The Ice King

by Michael Scott Rohan

  Pru smiled wryly and waggled her fingers. ‘These tentacles of mine. Who said long fingers were good for delicate work? I’m going gaga – and blind – trying to clean up one of these box clasps.’

  Hal smiled, and Pru thought how worn he looked. ‘Let me see them. Ah yes, the clasps. Snaky little creatures, these. I had hoped to get them from the box intact, but saadan er livet. Show me what you were doing.’ She sat, and he leaned over her shoulder, staring into the little pool of light. ‘Yes, I see. But it is not the butterfingers, your problem, it is the way you hold the pick. See – like this.’ He reached out and took her hands in his own, deftly angling them, guiding them. The crust on the clasp flew away in flakes as he worked carefully around the thin lines. She could feel the strength in his hands, lean and wiry and precisely controlled. The probe stuck for a moment, and his arms pressed against hers – it felt as if a static shock had passed. She tensed, and so did he, and abruptly he let go of her hands. ‘Well – like that,’ he said lamely.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, looking up at him. ‘Thanks. I see. I’d been doing it rather the hard way. Thanks for the master class.’

  He shrugged. ‘Everybody has to learn – even the masters.’ His voice was oddly breathless, and he ran a hand through his already dishevelled hair. Pru stared at him a moment, then hooked out the chair beside her with her foot, turning it to face her. ‘Hal – sit down a minute. You look awful, really. I thought it was just the cold, but – you’re really upset, aren’t you?’

  He sat, heavily. ‘Young Paul is dead. Paul Harvey. You would have heard soon enough …’

  ‘How? Not like – like here? And there’s something else, isn’t there?’

  ‘More and worse!’ He rested his head on his hand for a moment, staring at the ground between them. ‘Others died. Yes, like here. I did not know them. But Paul – that was different. I had to identify him …’

  ‘Oh, Hal –’

  ‘There is more – you will hear it later. Everybody will. It may have been Jay who did it.’

  ‘Jay? Are you sure?’

  ‘The police think so. They are looking for him. He was definitely involved, and he has vanished.’

  ‘Yes, but Jay – he wouldn’t –’

  ‘No? You wish to take his side as well?’ The bitterness in his voice shocked her – and then she began to understand.

  ‘Hal, don’t talk like this. Try to relax for a minute. You mustn’t blame yourself for any of this. Not for trying to help Jay, even if he does turn out to be – well, involved. You couldn’t have known.’

  ‘I made myself responsible for him. After that first time – that was an accident. At least, I thought so then, and so did the college authorities. Just – over-enthusiasm, one would call it. It was not the first time something of the sort had happened. I wanted them to ban fraternities at Rayner, you know? The way they have elsewhere – not that the alumni would have permitted it to happen. I was so ready to put the blame anywhere – except the place it belonged!’ He slammed a fist down hard on the bench, and the clasp leapt into the air. ‘And so I – made – this – possible!’

  He half rose, but Pru reached out a long hand and put it on his shoulder, pressing him gently back down into the chair. ‘You said he was involved, and he might have done it – are you so sure he did? You don’t have any proof, do you?’

  ‘Well – not of the killings, no.’ He sighed. ‘But the rest is bad enough, and there is no doubt of it at all. He is more than a little crazy, Pru – like a Holy Roller or a snake-handler, if you have such things over here.’

  She smiled. ‘No, we don’t – sort of religious nuts, aren’t they? Anyway, I think all archaeologists are a bit crazy. Goes with the job.’

  Hal’s mouth twisted. ‘Touché! But we do not all set up sacrifices to Odin.’

  She shuddered. ‘Oh Jesus, did he do that? Yes, I see what you mean – crazy. But Daddy’s a JP, a magistrate, and he’s always saying people are innocent until they’re proved guilty. So –’

  ‘All right, Jay has not been proven guilty. But does your father ever speak of circumstantial evidence?’

  ‘Yes, and I’m still not too sure what it is. Anyway, it was you I was thinking about, not Jay. You’re torturing yourself before you know all the facts. I mean, Jay might just have been stupid – I bet it was something like that. He might’ve brained somebody by accident when he was drunk, or bored some poor girl to death, but tearing – well, you know. He just wouldn’t. And I’m not taking his side or anything; I can’t stand him, actually.’

