Reckoning in Ice, page 15
The theft itself had been carried through superbly – the marketing seemed improvised. I had been puzzled all along by the contrast between decisive action in everything relating to the theft and what seemed almost muddled goings-on afterwards. I should have expected at least the outlines of marketing plans and scientific escape routes to have emerged – a paper in one of the obscurer scientific journals, preferably a foreign language one, describing preliminary work on Platinum N, an article or two in the popular press hinting at almost science fiction developments in feeding the impoverished world from oil. There had been nothing.
My recruitment to International Metals was related in some way to an attempt to cover up the theft – of that I was convinced. But that, too, bore signs of improvisation. The theft had taken place in March and the suggestion of calling in a consultant for an efficiency audit had not been made until a board meeting in June. I thought it possible that the X–Y partnership had still no clear idea of what to do with me. I seemed to belong to some contingency plan – and there were many possible contingencies. An unlooked-for contingency was my direct involvement with the other side.
Returning to considerations of murder, I felt that while Rhys Jenkins – and perhaps Morgan-Jones, too, though he seemed less murderously inclined – might be happy enough to kill me if a suitable opportunity offered, they would not go out of their way to make an opportunity. Therefore, I must avoid giving them an opportunity. If I stuck to the office, my club, my normal shops and eating places, I should be less likely to offer opportunities for spur-of-the-moment murder. I did not enjoy getting back to my flat at night – I always half-expected to be hit on the head as I opened my door. But there were no signs of interference with the flat, and as the days went by unmolested my pulse rate on opening the door declined.
I spent one lunchtime studying swordsticks, blackjacks and other weapons of defence in a splendid walking-stick shop that has such things in its window in New Oxford Street. I decided that I was better off unarmed. I had a Very pistol for my boat, and I suppose a signal flare at short range would be a formidable thing. But a Very pistol is bulky, it would make a horrible bulge in a pocket, I could not see that it would really be of any use. I just had to rely on mother wit.
Another matter to which I gave much thought was the scale of the X–Y organisation. At the receiving end of their attentions – and at first sight – their intelligence service seemed to imply a spy at every street corner. Analysed, it really called for no more than a certain amount of luck, and brilliant improvisation in making use of every bit of luck. The only people so far identified in the enemy team were Morgan-Jones, Rhys Jenkins, and – I felt sure – Caroline. Caroline did not give me the impression of possessing a deep and sinister brain. She was basically a nice little middle-class girl, better equipped for mini-skirted tennis at Surbiton than the dark work of espionage and theft. But she was intelligent, and, as a secretary, good at carrying out instructions. I could not see her as having more than a minor part in things, but I was convinced that she did, in fact, have such a part. Why could be no more than guesswork – Paula’s hypothesis was as good as any.
Assessing the timing and geography of events since I had become mixed up with them, there was no need for anyone outside the Morgan-Jones–Rhys Jenkins–Caroline group to be involved. When Morgan-Jones and Caroline were in the office, Rhys Jenkins was available for outside work. I had dined with Morgan-Jones on a Wednesday, and ‘Bill’ had turned up to inquire about me on the Crouch on a Friday. Morgan-Jones could have reported his investigation of my mileage reading by telephone as soon as I had left his house on Wednesday night – Rhys Jenkins would have had ample time to arrange a trip to the Crouch for Friday.
I wondered why this investigation – tiresome, if in no way difficult – had seemed necessary. Then I saw that they were applying to me precisely the reasoning that I had applied to Caroline’s lie – if I was innocent of deception, why lie? The suspicion that fell on me when I was spotted by Rhys Jenkins in Perth could have been no more than suspicion. He may have guessed that I was on my way to Hee House, but it remained possible that I was on my way to see an eccentric aunt at Durness – or even that I had been invited to Hee House on a purely social visit because Paul Villeneuve and I had been to the same school. They could not know that there was anything at all sinister about me from their point of view. They had to know – and my own lies about Christmas and my flu had told them, convincingly. I was not pleased with myself as a conspirator – but I felt that I was learning. The first law of successful deception is to abstain from every lie that is not strictly, vitally and imperatively necessary.
