The Ice House (6 page)

She started to cry again, then wouldn’t look at him. ‘I’m frightened,’ she said. ‘Because the policeman was shooting at me … because you say they were trying to kill me …’

‘I’m frightened too,’ he said. ‘But that’s OK. Fear can keep you alive sometimes. Sometimes you need it.’

‘I need to speak to my mum,’ she said. ‘I need to ask her what to do …’

He sighed. He would have to lie to her, he decided. That was the quickest way.

‘Your mum and your dad won’t be coming back to that house,’ he said. ‘Not at the moment. Not with this all going on.’

‘How do you know?’

He stood up, shouldered the pack, turned his face from her. He didn’t want her to see his eyes as he spoke. ‘Your parents hired me,’ he said. ‘They paid me to protect you.’ The lie made him shudder slightly. He didn’t like lying. Despite everything, he didn’t like it.

She didn’t respond so he had to turn to look at her. She was frowning very hard, obviously sceptical. ‘My name is Carl,’ he said. ‘You can call me Carl.’

‘They hired you?’

‘Your name is Rebecca Martin, right?’

She nodded. He registered the surprise that he knew her name.

‘Your parents must be in some kind of trouble, Rebecca. I don’t know what. But they paid me to protect you. That’s what I do. That’s why I was here today. They must have known something was going to happen.’

She shook her head. ‘My mum would have told me.’

He shrugged. ‘Send your mum a text now. Tell her who I am, ask her if it’s true. We will probably get a signal as we head to the car. As soon as it’s back up your phone will send the message. Then you can wait to see what she says, or speak to her. But right now you have to decide whether you’re coming with me or not. Your choice.’

9

She chose to come with him. He waited nervously, gun ready, constantly scanning the slope behind them, while she composed a text message he knew her mother would never get. They crouched within the broken rocks as she flashed her fingers over the touchscreen, very fast. If he stood up he could see right back down the valley to the house near where the school bus had dropped her, see a few cars winding along the surfaced road there. But no one seemed bothered about the slowly dispersing pall of smoke further up the valley. Beyond the hills he could see a faint strip of sea, glimmering in the heat haze. That was where they needed to get to.

They set off when she was done, he jogging as fast as he could through the grass, carrying the gun on his shoulder. They quickly had to slow as the slope got steeper. She kept up easily, either just behind or to the side of him. When they reached the road – another unsurfaced dirt track, this one heavily rutted – he pointed along it and started running in the direction of the parking area, keeping up a brisk pace as the sweat poured off him beneath the hot plastic overalls.

When she asked, he slowed to a walking pace and let her dig out and check her phone for a signal. ‘It’s dead,’ she said. She looked like she would start crying again.

‘The people who did that – to your house – may have done something to the phone transmitter masts,’ he said. ‘Tell me your number and I’ll call you now, to test it.’ He looked directly at her as he said it, expecting her to resist that, but she told him the number straight away, forgetting her previous caution. He switched on his phone and put the number in, made as if he was trying to call her, then told her his wasn’t working either. ‘You can try again when we get to the car,’ he said. ‘But switch it off now, just in case.’ It would be better to get rid of her phone, and his own. Change phones, change cars, change clothes, as quickly as he could.

‘In case of what?’ she asked.

‘You can trace where someone is by using their mobile. We don’t want them to do that.’

‘You mean the people trying to kill me?’

‘Yes. What did your mother do? I mean, who does she work for?’

‘She has an ice cream shop,’ she said, reluctantly.

‘Has she always done that?’

‘Yes.’

‘And your dad?’

‘He helps her. Why?’

‘So I can try and work out what’s going on. Ice cream? That’s it?’

‘Yes.’

There would be something else, something in the past. Or was the contract a mistake? That could happen.

‘If I switch my phone off the text won’t send,’ she said. ‘You said I could—’

He held a hand up to silence her. He had heard something, up ahead. A car or a truck? He tried to focus on it, work out its position. He couldn’t see it because now they were actually in the trough of the valley, with a small stream off to their left and steep slopes to either side. The parking area was over the next lip of land, on a kind of flattened escarpment.

‘It’s a car,’ she said. ‘Someone is coming up the road, ahead of us, coming this way.’ She was standing very close to him. He could hear the fear in her voice.

