Ice Diaries (9 page)

I have a natural affinity for facts and
figures, and they stick in my mind; I miss the ability to satisfy my
curiosity on Google more than is rational. (I’ve brought
encyclopaedias home, but it’s not the same.) I know that the
Gherkin is 180 metres tall, so most of it – 160 metres –
still sticks out of the snow. It made me feel puny and ant-like as I
trudged nearer, abandoning thoughts of concealment as I followed
Morgan’s footprints. One triangular window at snow level was
not reflecting light like the others. As I got closer I saw the glass
was missing. I stepped into the building and through another inner
window, this time rectangular and floor-to-ceiling, but also
glassless. A vast empty floorspace, a hushed secular cathedral, light
because of its white floor and ceiling and the huge windows; the air
surprisingly temperate; a faint smell I identified as petrol. To the
right, a lobby with a steel staircase. Sunlight slanted in from the
east. Occupying only a tiny part of this grandiose space was a modest
pile of human clutter; a neat yellow generator, a few boxes of tins,
toilet rolls, a compact tent and sleeping bag, a typist’s chair
and several twenty-five litre water cans, the type from Argos we all
use.

And right at the front, shiny black and
silver, was a snowmobile.

I put my hood down, staring, and walked
round the machine. It resembled a two-seater motorbike, but with
short ski-type runners at the front and a caterpillar track at the
back. I got on the saddle to see what it felt like. On the dashboard
were LCD display panels; a speedometer, rev counter, mileometer,
engine thermometer, and compass. I’ve never ridden a motorbike.
How difficult was a snowmobile to learn? At least you wouldn’t
need to keep your balance. I clicked an inviting red rocker switch on
the handle, searched around for what to do next and noticed an
ignition like a car’s. No key.

Feeling it beneath me, gleaming and
raring to go, I had a sudden doubt my powerkite idea would ever come
to anything. I ran my hand over the glossy paintwork. This was what I
needed – a snowmobile would get me to the south, no problem.
This
snowmobile, if I stole the key while Morgan was asleep.
Not that I’d do something so … unethical.

A change in the light made me look up.
Morgan stood between me and the view, unsmiling. For such a
powerfully built man, he moved quietly.

I said, “You didn’t tell me
you’d got a snowmobile.” He said nothing, just stared at
me. “Why not? What’s so top secret about it?”

“You followed me here.” His
surprise was giving way to righteous anger. To my mind, Morgan had no
business to be righteous about anything.

“That’s right. So, are you
going to tell me what you’re up to?”

His eyes narrowed. “And I should
do that because … ?”

“Because you are living in my
flat, sleeping on my sofa and eating my food. And because you don’t
want to sleep in the Gherkin tonight.”

There was a pause while he thought this
over. Then the tension went out of him. He drew up the chair and sat
down. “What do you want to know?”

“Where the snowmobile came from,
for one thing.” Perhaps he had found a snowmobile shop beneath
the snow, and there would be one each for all of us and we could go
south together … or perhaps the Snowmobile Fairy gave it to him.

“I was travelling on it. I ran
out of petrol and had to walk, that’s when you found me. I
collected it yesterday.”

“Why didn’t you bring it to
Bézier? Why hide it here?”

“In case I was followed.” I
raised my eyebrows. “By Mike and the gang. I didn’t want
to leave a trail to your door.”

“Why would they follow you?”

“It’s kind of involved. I
guess there’s no reason not to tell you. Mike threw me out. He
gave me a clapped out Lynx with a full tank and told me not to come
back. I didn’t go quietly.”

“Why did Mike throw you out?”

Morgan paused before saying, “We
had a disagreement.”

“Is that how you got the knife
cut?”

Morgan’s eyes became opaque for a
moment. “Yes. After that, two of his goons went with me for a
couple of hours, to make sure I left. I was mad as hell. When they’d
gone I waited till dark and turned around – I had enough petrol
to get most of the way back. I took Mike’s snow machine.”

“This one?”

“Yeah. It’s a 600 ACE
Ski-doo, the best one we had. And I drained the petrol out of the
other machines, and emptied the spare cans on to the snow. We were in
the middle of nowhere, camped in a church bell tower. They’d
have had to go on foot back to the last place we found petrol to
fetch more. I figured by the time they’d done that, my tracks
would have been covered by fresh snow.”

