Ice Diaries (15 page)

Big Mac emerged from my flat as I
thought this; but he’d been sent to relieve Hong. We’d
been out here ten minutes. I’d been careful not to look in the
direction of the Gherkin, but now as Mac talked to Hong something
caught my eye against the moonlit snow. A figure was running, arms
pumping, straight as an arrow towards us, snow kicking up behind him.
He was past halfway, as far as I could judge. Morgan. I looked away,
my heart hammering. The later they saw him the better. I moved
towards Mac to try to distract him. He told me to stop when I was a
few paces away. Eddie watched me, having nothing else to do, stamping
his feet.

“Perhaps we could make a deal.”
My face was stiff with cold, lips numb, teeth chattering, making
speech difficult.

Small eyes looked down at me from under
sandy eyebrows, his head a little on one side. “You shouldn’t
have gone against Mike. Tell him what he wants to know lassie, okay,
then we can all go in. I’ve no wish to go on standing around
out here in the cold.”

“Imagine what it’s like for
us without jackets.”

“Why d’you not tell him
then?”

“Because I don’t know!”

“He reckons you do.”

“I don’t.”

“Then you’ll be out here a
while.”

Tedious. I hadn’t had an idea for
a deal anyway, I’d been bluffing. I tried something else. “What
happened the night Morgan left?”

“What d’you want to know
for?”

“I’m curious.”

“Ask him then.”

“He’s not here.”

“So you say.”

I felt a spurt of irritation. “Do
you know, this is a really boring conversation? Probably the most
boring conversation I’ve had in the last year. You’re a
boring man. No wonder Mike never talks to you, just uses you as
servile muscle. Does it ever occur to you he’ll screw you one
day too?”

“Shut it.”

“When it happens don’t say
I didn’t warn you.” I turned and walked over to Eddie.
“Are you any more interesting to talk to?”

Mac said, “Dinnae answer her,
Eddie.”

Eddie avoided my eyes and said nothing.

“Nope. Even worse. Dumb and
Dumber, you two.” I joined Greg, who was now shuddering with
cold. “Let’s keep moving, jump around a bit. That’ll
warm us up. Copy what I do.”

I started jogging on the spot, beating
my hands together, and did some camp 80s type aerobic exercises with
plenty of arm movements. Greg mirrored my moves. I felt chilled to
the bone and weak. Pretty stupid, too, with the two men watching –
but while they were watching us they weren’t noticing Morgan.
After a few minutes we stopped, out of breath but no warmer. A covert
glance showed Morgan nearer, still running fast towards us through
the soft snow. I had an inspiration.

“Hey, Greg, let’s do some
Scottish dancing. The Gay Gordons.”

Mac frowned, no doubt wondering if I
was taking the piss. I began clapping the beat and humming. Greg
joined in; we linked hands side by side, his right to my right, his
left to my left, and started the dance, forward then switching
backwards, whooping now and then. The men watched us. Next move; I
twirled under Greg’s arm for eight beats, and we polka-ed for a
notional four bars, with me counting out loud. It wasn’t our
best performance, but not bad given we could hardly feel each other’s
hands or our own feet any more. We had done all the steps and started
over, gasping for breath, when I realized we had lost our audience’s
attention. I stopped dancing. They’d spotted Morgan, nearly
upon us. He wore a thick black sweater and his face was shining with
sweat from the long run.

He slowed to a walk as he reached us,
breathing fast. “Mac, Eddie, hi. How’s it going?”

Mac said, “Mike wants a wee word
with you. About the gold.” His voice was unfriendly. “He
wasnae happy about that. Nor us. In your place I’d be feart.”

“Mike doesn’t scare me.
I’ll talk to him now I’m here.” Mac turned away and
went through the patio door into the apartment, presumably to alert
Mike. As we followed, Morgan stopped, turned to Eddie and said
conversationally, “Who are you most afraid of, Eddie? Me or
Mike?”

Eddie laughed. “Mike, no
contest.”

Without warning, Morgan head butted him
then punched him in the stomach. “Wrong answer.” He
kicked Eddie’s feet from under him and he crashed to the snow,
blood pouring from his nose. Mike came to the window, peering into
the darkness, Mac behind him. I don’t know how much he could
see with the candlelight reflecting on the glass.

Morgan looked at me. “Tori, you
okay?”

I nodded. “Glad to see you,
though.” Greg and I followed him inside.

