ICEHOTEL (40 page)

It was 1.00pm and I was on time. I approached Liz’s house
from the west, knowing I couldn’t be seen from that direction. There was no
sign of Mike’s banana-yellow Porsche on the street, or in Liz’s drive. That
meant nothing. He could have arrived by cab. The opportunity would be wasted if
he were present, to say nothing of how I’d feel about seeing him now.

The pink-white gravel, wet from the recent snow, sank under
my feet as I crunched up Liz’s drive. Weeds dotted the path, spoiling the lawn
and flowerbeds.

I loved Liz’s house, a Victorian jewel in a Georgian city.
The front door was framed with climbing roses, blooming despite the season, the
peach-coloured buds blackened with frost. The bushes grew untethered, and
several branches had made a bid for freedom, entangling themselves in the
profusion of dead honeysuckle wreathing the windows.

A large Peugeot stood backed up so close to the door that I
had to squeeze past to reach the bell. Liz had been on one of her mammoth
shopping trips.

The bell jangled deep inside the house. Liz opened the door
before it had finished ringing. She was wearing jeans and an Arran sweater, too
large for her, the cuffs hanging over her fingers. I glanced at the thick-soled
boots and the green parka in her hand; she was on her way
out. Disappointment, like the taste of old pennies, filled
my mouth.

‘You’re here, Mags.’ She smiled warmly. ‘Excellent, we’ve
just set the table.’

‘We?’ I said in alarm, trying to see over her shoulder. ‘Is
Mike here?’

‘He’s away. It was the twins who helped me.
They’ve already eaten.
’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘Are you
all right?’ She paused. ‘You haven’t been drinking?’

My breath smelt from the evening before. ‘I’ve not had a
drop today, honest, Liz. I’ve even had breakfast.’ I glanced at the parka. ‘Did
I get the time wrong?’

‘I’m out of cigarettes, that’s all. I was about to pop down
to the corner shop and get you some.’

‘Well don’t bother on my account. You know I’ve given up.’

Liz and I had taken to playing this game, each of us pretending
to the other that we didn’t smoke, and the other did.

‘So, where’s Mike?’ I said warily.

‘In Stockholm.’ She was looking at me curiously. ‘You know,
he told me he’s been to see you but you’re never in, and you don’t return his
calls. He’s even come into Bayne’s and asked after you. He said the girls at
Accounts Payable won’t leave him alone.’ She took my coat and threw it onto the
hall stand. ‘You’re not avoiding him are you, Mags?’

‘Of course not,’ I said, too quickly. ‘I’ve been meaning to
get in touch, but I never get round to it.’

‘That’s easily solved. I’ll have to have you both over,
then.’

I hesitated. ‘Look Liz, about Mike,’ I said, my voice
faltering.

‘Yes?’ She waited, her eyes moving over my face.

I found my courage. ‘There’s something I need to talk to you
about.’

‘Fine, but shall we do it over lunch? Come through, the
twins are dying to see you.’

I followed her into the living room, my courage evaporating.

The room was large with a high ceiling buried under ornate
plastering. Both sides of the dado rail were papered in red and green floral
damask, the wallpaper stained and torn in places. Fading curtains, too heavy
for the sagging brass rods, bordered the sash windows which were kept closed,
even in summer. Liz had inherited the heavy dark furniture from the previous
owners. Even the sofa was ancient, with its Queen Anne legs and striped silk
upholstery. There was no sign a fire was ever lit. Dried flowers, dust
powdering the leaves, were crammed into a Chinese vase in the fireplace. But
the room was warm. Liz had installed central heating.

It was weeks since I’d seen the twins. They were dressed
identically in kilted skirts and bright red sweaters, with differently coloured
grips in their hair. They were playing one of their let’s-make-as-much-mess-as-we-can
games. They’d draped a blanket over a clotheshorse and were pretending it was a
house, stuffing it full of objects from the room.

‘So, school’s over for Christmas?’ I said, trying to inject
a cheerful note into my voice.

Annie glanced up, then stared open-mouthed. ‘You’ve cut your
hair.’

I wondered what was coming next, Annie was not a child who
minced her words.

‘It makes you look like a boy,’ she said.

‘That’s rude, Annie,’ said Liz.

