Bruno Crane
The Friend
It’s so much colder out here on the ice in the dead of night. The snow is hardening in the freezing air, a lethal slick beneath our boots on the well-trodden pathways near the hotel.
‘Heard about the little scene in the restaurant earlier,’ I say. ‘They’re not going to make a complication here, are they? Your two women?’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Crane. You look after your house; I’ll look after mine.
But no. I put Catherine to bed like a good girl, made sure she took a nice dose of Veronal …
it’s just her nerves getting to her. She apologised to me, in the end.
But you see, don’t you, old man? One can’t dine on cucumber sandwiches forever.
Actually, maybe you don’t see. I’ll clarify: no full-blooded male can.
Every so often, one needs some red meat.
All women are a Catherine or a Sylvia in some formulation.
A Virgin Mary or a Mary Magdalene. And it’s just a damned shame you can’t get both together.
It would be so much less work if one didn’t have to roam beyond one’s hearthstone.
It’s just bloody inconvenient, when it comes down to it. ’
We continue to tramp away from the lights of the Grand Alpine, using just the blue glow of the full moon as Narracott doesn’t want to use torches in view of the hotel.
We have reached the glacier now. I hate the idea of crossing it in the dark, the hidden dangers of the ice.
I thump my gloved hands together to stop them going numb.
My teeth are starting to chatter. So cold that my head feels like it’s in a vice, as though my toenails have been ripped off.
They tortured people like that, in the war.
‘So how exactly are we going to get the stuff out of here?’ I ask. It’s something I have been mulling over, alone in my room. ‘Can’t imagine it’s going to be easy with your wife here. Especially not now.’
‘Ah, ye of little faith! I’ve got someone here. Going to do the whole transaction in situ. Much cleaner that way, don’t you think?’
‘There’s someone at the hotel?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who?’
‘Oh, never you mind, old chap. Think it’s safer for you if you don’t have that information.
Don’t you worry your ugly little head with such matters.
My contact would prefer that the fewer people know about their identity the better.
’ He taps his nose. ‘Let me take care of that side of things. Less risky to you that way.’
Is it? As far as I can tell I’m taking a pretty enormous risk as it is, with all of this. I don’t like this secrecy. I’m not sure it benefits me; Narracott has all of the information and I have only a rough sketch. The suspicion I have had about this whole endeavour grows.
Is this how he edges me out? His banker, whoever the fellow is, cuts him a cheque?
It might not even be a fellow. It could be anyone at this whole bloody hotel, other than perhaps the old dear who seems always to be knitting.
It could even be her! Now I come to think about it, she looks as though she has a secret.
I don’t voice any of this. Instead, I ask: ‘Presumably they take a cut, too?’
‘Fifty per cent for me,’ he throws back, ‘thirty-five for you and fifteen for our banker’s commission.’
I stare at his back. ‘I don’t get half? But I never agreed to that! Why should you get the lion’s share?’
‘It was my inspiration. My plan.’
But I risked just as much that night.
And a little voice inside me whispers: 100 per cent sounds a damn sight better than 35. That would sort out my troubles once and for all …
He swings round to face me and I feel caught out, as if he might be able to read my train of thought. ‘Penny for them?’ he asks, peering at me through the gloom.
‘Nothing,’ I say, but my mind is racing. If he’s just sprung this on me, what other tricks might he have up his sleeve? I need to keep my wits about me. Perhaps think up a few tricks of my own.
‘Come on, you old sack of potatoes.’ He sounds jovial enough but there’s an edge.
In the light of the full moon the white flank of the mountain glows like radium.
We need the moonlight, but we don’t want to be spotted out here if we can help it.
I have the sudden idea that we must look rather like two small boys, sneaking out for some larks in the snow.
But there’s something perverse about all of this.
Narracott has a pistol in his jacket, too.
I can see the shape of it in his pocket, the gleam of metal when he turns.
There is an unearthly groan from somewhere high above us; the sound of ice calving.
I try to gulp down my fear of the glacier.
I don’t remember the ice being so loud. It creaks and moans and growls like some ancient monster.
