Ice Claw (9 page)

Sayid smothered his face into the bundle on his chest, desperately hoping that his shallow breathing would not be heard. Under the edge of the sheet he could see soft-soled black boots. Whether it was the stress and fear of the situation or still the effects of the drugs, Sayid began to feel faint.

Corentin walked past the hospital trolley for another ten paces until he reached the end of the corridor. Turning back, he hesitated at the mortuary door. He was a man who had seen a lot of violent death, and been responsible for some of it, something which demanded energy and aggression, but a mortuary was a silent place where the spirits of the dead lingered. Old superstitions. Perhaps an unconscious fear of knowing that one day he would lie on a cold slab while a pathologist began the ritual cutting to determine how he had died. Knife, gun, explosion. What would it be? He didn’t think about it. It didn’t matter. But a mortuary …

Corentin eased open the door and smelled the sickly sweet aroma of embalming fluid and whatever else these doctors of death used. He looked quickly. Stainless-steel cabinets, a trolley and a body.

OK. Clear. He backed out. His instincts screamed a warning. He’d let a stupid childish fear absorb his concentration
and now someone was behind him. He whirled around, the automatic in his hand even before he’d completed his turn, already leveled to shoot the silent intruder.

“It’s me!” his partner hissed, arms half raised.

Corentin dropped his aim. “Thierry. For God’s sake!”

The two men had worked together for a dozen years, each as well trained as the other. “You’re getting twitchy in your old age,” his friend said. “Anything?”

“No. You?”

“There’s underground parking back there. This place has lousy security. You’d think in this day and age—”

Corentin interrupted him. “Did you see either of those kids?”

“Not a sign. It’s a fool’s errand. What could they know?”

“Enough to give us what we want. Let’s get out of here. We’ll call it in. The trail’s gone cold.”

Corentin followed his partner through the swing doors, but not before sliding the bolt home on the mortuary door.

Let the spirits of the dead stay where they belong, he thought.

Max waited. The low, muted voices he had heard speaking in French were indistinct. He heard the bolt slam home, then the swing doors swish open and closed. He lay still for another couple of minutes, just in case it was a clever trap to lure them out, before tossing the sheet aside.

His heart had thudded as solidly as the bolt when Corentin had rammed it across the door, but he still tugged at the handle in hope. It didn’t move.

Max tapped, still wary of being heard. “Sayid. I’m locked in. Sayid?” he called softly. He listened. Nothing. They
couldn’t have snaffled Sayid, could they? Suddenly gagged him and bundled him out?

Max pulled the trolley to the door, toed down the wheel locks and clambered on top. He could see the other trolley through the half-open fanlight. There was no sign of the two men. “Sayid!” he hissed, louder this time. Once again he listened and, frightening as the man pursuing them had been, his friend’s snoring now scared him even more. He couldn’t escape without Sayid’s help.

The transom, hinged at its base, pivoted outwards and offered far too narrow a gap for Max to squeeze through. He extended an arm as far as he could and tossed one of his boots at Sayid.

Bull’s-eye! It hit the side of the sheet exactly where Sayid’s head should be. A sudden gasp of breath was the response. Good! That should do the trick. No sooner had Max felt the gratifying sense of success than the gasp settled once again into a rhythmic, nasal snore.

Sayid was out for the count.

Max was trapped.

Bobby Morrell sat in the van about three hundred meters from the hospital. The road was on a slight incline, so he had a good view of the hospital, both front and back. The two other snowboarders were already tucked up in sleeping bags on the mattress in the back. This was taking longer than Bobby had anticipated. He was about to jump out of the van to try and find Max and Sayid when two men came out of the shadows from the back of the building and walked to an unlit
corner of the hospital’s parking lot. They climbed into a black Audi that Bobby hadn’t even noticed was parked there. He ducked as the blue-tinged lights swept across the van when they drove off.

Dude. Those are mean-looking guys. They don’t eat Sugar Puffs for breakfast
.

Maybe it was better to wait in the van after all. Just in case they had friends.

There was no way Max could ram open the door with the trolley and there was no other door out of the freezer room. If he could get his weight onto the transom and force it down, smash it from its hinges, he could probably crawl through. But even if he succeeded, shards of glass might rip his legs when he wriggled through, and if he cut the femoral artery in his groin, he would be dead within minutes—even though he was in a hospital. Medical help just wouldn’t reach him in time.

Sayid’s unabated snoring irritated Max like a persistent, troublesome wasp as he fingered the window, hoping to find a weakness, maybe a loose hinge that could be wrenched away. It was solid. Layers of gloss paint over the years had sealed the hinges into the woodwork. Only the hinges’ barrels remained oiled, allowing the window to be opened and closed. Then Max noticed the small corkscrew-like ratchet threaded with cord, used for opening and closing the transom.

He tugged gently, but it was obvious the window was at its maximum opening. If he could cut the cord and make a small loop he could lean out of the window and snag the bolt head.

Max wrapped the cord through his hands and tried to snap it, but it was too tough. He saw, though, that where the cord had gone through the ratchet it had frayed with constant use. He eased the cord down until he could get a firm grip with both hands—and yanked. The cord snapped. With the single length he formed a quick slipknot so that when he snagged the bolt it would tighten. He tried to reach out through the transom, but because he’d narrowed the gap he couldn’t get his shoulders and arm out at the same time.