‘It’s because you’ve got nits. Alastair in my class has got
nits and his hair has been cut just like yours, only shorter.’

Another time, I’d have joined in the joke, but I was
preoccupied with thinking of how best to broach the subject of Mike.

‘Annie, that’s enough,’ Liz said firmly.

Annie was famed for her non sequiturs. She eyed me solemnly.
‘Your clothes look funny.
I bet your bra doesn’t
match your knickers,’ she added knowingly. ‘Mummy’s always does.’

Liz shook her head in mock exasperation. ‘Could you watch
them for a minute, Mags? I won’t be too long.’ She took a ten-pound note from
her purse. ‘Mags is in charge while I go to the shops. Can I trust the two of
you to behave?’

Lucy gazed at her blissfully, nodding. Annie said, ‘Yeah,
yeah,’ in a bored tone and didn’t look up.

I smiled at Liz. ‘We’ll be fine.’

She threw the twins a warning look and left the room. A
second later, I heard the front door close.

I bent to stroke Lucy’s hair. ‘How did it go at the
doctor’s?’ I said, pleased I’d remembered this small but important detail.

She raised her hand proudly. ‘The nurse put a bandage on my
finger.’

‘That’s nice, sweetie,’ I said mechanically.

I sank onto the sofa, wishing I’d rehearsed what I would say
to Liz. There were two ways she could react. She’d agree I had a point, and it
would be worth going to see Hallengren. Or she’d be in denial, call me a
lunatic, and demand to see proof. Or she’d think I was fabricating some
nonsense to keep her and Mike apart. Three ways.

‘We’ve been practising ballet for the Nativity Play,’ Annie
was saying. ‘We’re angels and we wear white dresses with wings and we do a
dance.’

‘And we have sparkly stuff in our hair,’ said Lucy.

‘Do you want to see me do the dance?’ said Annie, nudging
her sister aside. She scrambled to her feet and did a little pirouette. But she
overbalanced and knocked into a table. She lost her footing and fell, her heavy
curls tumbling about her cheeks.

I turned away to hide a smile. ‘That’s wonderful, Annie.’

She struggled to her feet and brushed down her skirt, a
cross expression on her pink face.

‘Does Mike come here often?’ I said, watching them play.

‘He used to come a lot,’ said Annie. ‘He was always bringing
Mummy flowers, big yellow ones.’

‘Yes, lilies are Mummy’s favourites.’ I studied her face.
‘But he doesn’t come so much now?’

‘Mummy said he’s too busy working.’

I hesitated. ‘Do you like him, Annie?’

She turned away, shaking her head slowly.

I was surprised. I thought Mike would be well established in
their affections by now. I was about to quiz her further, when I felt a tug at
my arm. Lucy had clambered onto the sofa.

‘There’s something I have to tell you, Maggie,’ she said
earnestly. ‘We’ve got a computer at school and we’re using the Wide World Web.’

‘Wow, it sounds marvellous,’ I said, running a finger down
her cheek.

She slipped her little hand into mine and gazed at me with a
hopeful expression. ‘Will you play shop with us?’

‘Of course I will, pet. What do I have to do?’

Annie took control, as always. ‘We need cash.’

Liz’s handbag was on the chair. Annie opened it, and started
to throw the contents out onto the floor.

‘Annie, I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ I said quickly.

She brandished Liz’s purse in triumph. ‘Mummy lets us use
her money provided we put it back,’ she said with authority.

Before I could stop her, she tipped the purse upside down,
and shook it, showering the floor with money. After a final violent jerk, she
threw it over her shoulder. She and Lucy picked up the coins and
busied themselves making neat piles of pennies. I bent to
gather the scattered items.

I was zipping the bag shut when something under the chair
caught my eye. It was a silver cigarette case.

I’d never seen Liz use a case; like me, she took her
cigarettes straight from the pack. I examined it, running my finger over the
monogram: EK. The curling letters spiralled outwards, looping over the edges
onto the other side. I pulled at the clasp, wondering idly who EK was. The case
sprang open. I’d half hoped to find cigarettes, but it was empty except for a
few strands of tobacco. The workmanship was exquisite: tortoiseshell lining and
two yellow silk bands, one on either side. I wondered why Liz kept it in her
bag but didn’t use it.

