On the Edge

by Michael Ridpath

  But Martel had different plans. The door of the Range Rover opened and Sandy tumbled out. Martel took the wheel and managed to reverse the car out of the drift. He executed a neat three-point turn, and pointed the vehicle downhill, straight at Calder’s Bronco. Then he accelerated.

  Calder fired two rapid shots at the oncoming vehicle. The windscreen shattered but the car didn’t stop. It was going to ram the Bronco. Calder leapt to his left and clung to a sagebrush growing out of the steep hillside, hauling himself upwards just as the Range Rover hit the rear of the Bronco, spinning it through two hundred and seventy degrees so that it was facing downhill. Martel reversed and drove between the Bronco and the rim of the canyon, with so little room to spare that Calder thought he was going over the edge.

  Calder slid down the slope and jumped into his own vehicle. Although the bodywork was badly dented, the engine still worked fine. He reversed up the hill to meet Sandy who was running down towards him. She grabbed the passenger door and flung herself in. Calder had hit the accelerator before she had a chance to close the door.

  ‘You OK?’ said Calder.

  ‘Get that bastard!’ she panted.

  As they barrelled down the hill, they broke out of the cloud and snow into clearer visibility. They caught occasional glimpses of the Range Rover speeding down the road about half a mile ahead. Once Martel reached the highway north of Jackson he would be caught. Calder was sure that by now the police would be out in force, although with the weather as it was, they would be unable to put up a helicopter.

  Calder lost sight of the other car as he rounded a bend, and a few seconds later, when once again a clear view of the road below opened up, there was no sign of it. But a couple of hundred yards down the road was a ranch gate, two tall lodgepoles with a third across the top. On one side was a sign for snowmobile rental. Martel’s fresh tyre marks led up the snow-covered track, which climbed steeply uphill through small fenced-in meadows. The going was slow, and the Bronco’s tyres could barely maintain their purchase, but after half a mile, they came to the ranch itself. The Range Rover was halted in the middle of the yard with the driver’s door hanging open. There were half a dozen snowmobiles lined up beside a cabin, and the unmistakable lanky figure of Martel was climbing on to one of them. A man dressed in overalls and a baseball cap was standing a few yards away, arms stretched up to the sky.

  Martel’s snowmobile roared into life as the Bronco sped into the ranch. Calder aimed the car at the snowmobile, but Martel shot off ahead of it up a narrow track and off into the snow. There was no point in following him there.

  Calder jumped out of his car. ‘Keys!’ he shouted at the man and pointed to the snowmobiles.

  The man, who was about sixty with close-cropped grey hair under his cap, turned and ran into the cabin. He was out a second later and threw Calder a set of keys. ‘Take the sled on the end!’ he said. ‘I’m gonna get my rifle.’

  Calder jumped on the snowmobile, started up, and roared off after Martel, leaving Sandy to wait for the man.

  The snowfall had thinned and Martel’s tracks were easy to see. They headed up a steep slope towards the brow of the hill. Calder remembered that Martel had scoffed at snowmobiles, which suggested that he probably wasn’t an experienced rider. But if he got away from Calder he could go for a hundred miles through the wilderness, and emerge where the Teton County deputies would never find him.

  If he could get away.

  Calder opened up the throttle. He fought to keep the powerful machine under control. Every time he came to a turn or a bump or some uneven snow, the machine tried to throw him, but he hung on. At the brow of the hill was an incline down to a shallow valley and some trees. Calder saw Martel’s snowmobile speeding towards those. The tall man turned his head and almost fell off when he saw Calder. Calder opened up the throttle to the maximum as he shot over the snow. He was catching up.

  Martel might not have had much experience riding a snowmobile, but neither had Calder, and both men were learning fast, taking risks, seeing how far they could push their machines. Martel was a great skier and his sense of balance served him well as he weaved through the trees and then along a creek. Calder tried to accelerate, but lost control as his snowmobile refused to turn and instead hurtled straight ahead over a bank. He just managed to stay mounted, and was very lucky not to wrap himself round a tree. But he had to stop and turn to resume his pursuit, by which time Martel was far ahead.

