ICEHOTEL

by Hanna Allen

  Chapter 32

  I slipped in and out of consciousness. My dreams were surreal. I was with Liz and the others. They were dancing in a circle, laughing raucously. No-one had noticed the axe embedded in Harry’s skull. I tried to speak, but they were making so much noise they couldn’t hear me. Their laughter filled my head until it woke me. But waking was brief, and I drifted off again.

  After what felt like days, I opened my eyes, struggling not to lose consciousness. It was too dark to see. My body ached, and there was a grinding pain in the back of my head that drilled into my neck and spine whenever I moved.

  Then I remembered. Liz had injected me. I sat up sharply.

  My forehead struck something hard, and I fell back, stunned. I tried to stretch, twisting my body but, whenever I moved, a part of me hit a wall. Light was filtering through cracks in the ceiling, but my vision was so blurred that all I could make out was the faint outline of the room.

  My first thought was that Liz had locked me in her coal bunker. I ran my fingers over the low ceiling, feeling for a latch or hinge. The surface was smooth and metallic. And too clean for coal.

  The pain in my head was receding, and I became aware of the noise, recognising it as the raucous laughter of my dreams. It was coming from the walls, loud and relentless, and I was being jerked rhythmically from side to side. My lower hip was pressing against something so hard that I was getting muscle cramps keeping my weight off it. I wriggled furiously, rocking back and forth, and slipped my hand underneath. It was a coiled piece of cable with metallic ends. I fingered them carefully. Crocodile clips. I’d been lying on a pair of jump leads.

  This wasn’t a coal shed. I was in the boot of a car. My Ford was too small, and it had been rusting outside my flat for months. This could only be Liz’s Peugeot.

  I kept the panic in check and pushed against the door, but it wouldn’t budge, not even when I delivered a couple of well-placed kicks.

  My eyes were adapting to the gloom and the interior of the boot was taking shape. How long since Liz had drugged me? The quality of light suggested it was day, but I had no way of knowing whether it was the same day.

  Fragments of our conversation crept into my thoughts. I pushed them away, but they insisted on returning. Eventually, I surrendered myself, thinking through every detail, torturing myself by reliving it. I was staggered by her duplicity, but what shocked me was her patience, how she’d waited to kill Harry, befriending him, knowing that one day she would kill him. And how meticulously she’d planned his murder, positioning the chess pieces, her superb opening gambit of injecting the drug into Purple Kiss. I could almost taste her frustration as things went wrong.

  It was growing stuffy in the boot. Grogginess returned and my eyelids began to droop, but I made myself stay awake. Falling asleep now would be fatal: with no advantage from inside a locked boot, I would need to be alert when Liz stopped the car.

  After a while, the rocking became smoother and more rhythmical; Liz had turned onto a better road, a motorway, perhaps. Despite myself, the hypnotic rhythm lulled me to sleep. I lurched awake when we went over a bump. It was still light, I hadn’t been dozing for long.

  I forced myself to think of what was going to happen. Liz couldn’t let me live now that I knew everything. And what was one more murder, after all? How would she do it, though? Drugs were out of the question, too strong a connection with Wilson’s death. Would she cave my head in as she had Harry’s? Colonel Mustard did it with the ice-axe in the conservatory. No, that was wrong, it would have to be lead piping, Liz no longer had an ice-axe. Nor did she own a gun. She wouldn’t even know how to use one.

  Where in God’s name were we going? Why didn’t she murder me in my flat and make it look like aggravated burglary? She could wash off the gore in my shower. Ah, but she’d been clever, wearing two snowsuits. And when she’d murdered Harry, both suits had been red. Had she planned that nauseating detail? Of course she had.

  But Liz couldn’t kill me the way she had Harry. She would have to make it look like an accident, like Denny. A terrifying possibility ballooned like a phantom: she’d push the car into a river, with me in the boot. I pictured the water level rising while I beat and kicked from inside. It would be difficult to explain, though, how I’d managed to lock myself in the boot before getting the Peugeot into the river. And, anyway, I’d drowned once before, and fate doesn’t strike the same way twice. But whatever Liz might try, I’d put up a fight – I still had pieces left on the board – because I was a survivor. That’s what Hallengren had said, and he’d been right about that, if nothing else.

