The Ice Hotel

by Hania Allen

Genres: International Crime & Mystery

Synopsis

'Refreshing . . . I look forward to reading more' Alex Gray 'First-rate' Sunday Sport A seasonal hotel where murder can be made to disappear with the sun . . . Maggie Stewart travels with friends Liz and Harry to the Ice Hotel, a surreal building in Swedish Lapland constructed from ice cut from the nearby river. During the day, it is a museum housing ice sculptures, but at night it becomes a novelty hotel. Shortly after their arrival, the holiday turns into a nightmare. A near-miss snowmobile accident is followed by the discovery of the frozen body of one of the hotel's American guests. Maggie is shocked to learn that this was no accident: the American was drugged and pushed out of his sleeping bag to freeze to death in the room. As the body count rises and Maggie finds herself in mortal danger, she realises that the only person she can trust is Thomas Hallengren, the detective leading the case. But can he uncover the killer's identity before the Ice Hotel and other buildings - the Ice Chapel and Ice Theatre - melt back into the river, taking the clues with them? Praise for Hania Allen 'A fresh new find for crime fans' Sunday Post ' Nicely nasty in all the right places. . . The story rattles along until bringing the curtain down with an unnerving twist ' Craig Robertson ' Captivating characters and an intriguing plot. A great new find for crime fans' Lin Anderson ' Pitch-perfect. . . a witty, tense crime novel written in a highly readable style' Russel D McLean

Release date: February 4, 2021

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 384

Sample

‘It’s happened again, hasn’t it, Maggie?’ Dr Langley was watching me, her face a mask. ‘Tell me about it.’

‘I’ve told you before. It’s always the same.’

‘Tell me again.’

Again? Why did she want to hear what she’d heard so many times before? But she was the doctor.

‘It’s night,’ I began. ‘I’m in a dark room, with windows from floor to ceiling. The windows have shutters.’

‘Are they open?’

I made a point of not answering directly whenever she interrupted. ‘The moonlight makes patterns of light on the floor. But I don’t linger because I’ve seen the door in the far wall. I skirt the furniture, which is covered with dustsheets. As I reach the door, something makes me look back. The furniture is gliding across the floor, the pieces zigzagging past each other. I hurry into the next room, and the rooms after that. Then I’m there.’ My heart began to pound as the memory returned. ‘The bathroom is large, with no windows. It’s flooded with a harsh light.’

‘Where’s the light coming from if there are no windows?’

She hadn’t asked this question before. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Is it important?’

‘Everything you say is important.’ She smiled. ‘Please go on.’

‘The bathroom is tiled in white – the walls, the ceiling, the floor. The bath is in the middle of the room, sunk into the ground like a swimming pool. The water is level with the floor, and the surface is still.’

I hesitated, as I always did at this point, because I felt a constriction in my chest. ‘I look into the bath but it’s too murky to see. Yet I know something lies hidden under the water. I stretch a hand towards the taps and try to pull out the plug. But I can’t shift it. The chain is lying along the bottom and something heavy is weighing it down. I grip it with both hands and tug sharply. The thing at the bottom stirs, as though it’s wakening. Then I know I’ll have to do what I’ve dreaded since entering the house. I plunge my hands into the water and slide them down the chain. They’re so numb I can barely feel them. Icy water spills over the edge and soaks into my feet.’ I squeezed my eyes shut in an effort to blot out the image. ‘I pull hard, straining against the weight, and the thing shifts and starts to rise. The water thickens, changing colour from brown to dark red.’ My eyes flew open.

‘Breathe deeply. You’re nearly there.’

‘I try to loosen my grip, but I can’t. I hear something behind me. I turn round. The room’s empty. The door’s disappeared. It’s tiled over, become part of the wall. I pull and pull, and the thing in the bath reaches the top and breaks the surface.’ The last words came out in a rush.

‘And you wake up.’

I nodded, seized by a sudden fear. It was as though tentacles were coiling round my throat. I opened my mouth wide, panting, and struggled for control until my breathing grew regular.

