Death in a Darkening Mist

by Iona Whishaw

  “You’ve been drugged,” Lane whispered under a sudden burst of music. Sylvia’s eyes turned towards the front, but Lane turned her head back towards the sound of her voice. “You’ve been drugged, but you’re okay now. I don’t know what he’s up to, but I believe we have been kidnapped for some reason.”

  At this Sylvia closed her eyes and seemed to fall more heavily into Lane.

  Lane drew in a deep breath. They were going down a long incline that ended at a small bridge and a sharp turn at the bottom. Once they had crossed that bridge, they would begin the climb on the other side to the most dangerous part of the road. “Charles, could you slow down a little?” she asked in as sweet and normal a voice as she could muster.

  Cursing at the radio, which he now switched off, he said, “No bloody signal here.” He turned his attention to the road, speeding up on the descent and holding the wheel with both hands.

  “Charles, please. This is a dreadful stretch of road,” Lane persisted.

  “Would you shut up? We don’t have time. Do you understand that?”

  “For Sylvia? She’ll be okay if we take a little longer, Charles. If we have an accident . . .”

  “Sylvia? It’s not for Sylvia, you moronic woman. She’s just a bloody mistake. They want you.” They had reached the bottom of the hill, and he was forced to slow nearly to a stop to make the hairpin turn. Through the open window she could hear the roaring of the creek that tumbled out of the darkness and under the wooden bridge they were crossing at the base of the turn. The sound rose, desolate and grim, then fell away as they crossed the bridge.

  What did he mean, they wanted her? Once he made the turn he ground the gears and swore as the car jolted into the next gear. He pressed on the gas, increasing his speed, hurtling up the narrow road that in moments would take them to the naked edge of the cliff that fell away to the lake below. She had to think, to keep him calm, to understand what he meant, all at once. She jostled Sylvia gently, and was rewarded by her looking up and nodding. She straightened slightly away from Lane’s shoulder. Thank God, she seemed more fully awake, Lane thought.

  “Oh, I see. Who wants me?” She tried to keep her voice even.

  “Stop asking questions. You’re going to be fine. They just want to talk to you. I did everything they asked and now I have to put up with this!” His voice had taken on an injured tone, and he pounded the steering wheel angrily with his open hand.

  “What did you do? What did they ask of you? Charles, you’re driving a little fast for this road.”

  “Never bloody mind. I told him you spoke Russian. He sent me a telegram for you.” At this he barked out a laugh. “After everything I did, that’s all they bloody care about. They won’t get away with it. Some swine took the gun, but I have another one.”

  “Charles, did you kill Zaharov?”

  She could see him glance in the mirror at her, his eyes large and dark in the faint glow of light from the dashboard.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said savagely. He stared at her through the rear-view mirror, as if challenging her.

  “Charles, please be careful.” Lane could feel fear clutching her chest. Andrews seemed to be losing control of the car as his anger ramped up.

  He appeared not to hear her. “And in case you’re wondering about your money, it was that bastard Featherstone, nothing to do with me. Who would have guessed?”

  At that moment she could feel the back wheel drifting as he took the last turn onto the precipitous, terrifying stretch of road. There was a low hiss of tires skidding on the snowy surface. The headlights seemed to illuminate nothing. He pumped desperately at the brake to stop the slide. The car lurched and slipped and then began to turn uncontrollably. They now faced downward and towards the lake. Andrews slammed the brake pedal down to the floor, but it was sickeningly without resistance, and Lane knew, as the car began a slow, unstoppable slide towards the edge of the road, that it was certain death.

  Sylvia clutched at Lane and screamed.

