Black Ice

by Colin Dunne

  'What would it take?'

  'Like I said, we pick our guys very carefully and we look after them too. But one day one of our fellers will sniff something or drink something or just go off the wall like people do sometimes, in the best ordered societies, and he'll run round burning Reykjavik down and we'll be in big, big trouble.' He drank some beer from the can. 'I hope to God I'm not on duty when it happens. Come on back to my office for some coffee.'

  It had stopped raining, but spiteful clouds still tumbled

  around the sky. Two young blacks in track-suits jogged past.

  'That's something you wouldn't have seen at one time,' Dempsie said.

  'Jogging?'

  'No, blacks.'

  'How's that?' I'd heard the story but I still wanted to hear his official version.

  'When we first came here we had to make a deal that only "first-class" troops would be stationed here. You know what "first-class" meant then?'

  'White?'

  'White.' He stopped and looked out over the lava plains. With some care, he went on: 'These people had what I call an excess of national pride. They were pure bred. Literally, I mean. No newcomers had landed here for a thousand years. That doesn't seem important to mongrels like us but to them it was.'

  'You mean they were racists.' I put that in to see what he'd

  say. He handled it well.

  'I don't know. I don't think so. Certainly not in the sense of a racist in Birmingham, Alabama. Or Birmingham, England, for that matter. They didn't look down on other races because they didn't have any other races to look down on. A lot of the older people still feel the same. When they were discussing admitting two dozen boat people you would've thought they were landing battalions of Martian rapists.'

  'Know what you mean. All those years, locked in here battling with the elements. I suppose after a few centuries you begin to think you belong to the most exclusive club on earth.'

  'That's it,' he said, moving off again. 'The most exclusive club on earth, and membership's closed.' He gave me a grin over his shoulder. 'And if l was in a club with lady members like that, I'd close the membership too.'

  Back at his office, we drank some coffee and talked some more until his assistant, the one who'd been playing the juke box, walked in.

  'We hit a snarl-up over this Murphy,' he said. I can't say I was all that surprised.

  'Sam was saying that he thinks maybe he's no longer with us,' Dempsie explained, but the man cut him off short.

  'Oh no, Sir, he's still stationed here but he's not on the base today and I can't get in touch with him.'

  He turned to me, looking even more apologetic. 'I'm sorry about this, Sir, I really am. What I was going to suggest was that maybe Mr Dempsie or myself could bring Corporal Murphy down to your hotel tomorrow.'

  Now that did surprise me. And on Dempsie's large and genial features I thought I caught a glimpse of satisfied amusement.

  28

  I drove back into town alongside the Tjornin. I stopped and stared at it. You know how it is when you're sure something's wrong but you can't see what it is.

  Then I realised. It was deserted. A bold band of ducks was leading a raiding party on the land and ransacking a paper-bag of slices of bread, squabbling in their glee at putting one over on their patrons. Further along I saw a toy yacht beached on the side, and a coat and picnic bag beyond that. But no people. Then I saw where they'd all gone.

  A crowd of thirty or so people were taking the road that led up the hillside among the smart villas. From somewhere up at the front, out of my sight, I could hear the sweet burble of a motor-bike. Only one machine on the island sounded like that. There was no way of pushing through the crowd, so I did a few nifty turns around the town centre and pulled round the corner into Gardastraeti when I saw the mob advancing down the road.

  In front of them was Palli with a roped prisoner.

  Sitting back on his machine, his bare blue-stained arms were alive with muscles as he bent his wrists down, juggling throttle and clutch to hold it down to walking speed.

  Beyond him, thirty yards or so distant, was the shuffling muttering crowd. They daren't come nearer; they couldn't go away.

  And between them, secured to the bike by twelve-foot of orange nylon cord around his neck, was a young dark-haired man.

  At first I didn't recognise him, but then, neither would his mother. His face was blood and bruises and not much else, and he was holding his head back in a queer sort of way. He stumbled and staggered along and it took me a minute to realise it was the Russian. The one in the photograph with Solrun. The one in the chamois jacket. Only now he looked about as elegant as a scarecrow. His jacket was ripped open and as he walked his knee poked through a tear in his trousers.

