Black Ice (19 page)

He rose so he faced me. 'I wasn't some guy on a business  trip looking for a piece of ass.' You couldn't miss the cool venom in his voice.

'I didn't think you were,'  I said,  as gently  as I could,  and  I was relieved to see his shoulders sink down a fraction. It was too early in the day for all that  say-that-again stuff.

He flapped  his hand. 'Sorry about that,' he said, rubbing the back of his neck as though  easing  tension.  'Sometimes it still hurts.' He lowered  his voice and asked: 'Is she okay, Craven?'

'I think so. Yes, I'm  sure she is.'

'She's got into some trouble?' He didn't wait for an answer.

'No surprise, huh? Like I was saying, she knocked my socks off. I wanted  to marry  her  and  the whole  bit, and  the  personnel people  out  at  the  base,  they  really  tried  to warn  me off, you know. They say they don't do that, but believe me they do their best to build a wall a mile high between us and these Icelandic chicks.'

'Why?'

'Why? Come on now. Why? Because all the local guys will go bananas if we take all the  best girls. Because no one nowhere likes  to  have  foreign  military   around.  And   because  a  few hundred  half-American kids  running around   is the quickest way to screw  up international relations.'

'All of which  you forgot  the minute  you saw Solrun?'

He  held  out  his open  hands  in a gesture  of guilt.  'Almost forgot my own name.  I wanted  to take her back to the States.  I was very, very serious.'

'So where  did  it go wrong?'

He examined his immaculate finger-nails. 'Guess I found out what  I knew all the time really. About  the others. The guys like you. She told me. I suppose I couldn't take it, that's the truth of it.'  Once  again  he was raiding the breakfast  table,  loading  his plate. 'Can I get you some more coffee, Sir? No? Okay.  Look, Dempsie said I wasn't to hold anything back. She was screwing a Russian. It's true.  A diplomat from the embassy.  I loved her because she was wild and dangerous but, believe me, that was a bit too wild and  dangerous for me. That's why I wanted  out.' Squared-away. That was the expression. And I could see it applied. He was clean and  bright and all the things officers like to see when  they open  a barracks door.

'You  used to work for your brother. In a muffler shop I think you call it?'

He spun  round so that  he had  to hold the croissants on his plate.   'How the  hell  do  you  know  that?'  Then  he  began  to laugh. 'You reporters really do your homework, don't you? Yes, that's right. Joe’s got a back-street place, down in Jamaica. He does okay.'

'And  Vicky?'

His eyes narrowed down and  he stood there without  moving for several  seconds. 'Jesus H Christ, you don't miss a lot. Vicky was  my girl.'

'Still is?'

He shrugged. 'Who knows?'  Untroubled again,  he went on eating and  waved to me to do the same.

I felt as though  I'd  strayed  into a dream: reality  was out of focus. This  was Oscar  Murphy. He had  the same job and  the same girlfriend as the one Jack Vale had checked out. He knew all about  Solrun,  he even knew about  Kirillina. But Jack said he'd  left the marines  and  was living in New York- and  I was watching  him tear a croissant to pieces. Somewhere, time and place had got seriously  out of tune.

Then  I remembered. There was something else that  didn't match  up, too.

'That about  does it then, Oscar.'

'That it?' he spluttered through  the crumbs. 'Okay if I finish this? I mean  we eat  well out  there  but  this is .. .' He  pushed another piece in as evidence  of his sincerity.

'And  it's  been all over between  you and Solrun  for weeks?'

'Months. Finito.  Forget  it.'

That was my cue. 'So you don't really mind about  her getting married  the week before last?'

For  one  nasty  moment   I was sure  he was going  to take  a swing at me.

One  minute  he was sitting pushing civilian  goodies into  his face and drinking coffee, the next he was standing in front of me practically growling.  His left hand  was resting  lightly  on  my chest  to get the distance and  his right  was ready  to do almost anything except  pat  me on  the  head.  His  young  face-once frank and  friendly - was now frank and  very unfriendly.

'You're gonna  tell me real quick  how you know about that.' Delicately,  I lifted his hand off my chest.  I'm  not at my best

as  a  target. 'Yes,  I  am,'   I  said.  'But  first  you  are  going  to unbuckle  that  fist and  calm down.'

At that  moment  the door opened  and  Dempsie  stuck  his big happy  face round. The  happiness soon left it.

'What's the trouble, boys?'

