Ice Claw

7

Max got dressed in minus zero seconds-at least, that was what he wished. A stumbling, one-leg-hopping charade of a silent movie as he tried to pull on his clothes.

Sophie turned her back, covering her look of amusement, and waited, listening to the grunts and groans from Max’s efforts to dress himself. What a strange boy. She felt conflicting emotions. On the one hand, she was wary of his presence here at Zabala’s hut, but on the other, she was charmed by his unaffected manner. She’d come across plenty of boys his age who tried to show off or pretend to be something more than they were. That was natural, she supposed; boys had a much harder time of it, emotionally that is, than girls. Not that she would ever admit that to any of them. Anyway, in truth, boys never grew up. Perhaps that was why they became soldiers and firefighters, or trekked around from pole to pole. Women just got on with life and didn’t make a fuss. Having said that, this Max Gordon seemed to be-what was the English expression? — “pretty much together.” Except, it seemed, for dressing himself.

Max kept a fumbling, running commentary going as he pulled on his clothes. How surprised he was to see her. How there was this monstrous bear with an appetite to match, and that if she’d appeared minutes earlier she’d have been in danger. And an eagle who could take you home and pick your bones, that was how big he was. In fact, this was no place to be up here alone, even though he was, up here alone that is, unless you were used to the mountains. Which he was. Sometimes.

He was rambling.

He fell over once, got a boot stuck in his trouser leg, but eventually managed to complete the maneuver.

Finally, he called to her. “Er … right. Done.” A sheepish grin covered the last flush of embarrassment. And he realized he hadn’t asked the most obvious question: “What are you doing here?”

A chunk of snow slithered down his back and settled in his boxer shorts. He squirmed. It looked as though he was trying to do some kind of exotic dance. She gave him one of those cool, disdainful looks: a raised eyebrow, then a shake of the head, as if answering was beneath her dignity.

She picked up her small backpack. “I came to see Brother Zabala. Where is he?”

“You know him?”

She walked towards the hut’s entrance, Max at her side. “My father knows him. He helps wild animals in this region. The bear and the eagle you saw-”

“I didn’t just see them. I was nearly their breakfast,” he interrupted.

“Well, those wild animals you so foolishly tried to play the tourist with were some of the creatures we helped save. Brother Zabala has lived here for years. He is like a guardian to them.”

Max’s irritation got the better of him. He was suddenly suspicious of the petite, attractive girl. “You haven’t really answered my question. What are you doing here?”

Without thinking, he had grabbed her arm. She pulled away from him. “What’s wrong with you! I thought he might know where my brother is! My father and my brother worked with Zabala!”

The missing brother. Max had completely forgotten about him.

“I’m sorry, Sophie. Things have been a bit crazy these last few days.” He stepped back and gestured for her to go into the hut.

As she walked inside she gasped-a hand to her lips. Max remained silent, watching her reaction. It seemed genuine enough. Was it simply a coincidence that she was here at the same time as him?

Trust no one-they will kill you.

Come on, you idiot. Look at her! She’s a girl who’s looking for her missing brother. You helped her! She’s the reason those thugs are after you. Remember?

She stepped through the trashed room, looking at the devastation. In a futile gesture of doing something to take her mind off the terrible sight, she picked up a couple of books and put them back on the shelves. Max couldn’t read her mood. Was it sadness or fear that made her speak softly?

“Where is he?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Max lied. “I was training up here a few weeks ago. I came back just to get away from everything, after the competition, I mean. I haven’t been here long. I found the door smashed open. So I checked to see there was no one hurt in here.” It sounded horribly lame as soon as he uttered the words.

She said nothing. But Max could see uncertainty nagging at her. Did she believe him?

“Do you know Brother Zabala?” she asked him.

“Only what you’ve just told me.”

“But when I got here you seemed surprised that I knew him. You already knew his name. How did you know that? What aren’t you telling me?”

Max kept his cool. Her sudden incisive questions demanded a logical explanation. He moved towards her, and she retreated a step backwards.

“It’s OK, Sophie,” he said, a hand extended to calm her as if she were a frightened animal. “Look …” Max picked up a dog-eared book on astrophysics. Opening the cover, he showed it to her. “His name’s inside. In all of them, probably.”

