The Ice King

by Michael Scott Rohan

  ‘Aye – but he’s still got some leisure time, hasn’t he? What’d he do with it back home?’

  The tall man hesitated. His fingers rasped over his thick beard. ‘Sport, I guess, mostly – tennis, swimming. I believe he once took up judo or something of the sort. And he rides motorcycles – he has one here.’

  ‘I know. I’ve seen it. Must’ve set him back a bob or two, eh?’

  ‘You mean, was it expensive? Probably. I am no expert.’

  ‘And he could afford something like that? A student?’

  ‘Many times over. His family is wealthy even by local standards – and the locality is Texas. He has a considerable income, and they indulge him. It is a miracle he is not more spoilt.’

  ‘I wonder,’ said Ridley thoughtfully. ‘Doesn’t just zoom around alone, though, does he?’

  ‘Hardly,’ said Hansen, and his face took on a strange sour smile. ‘A number of girls seem to have found him impressive –’

  ‘I mean with friends – a group – other bike enthusiasts …’ Hansen hesitated again, and Ridley pounced. ‘Come on, Professor – does he hang around with biker types?’

  ‘I believe sometimes,’ admitted Hansen, as if a tooth was being extracted.

  ‘Tough types? Hell’s Angels?’

  ‘I believe he did at one time – he had rather a disturbed adolescence, and –’

  ‘Aye. Well, he’s doing it again.’

  Hansen’s face clouded over, the heavy brows knitting to form a solid storm-front. ‘Here? Just what are you talking about, officer?’

  ‘Chief Inspector,’ Ridley reminded him coolly. ‘I’d better spell it out. These last few years we’ve had the usual crew of layabouts on this patch – pretty pathetic bunch, Saitheby lads but no different from any dole-queue dropouts anywhere else. They get pissed, make a lot of noise, chase girls who don’t know any better, duff each other over, that sort of thing – trouble enough, but not real trouble, if you follow me. At worst, pinch a tourist’s handbag or a car to joyride. But this last year they’ve changed, and it’s no improvement. Your Mr Colby starts hanging around with them now and again. Suddenly the petty theft more or less stops, and yet they’ve more cash than ever to throw around. They’re more organised. They go roaring round the roads in convoy showing off and making a bloody nuisance of themselves. Almost no casual violence – but a couple of what looked like pitched battles with toughs from the fishing boats and the farms. One or two of them are turning into really nasty pieces of work – rumours of gangbangs, that sort of thing. And I personally am damn sure they’re getting drugs from somewhere. Do I need to make it any clearer?’

  Hansen’s eyes blazed. ‘Yes,’ he said with startling ferocity. ‘I believe you do. Rumours – implications – do you know, have you any idea how ridiculous it is to imagine Jay Colby doing anything to damage this dig? Anyone who knew him would find the idea absurd! I think you had better be damn sure you have solid proof before you start involving any member of my staff!’

  Ridley hated anybody trying to intimidate him, but taller men most of all. ‘Proof?’ he barked. ‘Let me tell you – yes, Bill, what the hell is it now?’ He yanked the little walkie-talkie from under his coat. ‘I see,’ he added, less irritably. ‘Okay, I’m on my way – no, you stay here and get the gen from Jackson and the Prof. Okay. Ridley out.’ He turned to Hansen. ‘You heard? They’ve found Lees, alive – just. Washed up a few miles down the coast, on some rocks. Exposure and a skull fracture, so he’s not telling us anything yet; still, I’d better get down there and see. But listen here, Prof – I’m not implying anything, not yet. But ask me where I’d find somebody in this area crazy enough to do … that,’ he nodded down to the depths, ‘it’d be that little bunch. And your Mr Colby’s mixed in with them.’

  The dusk was drier than the dawn, but darker. It settled clammily over Saitheby, blanketing the cheerful layers of red pantiled roofs; the little town, crouched in its steep-walled rift in the cliffs, seemed to fold in on itself under the shadowy weight. Jess Thorne, waiting down by the harbour for her bus home, felt as if everybody else in town had retreated behind those rows of glowing windows and left her shivering out here. There was plenty of light from the big dockside lamps, brighter and whiter than ordinary streetlights, but there was no warmth in it; it was bleak in the extreme, especially gleaming on the muddy black estuary water, and it made the town beyond seem vastly more remote.

