by Tom Clancy
Once aboard the trawler, they were placed in a special rad-insulated storage hold and ferried deeper into the southern latitudes, eventually crossing the Antarctic Convergence.
As it passed the subantarctic islands, the vessel encountered thin sea ice, which its riveted double-steel hull was able to nose through with relative ease. Further into its trip, the trawler used ice-distribution satellite maps composed weekly by the U.S. Navy and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration—and made available over the Internet for the safeguard of research vessels in subantarctic and antarctic waters—to locate and weave its way around heavy floes of pack ice as it circumnavigated the continent to the Ross Ice Shelf, an immense sheet of ice fastened like glue to the coastline and extending over fifty miles outward into the Ross Sea.
On March 4th, the trawler dropped anchor at the edge of this immense ice sheet and off-loaded its hot cargo onto rubber-belted Caterpillar trucks for conveyance to the mainland. It had reached the end of its outbound voyage.
Where in the continental interior the casks eventually wound up was a detail that neither its marine carriers, nor the administrators at Fels-Hauden, sought to learn.
In certain types of dealings, it is not unusual for all participants to agree that there are some questions better left unasked.
Scottish Highlands
More than five hundred stone forts once sat along the northern stretches of the Highland coast and the islands nearby in the north of Scotland, each in its own way the center of the universe. Their remains haunt the hills; besides the better-known attractions, a hundred walls, foundations, and bits of ceremonial markers lie scattered across many a square mile, some hidden by vegetation, others easily seen. Built during the Iron Age, the brochs remain outposts of distant memory, small and variable bits of the past whose worn rocks can be interpreted in endless ways. A row of stones together in a cow field might have seen incredible glory in the days after they were first chiseled and stacked; or perhaps they witnessed only cowardice and evil. A tourist touching them for the first time might feel his or her breath taken away, the mind recreating battles of kilt-clad warriors wrestling in the morning mist as pipers urged them together. A local growing up nearby might view the rocks as an apt patch for a tryst or a sip of something away from the folks.
All interpretations might be valid in their own way, all shapes, all ghosts. The past, ancient and near, is a country as varied and changeable as Scotland herself. To reconstruct it in a useful way is an act not of imagination but restraint—the possibilities must be winnowed, the ghosts held firmly in their places.
Frank Gorrie had found this true in every case he had ever investigated, from the traffic scrapes to the twelve murders he had seen since becoming a detective. It was not simply a matter of pushing the lies to one side and the truth to another; the lies were most often easy to spot. But the truth—there was a nub of a different matter.
The truth in the case of Ed and Claire Mackay was this: Edward Cailean Mackay had been an arse-chasin’ shit, from a good line of them. He’d been gone from Inverness with his wife for several years, working in Wales and England, the neighbors thought, but his reputation remained. He had picked up where he left off upon his return some two or three months ago, as the loquacious Christine Gibbon claimed. Many would testify to it, though they seemed curiously short on names of current girlfriends.
What they wouldn’t testify to, or maybe just could not admit, was the likelihood that Claire would put out his roving eye with a bullet. Especially with the wee babe in the next room. Most especially that.
Gorrie didn’t have children himself, and he guessed he ran toward overromanticizing the connection between mother and child, tending to view it wrapped in tender rose petals though he had ample evidence from his work to tell him different. It was on exactly this sort of matter that he missed his former detective sergeant and sometime partner most acutely. Nessa Lear had a fine compass for reality. Gorrie liked to say he’d raised her from a pup, picked her from the pool of detective constables and made her into a true solver of crimes. But he’d done too good a job—Nessa had been snatched away for a job with Interpol some months back. Never mind that she had asked for the job herself for several years—to Gorrie’s mind she had been wrestled from him, and the loss hurt all the more as no replacement had been forthcoming due to “budgetary considerations.”
The deputy area commander, Nab Russell, had promised a successor in the hazy distant future. For the meantime, DI Gorrie and the rest of CID were expected to make do by using “pooled resources”—Russell’s personal euphemism for the detective constables. An eager bunch, mostly overworked, in several cases very rough about the edges, they were good at running down the odd leads, but not for bouncing ideas with, as he had often done with DS Lear.
Nessa would have been excellent probing the neighbors, much better than DC Andrews, whose monotone voice tended to make him sound more like a footballer than a policeman. He’d been too quick with the interviews; Gorrie had to take him by the hand.
Did Claire strike you as a killer?
No, sir.
Good enough then.
No, detective, we do it like this:
Had Mrs. Mackay seemed depressed? Drawn out? At the end of her wits, would you say? Was she an angry person? More frustrated than normal?
No matter the phrasing, no was always the answer. Oh, she could yell at Eddie, put him in his place. But murder him? Should have maybe, but until it happened not a one of her friends or family would have predicted it. She had not seemed to suffer postpartum depression; she’d gained her shape back after the birth with a mum-and-child program, where the instructor—a looker herself—said she had a special closeness with the child. Her sister said that she had worked at a bank as a teller but had no plans to go back; it wasn’t the sort of job you’d worry into a career.
