The Ice King

by Michael Scott Rohan

  Then the clouds broke again, and momentarily the moon came out.

  The guard gave a single, tearing, convulsive shriek, and the sheer violence of it jerked one leg free. He wrenched it up, connected, and with the last shreds of his strength he lashed out his foot. The killing grip tore loose, gouging agony over face and throat, and the force of his kick shot him upward and back, out over the parapet of the wall. The glittering water careered crazily under him for an instant, he threshed his arms hopelessly for grip or balance, and then air, sea and sky were whirling around him in an insane kaleidoscope –

  The mirror broke with a hammerblow, and shattered him to shards. He sank into chill darkness and pain, fighting to breathe against a new and harsher weight. And after an age, an agony, there was air to gasp, and light. Above him the wall, and for a moment it seemed he would be hurled against it. His fingers scrabbled on rusty metal. Then, from above, came a single shriek of yelping agony and a terrible crash, and his fingers tore loose. The cold current whirled him around and past, outwards, seawards. A spark of orange flared in the blackness, and he clutched at that, too. But it was far away, high on the cold cliffs above him, and like the last ember of his consciousness it flickered, guttered, and went out.

  CHAPTER TWO

  WILF JACKSON’S usual twinkling charm was wholly absent from his face, and his neat beard twitched with indignation. ‘Damn it, this is ridiculous! You come bursting in on me at six o’clock in the morning, you drag me off down here saying something terrible’s happened to the dig – and now you say you don’t even know what it is!’

  Detective Chief Inspector Giles Ridley of the Saitheby area CID gave a deep sigh and stared out to sea. The waves were grey, the sky was grey, and the drizzle that passed between them was grey. Autumn was creeping into what was left of his soul, and he himself had been rooted out of bed at five twenty-nine precisely – a ghastly hour anywhere, but here it should be illegal. He forced a note of awful sympathy into his voice. ‘Afraid I can’t tell you more than I know myself, Mr Jackson. Sergeant Harshaw was on duty when the call came in, and he’s out there now. But we’ll be there in a minute.’

  Thank God, Ridley added to himself, though Jackson only snorted irritably. He should have called the police launch back instead of trusting himself to this fibreglass bathtub the dig people called a dory; its blunt bow plunged and wallowed like a hippopotamus among the white horses skipping along the bay. He felt unwell, unwashed, unshaven, and horribly awake. His only consolation was that the others didn’t look much better, and serve ’em right; this was their stupid business. Jackson, according to the patrol car that fetched him, had been rousted out of bed at the diggers’ lodgings – apparently with the Ravenshead girl. Nice kid, terrible taste. He himself had found Hansen in bed at the Two Ravens, though the landlady hadn’t been sure he would; the great professor hadn’t come back by the time she’d gone to bed. In fact, it appeared the great professor was often out on the tiles till the small hours – nice work if you could get it, this academic lark. Now he loomed in the stern by the wheel pulpit, as grey and grim as the cliffs above, so that it was a surprise when he spoke.

  ‘Some act of vandalism, that was all you said. And our security guard? I do not see his boat –’

  ‘No, sir,’ said Ridley absently. The dory, turning to come alongside the jetty, was momentarily broadside on to the swell, rearing and rolling. He swallowed heavily, not sure whether he was glad of his empty stomach or not. ‘It’s missing. And so is he.’

  Ridley flung the painter to the uniformed men waiting on the jetty. They looked almost as pasty as Jackson, and that was something to think about: they were local men who wouldn’t be upset by half a mile of choppy sea. And by God, there was Bill Harshaw looking cheesy too!

  The burly sergeant stepped forward to help the new arrivals up, and was introduced. ‘Morning, Professor, Mr Jackson. You’ll know your way fine, of course –’

  As they moved ahead Ridley leaned over to Harshaw and said softly, ‘Now, Bill, what the hell’s going on? You all look like you’d seen a ghost, and … What the bejasus is that smell? Something dead round here?’

