Black Ice (23 page)

The  lime-green  Ford  was in  the  square outside  the  Hotel Borg and  Palli was at the wheel.

'Where do we meet him?'  I said, as I pulled  the door shut. He  didn't  answer. He  didn't need  to.  My  answer  was  a forearm  like warm  steel  that  slid  across  my throat  and  then thumbs searching for the carotid  arteries.

If I'd  wanted  to show off my classical  education, I could've told  them  they get their  name  from  the Greek  word  for sleep because   the  Ancients  supposed  that   it  sent  you  to  sleep  if someone  blocked them.

My last vision was a stocking-masked head in the mirror. I did a few karate chops and judo throws all by myself in the front seat.  They  caused  about  as much  pain  as a fly's final spasm does to sticky-paper.

I sank into darkness. Those  Ancients  knew a thing or two.

37

When I woke up, I was sealed inside my own body. Blind. Deaf. Dumb. And paralysed. Yet I was thinking so I must  be alive buried  alive inside  myself.

It was  a  nightmare so  instantly  terrifying that  I  made  a convulsive  effort   to  throw   it  off,  and   then   the   nightmare doubled. This  was no mad  dream. This  was real.

Panic rocked my mind and shook my soul. I was being buried alive in a black coffin which  was pitching from side to side as it swung  down  into  the earth. Fear  ran like flames through veins shaking sanity out  of  my  finger-ends and  putting reason  to flight.  It was  true.  I was locked  up in my own  body and  my soundless screams rang  only  in my own  head.  I was  the last man  on earth. Me and Johnny Cash.

Johnny Cash.

Somewhere, far far away, Johnny Cash  was singing.

Now I know that  the end of the world isn't going to be a lot of laughs  for the likes of me, but even a vengeful God wouldn't hit me with Johnny Cash  in my last moments.

Intently,  I   listened   again. It was   one  of  those   prison dirges  ...

I could  hear.  Not much.  Indistinctly. But I could  hear.

At that  moment the pitching  to and fro stopped and the floor beneath me rose up, smashed me in the back and on the back of my head,  so that  I bounced  upwards, and  then fell back again. On cold metal. It hurt  but it was worth it. I wasn't cut off from the rest of the world after all. For that  relief, they could bounce me all day.

Consciously, I set about finding out what bits of me were still working and  what  they could find out about my surroundings. The  cold  metal  was  against my fingers.  My  arms  were  tied behind  me, my fingers free. And I really could hear. All around me was a dull  roar,  partly  vibration and  partly  sound. I could smell. Oil, petrol. Then  I knew. I was trussed  up in the boot of a car.

Right  then  we hit  what  must've been a pothole  and  I was thrown around again.

At least  I could do something about that  now. Hope surged through me, washing away  the panic.  I was lying on my side. All I had  to do was to wriggle until my shoulders were against the wall of the boot, then stretch out my legs to the other side so that   I  was  firmly   wedged.   Better,   much   better.   No  more bouncing.

And  my  legs  were  free.  Free  and  working,  what's more. Fingers,  legs,  at  least  ten  per  cent  of my  hearing - I  could always be a disc jockey.

I started to work on that.  It wasn't my hearing  that  was on the blink. My head  was bound  too. I stretched the muscles of my face to feel it. Eyes, ears and mouth  were all tightly covered by some stretchy, sticky binding- probably that  bandage they use to hold pulled  muscles. My nose was flattened but  I could still breathe.

Then  I remembered meeting  Palli and  the stocking  mask in the rear-view  mirror. They'd trussed  me up and  hi-jacked  me, and  were  now ferrying  me over  rough  Icelandic roads,  with accompaniment by Johnny Cash on the radio. Which  meant  it was the  base  radio  because  the  Icelandic government would not risk corrupting their citizens with that rubbish, and for once I was right  with them.

Where? Where were they taking me? And why? Was this how they'd  hi-jacked  the fake Oscar? Perhaps they wanted  me for a fourth for bridge. Ouch. We hit a pothole four-foot deep and my head  rang  bells on the back of the boot.

That focused my attention on where I was. It doesn't matter where you live, one of our old Barnardo's aunties used to say, so long  as  it's  home.  For  now,  this  was  home.  I braced  myself again  to get more comfortable. I tried again  to work my hands and  my jaw against the  bindings,  but always  they slackened, then  resumed  their  tight  grip.  Arm  fastenings. Same  there.  I was tied so tightly  at  the wrists  that  I couldn't even work my fingers back to feel what they'd  used. I tried to push my hands down to get my legs through. I couldn't get anywhere near, and every time I tried  I got another bouncing round  the boot. One thing  was for sure- I'd  never make a television cop.