He peered down. The head of the bolt was about a meter below. Dangling the cord through the gap, he worked blindly, fishing with his mind’s eye, trying to get the loop to catch hold. After half a dozen attempts he felt it snag. Keeping the cord in his fingers, he pulled his arm out of the gap, peered down again and saw the noose was tight around the bolt. Easing his arm back through the gap again and pressing his face against the edge of the transom, he yanked sideways as hard as he could. It didn’t budge. The bolt was pressing firmly against the door and its frame. It would take an earthquake to rattle that thing free. OK. Earthquake time.

Still balanced precariously on top of the trolley, he pulled his socks onto his freezing feet and laced up the remaining boot. Knowing the bolt was just below the door handle, he steadied himself with one hand, gripped the cord tightly with the other and repeatedly kicked the door, while at the same time yanking the cord. Frustration mixed with fear—he didn’t know if those men were still in the building—and he hammered the door loudly enough to wake the dead. Thankfully, no one in the room complained.

Come on! Come on!

Another kick, a sudden lurch and the bolt came free. The door swung open as the force of his kicking dislodged the trolley. Max fell back; the trolley lurched forward and rocketed into Sayid.

Max rolled onto the floor as Sayid blearily opened his eyes and yawned.

“Max? Where’s that bloke?”

“Gone,” Max said as he retrieved his boot. “Which is what we’ll be in a couple of seconds.”

“Good stuff. Why’ve you only got one boot on?”

Bobby flashed the van’s lights when he saw them emerge from the same dark area as the two men.

“I was getting worried,” Bobby said as Max pushed Sayid to the sliding door.

One of Bobby’s friends helped Sayid into the back of the van and made sure he was wedged on the mattress by sleeping bags.

“Not half as worried as me,” Max said, folding the wheelchair.

“Did you see those two bone crunchers?”

“Yeah. They were after us. I wish I knew who they were. I reckon they think I’m part of Sophie’s anti-animal-smuggling group.”

They were in the cab by now, and Sayid had covered himself with a sleeping bag.

“What? Who’s Sophie?”

“It’s a long story,” Max said to him, unfolding the grubby map from the dashboard. “Anyway, I need to get to …” His
finger traced the mountain route through to the coast. “About here. La Vallée de la Montagne Noire.”

“What about Biarritz? You need some rest, man,” Bobby said, easing the van into the empty streets.

“You drop me off, tell me where you’ll be and I’ll get to you by tomorrow night.” Max rubbed the weariness out of his face. “Right now I have to think things through, and I need to stay awake. Got any music?”

“Sure. What about him?” Bobby said, looking at Sayid, who was asleep again, mouth open, moments away from snoring.

“He’s had enough sleep for a lifetime. Go for it.”

Bobby hit the play button. A raucous tune spilled out of the van as they turned towards the mountain road. Bobby and the others would be at the wild Atlantic in a few hours.

But Max had a rendezvous with a dead man.

Sentinel mountains blocked the night sky with even blacker silhouettes.

The snow sat above the eight hundred–meter line on this side of the Montagne Noire. But the close-cropped pasture and stony ground made the going hard, so Max used goat and cattle tracks that were scuffed into the slopes to wind his way higher until he found shelter from the increasingly cold wind.

Shepherds used these stone-built mountain huts when bringing in the goats and sheep for market: gathering in the scattered animals was a task that could take days. Max had walked for over three hours since Bobby had driven over the mountain’s lower pass and left him to head for higher ground. Max had barely slept in the past twenty-four hours. Fatigue had set in. He had already pushed himself this far, so it made no sense to risk a fatal mistake. Lose your footing on these
steep slopes, tumble down through those rocks and serious injury was a given.

Max ate dry food from his backpack, and although there was kindling and wood in the small stone hearth, he wasn’t going to advertise his presence by lighting a fire. Neither did he climb into his lightweight sleeping bag. He wanted to be able to move quickly if trouble came out of the night.

He pulled back his sleeve to check the time, forgetting momentarily his watch had been ripped away by the dying monk.
Dad, I’m sorry. I couldn’t do anything. I tried. I just couldn’t save him
. A brief shiver of loneliness ran through him as thoughts of his dad flooded his mind. His father in the nursing home, his mind a netherworld—consciousness flitting between understanding and forgetfulness. He would recover, the doctors were certain, but Max feared that one day he might sit with his dad, look into his eyes and see no recognition there.

Max hid those fears, but they were a constant companion, partly responsible for his determination to carry on when others would have turned back. Zabala might have passed on a secret legacy, but Max’s dad had given him a much greater gift—his love. That, and the ability to meet a challenge and see it through.

Max fingered the pendant. It yielded no clue, but its secret had caused murder.

Nestling into the deep, warm hay, he set his mental alarm clock and listened as big white cows snuffled the grass on the mountainside. Broad leather collars supported dull-thudding bells around their necks, and the steady clonking lulled him into a deep sleep.

Max could see mountain peaks, one after the other, stretching to the distant horizon. The night wind had blown away clouds and pollution, leaving a diamond-bright sky. His polarized sunglasses helped keep the glare at bay, but he still had to shield his eyes as he peered across the white-blanketed mountains. He had walked for four hours after waking, climbing higher into the mountain, remembering where he had been previously when training.

Stepping carefully through the snow-dusted scree, he saw the stone hut he was searching for. The last time he had been here, a storm had swept in and deposited thirty centimeters of snow across his path. That was less than three weeks ago, and he’d been forced to stay sheltered for a whole day while the sun melted it enough for him to make his way down again. He had huddled in the building’s animal shelter, wishing he could have found his way inside the big hut. But a solid door had barred his way.