‘How does waking feel?’ Dr Langley said gently.

I ran a hand over my face. ‘I’m in a sweat and out of breath. I think I must have cried out. The woman in the flat above gave me a strange look when I passed her on the stairs.’

Dr Langley placed her palms together as though in prayer. For a second, I imagined her mumbling in Latin. ‘What do you think is in the bath, Maggie?’

Another question she hadn’t asked before. I wondered whether she was trying to trick me but I dismissed the thought. She was my doctor. ‘I’ve no idea,’ I said. ‘But there was one thing that was different. The smell.’

‘Describe it.’

‘It was dank, like a pond. Or a river.’

And laced with something impossible to describe, something I’d smelt in the chapel at the Ice Hotel. Oh, God, that chapel. My stomach lurched. I swallowed hard, trying to stop the retching.

Dr Langley rose quickly and walked to the sideboard, her shoes squeaking on the polished parquet. She poured noisily from a crystal decanter. I slumped back, listening to the tone change as the glass filled with water.

The doctor’s office was like none I’d seen. And I’d seen a few. The sideboard was antique. I’d asked about it at our first session, more to keep the conversation going than from genuine interest. Above it, a gilt-framed mirror hung from the picture rail. There was a time when I’d have leant forward to admire my reflection. Not any more.

‘Drink this,’ she said, handing me the glass.

I wrapped myself in the powdery scent of her perfume, and listened to the room’s sounds. They seemed strangely magnified: the ticking of the grandfather clock, the distant traffic through the partly shuttered windows. I drained the glass, holding on to these sounds as though sanity depended on it.

She returned to the desk.

‘I know I’m not supposed to smoke in here,’ I said, ‘but would you mind if I did?’

It was the first time I’d asked this question. The expression in her eyes changed. So, after all these sessions, I could still surprise her. The thought gave me a cat-got-the-cream sense of satisfaction.

‘I didn’t know you smoked,’ she said.

‘I started yesterday,’ I lied.

‘I’m afraid smoking is no longer allowed.’

‘Oh, well, no harm in trying.’

She smiled then, a wide smile that showed her perfect teeth. A Julia Roberts smile. She was older than Julia Roberts, her hands one of the giveaways, putting her in her early fifties. She was slim for her age, without the leanness of women on permanent diets. Her sharp trouser suit and silk blouse, ruffled at the neck and cuffs, would have been purchased on one of her trips to Edinburgh. Dundee didn’t sell clothes like that. She wore only a trace of make-up over skin that was largely unlined. But she’d let her hair go grey, even though the cut was modern. If she’d dyed it, it would have taken ten years off her age. Her most remarkable features, however, were her eyes. They were large and doe-like. And they saw everything. If anyone can help you, Maggie, she can. My GP’s words.

From somewhere within the building a door slammed, shredding my nerves. ‘Why am I having this dream?’ I said, trying to keep my voice steady.

She studied her finely manicured hands. The nails were varnished in the palest rose. I thought of my own, ragged, bitten to the quick, and slid my hands under my knees.

‘You need to bear in mind, Maggie, that there’s rarely a simple explanation for a dream.’ She was in teacher mode now. ‘Dreams consist of elements, which have to be disentangled. That’s not always easy. In yours, some associations are clear. The smell of river water, for example.’ She leant forward. ‘But the thing you can’t see, the thing that’s under the water – that holds the key. It’s something you want to discover, which is why you can’t release the chain and the door disappears, trapping you in the bathroom and forcing you to make the discovery. But it’s also something you dread discovering, so your brain wakes you before the thing reaches the surface.’

‘And the water turning to blood?’

‘That’s not so surprising, given what happened at the Ice Hotel. But the white tiles.’ She made an arch with her fingers. ‘Your subconscious is drawing your attention to them. My suspicion is you’ve seen them somewhere. Can you remember?’

‘I can’t remember what day it is, let alone where I’ve seen white tiles,’ I said, hoping she wouldn’t realise I was lying.