Television. On  television,  bound  victims  back  up against a saw-edged  strip  of metal and free themselves  that  way. All the time. Grunting and sweating, I manoeuvred myself around my metal  tomb,  feeling  with  my fingers  for anything like a saw edge. I couldn't find any edge at all, saw or otherwise. I banged my head a few more times and  that  made  me conscious  of the pain in my arms  and shoulders with being  trussed  so tightly.

I sagged  back. Lie back and  think of Iceland.

I ran through the who and why questions again. It had to be Sol run. They  must still think that I knew where she was. 'They' being one enraged Oscar Murphy with a Colt .45. And my pal Palli had set me up for it beautifully.

Braced  on my side again,  my fingers were doubled  up in the dirt  in the bottom of the boot. Dirt and paper. Slowly I realised that   my  half-numb fingers  were  resting  on  a small  sheet  of paper- as far as I could tell, about  the size of a pound  note. A garage bill perhaps. A petrol  receipt.  A love letter.  Who cared so long as it bore a name or an address. It took me about  five minutes to force my arms  up my back so that  I could  push it down  the back of my trousers. But I did it. That made me feel useful. It wasn't an emotion  I'd  experienced for some time.

I  must  have  faded  away  then.  The  next  thing  I knew was silence.  After  the  bouncing and  the  drumming, it was quite eerie. Before I could begin to evaluate that, I felt a big hand lock around my  upper  arm  and  heave  me  to my knees.  Another grabbed the front of my cord suit and  I was hauled  over the car boot. When  they stood  me on the ground, I was shaking so much  I had  to lean  back against the car.

'He  can't hear  you.'

'Sure he can  hear  me. You can  hear  me okay, can't you?'

'There. I told you he couldn't.'

Powerful fingers tugged at the bandages round  my head. He prised  an opening over one ear and  another so that  part  of my mouth  was free.

'This is the guy, Palli. See where  I got him on the head with the pan?'

All the time he was pulling  at the bandages, I was trying  to assess my new surroundings. The first thing I realised was that almost immediately I was covered in a fine drizzle, and the drumming of the car  was now replaced  by a great  whooshing roar of sound  that seemed to fill the background. Together they meant   something but,  with  my  head  still  echoing  from  the journey, I couldn't quite  piece it together.

'Evening, Oscar,' I said, as I managed to free my top lip from

another layer of bandage. 'Nice to meet you after all this time.'

'Manners. All these  Brits got such  cute  manners, Palli.'

'He's cute all right.  I told you he was.'

'Is that why Solrun  wanted  him? I mean, Jesus, he don't look much.'

'It's because   I'm   nervous,'  I  said.  'It always   upsets  my complexion.'

Suddenly I could  smell  his gut  breath as he came  close to me, and  feel the warmth of it on my lips.

'You gonna  be nervous, don't you worry about that. You are gonna  be very fucking  nervous.  Nervous  and  cute, eh? I never knew she went for nervous cute guys like you. To me you’re just a man  who  played  around with  my wife and  that  means  you don't have no future.'

'She  wasn't your wife.' I said  that  because  I wanted  to give the conversation a push from my end. I had to try to work out what sort of man he was and what his reactions were likely to be and  I  only  had  my  hearing to go on.  Reaction was  what  I wanted- reaction  was what I got. I felt myself jolted forward as he grabbed my clothes again  and  I could sense his face an inch or two from my own.

'She  was  my wife,'  he screamed, 'Palli  was standing in for me. I asked  him to. That was me she was marrying, not  him. Tell  him,  Palli.'

'Like  he says.'

He was still shaking me. 'She was going to get the money and come  over and  join  me in the States. Then, Mister  Goddam Smart-Ass, we were going to get properly married. With choirs and  things  like that.  It was all fixed up. You understand that now, you cute little  bastard?'

I did  understand it. I understood a few more things,  too.

'Then she  upped  and  ran  off with  her  Russian  fancy-man, did she, Oscar?'

I was halfway  into a flinch, waiting for the blow that  would bring.  Or  at  least  another gale of stomach-stench and  rage.  I got neither. He even let go of my clothes.  When  he did speak, his voice was easy and  pleasantly conversational.

