The Blue Ice (32 page)

‘Has Farnell passed you?' I asked as I ran up towards him.

‘Dunno,' he answered. ‘Two men went by a little time back. One a long way behind the other. The second looked rather like Dahler. Couldn't have been, could it? But neither he nor Jorgensen were at the hotel when I got down to breakfast. And police all over the place. Where have you been?' he asked, turning to Jill.

‘Up on Sankt Paal,' she replied.

Down in the valley the train whistled. The siren note was thrown back by the mountains, growing fainter and fainter as it slipped away into the infinity of snow-capped peaks.

‘That was Dahler all right,' I said. ‘The man ahead of him was Farnell.'

‘Good God!' I heard him mutter. But I was already past him, thrusting with my sticks to gain impetus. Jill came up beside me. Now that I was within sight of the quarry, I felt the excitement of the chase bringing the strength back into my legs. If only I could get Farnell alone – away from people like Lovaas and Jorgensen. He was bitter, tired of being pursued. He needed to be handled carefully. If I could talk to him quietly.

We topped another slight rise and there ahead of us, connected to us by the double lines of their ski tracks, two figures showed black against the snow. They were close above the railway now. The whistle of the train at Finse sounded again, the wail of it coming up to us from the valley and being thrown back by the hills. I glanced over my right shoulder. Great puffs of smoke were belching from the engine, condensing white in the thin air. The smoke turned black. I could hear the thick panting of the heavy locomotive. The long line of carriages began to move.

Jill came up alongside me. ‘We must stop him getting on to that train,' she panted. Then she raised her stick and pointed to the sharp-cut line of the snow-ploughed railway below us. Little figures were moving along above the cutting. ‘Police,' she said.

I nodded and plunged my sticks into the soft snow. All thought of my tiredness had vanished. If Farnell were captured by the Norwegian police, there was little chance of my getting the information I wanted.

Side by side we plunged down the slope, heads bent, our skis sizzling through the snow, thrusting the powdery top surface up like bow waves on either side of the upcurved points.

Ahead of us the two tiny figures swung further left. The leading figure turned still more. He was close by the railway now where it ran through a long cutting. He paused and half-turned his head. Dahler's smaller figure was gaining on him. Farnell swung away suddenly to the right, his skis throwing the snow up in a huge wave as he turned the speed. A moment later he was running parallel with the line directly below us.

I glanced once more over my shoulder. The train was moving steadily out of Finse. Jill saw it too and, without speaking, we turned and went headlong down the slope towards Farnell. Jill shouted at him. He must have heard, for I saw him look up. Dahler, too, had turned. He passed directly below us, a black speck hurtling down towards the railway.

Jill, in the lead again, swung away to the right, following Farnell's movement. Finse was hidden from us now by a long shoulder round which the line curved in a snowshed. Farnell was disappearing round the corner, Dahler close behind him.

Then they vanished from sight. Faintly came the siren sound of the train as it went into the first of the snowsheds after Finse.

A moment later, and we had turned the point of the shoulder. We were right over the line now, skiing along the roof of one of the snowsheds. It ended just round the bend. Here the line made a convex curve to another shoulder of hill where it entered the next snowshed. Farnell was climbing now up the side of the shoulder of land nearest Finse. Dahler came hurtling down the slope of the bend. He was making for the railway, clearly with the idea of getting between Farnell and the line.

It all happened very quickly then. The slope was steep where Dahler was coming down. At the bottom, just above the line, he did a jump Christi. Either he was tired or he was handicapped by his withered arm. At any rate, he muffed the Christi and went slithering down on his side. The next instant he had fallen down the sheer side of the cutting on to the lines.

Jill stopped then and I stemmed. We were standing at the end of the snowshed. Below us was the wooden tunnel over the line holding off the snow that poured like an avalanche slope down the shoulder of the hills. In places the wooden boards showed through the snow, which was blackened by smoke. Curving round the farther headland was the next snowshed, its entrance gaping black like a tunnel. Between the two snowsheds was the convex curve of the snow-ploughed cutting, with the lines showing black through the tight-packed snow. The walls of the cutting were quite sheer, the snow packed hard and tight. Its width was the width of a train. And in that cutting Dahler struggled to his feet and brushed the snow off his ski suit.