  She shrugged; she was going soft, that was what – too dependent on Hal Hansen’s car. So he wasn’t back from talking to the cops yet, so what? She’d managed well enough on the bus for the first week or two. For the tenth time she looked up the hillside, and felt ridiculously comforted to see the cheerful lights of a bus that might be hers come snaking down through the newer part of the town, momentarily silhouetting the high-roofed Victorian buildings, gleams of gothic fantasy against the sullen cliff face. In the tallest one of all, lights blazed yellow from uncurtained windows, and she grinned. She’d be infinitely more comfortable in her trailer than crammed into Dracula’s Castle up there with all the rest. The sheer press of people there made her itchy, the permanent tang of damp, laundry, stale cooking and underwashed bodies hanging in the air. And most of all the lack of privacy – all of them living in each other’s pockets. She had to be free to breathe the clean air above the cliffs, without anyone to note her comings and goings. It was worth a little extra trouble, an occasional lonely wait and long walk, to get that. As long as this bus didn’t turn off before the bridge … It did, and Jess swore. God alone knew when hers’d be along now.

  Then a sudden scraping sound made her jump, a dragging rasp that echoed along the empty sidestreet behind her. She looked around sharply and saw movement in the deep dark pools between the streetlights. Something large walked there, quickly but oddly, with a swaying, lurching gait that reminded Jess of a bear. Abruptly, it plunged forward into the light, caught hold of a lamppost and swung around it with a blood-curdling rebel yell.

  ‘Why sure it is Miz Scarlett O’Hara!’ drawled a deep voice. ‘Evenin’, mam, you look like a million dollars. Shall we dance?’

  Jess let her shoulders sag with a sigh. ‘Jay … You crumb, Jay, you really made me jump there, you know that?’ She peered more closely at the swinging figure. ‘You look like hell … Jay, are you drunk again? Have you been fighting?’

  ‘I cannot tell a lie,’ he carolled. ‘I did it with my little hatchet! Hey, I really showed the scaly bastards, you know, nine of them or maybe ten and they got their fuckin’ clocks well and truly cleaned, excuse me! Goddam fishermen, try an’ tell me I can’t drink where I want to in this town! C’mon, let’s dance, dah-de-dah –’

  Jess rubbed a weary hand over her eyes. ‘Oh Jay …’ She heard the wary tenderness of her own tone, and it infuriated her. It was snapping at he needed, not sympathy. ‘For the love of God, Jay, you’re an educated man – can’t you grow up or something? I mean, quit acting like you’re Indiana Jones!’

  The big man guffawed. ‘Pardon me, mam, you seen my bullwhip lyin’ around? Man can’t be a real ark-ay-ologist withouten a bullwhip’n’a purty gall, can he now? Well, guess I’ll have t’settle for the one – c’mere!’

  ‘The Hero is Back!’ said Jess sardonically, evading his clumsy lunge. ‘A born bullwhipper, that’s you. Hands off, Jay, you don’t know where I’ve been.’

  ‘But I know where you’re goin’!’ he hissed melodramatically. ‘Back to that lonely ol’ tin trailer up there on the seacliffs. Why d’you like living up there all on your lonesome, Jess? Whaddya do all night long? How come Hal doesn’t come sleep there? Or drag you off back to his nice little room at the pub?’

  She looked at him levelly. ‘Hal doesn’t own me, Jay. Any more than you did. The difference is, he isn’t fooling himself –’

  ‘You mean he lets you kick his ass around!’ growled Colby. His massive hand flickered out and clamped around her forearm. ‘But there’s more differences than that – aren’t there? He’s
an old man. Jess! You’re wastin’ your time with him – come back with me! Now, to my room! It’s real snug up there, you don’t want to hang around freezin’ your ass off on a night like this –’

  Jess managed to yank her arm free. ‘Forget it, Jay! That’s all over, remember? Finished – fini – finito – washed up! Got that? Times change! Other places to go –’

  He grinned like a dog. ‘Aw, c’mon, Jess … We had good times together, we really went places –’

  ‘Did we, Jay? Did we really? Don’t kid yourself. It wasn’t that great.’

  ‘Not that great? Ah c’mon now, Jess – Hal ever make it five times in one night?’

  Jess pursed her lips tight with annoyance. ‘You want to talk performance? Okay, we’ll talk performance! Jay, if you’d ever really cared a damn about women you’d have realised they might want something more than a battering ram play and a row of notches on the bedpost –’

  ‘Hell, you never had any complaints at the time! That’s just all this feminist batcrap you’ve been pickin’ up, Jess – why’d you ever let that come between us?’

