On the Edge

by Michael Ridpath

  Carr-Jones hit Send and went back to Perumal’s computer models. He smiled. Poor Derek Grayling. By Monday lunch-time the guy wouldn’t know what had hit him.

  Sandy drove Calder back to the hotel in her rented car. He flopped straight on to his bed. He was still tired. ‘It’s nice of you to bring me back here,’ he said. ‘But do you want to get some skiing in today? There’s still time. I’ll be OK here by myself.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. I promised the doctor I’d look after you. Besides, you’ve got a lot to tell me. Here. Have one of these.’ She opened two bottles of beer and handed one to Calder. He examined the bottle.

  ‘“Moose Drool”? What the hell’s this?’

  ‘It’s the local tipple. What’s wrong with it?’

  ‘It sounds disgusting.’

  ‘I thought the moose looked kinda cute.’

  Calder tried it. ‘Not bad,’ he said. In fact, the cold beer tasted wonderful. He was glad Sandy was staying. He could feel his spirits lifting in her presence. And she was right: he needed someone to talk to. He told her what he’d been doing over the previous few days. She was a good listener and she brought a fresh enthusiasm which invigorated Calder, exhausted as he was. She paid close attention and her lawyer’s mind picked up on blind spots or inconsistencies, of which there were many.

  But it took a while before either of them noticed the message light flashing dimly on the phone by the bed.

  There were two of them, one from his father and one from Nils. Calder called his father first. The doctor seemed pleased to hear from him. ‘How are your investigations going?’

  ‘I’m making some progress,’ Calder said.

  ‘And you’re still in one piece?’

  ‘More or less.’

  ‘Well, I won’t ask what that means, I don’t want to scare Annie. Are you getting a chance to ski at all?’

  ‘Er … yes. I went skiing yesterday, actually. It was … let’s say it was exhilarating.’

  Dr Calder chuckled. ‘You never do things the easy way, do you? Listen, I’ve got some good news. I’m going to be able to pay you some of your loan back.’

  Calder’s heart sank. ‘I thought I told you I didn’t want to be repaid.’

  ‘I know. But I’m uncomfortable owing you so much money.’

  ‘You don’t owe it to me, Father!’

  ‘Well, there’s a cheque waiting for you when you get home.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Sixteen thousand pounds.’ His father was trying to sound matter of fact, but he couldn’t keep the note of pleasure out of his voice. ‘It’s just a start. I’ll pay the rest back over time.’

  Pleasure Calder didn’t share. ‘Sixteen thousand! Where the hell did you get sixteen thousand from?’

  ‘Uncle Richard. You remember Uncle Richard, don’t you?’

  ‘But you haven’t spoken to Uncle Richard for twenty years.’

  Uncle Richard was Dr Calder’s younger brother. A black sheep. Calder had never been entirely sure what his sins were. He knew that he had been involved in property speculation in the early nineteen seventies, and had had to leave the country in a hurry in nineteen seventy-four when the boom turned to bust. He had ended up in Hong Kong, where he was involved in some kind of export–import business. Calder had apparently last met him when he was three, but he couldn’t remember the man at all. Dr Calder never spoke about him.

  ‘Aye, well. He was good enough to lend me the money.’

  ‘Why would you want to borrow money from him rather than me?’

  No answer.

  ‘Father, I know where that money came from.’

  ‘Uncle Richard.’

  ‘No. It came from a bet. The odds-on banker you were talking about. You said you’d stop, Father! You promised me. And Anne.’

  ‘I told you I’ve given up and I have. You’ll find the cheque when you get home. Goodbye.’

  The phone went dead. Calder put his head in his hands. Already his father was back at it, less than a month later.

  ‘Gambling?’ Sandy said gently.

  Calder nodded. ‘Yes. I only found out a few weeks ago. I thought he’d kicked it, but…’

  ‘He won?’

  ‘He won big. It’s only going to encourage him to bet more.’ Calder glanced at her to see if she understood him. She did. ‘He lied to me. Blatantly. He never would have done that before. It’s so unlike him.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Calder shook his head. ‘I don’t know when it will end. If it will end.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Anyway. Better call Nils.’ He looked up his home number in the vain hope that he would be in.

