Dread and Water

by Douglas Clark

  “We’re going to try, Doctor. But is it the mountains that claim them? Or is it some other agency? I know you can’t answer that one, but as I’ve said, we’re going to try to do so. We think our success will depend entirely on what sort of co-operation we get here in the Centre.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means people have got to talk to us. Tell us everything they know and then some, so’s we can fit it together to make sense. Then perhaps we’ll get to know why these valuable lives have been lost and—equally important—how they were lost.”

  “And when you do get to know why and how, what then?”

  “We can put a stop to whatever has caused it. For instance, Doctor, you were on that face or pitch or whatever it’s called when Doctor Silk fell. What happened?”

  “He fell.”

  “Now, now, Doctor, you know better than that. You conduct experiments, don’t you? You don’t just give the results. You make a note of every bit of apparatus you use, every step you take, every reading you make …”

  “From the beginning, Tom,” urged Toinquet. “Everything, right down to the colour of your socks.”

  Hawker put a hand to his brow, dug fingers into his eye-corners in an effort to remember and marshal the facts.

  “We were to make an easy climb.”

  “Your first?”

  “Yes. Stanley Silk had cajoled me into it. We stood at the bottom, among scree and loose rocks, and Stan gave me my instructions. I can remember him saying that it was a very easy first pitch, but it looked pretty fearsome to me. He laughed when I said so. Told me that if I wanted a final nervous pee, then was the time to have it, or if my mouth was dry, then was the time to have a last swig at the water bottle.”

  “And did you?”

  “What? Oh, yes. I went behind a rock—there were some of the women walkers nearby.”

  “Drink?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “What about Silk?”

  “He did the same. I can remember thinking that for an expert who wasn’t nervous at the thought of the climb he showed as much strain as I did. He joined me behind the rock and then had a good long gulp of water, and away we went.”

  “Roped together?”

  “Just like the book says you should be. He went first and I payed out. He was pretty quick and he kept calling out to me exactly what he was doing and where I’d find holds. He told me I should have no difficulty because the pitch had been climbed so many times before there were easily recognisable marks all the way up and all the loose earth and stones had been scrabbled out of the nicks and off the ledges so nothing should give way under my weight.”

  “How far up did he go before you started?”

  “About sixty feet, I think. He wanted a good spot because although it had only taken him a few minutes to get up there, he knew I’d take much longer and he wanted an easy wait.”

  “But you managed it eventually?”

  “Oh, yes. It was much easier than I’d feared it might be—due to Stan’s instructions and his hand on the rope, of course. Then, when I reached him, he led off again.”

  “Leaving you on the easy ledge he’d selected.”

  “He called it easy. I didn’t. I found it hell’s own delight just hanging on there. I hadn’t enough hands to cling tightly and pay out the rope.”

  “So what happened?”

  “He was making for a spot just about a hundred feet above us and slightly to our right. He said it was in the very easy class with nothing to test us except a very easy traverse about thirty feet up.”

  “He meant a move across the face of the climb?”

  “So little it wasn’t much more than a lean across, if you understand me. But he wanted to be sure he had enough rope and that I didn’t hamper him by not paying out as quickly as he liked—or at all. I told you I was clinging on like grim death.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Before setting off he pulled out as much rope as he felt he would need—to relieve me of the job.”

  “Enough to reach the traverse thirty feet up, or the ledge a hundred feet up?”

  “Whichever it was to have been, he made a mistake. Too much for the traverse, too little for the ledge. Anyhow, he didn’t think he needed to secure it before the traverse. He told me he would put something in—he was carrying channel pitons and bolts—on both sides of the traverse to make it easy for me.”

  “But he fell before he could rope on?”

  “He was left-handed, you see. And as I remember it, he leaned over to get a good grip out on his right and to leave his left hand free to fix the piton. He was in the act of doing it when he fell.”

  “You couldn’t hold him?”

  “I could have done, if he hadn’t had so much rope. I could have taken his weight somehow and held on, but he’d got about seventy feet looped behind him—more than the distance I was up from the scree and loose rocks. Before I could get in the slack he’d hit the bottom.”

  “How did he fall? Did his foot slip? Rock give way? Hand lose its hold?”

  “As far as I could see it was none of those. I have a dim recollection of him shaking his head, and I thought he must have got dust or earth on his face and was trying to shake it off.”

  “Did you call out to him?”

  “No. I thought it better not to. I didn’t want to distract him.”

  “How long did this head-shaking last?”

  “It seemed like an age at the time. Probably thirty or forty seconds.”

  “Did he then try to fix the piton?”

  “He certainly stretched out his left arm and he had the piton in his hand, but I got the impression that it was something of an act of desperation.”

  “Could you explain that a bit more fully, Doctor?”

  “Well, you know if you get soap in your eyes when washing, it hurts like hell. You shut your eyes tight, screw up your face and feel for the towel. You know you won’t get any relief until you do get the towel and clap it to your face and wipe away the suds.”

  “Something of that sort happened to Silk?”

