ICEHOTEL

by Hanna Allen

  ‘I’ve thought about it non-stop,’ she said. ‘I wish to God now that he’d frozen to death painlessly, unknowing.’ The words came out in a gasp. ‘The way he screamed – ’

  I closed my eyes, tears spilling down my cheeks. Oh, Harry . . .

  She played with the lighter, flicking it on and off. ‘I left you in the water and went back up to my room. As I was turning the corner, I heard someone call my name. My married name, Mrs Kellett. Denny was leaning against the wall, a smirk on his face. He said he wanted to speak to me. I was terrified. I simply couldn’t think, I had to stall for time. I told him it wasn’t safe to talk there, we’d have to find a spot where we couldn’t be overheard. He suggested behind the Chapel, early the next morning. I agreed. I spent much of the night wondering what to do.’

  She got to her feet, and poured herself a stiff gin from the drinks cabinet. I calculated the distance between the sofa and the door, shifting my weight as silently as I could.

  ‘I wouldn’t bother if I were you,’ she said softly. ‘You’ll never make it. Your legs won’t carry you.’ She flopped back in the armchair, determined to finish her story. ‘The following morning, I slipped out of the Excelsior through the fire door. I got to the river bank well before Denny. I wanted to do a quick recce, you see. He was so late in arriving, I thought he’d given up and gone to the police. But then I saw him, sauntering down the path, whistling. Silly of me, of course he was going to come. He didn’t bother with pleasantries, just came straight out and told me he knew who I was, and who Harry was, and that he’d seen everything in the Chapel. I nearly fainted when he told me he’d taken pictures.’ She mimicked Denny’s cockney accent. ‘Got a nice one of you removing your ski mask at the scene of the crime, I’m going to write a big fat article and make my fortune, I’ve even got snaps of Harry’s room in the Icehotel.’ She sipped at the gin. ‘He waved his camera at me, and said he wanted money. And lots of it. I asked if the pictures were his only evidence. Yes, he said, but they’re enough to put a noose around that lovely neck, if you catch my drift. They’re still in the camera, safe and sound. I’ve told my editor nothing because I’m sure you’ll make me a better offer.’

  Oh Denny, I thought bitterly. You idiot. You sad, sad idiot.

  She turned the glass in her hand. ‘He didn’t see the stone. I hit him on the side of the head, not enough to kill him, really, just to stun him. I pushed him into the water and held him up by the ankles. His head was under the surface and there was nothing he could do. He drowned in a matter of minutes. You see, I wanted them to find water in his lungs if they recovered his body. A small bump on the head would suggest he’d slipped on the ice, hit his head, then fallen into the river and drowned.’

  My blood grew cold. How little time she’d had to think up this scheme, but it was perfect.

  ‘I removed the memory card from his camera,’ she said, lifting the glass to her lips. ‘It was rather difficult with gloves on, but I managed it somehow. Then I took his room key. I ran back through the fire door and up to his room. I packed all his stuff, including the camera, into his rucksack. That was the hardest bit, you know. I was terribly afraid someone would hear. I took the rucksack to the river and pulled it onto his back. It must have weighed as much as he does, he had so much stuff with him. I pushed him into the water and he just slipped under. I didn’t want there to be footprints so I swept the area with branches. I even thought of taking my boots off, you know, before sneaking back.’ She drained the gin. ‘A bit of an overkill, I decided in the end. The bank behind the Chapel is popular with hikers. By the time anyone realised Denny was missing, it would be covered with footprints.’

  ‘They’ll find his body,’ I breathed. ‘Denny will get washed up somewhere. They’ll see him in the shallows.’

  ‘You weren’t listening to Marita, were you, Mags? The strong current when the snows melt? Remember all that? A few weeks later, you see, Denny’s body would be halfway to the Gulf of Bothnia. And goodness knows where it is now.’ She smiled sadly. ‘Everyone thought Denny had done a runner to avoid paying his bill. And that girl, Jane, supplied the icing on the cake when she told us he had more than one passport. I rather think no-one went looking for him.’

  Poor Denny, unloved and unlamented. He hadn’t deserved this.

