Black Ice (16 page)

It  had  stopped  raining,  but  spiteful  clouds  still  tumbled

around the sky. Two  young  blacks in track-suits jogged past.

'That's  something you  wouldn't have  seen  at  one  time,' Dempsie said.

'Jogging?'

'No, blacks.'

'How's that?' I'd  heard  the story but I still wanted  to hear his official version.

'When we first came  here we had  to make a deal  that  only "first-class" troops  would  be stationed here.  You know what "first-class" meant  then?'

'White?'

'White.' He  stopped and  looked  out  over  the  lava  plains. With  some care,  he went on: 'These people had what  I call an excess  of  national  pride.  They   were  pure  bred.  Literally,   I mean.  No newcomers had  landed  here for a thousand years. That doesn't seem important to mongrels  like us but to them it was.'

'You  mean  they were racists.' I put  that  in to see what  he'd

say.  He  handled it well.

'I don't know. I don't think so. Certainly not in the sense of a racist in Birmingham, Alabama. Or Birmingham, England, for that  matter. They didn't look down on other races because they didn't have any other  races to look down on. A lot of the older people still feel the same.  When they were discussing admitting two dozen boat people you would've thought they were landing battalions of Martian rapists.'

'Know  what  you  mean.   All  those  years,  locked  in  here battling with the elements.  I suppose after a few centuries you begin to think you belong to the most exclusive club on earth.'

'That's it,'  he said,  moving off again.  'The most  exclusive club on earth,  and  membership's closed.'  He gave  me a grin over his shoulder. 'And if l was in a club with lady members like that,  I'd  close the membership too.'

Back at  his office, we drank  some  coffee and  talked  some more until his assistant, the one who'd  been playing  the juke box, walked in.

'We hit a snarl-up over this Murphy,' he said. I can't  say I was all that surprised.

'Sam  was saying  that  he thinks  maybe  he's  no longer  with us,' Dempsie explained, but the man cut him off short.

'Oh  no, Sir, he's still stationed here but he's not on the base today and  I can't  get in touch with him.'

He turned  to me, looking even more apologetic. 'I'm  sorry about  this, Sir,  I really am.  What  I was going to suggest  was that   maybe   Mr  Dempsie   or  myself  could   bring  Corporal Murphy down  to your hotel tomorrow.'

Now  that  did  surprise me.  And  on  Dempsie's large  and genial features  I thought  I caught  a glimpse of satisfied amusement.

28

I drove  back into  town alongside  the Tjornin. I stopped and stared  at it. You know how it is when you're sure something's wrong but you can't  see what it is.

Then  I realised. It was deserted. A bold band  of ducks  was leading a raiding party on the land and ransacking a paper-bag of slices of bread, squabbling in their glee at putting one over on their  patrons. Further along  I saw a toy yacht  beached on the side,  and  a coat  and  picnic  bag  beyond  that.  But no people. Then I saw where  they'd  all gone.

A crowd of thirty  or so people were taking  the road that led up the hillside among the smart villas. From somewhere  up at the  front,  out  of my sight,  I could  hear  the sweet  burble  of a motor-bike. Only one machine on the island sounded  like that. There was no way of pushing through  the crowd, so I did a few nifty  turns  around the  town centre  and  pulled  round  the corner into Gardastraeti when I saw the mob advancing down the road.

In front  of them  was Palli with a roped  prisoner.

Sitting back on his machine, his bare blue-stained arms were alive with muscles as he bent his wrists down, juggling throttle and  clutch  to hold it down  to walking speed.

Beyond  him,  thirty  yards  or  so distant, was  the shuffling muttering crowd.  They  daren't come nearer; they couldn't go away.

And  between   them,  secured   to the  bike  by  twelve-foot  of orange nylon  cord  around his neck, was a young dark-haired man.

At first  I didn't recognise  him,  but  then,  neither  would  his mother. His face was blood and  bruises and not much else, and he  was  holding  his  head   back  in  a  queer  sort  of way.  He stumbled and staggered along and it took me a minute to realise it was the Russian. The one in the photograph with Solrun. The one in the chamois jacket. Only  now he looked about as elegant as a scarecrow. His jacket was ripped open and as he walked his knee poked  through a tear  in his trousers.