  “I thought so. Mind you, I was looking almost vertically upwards, so I couldn’t really see his face. But I think he had his eyes shut and he was fumbling desperately to get the piton in before he sneezed or something like that. I felt he needed to place the piton and get a grip of it before he could breathe freely again.”

  “But he failed?”

  “He fell all of a piece. Every hold went together. No lingering, hanging on by one hand, fingers slipping. No scrabbling with the feet. He just came away like a sack of spuds. No warning to me. Nothing.”

  “Suicide, perhaps?”

  “Stanley Silk? Suicide? No, Inspector. Never.”

  “How long did all this take?”

  “From Silk leaving the ground to his falling? Less than forty minutes. About thirty-seven. It was all worked out at the time.”

  “And then you had to get down by yourself.”

  “I managed it. As I said, it was well marked and I’m big enough to reach holds a little too far out for some men.”

  “And when you got to the bottom you had to deal with Silk.”

  “Not directly. There was a sort of base camp there with one or two of our people around. They’d naturally gone to him when he fell. He was dead, I believe, when they reached him. By the time I got down somebody had set off to call an ambulance.”

  “Thank you, Dr Hawker. You’ve been a great help.”

  “I don’t see how.”

  Toinquet patted him on the arm. “All information is useful in an investigation, Tom. Even if it’s negative it can help to show that there is no common pattern in the three falls, for instance.”

  “Oh, in that case … no, thanks, I’ll not have another drink. I must get off home.”

  Chapter 3

  It was after nine o’clock by the time Masters had rounded up his team for a conference in his room. Brant and Hill fetched chairs from their o
wn rooms. The brown rep curtains were pulled together. Cigarettes and Masters’ pipe were lit. The air grew blue and then fetid. And they talked. Each reported—as near verbatim as makes no matter—to the others, so that all were informed. It was almost eleven when Brant, who had spoken last, finished.

  Masters filled and lit his pipe for the third time.

  “In view of the opinions expressed in the car on the way down here, I think you’ve all done a remarkably good job in a short space of time. While it’s too early to congratulate ourselves, I feel that if we stick to it at this rate, we could begin to get somewhere within the foreseeable future. Does anybody feel that I am being too optimistic?”

  “Yes,” said Green who was sprawled on the bed. “We could fill the Encyclopaedia Britannica with reports like this and still fail.”

  “Agreed. Without the vital spark to light the fire. But at any rate we’re gathering plenty of fuel.”

  Green gestured his assent. “We’ve found out that these boffins like to talk, and I didn’t expect that.”

  “It also shows they’ve got pretty good memories,” said Hill. “Not the absent-minded type.”

  “OK,” said Green. “So I said they would be. But let’s not start jumping with glee. We’ve got a bit of something to work on, but we’re still a long way from home. Anybody got a fag? I seem to have lost mine.”

  “Smoked them all, you mean,” said Brant, handing him a packet. “Keep it. You’ll not get any more before morning.”

  “Suspects,” said Masters. “Who have we got so far?”

  “You’re going to discuss them as suspects this early in the case, Chief?” asked Hill.

  “Why not? These aren’t cosh merchants, you know. Not Bovver Boys. Motive—other than pure thuggery—is going to be important. But it’s hidden. We’ll have to speculate to stumble on it.”

  “You reckon?” asked Green. “I mean, there’s old Widow Twankey out there as nervous as a half-set jelly, but I can’t see him as the murderer.”

  “Why not?” asked Brant.

  “I’d quite like him to be,” admitted Green. “But that’s because I’ve never taken a shine to him.”

  “More than that,” suggested Masters. “Positive dislike, I’d have said.”

  “You’re right. He’s mean. He always has been. Probably he’s a better Security buff because of it. I don’t know. But I do know he’s hiding something.…”

  “A lot of them may be,” interposed Hill.

  “Maybe, lad. But Widow’s Security. Almost one of us, not one of your snot-filled boffins. He should be co-operating at top level.”

  “If he isn’t, doesn’t that automatically make him suspect?”

  “Of being guilty of something? Sure.”

  “Put it this way,” said Hill. “If we’re up against a conspiracy …”

  “Oh, blimey!”

  “We could be. More than one of them in cahoots. Couldn’t Toinquet be an active member?”

  “More likely to be an accessory before or after,” said Masters. “Knows something rather than being an actual member of a conspiracy.”

  “Right, Chief. Either way he’d be guilty. If the DI is right—and there’s no reason to suppose he’s not—Toinquet’s holding out on us. The hallmark of the accessory—yes? Conspiracy of silence, if you like. But equally guilty.”

  “I told him we’d be leaning on him,” said Green.

  “You did what?”

  “Don’t sound so scandalised, Sergeant. I wanted to scare him.”

  “Into doing or saying something to give himself away?”

  “That’s right.”

  “That’s the … what d’you call it, Chief? … of how to interrogate witnesses—to frighten them.”

  “Antithesis? Agreed—at any time but this. I think the DI is entitled to put pressure on to a Security man where it would be unforgiveable in the case of other witnesses. And don’t forget the DI was not interrogating him officially—merely talking to him.”