I was about to snap it shut when I noticed that the
tortoiseshell was loose on one side. I prodded it back, pushing it under the rim,
but it came away from the case. I glanced guiltily at the children; their
attention was on the coins. I tried to ease the tortoiseshell into place, but
something was wedged behind it. I picked the lining off carefully. A piece of
newspaper was jammed in so firmly it could have been glued to the silver.

I peeled it away and smoothed it open. The paper, yellow
with age, had been folded so many times it was difficult to read.

It was a cutting from a London
newspaper. There was
a single article. The title jumped out at me from
the page.

Leading civil servant commits suicide in prison

Richard Kellett’s body was found hanging by his belt in
his cell yesterday morning. The prison governor, Mr John Hickock, will deliver
a full statement later today, but told our reporter last night that Kellett had
been assessed as not being at risk to himself. His belt and shoelaces had
therefore not been removed. Police have ruled out foul play.

Kellett had just begun a life sentence after having been
convicted of treason in one of London’s most sensational court cases for
decades. Kellett, a leading civil servant in the Ministry of Defence, had been
found guilty of selling information to several international terrorist groups.
In his summing up, after a trial lasting nearly six months, the judge, Mr
Justice Cleveley, told the jury that the crime of which Kellett stood accused
was treason and, until recently, would have carried the death penalty. The jury
had taken less than thirty minutes to find Kellett guilty. Sentencing him to
life imprisonment, Mr Justice Cleveley said that the sentence reflected the
gravity of the crime and recommended that Kellett serve no less than thirty

The star prosecution witness was Professor Henry
Auchinleck, a historian at Cambridge University. Professor Auchinleck, a
researcher of international repute, had been commissioned by the government to
help them trace the leak in the MoD. After months of painstaking work, he had
finally uncovered the identity of the civil servant who had been leaking secrets
to terrorist organisations. When initially questioned by police, Kellett had
vehemently denied any involvement in the affair. But, after hearing the
evidence given by Professor Auchinleck and, under intense cross-examination in
the witness stand, Kellett had broken down and changed his plea to one of
guilty. He had acted alone, he said, and purely out of greed.

Notable by her complete absence from the trial and the
public eye in general, was Kellett’s wife, Elizabeth. A spokesman for the
family confirmed that she had been eight months pregnant when Kellett was
convicted, and had been too unwell to attend the trial. No-one was available
for comment at the family home yesterday.

I glanced at the date. The article was nearly six years old.
Details of the case started to come back to me. I remembered the name Kellett as
being unusual. Yet what had so interested Liz that she’d kept this cutting?

Below the text were two colour photographs, badly faded. One
was of Harry, looking more youthful than when I’d known him. The other,
grainier, was captioned:
Richard and Elizabeth Kellett on their wedding day
.
A couple was standing smiling for the camera, their arms around each other, the
man’s head inclined towards the woman’s. I recognised Richard Kellett’s face
from television.

His wife was wearing an ivory-coloured gown, the tight fit
accentuating her slimness. Her blonde hair was piled loosely on her head,
making her neck look longer than it was. She wore a simple headband of the same
pink rosebuds arranged in her bouquet. Around her neck was a double strand of
pearls which matched her earrings.

I looked at her face. The paper was worn, and the picture faded,
but there was no mistaking it. I stared, feeling the shock of recognition blast
through my body. That mole on her cheek. Elizabeth Kellett was Liz Hallam.

I sank onto the sofa, my mind reeling. So Richard Kellett
had been Liz’s husband. No wonder she never talked about him. I glanced again
at the date and did the calculation. The twins had been born after Kellett’s
death, so would know nothing of their father. I scanned the living room, only
then seeing what had escaped me before: the absence of photos of Liz’s husband.
There were several of Liz, and of the twins at different ages, but none of
Kellett.

There was something else. Harry had been involved. He’d done
the research that had brought Kellett down, even presented it in court. In all
their years of friendship, had Harry known that Liz was Kellett’s wife? It
seemed unlikely – Liz had kept out of the spotlight. But she would have known
who Harry was; she’d have followed the trial at home. So why, then, had she
been such a good friend to him?

Engrossed in my thoughts, I didn’t hear the door.