  Hansen, overhearing, smiled faintly. ‘I am afraid the smell is perfectly normal, Inspector,’ said the tall Dane before the sergeant could answer. ‘We have simply gotten used to it. In this profession one may – Gud i himmel!’ The tall man swayed to an invisible punch, clutching violently at the walkway guardrail. Beside him Jackson looked as if he’d been hit by a bus.

  Ridley, coming up the ramp behind, couldn’t see what had stopped them dead in their tracks. In the pit below them spread out a scene he had seen many times on the TV news, and it didn’t look any different. At first the sheer size of the place baffled him; on TV it had looked impressive but somehow easier to take in at a glance. From here it looked like a two-storey steel-walled courtyard, still half-built in scaffolding. Or some weird sports arena, with banks of lights glaring down through the drizzle and the fine mist from a dozen sprayers onto – what?

  He realised why it seemed so chaotic. The high brown-black mound of the ship, which had seemed so impressive on TV, looked absurdly small now, with a shredded rag draped carelessly across it. But there was more to it than that, more and worse. The neat rows of white tapes which had formed a chessboard grid across the pit floor, with the hull at its centre, were gone – tangled, torn up, strewn around like streamers after a party. Over a great swathe of the floor the bright Day-Glo labels, which elsewhere sat neatly attached to things in the ground, were crumpled and trampled into the mud. It was almost as if the ship itself had shrugged off everything the archaeologists had tried to impose on it – as if a door to the past, painstakingly coaxed open, had been brutally slammed shut.

  Ridley felt a sudden sharp tremor in the guardrail he was leaning on, and saw Hansen leaning over beside him, gripping the rail with a white-knuckled intensity that was almost frightening; the policeman felt that with a touch more effort the metal would twist like a corkscrew. And his face – for a moment Ridley seemed to be looking at an image in wood, a carved Viking with staring eyes, bared teeth, beard bristling. Embarrassed by the naked emotion, Ridley hastily looked back down at the ship – and wished he hadn’t.

  He had seen unpleasant things enough in his career, early and late in the day, but never after a rough half mile of sea. His all too empty stomach convulsed painfully, and he turned aside and retched slightly behind his hand. Nobody noticed. The thing he had mistaken for a rag had leaked a slug’s trail of dark glistening liquid down the timbers. He moved a few steps along the walkway, and saw, scattered across the other flank of the hull and the mud below, a ragged trail of fragments that looked like scraps from a slaughterhouse – raw dark flesh, gobbets of offal and foul pallid tangles of entrail, white shards of splintered bone. For a moment he found it impossible to see what they had once been part of, let alone believe they had come from a single body. Then he saw an unmistakable patch of tan and brown hide, an entire limb with the knuckle joint showing bare, as though torn out bodily by the roots, and near it the hollow curve of a ribcage, mangled and empty. Then it was possible to see the small triangle of jawbone, lying as if flung far from the trampled pinkish paste that must have been the skull, recognisable only by the single eyeball that had spurted out of it.

  ‘Oh my good God. Bill, that must be –’

  ‘The dog, aye, sir. But Lees ’imself, not a sign.’ Ridley raised an eyebrow, and Harshaw shook his head. ‘Not ’im, sir. Known ’im for years, and ’e was real soft on animals. But since t’boat’s gone –’

  ‘– you reckon chummy took it? And maybe Lees – or …’ He made a tossing movement towards the water.

  Harshaw nodded heavily, and Ridley pursed his lips. The two archaeologists were still staring grey-faced down at the mayhem. Time to seize his advantage and slip in a few questions before they could snap back.

  ‘Anything missing, Mr Jackson – Mr Jackson?’ Jackson’s neat features were sagging with shoc
k. ‘Professor Hansen?’

  The craggy face turned towards him. ‘I would have to go down there. And I think you will not wish me to, yet.’

  Ridley blinked with surprise. The voice was calm, the words spoken with a care that minimised his accent. Cold fish, this one – or cool. ‘In a moment, sir. When the photographer’s ready Sergeant Harshaw will take you through –’ He stopped short. Jackson had sprung to life, leaned forward for a moment and then gone racing around the walkway to the far side. He gave a sudden wild yell and waved.

  ‘God! Hal! Hal! They’ve got the second chest!’

