The Snow Tiger / Night of Error

by Bagley, Desmond

  ‘Pretty good,’ I said. ‘I did a lot of work off south-west Europe about four years ago and I was based in Spain. I took the trouble to learn the language – I have a flair for them.’

  The doctor tied a neat knot in the bandage round my arm and said, ‘That’ll hold it, but try not to use the arm for a while.’ He packed his bag and went out.

  I sat up and looked about the flat – it was like a field dressing station in a blitzed area. I was stripped to the waist with a bandaged arm and Geordie sported a natty bandage on his little finger. He was drinking tea and he held out his finger like a charlady at a garden party.

  The flat was a wreck. What hadn’t been broken by the burglars had been smashed during the fight. A chair with no legs lay in the corner and broken glass from the front of my bookcase littered the carpet. A couple of uniformed constables stood stolidly in the corners and a plain clothes man was blowing powder about the place with an insufflator.

  The Inspector said, ‘Once again – how many of them were there?

  Geordie said, ‘I had two on my hands at one time.’

  ‘I had a go at two,’ I said. ‘But I think that one of them had a bash at Geordie first. It’s difficult to say – it happened so fast.’

  ‘This man you heard – did he say “knife” or “knives”?’

  I thought about that. ‘He said “knives”.’

  The Inspector said, ‘Then there were more than two of them.’

  Geordie said unexpectedly, ‘There were four.’

  The Inspector looked at him with raised eyebrows.

  ‘I saw three men in the car that passed us. One driving and two getting in in a hurry. With one dead in the alley – that makes four.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ said the Inspector. ‘They would have one man in the car. Tell me, how did you come to get shot?’

  A smile touched Geordie’s lips. ‘How does anyone get shot? With a gun.’ The Inspector recognized a touch of overexcitement and said dryly, ‘I mean, what were the circumstances?’

  ‘Well, I chased the little bastard down the stairs and damn nearly caught him in the foyer. He saw he was going to be copped so he turned and let me have it. I hadn’t reached him yet. I was so surprised I sat down – then I saw all the blood.’

  ‘You say he was little?’

  ‘That he was. A little squirt of not more than five foot four.’

  ‘So two men went down the stairs, there was one in the car – and one went over the fire escape,’ the Inspector summarized. He had a blunt, square face with watchful grey eyes which he suddenly turned on me like gimlets. ‘You say this man threw a suitcase into the alley.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘We haven’t found it, Mr Trevelyan.’

  I said, ‘The others must have picked it up. That’s when they nearly ran us down.’

  He said softly, ‘How did they know it was there?’

  ‘I don’t know. They may have seen it coming over. I guess the car was parked in the alley waiting for the others to come down that way.’

  He nodded. ‘What was in the suitcase – do you know?’

  I glanced across at Geordie who looked back at me expressionlessly. I said, ‘Some stuff belonging to my brother.’

  ‘What kind of – er – stuff?’

  ‘Clothing, books – geological samples.’

  The Inspector sighed. ‘Anything important or valuable?’

  I shook my head. ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘What about the samples?’

  I said, ‘I only saw the specimens briefly. They appeared to be manganese nodules of the type which is often to be found on the ocean bed. They’re very common, you know.’

  ‘And valuable?’ he persisted.

  ‘I don’t think that anyone with knowledge of them would regard them as valuable,’ I said. ‘I suppose they might be if they were generally accessible, but it’s too hard to get at them through two or three miles of water.’

  The Inspector seemed at a loss. ‘How do you think your brother will regard the loss of those specimens, and his other things?’

  ‘He’s dead,’ I said.

  The Inspector sharpened his attention. ‘Oh? When did he die?’

  ‘About four months ago – in the Pacific.’

  He looked at me closely and I went on, ‘My brother, Mark, was an oceanographer like myself. He died of appendicitis a few months ago and I’ve just received his effects today. As for the specimens I would say they were souvenirs of the IGY survey in which he was engaged. As a scientist he would naturally be interested in them.’

  ‘Um,’ said the Inspector. ‘Is there anything else missing, Mr Trevelyan?’