So that was her story, rounded up with the help of Andrews in about a day and a half’s worth of work. A large question remained—where had she gotten the gun? It was not her husband’s, or at least there was no indication yet that it was her husband’s, and no one, not even Christine Gibbon, could remember any hint of it before.
Having reached a suitable impasse regarding the presumed killer, today Gorrie would turn his attention back to the victim, making his inquiries at the man’s employers and rounding up a few lost ends. But as he spotted Cromarty Firth’s domelike reactor building looming ahead in the early morning fog, an ungodly, un-Scottish creature wading in from the surf, he thought not of Edward Mackay but his son, christened Luthias Edward. It was one thing to grow up without a ma or a da, and quite another to grow up knowing your ma killed your da and then herself, with you in the other room.
What a legacy to leave a child. Gorrie could do nothing for the lad except his job, and while he regretted that his job might well mean pain for the boy in years to come, he endeavored to do his best to remove any question in the young man’s mind of what had happened. He would have done so no matter what the circumstance, but if his patience or stamina flagged at any point, he could gently prod it by recalling the infant in the crib, and imagining him fifteen years on.
A small valley ran between the plant and the road, making the access road seem as if it ran over a moat. Cement obstructions forced approaching vehicles to take a zigging path, and razor wire lined the double row of fences at the entrance; two guards manned the gate and demanded positive proof that DI Gorrie was indeed DI Gorrie.
“Aye, didna’ you know me well enough to borrow five pounds last Saturday, James?” Gorrie told one of the guards as he held out his badge.
“Procedure, Inspector,” responded the man, adding in a somewhat softer voice, “I’ll be payin’ you back next Friday, I’m sure.”
Gorrie was met at the door to the plant by a young woman tall and broad enough to play for the local football team; she showed him directly to the plant manager’s office, not pausing for pleasantries. Gorrie found his pace slowing with each step,
resisting the rush. With white walls sandwiched between white acoustic tile and white linoleum, the hallway reminded the inspector of a hospital corridor, except that it smelled of wood polish rather than antiseptic.
There was no wood to polish in the halls, nor was there any in the manager’s office, where the paper-strewn desk, file cabinets, and two movable carts holding computers were all made of metal. John Horace sat behind the desk, his owl eyes blinking once as they entered.
“Come,” he said sharply, though they were already inside.
“My name—”
“Inspector Gorrie, yes. Well?”
Gorrie sat down in the chair across from the manager’s desk. “I am investigating the death of one of your people here.”
“Ed Mackay. Efficient, good at his job.”
The manager’s manner might be common in London where, judging from his accent, he had been raised, but here it was grating enough to be suspicious as well as borderline insulting.
“What exactly was his job?” Gorrie asked.
“Supervised the removal of waste. We follow the Basel Convention in spirit and letter, Inspector. I’m sure that if you check with UKAE—”
“The atomic commission?”
“Quite. We are regulated—heavily regulated. Nothing moves from here without intricate planning. Even the odd hankie tossed in my basket there will be suitably accounted for. We don’t go polluting the environs, Inspector. We have precautions. Our record is exemplary.”
“I see,” said Gorrie. Under other circumstances, he might have been inclined to skip the lecture—he already knew a bit about Mackay’s job. But he generally found it useful to let a man speak, even when he didn’t feel an immediate need for the information. And so Gorrie folded his arms and leaned back as the plant manager began citing safety statistics. In three decades there had been over seven thousand shipments of spent fuel worldwide without an incident; the spent fuel had a better transport record than the average loaf of bread.
It struck Gorrie as Horace continued that the shape of his skull was not unlike the shape of the reactor dome.
“Interesting,” Gorrie said finally. “Did you know Mr. Mackay well?”
“Yes, of course. Not well, as you put it. But of course I knew him. He was staff.”
“He had only been here a few months?”
“Six weeks, two days.” The owl eyes blinked. “He had worked here in the early nineties, before moving on to Numberland Power. There were then a series of jobs of increasing importance. His wife wanted to return to the area, I believe, because they were due to have a child and she wanted to be near friends and family. He was very qualified.”
“I’d like a look at his resume, if that is possible.”
“What is this, Inspector? I read that his wife shot him.”
“We try not to draw hasty conclusions.” Gorrie rose, but then softened his tone, thinking to add to the manager’s willingness to cooperate. “The evidence leans in that direction, certainly. But we must make our inquiries. We have our procedures, as you do.”
Horace nodded almost sympathetically.
“I’d like to speak to some of his workmates,” said Gorrie.
“That can be arranged.” Horace pushed a button on his speakerphone. The woman who had shown Gorrie here reappeared. “Krista will assist you with whatever you need.”
The deceased’s staff members had little information about Mackay, responding to Gorrie’s suggestions that he might have had a randy appetite with shrugs rather than winks. His secretary, however, seemed to have formed a mild attachment. Tora Grant called her boss “charming” and “very able,” but as Gorrie continued with his questions, her answers dribbled down to bare yeses and noes. Finally, the inspector put it to her directly.
“Did you have sex with him?”
Her face turned so red it could have been mistaken for a traffic light.
