Killer

“Yes! We survive!” snapped back Kate.

“What else is there to do?” asked Job quietly. He immediately wished he had said nothing, for the simple fact became immediately obvious – there was nothing else to do: nothing at all. In the silence that followed, the crystals scratched quietly; the waves lapped; the ice cracked like rifle shots; the orange net shifted, tautened, flapped; the tents hollowed and puffed: the wind, pushed out of North Russia, flowed over them like an icy, invisible river.

Kate’s eyes swept over her companions, cold as the wind, suddenly seeing clearly – ill-shaven, dirty, hollow-eyed, desperate. There were new lines between Simon’s blond eyebrows. His hair was a birdsnest, the gold stubble on his cheeks blurred the lines of his jaw, making his chin suddenly look weak. And the mask. He looked dangerous, desperate, frightening. Job looked better, but his hair was an oily mess; his solid cheeks were rough, his smooth skin also marked with new lines. Her father’s face had aged. There was desperation in it too, now, deepening creases between mouth and chin; turning lips down, furrowing forehead. His mask, so much bigger than Simon’s, hid his eyes completely, but she knew they would also be desperate. And she thought she understood. His fear would not be for himself, but for his work.

And Colin, withdrawn now into some secret thoughts of his own, his expression closed, masked eyes distant. His face seemed to have filled out strangely. Not that it was any less hollow or lined than Quick’s or her father’s; it was just that the wildness added by the thick black stubble reaching down his neck into the fur collar, the tumbled hair, the thin pinched nostrils, the snow-tan, the hard, desperate line of his mouth turned up at the corners into a slight smile, deepened the face, made it more memorable, gave it more power. Her eyes drifted down his huge frame, sliding away from the wreck of his left arm towards his right. She was suddenly struck by the size of his right hand, curled loosely in the woollen glove outside the mitten. How much strength, she thought, lay in that huge square hand. Her eyes moved up to his face again, but it was still distant.

Anyway, she thought, I’m probably no picture myself. She could imagine it well enough: her hair, deep gold now because of the dirt and grease, would frame her thinning face in rats-tails. She shifted. Her whole body itched: what she would give for a bath! And never, ever again, would she go out without a little perfume!

“Food,” she said.

The word brought Ross back. He had, suddenly, and for no apparent reason, found his mind filled with thoughts of Charlie. He nodded. “Good,” he said.

“Christ!” hissed Quick, full of disgust, hopelessness.

Ross suddenly became aware of the aura of desperation coming from the man. All that huge nervous energy was somehow going wrong. Shorting out. Going to explode. Why?

“We must do something,” cried Quick. “Something. Anything. This is bloody ridiculous. Sitting drinking tea while we die. For Christ’s sake,” he became enormously persuasive, “can’t you see it? We can’t just sit here waiting. We must – we can’t just . . .”

Colin understood him then very well: he understood the public school training which had made Simon a leader, training him up through from prefect to school prefect and head of house. Under any pressure, everything in Simon’s upbringing demanded that he take charge; everything in the traditions he had been raised in demanded he succeed. But now there was nowhere to lead them to; and the only success would be if they remained where they were, on the ice, alive. In fact, of course, Ross was no more capable of truly summing up the twisted assortment of strengths and weaknesses which drove Simon Quick than he was capable of seeing through to the true depths of the ice on which he was standing. Not that there was anything obscure about the next step that Simon’s mind took, it was just that Ross really knew nothing about the true way the younger man saw him.

Simon’s eyes swept over them all: the fat old man not even paying attention, the rat-tailed tart staring at him. Job, even fatter than the old man. And Ross. His mind automatically blamed Ross for everything. It was Ross’s fault. And he would get him. In time, somehow, for it all, he would get him.

“Well,” he said. “Perhaps this once – a little food mightn’t be a bad idea.” And he smiled.