  With no sun visible, it was hard to be sure of direction, but Martel seemed to be heading upwards and northwards. If they continued like this, they would eventually hit Twogatee Pass, where Perumal had faked his accident.

  Calder was once again closing on Martel. They shot over the crest of a hill, and there in front of them was a meadow flanked by pines on either side, leading down to a ravine. Martel turned sharply, as did Calder, and accelerated along the rim of the ravine. They were hurtling towards the trees where Martel would have to slow. Calder’s gun was in his jacket pocket, but there was no way he would be able to reach it without stopping his snowmobile. So he’d have to jump.

  He timed it to a few feet before the pines, when Martel had slowed his machine. Calder accelerated and leapt off, catching Martel on the elbow. The two of them rolled over and over on the ground. Calder’s machine crashed into the trees, and Martel’s did a back flip and skidded over a heap of snow.

  Despite the soft surface, at the speed Calder was travelling the breath was knocked out of him. He pulled himself on to his haunches and reached for his gun. He cocked it and saw Martel, only a few yards away, pointing his own weapon at him. Calder dived to one side and crawled for the trees. A shot rang out and then another. He reached the trees and turned to see Martel aiming at him with two hands. Calder fired quickly, as much to scare the other man as anything else. Martel was out in the open. He turned and ran back towards the rim of the ravine, sliding behind a small rock at its edge. Calder could just see the top of his head and a gun. Calder aimed, fired and missed. He checked the revolver. Although Calder had taken Pohek’s gun, he hadn’t taken his ammunition. He’d fired four of its six shots. He would have to get closer to Martel to be sure of hitting him with the remaining two.

  Martel’s gun was a semi-automatic pistol, probably with a magazine full of bullets.

  Then Calder heard the whine of a snowmobile in the distance. The man from the ranch. With his rifle, no doubt.

  Martel must have heard it too. His own snowmobile was perhaps twenty yards from him. It looked undamaged. He darted out from behind the rock and ran towards it, bent low, pointing his pistol in the general direction of Calder and pressing the trigger. With bullets passing harmlessly several feet above his head, Calder took careful aim at the running, crouching target struggling through the snow and pressed the trigger. There was a cry and Martel fell to the ground. But as Calder rose to his feet in the trees, so did Martel. With one arm hanging limp he fired a couple more shots in Calder’s direction. Calder ducked back behind cover.

  One bullet left. He couldn’t risk loosing off that last shot and leaving himself defenceless. So he watched powerlessly as Martel ran to the snowmobile, pushed it upright with a cry of pain, clambered on and started it up. He was just pulling away when a sharp crack rang out and echoed around the mountains. Calder looked up and saw a puff of smoke from the meadow above, where two figures were crouching by a snowmobile. Sandy and the rancher. Martel’s snowmobile seemed to leap out from underneath him, throwing him off to one side, and rolled over a couple of times. Calder sprinted out of the trees towards the figure lying dazed in the snow. Just as Martel reached for his gun, Calder held out his own revolver and cocked it. One round left in the chamber. It would be enough.

  Martel knew it. Still sprawled on the ground, with blood pumping out of his injured arm, he raised the other. His gun-was lying harmlessly in the snow a few feet away.

  Calder stood over him, breathing deeply, just managing to restrain himself from sending that one bullet on i
ts way.

  Uncle Yuri fingered the smooth wooden dragon in his pocket as he waited. He had found the perfect spot, in a clump of trees near the bottom of the ski-mountain on the edge of town. He had an unrestricted view down a couple of blocks to the Sheriff’s Office. The weather was lifting nicely and the visibility was good. The range was a little further than he would like, he estimated it at between three hundred and sixty and three hundred and eighty metres, but he had practised sufficiently with the Winchester to be confident he could hit his target. If his target appeared.

  He had calculated that either Calder and Martel would kill each other in the middle of nowhere, or at some point they would be coming back to the Sheriff’s Office.