*
I gave myself a thoroughly unpleasant night on Friday. Paula and I had cancelled our Friday telephone call because she and her father were going overnight to Inverness to get a train for Newcastle on Saturday – and we should be seeing each other then. So I thought that I might as well go down to Newcastle on a night train. But I was anxious not to disclose to the enemy more than I had to – they might learn that I had spent the weekend away from my flat, but there was no need to help them to discover where. I did not know what manpower they had to deploy. The triumvirate Morgan-Jones, Rhys Jenkins, Caroline, might be the main army, but there are plenty of private inquiry agencies and I thought that in their position I should enlist some such help. It need disclose nothing – Morgan-Jones could suspect me of an intrigue with his wife and wish to have me watched. I could not be absolutely sure, but I’d noticed a man in a mackintosh studying the advertisements in a house agent’s window nearly opposite the block where my flat was, and somehow I could see him in the witness-box giving evidence about shadows undressing behind curtained windows (evidence, I have always thought, of remarkable visual acuity). I went back to the flat from the office on Friday evening to see if he was there. He was, not by the house agent’s window, but buying a newspaper at a street corner.
I collected a bag from the flat and went on the District Line from Richmond to Charing Cross. The matrimonial man (as I called him) joined the same train, two coaches behind mine. At Charing Cross I got out and walked to Piccadilly –not particularly slowly, but gently enough to make it easy for him to keep up. There was the usual crowd at Piccadilly tube station and he followed me down the steps safely shielded by a knot of people between us. I did not go to a ticket machine but stood in a queue for the booking office window. He was about three people behind me, near enough to hear where I booked for. In a good clear voice I asked for a ticket to Turnpike Lane.
Then I dropped my change a little to one side of the queue, and while I was hunting about on the ground to pick up my coins, the queue naturally moved forward. He had to move on, too, and got on the escalator at least half-a-dozen people in front of me. I saw him look round to make sure that I had joined the escalator.
At the bottom of the escalator he took a chance, which I had gambled on his taking. He had heard me book to Turnpike Lane, he did not want to look round too often, so he walked on towards the north-going Piccadilly line trains. I went straight across to the ascending escalator and went up again.
Probably he guessed what had happened fairly quickly, but it was not quickly enough. There was no sign of him as I went out by the exit to Shaftesbury Avenue. There was a bus going to Holborn and I jumped on it. I sat downstairs, and I was sure he was not on the bus. From Holborn I went to King’s Cross.
I booked to Newcastle and got on the night train, but I was set on giving any possible pursuers a run for their money. I got out at Doncaster in the small hours, and went for a long, depressing walk in that unlovely town. Finally I returned to the station, and spent the rest of the night in the waiting room. I went on to Newcastle in the morning and shaved in a lavatory in the train. I had an early lunch in Newcastle, and got a local train for Whitley Bay. I was confident that wherever the matrimonial man might be looking for me, it was not in Whitley Bay.
The North Sea Hotel was on the front – a good front, and perhaps better in its clean winter look than it would be in summer. The hotel was newish, with lots of glass about it, and with palm trees in pots inside the glass. I registered as Richard Grainger and asked if the Vincents had arrived. They had not. I needed a rest after my considerably broken night, so I went up to my room.
The rooms were not at all bad. There was the usual plastic-topped furniture that you get nowadays, but each bedroom had a bathroom, and there was a telephone by the bed. I lay down, and went to sleep almost at once. I was woken by the telephone. It was Paula. ‘I’m speaking from the reception desk,’ she said. ‘We’ve just arrived.’ We arranged to meet downstairs in ten minutes.
I could have done with a bath, but there wasn’t time. I tidied myself as much as I could, and went down excited to see Paula. I was down first and they were not there, but they appeared in a minute or two. To my surprise and considerable delight Paula put her arms round me and kissed me. She dashed the delight a little, though, by whispering, ‘I’m sure cousins ought to meet like this.’ I got my own back a bit by calling her Pamela. ‘Oh, Pamela,’ I said, ‘how nice to see you.’