The darkness only seems to amplify the noises.
This part of it is meant to be riven with crevasses.
There could be one mere inches away. I could be standing on a snow bridge right now, moments from the ground giving way beneath my feet.
Would Narracott send for help, if I fell?
How would he explain what we were both doing out here in the small hours?
Best not to think about it. Best not to think too hard about anything.
Focus on putting one foot in front of the other.
It’s hard going. The snow holds beneath the foot in places but gives out in others; I sink to mid-thigh every other step.
Then I hear something that makes my bladder clench with terror. A high, keening cry, which seems to ricochet among the surrounding peaks, the walls of ice and rock ringing like tuning forks.
‘Did you hear that?’ I ask Narracott.
‘What?’ He glances over his shoulder and his breath, white vapour in the night air, comes in fast pants. There’s a loud creaking sound from somewhere up the glacier. ‘That’s the ice,’ he says. At this moment, as if on cue, there is a hideous cracking, like the sound of a giant’s bones splitting.
‘No, I heard—’ But what did I hear? It’s hard to be sure. Maybe it was the ice? But it seemed a different quality of sound …
Now Narracott shines his torch up towards the rock wall of the glacier, the lowest flank of the mountain that rises above it.
‘There it is,’ he says, and now I can see it: the small cabin built onto a shelf in the rock there.
The refuge. The ice has sunk back over the years: it’s higher above the glacier than last time I saw it.
We bought the mountain hut in 1943, from a local climbing guide, with our watches, two packs of cigarettes and one of our pistols (mine).
He probably thought he’d swindled us, because no one was climbing these routes and the hut was falling into disrepair.
That suited us just fine. Better than fine.
As Narracott said, we didn’t need anyone nosing their way in there.
We begin the short scramble up the rock. That sound – again. A high whine, or howl. ‘There! Did you hear?’
‘For God’s sake,’ he says, crossly. ‘That was definitely just the wind.’
He opens the door to the hut. There is a sudden, brief bright light … from somewhere behind us, I think.
‘Did you see that?’ I ask him.
‘What now, Crane?’ He comes to the doorway.
‘A strange … flash.’
‘A strange flash,’ he repeats, mockingly. ‘Sure you aren’t getting cold feet, old man?’
‘No – I really saw something.’ Now I voice the thought that came to me the first time I heard that strange howl. ‘You don’t think … you don’t think there could be one of them here, somehow?’
‘Spooking at ghosts now, Crane? They’re all dead.
We made sure of that. You made sure of that.
’ He says all of this as though daring me to challenge him.
‘No. There are small electrical storms up here all the time. Even in the summer. You must remember that! Now for God’s sake get in here and help me.
It’s not going to be easy. Earth stood hard as iron and all that. ’
I follow him into the musty darkness. The smell; hadn’t even realised there was a smell, but it clutches me by the throat and drags me back through the years.
We lived here for several weeks, after all, before we ‘escaped from the prisoner of war camp’ and rejoined our men. I feel as though I might vomit.
‘Steady on, old chap,’ he says, catching me by the upper arm as I pitch forward. And then, almost kindly. ‘This, now: this is the easy part. This is you taking what is yours.’
For one insane moment I’m struck by the fear – or is it almost a kind of hope?
– that it might have gone. That someone might have watched us, or found it by accident.
It would be a great blow in one respect, but at the same time it would mean I could continue to believe that all of it only really happened in the realm of nightmares.
‘Naughty, naughty,’ he toes the ground, showing a patch where the floorboards have been lifted up. ‘Look here. Someone had a go. Lucky we took precautions.’
He takes a hammer from his pack and uses the claw to prise out several nails from the boards in the floor. ‘Come on, help me.’
Once we have the boards loose the rock itself is exposed beneath. Or what appears at first to be the rock but is actually an amateurishly made floor put together from loose fragments of rock and stuck fast with homemade cement.
‘Here.’ He thrusts cold metal into my hand; a pickaxe. ‘Come on, man. Do get on with it. Now is not the time to grow a conscience, Crane.’ And then: ‘Most of them would be dead by now anyway,’ he says, casually. ‘You know that.’