Beyond the headland the train hooted as it entered another snowshed. Jill clutched my arm. Her fingers bit into my flesh. For a moment I couldn't understand her agitation. Then I saw Dahler trying to scale the sheer snow walls of the cutting and I realised the danger of his position.

I glanced quickly up the shoulder ahead of us. Farnell was still climbing, glancing over his left shoulder as though measuring the distance to the line below. He was directly above the next snowshed now. Then I looked down towards Dahler. He was scrabbling frenziedly at the snow with his hands, trying to get a purchase for his skis. Round the headland I could hear the heavy panting and rumbling of the approaching train. ‘Mr Dahler!' Jill screamed. ‘This way. Under the snowshed.' Her fingers dug at my arm. ‘Doesn't he know there's room for him to get off the track in these snowsheds?' She breathed, ‘Mr Dahler!'

But the man was panic-stricken. Where he was, he could probably feel the trembling of the rails under his feet as the giant locomotive came down the track beyond the headland.

‘Dahler!' I shouted. ‘This way!'

But he was frenziedly tearing at the wall of snow as though he would burrow through it. Every now and then, where he had made it crumble a bit, he tried to climb with his skis.

‘Dahler!' I yelled.

He looked up.

I waved to him. ‘This way, for God's sake. Get under the shed here.'

He seemed to take it in at last, for he straightened up. The engine hooted again. The sound of the siren was very clear now. It was hooting for the entrance to the snowshed on the other side of the headland. Dahler half turned and looked at the black, gaping hole of the snowshed. Then he started to ski towards us. But his skis caught in the sleepers and he fell. ‘Take your skis off and run for it,' I shouted.

He bent down and worked like a mad man at his ski bindings.

Jill pulled at my arm. She was pointing to where George Farnell stood poised high up on the slope of the headland. He was watching the track below, his body bent forward as though about to start the run for a ski jump. ‘What's he going to do?' Jill whispered.

‘I don't know,' I said.

The sound of the train was loud now, the noise of it magnified by the snow-arched tunnel. Dahler had at last got rid of his skis. He was running down the track towards us. Above the snowshed I saw Farnell do a half-jump and come hurtling down the slope. And suddenly I knew what he was going to do. He was going to do a ski jump from the lip of the snowshed entrance on to the top of the moving train as it came out of the tunnel. Jill had understood too, for her grip on my arm tightened.

The rumble of the train grew louder. Here and there on the outer side of the shed little puffs of smoke seeped out into the cold air. Farnell was just above the snowshed now, his body bent forward, his sticks poised ready. A perfect jump turn in a welter of snow and he was coming straight towards us along the very top of the shed. My hands were gripped around my sticks so that it hurt. Suppose he reached the edge of the shed before the engine emerged? But he was stemming now. The blunt, cow-catchered front of the engine burst out of the tunnel in a roar of smoke, its headlight blazing dully in the sunshine. The tender and then the first carriage appeared. In that instant Farnell reached the end of the snowshed and jumped. And in that instant I realised with horror that the forward carriage had no snow on it. The smoke from the engine must have melted it. He had gauged it perfectly and for a moment I thought he was going to make it. He had skied on to the train at the exact speed the train was moving. And for one instant he stood erect on his skis, steady on the very top of the carriage.

Then his skis caught something, slipped and threw him. He folded at the knees in a proper fall and clutched at one of the ventilating cones. I think he gripped it. But one of his skis caught the snow that was on a level with the top of the carriage and in a second he was dragged sickeningly back along the carriage top, ground down between the moving carriage and the small wall at the side and then spewed up again on to the snow above the cutting.

I felt Jill tense. I looked down at her. She had her hands over her eyes. Then she relaxed and looked up again. But in a moment she had stiffened with renewed horror. The train was on the curve now. Below us, in the cutting, Dahler was running towards us. Behind him, the engine panted and rumbled round the curve. I saw him glance over his shoulder. Then his face was turned towards us again and I saw that it was a mask of fear, his eyes wide and his teeth bared with the effort of running. He wasn't a young man and he'd been skiing all morning. He ran incredibly slowly, it seemed.

