Athabasca

  “They’re the only suspects we have—especially the men in charge of the security shifts. Not only do they have access to the key of the armoury from which the explosives were stolen, they actually carry the damn thing around with them on duty. More, I have good reason to suspect the security staff on the Alaskan pipeline. Further, it appears more than likely that both security staffs are working hand-in-glove under the same boss or bosses. How else can you explain how some villains here know the Sohio/B.P. code, while the villains there know Sanmobil’s?”

  Willoughby said: “This is just conjecture…”

  “Sure. But it’s conjecture shading into probability. Isn’t it a basic police philosophy to set up a theory and examine it from all sides before discarding it? Well, we’ve set up our theory, examined it from all sides, and don’t feel like discarding it.”

  Willoughby frowned, then said: “You don’t trust the security men?”

  “Let me amplify that. The majority are straight, no doubt, but until I know for sure, they’re all under suspicion.”

  “Including Brinckman and Jorgensen?”

  “‘Including’ is not the word. ‘Especially’.”

  “Jesus! You’re talking crazy, Dermott. After what they went through?”

  “Tell me what they went through.”

  “They told you already.” Willoughby had become incredulous.

  Dermott was unmoved. “I’ve only got their word for that—and I’m pretty sure in both cases that word’s worthless.”

  “Carmody corroborated their story—or rather, Johnson did. Maybe you don’t trust him either?”

  “I’ll decide that when I meet him. But the point is, Johnson didn’t corroborate the story. All he said—correct me if I’m wrong—was that when he arrived on the scene he found Brinckman unconscious and Jorgensen staggering around. That’s all he said. He had no more idea what went on before that than you or I do.”

  “Then how d’you account for their injuries?”

  “Injuries?” Dermott smiled sarcastically. “Jorgensen didn’t have a mark on him. Brinckman did, but if you’d been watching him, you’d have seen him jump when I told him he’d been struck by a lead-filled cosh. That didn’t fit. There was something wrong with the scenario.

  “I suggest—both men were in perfectly good health until they saw the lights of Johnson’s minibus approaching, whereupon Jorgensen, acting on instructions, tapped Brinckman on the head just hard enough to lay him out briefly.”

  “What do you mean, ‘under instructions’?” Willoughby demanded doggedly. “Whose?”

  “That remains to be discovered. But you might like to know that these aren’t the first peculiar injuries we’ve come across. A doctor in Prudhoe Bay, for one, has discovered that we have highly suspicious minds on this subject. Donald and I had to examine a murdered engineer whose finger had sustained a curious fracture. The good doctor explained it away to his own apparent satisfaction, but not to ours. He probably gave orders that if any other such—ah marginal incidents happened, any security agents in the vicinity were to display proof of injuries sustained in the loyal execution of their duties—such as, in this case, their attempts to protect those whom they were supposed to be protecting.”

  Willoughby stared at him and muttered: “You have to be fantasising.”

  Dermott answered: “We’ll see.” But his reply was cut short by the sudden arrival of Carmody and Johnson. Both men looked pale and exhausted—a condition Brady sought to remedy by providing them with very large Scotches.

  After a suitable pause for congratulation on his night’s work, Carmody was taken through his account, step by step. The exercise proved disappointing until, when he came to describe the scene of the helicopter ski-marks, he suddenly became tongue-tied. He broke off in mid-sentence and stammered: “Say, Mr Brady, could I—er—could I talk with you privately?”

  “Well!” Brady was somewhat taken aback. “By all means—but what purpose would it serve? These gentlemen enjoy my fullest confidence. Say what you want in their hearing.”

  “O.K., then. It’s about the girl—Corinne…” Whereupon he told them the story of the rescue. Amazement swiftly and thoroughly woke up his audience. They crowded forward, listening intently.

  “Maybe I was wrong,” Carmody ended up, “but I just figured that if news of her survival didn’t get out, it might be a card up our sleeve.”

  “You figured correctly,” Brady said.

  “Where is she, then?” asked Dermott sharply.