  “We have to roll out, now!” Lane shouted. She reached over Sylvia for the door handle and pulled at it frantically. It snapped back painfully on her hand. She pulled at it again, willing it open. The door swung outward heavily, letting in a blast of cold air and the incomprehensible spinning darkness. Sylvia cried out in panic. Lane put both her hands on Sylvia’s body. “I’m going to push you! Try to roll, just roll, do you hear me?” With that she shoved with all her strength and Sylvia tumbled onto the road. She looked back at Charles, who seemed rigid with fear and screamed at him, “Jump, Charles! You have to jump!” and then she threw herself out onto the snow, just as the door began to swing closed again and the car started one last crazy spin. She hit the road heavily and searing pain shot through her arm. She could hear her own gasp as it it were coming from somewhere else. Nearby Sylvia was calling out, but Lane’s eyes were riveted on the sudden lifting of the dark shape of the car, the headlamps tilting crazily downward. As if from a nightmare, she heard Andrews’s rising scream, smothered in the scrapping and banging of the car going over the cliff. She would later be surprised at how muffled the sound was of steel hitting the rocky cliff into the lake below, but she would never forget that final scream.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  “SWEETIE, ARE YOU SURE?” ANGELA was holding her middle son, Rolfie, gently by the shoulders and looking at him intently.

  “Yes, Mommy, it was our game that made me think of it. Rafe was pretending to be wounded after a bomber crash, and he was limping.”

  Had he said this the night the police came to talk to him? She was sure he hadn’t. “Can you walk like you remember him walking?” Rolfie turned and walked across the kitchen, favouring his left leg. “Are you sure it was like that? That was the leg he was limping on?”

  “Yes, I’m really sure.”

  “And you’re not talking about Rafe’s limp, you’re talking about the man you saw?”

  Rate looked a little anxious. “Yes, Mommy, the man.”

  Angela pulled him towards her and gave him a hug. “You’ve done really well. I bet the policeman will be happy to hear about this.”

  She watched him run happily back to his game. Should she phone Lane? No, obviously, the police. She glanced at the clock. It was shortly after six. Maybe she could still get them in the office. Otherwise, did the night operator phone people at home? There must be police on duty all night, but it’s Darling that would want to know this. She didn’t want to call when he’d have to be disturbed at home if it could wait till morning. Something made her pick up the phone, just as her husband came in.

  “Filthy weather,” he commented. “They’ve issued a snow advisory,” and she held her finger to her lips.

  “Nelson police station, please.” She waited, watching her husband go into the hall to hang up his coat and hat. She hoped he’d left his boots on the porch. She was relieved to find the inspector was still there. “Oh, hello, Inspector. Angela Bertolli here. I’m sorry to call you late like this. I’m sure you want to go home, and I don’t know how important it is, but my son Rolfie suddenly remembered something about the man at the swimming pool.”

  At that moment David came back into the room and seemed to have forgotten his wife was on the phone. “I saw a big blue car turning towards Adderly just as I hit the turnoff. I could have sworn Lane was in the back. Odd time to be going up there. Do we know someone with . . . oh! Sorry!”

  “What was that, Mrs. Bertolli?” Darling said.

  “Oh, gosh. Sorry. Just Dave coming in from work. He said he saw a big car heading out of the Cove when he arrived. But I know you are waiting to hear what I called about. Rolfie has suddenly remembered that the man he saw had a limp. He thinks it was the left foot. Does that help at all? I know. Probably not . . . limping men are a dime a dozen since the war.”

  “No, it’s very important,” Darling said, signalling to Ames, who had his hat and coat on. “Pen, paper,” he mouthed. “Rolf thinks the man was limping
on his left foot? How sure would you say he is?”

  “Pretty sure. I asked him that myself. Who knows with children, but he was sure about the limp.”

  “Tell him that is very important information, and pass on my thanks.”

  “I will, Inspector, thank you!”

  “Wait, before you hang up . . . did you say your husband saw a car leaving the Cove? What time was this?”

  “It must have a been a few minutes ago. He just came in the door from school. I’ll check with him. Dave, did you see the car just now as you were coming home?”

  “Yes. Seemed in a hurry, the strange thing is I’m sure I saw Lane in the back. Big blue thing. It might not have been . . . just the flash of my headlights for a second.”

  “Yes, Inspector, it was just now. Big blue model of some sort. The odd thing is that he thinks he saw Lane in the back. I can’t see why she would be. She said she was going to be home tonight writing to her grandmother. I can’t think who would be going off in weather like this.”