  “And having put the shakes up him,” said Green, “we’ve now got to watch him like sailors watching a strip act. There’s no good getting him to give himself away and not being in the audience to see what he does.”

  “So he is definitely a suspect?” asked Brant.

  Masters nodded.

  “Who else, Chief?”

  “What about Crome?” asked Green. “Or is the big boss out of the running just because he is the big boss?”

  “Nobody’s above suspicion,” replied Masters. “It appears, as I’ve already told you, that the scandal of a triple murder investigation could do him a lot of harm politically and professionally, so on the principle that he has most to lose, one could suggest that he wouldn’t do anything as stupid as murder to jeopardise his career. But scientists of his calibre are people who weigh evidence just as much as we do. It is possible to suppose that Crome—faced with a choice of two evils—may have weighed the two factors one against the other and decided that murder was likely to be the lesser.”

  “I don’t get it,” said Hill.

  “Oh, come on now,” said Green. “Crome’s a top dog. Say he got to the top through doing some scientific research which he fudged but got accepted. Then there comes along a bright boyo who sees through Crome’s fudge and is prepared to blow the gaff. What’s Crome’s position? If he does nothing he’s shown up as a fraud and loses his job. But if the bright boyo can be disposed of before he can spill the beans, then Crome will still be Director and not a disgraced has-been.”

  “I see. But would he chop three of them?”

  “I don’t know, do I? But if that were the position, it could be that every so often the fudge would be discovered by another bright boyo. If so—three deaths.”

  “You mean it would go on for ever?”

  “Not necessarily—or Crome may think not. He could be working like hell to produce the real McCoy. Once he succeeds, he can turn round and apologise for making a mistake in the first project. Then he can add that it was a lucky mistake, after all, because it has led to this better discovery he has found. When that happens, he won’t have to knock off anybody else and he’ll be as safe as houses in his job. But the point of the argument is that he will have weighed the relative risks of committing murder against those of losing his reputation. And he has decided he is clever enough to get away with murder—as he has done. Nobody suspected him the first time or the second. So …” Green sat up and stubbed out his cigarette. “So, he had a third bash when the need arose. Unluckily for him, this time, Whitehall sticks its nose in.”

  “Is that what you had in mind, Chief?”

  “More or less. If needs be, I could support what the DI has said with a few more observations. Why didn’t Crome call us in off his own bat? Why didn’t he take some action after the second death? Why, despite protests from the Security man, did he insist on Toinquet being present at our first meeting? To protect him—under the guise of security—from saying things he shouldn’t? If it comes to that, why did Toinquet prefer not to stay? I find that odd. I’d have thought that normally he would have been agog to hear all that was to be said. But did he want to leave because he knew something he didn’t want to be surprised into revealing? Something about the Director? Why did Crome cut such an important meeting short? Was there some important matter he had to attend to before we could come across it? And so on, and so on.”

  Hill said, “It would make a nice case, Chief. But are you seriously suggesting that Crome may have acted in this way?”

  “Do you seriously suggest that we should overlook him?”

  “No. But that fairy story …”

  “I’m not asking you to accept it as told. Nor is the DI. He merely illustrated what I was attempting to convey, and that is that a cool, calculating brain may weigh two courses of action—one of which may be murder—and come to a conscious decision to avoid the one which promises immediate professional repercussions in the hope of gaining enough time to save the day in some other way.”<
br />
  “Right, Chief. Anybody else?”

  Brant said: “Gerald Newsom.”

  “Not your little girl scientist?” sneered Green.

  “Maybe. But not just yet, I think.”

  “Not even if she made up that story about that bet?”

  “Let’s try Newsom,” said Masters. “As I see him—after hearing your report—this Newsom chap appears to make a lot of hay with words which are apparently unsupported by thought. But Miss Dexter has warned us not to be fooled. She says there is hidden purpose in Newsom. So, Sergeant, you winkled out the story; now you can give us an opinion.”

  Brant flexed both arms. “Can I be as far-fetched as the DI, Chief?”

  “What’s good for the goose …”

  “Well then, Newsom is interested in astrology. Now that makes me think a bit. A pure scientist dabbling in predictions—and not even the pseudo-scientific side of prognostication …”

  “Meaning?” asked Green.

  “The real astrology buffs work pseudo-scientifically from carefully prepared charts. So even if the basis on which they work is a load of rubbish, at least they use some semblance of learning in producing their results. But Newsom is apparently trying to collate all the various daily paper forecasts. I can’t believe that even astrologers are very serious about those. I mean, think what is being offered. One in every twelve people has exactly the same forecast in any given paper. That’s bad enough. But there are scores of magazines and papers all producing entirely different forecasts supposedly covering each of those twelve groups for exactly the same times. I reckon that any scientist who’s trying to make sense of that lot is either a fool or he’s trying something on. And Newsom, by all reports, is no fool.”

  “Goody, goody,” said Green. “What’s he trying?”

  Masters interrupted. “Don’t forget he may be trying to show just how absurd is the widespread belief in what the stars foretell. That could be a worthwhile debunking project in his eyes.”