  “Right now she’s in the isolation unit at the plant. She went a bit hysterical, with the reaction, but she’s all right.”

  Dermott let out a whoosh of air and said “My, oh my!”

  “A very original observation, George,” Brady remarked wryly. “Do I detect a certain…pleasure on your part that the young lady is alive and well and in safe hands?”

  “You do,” said Dermott. Then he added quickly, as if feeling he had been over-enthusiastic: “And why not?”

  “Point is, I took a statement from her,” Carmody went on. “Want to hear it?”

  “Certainly,” Brady said. “Fire away.”

  The statement still existed only in Carmody’s notebook, and so took some time to read. The beginning of it merely confirmed what had been established already—but then came a revelation. After the hold-up, the girl reported, “one man came staggering towards us along the road”.

  “One man?” snapped Dermott, half-rising out of his chair. “Did she say one man?”

  “That’s what she said.” Carmody resumed his recitation, back-tracking a sentence to emphasise her account. ‘“I saw two men lying in the road, like they were hurt. One was dead still. The other could move a bit. Then one other man came limping back towards us. He had a hand up in front of his eyes. Mr Brinckman was sitting on my right. He jumped out and grabbed the first-aid box from under the seat. I think he slipped and fell over. Then he got up again. Then I saw the other man straighten up and hit him. He went down—Mr Brinckman, that is. The other man had a stocking mask on—I could see that by now. He opened the door where Mr Reynolds was sitting and threw something into the bus…’”

  “That’s it!” cried Dermott, smiting his fist on the coffee-table. “We got them!”

  Brady glowered at him. “Would you favour us slower brethren with an explanation?”

  “The whole thing was a frame-up. They told us a load of garbage. They said two men came at them, to make it seem more realistic that they hadn’t put up any resistance. Now it’s obvious they didn’t try to resist. They were part of the act. Jorgensen just sat there watching his partner get slugged.”

  “How come he wasn’t much affected by the tear gas?” Brady asked.

  “He was prepared for it, of course,” Dermott replied instantly. “If you screw your eyes shut and hold your breath, tear gas has very little effect on you. Jorgensen only had to hold out for a couple of seconds before opening his own door and getting into the fresh air. Listen to what the girl said: there were no bodies left on the road when she was dragged away. Every damn one of them had got up, right as rain, to help get the captives aboard the chopper. It was only when they saw Johnson’s headlights coming that Brinckman and Jorgensen resumed their artistic poses on the road.”

  Willoughby muttered a curse. “I believe you’re right,” he said slowly. “I really do. And we haven’t a shred of hard evidence against them.”

  “No way you could dream up a charge and haul them in for preventive detention?” asked Dermott hopefully.

  “None.”

  “I wish you could,” said Dermott. “I’d sleep happier for the rest of the night. As it is, I don’t intend to sleep at all. I’ve got a slight aversion to being murdered in bed.”

  Brady nearly choked on his drink. “And what the hell does that mean, mister?”

  “Just that I think an attempt will soon be made to murder me. And Donald. And you.”

  Brady looked as though he might explode, but remai
ned speechless. Dermott addressed him with some acerbity.

  “Whenever you spoke down there in the foyer just now, you were tightening another screw in your own coffin-lid.” He turned to Willoughby. “Could you spare a guard for Mr Shore’s house tonight?”

  “Of course; but why?”

  “Simple. Mr Brady unfortunately made it clear that he wanted copies of fingerprints found on the stolen truck. Brinckman and Jorgensen know that we’ve asked your people for what could be damning prints from your Edmonton H.Q. They’ll discover, if they haven’t already, that the copies of their own prints which we took earlier are in the safe in Mr Shore’s house.”

  “What good would it do them to get the copies?” Brady asked edgily. “The originals are at police H.Q. in Edmonton.”

  “How far d’you think this rot has spread?” said Dermott. “The originals may still be there, but they won’t be much help once they’ve been through a shredding machine.”

  “Where’s the problem?” asked Willoughby. “We just print ’em out again.”