‘It’s a tourist spot,’ he said. ‘It’s no problem.’

‘It might be
them
though.’

He considered it, brought the gun off his shoulder and auto­matically checked it. She watched him, moving rapidly from one leg to the next like she needed to pee. Maybe she did. He hadn’t thought of that.

‘Just keep going and don’t worry,’ he said. ‘Nothing bad will happen to you. You have my word.’

He started off again, moving quicker. It was a car, he thought, just as she’d said. It was travelling at a normal speed, in no hurry. The sound drifted away and came back as it negotiated the bends in the valley road below. He thought it might still be over a kilometre away. All the same, he started to run properly, glancing behind every now and then to check she was with him, but there was no danger there. She looked scared enough to go twice the speed.

Within a hundred metres the land started to fall away and parts of the road far below came into view, masked in stands of pine trees. But not the car. It was closer than he thought.

They came over the lip of land behind the parking area and he saw his car waiting there – the one Jones had hired for him. They were about seventy metres from it. He had miscalculated though. As they came into view a car was already turning into the parking area – a black Audi
SUV
. It braked sharply. Whoever it was had seen them, or seen his car, and reacted. He glanced back, checking her position, considering ducking to the side, where there were rocks and bushes, but it was too late for that.

‘Shit,’ he said. He had a feeling about it. He stopped running.

‘What is it?’ she asked. She was almost shouting. He felt her catch hold of his arm.

The front doors opened. It had stopped beneath two lone, windswept pines flanking the entrance to the parking area, blocking the road out. In between there were big wooden picnic tables and a toilet block in tasteful logs. The view behind was breathtaking – a vast scenic prospect where the valley opened out in steep cliffs, leaving a view as far as the coast. The Mediterranean was a shimmering, beckoning line of washed-out blue. Beyond it, in the far distance he could see the snow-capped peaks of the mountains across the other side of the Mediterranean, in Africa. But there was no one here to take it in – the only people in the picnic area were himself, the girl and the people in the Audi. ‘Let go of my arm,’ he said quietly. ‘I need to be able to move it. Stand a little behind me.’ She moved quickly behind him.

Two men got out. That was all of them, he judged, though he couldn’t see clearly into the rear. He put the distance at seventy-five metres. There was hardly any wind, though at this range, with this gun, wind was irrelevant. He watched to see what they would do. One was possibly the guy from the ridge opposite, though he couldn’t be sure – he was dressed in the same light-coloured clothing, quite short, with cropped blond hair. The other – bigger, with a leather jacket on – he definitely hadn’t seen before. They could be police. They looked like police. They were looking over at him, but not doing anything. The one in light-coloured clothing started stretching, like he had just got out after a long journey. He had been the driver. The other, obscured by the front of the Audi, was doing something in the open door, bent over. Tying his laces?

‘Maybe they’re just tourists,’ Carl said to Rebecca. The one in light clothing wasn’t even looking at him now. He’d gone back to the open driver’s door and was leaning in. Carl could hear them talking to each other but couldn’t make out the words. ‘Can you hear them?’ he asked her. She was ten – her hearing would be better than his. ‘Can you hear what language they’re speaking? Or what they’re saying?’

‘I can’t hear anything,’ she whispered, from right behind him.

‘OK. Let’s keep walking towards my car.’ He couldn’t think of what else to do. ‘You keep a bit behind me.’

They walked at a normal speed, resisting the urge to make a dash, Carl keeping both hands on the gun. He had closed the distance to about sixty metres when it started to happen.

The one in leather came from behind the door and leaned across the bonnet of the Audi. The girl shrieked, really loud. There was a fraction of a second when Carl didn’t get it, before he saw the guy had a pistol pointed at them. Immediately, he thought that they must be police, that they were now going to shout at him to freeze, or get on the ground – and what would he do then? But he didn’t have time to work that out because the man started firing. He had a shot off before Carl was even reacting.

Carl dropped a knee to the gravel, brought the gun round. As he started fitting the stock to his shoulder the one in light clothes started firing as well. He wanted to tell the girl to get down flat, but didn’t have time. A part of his head catalogued the details as the adrenalin kicked at his system – the reports and the size of the weapons – the positions of the shooters, the distance. Everything was streaming at him, very fast. They were shooting small calibre pistols, almost impossible to control at that range. The one in light clothing was actually running at them as he fired. The leather jacket was bracing his weapon on the car, but only with one hand. So no need to duck and panic, no need to hide. It was in the hands of fate. Just take it calmly, slowly, deliberately. The chances were that they would empty their little guns without hitting a thing.