When  he saw me, Palli gunned the bike and eased the clutch a fraction. It was beautifully judged. The  bike jumped forward a yard,  the rope  tightened and  Kirillina was jerked forward on his knees. I saw then  that  his hands  were tied behind  his back.

'Said  I'd  run  you  home - here y'are,' Palli  called  out.  He didn't even bother  to look round. He smiled at me all the time.

'Know who this lulu is?'

'I know.'

By this  time  I was out  of the car  and  unfastening the cord around his neck. At least it wasn't a noose. And the fastening on his hands fell away when I touched it. 'What  the hell are you doing, Palli? The cops'lllynch you for this.'

He pulled an innocent face. 'Me? I was only giving the guy a lift home. I didn't  touch him. Ask the bum.'

I  knew I  had  to. Kirillina  was mauling  at  his face and generally trying to bring himself round.

'No,' he said, when I put the question. 'Not him.'

'Who? Who did it? I'll get the police.'

'Police?' His eyes opened in alarm. 'No police.'

Close to, I could see the damage.  His right eye had gonecompletely under a blue-black mound. The blood from his nose had soaked up the grime and grit of the road where he must've fallen, so that his face looked like a dropped  lollipop.

He didn't seem to know he was outside the Soviet Embassy. It's  a cream and grey building, which somehow manages  to look  thickset  and  heavy-shouldered,  as  though  anxious  to conform to its national stereotype. It was the sort of building where a Victorian  might have kept his second-best  mistress. Now it was bursting with life. Faces appeared  at the basement windows behind the security bars, and higher up the building.

'He was playing around with Oscar's chick,' Palli said. He'd obviously decided  to try to justify it. 'You gotta  hand  out a warning now and again.'

I didn't reply. Then I heard him say 'Hey, this could be fun,' and I looked up and saw the door to the embassy, on the side of the building, had opened. Three  men were coming down  the steps, two of them trying to restrain a third who was shouting and waving his one free arm. Down the road the crowd watched this loud incomprehensible drama.

As he burst free and rushed to the gate, I led Kirillina to him. He put  his arm  round  him lovingly, and coaxed him up the stone steps and into the embassy.

One of the two remaining men pointed at Palli and bellowed a fierce threat. Then  they all withdrew and closed the heavy green door behind them.

'Some show, huh?'

'You  must  be  mad.  Are  you  trying  to  start   a  war  or something?'

He pushed two fingers down into the pocket of his sleeveless denim jacket and pulled out his cigarettes. As he lit one, he said: 'I told you, it wasn't  me. But if it was I've got the perfect defence.' He drew on the cigarette and then leaned back on his bike to blow the smoke skywards. 'Yes, sir, that bastard was screwing my wife.'

'Your wife?'

'That's right. Solrun.'

Then  I saw what he meant.

'Now leaving out what I know and what you know, on paper she is my wife and that guy - who is reckoned to be a smart-ass diplomat  or something - has been taking advantage of her loving disposition. Now she's gone missing and he's got the nerve to come to my apartment  looking for her. Shit, man, no one would convict me on that. They'll say I shoulda killed him.' He pretended  to get off his bike to go and find the Russian again, then sat back. He was fire-proof and he knew it.

'Did he really come to your apartment?' Somehow I had to try to salvage some truth from all this.

'That's right. A real foolish thing to do.'

'Why?'

He began to paddle the bike along with his feet. I walked with him. The crowd had almost all gone now, back to their boats and empty bags of bread.

'He said he was looking for Solrun. Friends of Oscar he ran into thought he might know that himself.'

'And did he?'

'Well, he didn't say, matter of fact.' He scrubbed his fingers in the ginger matting of his chest.

He  stopped   the  bike  and  motioned  me  nearer  with  a movement of his head. The jeering triumph left his face.

'Look. After last night, some things I wanna say, okay?'

To him, a beating-up was all in a day's work. He obviously thought  I was getting far too excited about it.

'All right. What?'

'I'm sorry I walked out on you. I don't know where you got the name, but yes, sure, Oscar Murphy was my buddy.'

'And he isn't here?'

He kept his hairless face directed towards me and his pale blue eyes were steady  enough. 'I told you that. He's  working in a muffler shop in Jamaica- New-York Jamaica that is, not the one down  in the West  Indies.'

He saw me glancing back anxiously  at  the embassy.