  Then he heard it, the urgent blare of sirens, the triumphant cries of policemen returning to base with their quarry. He checked the two flags flying outside the building, the stars and stripes arid the white bison on blue background that was the flag of Wyoming. They were flapping idly to the left. At this range, he would have to allow for the slight cross-breeze.

  In a moment four white and orange SUVs pulled excitedly into the parking lot. Doors opened and people leapt out. Most were deputies, but there were two civilians. A tall girl with short blonde hair. And Calder.

  Uncle Yuri examined Calder closely through the telescopic sights. He was smiling, and clasping the girl around the waist. A brave man who had found a criminal and was bringing him to face justice in the courts. Uncle Yuri smiled to himself. That wasn’t the way things worked in his world, Bodinchuk’s world. Myshko’s instructions had been very clear.

  The last SUV pulled up, the doors opened and the tall figure of Martel was bundled out and towards the door of the Sheriff’s Office.

  Uncle Yuri shifted the crosshairs to a spot just above and to the right of his victim’s head to allow for distance and drift and pressed the trigger once. A flash of red appeared on the side of Martel’s skull as he slumped against his captors.

  Jean-Luc Martel and Vikram Rana were the two men who could have connected him and Bodinchuk to the death of Jennifer Tan. Now that connection had been severed. Uncle Yuri dumped the rifle and slipped away.

  39

  It was a few minutes past six and the last of the skaters were making their final circuits. Calder nursed his beer as he looked down on the rink in Broadgate Circle from the same spot he had sat with Jen a year before. They never had gone out on the ice together. Calder smiled as he remembered Jen’s words. She was right, she would have shown him up.

  He had done his best for her. He had given up his job at Bloomfield Weiss and he had brought down Martel, the man who had ordered her death. Could that make any difference to Jen now? The answer to that question was unknowable. But Calder realized that he had done what he had done as much for himself as for her. He couldn’t face being the kind of man who stood by and watched while someone was beaten up on the street. Well, Jen had been beaten up all right. And then murdered. And he had done something about it. He didn’t know exactly why, but he had felt more alive, more invigorated over the last couple of months than he had felt for a long time.

  It was now two weeks since Martel had been shot and Bloomfield Weiss had moved in to take over the management of the Teton Fund. Calder followed it all in the financial press. The first few days were hairy as the Nikkei plunged in anticipation of the Teton Fund being forced to sell the trillions of yen of Japanese equities it owned. But Bloomfield Weiss, with the grudging support of the other brokers who had dealt with the Teton Fund, managed to steady the market by claiming that they would liquidate the fund’s positions over the next twelve months, not twelve days. Although the positions were big, they weren’t big enough to suppress the market for a whole year, and so prices had begun to rally. Martel had been right – there were buyers out there waiting for their moment after all. The investors in the Teton Fund might even come out ahead.

  It had been impossible to link Mykhailo Bodinchuk with anybody’s death. He had the good grace to agree to be interviewed by both the British and American police on neutral ground, in Switzerland, but they were unable to prove a link with Martel beyond the relationship of fund manager and client. Nils had waited in vain for Martel’s cheque for half a million dollars. Bloomfield Weiss had fired him and, according to Matt, the bookies were after him for massive unpaid debts. So far it looked as if he wasn’t going to face any criminal charges, but his employment prospects were not good.

  Calder threw himself back into the flying school with renewed energy. It was still making a loss, but a number of new students and aircraft-hirers were appearing as word spread. There was plenty of work to be done, but breaking even now seemed a distinct possibility rather than the implausible dream it had appeared to be only a few months before.

  There had been an envelope from his father waiting for him when he got back home, as promised. Calder had sent it back to Orchard House unopened. Since then the two men hadn’t spoken.

  Sandy had begun her new job. Calder spent a night with her in a hotel in New York, but there was so much for her to organize that he knew he was in the way. He watched as she began to focus on the new work, and he could see how, despite all her complaining, it was desperately important to her. She was sorry to see him go; he was sorry to leave, and felt even sorrier now. They hadn’t even discussed a future. A woman who couldn’t keep an appointment for a date could hardly maintain a boyfriend three thousand miles away. That was so obvious it didn’t need to be said. So it hadn’t been said. Calder felt sad about that.