'Would  you go and  leave us, Sir?' Murphy's voice was high but firm. 'This is private.'

Dempsie looked at me, worried.  I gave him one of those reassuring looks  and  nodded. 'I'll  be in  the  foyer,'  he said.

'Don't make it too long.'

Oscar tilted  his head  towards the door.  'He  doesn't have  to know about this. You got that?'

'He won't. Nobody  will. Tell  me your end of the story.'

His  end   fitted   exactly   the  version   Palli  had   given   me. Although their  affair was supposed to be over officially,  they still  saw  each  other  and  they still  planned   to go back  to the States. She'd  gone  through the stamp wedding  with  Palli  to raise  money.  Once   again   he  made  me  promise   not  to tell anyone.

And  once  again  there  was only  one  thing  wrong  with  the story.  Palli -like jack Vale- had Oscar Murphy back in New York already. Yet here he was.

'I  wouldn't have   thought  Palli  was  your   type,'   I  said, wondering if I could turn  anything up by chatting around the fringes.

'That's what  a few people said.  He's  an  old  meatball. He used to laugh at me because  I'd  made corporal on my first tour -and I'll make sergeant on this one. I felt sorry for him at first. He's had a bad time. So we used to take him back to the Marine House and feed him a few Buds or Polars because you can't get any  real  beer  here.  He even  played  on our  darts  team  once. Hey,  you're a  Brit- did  you  know  we've  got  the only  darts board  in town in the Marine House? Sorry - I got to like him. He's  mixed  up but once you get past all that  macho  shit,  he's okay. Hell, he got married for me, didn't he?'

He laughed, and so did I. It was authentic, every word of it.

Yet it still didn't make any sense. I wished I'd got jack  Vale out of bed again  before I'd  come,  to see if he'd  dared  to risk his social reputation by being seen in Jamaica.

Dempsie  was waiting  in the crowded  foyer. All his geniality flooded back as soon as he saw Oscar and  myself walk over to him chatting and smiling.  We were doing  those awkward triangular-handshake operations when  a  thin  young  waiter came  through paging someone.  It wasn't until he called it out the second  time that  I realised  what  he was saying.

'Mr Oscar Murphy. Mr Oscar Murphy.'

His mouth  open,  Murphy swung  to Dempsie  to see what  to do.  Dempsie  did  it.  Three strides  took  him  past  a group of German   businessmen  and   he  grabbed  the  waiter   by  the shoulder and  almost  carried  him off to the corner  by the lift.

'They talked for a while. I saw him stuff a note into the waiter's band  before he returned.

'He doesn't know who put the call out,'  he told Murphy. 'It was a phone call.'

'Won't reception  .. .'

Dempsie shook his head. 'They  never remember phone calls. Let's get out of here.' Then  he remembered I was there. A ghost of the old affable Dempsie flickered through this new swift moving, hard-talking version. 'Sorry, Sam. Got to move. Small problem. Catch  you later.'

They went out through  the swing door so quickly they almost fired Christopher and  Ivan  across  the lobby as they came in.

'Your  friends seemed in an awful rush,' Ivan  said.

'That was your old pal, Oscar Murphy.'

'Really?' He pushed  back his flopping wings of hair. He still looked ill and  tired.  'I wanted  to meet  him. You're not doing one of those awful scoop things, are you?'

'Not  if l can  help it. Excuse me a minute.'

I went to the big window but I was too late. All I could hear was the drumming of the Triumph Trophy's engine as it moved up through  the gears.

Someone had put the finger on Oscar Murphy. I had a nasty feeling it was me. There was only one way to be sure.

32

'Collect?'

In Jack Vale's mouth the word sounded like an extreme form of perversion. Come  to think of it, to him it was.

'Did I hear that woman correctly? You're calling me collect?' I began to explain  that I didn't have much choice when I was using  a pay-phone at  the  hotel,  to save  time  rushing back  to

Hulda's, but  by this time he was practically keening.

'Is this some new sort of interrogation technique you are employing? First of all, persistent deprivation of sleep, and then you  hit  me  where  it  most  pains  every  man  of breeding  and culture- in the wallet.  Are teams  of men waiting  outside  my apartment door even now, ready  to rush in and douse  me with buckets  of ice-cold water?'

Somewhere in among this catalogue of self-pity I managed  to ask him if he'd  been able to get down  to Jamaica. He had.  He then   began   to  explain,  yard   by  yard,   what   a  tremendous distance this  was from Greenwich Village,  by way of preparation  for his expenses, no doubt.