  She set the glass down. ‘Later that morning, the workmen had a fire going. I warmed my hands at the brazier, then slipped the memory card in. After that, things moved rather quickly. There was a chance we’d be getting our passports back, so I had less than a day left.’

  My head was spinning. Once she told me the rest, it would all be over. My eyes drifted to the door. Only now did I notice she’d left the key in the lock. I moved my legs cautiously. To have any chance, I’d need to get her away from her chair.

  ‘Could I have a fag, Liz?’ I said weakly.

  She threw the packet and lighter. The lighter struck my arm and landed on the carpet, along with the cigarettes. I reached for them, catching a sharp whiff of vomit through the blanket. I lit up, sucking greedily, my actions studied as though I were doing this for the first time. Out of habit, I took several cigarettes from the pack and stuffed them into my jeans. I was about to pocket the lighter when Liz motioned to me to leave it on the sofa.

  She was watching me, waiting to continue her narrative. How much more was there to tell? Yet the longer I could keep her talking, the more the odds increased in my favour. Perhaps the twins would tire of television and come down, demanding attention.

  ‘And Marcellus?’ I said. ‘He has a part in this story too, doesn’t he?’

  ‘That’s perceptive of you, Mags.’ She settled back. ‘It was after that shopping trip to Kiruna. You returned to the Excelsior, and I went to pick up Harry’s death certificate. While I was waiting in the café there, Marcellus came in.’ She examined her nails. ‘He sat at my table and bought me a coffee. He seemed awfully depressed, said the police weren’t telling him a thing. Then he started to talk about you. He’d heard you nearly drowned. My mind wasn’t really on what he was saying, and I let slip you’d returned to the Icehotel after it was placed out of bounds, and it was afterwards you fell in the river. He said he’d heard different. People were saying you’d fallen through the ice watching the aurora. That’s when I had my lightbulb moment. I said you were lying. I knew you’d gone back to the Icehotel, and it was somehow to do with Wilson’s murder. He swore under his breath and nearly spilt coffee over himself. I knew then that I could turn things around.’ She raised a tense face. ‘I could make it look as though Marcellus was the killer all along.’

  ‘Why? Marcellus was already the prime suspect.’

  ‘But, you see, I wanted him to be a suspect beyond shadow of a doubt. If I sent him to the church, it would look as though he’d gone to murder you, wouldn’t it? The police would conclude he was the killer – why else would he climb after you at dead of night? – but more importantly, you would conclude that he was the killer too.’ She smiled wistfully. ‘I knew you simply wouldn’t be able to resist one last look at the aurora. Specially if I came as well. I was going to suggest we go to the tower but you did it for me.’

  ‘But how on earth did you persuade Marcellus to go to the church?’

  A look of anguish appeared on her face. ‘First, I really need you to understand that I had to do it.’ Her voice broke into a hoarse sob. ‘I tried so hard to find another way. I absolutely did. I wanted you to stay my friend.’

  I looked at her in disgust. ‘You’d have had an innocent man convicted just to keep our friendship?’

  She wiped her eyes. ‘I told Marcellus you were telling me nothing, so if he wanted to uncover the truth, he’d need to talk to you himself. He was convinced Hallengren was going to arrest him that evening and charge him formally with murder. Once I knew time was running out, it was easy to bait the trap.’ She looked directly at me. ‘I told him it wasn’t just that you’d gone back to an out-of-bounds crime scene. You’d been acting really strangely ev
er since Wilson had died. As though you were feeling terribly guilty about something.’

  ‘But if he knew I’d gone back to the Icehotel, why didn’t he tell Hallengren?’

  ‘I think he wanted to present him with evidence that would clear him. And he had to be sure of that evidence before he walked into a police station.’ She paused. ‘You didn’t see him, Mags. He was like a wild man. He hadn’t shaved, his eyes were bloodshot, and there was a dreadful look in them I can’t describe. Don’t get me wrong, though, I don’t think he meant to harm you.’

  I thought back to my encounters with him. No, whatever he may have thought about my actions, I didn’t think Marcellus would have hurt me.

