Ted Wood - Murder on Ice aka The Killing Cold

I did the tactful thing, went back out to the space by the cells where the coffee was perking briskly. Val followed me, moving as if she were eighty years old. "Want some?"

She nodded. "Thank you."

"There's mugs under the counter out front and I've got some brandy in the stationery cupboard. I think a slug of that would help." I went and fetched them, carefully not listening to what Nancy was saying to her father. It seemed for the most part to be single words, followed by long pauses while that thin, old-man's squeak came out of the earpiece. "There's coffee when you're ready," I told her. "No cookies, but I might be able to find you one of Sam's dog biscuits if you like." I winked at her and left. I didn't like what the phone call was doing. It sounded to me as if her father was unloading a parcel of blame. That wouldn't help anything, least of all her attitude.

Val poured the coffee and I slopped in some brandy. Just for her. I had one more call to make and I wanted to be as sharp as I could manage. If the Sumner woman had a grenade with her, anything could happen.

Nancy came back out as we were sipping and listening to the two prisoners ask very politely if they could have coffee, too.

"My father wants to speak to you," she said. I nodded and gestured to the coffee. "Have some, it will warm you up."

I could hear Carmichael speaking to someone else at the other end so I said, "Bennett here," in a businesslike voice and waited. At the other end he was telling somebody to wait upstairs, but she wouldn't. I imagined it must be the Iron Butterfly he had married. Then he spoke into the phone.

I was expecting a thank-you speech for saving his daughter, but he was too important to waste time on trifles like that.

"Bennett. Good. I wanted to talk to you."

"What's on your mind?" I didn't feel polite. My job involves keeping the peace in this backwater and except for his daughter's involvement in this crazy scheme I would have been in bed for five hours now. Instead I had been shot at, slapped, had my girl threatened with rape, and been obliged to kill a man. Just in the line of work, but it didn't make me very tractable.

"She said there was a woman called Margaret involved in this plan of hers."

"Yes, Margaret Sumner, maybe fifty-five, one-forty, around five foot four. Looks as if she might be an Indian."

"Is that her married name?"

That made me think. I hadn't noticed any wedding ring, but then, we hadn't met at a cocktail party. I'd been busy.

"I'm not sure. It's not an Indian name that I've heard in any of the bands up this way."

"Fifty-five, you say?" He was nervous. When he spoke to me first he had been scared, angry, but now he was nervous. His voice had the metallic tingle of tense people, heart attack candidates. And this was not much to do with his daughter, this seemed more personal.

"Around fifty-five. You know how it is with Indian people, they don't shrivel up like city folks. But they don't have face lifts, you have to guess. I'd say from fifty-two to fifty-eight would be right. Why are you asking?"

He cleared his throat, an unpleasant dry rasp in my ear.

"Well, thing is, I wasn't always in industry. I started out after the war in geology."

Save it for your memoirs! My mind was racing ahead, hurdling over the dribs and drabs of life story he was going to send my way. The fact was he knew this Margaret, or somebody very much like her. And from the sound of his voice, she had no reason to love, honor, or respect him.

"Look, I don't have time for all the details. Are you telling me that you know somebody who might fit this description?"

His voice rose in alarm, which he masked as indignation. "Now don't go jumping to conclusions."

"I am not prying into your private life. I'm just putting two and two together and coming up with sixteen. From what I read you used to work in the north, you knew a girl who would be the age of this Margaret. Is that right?"

He coughed again, like somebody easing the bolt on an old Lee Enfield rifle. "Yes. You could say that."

"And what was her name?"

A long sigh. "Her name was Peggy. Peggy Burfoot."

Burfoot! I felt a shock of understanding race up my arms from the fingertips and into my brain. I almost shouted at him "Burfoot? Did she have a baby? Would this have been back around nineteen forty-seven, forty-eight?"

"I don't know about any baby." He whispered it. I guessed his wife was standing over him.

"Don't jerk me around. This is important. Did you leave her knocked up back a couple of years after the war?"

Again the sigh. Bless me officer for I have sinned. "It's possible. I lost track of her. I moved away, down to Montreal."

And meanwhile a frightened, pretty Indian kid found herself pregnant. Her father would have been ready to kill her. He would have thrown her out. She would have headed for Toronto and had the baby, a black-haired, bright-eyed little bastard that nobody wanted. Those were the days when babies were a dime a dozen. People were marrying and moving to new suburbs and having three kids each. The baby would have been shunted from one foster home to another. By the time he was six or so the other kids would have started slapping him down and calling him a half-breed. I could see the whole pitiful pattern, the thefts, the sadness, the punishment, the bigger crimes, the penitentiary I had put him into. I felt humbled. If the nickel mine stope had collapsed on my father when I was eighteen months instead of eighteen years old, this could have been almost my story.

At last I said, "Mr. Carmichael. I think I've met your son. Why don't you get yourself a double shot of brandy out of the bar and settle down? I'll call you back later."

There was no answer and after an eternity the phone went down, as gently as the snow that was still falling outside the window.

I replaced the receiver and sat on the edge of the table. You can't afford to be sentimental as a policeman. Kind, yes. Merciful, compassionate, but never sentimental. The child Carmichael had abandoned was dead and buried under thirty-five years of grief and change. The man who had replaced it was pinioned in a snowbound cottage. I was only glad I had pulled that kick.

Valerie said, "What's the matter? You look terrible."

I tried a grin. "Old age, kiddo. This is a young man's occupation and I feel about ninety."

She smiled at me nervously. "It's not that bad," she said, but she didn't come over to me and put her arms around me the way she would have done eight hours before, when the world was a warmer, happier place. I could sense that I had lost her somewhere along the trails I had covered this night.

"I'll be fine. Maybe I'll have a touch of that brandy before I go."

"Go where?" Her voice rose in horror. "You're not going anywhere else, surely not?"

"I have to close the circle, tell the folks at the Legion that everything is all right." It wasn't the whole truth but I wasn't sure how much more she could handle. "I'll be back in half an hour. I'd phone but the line must be down."

Her voice was harsh. "You don't have to go out and do any more. Nobody expects that of you."

"Just my boss," I said, and explained what I meant by flipping one cocky thumb at myself. "Me."

I prepared for the trip to the Legion as carefully as I would have done for a night patrol in Nam. Not with armaments. I knew I would be better off with my handgun than the shotgun. You can't use buckshot when there are civilians around, it spreads into a cloud that cuts through the air like grapeshot from Napoleon's cannons. I needed a clean, single shot, if I had to fire at all. But I was hoping it wouldn't come down to violence. It usually doesn't, even when you're up against men. Unless these two women were dedicated terrorists, they wouldn't fight.