  Hansen exhaled sharply, and his head sagged forward. He stared down at the walkway for an instant, but spoke as calmly as before. ‘That was only to be expected, I suppose …’

  Ridley collected his wits. ‘Excuse me – the second chest?’

  Hansen gave an utterly mirthless smile. He strode along after Jackson, and pointed down at the gaping hole between the hull’s bare ribs. ‘We were hoping to keep that a secret from the public, for the moment.’

  ‘So who did know?’

  Hansen shrugged. ‘All of us on the dig, naturally. And that television fellow Latimer –’

  ‘He was with us down at the house until late last night,’ muttered Jackson as he came back.

  Ridley coughed diplomatically. Another one who’d been reading detective stories, too ready to start plastering alibis over the landscape. ‘We’re not chasing anybody, yet. The chest’s just one factor. I don’t suppose you’ve considered other motives?’

  They both looked nonplussed. Specialists! Can’t imagine anything more important than their load of little Viking knick-knacks! ‘You don’t know, for example, just how much local ill-feeling there is about this set-up of yours?’

  Hansen mouthed an O of understanding. ‘The fishermen, you mean? They do not like the dam obstructing the main navigational channel. Yes, I can understand that. But they can still get by. And it is only for two seasons, it will bring in much tourist income, and we obtained the council’s permission …’

  ‘Even so. They don’t think much of the council either. And there’s a trace of something else. You most often hear them bellyaching about wasting time and daft university types, the usual class warfare claptrap, but there’s a real resentment underneath. They don’t like what you’re doing here.’

  ‘Superstition? They are not savages, they are Yorkshiremen with very hard heads –’

  ‘Aye, hard-headed enough – but old-fashioned with it, and bloody-minded. A couple of drinks and that resentment gets blown up out of all proportion – it can turn violent.’

  Hansen thought for a moment. ‘But surely it would not go this far? This guard of ours, is he not a local man also? Well. And the chest is not merely destroyed, but emptied. You must forgive me for thinking only as an archaeologist, but I remain sure that whoever did it came for what that chest might contain – came, perhaps, a long way. And were such people that the lives of a man and a dog did not mean much to them.’

  Ridley twisted his mouth. Normally he’d never bandy theories with anyone but his own people, but this Hansen was definitely in a position to throw some weight around – especially with the Press. Time to touch the forelock. Besides which, his reaction might be interesting. ‘Give me some credit, Professor. First thing I thought of – except that Scotland Yard keep tabs on the high-grade villains in the antiquities game; any of ’em come within a hundred miles, they’d just love tipping the word to us locals. Up till now, well, no offence, but you’ve not been churning up the kind of stuff that would interest them. It was only yesterday you found that chest, the news wasn’t broadcast till late evening, an hour or two at most before – well, this. We’re examining all the possibilities, but I can’t imagine a pro coming running that quick – not when the chest hadn’t been opened, and he didn’t know there was a second one. And if he did, he’d be more likely to have a go wherever you’ve got chest number one – your lab, of course – than out here. Eh?’

  ‘The waste of it!’ exploded Jackson before Hal could answer. ‘Criminal waste! What could have been in that chest – the opportunities –’

  Hansen smiled sourly. ‘I should not be too worried, Wilf. You can still tell Timescape all about number one. And say to the newspapers how you are defying the new Tutankhamen’s Curse.’

  Jackson’s face collapsed in a self-righteous glower, suggesting that Hansen’s shaft was all too accurate. Ridley looked sourly at the pair of them. Academic types! Squabbling like a pair of teenyboppers. There was some excuse for Hansen, though; the man was obviously under terrible strain. A change of subject was indicated. He raised his voice. ‘Box Brownie boy ready yet, Bill? Okay, send him through and take the prof in after. You understand, Professor? We want to know what’s obviously missing, near as you can tell us. Also anything there that shouldn’t be – tools, anything like that you’re not one hundred per cent sure about, okay?’

  Hansen looked glum. ‘That will present a problem. We obviously do not know what was in the chest.’