  I dozed fitfully. A while later, we cruised to a stop. The engine died, and the car juddered as Liz jerked the handbrake. I waited, my heart beating violently. After a minute, there was the sudden scratching sound of a key in the lock. I resisted the compelling urge to struggle out fighting, feigning unconsciousness and keeping my breathing slow and even.

  A second later, the door of the boot was flung back and light streamed in. I smelt salt air and rotting seaweed. Gulls cried overhead. Were we northeast, on the Fife coast? Or had Liz driven south?

  A large shape blotted out the light, and I smelt something warm and sensuous. Liz was wearing Paris. She wrapped her arms around my body, and pulled hard. It was more of a roll than a pull. Even Liz didn’t have the strength to lift someone from the boot of a car. My body balanced on the lip of the boot, and then she released me and I fell face downwards, scratching my cheek on the metal clasp. As I rolled onto the ground, the sweet smell of wet grass filled my nostrils.

  She manoeuvred me to a sitting position, then propped me against the boot. I kept my eyes closed, letting my head loll forward. Her face was close to mine, and I heard her laboured breathing as she waited for her strength to return. But she still had the advantage. I had little chance from a sitting position, even with Liz out of breath. She took a huge gulp of air, gripped my arms and tugged them smartly forwards, pulling me up and over her shoulder.

  I opened my eyes, and saw grass inches from my face. Liz was on her knees. With what must have been a superhuman effort, she staggered to her feet. Swaying dangerously, she stumbled forward, stopping briefly to shift my weight on her shoulder. I lifted my head to get my bearings. We were lurching towards the front of the car.

  I was about to kick and punch when she stopped at the driver’s door. She leant in and dropped me unceremoniously onto the front seat, letting my head bang against the door frame. After a brief pause, she lifted my legs into the car and positioned them over the pedals. Something soft brushed my cheek, and I smelt her fragrance again. I half opened my eyes; the fur hood of her parka was close to my face. With a rapid movement, she yanked the seat belt across my body and snapped it shut. She released the handbrake, and sprang out of the car.

  Nothing happened. She swore softly and marched to the boot.

  Panic swept through me as I realised I’d lost my best chance of escape. No longer caring if she saw me, I opened my eyes wide and looked around rapidly. Seagulls were wheeling and dipping across the expanse of grey sky, their sharp cries fracturing the silence.

  We were on the edge of a cliff. She’d meant the car to go over, and me with it. It would look like an accident. She’d tell the police I’d taken her car without permission. Dr Langley would testify to my unbalanced state of mind. And Liz would get away with murder again.

  I peered into the mirror, trying to see what she was doing, but she was behind the boot. She hadn’t shut it after she’d rolled me onto the grass, and she didn’t bother to shut it now. So I couldn’t see her. And that meant she couldn’t see me.

  Suddenly, I felt the car sway. It inched forward. But Liz had made a fatal mistake – she’d left the driver’s door open. With fumbling hands, I released the seatbelt catch and, gripping the door frame, hurled myself out.

  I rolled heavily and came to a stop a few feet from the door. The Peugeot was moving briskly, gathering momentum. The bonnet dipped sickeningly as the car
balanced on the cliff edge, its back wheels spinning in the air. Then, with a sound like the splintering of bone, it tipped over and plunged towards the sea. Another second, and I’d have gone with it. I didn’t wait to see what Liz was doing – I scrambled to my feet and ran.

  My heels slid over the wet earth and I crashed to the ground. Before I could struggle to my feet, something heavy landed on my back, smashing me face downwards. My mouth filled with mud. I gagged, trying desperately to pull my head clear. I kicked frantically, pushing against the ground, and twisted my body until I was on my back. Liz lay on top of me like a crazed lover, hands at my throat, her face so close I could hear the rasping of her breath.

