David Gilman - Ice Claw

Peaches’s laughter, as always, threw light into the room, and Bobby nearly choked as he laughed with her.

“Hey, Max,” Bobby called. “Good sleep? Help yourself, pal. Look who’s here!”

“Hiya, Max!” Peaches said, giving a girly wave. She sat knee-hugging on the old sofa next to Bobby and Sophie.

Max nodded and smiled. Everyone seemed more interested in Sophie and Peaches than in his arrival in the room, as their chatter, fractured with gestures and shrieks, amused Bobby and his friends.

He looked at his friend now, smiling through a messy fried-egg sandwich. Sayid hobbled forward and hugged Max.

“You should’ve given me a shout when you got in last night,” he said, being careful not to drip the egg yolk that ran through his fingers onto Max.

“I tried, but you were snoring like a train. What’s going on?”

Sayid limped to the table. “Isn’t this great? Loads of nosh, Max, and the sea”-he pointed across the vast balcony, whose doors, leading from the lounge, were closed-“is right there, only don’t try and go on the balcony, it’s condemned. Drop a bread roll on there and it’ll collapse. The whole place is falling apart,” he said quietly, then more cheerfully, “Sea’s only a couple of hundred meters down that path. Great surfing. Peaches rocked up yesterday and she, Bobby and his mates were down there all day. They wheel me down as well to sit under a big umbrella. The Comtesse makes sure there’s plenty of grub whenever we want it. I read comics all day. Bobby’s got every superhero comic in his room, says he’s been coming here since he was a kid. I can’t believe his gran’s a French countess. She’s all right. Bit weird. But, well, y’know, they’re not like the rest of us, these aristocrats, are they? And you’ve gotta try these croissants and jam. It’s all homemade, almost as good as my mother’s ataif,” Sayid said, remembering the joy of the small pancakes stuffed with nuts or cheese and doused in syrup.

“Thanks for the potted history, Sayid. As long as you’re not going hungry or anything. Nice to know you weren’t too worried about me, yeah?”

“Listen, Max, if I spent half my time worrying about you, I’d be a nervous wreck. Sophie said she found you on top of a mountain.”

“Did she? I don’t know much about her,” Max said as he helped himself to the fresh fruit.

“She told us about Paris, and a circus and her dad. Then they did the girl-talk thing. Chatter mostly. Why they think anyone is actually interested in any of this stuff scrambles the brain. I mean, look at those two.”

They glanced at Sophie and Peaches.

“Boys and shopping. How boring can you get? So, what mountain were you on top of?” Sayid said as he reached for more food.

“How’s the foot?” Max asked, warily looking to see if anyone was paying attention and might hear what he wanted to tell Sayid.

“It’s all right. What mountain? Don’t hold out. Come on.”

“The old monk’s place.” Max spoke quietly. “Someone had trashed it. Looks as though there was a hell of a fight there, and I reckon it happened before the avalanche. I think they were searching for the you-know-what.”

Sayid looked blank.

Max stared at him.

“Oh yeah. Right. Of course. The … yeah. The thingy,” Sayid said, remembering the pendant. “Bloody hell, Max. This is getting dodgier, isn’t it?”

“By the minute. Maybe it’s time you went back to England.”

Max didn’t sound that convincing. He wanted Sayid to stay a while longer. His friend was good at figuring out complex problems, and if Max found more clues, he would be grateful for Sayid’s help.

Sayid hesitated. He also wanted to know more about the mystery that was unfolding, despite the nervous tingle of trepidation that fluttered in his breakfast-filled stomach.

“Well, let’s talk about that later, yeah?” Sayid said, delaying his own uncertainty.

“OK,” Max said, pleased Sayid was prepared to stick around for a while longer. “There’s a library down the corridor. When you get a chance, nose around, see if there’s anything about old abbeys in this area. I don’t want anyone seeing me do it and asking any awkward questions.”

Sayid nodded and smiled. Looking through books wasn’t dangerous at all. He could manage that.

Max nodded in Sophie’s direction. “What do you think of her?” he asked, before gulping down a glass of fresh orange juice.

“Sophie? Dunno. What was she doing all the way up there anyway?”

“I’m not sure. We’ll have to wait and see.”

Max’s doubts about Sophie persisted. He hoped he might be wrong in thinking she was more deeply involved in Zabala’s death than he suspected. He just hated coincidences-Max, the mountain and Sophie.

One thing he was wrong about was the witch who seemed intent on cutting his throat last night. Comtesse Isadora Villeneuve was a petite woman. The moonlight had been unkind to her, Max realized. Her finely etched features, distinctive cheekbones and emerald green eyes showed she must have been a beautiful woman when she was younger. Her sun-damaged, wrinkled skin now gave her a look of weather-beaten leather, as coarse as the thong holding the thatch of hair in place at the nape of her neck. She wore a different dress; still a cotton kaftan but shot through with iridescent color. Her bony fingers were, in fact, arthritic, swollen with painful inflammation. She smoked-that wouldn’t help her skin either, Max thought, as she approached the others. She took a plate from her grandson, Bobby, asked if Sophie had had enough to eat and then turned her gaze on Max.

Max faltered under her stare.

“I apologize, young man, for last night,” she said as she moved towards the table. “I have nothing left to pay the debtors. They have stripped my home, taken my land. I thought you were one of them trying to sneak inside and threaten an old lady.”

“I’m the one who should apologize,” Max finally managed to say, searching for an appropriate level of politeness. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

She smiled. A glimpse of what her beauty must have once been. “I think I was not the one who was frightened. Oui?”

It was said in such a gentle way, by no means a taunt, that Max smiled back. “I was scared stiff,” he admitted.

She cocked her head, looking for the mark under his chin where she had put the working end of the kitchen knife. “Did I hurt you?”

“No. It stung a bit. Like a wasp sting. It’s OK now. It was nothing.”

She studied him a moment. “From what my grandson tells me, you don’t scare easily. I like that in a boy. Robert,” she said, glancing at Bobby, his legs slung over the edge of the sofa, flopped like a rag doll, “is brave when he faces the sea and the mountain, but you have a different courage, I think.” She stopped smiling. Max felt embarrassed. “And a dark side. Am I right? I see it, you know. It’s in the eyes. It’s always in the eyes. Robert does not have it. But you …”

Her smile returned, brushing aside the moment of perception. “Eat. We always have enough money to feed my grandson and his friends.” She laughed. “Why do you think I am so poor!”

She floated away-that was how it seemed to Max-her feet gliding across floorboards and rugs. Bobby, unshaven and looking as though he hadn’t yet woken up properly, stretched over to the table for another roll. “The old girl’s all right this morning. She, er, sees things. Y’know, spooks and stuff.”

“Ghosts?” Sayid said quietly.

“Yeah. She wanders round at night making sure they’re all settled. Says they’re her dead friends, and Granddad.”

“So, you think she’s psychic?” Max asked.

“I think she drinks the wrong stuff,” Bobby said, filling his mouth with the roll. “Anyway-surf’s up.”