The Alex King Series, A BATEMAN [good books for high schoolers .TXT] 📗

her cupped hands. He looked at the ground. There were hundreds of footprints. The tunnel was an entrance and exit for the hotel, a main thoroughfare and part of the attraction. Even if they were not staying there, people all went and had a look. He couldn’t hope to track somebody here. He walked around the first viewing pod. There were less prints, but still too many to single out the watcher. The next pod had a couple seated inside, wrapped and watching the light show much as he and Caroline had. He noted how cosy they looked. Obvious that was as good as it was going to get for a voyeur.

There were less footprints by far, and as King reached the pod they had been in, the pod denoted by the exquisite carving of the eagle, he could see just a few scuffed footprints on the ground.

He turned to Caroline and asked, “How close do you think they were?”

Caroline stepped forwards. She crouched low to the ice wall. “Back a bit,” she said, standing up and walking backwards a few paces. She looked at the marks and scuffs on the compacted snow. “Here, I guess.” She crouched down again, squatted close to the ground. She looked to her right. “This would be about right,” she said confidently. “He jumped up and legged it that way.”

“He?”

“I’m just supposing.”

“What makes you think it was a man?”

She shrugged. “The build, movement…” Then she exclaimed decisively, “The suit! It was red and black. Not blue and black, which are the ladies suits.”

King glanced down at his own, then looked at Caroline’s. He led the way back to the tunnel entrance and pocketed the tiny pistol. His hands were raw and stiff. They would burn when they thawed inside. They said nothing as they walked back through the ice tunnel. The blast of warm air was both welcome and uncomfortable as they walked through the doors and they whooshed seamlessly shut behind them. Caroline stepped aside to allow a couple through. They beamed a smile, a knowing nod. They were looking forward to their night in the ice hotel and had paid a substantial figure for the upgrade. King barged between them.

“Come on,” he said sharply. “We’ll check the main entrance.”

“Hey!” the man shouted after him, but it fell upon deaf ears.

Caroline pulled a face of apology then followed. They marched through the foyer, past the main dining room and the brasserie restaurant, and past the reception desk. The duty manager looked up then turned back to his computer screen. Just another domestic, the woman chasing after the man after a few cross words. He’d seen it all.

King stopped at the front entrance, bumping into Neil Ramsay, who was brandishing an expensive looking camera in one hand and dusting snow off his suit with the other. Red and black, issued by the sympathetic manager.

Ramsay ignored them both, turned to the man next to him and said, “The wind’s getting up, I couldn’t work out if it was snowing or just the ice dusting off the trees in the wind.”

The man next to him was finishing a cigarette. He had a hooked nose and was particularly thin. “Yes,” he said, his accent thick and distinctive. King had heard the accent many times. Russian, or at least Slavic. “Plenty of snow is on the way, by all accounts.” He casually flicked his cigarette butt out into the wind and unzipped his identical red and black suit. “Well, goodnight.”

King ignored them both and pushed past. He rounded the front left façade and past rows of people cradling steaming mugs of coco or mulled wine as they watched the Northern Lights, which were now starting to fade having put of another spectacular show for the evening.

Caroline stopped and called out. King turned around, but he shared her expression. There were too many people. Too many tracks to hide the ones they were after and too many people for the watcher to hide amongst. Resigned to failure, King walked back with her to the entrance.

Peter Stewart was climbing the last of the steps as they reached the entrance. He was holding a mug of mulled wine and the heady scented aroma of cinnamon, nutmeg and red wine hit them. He eyed King warily but chose to remain silent as he studied Caroline. He looked at King approvingly, then ambled into the foyer, loosening the top proportion of his hotel-issue red and black snow suit as he headed to the bar. He drained his glass, obviously getting a top-up.

“Bugger,” said King. “Safety in numbers.” He stripped off, overheating from the thick suit, and yet his hands and cheeks were painfully tingling. He looked at Caroline and assumed his face was as red as hers. He wore his suit at his waist, the arms tied together. “Come on, let’s put these back, and get our shoes. And then we can get a drink. I don’t know whether I need to cool down or warm up.”

“You can apologise to that couple first,” she said indifferently.

“Right.”

“I mean it,” she said. “Crikey, Alex, what were you going to do if we’d caught up with whoever was spying on us? It could have just been innocent.”

“Innocent people don’t run.”

“Well, they do if someone built like you looks at them like you did, then shouted and charged out of the room,” she retorted, only half serious, downplaying the incident considering there was no positive conclusion. “Let’s forget it and move forward.”

King shrugged. “Nothing else we can do.” He kicked off his boots and tore the snow suit off and hung it back on the peg. His trousers were damp from the exertion, but his cheeks and hands were numb. “Somebody tried to kill me,” he said calmly.

“What?”

“Twice,” he said. “And they killed somebody else, before they got the chance to