  It was then that I saw how close we were to the edge. I stopped writhing, terrified we would roll over, and clawed at her eyes. She threw her head back, arching her body to escape my fingers. She released her grip, but before I could push her away, she began to bring her knees up. If she succeeded in straddling me, the game would be over. I bucked wildly, pounding my fists against her chest. As she perched on one knee and brought the other forward, I turned sharply and, with all the strength left in me, twisted my body and pushed her off. She overbalanced and rolled away with a cry. A second later, she was over the cliff.

  I pulled myself onto my elbows, gasping convulsively, and dragged my body to the edge.

  The fall seemed endless. Liz bounced against the jagged slope, performing slow cartwheels like a grotesque acrobat. Her agonised screaming stopped when she hit the rocks far below. She lay in that obscene position that only a broken body can assume, her limbs splayed like a limp rag doll’s. The tide crept over her. The receding water left behind a dark stain, which grew slowly, to be washed away with each wave. On the left were the burning remains of the Peugeot. I hadn’t heard it crash, let alone explode.

  I lay on the muddy grass, with the gulls screaming overhead, and watched the tide ebb and flow over Liz’s body until they came and took me away.

  Chapter 33

  I was too numb with shock to tell them much. The local police, more used to breaking up Friday-night fights than investigating deaths, brought in the detectives.

  They scrutinised the wheel marks and muddy footprints, manifestly unhappy with my testimony. I said we hadn’t fastened our seatbelts, Liz had been driving (evidenced by her wearing driving gloves), she’d lost control of the car, and it had gone over the cliff. I’d had the presence of mind to jump out at the last minute. The older detective, with the wiry red hair and watchful eyes, asked how, if I was sitting in the passenger seat, I came to be found lying covered in mud on the driver’s side. I described how, in shock and unable to get to my feet, I’d crawled across the mud to the cliff edge. I could see he didn’t believe me. It was the fact that Liz’s body had been found outside the car that bothered him, although his companion did mention a similar case where witnesses saw the driver thrown out of a car that went over a cliff.

  A female officer accompanied me to Liz’s house so I could retrieve my handbag. It was lying in the hall where I’d dropped it, an oversight on Liz’s part, but the only one. She’d had the presence of mind to pull my arms through my duffel coat before dragging me to the door and bundling me into the Peugeot’s boot. She’d cleaned up the vomit, and disposed of the newspaper cutting and her syringes and drugs. I learnt that she’d left the twins with Siobhan, even chatted happily for a few minutes, before returning to the house.

  The detectives finished with their questions and, with no direct evidence to challenge my account, prepared a statement for me to sign. What may have clinched it was the level of alcohol they found in Liz’s bloodstream. My own blood, tested an hour after the arrival of the detectives, was clear of alcohol and anything else that might have raised suspicion. There was just a trace of Phenonal, a commonly used barbiturate. Nothing odd about that, I told them, I’d been having trouble sleeping. At the hearing, I stuck to my story. The verdict came in shortly afterwards: death by misadventure. The case was closed.

  If someone had asked me why I’d kept quiet about Liz and the murders at the Icehotel, I would have said that it no longer mattered. I’d had the truth. And Harry had had his justice. Also, a part of me didn’t want Annie and Lucy growing up knowing their mother was a murderer. It was bad enough that, in time, they’d learn about their father. As for what became of them, I heard that a young married cousin of Liz’s offered to take them. Liz’s parents, destroyed by their daughter’s death, were unable to look after their grandchildren. Thanks to Harry’s generosity – the bulk of his not inconsiderable estate was left to Liz’s children in trust – the twins would be well provided for. They were taken to somewhere in Dorset and the house in Granville Street put up for sale. I didn’t see them again.

  There was one piece of unfinished business. Yet I knew that it would expose Liz, her lies and plans, and ultimately ruin the lives of her children. I thought long and hard before making the decision. Someday, I might visit Kiruna and tell Hallengren everything. Until then, Denny Hinckley would have no memorial. He would remain a statistic, one more person on the missing list, his body slowly disintegrating in some northern sea.

  I continued my visits to Dr Langley. We rarely spoke of Liz and the accident. She knew I was keeping something from her – there was little that could get past those watchful eyes – and she couldn’t fail to have noticed that my mental health improved rapidly after Liz’s death. But she said nothing, keeping her counsel. Our sessions became easier, and shorter, until one day she pronounced me well enough to go it alone.