  ‘You know damn well what came between us, Jay. And it’s still there.’

  He stood very still, hands on hips, head thrown back, staring down his dented nose at her. ‘Meanin’?’

  She sighed. ‘You and your little frat buddies.’

  He didn’t move. ‘That was an accident, and you know it. Still get nightmares about it. Sure do appreciate your flingin’ it in my face …’

  ‘I wasn’t talking about that!’ She breathed out raggedly, between clenched teeth. ‘Oh Jay … You think I couldn’t see it? Where you were really at, who with? And I was just an ornament, a status symbol – a full scorecard to prove you’re a real man, Mr Colby, and never mind … Forget it. But I’m never going back …’

  He caught her hands, more gently. ‘Hey, look, so maybe I did neglect you a bit – so maybe I hadn’t quite got my emotions centred up yet, sure, that happens at that age, when you’re too young to know what you really want – what you value. So I was a dummy then, I drove you right into Hal – you goin’ to torture me for it now? Jess – I need you, Jessie, Jessica. Come back …’

  His huge hands clasped her shoulders gently, though she tried to wriggle out from under. She glared up at him, but he towered over her as few men could, his gaze sweeping her up and down, stripping her, she realised, in memory. ‘You look great, kid,’ he said in a husky whisper she remembered well. ‘Fit for a king! C’mon, Jess, you still go for me – c’mon, just once – just for tonight even – for ole times’ sake – Hal’d never know –’ He was pleading like a little boy, unable to believe he’d be denied something.

  ‘With you bragging all around the dig? Forget it, Jay! – Why don’t you go sleep it off, huh? – Jay, will you let go of me or … Dammit, Jay, I mean it! If Hal –’

  He smiled slowly, shaking his head, and drew her closer to him. A glassy intensity was creeping into the pale-blue eyes, although one was blackened and puffy, and his blood-bordered nostrils flared to catch her scent. She could sense him wanting her as he’d used to, coming a triumphant mass of bruises off the football field. Like something he’d earned – battle honours, a cup for the victor, none but the brave deserve the fair. The thought of that made her flesh crawl now.

  Jess’s crossed hands shot upwards, stiffened into blades, and chopped hard into Colby’s biceps. He grunted and let go, and she stumbled back in a defensive crouch – knowing, though, that he would not return the blow. For all he enjoyed a fair roughhouse, he kept a tight rein on his strength these days. Now he was looking at her, eyes brimming with the agonised surprise of a rejected child. But that weapon also had been used on her too often before. ‘That’s it, Jay! That’s enough! Any more and I put another dent in that nose of yours – and start screaming loud enough to bring down every copper in town, you hear? You hear?’

  He glared at her with the petulant resentment of drink, and stumbled forward. Jess retreated carefully.

  ‘Jay – I’m warning you …’ She wasn’t scared, not exactly. She could handle Jay, she’d had to before. He was no rapist, but with the drink to help he was quite capable of going too far, persuading himself that it was what she really wanted. The least traumatic thing would be a convenient exit, but there weren’t any. She looked around frantically, but there was nobody else in sight and no sign of her bus, even across the harbour. There was an engine sound, though, approaching, a flash of lights from the bridgehead and the sound of a big car rumbling across the old swingbridge. When she saw it was a Range Rover Jess leaped up and waved, snatched up her bag and sprinted towards it as it came purring down the dockside. The passenger door was flung open, and she bounded up into the high passenger seat. Hal Hansen smiled across at her. ‘They told me you had gone for your bus. Were you talking to somebody there?’

  Jess shook her head. ‘Nobody important.’

  The Range Rover rumbled off down the empty street.

  ‘But soft,’ squawked Neville in a ludicrous falsetto. ‘What fairy footsteps steal upon mine ear? Size 12 by the sound of it. If found, return to Thomas Jefferson Colby III, spinster of this parish.’

  ‘Shut up, Neville, he’ll hear you!’ hissed Pru, fighting her giggles and losing. ‘You know what he’s like when he’s had a few, honestly, he’s worse than Daddy –’

  The common-room door swung open, and Colby filled the gap, gazing disdainfully around at the happy squalor like a Roman patrician entering a slum. A somewhat drunken patrician, because he spoiled the effect with a rasping belch.