  “OH, FOR GOD’S sake!” Darling exclaimed as he slammed the receiver down. He dialled and asked to be put through to King’s Cove 431. His fingers drummed impatiently on his perfectly clean desk. Ames stood at the ready, pencil in hand. Already on his notepad were left foot limp, blue car, and he was looking at it wondering how his boss would want to flesh it out when his phone calls were done.

  Of course, it was all right there. How had he not seen it? “Sir . . .”

  “No bloody answer. Ames, forget the date with Camelia. You’re coming with me.”

  “Violet, sir,” said Ames, not entirely unhappy to forget the date. Vi was still touchy about her job prospects.

  “What?”

  “What, what?”

  “You said ‘sir’ as if you’d suddenly seen the second coming.” Darling reached for his hat and made for the door. “Never mind. Tell me in the car.”

  They sat in the car, their breath fogging the window, as the ferry scraped and cranked into action. Darling chaffed at the slow progress of the ferry. There was only one other car on board. Most people going to homes across the lake would be there by now, sitting by their fires, listening to the radio or eating dinner. It was snowing steadily. Ames knew his boss was waiting, but he was suddenly reluctant. It was too ridiculous. Finally, he spoke.

  “It’s Charles, isn’t it, sir? He drives that blue Studebaker he’s so proud of, and he limps. I’m assuming that’s what Mrs. Bertolli was telling you—that her boy remembered the man limping. It was his car seen up in New Denver, he visits an aunt who doesn’t exist. He served abroad, in Europe. What an ass I’ve been not to see it! What I don’t understand is why.”

  The ferry juddered to a stop, to Darling’s intense relief, and the ramp was let down by the operator, who was swaddled in winter clothing, a thick scarf covering the lower part of his face. Ames started forward and waved as he drove onto the road. “Poor bugger.”

  “What we should be asking ourselves is why he is driving north with Miss Winslow in the back of his car, because that’s what’s happening,” said Darling.

  Ames felt a wave of alarm, and was suddenly grateful for the chains and the newly filled tank. He sped up. “What do you mean, in the back of the car? Why?”

  “I think she suspected him, you know. She thought that perhaps the ‘aunt’ he kept visiting was that cabin where the gun and coat were found. The fact of the blue car turning up in New Denver has clinched it, I think.”

  “You didn’t tell me that,” said Ames, a little hurt.

  “Well, I only heard yesterday evening. I wanted to think about it. We need evidence, after all. And he is a friend of yours. I wasn’t sure . . .”

  “You believe I would compromise an investigation just because the suspect is my friend?”

  “No need to take umbrage. I see now that you wouldn’t. God almighty, it’s going to take us an hour at this rate; where can he get to in an hour?”

  Ames’s mind divided between rehashing all his recent meetings with Andrews—the man’s increasing reckless moodiness, his treatment of Sylvia—and thinking through how far he could have got heading north. They’d be slowed down by the snow and the dangerous road to Adderly. Beyond that, the next stop was Kaslo. They could turn up to New Denver, and then really, they’d loop back around to the Slocan Valley, and then they could go west towards the coast or back towards Nelson, even though the road was terrible going that way. He said this to Darling, who sank into thought.

  “You know,” Ames said into the silence, “you go along thinking your friends are just who they are, that nothing changes. Charlie used to be a real card, the popular athletic guy with all the girls. I think I just envied him. I had been thinking recently that he’d changed, but when I really look at it, he’s just always been self-centred and has never really respected girls. I . . . I was pretty angry about how he talked about Miss Winslow, like she was just one more of his conquests. I’ve been kicking myself for not saying anything at the time. I think I was just shocked.”

  Darling spoke, his voice urgent. “Okay, let’s think this through. If Andrews indeed murdered Zaharov, then he must have eliminated him because he knew something, or Andrews was connected in some way to some Soviet interests, since Zaharov was on the run. For starters that speaks to a whole area of Andrews’s life we none of us suspected. It has to have something to do with his time in Europe.”

  “The car, sir,” Ames interposed. “Heck, his coat for that matter. That camel coat. Those are expensive things; I don’t see how he got them on a bank clerk’s salary. So he had more money than he should. Only, I don’t know why, but I had a feeling he was broke. Like he’d lost all his money and was in trouble. He used to like to play poker, really like it. He used to say he was born with luck.”