  ‘So, I’m cured?’ I said in surprise.

  ‘You’ll never be completely cured, Maggie. Few people are who’ve had your experiences.’ She smiled her Julia Roberts smile. ‘But you’re the next best thing.’

  I’ve been back at work for nearly a year, slowly picking up the threads and weaving them into a new life. It’s not as neat and finely woven as before, but it’s a garment that functions well enough. There is the odd flaw in the fabric – the dream visits me from time to time – but the material becomes less likely to unravel the more I wear it.

  The dream, when it does come, is strangely different. I walk through the seemingly endless rooms of the dark house, no longer fearful of reaching the bathroom. When I find it, and peer into the bath, the water is clear and sweet-smelling. I tug at the chain and the plug pulls easily. The water drains away, leaving behind tendrils of blonde hair.

  Making new friends hasn’t been easy, but Harry’s colleagues still invite me to their parties. Keeping old friends has been more difficult. I found it hard to forget I once suspected Mike of killing Harry. I came to dread those chance encounters, the making of small talk. We never took our friendship to the next level and, more to his regret than mine, grew apart. Although he accepted the official version of events surrounding Liz’s death, he knew I was concealing something. But I’ve no intention of telling him the truth about Liz. That’s my secret, the secret bequeathed to me by the Icehotel before it melted back into the river.

  A month after Liz’s funeral, I ran into him outside Jenners.

  ‘Well I’m glad I’ve seen you, Maggie,’ he said slowly. ‘I’ve been meaning to ring.’

  I smiled. We both knew it was a lie.

  ‘How have you been, Mike?’

  ‘Never better.’ He looked discreetly at his watch. ‘I’d love to stay and talk, but I need to crack on. There’s packing to be done.’

  ‘A holiday?’

  ‘I’m moving to Stockholm for good. Looks like Mane Drew’s Swedish branch can’t get it together without me.’

  I laughed. ‘You know you’ll be leaving behind several broken hearts in Accounts Payable.’

  He smiled his impish smile, the one that made him look like a boy.

  Stockholm. Realisation moved slowly up through my brain.

  I gripped his sleeve, searching his eyes as if I could read the truth there. ‘It’s you, Mike, isn’t it?’ I brought my face closer to his. ‘You can tell me,�
� I breathed. ‘I won’t do anything about it, I swear.’

  ‘And tell you what, now?’

  ‘The hotel killings. It’s you, isn’t it?’

  ‘Is that what you really believe, Maggie?’ he said sadly. He held my eyes for what seemed like an eternity. But his facial muscles betrayed him.

  He walked away, leaving a silence, my last link to the past. I watched him go without regret.

  As for Liz, in an inexplicable way I miss her, although what I miss is not the Liz lying in her winding sheet, but the old Liz that I knew in another life.

  And Harry? I miss him most of all, his sense of humour, his integrity, and that funny way he had of peering over his glasses. (I still have an old pair, held together with sticking plaster, which he absent-mindedly left in my flat.)

  I visited St Monans yesterday and tidied his grave, hunching my back against the scouring sea wind. The cemetery is untidy at this time of year, and the grass, which isn’t cut till spring, had grown so thick and coarse over Harry’s grave that it was no longer possible to tell where the coffin had been lowered into the ground. I replaced the dead flowers and rose to go, turning quickly from the simple black headstone watching in silent accusation. Someone had once asked me whether I had a responsibility towards the dead. If I had, that responsibility was over. I could rest in peace.

  I removed a carnation from the vase and threaded it into my lapel. Without a backward glance, I left the cemetery, my feet crunching against the dark gravel.

  The first snow of winter fell this morning, a light covering, veiling the garden in white.

  I sat in the living room, watching a solitary robin tug at a holly berry, red as carnations. As it came away, the branch shook, jolting the robin from his perch and sending a shower of snow into the air. The robin flew around the garden, then settled back on the branch, fluffing out his feathers in righteous indignation.

  I watched for a while longer, then turned away.