  ‘Yeah?’ Nils answered before the second ring.

  ‘I thought you’d be out. Friday night and everything?’

  ‘No. Got to research tomorrow’s matches.’

  Nils was getting the spread-betting bug badly, Calder thought. A year ago he would never have missed a Friday night on the town. The irony was that he probably thought he was being conscientious preparing so thoroughly, whereas what he was actually doing was turning a bit of fun into something much more serious. But Calder could only worry about one gambler at a time. ‘I’m glad I caught you. What’s up?’

  ‘Good news,’ Nils said. ‘I’ve got some interesting stuff on Perumal.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I worked late last night. And I mean very late; you’ve got to hang around till after nine to outlast those derivatives guys. When everyone had gone home, I checked Carr-Jones’s computer. You know how people are always leaving computers on all night? Well, I didn’t even have to log in to his.’

  ‘Excellent.’

  ‘I went through his e-mail archive looking for any mention of Bodinchuk. Nothing. So then I tried Perumal’s machine. They haven’t got a replacement for him yet, and his computer still has all his stuff on it. Anyway, there was an e-mail to Mykhailo Bodinchuk. A couple of e-mails, actually. From last year.’

  ‘Really? What did they say?’

  ‘The first said Perumal was worried about Jen, and she needed to be taken care of urgently. The second was dated a few days later. It said Perumal would show Bodinchuk’s man where Jen lived.’

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ said Calder. Could Perumal really have set Jen up like that? ‘Did you print out a copy?’

  ‘Well, that’s the thing. I tried to, but the printer jammed. You know what a useless piece of crap it is. I was trying to unjam it when Carr-Jones came back on to the trading floor. I have no idea where he’d been. I didn’t know what to do: once he got to his desk he would see that I had been snooping in Perumal’s e-mails, they were right there on his screen. So I just grabbed my jacket and walked straight out of there.’

  ‘And the e-mails?’

  ‘Still jammed in the printer. Of course when I came in this morning there was no sign of them.’

  ‘Carr-Jones must have found them.’

  ‘I can try to check Perumal’s machine tonight.’

  ‘You could try,’ Calder said. ‘You’ll be unlikely to find anything. Carr-Jones will have deleted them: he wouldn’t want them coming out. He wants all this firmly swept under the carpet.’

  ‘But at least we know Perumal and Bodinchuk were working together,’ Nils said.

  Calder thought it over. ‘I ran into Martel’s private thug a couple of days ago. This suggests Bodinchuk’s man was working with Perumal, not Martel. I still can’t believe it. But well done, Nils. Very well done.’

  ‘Thanks. It was sort of fun.’

  Sandy had opened two more bottles of Moose Drool and handed one to Calder. She sipped from her bottle. What was all that about Perumal?’

  ‘Nils says he set up Jen.’

  ‘No?’ Sandy’s brows knotted. ‘Bastard.’

  When he realized Jen was threatening to expose the dodgy revals, he must have got scared and persuaded Bodinchuk to kill her.’

  ‘How would he know Bodinchuk?’ Sandy asked.

  ‘Hmm.’ Calder thoug
ht for a minute. ‘He might well have known that Bodinchuk was an investor in the Teton Fund. Perhaps Perumal called him up out of the blue and told him his investment was in trouble unless he did something about it. Or maybe Vikram put Perumal on to him. Then this year when Perumal was having second thoughts, Bodinchuk had him dealt with. He knew too much.’

  ‘Well, at least we know who killed Jen,’ said Sandy. ‘And the bastard’s where he deserves to be, under a pile of snow.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Calder.

  What’s up?’ Sandy asked. ‘You look doubtful.’

  ‘It’s just hard to believe of someone like Perumal. I mean, I can understand him faking a reval. An ambitious investment banker who overstepped the line: there have been plenty of those before. But killing someone? Or arranging for someone to be killed? If anyone looked harmless, it was Perumal.’

  ‘If Jen really was going to expose him, he was in big trouble,’ Sandy said. ‘People do desperate things under pressure.’