  “On what grounds? Suspicion? Just one moderately competent lawyer, and the town would be looking for a new police chief. They’d refuse point-blank. What could you do then?”

  “Point out to them—which is the case—that it’s a condition of employment at Sanmobil.”

  “So you’d have mass resignations on your hands. Then what?”

  Willoughby didn’t answer. Mackenzie broke in: “You said I was the other grave-digger?”

  “Yes. You said the kidnappers must have been tipped off from Sanmobil as to when to expect Reynolds’s bus. You were right, cf course. But Brinckman and Jorgensen must have thought you meant it was they who gave the tip. They may even think we can trace the call to them, even though outgoing calls from the plant aren’t normally tapped.”

  “Well, I’m sorry.” Mackenzie shifted uneasily.

  “Too bad. The damage has been done. And it wouldn’t have helped to reproach you and Mr Brady in public.”

  The phone rang. Dermott, the nearest, picked it up, listened briefly and said: “One moment. I think the person you should talk to is Mr Shore. He’s right here with us.”

  He handed the phone over and listened impassively to Shore’s half of the conversation, which consisted almost entirely of muttered expletives. The phone rest settled as he replaced the receiver, so badly was his hand shaking. His face had gone white.

  “They’ve shot Grigson,” he gasped.

  “Who’s Grigson?” snapped Brady.

  “Sanmobil’s president. That’s all.”

  13

  The police doctor, a young man named Saunders, straightened and looked down at the unconscious man on the pile of blankets. “He’ll be all right, eventually, but that’s all I can do for him now. He needs the services of an orthopaedic surgeon.”

  “How long will it be before I can question him?” Brady asked.

  “With the sedative I’ve given him, it’ll be several hours before he comes round.”

  “Couldn’t that damned sedative have waited a little?”

  Dr Saunders looked at Brady with a marked lack of enthusiasm. “I hope, for your sake, you never have your shoulder and upper arm shattered, the bone structure completely fragmented. Mr Grigson was in agony. And even had he been conscious, I wouldn’t have let you question him.”

  Brady muttered something about medical dictators, then looked at Shore and said testily: “What the hell was Grigson doing here anyway?”

  “Dammit, Brady, he’s more right to be here than you and I and the rest of us put together.” Shore sounded shocked and angry. “Sanmobil is the dream-come-true of one man and one only, and he’s lying there before you. Took him nine years to turn his dream into reality, and he had to fight all the way. He’s the president. Do you understand that—the president?”

  Mackenzie said pacifically: “When did he arrive?”

  “Yesterday afternoon. Flew in from Europe.”

  Mackenzie nodded and looked round Reynolds’s office. It wasn’t a small room, but it was fairly crowded. Apart from himself, Brady, Shore, Dr Saunders and the unconscious Grigson, there were Willoughby and two young men who had clearly been in the wars during the recent past. One had a bandaged forehead, the other an arm strapped from wrist to elbow. It was to this last person, Steve Dawson, that Mackenzie addressed himself.

  “You were in charge of the night-shift?”

  “Nominally. Tonight there was no night-shift. The plant’s closed down.”

  “I know. So how many of you were here tonight—yourself apart?”

  “Just six people.” He glanced down at the wounded man. “Mr Grigson was asleep in his private room along the corridor there. Then there was Hazlitt—charge-hand of the night security shift—and four security guards deployed around the plant.”

  “Tell us what happened.”

  “Well—I was patrolling, reinforcing the security team, as I had nothing else to do. I saw a light come on here in Mr Reynolds’s room. First I thought it must be Mr Grigson—he’s a very active, restless person, and an erratic sleeper. Then I got to wondering what he could be doing, because he’d already spent a couple of hours with Mr Reynolds yesterday. So, quiet as I could, I came along the passage to Grigson’s room.

  “The door was closed, but not locked. I went in, and there he was asleep. I woke him, told him there were intruders in the plant, and asked to borrow a gun. I knew he had one, because he used to practise on a little private target range he’d set up here.

