Death in a High Latitude, page 2
‘I’ve still got my rooms in the Temple. I’ll stay in London tonight and go to Cambridge first thing in the morning. I’ll go to the museum before the police, I think. Can you get Rosemary* to make an appointment with the Curator for, say, ten o’clock?’
‘Of course. I hope it’s not going to be too much for you, Peter.’
‘Can but try. As you found out in your own devious ways I’m a good deal better than I was. And it wouldn’t matter if I wasn’t. What am I supposed to be calling on the Curator for?’
‘Well, he’ll expect the police to be doing something about his map, and while he won’t know anything about us, and we don’t particularly want him to, it’s reasonable for some specialist help from London to be called in. I thought at first that you might represent the Museums Department of the Ministry, but he’ll know too much about museums for that. I think you’d better belong know anything about the Treasury, because hardly anybody outside the top Civil Service does. You can be concerned with export licences for antiquities, anything you like. You’ve done all this before, Peter, and you do it rather well. I can fix things with the Treasury in case he rings up about anything.’
‘Rosemary had better call me Mr Blair. I don’t think they run to colonels in the Treasury.’
‘Perhaps not, so we’ll civilise you for the museum. You’ll have to see the Cambridge police – I’ll tell them to expect you.’
*
I telephoned Ruth to say that I’d have to stay in London that night, and that I’d ring again after I’d sorted out what might have to be done in Cambridge. She was expecting something of the sort, because we both knew what the re-emergence of Sir Edmund Pusey in our affairs was likely to involve. We’d had a long talk about it after Sir Edmund’s call. Ruth was concerned about my taking on more than I was really fit for, but she felt that it would be good for me to have something to do: work is about the oldest therapy and it remains among the best.
*
Sir Anthony Brotherton’s home was one of the few buildings in that part of London that are still private houses and not embassies or the discreet offices of international companies. I was admitted by a butler who took me to a charming room with bow windows on the ground floor. It was furnished a little severely, but still more like a drawing room than an office. A big desk, its expanse of polished top completely bare of papers, showed however that it was a room where business was done.
I don’t know what I expected of Sir Anthony Brotherton. He was the biggest of big business, chairman of one of the top two or three of the world’s largest companies, but he was not big physically. His presence was neat rather than commanding, but as soon as he spoke you were conscious of authority in his voice, and you felt his intelligent eyes taking in everything. He had a warmth of personality that was doubtless valuable, and perhaps sometimes misleading, and he was exceedingly polite. ‘It is good of you to have acted so quickly,’ he said.
‘It would be shameful if we had not. Why did you go direct to Sir Edmund Pusey instead of getting in touch with New Scotland Yard?’
‘Through the Foreign Office. I know the Permanent Secretary and soon as the letter came I rang him at his home. He suggested that I should take the letter to Sir Edmund at once.’
‘It was good advice, and has saved a little time, which may be important. I want you to tell me all you can about Dr Braunschweig.’
‘Gustav is an old friend, and a man of great ability. He started on the technical side of the oil industry and he is one of the ablest petroleum chemists in the business. As he progressed in the company, however, he specialised in distribution, and he is directly responsible now for supply and delivery of all our crude oil throughout the world. He controls our tanker fleet.’
‘From Hamburg?’
‘Yes. As you know, we are a British company but German interests hold about forty per cent of our capital, and we have long worked in close partnership with the Germans. Our German subsidiary is a separate company – we have many subsidiaries – but our main board is closely integrated and Gustav is an important member of it.’
‘Age?’
‘He is a couple of years younger than me, and I am fifty-seven. He has always kept himself fit, goes in for ocean racing and won the Fastnet race a few years back. He is not exactly austere, but he is certainly abstemious. He will have a drink with you, but not many.’
‘After the recent kidnapping of other leading businessmen in Germany, wasn’t it foolish of him to drive himself?’
