Black Ice by Colin Dunne Page A

papers,  Ivan. They  don't do anything of the sort.' We were passing  the Tjornin and  the lake was as calm  as a mirror.
    I stepped on  the  brake.  Marching alongside the  water,  in corduroy shorts,  baseball  cap and  boots, was Bottger,  the Esperanto-speaker who'd  been on the flight out. With  his long legs and  bony  knees,  he looked  like one  of the  rarer  wading birds.
    'Have  you found  your friends over here?' I asked  him.
    'No.  It is most annoying. They  have also gone on holiday.'
    'Didn't you write to them  to say you were coming?'
    'Yes,  but I fear there must  have been a misunderstanding.' I couldn't resist it. 'I thought  that  was what  you Esperanto chaps  were going to wipe out.'
    He gave me a look loaded  with reproach. 'And  how is your friend  with the musical  lavatory?'
    'He  hasn't made his first million yet.'
    He pointed a long hard arm out towards the mountains. 'I go there.' He  banged  his chest  with his fist. 'Fresh air.'
    As he  loped  off, knees  high,  Ivan  patted   the  lapels  of his blazer.  'I go Saga  bar.  Fresh  g and  t.'
    With   a  couple  of  hours   to  kill,  I  nipped   back  down  to  the harbour to have a look at the Comrades Afloat.
    The Pushkin was still there,  though  whether that  was a good thing  or  not,  I  wasn't sure.  And  I could  see what  Petursson meant. The aft-deck  was strewn  with nets: the Russians  don't usually   go   in   for   that   much   window-dressing.  Fish   too, Petursson had said.  That was altogether too much innocence.
    I stood for a while watching the harbour move to the rhythms of  the  sea.  A  high-prowed steel  fishing-boat grunted  in  its chains. The  little  play-boats chattered like children. An  old wooden  warrior's engine  drummed as it pushed  out  to sea,  to where  the light sky met the dark  water.
    I turned then and was looking down as I stepped through the sea's  cast-offs - the scattering of torn  tyres and  wooden crates and  plastic bottles- when I heard  another engine drumming. I looked  up.  It was Palli  Olafsson. He  had stopped not six feet away  from  me.
    He was still wearing  the tee-shirt  and shorts, thin rags on the hard   pale  slabs  and  ridges  of muscle  that  looked  as  though they'd been  bolted  on to his body. The  tattoos  showed  clearly through the  thickets  of ginger  hair  on his arms.  You couldn't see his eyelashes and eyebrows, so his light blue eyes seemed  to be staring out  of a strangely naked  face.
    'Palli?' I said,  wondering how the hell I was going to talk to him without Christopher.
    He gave one short, pugnacious nod.
    Slowly  and  deliberately, I  mouthed: 'Do  you  understand English?'
    He folded his heavy arms across his chest. 'Bet your ass I do,' he  said.   And   a  hard   grin   bent   his  lips  as  he  viewed  my astonishment.
    I took him to a chintzy  upstairs cafe near the lake. Among the blue-and-white   gingham   tablecloths   and    spindle-backed chairs, he looked about as likely as a water-buffalo in a dinner jacket.
    He can't have been precisely  the sort of customer they were hoping would pop in to encourage mid-morning trade,  but they didn't say anything. They  didn't even say anything when  he spun  his chair  round  and  the back creaked  under  the weight of his arms and shoulders. And they didn't say anything when he flicked the ash off his cigarette on to the floor.
    I don't suppose he'd  ever  had a lot of complaints about his behaviour. Menace hung  about him like a low cloud.
    I   didn't  know   where   to   start    when   I   looked   at   that unnervingly hairless  face. 'So ... you're an American?'
    'No.  Next question.'
    I'd  no idea what  to make of that.  'You're not an American?'
    'That's what  I just  told you,'