'And  of course  there's the matter of all these collect  phone calls .. .'

'Oh, can't you go and  sell a sporran or something. Was he there? Did you see him?'

He   needed   a  minute  then   to  get  comfortable,  find  his notebook  and  light a cigarette.

'Now,  your first question. No, he isn't  there,  hence  I didn't see  him.   I  told  you  he  lives  with  this  girl,  Vicky.  On   his instructions, she'd  given  his brother this story  about  having influenza  and  naturally enough  the brother had  believed  her. Which  is why I believed  him.'

'So where is he?'

'Right where  you are, Sam.  He's  in Iceland.'

I was about to say that  I'd just had breakfast  with him when it struck  me I needed  to hear every single thing he could tell me. This  was the heart  of the confusion.

'From the top, Jack.'

'As best I can, Sam,  as best I can.'

It came out in bits and  pieces, some from his notebook, some scraps he remembered as we went along, and some in response to questions from  me. And  in one form or another I'd  heard most of it before.

Murphy was an exemplary marine. He had  made  corporal on his first tour.  He had got his wings flying helicopters out of Cherry Point.  For his second  tour  he did come to Iceland  and he was on embassy duty.  Then  there was the girl trouble.  He was sent  back  to the  States. He  began  drinking heavily.  He bopped  a sergeant one night.  And the marines didn't want him any more. It was true that  he was now working for his brother and  living with a woman  called  Vicky.

When Jack Vale arrived  on the doorstep with his Hibernian charm  she'd  abandoned the story of his having  'flu. The  truth was  that  she  was  none  too  pleased  about   him  going  off to Iceland  like that.

'He's not a big success out of uniform?'

'He's struggling. This Vicky, she's  pretty enough, or she has been.  You'd  give her  seven  out  of ten  for looks and  one  for brains.  But  she's  sitting there  eating  food out  of a  can  and killing roaches with her other hand. You know what it's like: no money, no clothes,  no pretty  hair-do .. .'

'Your  story, Jack. Why did  he decide  to come back here?'

'This Vicky, she says about  three  weeks ago he got a letter from Iceland. She accused  him of writing  to his old girlfriend is it Solrun  or something?- and  he showed  her the letter  and then gave her a smack in the mouth. We're talking about pretty basic communication here.'

'They'd do well in newspapers. Wasn't it from Solrun  then?'

'Apparently it was anonymous. That's all she knows about it, or so she says. Oh yes, and  there was a photograph too but again she says he wouldn't let her see it. Anyway  the effect of it was quite  dramatic. Old  Oscar went  right  off his chump. He said  he had  to go back  to Iceland, and  that  led to a free and frank exchange of views.. He gave her a few more smacks in the mouth, flogged  his old Toyota and  headed  north. Does  that make any sense your end?'

'Almost. He's  been here how long?'

'About a week, I think. She's  not  too clear  on dates. She's been  mooning  about  weeping  most of the  time,  hoping  he'll come back.'

There was a pause then, and  I knew that was ominous. Jack didn't go in for costly pauses,  not when  he was paying.

'There's one thing you're not going to like too much. He took some of his old marine gear, sleeping  bags and so on, as though he intended living rough.  He also took a gun.'

'A Colt  .45 automatic?'

'That's the one. They  call that  model The  Mule  because  it kicks so much,  but it's the old jar-heads' handgun, so it makes

sense,  I suppose.'

'What sort of state  was he in?'

'I wouldn't think  too good. He'd  been hitting  the booze and popping pills, she said, and God knows what else she wouldn't admit to. Apparently he didn't want to come back from Iceland anyway, and  he'd  been  under  a lot of pressure  since  then.  I think  he's going  to be a mite fractious.'

'I'll remember.'

'As they said  to Mrs  Lincoln,  apart from that,  how are you enjoying yourself  up there? Are the girls as dazzling  as ever?'

'Do  you know Iceland, Jack?'

'I did, certainly. When  you were a mere  twinkle, my boy. I was there with the real military, the RN, just after the war. You couldn't get  any  booze,  there  was almost  sort  of prohibition then,  as I recall,  but the women. Och-la-la, as we Scots say.'

'Land of the Midnight Fun?'

'And   then  some.  But  I'll   tell  you  something, your  man

Murphy wouldn't have got past first base in those days.'

'How  do you mean?'