The Ice House (24 page)

42

The fifteenth of July. She had been in the kitchen, making omelettes for their lunch. What time would that make it? Near midday. She had the windows wide open because it was hot, exceptionally hot for the area, they had told her, though the thermometer attached to the outside of one of the kitchen windows had read only twenty-eight degrees, which she thought a nice heat – you could still function in it, it didn’t drain you.

Alex had told her that this far north they were lucky to get even a few days like this, without wind or rain to ruin it. Usually, there was no difference between Finland and here – both were predominantly grey, cold, depressing. But these days were far from dull. Everything was feverish, tinged with guilt and fear, clandestine meetings with Alex that always ended in sex, everything intensified by the danger involved; the risk that Viktor would walk in on them or begin to suspect something. She performed a shadow play of the exact same deception with Viktor, vis-à-vis Michael, and in the evenings had to invent absurd excuses to keep Viktor off her.

During her break periods, lying in the forest, she plotted a future free of all the secrecy and tension, something that in her heart she knew they would never have. Because the thing between them was like something on fire. They talked about what it might be like years down the line, but only to assuage the constant fear of it ending at any moment. To get there – to pass into some kind of future
together
– what they had would have to cool into something very different, and neither could truly contemplate that. They were living in a world saturated with the colours, tastes, smells and sensations of the charge between them. Everything was a kind of constant astonishment. And always the background fugue of aching longing, crashing release. She was only dimly aware of any moral dimension. Reality was lost beneath layers of lies, but there was never a question of free choice – the emotions swept everything before them.

Why did she go to the window? She must have heard something, though could not now remember what. Or seen something out of the corner of her eye. She was hoping it was Alex, of course. She had put the whisk down, stepped over to the open window and saw instead the man who had been seated in the small courtyard area just in front of the garden. She saw him stand up and shout something. The garden right there was only a fraction of the area that had once been landscaped, though most of it now was overgrown, returned to nature, which this far north meant mainly pine trees and scrub. The part right outside the window would have been the kitchen garden once, over a century ago, with herbs and vegetables growing in a sheltered spot, screened by a low wall and an orchard full of fruit trees.

The orchard had long gone to ruin and the kitchen garden was like a jungle, the wall dividing it from the courtyard collapsed to knee height. The man had been sitting on a foldaway chair at the corner there, just behind the broken wall. He was one of the security guys, his job to watch the rear areas. The other was out front somewhere.

She had been vaguely aware of him all morning she had been in the kitchen, thinking he had an easy job; he either had his head tilted back, face up to the sun, or was smoking, every time she looked. There was a gun – she was just beginning to get used to there always being guns around, mainly because they were never actually used – propped against the wall beside him.

She thought at first he might be shouting at Viktor or Alex. They had gone up to the stable block, on a hill about a ­kilometre away. There was a route hacked through the overgrown gardens that led to a broken perimeter fence, then the forest started and you could take the track through the woods up to the stables, which were elevated enough for you to be able to see back to the house if you were there, across the tops of the trees. She couldn’t see the building from her position at the kitchen window, because the wild fruit trees were in the way, but the security guy would be able to see up there, so maybe he had seen Alex or Viktor and shouted to them. As far as she knew, the brothers had gone up there to talk business, and Michael was in the house somewhere, somewhere in this wing they were all using, though she had neither seen nor heard him all morning.

She was going to go back to her eggs – because there was nothing in the way the man had shouted to make her worry – when she saw him turn quickly and reach a hand out towards the gun. He didn’t get that far though.

The order of things was confused in her mind now. She could recall the brickwork behind him spinning off in tiny fragments, then a gout of blood coming out of his back. He fell against the wall, so hard she heard the breath knocked out of his lungs. Then, after that, there was a noise from far off like a whip crack, not particularly loud, and a moment later he was on the ground, on his knees, groaning.

Frozen to the spot, she watched blood run out of his mouth in a long stream. He fell flat onto his face, his arms limp, his legs kicking. But still she couldn’t assemble the distinct parts of what she had seen into something that made sense. What had happened to him?

She saw a puff of dust and fragments again, on the bricks lower down, nearer his head this time, then a split second later heard again the cracking noise. Then, off to the left, movement through the garden, someone coming through the overgrown vegetation.

All of this took only a few seconds, with her just standing there looking at it, looking at the man on the ground, the pool of blood spreading out around him, then the other man running through the bushes towards them.

She swallowed and opened her mouth to shout something – she had no idea what – then saw that the one coming through the trees also had a gun, but it wasn’t Alex, or Viktor, or the other security guy. She didn’t know this man but he was coming right at her, heading for the open kitchen door, off to her right.

It clicked that what she had seen and heard was two gunshots. She had seen bullets go through the security guard, then a fraction of a second later heard the reports, seen him slump to the ground. He was dying now, in front of her eyes, his limbs moving strangely, his face pressed into the stone flags.

Her mouth was open to scream but her brain was spinning into gear, alive with the danger, her heart racing in her chest. She closed her mouth, stepped back from the open window.

She had only seconds to react. But in that time many things went through her brain, were considered, rejected. Her first impulse was to rush through the kitchen, find Michael, alert him, but she had no idea where he was and in less than a minute the man she had seen was going to be at the kitchen door. He had killed the security guard, or so she thought – afterwards she was to find out that it had been another one of them who had shot him, from a position further away – so why not her?