I was relieved to be out of the cold,
even if it meant being back in Mike’s company. He confronted
us, Mac on his right, Hong on his left. After what had happened I
felt revulsion just looking at him. I hoped it wouldn’t come to
a fight between our two groups, because though our numbers were now
even, I had no experience and nor did Greg. This had not worried me
earlier when I had been fighting mad, but now Greg was safe the urge
to throttle Mike had dissipated. Morgan would effectively be on his
own. But he looked confident enough.

Mike smiled without warmth. “Let’s
conduct this in a civilized manner, shall we?”

“I will if you will.”

Mike turned to Mac. “Where’s
Eddie? Tell him to come in.”

As he spoke the balcony door opened
slowly and Eddie hobbled over the threshold, blood on his face and
running down his neck and jacket, eyes puffy, nose askew and
beginning to swell. Mike’s smile vanished and he shot a
malevolent look at Morgan. “Eddie, go to the flat.”

Eddie left. The rest of us faced each
other warily. My ears and fingers began to thaw and burn in the
warmth. My feet were like lumps of ice.

Mike said, “I want the gold. I’m
prepared to let you keep your share.”

“That’s big of you. What
happened to Red?”

“He’s no longer with us.”

“Then my share’s a seventh.
And I’ll be dividing it.”

“I want the ACE back.”

“I’ll swap you for the
Polaris. I’m not taking the Lynx. And I want a trailer.”

“Okay. You bring the gold and the
sled here, and I’ll give you the Polaris.”

Morgan shook his head. “No. You
give me the Polaris and both keys, plus trailer, spares and cans of
petrol, and I’ll tell you where you can find the ACE and the
gold on your way out of here.”

Ice Diaries ~ Lexi Revellian

Mike didn’t argue or bargain. He
said he’d think it over and left. I locked the door and hurried
to check in the mirror for rigid white patches on my face, signs of
frostbite. I prodded my cheeks gingerly, and the flesh sprang back.
Nothing. Overcome with shaky relief and gratitude, safe for the
moment, nose and fingers intact, I turned to Morgan. “Thank you
for coming for us. That was an impressive run.”

“You didn’t tell him where
I was. You could have told him and kept out of trouble.” As if
it cost him physical effort, he muttered, “That was nice of
you. Not many people would have done that. Thanks.”

I don’t think I’d ever
heard him say thank you before. Honesty compelled me to put a damper
on this pleasant exchange. “Another five minutes and I would
have. And it was your fault we needed rescuing.”

Morgan grinned. “Don’t
spoil it.”

Because of not worrying Greg, I didn’t
add that Mike might give us more trouble in the future. “You
know he put ash on the floor and a thread across the door? That’s
how he knew you’d been there.”

He scowled. “Fuck. I didn’t
see it.”

Greg had got Rosie out to check on her,
but she’d been fine, tucked up in his pocket in her own fur
coat. He let her investigate the counter and told Morgan about her
while I made more coffee. My ears burned painfully as they thawed and
no doubt looked like his, scarlet and glowing enough to guide Santa’s
sleigh. A hot drink made me feel better. After that Greg went home. I
said he could stay the night if he liked, but he wanted to get back
to his own place. I told him to lock his door and not let anyone in,
and he nodded.

“I don’t like Mike any
more. He’s definitely off my protection list.”

After he had gone I went to the window
to watch him walk home. Morgan told me he’d be fine, Mike had
no reason to waylay him, but I wanted to be sure. Greg’s figure
gradually diminished till he disappeared and the faint golden light
of a candle shone from his windows. Morgan said we should barricade
the front door just in case, so we extricated a double bed from under
my piles of stores and heaved it into the hallway, leaving the frame
on end at an angle against the door. Would that be enough to stop a
person intent on getting in? I was glad Morgan was there to protect
me. Except it was Morgan Mike had the quarrel with …

“We could add more furniture. I
hardly ever use that door.”

“We need to be able to get out
that way if we have to. Two exits are better than one.”

I still felt chilled to my core and
bone weary, so got myself a glass of brandy. I needed it. I put my
socks to warm on the stove top and flopped on the sofa, exhausted. My
feet were marmoreally pale, and I began to rub them. Morgan joined
me, heat radiating off him. He said, “Give me a foot,”
and massaged it. The warmth of his hands brought an involuntary smile
to my face. I was telling him about the party and had reached the rat
incident when a thought occurred to me and I broke off.

“I assume you got the spare part
after all that?”

