Death in a High Latitude, page 9
*
‘You seem to have done all right, Peter,’ he greeted me. ‘I’ve just had a private phone call from the German Ambassador who says that his Government is much indebted to you for leading to the recovery of Dr Braunschweig’s car.’
‘Hamburg police did that. Have you got the charts?’
‘He thinks you told the police where to look. Yes, I have got the charts.’
‘I want your globe, too. It will be a help if we can have it with the charts.’
He brought the globe and the three of us studied the North Pole. ‘If you forget flat maps you can see what a marvellous route there is from Alaska across the Arctic Ocean to the north of Ellesmere Island, then through Kane Basin and Smith Sound into Baffin Bay. And from there it’s straight sailing to the whole of the eastern seaboard of North America, and to Western Europe,’ I said.
‘The disadvantage is that the Arctic Ocean is mostly ice,’ Sir Edmund said mildly.
I’d forgotten that he hadn’t been doing my thinking about the Baffin Map. I gave him a hurried summary, and produced my photograph. ‘It’s maddening that it’s not in colour because Baffin used tints to indicate soundings,’ I said. ‘But you can tell from the shading of the photograph where the tints change, and you can tell roughly from the shaded key in the corner what depths the changes show. The important thing is that they show soundings. Baffin had to sound with lead and line – he couldn’t sound through ice. And the map shows that he got soundings of some sort in a rather wiggly pattern right through Kane Basin. It’s astonishingly far north for the seventeenth century.’
‘What do you think it means?’
‘That everyone else who looked for the North-West Passage tried too far south, being led astray by inlets like Lancaster Sound. And this applies equally to the known routes by which the passage has so far been accomplished, routes that are just possible, but of great difficulty. The secret is to go north, almost to the Pole.’
‘There’s nothing in this photograph of Baffin’s Map to suggest any practicable route from the north of Ellesmere Island across the Arctic Ocean. Why do you think there’s any chance of such a route?’
‘Because of Ruth’s discovery of the Arctic Calorific Syndrome and the immense depth of some sort of trench across the Arctic Ocean. Sorry, Ruth didn’t really discover any of this, but she discovered it for me from one of her experts at Oxford.’
‘It was the US submarine Nautilus that learned about the depths in 1958,’ Ruth said. ‘I’m bound to add, Peter, that there’s not the slightest indication that surface ice north of Ellesmere Island is any less severe than has always been supposed.’
‘I’m relying on old Baffin. He knew what he was doing in charting his route so far north. For all we know there’s another map of his dealing with the Arctic Ocean that has never come to light.’
‘That is pure speculation,’ Ruth said.
‘It’s all speculation. But you pointed out that it doesn’t matter if I’m wrong as long as someone else has made the same mistake about the map.’
‘You’re going far beyond me,’ Sir Edmund said. ‘All I know about the map is that it has been demanded as a ransom for Dr Braunschweig and is apparently missing from the Cambridge museum to which it belongs.’
‘Again I’m sorry. I’ve been so living with the thing that I keep forgetting that you haven’t. There must be something to relate the map to Dr Braunschweig. He is head of the distribution network of one of the biggest oil companies in the world, and if the map suggests a feasible route to transport oil from Alaska to the West it would be of the highest importance to him – and to anyone who wanted to stop either Universal Oil or the oil industry in general from making use of it.’
‘And you think he has been kidnapped in an effort to get hold of the map?’
‘I don’t know what to think – it seems to me that it’s much more complicated than that. I think that Dr Jackson, the expert at the Cambridge museum, was murdered, either because of the map itself, or of some work he was doing in connection with the Arctic, probably this theory of the Arctic Calorific Syndrome. I think that Dr Braunschweig has gone off, or been taken off, in his ocean-going yacht Apfel to look for something in the Arctic. There is evidence that he was planning a voyage to the Arctic in the charts that he bought recently. That links Dr Braunschweig with the map: what I haven’t found is anything to link the map with some third party who could feel strongly enough about it to murder Dr Jackson. There’s a vital link still missing.’