The engine rounded the bend of the cutting until its headlight shone straight at us. The noise of it shook the snow-clad hills. And Dahler ran – ran for his life. The driver saw him and the brakes squealed as he applied them. But the heavy train was on the down-grade. Dahler turned his head again. He was about twenty yards from us. I could see the sweat glistening on his face. The engine was bearing straight down on him. He hadn't a hope. I took hold of Jill and pressed her to me, so that she couldn't see what happened.

It was all over in a second. Realising that the iron monster was on top of him, Dahler flung himself against the sheer snow wall, squeezing himself against it in the hope that there would just be room between the snow and the train. It was the worst thing he could have done. There just wasn't enough room for his small body. I stood there, helpless, and saw the iron edge of the locomotive cut into him, mangling him to a bloody pulp against the ice-hard wall of the snow. His thin, high-pitched scream, like the cry of a trapped rabbit, merged and was lost in the squealing of the train's brakes. With a roar and a hiss of hot smoke in our faces the engine thundered into the snowshed, rumbling heavily in the snow under our feet and shaking the buried wood structure. Then the sound of it was drowned by the metallic clatter of the buffers as the carriages overran each other.

‘Oh, God!' Jill muttered. ‘How horrible!' Her face was buried against my windbreaker and she was shuddering. In that moment she was thinking of Dahler and not of Farnell. Then she stopped shuddering and straightened herself. ‘What about – George?' she asked and peered through the smoke towards the far side of the curve where George Farnell's body lay in a dark heap on the snow above the cutting.

‘We'll go and see,' I said. Anything for action. To stand there waiting for Dahler's mangled body to emerge from the other end of the train was unthinkable.

We started forward then, leaving the top of the snowshed and moving along above the cutting. Below and to the left of us the last carriages were moving slower and slower into the dark tunnel entrance of the snowshed.

The last coach moved sluggishly past me and stopped, with just half of it protruding from the tunnel to show that a train was standing there beneath the snow. I glanced hurriedly into the cutting. The farther wall, directly below me, was broken and scarred with crimson as though some political agitator with more ardour than education had tried to daub a slogan. Of Dahler himself there was no sign. Somewhere along the train they would find his remains caught up between two carriages. I did not like to think what his body would look like.

I turned my head away and trudged on as fast as I could. It was Farnell I had to reach – Farnell, who might be still alive. But I could not get the thought of Dahler out of my mind. I'd liked the man. There had been something sinister and unreliable about him. And yet, remembering his past, it was all so understandable. I was sorry he was dead. But perhaps it was as well.

‘Bill! I think I saw him move.' Jill's voice was small and tight as though she were fighting to keep control of herself.

I peered ahead. The brilliance of the sunlight on the snow played tricks. My eyes were tired. I couldn't focus properly. ‘Maybe he's not dead,' I said, and pressed on, my skis crunching in the frosty snow.

When we reached Farnell he was lying quite still, his body curled up in a tight ball. His ski pants were dug deep in the snow and there were smears of blood along the broken lip of the cutting. Jill lifted his head. It was all bloody. I loosened the bindings of his skis and cleared them from his boots. One leg was horribly broken. As I eased it round so that it was less twisted he gave a slight groan. I looked up and, as I did so, I saw his eyes open. Jill was wiping the blood from his face. His skin beneath the stubble was ivory against the pure white of the snow.

‘Water,' he whispered. His voice rattled in his throat. Neither of us had our packs. Jill smoothed his forehead. He stirred and tried to sit up. His face twisted with pain and he lay back again, his head cradled in her lap. His teeth were clenched. But when he looked up into her face and saw who it was, he seemed to relax. ‘I nearly made it,' he whispered. ‘No – snow. I'd have done it if—' He stopped and coughed up a gob of blood.

‘Don't talk,' Jill said, wiping his face again. Then to me, ‘See if there's a doctor on that train.'