  ‘But soft,’ Neville trilled again, ‘what wind from yonder blighter breaks?’

  Pointedly ignoring Neville, the immense young man weaved out across the room, steering a perilous course between the piles of old magazines and paperbacks littering the floor. An abandoned beercan squashed under his foot. He bumped into the bare melamine table, clattering its jetsam of unwashed crockery and coffee-mugs, kicked one of the fifth-hand wooden chairs out of the way, and staggered up against the rows of open cubicles on the far wall, crammed with stale sneakers, laundry clean and unclean, items of cooking gear and other personal relics. Things spilled out as he bounced along the wall. ‘Ach, watch it, y’drunken booger!’ grumbled a heavyset man from the depths of the less dangerous armchair.

  Colby manoeuvred his bulk around to face him, and leered nastily. ‘Aw, we’re getting kind of fastidious all of a sudden, Hardwicke, aren’t we?’ he growled. ‘Given up sniping at other folks’s pheasants? Or looking up little girls’ skirts?’ Pru clapped a hand to her mouth, but all Harry Hardwicke did was cackle.

  ‘Nay, lad – not yet. So you’ll joost ’ave to wait yer turn!’ He was the dig’s crane operator and driver, seconded on a programme for long-term unemployed. He was also the town character, a short, massive man in his mid-thirties with coarse, gypsyish good looks, now running to a beer gut. His persistent tastes for poaching and teenyboppers had got him into trouble before, but he was no child molester, and most people liked him. He heaved himself up to face Colby, and his chest and arms were almost as formidable as the younger man’s. ‘Now – you going t’pick those oop like a good lad?’

  Colby’s reply was cut short by the sharp rapping of a heavy pipe in a metal ashtray. ‘That’ll do, the pack of ye!’ A copy of The Scotsman, erected like a wall, crumpled down, and the thin face of Forbes, the senior supervisor, peered over it. ‘Ye’re no’ fit company for civilised men. Away wi’ you t’yer bed, Jay – it was where ye were gaun’ anyhow, wasn’t it?’

  Before things could go any further, Pru sprang to scoop up and return the fallen items. Colby’s gaze, bleaker than the light of the bare ceiling bulbs, swept across them all for an instant, then he stumbled around and went banging and clattering up the decrepit staircase to the first floor ‘bedrooms’. The title was a hollow courtesy for rooms as big, bleak and empty as the rest of the building. There was nothing in them but bare walls and boards where the diggers could stretch
out air mattresses and campbeds. The wealthier of them managed a few luxuries – reading lamps and transistor radios. At least they were roomy, a welcome, sometimes necessary escape from the noise and bustle downstairs – and from occasional embarrassing situations.

  They heard him go, listened to his boots clatter across the boards above and the rending crash as he slumped down on his big old-fashioned campbed. Pru sighed deeply. ‘Ah, don’t let Gentleman Jay get to you, pet,’ said Harry cheerfully. ‘You know ’e always apologises in the morning.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose he will,’ said Pru, a little too brightly. ‘Still, I think I’d better be going up myself …’

  ‘What’s the ’urry?’ demanded Neville wickedly. ‘The Mighty Wilf’s not back yet …’

  ‘Aye,’ grinned Harry. ‘T’night is young. Fancy a round o’ cards?’

  ‘With you?’ she smiled. ‘You’d want to make it strip snap, and I don’t think we could stand the awful revelations really, could we, Neville? Nighty-night!’ She shut the door softly and began the long tramp up to her own room on the top floor. It suddenly seemed longer and more depressing than it ever had. She wished Wilf would come back. He seemed somehow less eager to, these days. And people seemed to be getting at her about him, laughing – the Mighty Wilf – it was so unfair. Nobody got at Jess, and Hal was just about old enough to be her father. Well, nobody would dare get at Jess; it must be nice to be all tough and independent like that. Pru was trying, but it didn’t seem to come easily to her. Taking up with Wilf had been part of making it happen; he was dapper, charming, terrific fun in bed, and above all interesting. The places he’d been to, the things he’d seen, the way he had caught her up in his involvement with archaeology …

  Even if that did make him a bit too ambitious – especially lately … Well, you had to be, didn’t you? Though Hal Hansen stayed so charming – but then he’d reached the top now, hadn’t he, and didn’t have to push any more?