‘And you hope to find it in Cambridge?’
‘I don’t know where else to look. The carrying out of whatever ever plot there was took place in Hamburg, and the very able German police are doing everything that can be done there. But I don’t think the reasons are in Hamburg. They may not be in Cambridge either, but Cambridge must come into the chain of events at an earlier stage than Hamburg, and it’s only by working backwards from Cambridge that we can hope to break into the chain.’
Sir Edmund has some tiresome characteristics but they are more than made up for by unshakeable loyalty to those who work for him. He may have been wholly sceptical of my wild assumptions about the Baffin Map but he didn’t waste time in cross-examining me. My reasoning might get us nowhere, but it had produced at least prima facie evidence that Dr Jackson’s death was a graver matter than had been supposed. He agreed to see Sir Anthony Brotherton himself, to keep him diplomatically in the picture without disclosing any details of the picture as we saw it. I wanted to get back to Cambridge, but first I wanted a word with Seddon at New Scotland Yard. Ruth had to return to Oxford and I arranged to ring her in the evening.
*
Paul Seddon is an Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, with vast experience as a detective and an accumulated wisdom that makes his police skills doubly valuable. He acts as the Department’s special representative at the Yard, and also as consultant in cases concerning fraud or financial crime, which was his own field of detection before he was recruited by Sir Edmund. We were old friends. Ruth dropped me at the Yard on her way out of London.
‘I thought the boss would call you in on the Cambridge case and I’m delighted to see you back at work,’ he said. ‘We certainly get some sticky ones. I spent a day at Cambridge as you know, and I’ve seldom met a case that had less to go on. I felt sorry for that young Inspector Richards. He’s a good man. He rang me about your discovery of the fingerprints, kicking himself for not having got on to it but glad to have evidence to reopen inquiries.’
‘He has no cause to blame himself – with his limited time and facilities he was extraordinarily thorough,’ I said. ‘The trouble was that the picture someone wanted the police to see – depression, properly prescribed drugs, death from a sad combination of drugs and alcohol – was too well painted. Glass of water beside bed with man’s own fingerprints on it, everybody wanting a verdict of accidental death – what more was to be looked for? It was chance that Mrs Jackson told me she was in the habit of putting out her husband’s drinking water for him.’
‘Well, you found out, but we can leave it at that. What do you want me to do?’
‘I want you to go drinking with some of your old City pals. Universal Oil’s share price seems well up, but with the oil market as it is that may not mean much. I’d like to know if at any time in the past couple of years there’s been a hint of board room rows, or any talk of a possible takeover. The company is too big to make a takeover bid seem likely, though I suppose there could be a merger of interests with one of the other giants. But I’m equally interested in any takeovers, actual or considered possible, by Universal Oil.’
‘I’ll have a go, but Unol’s the bluest of blue chips in the stock market, and oil companies tend to live in a world of their own, respecting one another’s secrets. Takeovers by Unol should be a bit easier. The company certainly acquired Arabian Sands, one of the smaller Middle Eastern outfits, not long ago, and there may be other deals in the pipeline. It would be a help if you’d give me an idea of what you suspect.’
‘That’s the trouble, Paul – I don’t know. I told you that the picture of Dr Jackson’s death seemed too pat. I have rather the same feeling about the kidnapping. Dr Jackson certainly died and Dr Braunschweig may well have been kidnapped, but the extraordinary ransom note, and such bits and pieces as we have been able to put together about the probable sequence of events in his disappearance make me feel that we’re meant to put two and two together and make four – whereas the real sum may be two plus or minus some completely different figure. I’ve no evidence to indicate that we should look inside the oil company for the unravelling of events, but somebody is determined that we should look outside it, and it is this that bothers me. Sending the ransom demand to the oil company at once makes it look like a political kidnapping. It may be, but like Dr Jackson’s death the picture somehow seems too neat. And if the kidnapping is an attempt to get hold of the map it doesn’t make sense. A great oil company can obviously afford to buy the most valuable of maps in return for the life of its deputy chairman, but in this case the map can’t be bought because it can’t be found. Suppose that whoever sent the ransom note knows that the map is unobtainable and that the demand can’t be met. It’s cleverer than asking for money, which can be bargained about. Either the map is produced, or Dr Braunschweig is killed. And since the map can’t be produced that’s equivalent to a death sentence.’
