Ice Claw

Fauvre. Her slight, elfin build put her age anywhere between fourteen and eighteen. She had lived in Paris until two years ago, and Max was right, she was a parkour, and the discipline of urban free-running was something her elder brother, Adrien, had taught her. But those boys who had boxed her in tonight-they had been sent deliberately to hurt or kill her.

“Someone sent those blokes? I mean, how do you know it wasn’t just a bunch of yobs having a go?”

She frowned. “Yobs?”

“Er …” He scrambled for a French equivalent. “Loubards.”

“No, no. They are paid to stop me. They are kids, sure, but they’re like feral animals. The men with the money buy them anything they want, and they do as they are told. If they had hurt me tonight, the police would have put it down to a malicious accident.”

“Why would people buy off street kids with fancy motorbikes to hurt you?”

She hesitated. Hadn’t she told him enough? He was an innocent who had jumped into danger to help her.

“Have I got food on my face?” Max asked.

“What?”

“You were staring at me.”

“Sorry. I was thinking. Look, you don’t understand. My brother has gone missing. He called us from a town called Oloron-Sainte-Marie; it’s a few kilometers down the valley. And then he disappeared. I thought I could find him. People I have spoken to remember him but nothing else. So now I have to go home. Perhaps there is news there.”

“To Paris?”

“No. To Morocco.”

“Ah. Did I miss the Moroccan connection somewhere?”

She laughed. She liked him. Which was not a good idea.

It wasn’t going to help her complete her task. He had a habit of rubbing a hand across his tufted hair, and then, as he smiled, his eyes would flick self-consciously away. Nice eyes, though, she thought. Blue or blue-gray, she couldn’t be certain in the soft light of the cafe.

“Now you’re staring,” she said.

Embarrassed, Max quickly recovered and put a finger to his mouth. “You’ve got cheese in your teeth.”

And as soon as he said it he wished the earth would open and swallow him.

He walked her back to her small hotel through the winding streets, keeping in the middle of the narrow road, the brightest place, away from light-swallowing alleyways. The cold night air began to bite, even through his padded jacket.

He ignored the creeping ache in his body, alert for any movements in the shadows. Fear kept the circulation going better than any warm coat.

Sophie told him that her father used to run the Cirque de Paris, but over the years he had turned more and more towards animal conservation. Her Moroccan mother had taken ill several years ago, and the family had returned to her homeland, where, after her death, Sophie’s father founded an endangered-species conservation group. Like other conservationists who tried to stop the illegal trade in animals, threats and violence were not uncommon. The traders made big money. People like her father were bad for business.

“Adrien discovered one of the routes was through Spain and across the Pyrenees. There are no customs posts anymore, so every day thousands of trucks cross from the ports in the south of Spain.”

“And your brother found one of the animals?”

She nodded. Cupping her hands to her mouth, she blew moist air to warm her gloves. Her shoulders hunched against the icicle-snapping cold. Max wondered, for all of a nanosecond, whether he should put his arm around her.

“An endangered South American bear was shipped out of Venezuela, through Spain and into France,” she said. “Buyers pay a huge premium for anything endangered.”

“Why? Do they have private zoos?”

She shook her head.

“Trophy hunters. They kill the animals. Shoot them. And one day one of the killers will be the luckiest hunter of them all. He’ll be able to say he shot the very last animal of its species.”

They reached the corner of the pension, the small hotel where she had a room. A car eased along the street behind them; its exhaust growled as the studded tires purred into the layered snow and ice. Max eased Sophie behind him into a shadow. It was a black Audi A6 Quattro-high-powered, four-wheel drive, fast, sure-footed and expensive. As it came to the intersection it stopped. A tinted window slid down. Two men: the driver and his companion. They wore black leather jackets over black roll-neck sweaters. They were big men. Dark cropped hair, their faces unshaven for a couple of days-designer stubble or tough blokes? Max settled for tough. Their cold, hard stares went right through him.

The window glided upwards; then the car eased away. Maybe they were just tourists looking for their hotel late at night, but there were no ski racks on the car, and they didn’t look as though they were into snowball fights for fun.

“Do you know those men?” he asked.

“No. I have never seen them before.”

“Probably nothing,” he said, smiling to reassure her, despite his own sixth sense warning him otherwise.

The night porter shuffled towards the pension’s door on the third ring of the bell.

“I can order you a hot drink, if you would like. Before you go?” she said.

“No. Thanks. I’ve gotta get back. Big day tomorrow.”

“Of course. Good luck for that.”

The sallow-faced porter stood waiting silently.

She lowered her voice. “Thank you, Max. If there is anything my family can ever do for you, my father would be honored.” She went up on tiptoe, placed a hand on his shoulder and kissed his cheek. Max’s head bobbed to meet her lips and, uncertain where to put his hands, he fumbled and dropped his snowboard. He felt the heat rising into his neck and face.

The night porter gazed at him in bored pity.

She stepped through the door and smiled again. “Sure you don’t want a drink?”

“No. Honest. Thanks. I’ve … I’ve got ironing to do,” he muttered uselessly.

She said nothing, then nodded and turned, walking farther into the half-lit reception area, as the porter, now with unconcealed disdain, latched and bolted the door in Max’s face.

Cheese teeth and ironing. What a disaster.

The truth was he did have ironing, but it had nothing to do with making himself look any less untidy.

Max’s snowboard rested across the two single bed bases in the room he shared with Sayid at the hostel. The mattresses had been shoved to one side on the floor. A towel and a newspaper were spread out beneath the board, and holding the pointed end of the iron downwards, he pressed a stick of wax against the hot surface and dribbled the melting liquid across the board, which was badly scratched from sliding across the road.

The heat opened the board’s pores and allowed the wax to penetrate. Twenty minutes later, when it cooled, he scraped off the excess wax and rubbed hard with the back of a pan cleaner, buffing the surface.

His kit was as ready as it could be. All he had to do now was secure a place in the top three of the wildwater kayak race next morning and he’d be ready for the final in the freestyle snowboarding event.

He checked the alarm clock.

The wake-up call was only three hours away.

Max slumped onto one of the mattresses on the floor, fully dressed. He pulled the duvet over himself and fell sound asleep.

And then-what felt like two minutes later-the alarm clock’s bell clattered him awake.