He had time to tell himself that, very clearly, as he counted off the rounds. Two now from the leather jacket. As the gun recoiled the third time Carl had the rifle up and the sight to his eye. Two from the other, and counting. Five bullets, all fired off in under two seconds. He wasn’t aware of the rounds striking anywhere near them.

He tracked right, got the cross hairs onto the moving guy and fired. Then moved the rifle off to the side, eyeball on the guy as he went down, picked up off his feet like an invisible block had hit him. He worked the bolt smoothly, three rounds left, felt the top one shift and snap into position, gun straight back up to his eye. Two more shots from the one behind the car, then Carl had the sight on him. He was standing, turning. He was going to run. Carl squeezed without taking a breath, knew at once the shot was solid. The guy disappeared from sight.

Just like that. Silence.

It had taken about five seconds from start to finish, he thought. Maybe slightly more. He stood up, looked behind for the girl. She was flat out on her stomach, staring at the Audi. ‘You hit?’ he asked. But her eyes were screwed shut, her face rigid. Had she even heard him? ‘Wait there,’ he shouted. He would get back to her.

He ran over to the one in light clothing, looked down at him. He was still alive, though hardly moving, lying on his back, one leg bent beneath his body at a very awkward angle. The chest was going rapidly up and down. His eyes were open, blood pulsing out from between his lips. The round had gone through the chest, in one side and out the other. There was a lot of blood gathering in the dust around him. Carl wasn’t sure he could see anything, or hear, but he had questions for him.

He moved more carefully behind the Audi to find the other one, chambering another round from that magazine before doing so, letting the spent casing eject onto the ground to cool. He held the gun up to his shoulder and came round the back of the car in a crouch, ready to fire, but the body was just lying there. The shot had gone through the back of the head. In at the base of the skull, out through the top, just above the forehead. The exit wound was not survivable, under any circumstances.

Carl stared at it for a moment, trying to link the gentle squeezing action of his finger on the trigger to this consequence. Then he bent beside the corpse, the thin latex gloves still on, and went through the pockets of the man’s trousers and jacket. Every now and then a leg would jerk. When it happened Carl paused, but didn’t feel anything for the person. No thoughts about his lost past or history, or none that he couldn’t just push away. The leg spasms didn’t mean he was alive, but he checked anyway for a pulse. There wasn’t one. There was a wallet with cash and a few credit cards. The name was Arturo Flores. Aside from that, no ID of any sort. Carl doubted it was his real name.

He went quickly back to the other, recovering the shell case on the way, noticing that Rebecca was standing now, but still where he had left her. ‘Are they hurt?’ she shouted out to him, her voice wavering wildly. He looked down at the one who had been alive. He was still staring up at the sky. He looked very young, almost like a little boy. Carl couldn’t tell whether he was alive or not.

He bent down and spoke to him. ‘I can get you help,’ he said. His voice sounded unreal, high-pitched. ‘You’ll be OK.’ A ­bubble formed in the blood at the man’s lips. He was still breathing, just – the eyes didn’t change focus though, didn’t blink. One of the hands started trembling. The pool of blood was still growing. Carl decided he wasn’t going to last long enough to say anything. He searched him carefully, trying to keep the blood off himself. This one didn’t even have a wallet. He could search the Audi for ID, but didn’t want to touch anything in there. It was bad enough what he was doing now. And time was against him.

He turned away from the man and walked over to Rebecca. ‘Are they hurt?’ she asked again. She sounded terrified. He nodded, scanning the ground for the first case he had ejected. He found it, picked it up. The nearest would be dead soon, he thought. He would just leave him to bleed out. ‘Nothing to worry about,’ he said, trying hard to keep his voice steady. He was wound tight, all his muscles bunched with stress and adrenalin, his eyes super-dilated, his heart pounding like a drum. He made an effort, took a deep breath, then reached a hand out and touched the top of her head, very gently. ‘You’re OK,’ he said. ‘You’re safe.’