'Don't worry  about it.  They  just  roughed   him  up  a little. He'll  be okay. Sam,' he said, 'I wanted  to tell you I was hearing you last  night.  You talked good sense  to me. Better  than  I've heard  for years.  I'm  going  back. I'm  going  back to Chicago.'

'Great,' I said,  and  he managed to look quite  hurt  by  the sardonic way  I said  it. For some  reason  he wanted   my good opinion.

He halted  the bike with his feet on the road again  and  held out  his  broad   hands   with  their  tufty  golden   hair.  Then   he turned  them over,  palms and  padded muscles  uppermost.

Whoever  had beaten  up the Russian  would've had hands like a slaughter man. Palli's  wouldn't have got a second glance  at a needlework  class.  Not only were they  unscratched, they  were surprisingly clean.

29

From  the  top  bar  of the Saga  we watched   the  bulging  black clouds chug across the sky and tip their endless drenching loads on the city. It wasn't a scene to lift the human spirit, but right then you couldn't have budged  Ivan's spirit  with heavy-lifting gear.

His face, one of those long and mournful  models at the best of times,  hung  in grey folds and  his soft brown  eyes were veined and  rimmed  with red.

'I know, I look ghastly,' he said, when he saw the expression on my face.

'What's the  trouble?' I asked,  waving  up a martini for me and  another gin for him.

'The usual.' He shrugged and  turned  his face towards  the windows which were draped from the outside with nets of rain.

I don't know why  I bothered asking. That was all he ever said:   the  usual.  It was  frustrating  really,  because   he  was disbarred from  the one activity  that  all us diurnalists have in common- group grizzling. Somehow  we manage to combine a mawkish affection for our worthless trade with a deep contempt for those who employ  us. Grimm, admittedly, was an extreme case,  but in general  we were right.

And  poor old Ivan  couldn't join in.

'They're giving you a bad time?' I said. He didn't even nod. They  probably had  nod-detectors in every room in the place.

'I wish I were like you- independent,' he said, unexpectedly.

There were only  three  businessmen at  the  bar,  and  we were tucked  quietly  away  in a corner.

'You  are independent.'

'Not  really.  Not like you. Not emotionally independent. I'm terribly  vulnerable, as I'm sure you know. It's inevitable if one is . . . gayish.'

He always  qualified  gay  by adding the last  three letters,  as though  the process was somehow  incomplete and a little bit of him was still heterosexual. If so, it was a little bit I'd never seen.

'I suppose they can always haul you back to Mother Russia.'

He lifted his hangdog face. 'Don't.'

'Are  you filing anything so far?'

He shook his head.  I was glad about  that. What  can happen on those sort of jobs is that some agency bloke files to Moscow, one of the Moscow-based western reporters picks it up and does it up for London  and  New York, and  before you know where you are  you have an editor  ratting at you.

'Apparently,' he added, 'I'm on ice for a policy piece.'

'That shouldn't affect  me  too much.  Unless  it's  a  topless policy piece.'

'You?'

That was my chance to tell him about offering Grimm a story on  Solrun's  mother. I'd   caught a  call  from  him - and  just missed  one from jack Vale in New York- when  I got back to Hulda's. At least  the story about Grimm might cheer him up.

'He  said  it was too fish-and-chippy and  they'd  got a dozen like that down the Old  Kent  Road every week. So I suggested that  there  might  be a security  angle  to it and  my esteemed editor squealed  with laughter. "What are they after up there," he said, "the secret recipe for fish fingers?"  He told me to stay on the trail of the Sexy Eskies and  he also authorised me to go up to a thousand quid  to get the right  pictures.'

Ivan  did  manage  a tired smile.  He wasn't  being drawn by that  reference  to a security  angle.  All he said  was: 'But  you haven't got your  model available for the pictures,  have you?'

'We're working on it, Ivan. By the way, you know about  your embassy  chap  being beaten  up, do you?'

'It was nothing  much,' he said  hurriedly.

'Nothing much? I saw it. He'd  had a damn good kicking and he was hand-delivered, in public and daylight, to the embassy door. Well, gate.'

Ivan  looked  agitated. 'I  gather there's no official  protest anyway.'

'Odd. Very odd.' That covered the two questions I'd  wanted to put to him. Which left me with one small item of information which I wished to slip into his drink-or wherever else he might best swallow it. And I wanted  to watch his face while he did it.