‘That’s hard to say. Armed guards haven’t always been able to save people from being kidnapped or murdered. We’ve discussed it several times at board meetings. Gustav held that going around with guards was over-reacting, and might bring about the very kind of attack it was supposed to prevent. I don’t know. We have unobtrusive guards around a good deal of the time, but you can be guarded to the extent of making life intolerable. I drive alone myself sometimes, and I can’t blame Gustav for taking the view he did. He seems to have been wrong, but we have no idea what happened, and whatever it was might equally have happened if he’d had a couple of guards with him.’
‘Are you contemplating meeting the ransom demand for the Cambridge map?’
Sir Anthony thought for a bit before replying. ‘Left to ourselves, I think my board would probably want to buy the map and hand it over,’ he said. ‘There are a lot of old maps, and only one Gustav Braunschweig. I know nothing of this particular map, and the demand for it makes no kind of sense. I suppose it’s valuable, but it’s scarcely in the Old Master class – I mean, like the Mona Lisa or some priceless painting. Whether the museum would sell it I don’t know – naturally I haven’t asked. In the circumstances probably they would sell, but for how much I’ve absolutely no idea – £10,000? £50,000? Even £100,000. Whatever they asked it would be trivial in relation to Gustav’s life.’
‘You say that left to yourselves you’d try to buy the map and release Dr Braunschweig. Why didn’t you just do that when the note came?’
‘Because we’re not on our own. Almost any businessman nowadays may be the next victim. And we haven’t been told yet where to deliver the map. The note itself seems a kind of declaration of intent, not a final demand. When we get a final demand we may well want to meet it to save Gustav.’
‘In spite of the opposition of both the British and the German Governments, and of the police?’
‘Ultimately, in a company like ours, you have to take your own decisions. I’m not saying that we would act against the wishes of governments, but simply that we’d have to decide what to do when the time came. We might consider that we were better judges of the value of Gustav’s life than anybody else, and that we had a more direct responsibility to him and his family than anybody else.’
‘What if the museum refused to sell the map?’
‘All museums want money. Price would be irrelevant to us. I have no doubt whatever that we could acquire the map if we set out to get it. But that situation hasn’t arisen yet. Whatever it does depends largely on you and, of course, the German police.’
I could understand why this man was chairman of Universal Oil. I changed my line of questioning. ‘The key to the problem seems to be why anyone should go to such lengths to get hold of a map that can be studied at Cambridge anyway, and that was on exhibition in Hamburg not long ago.’
‘Was it? That seems to provide a link with Hamburg. Where was it on show?’
‘At the School of Geography of Hamburg University. It was lent as one item in a large exhibition of world maps. The display was open to the public and was on for a couple of months.’
‘We probably helped to finance it – we have many links with the university. Gustav may have known about it, but not necessarily. We have a public relations division that looks after contributions to that sort of thing. I can easily find out if you like. Do you consider it important?’
‘At this stage everything is important. Can you think of anything in the operations of your company that could be related to a seventeenth-century map of part of the Arctic?’
‘We have a big operation in Alaska, but that is a long way from Baffin Bay. In common with other companies we have prospected for oil in various parts of northern Canada, but we have no big development under way. That is not to say that Arctic oil will never be important – a generation ago who would have forecast the present developments in the North Sea? All I can say is that I know of nothing of any particular significance in the area of the Baffin Map, which presumably relates to some part of Baffin Bay. But I have never seen the map, and until yesterday morning I had never heard of it. In any case, the map is of some three hundred years ago. We have modern charts and make our own surveys when we need to. The map is an antique. It can have no possible bearing on our operations.’
‘Yet your deputy chairman is being held to ransom for it.’
‘Gustav is apparently being held to ransom. It is possible that the group, or even individual, concerned saw the map at the Hamburg exhibition and is using it to make a grotesque opening bid. He, she or they may simply be testing our nerve before coming out with their real demands. I cannot believe that the map itself can matter much one way or another. The German police may get some sort of lead from the Hamburg exhibition.’
‘The police may be able to discover if an attendant noticed anyone taking a particular interest in the map. It’s a slim chance, and if they do get any information it may not mean anything.’