  ‘I suppose that’s it,’ said Calder. ‘I just wish I could have got him to talk when he came to see me in Norfolk.’

  ‘Well, you never will now.’

  They pondered that thought.

  ‘I still don’t understand how he died,’ Calder said. ‘The receptionist in the hotel said the Ukrainian thug checked out the day before the avalanche and went to the airport. So who killed Perumal?’

  ‘Carr-Jones?’

  Calder shook his head. ‘I really don’t think so. Perhaps it was Martel or Vikram or Ray Pohek. Whoever it was, how did they do it? Maybe they engineered the accident somehow, just like Martel did with me on the mountain yesterday. The really annoying thing is we still don’t have any hard evidence to prove anything. I bet those e-mails Nils found will disappear into a digital hole.’

  ‘Perhaps that guide’s right,’ said Sandy. ‘Perhaps Perumal did kill himself. I mean, it sounds as if he was in serious trouble whatever happened.’ She sighed. ‘Once they find his body, we’ll know.’

  Calder stared at her.

  ‘What?’ she said. ‘What is it? You’re looking all weird!’

  Calder smiled. ‘I think I know what happened to Perumal.’

  33

  Saturday morning. Sandy and Calder got up early to drive the forty miles to Twogatee Pass. Sandy was wide awake on Greenwich Mean Time, but Calder found it hard to drag himself out of bed. His body was definitely mending, though.

  They arrived at the Double D Ranch at eight o’clock. Already it was active, with snowmobiles buzzing about, preparing for the morning’s customers. They approached the rental office, which was manned by a scrawny kid of eighteen or so. Nate wasn’t there.

  ‘How’re you doin’?’ the kid asked.

  ‘Good,’ said Calder.

  ‘You guys come for a tour?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. I’m enquiring about a friend of ours, Perumal Thiagajaran. He was involved in, that accident last month.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, the Indian guy.’ The kid sucked through his teeth.

  ‘I wonder if you could check the day he rented the snowmobile? We’d like to see what time he checked it out and when he was due back.’

  The kid paused a moment to think the request over. Then he shrugged and pulled out a large black book, more like a ledger than an exercise book. He opened it in front of Calder. Each double page represented a day, split up between snowmobiles, all numbered, guides and customers. He found the correct day and ran his finger down until he found Perumal. ‘It’s right here, see? He checked the sled out at ten a.m. He was due back by four thirty.’

  Calder bent over the ledger.

  ‘My, this is a busy place,’ said Sandy brightly. ‘How many snowmobiles do you have here?’

  As the kid answered Sandy’s questions, Calder carried on looking at the book. The pages were upside down and the writing was none too clear, but in a few seconds he had found what he was looking for.

  He straightened up. ‘Thanks. By the way, where can I find Nate?’

  ‘Out by the pumps.’

  Calder and Sandy strolled over to Nate, who was filling up a snowmobile. Nate frowned as he saw them coming.

  ‘Got a minute?’ Calder said.

  ‘I’m kinda busy right now,’ Nate replied.

  ‘No. I think you’ve got a minute,’ Calder said firmly. ‘Can we go somewhere private?’

  Nate finished filling up the snowmobile, pulled out the nozzle and replaced the hose. ‘C’mon.’

  They followed him to the main building of the ranch. Inside was a small restaurant. It was three-quarters full with customers eating breakfast, fuelling themselves for the day’s snowmobiling. A group of four men were crowded round a deer-hunting video game, noisily cheering each other on.

  Nate found a table in the corner. ‘I got a lot to do, and I’m takin’ a group out later.’

  ‘The day our friend Perumal died, you said you were seeing friends in Utah,’ Calder began.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘How did you get there?’

  ‘I drove.’

  ‘In a car?’

  ‘My truck. It’s out back. Wanna see it?’

  ‘No. You sure you didn’t go by snowmobile?’

  Nate froze.

  ‘Because, you see, you booked a snowmobile out that day.’

  For several seconds Nate said nothing. Then he spoke. ‘Sure, I booked one out. But my plans changed. I didn’t actually take it.’