  When he saw me, Palli gunned the bike and eased the clutch a fraction. It was beautifully judged. The bike jumped forward a yard, the rope tightened and Kirillina was jerked forward on his knees. I saw then that his hands were tied behind his back.

  'Said I'd run you home - here y'are,' Palli called out. He didn't even bother to look round. He smiled at me all the time.

  'Know who this lulu is?'

  'I know.'

  By this time I was out of the car and unfastening the cord around his neck. At least it wasn't a noose. And the fastening on his hands fell away when I touched it. 'What the hell are you doing, Palli? The cops'lllynch you for this.'

  He pulled an innocent face. 'Me? I was only giving the guy a lift home. I didn't touch him. Ask the bum.'

  I knew I had to. Kirillina was mauling at his face and generally trying to bring himself round.

  'No,' he said, when I put the question. 'Not him.'

  'Who? Who did it? I'll get the police.'

  'Police?' His eyes opened in alarm. 'No police.'

  Close to, I could see the damage. His right eye had gonecompletely under a blue-black mound. The blood from his nose had soaked up the grime and grit of the road where he must've fallen, so that his face looked like a dropped lollipop.

  He didn't seem to know he was outside the Soviet Embassy. It's a cream and grey building, which somehow manages to look thickset and heavy-shouldered, as though anxious to conform to its national stereotype. It was the sort of building where a Victorian might have kept his second-best mistress. Now it was bursting with life. Faces appeared at the basement windows behind the security bars, and higher up the building.

  'He was playing around with Oscar's chick,' Palli said. He'd obviously decided to try to justify it. 'You gotta hand out a warning now and again.'

  I didn't reply. Then I heard him say 'Hey, this could be fun,' and I looked up and saw the door to the embassy, on the side of the building, had opened. Three men were coming down the steps, two of them trying to restrain a third who was shouting and waving his one free arm. Down the road the crowd watched this loud incomprehensible drama.

  As he burst free and rushed to the gate, I led Kirillina to him. He put his arm round him lovingly, and coaxed him up the stone steps and into the embassy.

  One of the two remaining men pointed at Palli and bellowed a fierce threat. Then they all withdrew and closed the heavy green door behind them.

  'Some show, huh?'

  'You must be mad. Are you trying to start a war or something?'

  He pushed two fingers down into the pocket of his sleeveless denim jacket and pulled out his cigarettes. As he lit one, he said: 'I told you, it wasn't me. But if it was I've got the perfect defence.' He drew on the cigarette and then leaned back on his bike to blow the smoke skywards. 'Yes, sir, that bastard was screwing my wife.'

  'Your wife?'

  'That's right. Solrun.'

  Then I saw what he meant.

  'Now leaving out what I know and what you know, on paper she is my wife and that guy - who is reckoned to be a smart-ass diplomat or something - has been taking advantage of her loving disposition. Now she's gone missing and he's got the nerve to come to my apartment looking for her. Shit, man, no one would convic
t me on that. They'll say I shoulda killed him.' He pretended to get off his bike to go and find the Russian again, then sat back. He was fire-proof and he knew it.

  'Did he really come to your apartment?' Somehow I had to try to salvage some truth from all this.

  'That's right. A real foolish thing to do.'

  'Why?'

  He began to paddle the bike along with his feet. I walked with him. The crowd had almost all gone now, back to their boats and empty bags of bread.

  'He said he was looking for Solrun. Friends of Oscar he ran into thought he might know that himself.'

  'And did he?'

  'Well, he didn't say, matter of fact.' He scrubbed his fingers in the ginger matting of his chest.

  He stopped the bike and motioned me nearer with a movement of his head. The jeering triumph left his face.

  'Look. After last night, some things I wanna say, okay?'

  To him, a beating-up was all in a day's work. He obviously thought I was getting far too excited about it.

  'All right. What?'

  'I'm sorry I walked out on you. I don't know where you got the name, but yes, sure, Oscar Murphy was my buddy.'