“No. The box with the spares in
wasn’t there. Either he’s hidden it somewhere else, or he
had it with him tonight.”

This was bad news. It meant Morgan had
no alternative but to make a deal with Mike; and the longer this
thing went on the more likely we all were to get involved. Greg and I
had already. “D’you think you can trust Mike if he
agrees?”

He gave a short laugh. “No way.
He’s lost too much face. He’ll want to get his own back.”

That’s what I’d thought. My
heart sank at the prospect of more conflict. “Mike said it was
Eddie who knifed you.”

“It wasn’t Eddie.”

“Then why did you hit him? It
seems a bit gratuitous.”

“If I hadn’t it would have
been three of them against me instead of two. I don’t count
Mike.” He spoke as if it was a simple matter of arithmetic.
“And I didn’t like what Mike did to you and Greg.”

“Why didn’t you hit
him
,
then?”

“He wasn’t standing outside
on his own. Eddie was.”

I thought about this, unable to decide
whether a savage premeditated attack on an unprepared man was
justified in the circumstances, or reprehensible. We’d needed
rescuing and Morgan had rescued us with efficiency, but smashing a
person in the face and guts in a world without hospitals was a brutal
thing to do. He might have ruptured his spleen and killed him. The
fact that BJ was a nurse and presumably able to help Eddie had not, I
felt sure, entered into Morgan’s calculations. David would
never have behaved like that … uneasily, I recognized this was a
situation he would not have been able to deal with. He’d have
come to help and ended up outside instead of us – or as well as
us, depending on Mike’s whim. I also had to admit, reluctantly,
that some primitive part of me thought Morgan’s violent alpha
male behaviour awesome. I changed tack.

“What do you think Mike will do?”

“Nothing tonight, most likely.
He’ll think it over like he said. Nothing till he’s got
the gold and the ACE. It’s after that he’ll try
something. Other foot.”

I swung my left foot up and put my hot
sock and slipper back on my right, which felt more its old self.
“Tell me what happened to Red.”

“Why d’you want to know?”

“Because I’m sick of
everyone being mysterious about when Mike kicked you out. Mention the
subject and everyone tells you contradictory stuff, or goes all vague
and clams up. It’s like the Secret of Glamis Castle.”

“None of us come out of it well,
that’s why. Okay. I’ll tell you.” He let my foot
go, went and got himself a bottle of beer, and sat down again. He
took a drink and absently resumed massaging my foot one-handedly. “We
were going through a small town when Red crashed his Yamaha, snagged
it on part of a building sticking out of the snow and smashed into a
wall. The sled was a write-off, but he was thrown clear, not a mark
on him. That left us with seven sleds and eight people. Four of the
sleds take two, but with two they go slower and use more fuel, and we
were hauling supplies anyway. Mike told me to take Red behind me on
my Polaris. Slowed me right down, it was a drag, we were way behind
the others. I had a go at him for being careless. We had a row,
yelling abuse at each other as we went along. At nightfall we stopped
in a bell tower, the only building above snow for miles around. Cold,
no proper windows.”

He gazed at the flames in the stove’s
little window without speaking for a bit, stroking my foot as if it
was a cat, sending distracting tingles up my leg.

“I should tell you Mike and I
hadn’t been getting on too well. We’d disagreed over a
few things. I’d always been closer to him than the rest, like
his second in command, but after a while he cooled on me. I got the
feeling he thought I was angling to take over, plus he didn’t
like to see me talking to Serena. He got less friendly, started
criticizing everything I did or said. To make this more noticeable,
everything Red said was clever, a really good idea. I know this
sounds dumb. It was. So that evening, we were all sitting round in
the bell tower drinking to keep the cold out, talking about being one
sled short, and Mike told Red he could fight me for my sled. The
loser got left behind. We were in the middle of nowhere –
anyone left there wouldn’t survive. I said no way. Did I say
we’d had a lot to drink? The others were chanting, ‘Fight!
Fight!’ Red was all for it. We’d fought back in FreeFight
days, and were pretty evenly matched. He was dancing around, calling
me chicken. I told him to fuck off. He hit me. I told him he was
drunk, he should go to bed. He wouldn’t leave it. I couldn’t
walk away, there was nowhere to go. I lost my temper. Mike got the
fight he wanted. I’d got Red in a head lock on the floor. He
had to tap out, I’d got him beat. Instead he pulled a knife and
tried to stick it in my ribs. By chance I moved and spoiled his aim.”