I was getting a bad feeling about this.
“It’s hardly snowed for the past week, till last night.”

“No. Unlucky, that.”

“But even if you took his best
snowmobile, is that worth Mike chasing you to get it back? He’s
presumably found the Lynx where you left it. Okay, I can see you gave
them a lot of trouble with the petrol and he wouldn’t be
pleased, but the sensible thing for him to do would be to say good
riddance, cut his losses and move on.”

Uneasily, I remembered Morgan saying
Mike was a psycho. Maybe he didn’t do sensible. Maybe he had
really, really liked his 600 ACE Ski-doo. It was a nice machine.
Morgan sat there, silent, and I had a disagreeable feeling there was
more, and it was worse, and he was deciding whether to tell me. I
waited, unreasonably apprehensive, reminding myself it wasn’t
my problem. Finally he spoke, avoiding my eyes.

“It’s not just the sled. I
took the gold too. All of it.”

Silence fell while the significance of
this information sank in. “So – there were eight of
you … and you’d all worked for the best part of a year
amassing this gold. Digging down to jewellers, blowing up safes. And
you stole the lot.” I stared at him. “Were you insane?”

He darted a look at me. “I was
angry. I wasn’t thinking straight.”

“That has to be the
understatement of the century. Because those seven men –”

“Six men and a woman.”

“– whatever, those seven
are going to be in total agreement about tracking you down to get
back the stolen gold. They’ll probably agree about beating you
to a pulp afterwards, too. If you’d just taken your share,
okay, Mike might have wanted to get his Ski-doo back, but he’d
have had trouble getting the others to care. As it is, they’ll
all be thirsting for your blood. And any minute now, they could be
here.”

I looked out of the window to the
north, half expecting to see seven ominous and growing black dots on
the horizon. I didn’t want any of us to get caught up in a
showdown between Morgan and Mike’s gang, and that seemed a real
possibility if – when – they turned up in a London with
no law. I didn’t want them to know we’d been harbouring
him for fear they got nasty with us. Morgan appeared to guess my
thoughts.

“I was going to leave tomorrow.
But I’m nearly ready, I’ll go today – this
afternoon. Get out of your way. I’ve just got to find one or
two other things I need, rope up the trailer and I’ll be off.
Okay, it’s bad luck about the snow, they’d have been able
to follow my tracks until the blizzard, but there’s no reason
for them to bother you. If they pick up my trail they’ll follow
me out of London.”

“I bloody hope so.” I had
an idea to defuse the situation. “Why don’t you count out
the gold and leave seventh eighths with me? If Mike turns up I can
give it to him, and then he probably won’t chase you.”

He laughed, as if I’d made a
pathetically transparent attempt to trick him that he wasn’t
going to fall for. “I don’t think so.”

“Honestly, Morgan, you are a
fool. Not everyone is as venal as you and your mates. I’m not
after your beastly gold. You can’t eat gold, or warm your hands
at it, or ride south on it. I think the whole scheme you and Mike had
is stupid. For all you know, it’ll be worthless where you’re
going, like it’s worthless here. You lot had snowmobiles, you
could have got out of this country and spent the last year in the
warm, somewhere where there’s a future. I think you’re
all crazy. Still, it’s up to you.” I swung my leg over
the Ski-doo and stood. “I’ll be going. Things to do.”

Morgan got to his feet and came close,
pale blue eyes meeting mine. “You were thinking of stealing the
ACE, weren’t you, when I turned up? I could see it in your
face. You’re not as different from me as you’d like to
think.”

He’d read my mind. How did he do
that?

“It’s been nice knowing
you, Tori. Shame we couldn’t have got to know each other
better. I’ll miss you telling me off.” He put a hand on
my arm, bent forward and kissed my cheek, his beard softly scratchy
on my skin. My body did the electric shock thing again. He smiled.
“I’ll miss you.”

I walked back to Bézier in
Morgan’s footprints. To my surprise, I felt sorry he was going.
I would miss him, too. Nothing to do with my meaningless physical
frisson – but I suppose our group is so small, any addition
makes a welcome change, and he was certainly different. Though from
the point of view of not wanting to tangle with vengeful psychos it
was all for the best.

