Snow Falcon

'See?' Waterford said, holding a Kalashnikov rifle up for his inspection. It was neatly stacked, with three others, against one wall. Looking at them, Davenhill noticed the uniforms hanging from fresh pegs, the boots — then, near the stacked hay, a military cot.

Are they Russian uniforms?' he asked.

'Not the Lapland Fire Brigade, that's for certain.'

'What does it mean?'

Waterford was patient, probably because he conceived no immediate danger.

'A special detachment, left to guard the village.'

'And — the villagers?'

'Settled — elsewhere.'

'Well, where are they?'

Davenhill pursued, determined not to move ahead of the answers he elicited from Waterford.

'Out and about — looking for us, or someone like us.'

'What?'

'Folley must have come here, or been brought. They found him, and they'd expect another enquiry of the same sort. That's why the uniforms are here. And I bet they speak Finnish.'

It was not a voice that they heard next, but footsteps on the bare floorboards above their heads. Waterford saw Davenhill's eyes roll comically in his head, and almost laughed inwardly at the way in which real fear hadn't even begun for the clever queer. He felt him an encumbrance, and pitied him at the same moment.

'What do we — ?' Davenhill's whisper was a squeak.

Waterford covered his lips again with the gun barrel, then listened. A voice called out in Finnish, and Waterford smiled. He motioned to Davenhill to put the gun away, and slipped his Parabellum back into the shoulder holster. Again the voice called out, then the footsteps began on the stairs, and they watched two legs above high boots come into view. There was an assuredness about the unhesitating steps.

Waterford called out, 'I say — can you help us?'

He moved swiftly to the foot of the steps, looking up into the face of the young man before he could leave the steps. The man, dark, thin-faced, was smiling openly, and yet contrived to appear surprised. 'You speak English, old man?' Waterford added.

Davenhill remained where he was, confused and withdrawn. He could no longer fathom motive, even identity. He wasn't sure who the young man on the steps was, but he believed, with difficulty, that he must be Russian. And his ignorance screamed that Waterford had betrayed them by addressing the man in English.

'A little?' the young man said, and the accent was no longer Scandinavian.

'Ah, how lucky, eh, Alex?' He turned momentarily to Davenhill. 'We're electricity board surveyors from England — our jeep broke down about a mile from here. Do you think the chaps here might help us?'

It was ridiculous, Davenhill had time to think. Then the young man said, with difficulty, 'I saw you — come here? Why are you in the cellar?'

'Couldn't find anyone, old man. Thought there might be someone down here. Not your cellar, is it, old man? Awfully sorry.'

'No — I live — other house. You come up now?' There was nothing of menace in the voice, perhaps only anxiety that they come quickly.

There were wet footprints on the stone floor of the cellar, next to the uniforms and the leaning rifles. It was stupid, a farce that they should be pretending to be innocent travellers. Davenhill felt something in him collapsing. His breath smoked round him in the cold.

The young man had stood aside on the steps. Waterford, with a charming, bland smile, was passing.

He turned and said, 'Come on, Alex — this chap will give us a hand with the jeep!'

He went up the steps quickly, and Davenhill, seeming to himself to be moving through an element more glutinous than the thick snow behind the house, followed. He hardly glanced at the young man, then, aware of admission in his averted gaze, stared at him, grinning foolishly; hating his inadequacy, already sensing Waterford's scorn.

That, more than the fear as soon as he was above the young man, and his unguarded back was to him.

At the top of the steps, Waterford, relaxed, smiling, was waiting for them. His hands were in the pockets of the heavy anorak. There was, incredibly, nothing to fear. Ridiculous.

The young man was alert — Davenhill saw the tension in his frame. An inappropriate image of nakedness, remembered just for a moment, then he was standing between Waterford and the Russian who was still pretending to be a Laplander.

'Why are you here?' the young man said then.

Waterford smiled, disarmingly. 'Ah — hydro-electric power.' His hands went into a mime, his voice into a pedantic deliberateness, head moving in emphasis. 'Water — dams, using the power of the water — we are investigating for the British electricity industry…' Pausing, while the vocabulary caught up.

Davenhill was tempted to laugh, and admire. 'What can we learn from your country? You understand?

'Ivalo?' the young man said.

'Yes. Doing a bit of sightseeing — tourists? — on our own.' Waterford had moved away from the young man and was looking out of the window. Davenhill saw now how lean the Russian's frame was, how fit the man must be underneath the assumed civilian clothing. He remained near the Russian, as if a token of good faith or an emblem of peace.

'Where is your jeep?' the young man asked, moving too.

'Just outside the village,' Waterford said, apparently unconcerned, looking up the main street of the village. The young Russian approached him. Davenhill could see the menace in the movement, but could not be objectively certain — hating the impotence that made him a spectator of the tiny events, and concentrating, as if afraid of missing something — but Waterford seemed oblivious.

When he turned from the window, he was holding a knife, glimpsed briefly by Davenhill, and the young man's back flexed convexly as he bucked his stomach away from the point of the blade.

'One move, sonny, and I'll kill you, just one move or sound — understand?' Davenhill knew sufficient Russian to understand what Waterford had said.

Then the older man moved closer to the Russian, turning him with apparent ease, knife now across the stretched white throat above the check shirt and the collar of the anorak.

'Don't kill him — !' Davenhill blurted out, as if disturbed by events on a screen that were unexpectedly real.

'Shut up!' Waterford snapped, and Davenhill almost failed to recognise the voice, as if a trick of ventriloquism had made the man's lips move. Alien…

Then Waterford pushed the man so that he stumbled, slipped on a loose thick rug, a splash of bright colours, and even as he turned over on his back Waterford kicked him in the thigh, near the groin, bent and pulled him to his feet, drew the gun with the right hand and hit the Russian across the cheekbone with the barrel.

Davenhill found his long fingers at his quivering lips, and a strange voice saying, 'For Christ's sake, what are you doing to him?' It was his own voice, and that was horrible, too.

'Disorientate!' snapped Waterford, as if reciting some lesson. 'Get a bucket of water — now!' There was no resistance in Davenhill. He turned and went out into the long kitchen.

He heard the sounds of tearing cloth, then slapping, and he hurried, as if afraid to be rebuked, filling the plastic bucket from beneath the sink with ice-cold water. He slopped it back from the kitchen, along the bare corridor to the main room, where Waterford snatched it from him, and flung the contents over the dazed, bleeding Russian in the armchair where he had been pushed. The man was naked, except for his boots and long socks. His torn trousers were in a stiff, degrading pool around his ankles. The check splash of the shirt was beside the armchair.

The body jerked as if from electricity as the water cascaded, shocked, froze. There was a strangled cry, and then Waterford was on him, knee on his chest, gun beneath the point of the jaw, forcing the flopping head with the lolling black hair up, to look into the grey, flat eyes.

'Where are the others?' he barked, shouting almost, jerking the gun in his hand so that the Russian's jaw grated, and the head snapped up and down. Puppet, thought Davenhill, with appalled fascination.