‘No, I don’t. And neither do you.’
And then, like a fox that can’t resist toying with its prey: ‘What was it? Bullet through the back of the head? One of the most cold-blooded things I’ve ever seen.’
I’m as shocked as if he’d just shot me. ‘That wasn’t me,’ I say. ‘That was you.’
He scoffs. ‘I saw you do it, you idiot. You can’t go playing the innocent now. Remember being pretty shocked at the time.’
My heart starts racing, my head swims; I lurch against the wooden wall for balance.
I squeeze my eyes shut, try to remember.
Oh God, but I don’t want to. But it was him, wasn’t it?
I’m sure it was. But now I’m not absolutely certain.
That night is all darkness, a kind of murky, bloody horror.
I’ve spent the last five years purposefully not thinking about it, not remembering.
Was my part in it even worse than I thought?
Everything since that night has felt more like a waking dream than real life.
It was his idea. Does that make it better?
No, I think the opposite. Because I was still there, I still did it.
At least I suppose one could find a perverse kind of audacity – perhaps not courage – in his role in it all.
My part, meanwhile: that was all cowardice.
Narracott’s voice snaps me back to the present: ‘What’s it going to be, Crane? If you’re too lily-livered I’ll happily bid you adieu here and take your share.’
‘No—’
‘Then can we please carry on with the task in hand? It’s too bloody cold to stand around waiting for you to have your next crisis.’ And then, his tone turning hard again. ‘Get on with it, or get out.’
My eyes go to the shape of the pistol in his jacket. It has just occurred to me that he wouldn’t merely let me leave. Of course he wouldn’t. I don’t have any choice.
I grip the pickaxe and he hefts his and together we begin to work on the floor. Finally, something begins to appear … a piece of hessian sacking. The sight sets my skin seething. Horror and excitement fight for dominance.
This is why he needed me. The job would be too physically exhausting for one man. It seems to take forever. Soon enough, every swing of the pickaxe sends pain juddering up my arms. And every so often I am sure that I hear something out there.
Les loups des montagnes …
I remind myself that there are no wolves in these mountains any more. They’re all dead.
I put all of my concentration into the task at hand.
And finally, it’s all exposed: the unprepossessing hessian sack, the sort of thing you might store grain in.
We found it in an abandoned shepherd’s hut, chose it because it was so unlikely looking.
The fibre worn and stiff, falling away to reveal a metal chest. Narracott opens this and now we can see the gleam inside – the rich, yellow light bright even in the darkness, especially in the darkness.
Something miraculous about it. Something magical and ancient, this treasure from underground.
I understand it, how it has driven men to madness and death and violence.
I lift the first bar from the chest. So cold, so dense. The weight of it is unexpected, quite incredible. I am very aware of Narracott standing just behind me. If it came down to it … I’m taller, but he’s in better physical condition. But I have less to lose.
A voice speaks inside me: I want it. I want it all.
The pass over the mountain is too deadly in winter.
At this time of year it must be a deathly wasteland of snow and ice.
No, it wouldn’t work, not for one with my lack of skiing ability.
But perhaps there’s another way … a way that wouldn’t have him hot on my tail …
‘What are we going to do with it?’ I ask. ‘Take it back down with us?’
‘Are you mad? No. The best thing is for it to remain here, not in a hotel full of people with few secure hiding places.’
‘Then … why are we here?’
‘We had to make sure it was in situ. Before we make the exchange.’
‘But when—’
‘We’re going to meet in the morning. I’ll let you know the next steps.’ Has he somehow guessed at my innermost thoughts?
‘But …’
‘Trust me, Crane.’
I almost laugh out loud. Of course I can’t trust him. I know this better than anyone. Anyone alive, that is.
Sometimes I have thought it’s odd he didn’t kill me there and then, and take it all for himself.
But he needed someone else to back up his story, when we got back to our own troops.
And he needed someone else – a mule – to help him with this part.
But now … now I’m a liability, aren’t I? He has to split the pot with me.
Perhaps more importantly, I am the only other who remembers that night. And I’ve seen him kill in cold blood before …