  ‘He said he was sure he could persuade you to go with him to see Hallengren.’ She sighed deeply. ‘You know, the way he talked about Wilson, I think he genuinely loved him. He told me he’d even agreed to sleep in the Icehotel at Wilson’s request, although he wimped out at the last minute and went back to the Excelsior. He only got as far as the Locker Room. He was really gutted by his father’s death. Would you believe, he nearly broke down? It was quite awful to watch, actually. I mean, who’d have thought Marcellus was such a marshmallow?’

  So Marcellus had only got as far as the Locker Room. After leaving Wilson’s room, Liz had dumped her outer suit in the washroom. If Marcellus hadn’t returned to the Excelsior, he might have run into her. And how differently things would have turned out.

  ‘He told me he had to wait for his father’s death certificate,’ she was saying, ‘and there was some mix-up over paperwork, so he wouldn’t be free for ages. The timing simply couldn’t have been better. I said our passports had been returned and we were flying out in the early hours. If he wanted to see you, he’d have to go to the tower, where you’d be watching the spectacular aurora predicted for that night.’

  Poor Marcellus. He must have been frantic to prove his innocence if he was prepared to follow me to the church and confront me there. And instead of uncovering the truth, he’d slipped and fallen to his death.

  ‘I pointed out that he’d probably be under arrest shortly. That really did the trick. He left quickly, didn’t even bother to pay. I had to pick up the tab,’ she added, irony in her voice.

  I fell back against the sofa. My cigarette had burnt down and ash spilt onto the front of my sweater. Liz had had little time to formulate this plan, yet it was staggeringly simple. And it had worked. Hallengren had come to the conclusion that the murderer was Marcellus. I was seeing her in a new light: the grandmaster, moving her pieces over the board, mating in one decisive move.

  She mixed another drink, and swallowed it greedily. ‘You and I were leaving for the church when I got that phone call from Siobhan. It turned out to be nothing really, but it gave me the opportunity I was looking for.’ She looked hard at me. ‘I’d intended to cry off once we got to the church. You see, I needed you up that tower alone.’

  My heart hammered against my ribs. ‘Why alone? Because Marcellus was coming?’

  She didn’t answer immediately. ‘I put on a second suit, and left by the fire door. My plan was to slip into the Ice Theatre afterwards and return to the Excelsior with the crowd. That would give me the perfect alibi.’

  ‘What do you mean by “afterwards”, Liz?’ I said slowly. ‘An alibi for what?’

  ‘I reached the church just minutes before you. Gosh, when I think about it now, it was a miracle you didn’t see me.’

  I cast my mind back. I’d seen no-one. How could I have missed her on the road?

  She was enjoying my confusion. ‘I took that other route to the church. You know? The path inside the forest? It’s faster, and I had a torch. The guide took us that way on the tour, and he told us about the side door at the top of the tower, the one you reach by climbing up the outside.’

  There was a strange taste in my mouth. ‘What did you do, Liz?’ I breathed.

  ‘You know, for a moment I did think about just pushing you off the top and being done with it. If you didn’t break your neck, you’d freeze to death before anyone noticed you were missing. It would seem like a dreadful accident.’ She looked away. ‘But there’d still be those unanswered questions about Wilson and Harry.’

  ‘Where were you?’ I said in a whisper. ‘Outside?’

  ‘When you come in through that side door, you step onto a wide ledge with a safety rail. It’s tucked out of the way. Anyone climbing up the inside simply won’t see it’ – her eyes rested on mine – ‘specially in the dark, after they’ve dropped their torch.’

  So, she’d been there. As I was climbing.

  ‘You came past me, so terribly close I could have touched you. After a while, I heard the creak of the front door. A few minutes later, the door into the tower opened and someone started to climb. It could only have been Marcellus.’ She gripped the chair. ‘He came level with me. And I pushed him hard. He lost his balance and fell.’

  ‘My God, Liz – ’

  We sat in the thick silence, watching each other. Liz had killed an innocent man to throw the police off the scent, purely to keep our friendship. Liz, my best friend, someone I thought I’d known all these years.

  I had to ask. ‘What would you have done if Marcellus hadn’t come?’

  She was fidgeting with the hem of her sweater. ‘I’d have gone to the top and pushed you off. Or done it as you came back down.’ She raised her head. ‘It was jolly lucky for you that he arrived.’

  I saw the scene in the tower: the candlelight flickering over Marcellus’s twisted body, the staring eyes, the dark blood seeping into my boots . . .