‘Then that’s something we’ll keep working on.’

‘And when I find out what’s under the water, I’ll stop having the dream?’

‘It’s equally likely you’ll stop having it before you find out.’

I rested my head against the back of the chair and stared at the ceiling. I hadn’t always had dreams. My childhood and early teens had passed without them. Dreams had appeared at the onset of adulthood and, with it, responsibility. But the dream that had reduced me to a fraction of my former self was recent, brought on by the terrible events earlier in the year. Weeks would pass without it, then, for no apparent reason, three would come consecutively, like buses. I wondered whether the others who’d been at the Ice Hotel had dreams. Liz might, although I doubted Mike would. But not Harry. Not now.

Dr Langley’s voice broke into my thoughts. ‘You’re making progress.’ She was writing, adding today’s observations to her case notes. ‘Don’t you feel it?’

‘I feel as if I’m living someone else’s life.’

She replaced the cap on her fountain pen, then blotted and closed the file. She always did it in that order. I was fascinated both by this little ritual and by the medical profession’s apparent disregard for the ballpoint.

‘We went a little further today,’ she said. ‘I see evidence of improvement each time we meet.’

‘The men in white coats aren’t coming for me, then?’

‘When you can recall your experiences without reliving them, you’ll be through the worst.’ She searched my face. ‘But there’s something you’re holding back. Something you’re not telling me.’

I kept my expression blank. It was a look I’d perfected in recent weeks.

‘I’m not saying you’re doing it deliberately.’ She hesitated. ‘But you’ve still to tell me what happened at the Ice Hotel.’

What did she want to know? It had been in all the newspapers.

‘You’re back at work in the New Year.’ She had the file open again and was scanning the pages. ‘A pharmaceutical company, isn’t it?’

She played these little games. She knew the name, but wanted to see if I remembered it. She knew everything about my life: my childhood, my time at university, my first job in Newcastle. And the move to Dundee.

‘It’s Bayne Pharmaceuticals, Dr Langley,’ I said, my voice level. ‘They’ve given me six months’ leave of absence. My boss has been brilliant about everything.’

‘And how are you sleeping? On the nights you don’t have the dream,’ she added.

‘Having a drink before bed helps.’

I wondered if she’d guessed I needed to drink myself into oblivion. Even then, I rarely slept through. The worst hour was three in the morning: I’d wake and, unable to sleep, would chain-smoke in bed. But she knew I drank before our sessions. She couldn’t fail to notice the odour on my breath. I rarely went to see her without at least two drinks inside me. The first gave my brain cells a wake-up call, but a second was needed to make them fully functioning.

She was watching me. ‘You will get over this, Maggie. But you’ve got to give yourself a chance.’

I looked into her eyes, wondering why, after all these months, she still believed it. Probably because she didn’t know the whole story. Nor did I, come to that. Yet until I did, there’d be no recovery and the dream would overwhelm me. All it needed was a single sharp tug at the thread of my fraying sanity, and it would unravel completely.

‘It isn’t just about what happened there,’ she said, ‘although those events were terrible enough. Something else is behind this dream.’ She paused. ‘And you’ve come to the same conclusion.’

After a silence, I said, ‘The police got it wrong. They got it all wrong. I need to know what really happened.’

‘And what’s stopping you?’

‘I might discover something that …’ I tailed off, unable to find the words.

‘Something you want to discover, yet something you dread discovering?’ she said softly. ‘The thing in the bath?’

‘If I discover it, will it release me from this …’ I gave my head a small shake ‘… from this hell?’

‘Nothing else will. And I think you know that. But we can make the journey together.’ Her gaze held mine. ‘Will you tell me what happened?’

I nodded slowly.

‘Start at the beginning, then. Start with how you came to be at the Ice Hotel.’

So, as the wind seized the windows and rattled them, wailing to be let in, I told Dr Langley everything.

It was Harry who’d raised the idea.