  ‘Well – perhaps you are right. I do not know all the facts. But I cannot think that they will look good for Jay.’

  ‘Wait and see. Don’t let it gnaw at you. He’s a grown-up, after all. And anything nasty he’s been up to here, he’d probably have done somewhere else, too, in a different way. Come on, you can work for your coffee. Have a go at the other bit of that clasp.’

  Hal grinned. ‘Okay, froken, I hear and obey. But still – that forbandede ritual …’ He shook his head and picked up the clasp. Selecting another pick from the box, he began flaking away the corrosion.

  Pru laughed. ‘I blame the temple, myself. It’s having a bad effect on people. Look how the papers went on when we found the thing – the Vikings didn’t really sacrifice slave-girls, did they? With all those sexy bits?’

  ‘Well – yes, they did. At least, the Rus did.’

  ‘The who?’

  ‘Rus – Viking settlers who founded Russia. But they were all Swedes, and with the Swedes, Gud bevare os, anything is possible! But they only did it at funerals, when a girl volunteered to follow her dead master. There is an eyewitness account – an Arab traveller. It reads like one of your Sunday newspapers.’

  ‘Mmh. Maybe I’ve been doing Harry an injustice, then.’

  ‘Harry? Our Harry?’

  ‘Who else? You obviously haven’t heard about his latest trick.’

  ‘No …’

  ‘Well, he’s been picking up all these little tourist girls and taking them up to the temple site – priming them with all sorts of stories about slave-girls and sacrifices and fertility rites, gangbangs with the priestesses, all that kind of thing. Then he drives them out to Harbord Wood in that horrible old Cortina of his and – well – sort of demonstrates.’

  Hal threw back his head and roared with laughter. ‘I am sure he does! That man – he has hidden depths, you know. There is a story like that, about Viking orgies in a church, in an old Irish chronicle. No one takes it seriously now, it reads like IRA propaganda, but some books still quote it. He must have read it there –’ He ducked aside from the spray of blonde hair as Pru shook her head.

  ‘No, I don’t think so. He probably got it from his granddad – old Hardwicke was our gardener, you know. He used to tell us some pretty X-certificate fairy tales when we were little, and there was one about a wizard – or a witch – who did – well, things like that. Maybe it was both – wizard and witch, I mean. You could ask Jess, she knows about things like that –’

  Hal’s pick scraped violently across the clasp he was cleaning. He glared down at it, muttering to himself, then put it down very carefully on the benchtop and dropped the probe back into the box. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘still a little jumpy, I think. I had better go home. I am doing little good here.’

  Even more light dawned on Pru. I have the idea, she thought, that I have just dropped a special green brick … Aloud she said, ‘You didn’t come by car, did you? I’ll drive you. No really, I don’t much fancy staying here on my own, not now it’s getting dark so early. All right?’

  Hal was still folding his long legs into the front of Pru’s white Alfasud as she went roaring out of the drive in a spray of half-frozen gravel and onto the road, turning right, uphill and away from town. ‘You don’t mind if we go round the long way, do you? I’d have to go slowly all the way through town. Daddy’s said he won’t pay for any more speeding tickets, and it’s so boring, and I can get round just as fas
t this way, honest!’

  ‘I am sure you can,’ said Hal, holding on for grim death as she sent the little car charging up the steep road. At the top she swept regally onto and across the deserted main road, and surged away along it in grand defiance of the speed limit signs and the occasional patches of slush. He watched her pale hair flutter and stream out in the icy draught from the open window, leaving her profile clear against the grey sky: a swan-necked, delicate face, for all the firmness of nose and chin, managing to look cool and intense at the same time. Like Boadicea, he thought. Any day now she’ll be putting blades on the hubcaps. She caught his look, and met it with a quick smile.

  The road ran close to the cliff here, and they could see the town below through occasional gaps in the trees. Lights were already coming on, though it was only late afternoon; clouds hung heavily over the land, and the airflow through the window was rapidly getting unbearable. Pru touched the winding button, and a minute later the heater. ‘I must be going soft,’ she said, as they came to the turnoff for the southern route into town. ‘Shivering in September! Probably seems tropical to you.’