An old-fashioned rubber stamp had been used to imprint the framed words Ex Libris on the inside page. Beneath the Latin inscription the name Zabala had been written in ink, a bold flourish to the letter Z.

She seemed alarmed that the answer was so simple. Picking up the books she’d placed on the shelf, she leafed them open. In each one the same inscription told the reader it belonged to the owner’s library. She nodded. “I’m sorry, Max. I shouldn’t have doubted you. Now what do we do?”

The most obvious thing would be to tell the police, Max thought. He’d already decided it wasn’t what he wanted-but why hadn’t she suggested it? Maybe she was just thinking out loud. But before he could make any suggestions of his own she spoke quickly and certainly. Almost too quickly, it seemed, but maybe that was just his imagination getting the better of him.

“I don’t think we should say anything to anyone.”

The answer surprised him. “Why not?” Max said.

“Brother Zabala has wrecked places before.”

“You think he did this himself?”

“It’s possible. He has a temper and he drinks a lot. Some locals think he is a madman. No one comes up here, Max, unless it’s by mistake. We tell the police, it could turn bad for him. I don’t want that.”

An instant way out for Max. Keep quiet and no one would be any the wiser about the missing monk. That would give him the time he needed to find the mysterious abbey. The less he told Sophie, the better. Let her think this was a drunken trashing by Zabala. There was no way he was going to point out that the dark splashes on the wall were blood.

“You don’t think it has anything to do with those thugs who chased you that night? You’re the one who told me they were being paid to stop you. Maybe they tried to stop Zabala as well,” Max said, testing her.

She thought about it, then shook her head. “Attacking him would make no sense. We are the ones who save the animals and relocate them. Zabala is a recluse; he serves no purpose for them. No. I think sometimes the poor man is overwhelmed by the loneliness. Let’s leave things as they are. He will come home.”

Max wanted to tell her that Brother Zabala was never coming home.

They ran downhill fast. Sophie led the way, adjusting her stride for the terrain, using the ground well. Her poise was perfect, never faltering when she altered course to find another route. Max winched his backpack tighter. He didn’t want any untoward movement throwing him off balance. The athletic girl was a natural parkour-she jogged across the uneven ground and kicked against embedded rocks to propel her forward. Max was determined to keep up, but looking across the treacherous slopes, he knew he’d have found an easier way down, one less likely to cause injury as the result of a fall. But there was no sense in challenging her; he’d run down mountainsides before. Take your mind there first. He concentrated, but was pleased to hear she was gasping for breath just as much as he was.

Sophie was unsure about Max. Her instincts warned her he was a boy who could bury secrets deep inside, and he definitely knew something about Zabala. When she had picked up the books she had seen the picture frame, the edge of dried blood on the glass shard, and the picture was missing. Max had taken it, she was sure of that. And what else had he taken? When she reached Zabala’s hut, she had seen the sun catch something underneath the knotted sweat rag around his neck. It looked like a pendant, but she couldn’t be sure. One thing she did feel certain about was that he hadn’t been wearing it that night in the cafe.

A dog barked; cows scattered a few meters, then settled. An old Basque farmer looked up from where he dozed in the last rays of the day’s sun. By the time he focused his aging eyes he saw only a few fleeting seconds of a boy running fast, faster than any sane person would on those slopes; as if Inguma, the malevolent Lord of Nightmares, were chasing him. Kids today, they scoff if you tell them the legends, the old man thought, but if that Lord of Darkness came after you, there was no place to hide. That boy ran as if Inguma were biting his backside.

These valleys and mountains were closer to the Atlantic weather patterns, and the snow Max had seen approaching now shrouded the mountain peaks, but it fell as light rain as Sophie finally led Max to the narrow, twisting road in the valley. Tucked under a tree, behind a hedgerow, was a small car, barely visible on the deserted road. Neither had spoken since they started their helter-skelter run down the mountainside. Both still needed to get their breath back, but Max’s thoughts whirled. Did she live in Morocco, as she said? This looked like a local car. Had she lied? Had their meeting on the mountain really been by chance? Max was uncertain. Sophie had seemed to test him coming down the mountain-or had she just assumed he was fit enough to keep up? Max had to decide how to play it. He either went his own way or kept her in sight, and that meant keeping her with him, telling her just enough of a lie to avert any further suspicions she might have about him being in Zabala’s hut.