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  Geordie clattered his cup. ‘I think we were too quick for them,’ he said. ‘They thought they were on to a good thing, but we didn’t give them enough time. So one of them grabbed the first thing he saw and tried to make a getaway.’

  I carefully didn’t mention that the case had been hidden under my bed.

  The Inspector looked at Geordie with something approaching contempt. ‘This isn’t an ordinary burglary,’ he said. ‘Your explanation doesn’t account for the fact that they went to a lot of trouble to retrieve the suitcase, or why they used so many weapons.’ He turned to me. ‘Have you any enemies in Spain?’

  I shrugged. ‘I shouldn’t think so.’

  He pursed his lips. ‘All right, Mr Trevelyan, let’s go back to the beginning again. Let’s start when you say you first saw the light on in your flat …’

  It was after three a.m. before we got rid of the police, and they were back again next morning, to recheck the premises and to hear the whole tale yet again. The Inspector wasn’t satisfied but neither he nor any of his colleagues could pin down what was wrong. Come to that – neither could I! It was a great way to start my leave. His last word to me that morning was, ‘There’s been a fatality here, Mr Trevelyan, and that’s a very serious matter. I shall expect both of you to hold yourselves in readiness for the inquest. You are not under arrest,’ he added in such a way as to make me feel that I was. He strode out of the flat with his myrmidons trailing behind.

  ‘In other words – don’t leave town,’ I said. ‘There goes a very unhappy policeman.’

  Geordie said, ‘He’ll be burning up the wires looking for an expert on manganese nodules. He thinks there’s something fishy there.’

  ‘By God, so do I! But he won’t find much. He’ll phone the Institute of course, and speak to Jarvis or some other big noise and get exactly the same story I told him.’

  I got up, went into the kitchen and got a couple of bottles of beer from the refrigerator and took them back into the living room. Geordie eyed them and said, ‘You have some good ideas, sometimes. Tell me, these nodules – are they really valueless?’

  ‘I told the coppers the plain truth,’ I said. ‘But Mark seemed to have some curious ideas about nodule formation – still, the notebooks are gone and I can’t check up on his theories without them.’

  Then suddenly I remembered something. ‘Wait a minute,’ I said and went into the bedroom. Sure enough, there it was – the little leather-bound diary, still lying on my dressing-table. The police would have had no reason to think it wasn’t mine, and hadn’t touched it.

  I went back and tossed it to Geordie. ‘They didn’t get that. I meant to tell you – I found it in a pocket of one of Mark’s suits. What do you make of it?’

  He opened the book with interest but I watched the enthusiasm seep out of him as he scanned the pages. ‘What the hell!’

  ‘That’s Mark’s patent Pitman variation,’ I said. ‘I doubt if old Isaac himself could make anything of it.’

  ‘What are all the drawings?’

  ‘Mark was an inveterate doodler,’ I said. ‘You’d have to apply psychological theory to make anything of those.’

  I sat mulling over the events of the previous day, trying to piece them together.

  ‘Geordie, listen to this,’ I said.
‘Mark dies, and Norgaard, his colleague, disappears. Jarvis keeps his ear close to the ground and knows all the gossip of the profession, and if he says he hasn’t heard anything of Norgaard then it’s unlikely that anyone else has either.’ I held up a finger. ‘That’s one thing.’

  ‘Do you know anything about Norgaard?’

  ‘Only that he’s one of us oceanographers. He’s a Swede, but he was on an American survey ship during the IGY. I lost sight of him after that; a lot of comradeship went for a bust when the operation closed down.’

  ‘What’s his speciality?’

  ‘Ocean currents. He’s one of those geniuses who can dredge up a bit of water and tell you which way it was flowing a million years ago last Wednesday. I don’t think there’s a name for his line yet, so I’ll call it paleoaquaology – there’s a mouthful for you.’

  Geordie raised his eyebrows. ‘Can they really do that kind of thing?’

  I grinned. ‘They’d like you to believe so, and I’ve no reason to doubt it. But to my mind there’s a hell of a lot of theory balancing uneasily on too few facts. My line is different – I analyse what I’m given and if anyone wants to build any whacky theories on what I tell ’em, that’s their affair.’