‘At least it’s something to go on. Are you planning to go to Hamburg? I can arrange for our people to look after you.’
‘That is kind of you, but for the moment I think Hamburg is best left to the German police. I shall go to Cambridge in the morning to find out everything I can about the map, without disclosing anything about Dr Braunschweig to the museum. I can rely on you and your board to maintain absolute secrecy in the matter – and please do not get in touch with anyone in Cambridge without consulting me, or Sir Edmund Pusey.’
‘How do I get in touch with you?’
I gave him my card. ‘That telephone is always manned. Ask for the duty officer and say that you want to speak to me. If I am there he will put you through, if not, he will know where I am and get a message to me telling me to ring you at whatever number you give. If it is too urgent to wait, ask for Sir Edmund. You will find that we are quite efficient.’
He smiled. ‘I don’t doubt it. I can only say good luck – you will understand the personal agony that we are living through.’
‘Insofar as I can I share it.’
‘I think you do.’ The warmth of the man was real. ‘I am at your disposal at any time. I’ll tell my secretary that if you ring you are to be put through at once, whatever I may be doing. Can I offer you a drink of any sort?’
‘It would be nice, but I feel that we’ve both got rather a lot to do. May I leave it to a happier occasion?’
‘We must hope that there will be a happier occasion. Tell me frankly, do you think there is much chance of saving Gustav?’
‘Of course there’s a chance – how much it’s impossible even to guess. On his side – on our side – there’s the fact that we’ve been given some time, but how much time again we don’t know. Against this we’re completely in the dark about who may be involved. Your letter was posted in Holland, but that doesn’t tell us much. Various anarchist groups in Germany seem to have associates in Holland, and it would be easy enough for an individual in Germany to get a letter posted in Holland. The letter and the envelope have gone for forensic analysis, and it is possible that the German police may be able to relate the paper or the typing to some known group, but I don’t have high hopes of this, and even if it can be done these groups tend to be so elusive and their membership so vague that it may not help much. The main thing at the moment is to try to find out why they are interested in this particular map. You may be right in thinking that the map as such is unimportant. On the other hand it’s an extraordinarily precise demand. And it’s all we have to go on, anyway.’
* See Death in the Greenhouse
* Assistant Commissioner Paul Seddon, the Department’s representative with the Metropolitan Police at New Scotland Yard.
* Sir Edmund Pusey’s secretary
II
An Amber Necklace
IT WAS MISERABLY little to go on; what was worse, I couldn’t even get on with it. I suppose I could have gone straight off to Cambridge, but by the time I got there it would be late at night, and since we were not disclosing the disappearance of Dr Braunschweig there seemed no adequate reason to get the Curator of the museum out of bed. The immediate problem was to get through the evening. My old rooms in the Temple were still furnished, but there was no food in the place, and it was too late to shop. I didn’t feel much like eating, so I went to a pub and stood myself a large whisky and a sandwich. I enjoyed the whisky considerably more than the sandwich. Before going to the Temple I rang Sir Edmund to see if anything had come in. My hopes rose when he said yes, there was news of a sort. We didn’t want to discuss the case on the phone so I said I’d call in.
*
‘Have you eaten anything since lunch?’ he asked when I arrived.
‘Yes. I’m all right, thank you.’
‘What exactly have you eaten?’
‘That’s my business. You generally have some decent malt. I could use a drink if you like.’
‘Surely.’ He poured me a generous measure of one of my favourite brands of straight malt whisky, poured one for himself, and said, ‘How did you get on with Sir Anthony?’
‘Well enough, I think. He answered everything I asked him, but I’m less sure if he told me everything he knew about Dr Braunschweig. He may have felt that there was no reason for going into things I hadn’t asked about. He struck me as a very cagey sort – but perhaps that’s an occupational habit of the chairmen of oil companies. What’s the news that you have?’
‘Hamburg police have been on to say that Dr Braunschweig’s yacht is also missing.’