We were in Liz’s back garden. Summer was slipping away, making a last desperate attempt to survive with a spell of balmy weather. Although the time for shorts and T-shirts had passed, there was enough heat in the pale September sun to warm our upturned faces.

I was watching Liz’s children, Annie and Lucy. They were running round the plum tree, playing a chasing game I recognised from childhood, their shrieking laughter eclipsing the droning of the wasps that were drunk on the rotting plums. The girls had inherited their mother’s looks – creamy skin, blonde hair and blue eyes – but their hair wasn’t straight like hers, hanging instead in short heavy ringlets, which bounced as they moved. The curls were held back with hair slides and, as Annie and Lucy were identical twins, the colour of the slides was the only way to tell them apart.

Liz Hallam was the sister I’d never had, my closest friend with whom I’d passed a blissful childhood and teens. We lost touch, then after her divorce she’d moved from London to Dundee to start a new life with her children. I’d run into her two years earlier, and we’d taken up our friendship as though we’d never put it down. It was she who’d introduced me to Harry Auchinleck, ‘a gay gentleman in his fifties’ and a professor at the University of Dundee. An accredited Cordon Bleu cook, he shared Liz’s love of entertaining, and most of our Sundays were spent at his legendary buffet lunches. Harry and I hit it off immediately, and it wasn’t long before the three of us became inseparable.

Liz was picking over the last of the strawberries, examining each one before popping it into her mouth. As she chewed, the velvety mole on her cheek jiggled up and down. I’d once tried to give myself a beauty spot with an eyebrow pencil, but had smudged it without realising, and spent the entire evening at a party looking as though I had a tadpole on my face.

Harry had just mooted the idea of the holiday. He was sitting under the parasol, wearing his battered Panama hat. He’d exchanged his spectacles for an ancient pair of sunglasses that were held together with sticky tape. ‘So we’re agreed, then,’ he said, pushing them further up his nose. ‘And you’re sure next spring will work for you, Liz?’

‘Absolutely,’ she said, running a hand over her ponytail. ‘I can leave the girls with their grandparents, or there’s a friend at work, Siobhan. She’s awfully fond of the children and has helped out in the past. But let me get my phone so I can check the dates.’

As she passed me, moving with the idle grace that comes naturally to some women, I caught a trace of her signature perfume, Paris, by Yves Saint Laurent.

‘It was too easy, Harry,’ I said. ‘I was certain that prising Liz from her children would be much more difficult.’ I leant back, drenching myself in the heady scent of jasmine.

‘My dear, gift horses and mouths spring to mind. If only persuasion were as easy with my head of department.’

I smiled, my eyes still closed. ‘I thought those travel brochures you brought might be tempting Fate.’

‘The important thing is that she’s agreed to take a holiday. She’s run ragged half the time, and it’s healthy to loosen the umbilical cord a bit.’ He lowered his voice unnecessarily. ‘I’m delighted you’re able to come. It would have been improper for me to take her away, even though I’m a crusty professor, old enough to be her father, and everyone knows I bat for the other side.’

‘Harry, no one bothers about that sort of thing these days.’

At that point, Liz returned with her phone. She scanned the screen. ‘March, you said? How about the first week?’

‘Has to be second week, my dear.’

I glanced at him, surprised at the firmness in his voice. ‘I thought you had that conference in Rome. Aren’t you the chairman or something?’

‘I’ve decided to cancel.’ His tone discouraged further questions. ‘Now, children, I know we discussed a beach holiday, but I’ve rather set my mind on skiing.’

‘Fine by me,’ Liz said. ‘France or Switzerland?’

He poured himself another Pimm’s. ‘Sweden.’

‘I didn’t know there was skiing in Sweden,’ I said. ‘Seems an odd choice.’

‘I was there briefly last year, and I’d really like to see the place properly.’

‘Okay, where are the brochures?’ I said, watching the twins.

They’d stripped to their knickers and were running under the arcing jets from Liz’s garden-watering contraption. Thoroughly soaked, they charged at Harry and banged into the table, upsetting the jug of Pimm’s. They pressed against him, leaving wet marks on his trousers.

