Catching the Ice Queen Read online

  Robin thumbed her phone on and ignored its immediate burst of message alerts. She pulled into the kerb for a moment, calling up Google Maps and getting a bird’s eye view of the area, hoping she could see an alternative way in. Mac was going to be jumpy enough without following him down the road he’d just taken. And yes! She spun the wheel and raced along two more blocks before swinging into the car park of a big crafting store. Ignoring the shop itself she shot behind the building, round a couple of turns, and then found herself in a little gravelled area facing a wilderness of buddleia and brambles. Parked askew in front of her was Mackenzie’s Ford, its boot not completely closed.

  She took a deep breath to try and calm her nerves. If I could only record this, she thought. And then kicked herself. She was driving an unmarked car, wasn’t she? She flicked on the hidden dash cam (hoping that Tony Parker’s abominable driving hadn’t knackered it) and angled the car so it was facing towards Mac’s vehicle. No matter what happened to her now this would save to a hard drive and then upload itself to a secure storage file.

  Cautiously, she opened her door. On the breeze she could hear voices, indistinct, but definitely a man and a woman’s. With a cold thump of her heart she realised that Sylvie Dean was already here. In her hand, her phone buzzed again. It was Lara. On impulse, she answered.

  ‘Robin!’ the woman’s voice broke with relief. ‘Where are you? Keith Bolton –‘

  ‘Be quiet, I’m at the scene now. Dean and Mackenzie are both here.’

  ‘Oh God, Robin, don’t do anything stupid, wait for back up! Where are you?’

  She quickly sent a message with her location. Ignoring the muffled sound of Lara continuing to speak she picked up a discarded lolly stick to push up the boot lid of Mac's car. Inside lay an empty water bottle full of yellowish liquid, and strips of duct tape that looked like they’d been wound around something. She stepped to one side so the camera in her own car would pick this all up.

  ‘I think he’s had the witness in the boot of his car all the time. He’ll be handing him over now.’ She bit her lip. And Sylvie didn’t like witnesses. She’d be keen to tidy up this lose end herself, now. Gradually she tuned back into the voice at the end of the phone.

  ‘Robin! Robin! You’ve done enough, do you hear me? We’ve sent someone to Mackenzie’s flat and he’s cleared out, taken his passport and everything. We know he’s running. We believe you.’ Her voice trembled. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t believe you before.’

  She felt remote, detached. ‘That’s ok. I’ve got to go now. I’m going to record this and get it to automatically upload to the cloud. I’ll send you the link.’ Before Lara could work out what she was going to do she hung up. Automatically her fingers pushed buttons, and she shoved her phone into the top pocket of her jacket where she hoped it would go unnoticed. Then she pushed apart the tall green fronds in front of her, and stepped out into the wasteland beyond.

  Chapter 15

  Two hundred yards away a small group of people were standing, oblivious to her approach. In the centre was Sylvie Dean, tall, beautiful, dressed as she had been in court only that morning. Beside her was Connor, her faithful side-kick, who normally would have spotted someone approaching from a mile away but who, like his boss, was fixated on the two men in front of them. One, Robin could see, was Mac Mackenzie, his face livid with high emotion. The other, kneeling on the ground, hands taped up, was their missing witness, Dr Miran Khalil. A gun, held in Mac’s trembling hand, was pressed to the man’s head.

  As she neared, their conversation drifted clearly over. Sylvie sounded reasonable, and slightly bored. ‘If you want to shoot him, then do it. I’m not going to stop you.’

  The policeman’s voice was a shriek. ‘I want what you owe me first. You know you owe me! Everything I’ve done for you!’

  ‘Everything you did for yourself, you mean,’ she pointed out. ‘I didn’t ask you to gamble more than you could afford, did I?’ She turned to Connor. ‘You men are so emotionally volatile, do you know that?’ Her words tailed off as she saw Robin stepping over the broken ground towards them. ‘Well, well, well! A rose amongst thorns!’

  Connor jumped guiltily, and raised the pistol that Robin now saw he’d been holding in his left hand the whole time.

  ‘Don’t move!’ he shouted.

  Sylvie sighed. ‘See what I mean? So emotional.’ She smiled a slow, assessing smile at the woman and looked her up and down. ‘You look like you’ve been having quite the day of it, eh? Let me sort this out and then we can go somewhere and relax, hmm?’

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ Mac jumped like a trapped rat, his eyes shooting all around the open space. Huge circles of sweat stained his shirt and his face was blotchy with terror. ‘Where are the others? Are there snipers?’ He pulled the gun away from Khalil’s head and threw it onto the ground, then stepped back and put his hands on his head. ‘I surrender! I surrender!’