‘I wouldn’t put it past the oil company to have removed her to back up their story that he’s gone off on a cruise.’
‘The police thought of that. The company says not.’
‘That makes it more interesting. What kind of a boat is she, and where was she kept?’
‘She’s quite big – a fifty-foot steel ketch. She had a mooring at a yacht club. The moorings for the bigger boats are some distance from the clubhouse, and the club runs a launch for members to get to their boats. Inquiries have had to be discreet, but as far as the police know Dr Braunschweig did not use the club launch. That doesn’t mean much, because owners often take their own dinghies. Dinghies are coming and going all the time, and no one – at least, no one that Hamburg police have come across so far – remembers seeing Dr Braunschweig go out in the past few days.’
‘What’s his boat called?’
‘Apfel.’
‘Curious name for a boat. But why not? The apple is one of the finest fruits of the earth – he may have regarded her as the fruit of his own industry. He seems to be very fond of her. How old is she?’
‘Newish. She was launched just over a year ago, and Dr Braunschweig gave a big party at the club.’
‘Why didn’t the chairman tell me about it? I suppose he thought it of no importance – maybe it isn’t. But I wish he’d given me a more rounded picture of Dr Braunschweig.’
‘Not everyone realises the value of detail.’
‘You’d have thought the chairman of Universal Oil would. Perhaps he thinks so big that there’s no room in his mind for detail. Anyway, the new boat and the party for her give me a slightly more real impression of the man. And a fifty-foot steel ketch can go anywhere. If they haven’t already done so, you might ask the Hamburg police to go a bit more thoroughly into the question of dinghies.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, if you have a fifty-foot boat drawing seven or eight feet moored off a yacht club you have got to get from her as well as to her. She will have a dinghy of her own carried on board, and if you use that it will be moored near the club. If no one went out to Apfel in the club launch, then her own dinghy was presumably used. But that implies that last time Dr Braunschweig came ashore he came in Apfel’s dinghy, which means that it should have been at the yacht club since Apfel last came in. If Apfel’s dinghy is still at the club, then either Dr Braunschweig or whoever sailed off in the ketch did go out in the launch in spite of what the police inquiries so far show, or they went in some other small boat, perhaps from somewhere else altogether. Hamburg police must have people who know about sailing. I don’t know who’s handling the Braunschweig affair – he may know a lot about anarchist politics and not much about boats. We want to find out everything we possibly can about exact movements relating to Apfel – how long had she been at her mooring since she last went out, what sort of dinghy does she have, when was anything last seen of it? And still more questions – what is her auxiliary engine, how much fuel can she carry, does anybody know when she last fuelled? Has other shipping been asked to look out for her?’
‘I’ll do what I can for your first questions, Peter – your habit of messing about in boats has come in useful before, and what seems obvious to you is not always so clear to people without your specialised interests. But the alerting of other shipping is not easy – we could only say that Apfel was believed stolen, and that would make nonsense of the story that Dr Braunschweig has gone off for a cruise in her. Unless the German police are forced to make a statement I think they’re right to keep quiet.’
‘I’m with you there – I’ve often thought that a lot of terrorism is simply kept going by publicity. There can’t be any general alert for Apfel at the moment. But it would help to have even a rough idea of where she is or may be heading.’
*
Sir Edmund is inclined to be scathing about my preference either for not bothering about lunch, or being content with a sandwich, a habit which he considers uncivilised. This is not out of concern for my dietary welfare but because lunch to him is an important means of keeping up with his vast range of semi-official, semi-social, contacts. To me it is more of a nuisance – I hate lunches that go on for two or three hours, however fascinating the conversation. I enjoy food at what I regard as the right times, and one of them is breakfast. With so much else in our society breakfast standards are, alas, declining, but there is one honourable exception – the breakfasts you can still get in restaurant cars on British Rail. There was a restaurant car on my early train to Cambridge, and I thoroughly enjoyed my meal. The train was not crowded and I had a table to myself. You don’t actually need space for thinking in, but sometimes it helps. I had a lot to think about.
