Алистер Маклин - Athabasca

Dermott found Brady and Mackenzie taking their ease in the only two chairs in Brady’s room. He looked on them without favour.

“It’s very pleasant and reassuring to see you two so comfortable and relaxed.”

Brady said: “Rough afternoon, huh?” He waved a hand towards the serried row of bottles on the sideboard. “This’il restore your moral fibre.”

Dermott helped himself and asked: “Any news from Athabasca? How are the family?”

“Fine, fine.” Brady chuckled. “Stella passed on a lot more stuff from Norway. Apparently they’ve got that fire licked. No need to keep in touch any longer.”

“That’s good.” Dermott sipped his Scotch. “What are the girls doing?”

“Right now, I guess, they’re touring the Sanmobil plant, courtesy of Bill Reynolds. Very hospitable lot, those Canadians.”

“Who’ve they got to protect them?”

“Reynolds’s own security man, Brinckman – the boss, you remember – and Jorgensen, his number two.”

Dermott was unimpressed. “I’d rather they had those two young cops.”

Brady snapped: “Your reason?”

“Three. First, they’re a damned sight tougher, more competent than Brinckman’s lot. Second, Brinckman, Jorgensen and Napier are prime suspects.”

“Why prime?”

“For having the keys that opened the Sanmobil armoury door, for having given the keys to those who did. Third, they’re security men.”

Brady smiled blandly. “You’re bushed, George. You’re becoming paranoid about the security men of the great north-west.”

“I hope you don’t have reason to regret that remark.”

Brady scowled but said nothing, so Dermott changed the subject. “How did the day go?”

“No progress. Along with Morrison we interviewed every man on the base. Every one had a cast-iron alibi for the night of the explosion in Pump Station Four. So it’s all clear there.”

“Except–” Dermott persisted.

“Who do you mean?”

“Bronowski and Houston.”

Brady glowered at his chief operative and shook his head. “You’re paranoid, George, I say it again. Shit, we know they were both out there. Bronowski’s been hurt, and Houston didn’t have to find Finlayson. If he had been crooked, it would have suited him far better to let the drifting snow obliterate every last trace of Finlayson. What do you say to that?”

“Three things. The fact that we know they were out at the pump station makes them more suspect, not less.”

“Second guessing,” growled Brady. “Hate second guessing.”

“No doubt. But we’ve agreed that the bombers must be people working on the pipeline. We’ve eliminated everyone else, so it has to be them – does it not?”

Brady did not answer. Dermott went on: “The third thing is this: there must be some reason, albeit devious, why Bronowski was clobbered and Houston made the discovery. Look at it this way. What evidence do we have that Bronowski was assaulted? The only certain thing we know about him is that he’s lying in the sick bay with an impressive bandage round his head. I don’t think there’s a damn thing wrong with Bronowski. I don’t think anybody hit him. I suggest that if the bandage were removed, his temple would be unblemished, except, perhaps, for an artistic touch of gentian blue.”

Brady assumed the expression of a man praying for inner strength. “So, besides not trusting security men, you don’t trust doctors, either?”

“Some I do. Some I don’t. I’ve already told you that I’m leery of Blake.”

“Got one single hard fact to back up your suspicions?”

“No.”

“Okay, then.” Brady didn’t enlarge on this brief statement.

“We also rounded up the Prudhoe Bay members who were in Anchorage on the night of that telephone call,” Mackenzie said. “Fourteen in all. They seemed a pretty harmless bunch to me. However, Morrison of the F.B.I. did call up the law in Anchorage, gave names and addresses and asked them to see if they could turn up anything.”

“You printed those fourteen, right?”

“Yes. One of Morrison’s assistants did. Some Ivy League kid.”

“No objections offered?”

“None. They seemed eager to co-operate.”

“Proves nothing. Anyway, I brought along the prints found on the phone booth. They’re being checked now against the prints of the fourteen.”

“That won’t take long,” Mackenzie said. “Give them a call, shall I?” He called, listened briefly, hung up and said to Dermott: “Cassandra.”

“So.” Brady looked positively lugubrious, no easy feat for a man without a line in his face. “Houston’s finest have run into a brick wall.”

“Let’s not reproach ourselves too much,” Dermott said. He looked less downcast than the other two. “Our business is investigating oil sabotage, not murder, which is the province of the F.B.I. and the Alaskan State police. They appear to have run into the same brick wall. Besides, we may have the lead into another line of investigation – John Finlayson’s autopsy.”

“Huh!” Brady gave a contemptuous lift of his hands. “That’s over. It turned up nothing.”

“The first one didn’t. But the second one might.”

Mackenzie said: “What! Another autopsy?”

“The first one was pretty superficial and perfunctory.”

“Unprecedented.” Brady shook his head. “Who the hell authorised this?”

“Nobody really. I did ask for it, but politely.”

Brady cursed, whether because of Dermott’s words or because he had spilled a goodly portion of a daiquiri over his immaculately trousered knee. He refilled his glass, breathed deeply and said: “Took your own goddamned good time in getting round to telling us, didn’t you?”

“Everything in its own good time, Jim: just a matter of getting priorities right. It’ll be a couple of days before we get the results of this autopsy. I really can’t see why you are getting so steamed up.”

“I can damn well tell you. Who the hell gave you the authorisation to make such a request without first getting permission from me?”

“Nobody did.”

“You had time before you left here this morning to discuss the matter with me.”

“Sure I had time, but I hadn’t had the idea by then. I was half-way down to Anchorage before it occurred to me that there could be something far wrong. Do you imagine I’d talk to you in Prudhoe Bay over an open line?”

“You talk as if this place is an international hotbed of espionage,” Brady came back to him sarcastically.

“It only requires one disaffected ear, and we might as well pack our bags and return to Houston. We already know how good those people are at covering their tracks.”

“George.” It was Mackenzie. “You’ve made your point. What triggered your suspicions?”

“Dr Blake. You know that as far as the murdered engineers at Pump Station Four and Bronowski’s alleged accident were concerned, I already had reservations about Blake. I began to wonder if there was anything that could tie Blake in with Finlayson’s death. I was the only person who saw the body between the completion of Blake’s autopsy and the time the lid was screwed down on the coffin.” Dermott stopped to sip.

“During that period Blake showed me marks on the back of the neck where, he said, Finlayson had been sand-bagged into unconsciousness. On the plane it occurred to me that I had never seen a bruise or contusion of that nature. There was no sign of discoloration, or of swelling. It seemed to me more than likely that the skin had been roughed up after death. Blake said Finlayson had been struck by a bag of damp salt. His neck smelled of salt all right, but it could have been rubbed on during the night, after the body had been brought back up to the room. If he had been coshed, the vertebrae would have been depressed or broken.”