  With shaking fingers, Robin pulled her warrant card from her pocket and held it up. ‘Connor Reed, Sylvie Dean, Richard Mackenzie, you are all under arrest on the charge of perverting the course of justice. Anything you say will…’

  ‘Oh Christ, you’re such a fucking bore,’ said Sylvie and shot Mac in the forehead.

  The man dropped like a stone. The reverberation of the shot bounced dispassionately between the abandoned buildings all around them, and from a clump of bushes a few hundred metres away a flock of sparrows took to the air in fright. Robin felt her pulse hammering with shock. The witness groaned and crouched even lower to the ground.

  ‘Well, now that’s over.’ Sylvie smiled. ‘He was getting really annoying. But he has been useful, so that’s something. Now, are you going to be useful?’ Distantly, the wail of sirens came to them on the air. A faint frown creased the woman’s flawless face.

  ‘You know I have to take you in, Sylvie. It’s over.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be stupid. Of course you’re not taking me in. Bloody hell, I’ve only just got out of that miserable excuse for a gaol. I’ve been in sex dungeons with more atmosphere.’

  The sirens were much louder now, probably racing down Wellington Road, Robin calculated. She looked at Connor. His eyes were widening and he kept nervously looking between his boss and another small side road where she could see their car was parked.

  ‘Maybe we ought to go, Miss Dean,’ he offered.

  She scowled. ‘Grow a pair, Connor, there’s a love.’ She turned to the man kneeling in front of her, and Robin could see streaks of tears down his face. ‘I just need to sort this out first.’

  ‘No!’ with a yell, Robin dived at Sylvie as the woman raised her arm to take aim. She grabbed the smooth wrist and shoved it skywards, then the gun went off with a sickening boom which silenced everything and left only a faint ringing sound behind it. In dumbshow Robin saw the elegant figure stumble to one knee, a vicious snarl distorting her face, and then she felt a huge push of energy that sent her flying and falling. With a thump she hit the ground and her hearing snapped back on, and with the smell of cordite hanging in the air she looked down and saw a dark red blossom spreading across her chest.

  Sylvie climbed to her feet like something climbing out of Hell. The knee of her trousers was torn and a bramble had left a long scratch on her neck. For a second she just stood there, silent and awful, and then she turned to Connor who was staring at Robin’s sprawled figure, his gun trembling in his hand.

  ‘Did I ask you to do that? No, I fucking didn’t!’

  ‘She was attacking you, Miss Dean! I –‘ He stopped and paled.

  Sylvie’s face was nightmarish.

  ‘I was going to play with that and now it’s broken!’ She shot him in the chest, then again, and again, the gunshots punctuating her words. ‘Don’t. Break. My. Toys.’

  Lying in the weeds, Robin stared up at the chasing grey sky and realised she was having difficulty breathing. Panic began to wash in, and then she saw the woman move over to look down at her. All her beauty had gone now, the smiles and the win
ks and the coquettish glances. Instead the face that stared down was blank, a mask worn by a creature for whom death was just an amusement. Through the fog of pain and the knowledge that she was probably dying Robin still felt a stab of pure fear. And then there was another bang, and Sylvie was gone.

  After a second, Khalil’s face leaned over her. ‘I had to shoot her,’ he whispered, ‘God help me, but she was going to kill you.’ He placed his taped hands over the wound in her chest and hesitated. ‘This is going to hurt, but it will save your life. Trust me, I’m a doctor.’ He pushed down, and the agony swallowed Robin whole.

  Epilogue

  Robin smiled at the guests as they left the restaurant and moved off into Melbourne’s network of covered arcades. Another honeymooning couple, she thought, and hopefully another good review. She walked back towards the bar, collecting glasses from the simple wooden tables and straightening menus as she went, smiling at the scattering of customers making the most of the quaint atmosphere before heading back out for another afternoon of expensive shopping.

  A tall blonde woman at a far table caught her eye. Without noticing, her hand began rubbing the scar that spread across her stomach, a souvenir from that last year in England. How dreamlike it all seemed now: impossibly beautiful Sylvie Dean, rotten to the heart, corrupt Mac Mackenzie, grizzly Keith Bolton. And Lara Black. Her breath caught at the thought of the woman who had broken her heart.

  Robin walked slowly towards the woman at the table, who looked up at smiled.

  ‘Could I get another glass of white wine, please, waitress?’ Her blue eyes dazzled with amusement.

  ‘Get it yourself,’ replied Robin, leaning down to give her wife a soft kiss on the lips. ‘And I’ll have you know I’m the owner of this place.’

  Lara laughed. ‘Joint owner, you mean. Don’t forget us backroom people,’ she gestured at the sheet of accounts she’d been working on.

  Robin smiled. ‘You get more beautiful every day. I could never forget you.’

  The other woman took her hand. ‘Well luckily, you never have to,’ she said.

  The End