Annie, the older of the twins by five minutes, spoke with the authority conveyed by her status. ‘Do the trick with the flower, Harry.’

His round face broke into creases, happiness making him instantly younger. He removed the red carnation pinned to his cricket whites and, with an impressive sleight of hand, made it disappear. He held up both hands, palms outwards, for the girls to inspect, then reached over and pulled the carnation from behind Lucy’s ear. The girls squealed with delight.

Lucy jumped up and down. ‘Do it again, Harry. Do it again.’

So Harry did it again. I’d seen this trick many times, as had the girls, but we never tired of it. Fortunately, neither did Harry.

Liz shooed the twins away, and they skipped off happily. ‘There’s skiing near the border with Norway,’ she said, poring over a catalogue.

‘Nothing further south?’ he said, disappointment in his voice.

‘That’s not where the mountains are, I’m afraid.’ She turned the pages, frowning in concentration, then sat up so quickly she spilt her drink over her jeans. ‘Oh, wow, forget skiing. This is it. This is the one.’ She read from the brochure:

‘For a winter holiday with a difference, why not spend a week discovering the spectacular scenery of Lapland, the land of the Northern Lights? The highlight of this unforgettable experience is a stay in the unique Ice Hotel.’

‘Ice Hotel?’ Harry said.

She read on: ‘Set near the town of Kiruna, the Ice Hotel is built entirely of ice and snow – a staggering 30,000 tons of snow and 10,000 tons of ice are used in its construction. Each spring the Ice Hotel melts and each winter it is rebuilt to a different design.’

‘A building made of ice? Not sure the old constitution will stand it.’

‘We’re not in the Ice Hotel the whole week, sweetheart. Four nights in a nearby hotel.’ She looked up, her expression anxious. ‘Please, Harry, let’s go. We can do skiing some other time.’

He smiled faintly. ‘Of course, my dear, if that’s what you’ve set your heart on. But where exactly is Kiruna?’

‘North of the Arctic Circle. There’s an airport, so it’s not exactly in the sticks.’

‘The Arctic Circle.’ He spoke quietly, almost to himself. ‘A fair distance from Stockholm, then, but if there’s an airport I could fly there.’

I tried to catch his eye. Was it my imagination, or was he deliberately not looking at me? First he’d cancelled attendance at the Rome conference, which he’d spent months organising, and now he was muttering about flying to Stockholm. Something wasn’t right.

‘You’re awfully quiet, Mags,’ Liz said. She handed me the brochure. ‘Here, take a look.’

I studied the photograph. I was mildly disappointed: I’d expected a tall, tiered building, white and heavily decorated like a wedding cake. But the Ice Hotel was an elongated igloo with low rectangular structures on either side. It squatted against the darkening sky like a monstrous pale toad. And it wasn’t white. It was blue – faintly, but distinctly, blue.

There was one other photograph. The caption read: A guest in one of the Ice Hotel’s bedrooms. A girl wearing ski-suit, fur hat and gloves was sitting on a bed covered with animal skins. Frosted snakes curled behind her head, like an anaemic Medusa’s, but she seemed oblivious, leaning back, smiling radiantly. With a shock of recognition, I saw that she was leaning against a headboard made of ice, and the snakes were the curved patterns.

I ran a finger over the outline of the building. An uneven glow radiated from its depths, as though the bloated toad had swallowed fire. It was surreal, scary and magnificent. And then I knew that I had to see it.

Liz took my silence for hesitation. ‘Come on, Mags, it’ll be a hoot and a half.’

I looked up. ‘Oh, yes,’ I said softly. ‘Let’s do it.’

She laughed, a light ringing sound, like a bell, and pushed Harry playfully. He pretended to fall off the chair, scattering the brochures.

He nudged his sunglasses on to the bridge of his nose, and peered at the catalogue. ‘My God, but look at the cost. I can’t afford this. I’m on the edge of ruin, as it is.’