  'And he isn't here?'

  He kept his hairless face directed towards me and his pale blue eyes were steady enough. 'I told you that. He's working in a muffler shop in Jamaica- New-York Jamaica that is, not the one down in the West Indies.'

  He saw me glancing back anxiously at the embassy.

  'Don't worry about it. They just roughed him up a little. He'll be okay. Sam,' he said, 'I wanted to tell you I was hearing you last night. You talked good sense to me. Better than I've heard for years. I'm going back. I'm going back to Chicago.'

  'Great,' I said, and he managed to look quite hurt by the sardonic way I said it. For some reason he wanted my good opinion.

  He halted the bike with his feet on the road again and held out his broad hands with their tufty golden hair. Then he turned them over, palms and padded muscles uppermost.

  Whoever had beaten up the Russian would've had hands like a slaughter man. Palli's wouldn't have got a second glance at a needlework class. Not only were they unscratched, they were surprisingly clean.

  29

  From the top bar of the Saga we watched the bulging black clouds chug across the sky and tip their endless drenching loads on the city. It wasn't a scene to lift the human spirit, but right then you couldn't have budged Ivan's spirit with heavy-lifting gear.

  His face, one of those long and mournful models at the best of times, hung in grey folds and his soft brown eyes were veined and rimmed with red.

  'I know, I look ghastly,' he said, when he saw the expression on my face.

  'What's the trouble?' I asked, waving up a martini for me and another gin for him.

  'The usual.' He shrugged and turned his face towards the windows which were draped from the outside with nets of rain.

  I don't know why I bothered asking. That was all he ever said: the usual. It was frustrating really, because he was disbarred from the one activity that all us diurnalists have in common- group grizzling. Somehow we manage to combine a mawkish affection for our worthless trade with a deep contempt for those who employ us. Grimm, admittedly, was an extreme case, but in general we were right.

  And poor old Ivan couldn't join in.

  'They're giving you a bad time?' I said. He didn't even nod. They probably had nod-detectors in every room in the place.

  'I wish I were like you- independent,' he said, unexpectedly.

  There were only three businessmen at the bar, and we were tucked quietly away in a corner.

  'You are independent.'

  'Not really. Not like you. Not emotionally independent. I'm terribly vulnerable, as I'm sure you know. It's inevitable if one is . . . gayish.'

  He always qualified gay by adding the last three letters, as though the process was somehow incomplete and a little bit of him was still heterosexual. If so, it was a little bit I'd never seen.

  'I suppose they can always haul you back to Mother Russia.'

  He lifted his hangdog face. 'Don't.'

  'Are you filing anything so far?'

  He shook his head. I was glad about that. What can happen on those sort of jobs is that some agency bloke files to Moscow, one of the Moscow-based western reporters picks it up and does it up for London and New York, and before you know where you are you have an editor ratting at you.

  'Apparently,' he added, 'I'm on ice for a policy piece.'

  'That shouldn't affect me too much. Unless it's a topless policy piece.'

  'You?'

  That was my chance to tell him about offering Grimm a story on Solrun's mother. I'd caught a call from him - and just missed one from jack Vale in New York- when I got back to Hulda's. At least the story about Grimm might cheer him up.

  'He said it was too fish-and-chippy and they'd got a dozen like that down the Old Kent Road every week. So I suggested that there might be a security angle to it and my esteemed editor squealed with laughter. "What are they after up there," he said, "the secret recipe for fish fingers?" He told me to stay on the trail of the Sexy Eskies and he also authorised me to go up to a thousand quid to get the right pictures.'

  Ivan did manage a tired smile. He wasn't being drawn by that reference to a security angle. All he said was: 'But you haven't got your model available for the pictures, have you?'

  'We're working on it, Ivan. By the way, you know about your embassy chap being beaten up, do you?'

  'It was nothing much,' he said hurriedly.

  'Nothing much? I saw it. He'd had a damn good kicking and he was hand-delivered, in public and daylight, to the embassy door. Well, gate.'

  Ivan looked agitated. 'I gather there's no official protest anyway.'

