The Alex King Series by A BATEMAN (free ebook reader for ipad TXT) 📕

his bare face. He pulled the beanie down further until only his eyes, nose and chin remained uncovered.

The car had cooled already, and he started it up and kept the heater on as he polished off a chocolate bar and looked at the map. He picked up the acetate sheet and placed it over the map. The first cross he figured would be a start and he drove out of the parking bay and down the street. The lights within the houses shone warm and welcoming. The street lamps were sporadic, but King could already see that the snow provided enough ambient light to see by. A white background that would never give way to darkness. The headlights from the SUV cut swathes in the night and highlighted the houses further. King had seen similarly painted houses on the shores of Norwegian fjords.

King saw that the first mark on the acetate was a hotel. There was nothing else in the vicinity, so he figured this was where he was meant to stay. He drove on to the second marker and found the police station. There was one patrol car outside. A Subaru liveried as a police cruiser. It was a four-wheel-drive saloon with a handy turn of speed. Next to the car were two snowmobiles. Each looked frozen in the headlights, a thin sheen of ice covering them. There were ice particles in the air as well. The moisture freezing and dropping lazily to the ground. King could see a figure moving around inside the building. He switched off the engine and got out. He walked the twenty-metres or so to the steps and climbed them carefully, the ice forming a lethally slippery layer as the temperature dropped. He had no idea what the temperature was now, but it was considerably colder than it had been at the airport.

King opened the glass door and stepped into the heated foyer. He dusted the ice crystals off his jacket and removed his beanie and gloves, then unzipped his jacket and felt his skin start to breathe through the multiple layers of clothing underneath.

“It takes some getting used to, doesn’t it?”

A woman’s voice behind him. In all his cumbersome efforts to remove the clothing he had not heard her open the door to a row of offices.

He turned around and smiled. “You knew I was English?” he asked, feeling it strange she had addressed him in anything other than Finnish.

“I was expecting you,” she said. “Your department called ahead.”

“My department?”

“The Home Office,” she said, a little irritably. “I waited for you, was just about to give up and go home.”

King looked at her. Standard Nordic supermodel. Blonde hair plaited in pigtails and held together with red ribbon, strong features with a sharp nose, blue eyes and teeth as white as the landscape. She could have been on the cover of Vogue, except King had no idea what she looked like under her multiple layers of clothing. Perhaps that was why they were all so good looking and had such wonderful smiles? Maybe you just got to fall for the person before you made decisions about their build. From here, she looked like a fourteen stone power lifter in her snow suit and bib. He glanced at his watch. It was just after seven. He looked back at her and smiled.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought I’d come and touch base,” he paused. He never said things like that, thought he sounded like an area sales manager. “My name is King.”

Her expression softened. “Lena Mäkinen.”

“Senior Constable,” he said.

“Yes.”

“How senior is senior?” Her eyes flashed, and he knew he’d offended her. “I’m sorry, I don’t know how it works out here.”

“Senior enough,” she assured him. She sighed. “Coffee?”

“Please,” King replied. He didn’t drink coffee as a rule, but the British Empire was in full retreat and he found he could get tea in less and less places as coffee completed its march towards global domination with a coffee shop on every corner and a paper cup in every busy persons’ hand. He conceded that anything warm would be welcome and did not want to rebuke her offer. “White and sugar, if that’s okay?”

“Sure,” she said amiably. “Take a seat through here.” She beckoned him into the office and walked over to a weird-looking machine of chrome and red with taps and buttons all over it. She twisted a tap and the machine started to steam and clunk. “Do you watch American dramas?”

King thought for a moment. He realised he didn’t watch much television at all. “Sure,” he said. He had watched CSI for a while, but realised it was most likely a rhetorical question.

“My rank is like that of a Sheriff,” she paused. “I am the law around here…”

She had tried an American Wild West accent, but it hadn’t really worked. Somewhere between Wyoming and Munich. She flushed red, turned her back on him as she made the coffee. When she walked the cups over she had returned to her pale self. King thought she was as beautiful a woman as he had ever met. The thought made him feel guilty, but, he reflected, not as much as it should have.

“I have two constables under me…” she continued. “We are a small department. When we need further assistance, we have police officers and detectives allocated to us. But largely, we do not have murders up here. A bit of drinking and fighting, some thefts of machinery, perhaps love triangles gone wrong. A husband out for some payback…”

“Cold nights?” King smiled knowingly.

“Everybody needs a snuggle in the cold and sometimes there aren’t enough single people to go around,” she said light heartedly. “But seriously, about your friend… He was killed by wolves. Nothing more sinister than that.”

“Personally, I find the thought of wolves eating up tourists quite sinister,” said King, sipping