  ‘Yes, you did. And when Sergeant Twiler of the Sheriff’s Office comes asking, he’ll be able to prove you did.’

  Nate didn’t say anything.

  ‘On the day Perumal died, you were out there somewhere,’ Calder nodded to the door and the hundreds of square miles of mountain range beyond. ‘My guess is you were out there with him.’

  No answer.

  ‘Nate. Did you kill him?’ Nothing. ‘Did you kill Perumal?’

  Calder stared hard at Nate. He could see the man was tense, struggling with himself, trying to make up his mind. Calder gave him time. Finally Nate exhaled. His shoulders slumped. ‘I didn’t kill him,’ he said.

  ‘I know,’ said Calder. ‘So tell me what you did do.’

  Nate took a deep breath and then started his story.

  Forty thousand feet above the Arctic Circle, Uncle Yuri was scribbling furiously in his notebook. He should have been asleep; it always made sense to be well rested before an assignment. But as he had tried to drop off in the luxury of one of the leather seats in Bodinchuk’s Gulfstream, he had been struck by an idea. What if he made some balsa-wood figures for little Sasha? Models of the dragon and the prince and the princess in that game they always played. He used to be good at carving when he was a boy: he was sure he could still do it. And he could paint them. Or better yet, they could paint them together!

  What he really wanted was to get right down to work, but although the Gulfstream was equipped with champagne and caviar and pornographic DVDs, it didn’t have balsa Wood. So he amused himself making sketches.

  The job ahead didn’t worry him. He would meet someone in Jackson Hole with the equipment he would need. Myshko had insisted that he act quickly: he wouldn’t have time for his usual careful preparation. But the target was neither guarded nor a professional: a fat westerner rather than a wary Russian. No problem.

  He smiled to himself as he thought of the expression on little Sasha’s face when she saw his models.

  Martel stared out over Antelope Flats. There had been a snowfall overnight and the sagebrush was coated with a dusting of white sugar. The wind had picked up and wisps of clouds were scudding across the broad sky, before gathering around the mountain tops. Martel was in a foul mood. Not only had Cheryl refused to talk to him the night before, but she had kicked him out of the bedroom. His bedroom. Something was seriously wrong with her, and he had no idea what. He had gone off to find a bed in one of the guest rooms, which was comfortable enough, but he hadn’t been able to sleep. Cheryl’s attitude irritate
d the hell out of him. Here he was, facing the biggest challenges of his career, and she ignored him. He needed her love and support and she kicked him in the balls. That woman managed to screw everything up.

  Martel saw a dot travelling fast over the sagebrush two miles away. As the dot drew nearer it grew into Pohek’s red Buick. Martel was looking forward to this meeting.

  The Buick pulled up next to the Range Rover. Martel noticed a large dent in the driver’s door and some severely scratched paintwork above the front wheel. He clicked open his own door and Pohek climbed in, clutching a large manila envelope.

  ‘Morning, Mr Martel.’

  ‘Morning, Luigi.’

  Pohek shot Martel a look of panic.

  ‘Oh, I know who you are,’ Martel said. ‘Or rather, who Luigi is. What are you trying to do? Make a fool out of me? Betray me to Alex Calder?’

  ‘No, Mr Martel, nothing like that,’ Pohek gabbled. ‘It was for security.’

  ‘Security, eh? In France we know how to deal with people like you. We built a machine specially for the purpose. The guillotine!’ Martel leaned over and clapped one hand with a chopping motion into the other, a couple of inches from Pohek’s face. Pohek pressed himself back into his seat. ‘What were you thinking of? You had no idea what you were doing, did you? You tried to kill Calder twice and failed each time. Pathetic. Now get out of my sight! I don’t want to see you again.’

  Martel sat still, waiting for Pohek to leave the car. But the other man didn’t move.

  ‘I said, get out!’ Martel yelled.

  ‘I’ve got something for you,’ said Pohek quietly, touching the envelope resting on his lap.

  ‘Let me see.’ Martel reached across to grab it.

  ‘Not unless you pay me,’ Pohek said, snatching it away.

  ‘What is it?’ Martel growled.