  “Fatal to a gambler. But you’re right. He did have a lot of extra money at one time. His mother, she keeps house for me and cooks me abominable meals, said he was being very generous, bought her quite an expensive new coat, I remember her telling me. Okay, let’s go wildly crazy and say someone is giving him money, say, to kill a Soviet citizen, who has been hiding in Canada for some years . . . that’s a vendetta with a long memory. Why is he so interested in Miss Winslow?”

  “Sorry, sir, but that one is obvious. She speaks Russian. She must have some Russian connection.”

  Anxious doubts again began to filter into Darling’s mind. He knew Ames was right. What an irony that he doubted his constable’s objectivity in the case of his friend, while he was guilty of the same thing where Miss Winslow was concerned! What, he asked himself again, did he really know about her, her life, her connections, even her stated reasons for coming to live in the middle of nowhere? In the back of his mind was his absolute certainty of her truthfulness, but he pushed this ferociously away now. A man who may well turn out to be an assassin in the pay of Stalin himself had an interest in her.

  “He hasn’t killed her,” he said out loud and suddenly enough to make Ames jump. “If Bertolli is right, he’s taking her somewhere. Does his paymaster want her? Is he taking her to meet someone?” Silently he asked himself the question, Is she going willingly?

  “We’re near the turnoff to her house, sir. Do you want me to go up and you can check if she’s there?”

  “No. If she’s with him we have no time to lose, and if not, we need to catch up to him anyway. I don’t think there’s any doubt he’s our man, and I’m going to guess he’s doing a runner.”

  LANE STRUGGLED UP into a sitting position. The shock of hitting the ground was being replaced by her awareness of the icy cold and the almost blinding whirling of snow. Her face felt as if it had been scoured with sandpaper and her arm was beginning to throb unbearably. It was certainly broken, she decided. Using her good arm, she pushed herself slowly onto her feet. Everything else seemed to be working. She could not shake the horror of seeing the car go over the cliff, of hearing that awful scream. She looked up the road. She could just see the dark form of Sylvia ag
ainst the snow. Wanting desperately to look over the cliff, perhaps somehow hoping it was not hopeless, she moved gingerly up the road towards Sylvia, who was now calling out in a high, frightened voice. The road was like ice where the car had made the last desperate slide to its destruction. Andrews’s destruction.

  God, she thought, could things be worse? It was dark, snowing, and they were miles away from anywhere on a lonely road. She had a broken arm, and who knew what was amiss with Sylvia.

  “Sylvia, I’m right here,” she said in answer to a querulous plea for help. “Here, can you get up?” She offered the pregnant woman her good hand. She would have to make a sling for her broken arm. It was too painful to hold against her body without support and it was flopping around dangerously.

  “What happened? Oh God, where are we?” Sylvia had sat up and was looking uncomprehendingly around at the darkness and snow. Then as if she suddenly remembered, she screamed, “Charlie! Where’s Charlie?”

  “Sylvia, take a deep breath. Try to get up. We’re a few miles from Adderly, maybe two at most. We need to get there.”

  “Something’s happened to him! Where’s the car?” She clutched at Lane, trying to pull herself up.

  It was no good. She would never move if Lane didn’t tell her. “The car’s gone over. Charlie didn’t make it out. I don’t see . . .”

  As if to illustrate her point, a great burst of light coming from below the cliff illuminated the road, making the few trees at the edge of the cliff loom suddenly as if they were demons come to life. The unexpected brightness shone a satanic light on their own shocked faces, and then came a muffled explosion.

  Unable to move, the two women stared towards the cliff as the blinding light of the explosion dimmed, becoming the dull wavering of a distant fire, far below them.

  There was no doubt now, Lane thought. She turned towards Sylvia, thinking of the job she would have to calm her now, to get her moving, but Sylvia only looked, motionless, towards the flickering light. She’s gone into shock, thought Lane desperately, looking up the dark, snow-covered road they had to traverse.