‘There’s a special offer, sweetheart. If we book within seven days, it’s half-price. We really need to do this tomorrow at the very latest.’

‘Only seven days? How very awkward. Even with the discount, it’s a bit steep. What sort of people can afford this sort of holiday? I’m a humble academic, remember.’

‘Ah, but it’ll be fantastic,’ she said, squeezing his arm. ‘The holiday of a lifetime. You can mortgage the Rubens.’

‘Nice if I had one to mortgage. There’s nothing for it. I’ll have to write another book.’

‘You do know you won’t be able to wear carnations in the Ice Hotel, don’t you? They’ll shrivel at those temperatures.’

‘Ha, that’s not the only thing that’ll shrivel, dear girl.’

I listened as they made plans.

‘Look, there’s a website,’ Liz was saying. ‘We can book online. Shall we use my laptop?’

I lay back, warmed by the sun, trying to imagine a night in a building made of ice. I closed my eyes and pictured the gleaming igloo. But something had changed. The light was dwindling, fading slowly at first, then more quickly until, with a bright flicker, like the sudden rekindling of dying embers, it vanished. The Ice Hotel darkened, growing menacing against the livid sky.

I opened my eyes, touched by a strange fear.

Liz was on her feet. Her eyes were shining. ‘Come on, if you’re coming, Mags.’

The feeling passed. My excitement returned and I followed them indoors. In her office, Liz made the booking. With a few clicks, our fate was sealed.

It was March of the following year, and the plane was approaching the runway at Stockholm airport. Harry was wedged between us, squeezing our hands tightly. He’d developed a fear of flying years before after his plane had landed badly at Charles de Gaulle airport. Sweat had broken out on his forehead and his eyelids were fluttering. Although he’d taken enough temazepam to knock out a horse, it had done nothing to reduce his strength, and I winced as he crushed my fingers.

I glanced across at Liz. ‘You okay? You look a bit preoccupied.’

‘I’ll be fine once we’ve landed and I can call the twins.’ She looked away. ‘I’m just awfully worried they’ll be suffering from separation anxiety.’

‘The twins, Liz? Or you?’

She threw me a lopsided smile. It was clear she was finding it difficult away from her children. I disentangled myself from Harry and squeezed her fingers. Her hands were cold.

I wondered whether Harry had caught the conversation. His eyes were closed, his breathing shallow. I thought he was asleep but I felt his body stiffen as the wheels touched the tarmac.

An hour later, in the main airport café, we were waiting for our flight to Kiruna to be called. Harry looked queasy, Liz was drinking espresso, and I was demolishing a second breakfast.

Liz glanced at the smorgasbord. ‘Keep eating like that, Mags, and you can kiss goodbye to that hour-and-a-half-glass figure.’

I pushed the plate away, smiling. My metabolism allowed me to eat as much as I liked. But my smile faded as I saw Harry’s complexion. How would he manage in a twenty-seater plane?

As if reading my thoughts, he said, ‘Could one of you children please remind me to take my pills before we board? Otherwise you’ll have to scrape me off the ceiling.’

‘Shush a minute, listen to this,’ Liz was saying. Her eyes were glued to the large TV screen. ‘It’s a news clip about a murder. There’s a picture of a hotel. I can’t understand very much – it’s in Swedish.’

The hotel was a six-storey, stone-faced building. A blue-and-yellow flag fluttered wildly over the canopied entrance.

‘I think I know what this is,’ Harry said, nodding at the screen. ‘The Stockholm hotel murders. But I don’t understand – it was over and done with some time ago. Why has it reared its ugly head now?’

An English translation appeared, ticker-tape style, across the screen.

He leant forward, squinting. ‘A year on, they still haven’t caught the perpetrator, although the police say the net is closing. That’s something at least.’

‘You know about this?’ I said, surprised.

He nodded slowly. ‘Last year, there was a series of gruesome murders in a large Stockholm hotel. In more than one hotel, now that I remember. All very Grand Guignol. The victims were dispatched in particularly grisly ways.’ He lowered his voice. ‘One of the murders was so terrible that the details were kept from the press.’