'Maybe she did. Or maybe that's what she's planning to do. I

asked  her little  Russian  boyfriend  about  it and  he wasn't too helpful.  I coulda  made him more helpful but Palli here said we didn't want  to start no Third World  War  or  nothing. Me,  I don't mind.'

As he spoke, chuckling gently from time to time, he spun  me round, holding  my collar  with one  hand  and  sawing  through the binding around my wrists with the other. Then  he spun  me back  again,  one-handed. In  the  jumble  of new  sounds   and voices, I'd at last managed to work out where I was. The spray and  the whooshing sound- we must be close, very close, to one of the tumultuous waterfalls  that you find in Iceland  where the rivers, swollen with  the melting snows, crash  over the rocks. I rocked around for a minute, partly at the novelty of having my arms  free and  feeling the blood rush in them, and  partly  at the proximity of tons of cascading water.

'So  now  I'm   gonna   ask  you.  I'm   gonna   ask  you  where Solrun's  hiding  and   you're   gonna   tell  me  and  we'll  all  be friends. Palli here says you're  a good guy and  I believe him, so naturally I don't wanna  hurt someone who's a friend of Palli’s. It's reasonable, you gotta admit. She's  my wife. I'm looking for my fucking  wife. Nothing  funny  about  that,  is there?  It's  not crazy or anything, is it? So you tell us. Okay?'

That did worry me. The careful control  in his voice, the way

he  had  to rationalise what  he was doing,  the  insistence  that Solrun  was his wife, the way he tried  to hold a line of logic ... he'd  gone.  He was mad.

'By  the way,  Palli,'  I whispered, when  I reckoned  Oscar was out of earshot, 'just  in case I don't get out of this alive, I'd  like you to know I do appreciate your efforts on my behalf.'

'I had to get you out of the house,'  he hissed back at me. 'He was going  to come in and  carve  up the old lady,  too.'

By this time we were actually doing  that  shouting-whispering up against each other's ears to be heard over the crash of the water.  When  I'd  thought I was next to the water  before, I was wrong. Oscar had walked me about  thirty yards- I counted  the steps-over rough rocks to what I now knew must be the edge of the waterfall. Here  the spray  streamed down  my face and  my clothes  were  drenched. He'd  gone  back  to the car  for some thing,  which gave me my only chance  to try to lay claim on the friendship I'd  built with  Palli.

'Anyway, you said  you were going  back to the States.'

'I was. I am.  I just gotta  get Oscar out of this_ hole.'

'He's in a hole? Oh  that's great  .. .'

'He's gone  nuts, Sam,  can't you see? They  were working on him back home,  phone  calls and  letters,  drip,  drip, drip, until his  nerve  went.' He  held  my  arms   hard   to  drive  home  the urgency  of what  he was saying.  'Do what  he says .. .'

'Do  I have a lot of options?'

'Listen. Do what  he says,  play along,  I'll  try to get you out from  under  ... you'd   better  tell  him,  that's all.  Hey  Oscar, what's the rope for- we're  not having  a lynching are we?'

His laugh  was too sharp and  too quick  to be anything other

than apprehensive. I didn't like the sound of that.  Palli wasn't a man  who apprehended easily.

'Your friend here's gonna  tell me and we'll go straight up and see my wife. No problem. It's make-your-mind-up time, cutie. Where  is she?'

'I don't know.  I really don't.'

He  was  chuckling. Anywhere else you'd   have  taken  it for good humour.

'Look,  I didn't come up here for the air, you know. Solrun's got a summer-house up here. Hell,  I've  been there,  man.  But they all look the same  to me, all this fucking country looks the same to me. I was gonna ask her but someone got to her first and did some asking. But you know. You've gotta know. Which one, cutie? Tell  me which one.'

So that's why we were out here. He was right. She did have a cabin,  somewhere near Thrastarskogur, which was near a lake on  the  road  out  to Gullfoss  - if I  remembered correctly. It wouldn't  have   mattered  anyway. There  were  dozens   and dozens  of the bright  little cabins. I'd  no idea which  was hers.

I  thought perhaps Oscar wasn't paying  rewards for information  like that.

'Why  did you come back?' I asked,  by way of an alternative.

'I told  you.'  He  sounded stubborn  and  peevish,  for some reason.  'I come back for my wife.'

'That didn't bother  you when  you left her.'

'I didn't know the truth  then. They  told me she was a tramp, even said she was some sort of spy and that she'd  been twisting secrets out of me and  making  me into a traitor. That's a thing I'd  never  be, a traitor. Palli'll  tell you that.'