The Villeneuve performance was faultless. Paula had attempted no change in her appearance, but she wore a white skirt and a mauve jumper that I can only describe as hideous – just the sort of thing that the country cousin getting on for thirty might be expected to wear to meet the up-and-coming relative from London. Unless you knew Mr Villeneuve exceptionally well, you would not have recognised him. There was no major change about him, but the sum of a mass of small details made him into a different man. His normal clothes were meticulously neat – his suit now was on the baggy side. Instead of somewhat professional gold-rimmed spectacles, he had horn-rimmed glasses. There was rather less grey in his hair.
It was after six, so we went into the bar. ‘I fear I can’t offer you Glen Morangie,’ I said, ‘but they seem to have some straight whisky – there’s a bottle of Glen Fiddich up there.’
‘My boy,’ he said, ‘there are times when you need whisky for its fundamental alcoholic content. This, I think, is one of them.’
*
We talked about nothing in the bar, and at dinner discussed boats and the Wild Duck. We retired for coffee in the Residents’ Lounge – a room devoid of personality and also, that evening, mercifully devoid of other occupants. The hotel also offered a Television Lounge and it seemed that such other guests as there were had congregated there.
Paula poured out coffee, and I said, ‘I’m afraid I’ve got to do rather a lot of talking. Shall I just carry on?’
‘Please do,’ said Mr Villeneuve.
I gave them an account of all that had happened since Paula had reported the entry concerning Mr George Underwood and the car TDF 149W in the hotel register at Perth. When I described the shooting Paula put her hand across to me, and I took it. When I explained my reasons for concluding that I was fairly safe from further attempts at murder provided that I did not offer opportunities for being murdered, Mr Villeneuve said, ‘That is interesting deductive reasoning, but you have not got all the data. You don’t know why they want to murder you.’ He paused, and asked, ‘Are you sure about the rifle shot?’
‘Absolutely,’ I replied. ‘No stone could have gone through the windscreen and out through a clean hole in the metal at the back of the car. I didn’t hear a shot, but then I couldn’t have heard it – the velocity of the bullet – and remember, I was approaching, so it’s our combined velocities that count – would have been more than the speed of sound. And inside the car the noise of the impact would have masked the sound of the shot.’
‘I think now that we should go to the police,’ said Mr Villeneuve. ‘When I invited your help I had no wish to involve you in personal danger of this sort. I regret it deeply.’
‘I think we should go to the police,’ said Paula.
‘Well, I don’t,’ I argued firmly. ‘We have no real evidence against Rhys Jenkins. We have not discovered what has happened to your notes – we have not got to the bottom of the theft. If your feelings against going to the police were valid before, they are just as valid now. If we throw in our hands and go to the police we might as well make a present of your process to whoever stole it. No, I don’t mean that the police are incompetent – of course they’re not. What I mean is that they are more powerless than we are, because – however hard we try – we can’t pass onto them all the feelings and inferences that are evidence to us. And once the police start a formal investigation, everybody is alerted. X and Y will have lawyers – they’ll know just what the police can do, and what they can’t. Our strength at the moment is that they don’t know what we are going to do – I imagine that they are having quite a worrying weekend wondering where I am at present. By going to the police we forfeit all this.
‘Then although it might be comforting to feel that the police knew about the shot at me, I don’t see that they can take much practical action to protect me. I’m not a Prime Minister – I can scarcely have a personal detective allotted to me. I’ve been asking myself the question you asked – why should Rhys Jenkins want to kill me? My interference is obviously a nuisance, but they must have expected investigation by somebody, and if they were sufficiently sure of themselves to undertake the theft at all, they must reckon they can stand investigation. Murder is a pretty serious business. If they’re hoping to make a million or so by stealing your process – and get away with it – why take the added risk of a possible murder charge?