She started to say something, but quickly stopped. Gorrie waited a bit before gently prompting. “He seemed quite an attractive man.”
“A hug ’n a kiss, a little flirting ’s all we ever did.” She took a hard breath, which made it seem to the inspector that she was lying. “I dina’, but might have, I’ll admit it.”
Her skin color returned to normal with the admission. She looked slightly angry, but gave no hint that she was going to cry, or say anything else. Gorrie waited a moment, then fell back to a few routine questions, circling around.
“Did you know if he had a gun?” he asked.
“Never heard.”
“Was he acting strange in the past week or so?”
“Not so’s I could tell.”
“Meet his wife?”
“Ne’er. Ne’er. Not.”
“Very definitive on that.” Gorrie made a show of folding his notebook away, a well-practiced trick—he was setting up to lob the seemingly casual question on the way out the door. “If anything occurs to you, please call me,” he said, handing over a card.
“Yes.”
He took a step, then canted his head to the side as if inspiration had just beamed in from Scotland Yard. “Anyone else?”
“Else?”
“Do you know of other girlfriends?”
She turned scarlet again. “I—”
The secretary had overheard several conversations, as it turned out, but one woman in particular stood out, Cardha Duff. And she should stand out, Gorrie decided when he saw the department phone records: Mr. Mackay had called her two or three times a day for the past three weeks.
From the time Cardha Duff was a young girl, she had hated drugs of all kinds, even aspirin. And yet now at the age of twenty-six, she needed drugs to survive—to be precise, 150 milligrams of Synthroid every day. Cardha Duff needed to take this drug because her body no longer manufactured thyroid hormones, due to the fact that she no longer had a thyroid.
The doctors had removed it six weeks before, after discovering a gray, roundish mass on the right anterior lobe. The mass, about the size of an old farthing, proved to be cancerous; the lab report classified it as medulary thyroid carcinoma, a relatively rare form of cancer that was often hereditary and more often caused by radiation. The origin in her case was not known; she hadn’t bothered taking the genetic test because she had no siblings or offspring to warn and decided, quite sensibly, that the cause made little difference to her. There was no treatment or cure beyond surgery. Her prognosis could be estimated from the two different survival charts included with the material she received while preparing for surgery. Depending on which graph one preferred to consult, either 78 or 91 percent of patients in similar circumstances lived five years after the discovery of their disease; ten-year survival was either 61 or 75 percent. Given her young age, Cardha was more likely to fall in the positive end of either curve; there was much reason for optimism. But numbers and percentages told you nothing about your future, and much less about yourself. They told you nothing about fear, and failed miserably to track the daily ironies of “getting on with things,” as the pamphlets implored.
Such as the daily irony of the small blue pill. Without it, she became depressed and couldn’t concentrate. Taking it made her head buzz, but forget to take it and she felt as if her skin were made of tissue paper. She slid a pill out from the bottle and pressed it onto her tongue, washing it down with two sips of grapefruit juice.
Cardha had barely swallowed when she sneezed. It was a scratchy sort of sneeze, the kind that presaged a cold.
Not what she needed this week. She had a job interview tomorrow at the Playhouse. It was a small position as assistant house manager, but she wanted it badly, part of her campaign for a new start, a fresh go, propelled by her cancer and the realization that she might very well die soon.
The phone rang. As Cardha reached for it she had a premonition that it was about Ed and his wife, the ghastly murderess. So she wasn’t surprised when the inspector introduced himself.
“Of course, Inspector Gorrie, I’ll tell you everything I know,�
�� she said. “I have a doctor’s appointment in a half hour. Could you stop by after that?”
The inspector consulted his appointment book. He had a few other matters to attend to. First thing tomorrow morning?
Before the operation, she would have agreed, risking the job interview or even rearranging her plans to meet the inspector. But now she felt stubborn—nothing, not even Ed Mackay, God rest his soul but damn him at the same time, would take her off course.
“The next day perhaps?” she asked.
The inspector agreed and rang off after receiving directions.
Cardha sneezed again. She hated drugs, but she’d have to get something for her cold. She poured another glass of juice, lost track of herself for a moment—had she taken the thyroid pill or not?
Cardha decided that she had, and resolved to get one of those multicompartment pillboxes with the days of the week inscribed outside. Then she put up her tea and went to see if the morning paper had arrived.
Amid the long clutter of innuendo spewed by Christine Gibbon about Ed Mackay’s sins were the names of a few locales where his sinning took place. She was only slightly more selective than the telephone book, but here at least DC Andrews had done a good job narrowing down the list. He had already visited six of the establishments, returning with nothing to report. Inspector Gorrie took the last three himself, visiting them in succession after lunch.
The verdict at all three was similar: “An eye for the lasses” or “a real oinker,” depending on whether he’d bought rounds lately.
At Lion’s Bridge the owner winced as they were speaking, seeing a customer come in. Gorrie immediately guessed the reason.
“Cuckold?” he said.
“I wouldn’t, uh, put it that way,” said the owner, who also worked as bartender during the day. Gorrie asked a few more perfunctory questions, then went over to see the party in question.