave the farmer and take the truck but that would invite complications. Easier to take him to Reykjavik and let him make his own way back. The farmer’s done nothing wrong – other than point a shotgun – but Thurston can’t rule out a link with Miller, who is, after all, a neighbour.
Before heading back to the city, Thurston checks the Land Cruiser at Gullfoss Falls. As expected, it’s gone. He thinks about heading straight back to Miller’s place but dismisses it. With Miller assuming he is dead, Thurston knows he temporarily has the upper hand. Better to go back when he’s fully prepared.
He points the truck east and heads to Reykjavik. The journey passes uneventfully although he has to blink himself awake more than once.
Eight blocks from his rented apartment, Thurston parks the truck. He grabs the holdall and steps out of the car. Leaning into the back seat, he unties the farmer’s hands and walks away. By the time the old guy has his bearings, Thurston is gone.
He makes his way to the apartment and, although he doesn’t expect any, checks for surveillance. Once he’s satisfied Miller hasn’t left anyone, he goes inside.
The place has been tossed but, since Thurston didn’t spend more than five minutes there, he has nothing to worry about. He retrieves the backpack he stowed under the outside steps last night.
By midday he’s in another scalding bath at the CenterHotel Arnarhvoll overlooking the harbour. He stays there for almost an hour before wolfing down a room-service steak and sleeping the sleep of the dead.
CHAPTER 25
FOR THREE DAYS Thurston licks his wounds at the Arnarhvoll. His main concern was his hands and feet but they seem to have come through without any lasting damage. He’s copped a black eye, bruised ribs and an impressive line-up of other bruises from the battering he took in the falls. As he recovers he spends time mapping out an approach route to Miller’s farm and rents a car to replace the Land Cruiser. He’ll report it stolen when he’s left Iceland. If he leaves Iceland.
Thurston’s dreams are plagued by images of Sofi Girsdóttir and Barb Connors – Sofi appearing to him wearing the look of pure animal horror when she saw Miller in the bar. With Barb it is her screams, screams that jolt him awake in the small hours. He spends a lot of time in those hours thinking about the two women and about the party girls he saw at Miller’s place. Those girls – and it’s all too easy to see a younger Sofi as one of them – were as disposable to Miller as paper coffee cups. Children – or as close as makes no difference – used as toys. Thurston flashes back to the smug expression on Miller’s face at Gullfoss and fixes the image in his mind.
Thurston’s escape from Paddington Green has faded from the online press. He has no doubt the case is still very much alive but at least it means his photo isn’t still being splashed around the media. He notes that DS Hall is no longer mentioned as leading the investigation, although, so far, there’s no tabloid exposé of the video he shot of Hall at 22 Logandale Lane.
By day three at the Arnarhvoll Thurston’s ready to move on Miller again. He picks up the new rental and starts assembling what he needs. The farmer’s shotgun turns out to be a piece of crap so he drops it in the bay. In a tourist bar on Tryggvagata he gets a line on somewhere to score dope which, in turn, takes him to a run-down cafe in the Efra-Breiðholt district to the east – the nearest thing Iceland has to a rough neighbourhood. A few steps and a couple of false starts later, he’s out by the port talking about guns to a Russian guy who works at a car repair shop. The Russian, despite his energetic sales pitch, doesn’t have much stock worth shit. But beggars can’t be choosers so Thurston takes a semi-automatic Zastava pistol and an Ithaca M37 shotgun from him. He buys all the ammo the guy has along with a lead-weighted police baton.
By Wednesday night Thurston has what he needs.
He pays the hotel bill and leaves Reykjavik at midnight. By two he’s at Miller’s place out by Gullfoss, amped up and ready.
There’s only one problem. The bird has flown.
CHAPTER 26
‘WHERE?’
The guy sitting on the kitchen floor shakes his head. Blood from the crack Thurston has given him spatters across the tiles. He’s a big man with a beard, in his late twenties with plenty of tattoos. Thurston has him pegged as a local recruit. From the look of the guy he might have done some boxing once but he’s running to fat now. Probably got a rep in Reykjavik but, fuck, we’re talking Iceland here. By Thurston’s standards this tub of guts is an amateur all the way up. No wonder Miller was looking to recruit back at the V if this represented the standard local issue. Thurston guesses that’s why he’s been left behind to look after the joint – the gangster equivalent of a janitor.
‘Fuck you!’ the guy snarls and says something else in Icelandic.
Thurston jams the muzzle of the Ithaca hard into the guy’s mouth. He hears some teeth break.
‘Don’t try that “fuck you” movie shit,’ he snarls. ‘It doesn’t work in re
al life, buddy, and I’m not in a forgiving mood. Where’s Miller?’ He pulls the muzzle back and places it flush against the guy’s right eye socket.
‘English, not,’ says the guy, spitting blood. Thurston pulls the Ithaca back, flicks the gun round and smashes him backwards into a table with the stock of the rifle.
Thurston has no problem doing it: he remembers seeing this guy through the window getting his tiny dick sucked by one of the teens. He poured beer over her head and laughed.
‘I told you,’ says Thurston. He steps forward and stands over the guy, the gun aimed straight at his face. ‘You speak English just fine so don’t try that bullshit with me again, understand me?’
The guy looks dazed. He rubs blood from the gash on his temple.
‘So, again,’ says Thurston. ‘Where’s Miller? I know he’s gone: no cars left, rooms all empty, closets empty, girls gone, the equipment in the sheds on standby. I’m guessing there’s been a big shipment out and Miller’s gone back to whatever hole he calls home. This is where you come in and tell me where that is.’
The guy looks round the kitchen as if expecting Nate Miller to show up.
‘Miller kill you.’
Thurston’s tempted to blow the guy away simply for wasting his time. He pulls the slide on the Ithaca and lifts the stock to his shoulder.
‘Wait! Wait!’ Miller’s guy flinches and Thurston nods, lowering the Ithaca a fraction.
‘Go on.’
‘He’s in America, OK? OK?’
‘Where?’
The guy shakes his head.
‘I said, where?’ Thurston pushes the gun in closer.
‘Vermont. He has place there. I don’t know where—’
Thurston cocks the Ithaca again.
‘Not far from the border! I don’t know exact! Some French name. Isle de something. All I know is it’s on lake. Supposed to be a chemical fertiliser plant. That’s all, I swear! I swear!’
Absolute Zero Page 5