  ‘And Mark was like yourself – an analytical chemist. Why would he team up with Norgaard? They don’t seem to have anything in common.’

  I said slowly, ‘I don’t know; I really don’t know.’ I was thinking of the highly unlikely theory indicated in Mark’s missing notebooks.

  ‘All right,’ Geordie said. ‘Norgaard’s disappeared – you think. What else have you got?’

  ‘The next thing is Kane. The whole thing is too damn pat. Kane turns up and we have a burglary. He knew the stuff was coming – I told him.’

  Geordie chuckled. ‘And how do you tie in the four Spanish burglars with Kane? Speaking as a non-theoreticist, that is?’

  ‘I’m damned if I know. There’s something odd about that too. I couldn’t place the accent; it was one I’ve never heard before.’

  ‘You don’t know them all,’ said Geordie. ‘You’d have to be born Spanish to be that good.’

  ‘True.’ There was a long silence while I marshalled my thoughts. ‘I wish I could get hold of Kane.’

  ‘You think there’s something odd about him, don’t you?’

  ‘I do. But I don’t know what it is. I’ve been trying to bring it to the surface ever since I saw him.’

  ‘Mike, I think this is all a lot of nonsense,’ Geordie said decisively. ‘I think your imagination is working overtime. You’ve had a shock about Mark’s death and another over the burglary – so have I, come to that. But I don’t think Norgaard has mysteriously disappeared; I think he’s probably sitting somewhere writing a thesis on prehistoric water. As for Kane, you’ve got nothing but a blind hunch. But I’ll tell you what I’ll do. If Kane is a seaman he’ll probably be down somewhere in dockland, and if you want him that bad I’ll put my boys on to nosing around a bit. It’s a pretty hopeless chance but it’s all I can do.’

  ‘Thanks, Geordie,’ I said. ‘Meantime, I’d better ring Helen and tell her I’ve been burgled. She’s not going to like hearing that Mark’s stuff is gone but there’s no hope for it. I can only play it down, tell her it was all worthless anyway.’

  ‘Are you going to pass on the notebook to her?’

  I shook my head thoughtfully. ‘What notebook? As far as she’s concerned, it was all stolen. She could never make anything of that stuff of Mark’s – but maybe I can.’

  V

  I had nightmares that night.

  I dreamed of a lovely Pacific island with white beaches and waving palm fronds where I wandered quite happily until I became aware that the sky was darkening and a cold, icy wind had arisen. I started to run but my feet slipped in the soft sand and I made no progress. And I knew what I was running from.

  He caught me at last with my back to a palm trunk, and came nearer and nearer, brandishing a rusty kitchen knife. I knew it was the Dutch doctor, although he was screaming in Spanish, ‘Emplead cuchillo – cuchillo – cuchillo!’

  He was drunk and sweaty-faced and as he came nearer I felt powerless to move and I knew he was going to stick me with the knife. At last his face was close to mine and I could see the individual beads of sweat on his shiny forehead and his lean dark face. It was the face of Kane. He drew back his arm and struck with the knife right into my guts.

  I woke with a yell.

  I was breathing deeply, taking in great gulps of air, and I could feel a slick film of sweat all over my body. The knife-scratch in my arm was aching. And I knew at last what was wrong with Kane’s story.

  The bedroom door opened and Geordie said in a low voice, ‘What the devil’s going on?’

  I said, ‘Come in, Geordie; I’m all right – just a nightmare.’

  I switched on the bedside light and Geordie said, ‘You gave me a hell of a fright, Mike.’

  ‘I gave myself a hell of a fright,’ I said and lit a cigarette. ‘But I discovered something – or remembered something.’

  ‘What?’

  I tapped Geordie emphatically on the chest with my forefinger. ‘Mark had his appendix out years ago.’

  Geordie looked startled. ‘But the death certificate …’

  ‘I don’t know anything about the death certificate. I haven’t seen it yet, so I don’t know if it’s a fake. But I know that Mr Bloody Kane is a fake.’

  ‘Are you sure about this?’

  ‘I still know the doctor who operated on Mark. I’ll give him a ring and check on it – but I’m sure.’

  ‘Perhaps this Dutch doctor made a mistake,’ offered Geordie.