Liz was staring at him. ‘How do you know so much about it, Harry?’

‘I was at a conference in Uppsala when it happened. We got a daily blow-by-blow account, so to speak. Uppsala is not far from Stockholm so, as you can imagine, we were all rather alarmed. I think everyone who stayed in a Swedish hotel at the time was. But then it all stopped suddenly.’ He hesitated. ‘There can be only one reason why this has surfaced now. There must have been another death.’ He turned to the screen but the news had finished and, in place of the hotel, there was a weather map.

Liz frowned. ‘Perhaps Sweden wasn’t such a good choice of location, Mags.’

‘Oh, come on, show me a country that doesn’t have murders. Anyway, we won’t be anywhere near Stockholm.’

‘I told you we should have gone for a beach holiday.’

‘You did not, you little fibber,’ I said, grinning.

I turned to Harry, hoping to engage him as my ally, but he was staring at a point behind me. His eyes were wide with excitement. I turned round.

Two men had entered.

Both were tall, six foot or more, and well built. The older was dressed impeccably, the cut of his clothes hinting that they’d been tailor-made. His green Harris Tweed jacket was buttoned over a cream roll-neck sweater, which he was fingering at the throat as though it was too tight. His trousers, which lacked the usual faded look of brown corduroy, were sharply creased, the creases saying more about him than anything else.

He held his head confidently, studying the room with an air of boredom, like a well-fed lion surveying his territory. As he moved his head, our eyes locked for a second, but he looked past me immediately, not interested in what he’d seen. He had the pale, unlined skin of someone who stays out of the sun, and a thin mouth set in a sneer as though nothing was up to his usual standard. His hair, styled to disguise that it was receding, was the same salt-and-pepper colour as Harry’s. There was an unmistakable aura about him. It took me only a second to recognise it. It was power. And he reeked of it.

His companion, casually dressed in sports clothes, had the same hooked nose and brown eyes, but darker hair. He seemed nervous and fumbled in his carry-on bag, dropping his mobile phone with a clatter.

‘He’s here,’ Harry said, reverence in his voice. ‘He’s actually here. I’m in the same room as Wilson Bibby.’

‘Wilson who?’ I said.

‘Wilson Bibby the Third.’ His eyes were riveted on the men. ‘Of the Bibby Foundation.’

‘I’ve never heard of it,’ I said, my curiosity rising. ‘Is it a charity?’

‘I prefer to call it a charitable foundation,’ he said stiffly. He seemed unsure whether to continue. ‘Years ago, I applied to the Foundation for a grant. They looked kindly on my application, and have been funding my research ever since.’

‘I take it you’re talking about the older man,’ Liz said. ‘He looks terribly serious. Have you met him?’

‘Good heavens, one simply doesn’t meet a man like Wilson Bibby. He’s far too important.’

‘If he’s that important, why is he in an airport café like everyone else?’ I said.

‘I think, my dear, it’s because he’s travelling incognito. He’s been the victim of several failed kidnap attempts. And there was a well-publicised stalking case a couple of years ago.’

I studied Wilson Bibby with growing interest. He wasn’t acting like a man afraid of being kidnapped. ‘What else does he do, apart from giving money to deserving academics?’

‘He’s a benefactor in other ways. He’s used some of his billions to establish a charity for poor children in South Carolina.’

‘Why South Carolina?’

‘His family hails from Charleston. They go back several generations. I think one of them fought at Gettysburg. At least, that’s what Bibby claims. But, then, every American I’ve met from the south has an ancestor who fought at Gettysburg.’

Wilson was speaking into a mobile phone. His call finished, he handed the phone to the younger man, who snapped it shut.

‘His manners are said to be impeccable.’ Harry smiled knowingly. ‘Forget truth and justice, my dear. Charm is definitely the American Way. He’s a real southern gentleman. And he keeps a stable of mistresses. But you’d expect that