  ‘Hardly,’ said Hal. ‘You forget, I have lived in Texas for the last five years – I have gone soft. This is cold even for Scandinavia, though – surely it is unusual here?’

  ‘For as long as I can remember, yes. But Granddad Ravenshead used to say they had some terrible winters when he was a boy. Maybe it’s a cycle or something.’ The southern route led them away from the town, out towards Oddsness and then back along the seacliffs. Hal could feel the wind buffeting the little car, and imagined a winter storm powerful enough to pick it up and whirl it back over the edge like a dry leaf. Ahead of them, the road climbed into a wide stand of trees extending almost to the edge of the cliff. Their foliage was swept back by the prevailing winds to form a dense canopy that arched across the road. Pru slowed down as they approached the patch of gloom, peering along the road ahead and then into her mirror. Impenetrable-looking hedgerows loomed over the road on either side, but without warning she twisted the wheel and sent the car hurtling towards the one on the right. Hal made out the narrow opening just a split second before the car plunged through it with a rasp and rattle of twigs, and went humping and bumping onto a narrow, rutted track.

  ‘Don’t try bringing that great brute of a Range Rover through here,’ panted Pru, wrestling with the wheel. ‘You’d take half the hedgerow with you and make it too obvious. Haven’t been here before, have you? Thought I’d show you ’cos we were passing – whew! – the woods. There’s a nice view.’

  The track ended in a wide clearing, sheltered by bushes but open at the far end to the unfenced cliff. An angry orange sun sank free of the clouds, flooding the clearing with long shadows and a brief melancholy warmth, staining the wind-driven whitecaps far below. The car bumped to a halt, and Pru switched off the ignition. Sounds of wind and sea closed in around them in their slow, ancient rhythm. Hal realised he could hear Pru’s breathing, in the same soft sequence as the waves. He turned to her, but she was looking straight ahead, with the sun flaring on her cheeks. He reached out to her, but she caught his hand. Then her fingers twined tightly with his own and pulled him to her.

  She rose to him, and their lips met. In a single simultaneous surge they grabbed at each other, her hands sliding under his heavy jacket, scrabbling at his shirt, his hands at her waist, sliding under her cashmere sweater to find warm skin above her jeans, up and around the slender waist to trace out her spine. Her hand swept in slow circles over his bared back and downward – his found her bra and followed it caressingly round, fingertips tracing the curve to its peak. Her tongue lashed and writhed around his, reaching, and he slid his fingers back and under the taut fabric, then forward and up till her blunt nipples nuzzled against his palms. She fell away from him, gasping, but he kept his hands where they were.

  ‘Oh God,’ she gasped, ‘the back –’

  ‘Don’t the seats fold?’

  ‘Broken. Oh God –’

  Separating, they stumbled out on either side, Hal shedding his jacket, the wind whipping his shirt. They swung open the back doors and fell in. Pru yanked her sweater over her head as Hal leant forward to kiss her, so he kissed her breasts instead. She held him for a second, wrestling with his shirt, hauling it down off his shoulders and dabbing them with quick, hungry kisses. His thumbs rubbed over her nipples, and the kisses became bites. Her waistband yielded to his fingers, and they stroked slowly downwards, twining in the soft, flattened curls, lingering in moisture and warmth. Her breath hissed through her nostrils as they kissed, fluttering against his face and then against his neck as she hung there; her long, delicate fingers traced, opened, sought and found. With a gasp of effort she arched her back off the seat, sliding jeans and panties to her knees, then to her ankles, and slumped back. His lips slid from hers to her breasts, her navel, and past; she gasped, as if in panic, and clutched at him. Then her back arched, and her bright hair flew out in an arc across the seat-back. The smoky light tinged her body for an instant longer, and was eclipsed as he moved over her and down. She rose to him, and their lips met. The rhythm of their breathing moved ahead of the sea and the wind, swelled and drowned it in a fast, insistent hiss. He drank in her scent as her body butted at him with cramped, demanding urgency, and felt his own response surge up and out and overwhelm him. The two cries came from a common agony, a shared violence that tore only at itself. Gulls screamed an echo, and the sea-sound washed around them once more.

  ‘Mmmmh,’ said Hal.

  ‘Mmh yourself,’ said Pru, and then yelped with pain.