  ‘He’d be a damned good doctor who could take out an appendix that wasn’t there,’ I said acidly. ‘Doctors can’t make mistakes like that.’

  ‘Not unless he was covering up. Lots of doctors bury their mistakes.’

  ‘You mean he was incompetent?’ I thought about that, then shook my head decisively. ‘No, Geordie, that won’t wash. He’d see the old operation scar the moment he made his examination, and he’d know the appendix had already been removed. He wouldn’t stick his neck out by signing a certificate that could be so easily disproved – no one is as incompetent as that.’

  ‘Aye. If he wanted to cover up he’d put down the cause of death as fever or something like that – something you couldn’t prove one way or another. But we don’t know what he put on the certificate.’

  ‘We’ll soon find out. They sent it to Helen. And I want to find Kane more than ever – I want to nail that lying bastard.’

  ‘We’ll do our best,’ said Geordie. He didn’t sound too hopeful.

  TWO

  I had no more dreams that night, but slept heavily and late. It was Geordie who woke me by shaking my shoulder – and incidentally hurting my arm once again. I groaned and turned away, but he persisted until I opened my eyes. ‘You’re wanted on the phone,’ he said. ‘It’s the Institute.’

  I put on my dressing gown and was still thick-headed with sleep when I lifted the receiver. It was young Simms. ‘Dr Trevelyan, I’ve taken over your old office while you’re away and you’ve left something behind. I don’t know if it’s valuable or if you want it at all …’

  I mumbled, ‘What is it?’

  ‘A manganese nodule.’

  I was jolted wide awake. ‘Where did you find it?’

  ‘I didn’t. One of the cleaners found it under your desk and gave it to me. What should I do with it?’

  ‘Stick tight to it. I’ll pick it up this morning. It’s got some – relation to work I’m engaged on. Thanks for calling.’

  I turned to Geordie. ‘All is not lost,’ I said, ‘we’ve got a nodule. You dropped some on the floor of my office, remember, and you left one under the desk.’

  ‘I don’t see what all the fuss is about. All along you’ve been insisting that the damn things are worthless. What’s so exciting about this one?’

  I said, ‘The
re are too many mysteries connected with this particular lot to suit me. I’m going to take a closer look at this one.’

  As I breakfasted on a cigarette and a cup of strong coffee I rang Helen and asked her to read out Mark’s death certificate. It was in French, of course, and she had some difficulties over the hand-written parts but we got it sorted out. I put down the phone and said to Geordie, ‘Now I want to talk to that doctor as well as Kane.’ I felt full of anger and frustration.

  ‘What was the cause of death?’

  ‘Peritonitis following an appendectomy. And that’s impossible. The doctor’s name is Hans Schouten. It was signed in Tanakabu, in the Tuamotus.’

  ‘He’s a hell of a long way from here.’

  ‘But Kane isn’t. Do your damndest to find him, Geordie.’

  Geordie sighed. ‘I’ll do my best, but this is a bloody big city, and no one but you and Helen can identify him for sure.’

  I dressed and drove down to the Institute, retrieved the nodule from Simms and then went down to the laboratories – I was going to analyse this lump of rock down to the last trace elements. First I photographed it in colour from several angles and took a casting of it in latex – that took care of the external record. Then I cut it in half with a diamond saw. Not entirely unexpectedly, in the centre was the white bone of a shark’s tooth, also neatly cut in two.

  One of the pieces I put in the rock mill and, while it was being ground to the consistency of fine flour, I polished and etched the flat surface of the other piece. Then the real work began. By early afternoon everything was well under way and luckily I had had the place almost to myself the whole time, but then Jarvis walked in. He was surprised to see me.

  ‘You’re supposed to be on leave, Mike. What’s all this?’

  He looked at the set-up on the bench. I had no worries about that – I could have been analysing anything, and the identifiable half-rock was out of sight. I said lightly, ‘Oh, just some homework I promised I’d do when I had the chance.’

  He looked at me out of the corner of his eye. ‘What have you been up to, young feller? Saw something about you in yesterday’s press, didn’t I? And I had a chap in from Scotland Yard asking questions about you – and about manganese nodules. And he said you’d killed someone?’