Was Zabala’s death associated with the animal smugglers? Max didn’t think so. Zabala died for another reason, something to do with the abbey. There seemed to be a connection between Sophie’s family and Zabala-did she know more about the reclusive monk than she had said?

She caught Max’s glance of uncertainty when he first saw the car. “It’s hired,” she said. She opened the car’s boot and threw her backpack in. Max did the same. She slammed closed the lid. For a moment they stood looking at each other, drizzle washing sweat from their faces. She gazed at the boy, who, impervious to the rain, stared at her.

“Where to?” she asked Max.

He hesitated for only a heartbeat. “Biarritz,” he answered.

They drove south of Biarritz’s airport, near the sweeping curve of road that skirted the runways, and which would lead a motorist down the coastal road and, within an hour’s drive, across the border into Spain.

Max remembered Bobby Morrell’s instructions and headed for the sound of the crashing waves. A major surfing destination, Biarritz had been “discovered” in the 1960s by a Californian filmmaker-surf this good had to be experienced-and since then it had become the surfing capital of Europe.

They drove past a modern and, by the look of it, very expensive low-rise block of flats. The road curved away into darkness. A high, grass-covered bank, topped with razor wire, hid the dark shape of an old building behind rusting iron gates. It was the end of the road.

“Kill your lights,” Max told her. They sat in darkness for a few moments. Max, uncertain he’d found the right place, didn’t want to raise anyone’s suspicions if he was wrong. “Stay here,” he said as he got out of the car.

It’s a chateau, Bobby Morrell had told him. Well, it wasn’t as fancy a building as Max had imagined. It was unfussy, stark and surrounded by this fortification. It was more like a state-built monolith. The moon cast a sallow glow across the landscape and then disappeared as clouds tumbled across it.

There were no grounds to speak of, as beyond the wild bushes and defensive wire the scenery was scooped out and shaped into a golf course. Distant low-level security lights from the clubhouse helped illuminate some of the undulating land. It seemed as though the chateau’s owners had sold off whatever they had owned and retreated behind the grassy embankments that surrounded the house. Max stood in the eerie shadows. An iron gate barred the way. The only sound was the surf crashing a few hundred meters away.

Max’s fingers traced the gate’s framework, hoping to find a bell. His hand brushed a thick chain and then found the padlock binding the gate closed. As he reached through, someone grabbed his arm and yanked him forward, banging his head against the bars. No time even to cry out! Something sharp pressed under his chin. A cloud shifted away from the moon; light glinted on a broad-bladed kitchen knife that now stung his skin. Blood trickled down his neck. He gagged. He was held fast, unable to move. A leathery face pressed against the bars, eyes narrowed in suspicion. An old woman, her twisted hair covering her features. Moonlight. Clouds. The image of a witch.

Her rasping voice hissed in his ear. “I told you, there’s nothing more! Nothing!”

Then, as if from heaven, lights flared. A figure ran, blurred by the powerful beams. Max could only see out of the corner of his eye; the woman still had him jammed into the railings. Then a familiar voice. Bobby Morrell.

“It’s OK! He’s my friend I told you about! Comtesse! Let him go!”

The grip loosened; the blade pulled back. Max pushed away from the gate and held a hand up to his eyes to ease the glare. Bobby reached the other side of the gate and stood next to a strong-looking woman. She was short and bony; thick, unkempt gray hair fell down to her shoulders. She wore what looked to be a kaftan, or a nightdress. Max couldn’t tell. In truth, he didn’t care. He looked at the dribble of blood on his fingers from the nick. The old woman turned on her heel and merged into the light.

Max felt Sophie at his shoulder. She glanced at the bloodied fingers. He shook his head. It was nothing.

Bobby opened the gate. “Sorry, pal. It’s Gran, she gets a bit confused at times.”

Max and Sophie stepped into the chateau’s courtyard, the chain rattled through the iron bars and the padlock snapped closed.

“Truth is,” Bobby said as he tested the chain, “she’s as crazy as a loon. Definitely one sandwich short of a picnic.”

“And you let her out?” Max said.

“Only when there’s a full moon.”

Max noticed that Bobby didn’t smile when he said that.

Max shuddered. It felt as though he were being ushered into a prison.

Or a lunatic asylum.