‘You’ve got to assume that somebody has a compelling motive for getting rid of Dr Braunschweig.’
‘That’s why I want you to go drinking in the City – in the hope that you can pick up something that may give us a line on motive.’
‘Some hope! I do know one or two people in the oil market but it’s a cagey business, and I’ve got to be careful – it doesn’t need much to start some rumour that sends share prices tumbling with a lot of innocent people getting hurt. How much time do you think we’ve got?’
‘That’s anybody’s guess, but if I’m right about the general feel of things without necessarily being right in any of the details – I reckon we’ve still got a few weeks. I think that Dr Braunschweig alive is still valuable to somebody, and will remain so until his boat has got to wherever she may be going. The critical time will come when she’s run her distance, which, if I’m right, will be around the end of the month.’
‘But you don’t know where she is.’
‘No. The NATO air and sea forces are looking out for her, but a fifty-foot boat is a tiny speck in the North Atlantic and I doubt if there’s much chance of spotting her. But we can make a reasonable guess at the area she’s bound for. It’s a vast region, but I’m hoping that research into the map and more inquiries in Cambridge may narrow it down a bit, and we may be able to intercept her. By that time you may have filled in some of the real picture, not the one that we’re supposed to see.’
I’d talked to Paul Seddon with more confidence than I felt. His record in ferreting out financial scandal was remarkable, and if there was any funny business going on inside the oil company I’d every confidence in his ability to sniff it. Where I had less confidence was in myself. The car and the dinghy made it seem reasonably likely that Dr Braunschweig was on board Apfel bound for the Arctic, but why, and who was with him, remained x and y in a still insoluble equation. My maths is not Ruth’s, and I thought back to my schooldays about equations with x and y in them. As far as I remembered the best way of solving such puzzles was to find two sets of equation – simultaneous equations – which could provide values for x and y because they told you different things about them: you could solve two equations together when you couldn’t solve either of them alone. Could I find two equations here? Well, at any rate there seemed two problems – the murder, for I was convinced it was murder, of Dr Jackson, and the disappearance of Dr Braunschweig. And there was a common factor in both – the Baffin Map. If we could make any progress in the Jackson case we might begin to see light in the Braunschweig affair.
*
There was no nice breakfast on this journey to Cambridge because it was the wrong time of day, but I had more than enough to think about as the gentle landscape of East Anglia slipped past. Too neat a picture . . . was that another common factor in the Jackson and the Braunschweig cases? I had told nobody so far of the amber bead I had found in Mrs Jackson’s house. Was this another stage property, added to the scene-setting to provide an insurance policy in case the police had not taken everything about Dr Jackson’s death for granted? Ingrid Mitchell was his successor at the museum, she wore an amber necklace, and she could be considered to have a motive for getting rid of Dr Jackson in order to obtain his job. Sufficient for murder? Doubtful, but ambition can be a terrible driving force and even in these days an able woman can see herself passed over for a job she is well qualified to do. Dr Mitchell had reasonable hopes of succeeding Dr Jackson, and she may have felt that if the vacancy could occur before that pompous old fool of a Curator retired she would have a better chance of getting it. She was with Dr Jackson at the party and knew the state he was in. Why not slip into his room through the french window and help him to an overdose of tranquilliser? Necklaces can break, and a bead from an amber necklace might be damning evidence against her. Again I thought, ‘Too neat.’ And then my whole reasoning was upset – the amber bead couldn’t provide the police with a readymade suspect at the time of Dr Jackson’s death because it had not been found. It came to light by chance when I visited the house some months later and could have no possible bearing on the case. I was wasting time over it. But the thing nagged at my mind and I decided that I was not necessarily wrong in thinking that it might have some connection with the case. The fact that it was not found at the time of Dr Jackson’s death was not proof that it was not there to find. It was more or less hidden under the edge of carpet, and had I not been studying the surround of the french window with particular attention it might be there still. Amber was already connected with a woman who had played some part in Dr Jackson’s life, and who was with him on the night he died. I couldn’t have things both ways – if I was trying to deduce things from what seemed an unreal neatness in the pattern of events I couldn’t dismiss the amber bead because it now seemed too neat. The fact that it had not been found did not rule out its value in offering the police a readymade suspect. As it happened it was not needed, because the police were not suspicious. If they had been suspicious they would have searched the room more thoroughly and the bead would have been found.