  'Odd. Very odd.' That covered the two questions I'd wanted to put to him. Which left me with one small item of information which I wished to slip into his drink-or wherever else he might best swallow it. And I wanted to watch his face while he did it.

  'Hey,' I said, breaking off mid-swallow as I suddenly 'remembered' something. 'One of your tips came up nicely, Ivan.'

  'Did it?' he replied, listlessly.

  'Yes. Oscar Murphy.'

  'Oscar Murphy.' He ran his thin fingers around his mouth and began to pull himself up from his slouched position.

  'You remember. Our first day here, I think. You said you'd picked his name up at the embassy.'

  'Oh, yes, I remember.' He looked relieved. He didn't know what was coming next. For all he knew he was in for a nasty shock. He was.

  'I've got an appointment with him tomorrow.'

  Then he did drag himself up and he couldn't keep the amazement out of his face. 'Oscar Murphy? You're meeting him? That can't ... I mean, are you sure, is it the same man? I'm sure there's some kind of mix-up.'

  'Why?' I almost hated myself for doing that. He was in enough trouble as it was. But it was Ivan who'd fed me the two names in the first place, both the Russian and the American, and it was only fair I should bounce one of them back at him.

  He cast about for an answer. 'I had the impression that he was ... abroad somewhere.'

  'Not at all,' I went on, breezily. 'Chap up at the base has fixed it all for me. I'm seeing him at ten tomorrow.'

  'Where?' he asked, too quickly. Then he added lamely: 'You don't want to have to bother going all the way out to Keflavik again, do you?'

  'No, they're bringing him down here. That's one thing about the Yanks, their PR is terrific. So I see him here and let's hope he can give us a lead on Solrun.'

  What he should've done was to ask if the mysterious Oscar Murphy knew Solrun, because as far as Ivan was concerned, he didn't. But he was tired and he was missing a few, and he let that one go.

  He sat back again and rested his head on the cushion. Wearily he closed his eyes. I felt sorry for him.

  'This wretched business,' he murmured. 'Do your bosses ever make you do things you find distasteful?'

  'On
ly every day.'

  'Like what?' Above his closed and hooded eyes, his brows furrowed into a frown.

  'Like getting out of bed. Picking up the telephone. Talking to their readers. All pretty grisly, I can tell you.'

  After a short silence, still with his eyes closed, he asked:

  'Have you found anything for the wondrous Sally yet?'

  'I thought maybe something in sealskin.' I didn't dare tell him about Bell's gift of the stuffed puffin.

  'How ghastly.' His eyes half-opened. 'I won't have that, I'm afraid. Not the skins of those dear little creatures. Why don't we look at some of the knitwear here? It's gorgeous.'

  'Then we'll run into the save-the-sheep mob.'

  As I walked through the door at Hulda's the phone was ringing. It was Jack Vale.

  'What a busy little bee you are to be sure,' he said. 'This is the third time I've tried you.'

  'How'd it go?'

  'I managed to run him down all right. He's your man, no doubt about that, Sam. Hang on while I check my notes. Here we are ... ready? It's Corporal Oscar Murphy and he was with the jar-heads.'

  'Jaw-heads?'

  'Jar-heads. Marines. They are known by this fine example of muscular American English because their caps fit so tightly on to their cropped heads that they look as though they've been screwed on.'

  'Can we have the rest in English English please?'

  'And who better than a Scot to answer that plea ... yes, of course. On his first tour of three-to-four years he was a crewman on helicopters out of MCAS Cherry Point, North Carolina. Okay?'

  It was a clear line. I could even hear his notebook rustle as he turned the page.

  'That's right, Cherry Point. He was a gunner on CH-46s. Is this what you want to know?'

  'Couldn't be better.'

  'He made E4, that's corporal, on his first tour, and - this is interesting- to do that you have to be what they call squared away.'

  'English, please?'

  'It's a reference to the way they have to do their beds at boot camp, like hospital corners for nurses. A squared-away marine is one who is well trained, highly-disciplined, a good soldier in other words. He was doing well, your man.'