  ‘Mmmh. The first chest? If you had a look in that, could you guess …’

  Hansen shook his head sharply. ‘Not a safe guess! When I travel, I might pack one bag full of clothes, another of books – you follow? In any event, it is not so simple. Whatever is in that first chest will need microscopic examination and testing before we dare move it, let alone remove it – understand, I am not being finicky. Without stringent conservation work it might crumble to nothing – meaningless as evidence for either of us.’

  Ridley nodded. ‘I understand. And you really can’t even hazard –’

  ‘I cannot!’ said the tall man firmly. ‘Not yet. We may have lost the greatest treasure since Sutton Hoo, or nothing at all.’

  And a right little can of worms that opens up, thought Ridley as he watched the photographer go tottering down the steps. Suppose there was something valuable, and one of the diggers – maybe even Hansen or Jackson – just happened to want the money more than the glory? Professional archaeologists couldn’t expect to get windfalls under the treasure-trove law on stuff they’d dug up. Or there was nothing, and somebody didn’t want to lose face – Hansen? Doesn’t seem like his style. Jackson? Wouldn’t have the guts. Bit extreme for either of ’em, this. Maniac’s work. Doing that to a poor bloody mutt –

  ‘The dog!’ said Jackson suddenly, as if reading Ridley’s mind. ‘Last night’s guard, it was – forgotten the name – older chap, broken nose …’

  ‘Bill Lees, aye. So?’

  ‘Well, I may be wrong, but wasn’t there a dust-up over that dog of his? About, oh, six weeks back?’

  The professor glared at the supervisor, ran a hand through his thick red hair, and clutched at it for an instant. ‘Something we should know about?’ inquired Ridley politely.

  ‘If only to dismiss it,’ grunted Hansen, no longer cool; Jackson’s return shot had hit the nerve. ‘A stupid business – one of my supervisors a few weeks ago, working late on a light summer evening. The dog was not used to seeing him, it growled at him and I believe tried to bite him. He does not like dogs, and I believe they generally return such feelings.’

  ‘Seems so. And?’

  ‘He was nervous, perhaps. He was foolish enough to kick it, and it did bite him, not badly, before Mr Lees could restrain it. There was an argument.’

  Ridley and Harshaw exchanged expressionless glances. ‘Oh aye? And, who was this dog-lover, just by the by?’

  ‘A young man called Colby – Jay Colby. He is one of my departmental staffers –’

  Harshaw’s finger twanged the rubber band that secured his notebook. ‘Well now, sir. I’ll bet there was an argument –’

  ‘All right, Bill,’ said Ridley quietly. ‘Perhaps we’ll send Mr Jackson down to look around just now – I’d like a word with you first, Prof. If you don’t mind, that is.’

  Hansen shrugged with weary fatalism, and Harshaw bustled Jackson away out of earshot. Hansen watched him go, and,
surprisingly, smiled. ‘Poor Wilf! I hope you do not think we are bickering like that all the time. This has come as a blow to him …’

  ‘His big chance, you mean? Can’t blame a man for being ambitious, Professor …’

  ‘Oh no, I agree. And he is a very knowledgeable man, a real expert in his chosen field. But he seems hypnotised by this television nonsense. Myself, I would be glad enough to be rid of it, except that it helps to interest people in the subject.’

  Ridley smiled wryly. The abominable snowman was definitely thawing a bit. ‘For recruiting, you mean? I wish TV cop shows did. Seems to give them all the damnedest bloody ideas of what we do …’

  ‘I can believe that. For recruiting, yes, to raise money for expensive projects like this – and to make John Q. Public see why it is worth delaying that new freeway or office building a few months, so we can save vital knowledge it would obliterate. People must be informed, so that they know why they must care for their past, their inheritance – perhaps not as passionately as a good archaeologist does, but enough.’

  ‘I see,’ said Ridley thoughtfully. ‘This lad Colby – is he a good archaeologist? Does he care passionately?’

  Hansen nodded. ‘I had him in mind.’

  I’ll bet you did. To defend him, though? Or what?

  ‘In fact,’ continued Hansen, ‘he is probably the best single doctoral student at Rayner’s graduate school in all my time there. Since he quit football he has been dedicated to his subject, single-minded –’