  ‘When I heard him hit the ground, I slipped outside and climbed down the ladder. I took the path through the forest and hurried to the theatre. I stayed there till the end of the play.’ She drew out a thread from the sweater. ‘I came home with the crowd, making sure I removed my mask so people could see my face. And having watched the rehearsal, I could discuss the play over breakfast.’

  ‘When did you change, Liz?’ The words caught in my throat. ‘When did you stop being the person I knew?’

  She looked at me in bewilderment. Her face crumpled and she pressed trembling fingers into her eyes.

  ‘What do you want?’ I said sadly. ‘Forgiveness?’

  ‘Don’t think this hasn’t affected me, Mags,’ she wailed. ‘You’re not the only one who’s had nightmares, you know. I feel as though I’ve exchanged one kind of hell for another.’

  ‘And I’m supposed to cry bitter salt tears over you?’

  She wiped her face, sniffing loudly. ‘At breakfast, we heard something about an accident in the church. You weren’t there, of course, you were fucking your detective.’

  I looked away, unable to meet her eyes.

  ‘Leo Tullis told us a body had been found in the tower,’ she said, pulling viciously at the loose thread. ‘The police were treating it as accidental death. He announced we were getting our passports back. He looked awfully relieved. Poor Leo, I bet he’s never had a week like that before.’ She was unravelling the hem of her sweater. ‘On the plane back, you told me that whole story about Marcellus and Aaron and the diary, and what Hallengren thought had happened. And how you wanted to forget and move on. I really thought it was all over and, if I kept my nerve, things would go back to the way they were. I knew there was absolutely nothing to link me to Harry’s death.’

  ‘Only Denny,’ I said quietly.

  She looked up sadly. ‘You know, Mags, I often wonder where he is. In the Baltic, perhaps, some faceless corpse. Those first few weeks, I kept checking the papers, but there was no mention of him. There was just the one article in the Express, saying he was missing and if anyone knew of his whereabouts to contact the editor. I was jolly lucky. There was an outside chance he’d downloaded his photographs before meeting me.’

  No, Denny wouldn’t have done that. He wasn’t the sharpest pencil in the box. I don’t go looking for trouble. I don’t need to. I know where it is.

  Her
mouth twisted suddenly. ‘For what it’s worth, killing Harry has brought me neither happiness nor peace. You saw how much he loved the twins.’ Her voice broke on the word. ‘And they really loved him. He was such a fine man, in another life I would have loved him too.’ She was convulsed with sobbing, tears running down her cheeks. ‘And all those others I killed. Oh God, every day I wish I could turn the clock back. I see them everywhere, on street corners, in shops, whenever I look at myself in the mirror. Even on the faces of my children.’ The pain in her eyes was excruciating. ‘I can’t live like this, Mags, I can’t. If it weren’t for the children, I’d go to the police. But I did it for them. I had no choice.’

  I almost felt sorry for her. ‘You had a choice, Liz, and you made it. And don’t fool yourself by saying you did it for Annie and Lucy. You did it for revenge.’ Hallengren’s words came back to me: Apart from greed, Miss Stewart, revenge is the strongest motive for murder.

  ‘I’m so sorry.’ Her voice was a whisper. ‘So terribly sorry. For everything,’ she added, swallowing the word.

  I gazed at her swollen eyes, her face washed with grief. Liz, the mass murderer.

  She let her head drop.

  ‘Whether you’re sorry or not is immaterial,’ I said wearily. ‘There’s a special circle in hell reserved for you.’

  She lifted her eyes to mine. ‘Then I’ll meet you there,’ she said, regret in her voice.

  A pulse was beating in my temple. We’d come to the endgame.

  Her hand closed round the syringe. She rose quickly and crossed the floor. I tried to get up, but she gripped my arm and plunged the needle into my neck. Her lips moved but the words were strangely muted. She released me, still talking, and stroked my hair, an expression of pleading in her eyes. Terror-stricken, I strained to make out the words, but I could no longer hear. My limbs grew heavy, there was a sudden rush of blood to my ears, and I sank back into the sofa.

  I fell sideways. My vision narrowed to a cone. And then it faded into blackness.