  Hal shifted hastily aside, rose, and slumped down on the seat beside her, rubbing his left thigh. ‘Hey, kaereste, what’s worrying you?’

  ‘Owww. About the same thing worrying you. Nearly put my hip out of joint – and that bloody armrest must’ve been sticking into me the whole time.’

  ‘Ah,’ murmured Hal, reaching over to rub, ‘I wondered why you were making all that noise.’

  ‘No, dear, that was something else.’ She shook her head suddenly, as if to clear it. ‘Oh my God, Hal, we must’ve been out of our minds!’

  He tilted her chin up with a gentle hand. ‘There are worse ways of going mad, I think. Let us say we were upset, and lonely, and we – found each other. I only hope you do not regret it too much –’

  Pru bubbled into laughter and swung her hair across his face. ‘Regret it! Hal, darling, it was fantastic! I mean really!’ She draped herself around his neck and kissed him demurely on the nose. ‘No. I mean having it away in this silly little car instead of somewhere civilised! I mean, I’m not exactly a teenager any more –’

  ‘And I am old enough to be your father –’

  ‘Only if you were a really active sixteen-year-old. Which given the way you do it now is certainly – Oh come on, Hal. Don’t you think you could find me again, hmm? Tell you what – come up to the farm tonight. I could fix you dinner, something really super – well, better than you’d get at the Ravens anyway! Oh come on!’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘Eight tonight, then. I’ll drop you back now. Give us a chance to get a bath and – catch our breath a bit …’

  ‘But it was kippers tonight, Professor!’

  ‘Well, I am sorry, Mrs Robinson, but I am sure you can freeze them again for tomorrow night. I have some urgent business to attend to up at the farm. I may be back late, but I have my key. So long!’

  Hal felt years younger and pounds lighter as he swung himself up into the battered Range Rover’s high driving seat. He chuckled with pleasure at the soft, smooth throb under the bonnet, and revved up a couple of times, remembering the sports cars he had left unexpectedly standing. Like me, he thought, and chuckled again. Faster than it looks!

  Four-wheel drive was made for Saitheby streets, and the savage headwind hardly held him back as the car climbed steadily up through the town, heading inland. Once above the cliffs, though, it seemed to claw at him from all angles, and gre
w worse the higher he climbed. He passed the turn-off to Jess’s van without the slightest qualm. Let her wonder where he was, what he was thinking. He had no idea what would happen tonight, or tomorrow, or after, and for once he didn’t care. Right now he’d had his bellyful of caring in that particular direction, for Jess and her refusal to commit herself. And Wilf seemed to be just as bad for Pru, in much the same way. Poor Pru! That was the one care he must have in all this, to see she wasn’t hurt. For the rest … He gave a deep, luxurious sigh, both in memory and in anticipation, and slowed the car as the Fern Farm signpost came into sight, leaning as drunkenly off-centre as it had the first day he saw it. But as his headlights played clear across it he stared, and then braked violently. The hummock at the base of the sign was new. And if it was what it looked like –

  The figure’s outflung hand was cold and lifeless, without a trace of a pulse. It had fallen at the base of the post, sliding down it, perhaps, as if reaching out for something. Hal put his hands under the shoulders, flinched at the touch, then nerved himself and heaved the dead weight over onto its back, baring the face to the headlights’ glare. It was nobody he knew, and he was angry at himself for feeling relieved. A man’s face, round and ordinary, gaped up at him with the slack-jawed idiocy of death; a pair of glasses hung askew, one lens starred with cracks. The pallid skin gleamed wetly from the damp grass, with no mark on it. Hal glanced across at the road. It was easily two metres away, the farm road even further. He had seen a hit-and-run victim before; anyone flung that far would have some kind of scraping or bruising even if they were dead before they hit the ground. Something warmer than dew trickled across his hand; he looked down, and wiped it hastily in the grass, shuddering. The man’s overcoat collar was folded in oddly, as if by an impact, just above the breastbone, and the blood, no longer pumping, was seeping slowly along the creases. Hal looked around wildly, and saw a dim gleam in the mirk – the phone box, of course, about fifty metres on down the road. He scrambled up and ran towards it. Then, halfway, he stopped and turned. The dim shape in the grass seemed to be pointing at him. Had that man, too, seen the box, and run towards it – but been overtaken? Hal hurried on.