Алистер Маклин - Athabasca

“Same thought occurred to me.” Mackenzie turned to face the back seat. “Either get the girls right back home, or have the RCMP protect them.”

“Hell – I need them!” Brady sat forward with indignation. “Number one, I have to be looked after. Number two, Stella’s handling the Ekofisk business for me.”

“Ekofisk?” Dermott almost turned backwards. “What’s that?”

“Big fire in the North Sea, Norwegian half. Started after you’d come north. We have a team going in there today.”

“Well, okay,” Dermott gave way a little. “So you have to keep in touch. But why not work through the locals? That red-head of Reynolds’s – Corinne. She could field calls for you.”

“What happens when we go back to Alaska?”

“Use somebody up there. Finlayson’s got a secretary – must have.”

“No substitute for the personal touch,” said Brady magisterially. He sank back in the seat as though the argument were over.

His two heavyweights turned forward again with an exchange of looks. Having been through all this a hundred times before, they knew that further pressure would be useless for the moment. Wherever he went, Brady maintained the fiction that his wife and daughter were part of his essential life-support system, and he kept them with him regardless of the expense. Or danger.

Not that Dermott and Mackenzie in the least minded having Jean and Stella around. Like mother, like daughter: whereas Jean was a strikingly handsome woman in her middle-forties, with that lovely, naturally blonde hair and intelligent grey eyes, Stella looked the spitting image of her mother, only younger, and even livelier, with, as her father was so fond of claiming, dancing eyes.

The men found Jean awaiting their return in the lounge bar of the Peter Pond Hotel. Tall and elegant, she advanced to meet them with her usual expression of tolerant, kindly amusement. This look, Dermott knew from experience, reflected her genuine feelings: an equable temperament was no small advantage for someone who had to spend her life humouring Jim Brady.

“Hi, honey!” He reached up slightly to kiss her on the forehead. “Where’s Stella?”

“In your room. She’s got some messages for you – been pretty busy on the phone.”

“Excuse me, then, gentlemen. Maybe one of you would be so kind as to buy my wife a drink.”

He waddled off along the corridor, while Dermott and Mackenzie settled comfortably into the warmth of the bar. In marked contrast to her husband, Jean scarcely drank alcohol at all, and she sipped carefully at a pineapple juice while the two men addressed themselves to the Scotch. Nor did she try to talk shop in Brady’s absence: instead, she chatted pleasantly about Fort McMurray and its modest midwinter pleasures until her husband returned.

When he came back, Stella was with him, swinging along with her easy, loose-hipped walk. Dermott – not normally given to flights of fancy – was suddenly struck by the absurd disparity between the two figures. Jesus, he thought to himself: a hippo and a gazelle. What a pair!

Scarcely had Brady subsided into an armchair, with an outsize glass of daiquiri in his podgy hand, than he made a slight sign to Dermott and Mackenzie, who muttered something and slipped off.

Brady seemed in buoyant form, and began to regale his family with an edited account of his movements around the far north. After a while Jean said doubtfully: “It doesn’t seem to me you’ve accomplished very much.”

Brady was unruffled. “Ninety per cent of our business is cerebral, my dear. When we move into action, what happens is merely the almost mechanical and inevitable culmination of all the invisible hard work that’s gone on before.” He tapped his head. “The wise general doesn’t fling his troops into battle without reconnoitring beforehand. We’ve been reconnoitring.”

Jean smiled. “Let us know when you’ve identified the enemy.” Suddenly she became serious. “It’s a nasty business, isn’t it?”

“Murder always is, my dear.”

“I don’t like it, Jim. I don’t like you being in it. Surely this is for the law. You’ve never come across murder before in your business.”

“So I run away?”

She looked at his ample frame and laughed: “That’s one thing you’re not built for.”

“Run?” Stella said, mock-scornfully. “Dad couldn’t jog from here to the John!”

“Please!” Brady beamed. “I trust no such haste will be necessary.”

“Where did Donald go?” Jean asked.

“Upstairs, doing a little job for me.”

Mackenzie was at that moment moving slowly round Brady’s apartment with a calibrated metal box in one hand, a portable antenna in the other, and a pair of earphones on his head. He moved purposefully, a man who knew what he was about. He soon found what he was looking for.

When he came back to the bar he headed straight for Brady’s family encampment.

“Two,” he reported.

“Two what, Uncle Donald?” Stella asked sweetly.

Mackenzie appealed to his boss. “When are you going to start training this incorrigibly nosey daughter of yours?”

“I’ve stopped. Failed. Mother’s job, anyway.” He jerked his head upwards. “Got them all, did you?”

“Guess so.”

Dermott also reappeared to report.

“Ah, George,” Brady greeted him. “How did it go?”

“Reynolds seems very co-operative. Unfortunately all records are stored at the head office in Edmonton. He says by the time they’ve been dug out and flown up here, it may be late this evening or even tomorrow morning.”

“What records?” Stella asked.

“Affairs of state,” Brady told her. “Well, can’t be helped. Anything else?”

“Naturally enough he’s got no fingerprinting equipment.”

“Fix it after lunch.”

“He says he’ll fix it himself – the police chiefs a pal of his, apparently. Thinks the chief might be a bit shirty about the delay in reporting the crime.” He grinned across at Stella. “And don’t ask ‘what crime?’”

“No, sir, Mr Dermott, sir!” She wrinkled her upper lip in a fetching manner. “I never ask questions! I’m just permitted to fetch and carry, mend and clean.”

Brady went on: “Reynolds can always claim that at first he thought it was an industrial accident.”

“I understand the chief of police has 20-20 vision and intelligence to match.”

“Well – Reynolds’ll have to handle it as best he can. What about Prudhoe Bay?”

“An hour’s hold. They’ll page me.”

“Fair enough.” Brady shifted his attention to Stella. “We met an enchanting girl this morning – didn’t we, George? Knock spots off you, any day. Wouldn’t she, gentlemen?”

“Unquestionably,” said Mackenzie.

Stella looked at Dermott. “Foul, aren’t they?”

“Dead heat,” said Dermott. “But she’s very nice.”

“The manager’s secretary,” Brady said. “Corinne Delorme. I thought maybe you’d like to meet her. She said she’d like to meet you. She must know all the night-clubs, discos and other iniquitous dens in Fort McMurray.”

Stella said: “News for you, Dad. You’ve got to be talking about another town. I don’t know what this place is like in summer, but whatever it is, it’s a dead city in mid-winter. You might have warned us that this is an Arctic town.”

“Lovely choice of phrase. Wonderful sense of geography. That’s education for you,” Brady said to no-one in particular. “Maybe you should have stayed in Houston.”

Stella looked at her mother. “Did you hear what I just heard, Mummy?” she asked with a scornful shake of the head at her father which brought the pale blonde hair swinging round her face.