*
I badly wanted another talk with Ingrid Mitchell but by the time I got to Cambridge it was too late to call at the museum. I had not found her easy to talk to, and an unexpected visit to her home, assuming that she had not gone out for the evening, was about the worst possible way of opening an interview. But I also needed to see Inspector Richards. I rang his home number and he invited me to his house. ‘If you don’t mind a scratch meal I’d be delighted if you could stay for supper,’ he said.
Inspector Richards offered to drive to the station to collect me but I wouldn’t let him and got a taxi instead. He had a pleasant small house on the outskirts of Cambridge. He introduced me to his wife and two young children, a boy coming up to four and a girl of about two. Either tactfully, or because it really was their bedtime, Mrs Richards went off with the children, leaving the sitting room to her husband and me. I brought him up to date with the German side of things and he was impressed by the finding of the car and dinghy. ‘You seem to have a knack of finding things, if I may say so, sir,’ he said.
‘You can cut out the “sir” and forget about knacks – it was straightforward police work, and the German police seem highly efficient.’
‘Better than we are, I’m afraid.’
‘Come off it. With hindsight I think Dr Jackson’s death merited a rather fuller investigation than it got, but the coroner was satisfied and the university people must have been thankful to have the whole business cleared up so quickly. I had much more reason to be suspicious.’
‘Well, you certainly stirred things up. I can’t say that the Super was all that pleased, but he’s a good policeman and he took me off everything else to concentrate on the Jackson case.’
‘How does it stand now?’
‘To be honest, just as it was before. I’ve been to see Mrs Jackson – she’s an intelligent woman and seems to like you, though she doesn’t know what to make of you. I had to check your report on the glass, and it’s just as you said – she is prepared to swear that she filled the glass and put it on the bedside table. We examined the glass for fingerprints at the time, of course, and found only Dr Jackson’s on it. That seemed natural enough in the circumstances as we knew them then. I’ve tried to find out who was at the party where he had too much to drink – I thought the other guests could be interviewed to see if anyone recalls seeing him being deliberately encouraged to drink. But it’s not easy. The people who gave the party are in the States, and that sort of Cambridge party has a lot of coming and going. Mrs Jackson remembers some of the people there, but she wasn’t with her husband all the time. I haven’t talked to anybody else yet because we can’t have those sort of interviews in Cambridge without people talking, and it’s only a matter of time before all sorts of rumours start flying around.’
‘You’re right to be careful. We may have to announce a murder inquiry and invite help from the public, but that’s the last thing we want at the moment. Apart from Mrs Jackson, nobody outside the museum even knows that the map is missing, and apart from a few high-ups in the oil company nobody knows yet about Dr Braunschweig. Somebody must be very anxious to know just what we’re doing . . . the less we give away the more chance there is of that somebody trying to be too clever and making a mistake.’ I outlined my theory of how a plausible picture of Dr Jackson’s death had been put together and then I told him about the amber bead.