  She had seen him off at Newark airport. They had been silent in the taxi on the way, their fingers touching on the seat between them. At the gate they held each other for a long time. When they finally broke apart and she looked up at him, her face had been damp, and so had his shirt where she had rested her head.

  He remembered the tiny freckles on her nose. He would always remember those.

  He hadn’t called her. She hadn’t called him. They were beginning to return to their very separate lives. But he missed her. God, he missed her.

  ‘Hey, it’s The Man Who Broke The Man Who Broke the Euro!’ Calder turned to see Stahl approaching him, clutching a whisky. ‘Don’t look so miserable, you’ve got a lot to be proud of.’

  ‘Hello, Sidney.’ Calder forced a smile as he rose to his feet and returned Stahl’s firm grasp. Stahl had asked to see him for half an hour before he went on to dinner with the chief executive of one of the major oil companies.

  He raised his glass. ‘I wanted to say thanks.’ His voice was suddenly serious. ‘Not just for the help with the Teton Fund. But for everything else too.’

  Martel’s threat to Stahl and Stahl’s decision to acquiesce hadn’t been mentioned by anyone. That was the closest it was going to get.

  ‘I see the Nikkei is up again today,’ Calder said.

  ‘Seven thousand four hundred and rising. We’re gonna be OK. Actually, it’s been kinda fun. Showing the other guys on the street that when there’s a real crisis Bloomfield Weiss can handle it. Tarek’s doing a great job out there in Jackson Hole.’ Stahl chuckled, his laugh turning into a rasping cough.

  ‘How’s Justin Carr-Jones?’ Calder asked.

  Stahl put down his drink. ‘Justin’s doing fine,’ he said carefully. ‘He’s been very helpful getting us out of this mess.’

  Calder remembered Sandy’s comment about Carr-Jones being history. How wrong she’d been. ‘What about Benton Davis? And Simon Bibby?’

  ‘They’re good.’ Stahl held Calder’s eyes. He knew what Calder was saying.

  ‘And Perumal? I suppose you’ve fired him?’

  ‘By no means. He’s no longer in London. We’ve transferred him to New York.’

  ‘And he’s happy with that?’

  ‘Very happy. He’s got a good future at the firm.’

  ‘So Bloomfield Weiss is all one big happy family then,’ said Calder bitterly.

  ‘No. It’s a bunch of bright, overambitious sons-of-bitches who happen to
make a lot of money,’ Stahl replied. ‘You know that.’

  Calder watched the last skater being ushered off the rink. He was angry and he wanted Stahl to know it. ‘The reason I left Bloomfield Weiss, the reason I started trying to find out what was wrong with the Teton Fund, was what Justin Carr-Jones did to Jen. It was wrong. And you’re going to let him do it again.’

  ‘He didn’t kill her,’ Stahl said. ‘He didn’t even get involved in faking the revals.’

  ‘But he knew about them.’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe not. But the guy’s gonna make us a lot of money this year. And next year.’

  ‘And that’s all you care about?’

  ‘It’s what I care about,’ said Stahl. ‘It’s what makes Bloomfield Weiss the most successful firm on the street. The thing is, guys that make money, big money, they’ve often got something wrong with them. Some personality defect. They’ve got some screwed-up childhood or they’re trying to prove something to their fathers or their mothers or their friends, and they’ll die trying. Dysfunctional, that’s what the shrinks call them. Half of them, if they weren’t on Wall Street, they’d be in prison. They’re just not very nice people. My job is to manage these misfits, point them in the right direction and encourage them to make money.

  ‘Take this guy Carr-Jones. Now he’s an asshole. He’s got all kinds of personal problems, and he’s definitely not the kind of guy I’d want my daughter to date. But I don’t care.’

  ‘I do.’

  Stahl smiled. ‘I know. And that’s the thing. You told me yourself in Jackson Hole there are some guys at Bloomfield Weiss who are straightforward decent people. People like Tarek. People like you. And if those people can make money too, I want ’em working for me.’