  “He’d have none of it. He produced his automatic, but kept it himself. He said he’d had it for years and knew how to use it. I couldn’t argue with him—after all, I’m only twenty-eight, and he’s crowding seventy.

  “Anyway, in here we found a man with the door of that safe open. He’d smashed Corinne’s desk open with a fire-axe to get at the keys. He was wearing a stocking mask and examining a bunch of keys he had in his hand.

  “Mr Grigson told him to turn around, real slow, and not to try anything, or he’d kill him. Then suddenly came two pistol shots, right close together, from behind, and Mr Grigson pitched headlong to the floor. He was wearing a white shirt, and blood from his right shoulder and arm was pumping through it. I could see he was hurt real bad.

  “I dropped to my knees to help him. The man who’d fired the shots probably figured I was going for Mr Grigson’s gun. Anyway, he fired at me too.”

  Dawson was breathing quickly, his distress evident. Brady poured him a Scotch and handed the glass over. “Take this.”

  Dawson’s smile was wan. “I’ve never had a drink in my life, sir.”

  “Maybe you’ll never have another,” said Brady agreeably. “But you need this one, and we need your story.”

  Dawson drank, spluttered and coughed. He screwed up his eyes and drank some more. He clearly detested the stuff, but his system didn’t, for almost immediately some colour began to return to his cheeks. He touched his bandaged forearm.

  “Looks worse than it is. The bullet just grazed me, wrist all the way to elbow, but very superficial. Stung, more than anything. One of the masked men forced me to help lug Mr Grigson to the armoury. On the way out I picked up two first-aid kits—they didn’t object. They pushed us into the armoury, locked the door and left.

  “Then I took off Mr Grigson’s shirt and staunched the wound as best I could. It took a lot of bandages—there was so much blood coming. I thought he was going to bleed to death.”

  “He could have,” Saunders said with certainty. “No question, your quick action saved his life.”

  “Glad I was some use.” Dawson shuddered, looked at the doctor and went on; “Then I bandaged my own arm and had a go at the door, but there was no way I could get it open. I looked around and found a box full of detonators, each with a fuse attached. I struck one and dropped it out through one of the ventilation grilles. It went off with quite a bang. I must have let seven or eight of them off before Hazlitt came hammering on the door and aske
d what the hell was going on. I told him, and he ran off to fetch a duplicate key.”

  Dawson drank some more, spluttered, but less than before, and put his glass down. “I guess that’s about all.”

  “And more than enough,” said Brady with unaccustomed warmth. “A splendid job, son.” He looked round the assembled group, then asked sharply; “Where’s George?”

  Until then no-one had noticed that Dermott was missing. Then Mackenzie said: “He slipped out with Carmody some time back. You want me to go find him?”

  “Leave him be,” said Brady. “I have little doubt our faithful bloodhound is pursuing some spoor of his own.”

  In fact the bloodhound was pursuing a fancy, not a line. He had taken Carmody aside and whispered in his ear that he urgently wanted to question the girl, Corinne. Where was she?

  “In the isolation ward, like I said,” Carmody replied. “But I doubt you’ll find it on your own. It’s way out by itself, near Dragline One. Want me to come with you?”

  “Sure. That’d be real kind.” Dermott swallowed his disappointment. He wanted to go alone. The instincts at work inside him made him feel uncomfortable: nothing like this had happened to him in years. But he had better be realistic and accept the offer of guidance.

  By then the wind had increased, as it often did late in the night, and was whistling across the flat, open site with a deadly chill. The noise made it almost impossible to talk in the open—not that anyone in his senses would remain in the open for more than the minimum time.

  Carmody had been reunited with his damaged Cherokee. Shouting an excuse into the wind, he got in first at the passenger door and slid across behind the wheel. Dermott heaved his massive frame in close behind him and slammed the door.

  Carmody drove steadily across an apparently unmarked plain. The film of drifting snow had obscured the road, and the flat ground all looked the same.

  “How the hell do you know which way to go?” Dermott asked.