They were coming for Michael, she assumed. They were moving down from the direction of the stables, where Viktor and Alex had been. Did that mean that they had already found Viktor and Alex? The thought had no time to take root. She heard a noise out in the courtyard and started to cross the kitchen. By chance her eyes passed over the tiny missing piece of floorboard that was the release mechanism for the hole Michael had showed her only two days previously. Without thinking further she stooped and curled her fingers into the gap, found a trigger, pulled it, watched the boards lever themselves up. She went straight into the hole, not pausing, reached up, pulled at the leather handle hanging down and brought the cover back down onto herself as she lay down. It shut with a soft, terrifying click and suddenly she was in total darkness, her breath very loud. She struggled to control it, and the fear behind it. She could hear nothing but herself. She held her breath, but then could only hear her heart.

She felt a slight movement in her position. Had someone stepped on the boards above her? She listened intently but still could hear nothing but the blood pulsing in her ears. She expected at any moment that the boards would swing up and someone point a gun at her face.

But it didn’t happen. She held her breath as long as she could, twisting her head and pressing an ear against the cold surface above her. There was muffled shouting, she thought, but nothing clear. She started to breathe again.

The space was only just big enough to fit her. The sides seemed to be of wood, the cover lined with some metal, maybe to dampen sound. The seal – whatever it was – was very tight. She could see absolutely nothing, not even a crack of light. She thought there was an odour of fish. Already she wondered how long she had been in there. She started to count off the seconds in her head, then heard voices more clearly, more movement, a sound like a bang, then a scuffle. She held her breath again and felt the panic rising in her throat. She had an urge to scream. She put her knuckles in her mouth, started to suck in air like she was having an asthma attack.

She was just getting the better of it when she heard the gunshots. Very loud, near her. She jumped so much her head banged off the metallic surface above her. Then she could hear a man shouting, and for the first time her thoughts came back to Alex. Was it him? She couldn’t tell. But where was he? The thought made her forget her own predicament. If the man in the room above hadn’t already been to the stables then he might go there now. Or Alex might hear the shots and run down. She should get out, try to warn him. She couldn’t just skulk here and let the man surprise him. He would kill Alex as he had killed the guard. She felt a sudden leaping fear thinking about it, quite different to the emotion that had gripped her when she was thinking only of running. Because now she had to do something, she had to get out there, face it.

She pushed gently on the cover, trying to get it to move, but it felt solid. She pushed harder, putting her knees against it, but that was useless too. She started to shout, involuntarily, but shut herself up quickly and made herself think about it. She felt her way around the parts of the lid she could reach. There had to be a switch or release mechanism. She couldn’t be trapped here. But what if she had got in the wrong end? What if the switch was nearer her feet? There was no room to sit up and reach down there. The man might kill everyone and she would be left here, in the middle of nowhere. Would anyone come before her air ran out?

She found it. A small metal catch. She pushed it one way, then another, heard another shot from up above. The catch clicked when she pulled it towards her and the lid moved slightly – light poked in, dazzling her. She lay still, listening intently, found the leather strap she had used to pull the lid down on her and held it from opening any further.

Now she could hear properly. Noises from the rooms above. Loud blows, grunts, furniture moving, someone fighting. She eased on the strap and the false boards swung up enough for her to raise her head and look across the kitchen floor. She couldn’t see any feet. She let go of the strap and as the cover sprang back pushed herself out of the hole. She could hear a muffled cry for help, from the next room, the dining room.

What happened next became very scrambled in her memory. She thought it sounded like someone was struggling through there, shouting for help, and could remember thinking definitely that the voice sounded like Alex’s. She could not remember picking up a knife as she passed the work surface, but as she pushed open the doors into the dining room she was certainly holding a long, thin filleting knife from the rack.

What she saw was not what she had been expecting. Above the long, mahogany dining room table a man was hanging by his neck, kicking wildly with his feet, a strangled, terrible scream coming from beneath a black hood that covered his head. His hands were tied behind his back and he was spinning and turning through the air as he scrabbled desperately to get one foot then the other down onto the table. The rope holding him was looped through a fixture in the high ceiling above the dining room table and another man was hauling on the end of it, trying to get the hooded man off the table, trying to hang him.

As she came in the man hauling at the rope was struggling back towards her, his body straining at a sixty-degree angle, both hands tangled in the rope and heaving at it. She couldn’t see his face, couldn’t see anything of him. It might have been the man she had seen earlier with the gun. He was grunting and cursing at the struggling man. He didn’t turn round as she came in, didn’t even notice her. All his attention and strength was on getting the man off the table.

She knew the hanging man was Alex, knew with absolute certainty, without checking the clothing or trying to interpret the cries. But she could not remember crossing the floor towards the one trying to kill him. The distance was no more than five metres. She didn’t know whether she walked it or ran, had no memory of any thoughts going through her head between ­coming through the doors and then being there behind the man. Except that it was Alex on the end of the rope. And she had to do something.

She stabbed the man three times in quick succession, using one hand to jab the knife into his exposed back, the other to push at his shoulder, forcing him sideways and away from the rope. When he fell to the ground, releasing the rope with an exclamation of surprise, she slashed towards him again, missing this time as he stumbled across the floor, blood coming out of him, his eyes wide with surprise. Alex came down onto the table with a heavy bang, the table splitting and collapsing beneath him. She turned her attention only briefly towards it, but as she did the one she had stabbed continued to crawl away from her.

She was torn between the need to get to Alex, to get the noose off his neck and check him, and the need to make sure the stabbed man wouldn’t come back at her. She glanced round for a weapon he might have ready but could see nothing. When he was about five metres across the room he pushed himself to his feet, screaming now at the top of his voice, then crashed in a half fall, half run, through the doors at the opposite side.

She dropped the knife, stepped over to the broken table. Alex was on the floor beneath a part of it, struggling and yelling, still hooded. She got her hands around the rope and pulled frantic­ally, trying to loosen it. It gave and she got it off, then pulled the hood over his head and opened her mouth to say something.