Алистер Маклин - Athabasca

“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 remained 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.”

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.