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

the man, just needed another second to put pressure on the arm lock. Another second and the man would have dropped to his knees and started talking.

“He did.” King looked back at her. “The man shot at me when I visited the scene of Fitzpatrick’s death. I winged him, but he got away. There was another man, I shot out his engine, but he got away on his accomplice’s snowmobile.”

Caroline nodded. She had been brought up to speed in her briefing prior to leaving London. “Where is this man who Stewart killed?”

“About five miles away,” King paused. “I’ve made a note of the GPS coordinates on my phone, but we couldn’t bring him on the snowmobile.”

“So, where does this Peter Stewart character fit in? Does he know I’m with MI5?”

“Oh, I’m positive,” King mused. “He may not know the rest of the team are here, or who they are. But he’ll know you from your South African escapade. And he’ll know Neil Ramsay for sure. Simon Mereweather is deputy director. Ramsay is Mereweather’s righthand man. He’ll know him, will have looked at his file. Or whatever they have on him.”

“But he won’t know Rashid and Marnie,” Caroline nodded. “We should keep it that way. It won’t hurt to have two pairs of hands that only we know about. Not if you don’t trust MI6.”

King nodded. “I’m not happy about those two Russians either.”

“The barman and the waiter?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t think it’s just a coincidence?”

“I don’t believe in coincidence.”

Caroline took a sip of her drink, put it down and looked at him. “I’ll lay off those for a while, it’s easy to get caught up with thinking I’m actually on holiday, when really I need to keep a clear head…” she paused. “I’ll get a coffee. Do you want a tea?”

King shook his head. “They don’t do tea well here… It tastes like wood and they keep putting lemon in it. The milk tastes sour, but the curtesy tray in the room has UHT, which is passable, and Lipton tea, which is drinkable.” He looked up as Caroline swung around in her seat as a commotion started at the front desk. King stood up and said, “Let’s take a look.”

It was a chaotic scene. The manager was calling somebody on the phone and holding up one hand to subdue the man thumping the desk with a fist. King couldn’t understand a word of the language, but he got the gist. The man wasn’t happy. He was clad in thick clothing made from animal skins, and had a rifle slung over his shoulder on a braided leather sling. King could see the rifle was a Mauser from World War Two. The scope on top looked from the same era. He suspected the man would be a superb shot. There was something about people who used a gun to feed their family. They learned not to waste a single bullet.

King turned his attention to the two women who stood quietly behind the man. They were rotund, red faced. He doubted he could guess their ages within twenty-years. To King and his limited knowledge, the three looked like Eskimos. Only he knew they were called Inuit now. And he doubted they still lived in igloos. He was aware that these people of Northern Scandinavia were the Sami, and he knew there were several types of Sami, like tribes. They were a semi-nomadic group and they travelled through Norway, Lapland, Finland and Russia. The Russians seemed to leave them alone. There wasn’t much in the way of a hard border this far north.

A tall, lithe man of about fifty, with cropped white silvery-white hair sidled up to the desk. He carried an aura of calm and confidence. King watched as the manager seemed to breathe a sigh of relief and the newcomer started to talk with the Sami at the counter. The manager seemed bolstered by the arrival of the other man, and an arrogant expression took over where indecision and uncertainty had been merely moments before.

King caught sight of the waitress walking through, and he walked over and said quietly, “Excuse me, what’s going on?”

She looked at him quizzically and frowned. “I’m sorry, but why are you interested?”

King smiled. “Well, the man was being aggressive, I’m hanging around in case the manager needs a hand,” he said with a concerned expression. “I work in security, I guess it’s a natural reaction. A habit, I suppose.”

“Oh, I see,” she hesitated, then said, “From what I gather, they have come here to take advantage of the owner’s offer to shelter people from the storm,” she paused. “It’s coming tomorrow afternoon, or evening. No change to its path.” She frowned, listening to the Sami and the man who had certainly calmed the situation. She looked back at King. “Nobody has seen his brother.”

“His brother?”

“Yes,” she said. “Apparently, he was going to meet them here, hours ago.”

King swallowed. His heart raced, but years of operating on the edge had given him the ability to quell his nerves quickly. “And nobody has seen this man? His brother?”

“No. Not a soul.”

“And is there CCTV?” he asked, then said, “Sorry, as I said, I work in security.” He offered, to cover his inquisitiveness. He just hoped that there wouldn’t be footage of Stewart and himself riding in on the dead man’s snowmobile, of King hiding it down the side of the hotel amongst the spindly fir trees and concealing the man’s rifle in his jacket.

“No,” she replied. “It was all knocked out by the storm we had earlier. It was like a tornado crashing through. It was terrifying, but over in a few minutes.”

“I know,” he said. “It knocked our car off the road. We came in by foot.”

“Oh, you were lucky to get here,” she said, her voice full of concern. “It would