‘I think we’ve stumbled on something that means vastly more to them – or to one of them – than it does to us – more than we understand at present, that is. And I think that something is that there is a link between Morgan-Jones and Rhys Jenkins. Either may feel safe enough in himself but they share something between them that they don’t want looked into. I’ve been going into dates as far as I can – the inquest on Megan Jenkins was about six weeks after Morgan-Jones resigned from the Coal Board. Suppose – this is pure supposition – he had been having an affair with her, and she’d told him she was pregnant. He was already married – it would not have been a pretty story if it came out. She was only nineteen, remember. He may have persuaded her to have an operation to get rid of the baby. Perhaps he arranged it for her – he’d been a student in London, and in any body of students there is generally somebody who knows his way around. I think he’d have had to leave the Coal Board. He was ambitious, he’d not yet got far with his career, he’d prefer to resign in his own time and for his own reasons than risk any scandal.
‘Then the girl dies. Morgan-Jones does not come forward. He’s left the office – he thinks he’s all right. Probably he was discreet in the office, and whatever his relations with the girl, they conducted their affair outside the office. Abortion’s a beastly business – this was long before our present permissiveness about it. Even now, though, manslaughter as the result of an illegal operation is still a serious charge. If the police had known about him, if they’d known that he’d been mixed up in the operation – paid for it, perhaps assisted at it – they’d have proceeded against him. But abortion – legally, at any rate – is not murder. The police have a lot on their hands. They’d keep the file on Megan Jenkins open, but they’d scarcely deploy a large force of detectives on hunting down her boyfriend.
‘But somebody may have known about her boyfriend. She was not on good terms with her father, but it doesn’t follow that she’d severed all relations with him. Indeed, we may assume that she had not. She’d not run away in the sense that she’d disappeared from home. Dave in the pub knew that she’d got a job with the Coal Board. If she was radiantly happy in a love affair away from home – probably she thought that Morgan-Jones would marry her – she may easily have said something about him in a triumphant letter to her father – something quite unguarded. It would be consistent with what we know of Rhys Jenkins to use this piece of knowledge to his own advantage if he could. I don’t see him as the grieving father anxious to bring his daughter’s betrayer to justice. I do see him as a cold man quite ready to blackmail his daughter’s betrayer if he were worth blackmailing. Morgan-Jones fairly soon became worth blackmailing.
‘I don’t know any of this – it may all be wildly wrong. But in a way it doesn’t matter. There must be something special in the relationship between Morgan-Jones and Rhys Jenkins that makes it worthwhile – to Rhys Jenkins at any rate – to contemplate killing me. Now if we invoke the police it may make it seem even more imperative to put me out of the way. So apart from the fact that I don’t see much that the police can do to protect me, we might easily make a dangerous situation a bit more dangerous by going to them. No, having started on our own, we’ve got to go on.’
‘That is a formidable piece of logical synthesis,’ said Mr Villeneuve. ‘I can’t say whether I agree or disagree with your deductions – I know even less of the man Rhys Jenkins than you do. I do know – or thought I knew – Morgan-Jones. He is undoubtedly able. Thinking back over his attitude to various personal matters that crop up from time to time at the head of a business like ours, I’m inclined to feel that he’d not be over-scrupulous in some of his own personal affairs.’
‘The whole thing seems so mad,’ said Paula, ‘that it may even be true, or nearly true. Anyway, you’ve strengthened the case against X by producing a motive, which we couldn’t do before. If he was being blackmailed by Y he’d have to do what he was told, I suppose. But what do we do now?’
‘As I see it,’ I said, ‘we want somehow to force somebody to come into the open. I think we should play our card about Agdalite. I want to put that advertisement I suggested in the Financial Chronicle. If Agdalite has no commercial value apart from the process, we can assume that anyone who replies to the advertisement has an interest in the process. And as far as we know no one other than ourselves can have a legitimate interest in the process. There may be a few cranks, of course, or people who reply simply out of curiosity, but those should be fairly easily discarded. With any luck, some reply will give us a direct lead either to Morgan-Jones or, more probably, to Rhys Jenkins. Then you can act officially – you can go to the board of International Metals, tell them the whole story, and say that so-and-so is trying to obtain Agdalite concessions. And the board will want to know why.’