Ice Diaries ~ Lexi Revellian

Back at the flat, I tidied up and swept
the snow off the balcony. Slightly grumpily, I put away Morgan’s
duvets and beer bottles. Then I went up five flights of stairs to the
top of Bézier, traversed dark corridors, and climbed to the
roof garden. The curved walls are filled with snow blown level by the
wind, and I didn’t go too near the edge. The view offers a
panorama of London, an edited version where only the tallest
buildings exist. I got out my binoculars and trained them on the
broken window of the Gherkin, which was ridiculous, nothing to see,
because he wouldn’t be leaving for hours.

I’m foolish about partings and
find them unduly poignant; they are like a mini form of death which
is the final and irrevocable parting. I’d never see Morgan
again, and this must be why I was up on a snowy roof hoping to get a
last glimpse of him. I wondered how he would cross the Channel, and
how long it would take him to reach the point where the snow stopped,
and what it would be like when he got there. I imagined warm sun on
bare skin, a balmy breeze, a seashore, greenery … I pulled
myself together. For once, I decided, I’d take a day off; mess
around, achieve nothing. I’d go and see Claire.

Claire was pleased to have an excuse to
stop the half-hearted tidying she’d been engaged on while Toby
was asleep, and have a cup of coffee with me. She put water to boil.
Gemma was doing a jigsaw at the table with great concentration,
watched by a row of toy ponies. She looked up as I took off my jacket
and said,

“Tori, why have you got a knife
stuck with tape to your belt?”

“In case I have to suddenly peel
a lot of potatoes unexpectedly.”

“There aren’t any potatoes
except in tins, and they’re already peeled.”

“Course I realize that
now
,
but I’d already made the sheath and didn’t want to waste
it. Good, isn’t it?”

Gemma contemplated it, then said
critically, “It’s a bit black, with the black handle as
well. You could stick on gold stars. Or sequins.”

“I’ll consider your
suggestion.”

Claire and I flopped on opposite ends
of the sofa and put our feet up. They had made fridge cakes, which
were delicious. I told her about Morgan’s snowmobile, and that
he’d be leaving today. I didn’t tell her about the gold –
I didn’t want to alarm her about Mike the Psych. He’d
probably never turn up.

“You’ll miss Morgan.”

“He’s only been here a
week! It’ll be nice to have the flat to myself again.”

“He’s quite good looking,
didn’t you think? I thought you made a nice couple, sitting
together at the ceilidh.”

I laughed. Claire was way off beam.
Morgan was not the sort of man I go for. Of course, I hadn’t
told her about David; she had no idea what my taste in men was. “You
old romantic, trying to pair me off. We’ve got nothing in
common.”

Claire said shrewdly, “As if that
ever made any difference.”

“If he’d been interested,
he wouldn’t have gone home early from the ceilidh.” For
some reason I didn’t tell her about him making a pass
afterwards. His last year might well have been as monastic as mine.
No doubt he’d jump with gusto on any female; he hadn’t
chosen me for my niceness, wit and beauty, I just happened to be
around. I remembered how his eyes had lit up at the sight of Sam, and
how he’d sat by her last night before being moved on by
Charlie. And he hadn’t told me he’d got a snowmobile,
which meant he didn’t trust me any more than I trusted him. I
like a man you can trust. “Anyway, I’m not interested in
Morgan. He’s not my type.”

After the coffee, while Claire fed the
baby, Gemma and I went outside and had a snowman building contest.
She won, because I over-reached myself and made a snow sculpture of a
tooth which, though topical, turned out completely unrecognizable.
Claire brought Toby outside to see.

“Okay, I’ve finished. What
d’you think?”

Claire walked in a circle to view it
from all angles. “What’s it supposed to be?”

“Can’t you tell? I’ll
give you a clue; the real thing is that colour, or nearly.”

“It’s a snow Ku Klux Klan
member?”

“No! Gemma, I bet you can guess.
It’s to do with you.”

Gemma stopped putting finishing touches
to her snowman, and stared thoughtfully at mine. “It’s a
snow ghost.”

“Huh.”

After I told them what it was, Gemma
said it looked much more like a snow ghost than a tooth, and I should
give it eyes. Then she and I played snowball-bowling with wine
bottles, which is a good game with flexible and inventive rules.