Bonereapers

by Jeanne Matthews

  Dinah wasn’t entitled to an answer, but she couldn’t resist asking. “Aagaard said that Maks was in love with you. Will you go back to him now?”

  “Why not? If you believe Inge, I’ve already ruined his life. Inge would call herself an objective moralist, but she’s the worst kind of romantic. She’s always looking for a villain to blame. She underestimates the hero’s willingness to ruin his own life, often for something that was never real.” She laughed. “Of course the same is true for the heroine.”

  Maks reappeared in the doorway. “Rika? What do you want me to do? That tosk is threatening to have us arrested for false imprisonment. I can’t keep him shut up in the pantry for much longer.”

  Dinah said, “Inspector Ramberg has gone to Barentsburg to search for you, Erika. Even if you don’t go back to the States with Colt and the others, you’ll have to talk to the police.”

  “You’re quite right.” She stood up and dusted herself off. Her voice was suddenly cool and assured, the voice of a senator’s wife, unfazed by wine. She wrapped a thick rag around her hand, lifted the lid on the stove by its cast-iron handle, and added a few chunks of coal from a metal bucket. “Invite Mr. Aagaard to come in and join us by the fire, Maks. He must have a cell phone. He can call the police for us and we can sing a few of our golden oldies for him while we wait for them to arrive. I’m sure that Dinah would rather return to town in a police car than a snøscooter.”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Thor and Sergeant Lyby manifested anger in different ways. Whereas Thor maintained an icy and forbidding façade, Sergeant Lyby showed a more volatile side. Her questions to Dinah came barbed and freighted with prejudice. Dinah would have liked to believe that her prejudice stemmed, in part, from sexual jealousy. Her baby-blues kept drifting behind her to Thor, who stood stock-still and silent, as if staring out through a block of ice. He hadn’t exuded this much chill even when he learned that Brander Aagaard had duped him into making a pointless trip to Barentsburg to search for Erika. Dinah, who didn’t think she’d done anything illegal or wrong, repaid his coldness and Lyby’s prejudice, with the insolence they deserved.

  “I can’t cut a piece of meat, let alone whack somebody in the head with a five-pound dumbbell.” She pointed to her bandaged arm.

  “The bullet only grazed your arm,” said Sergeant Lyby. “The nurse at the hospital says it is a very minor injury.”

  “Nurse Vanya doesn’t have much empathy for other people’s pain. But I expect that even she would acknowledge that lifting over a hundred-pound woman onto the top bench of that sauna would rip out the stitches she so gently sewed.”

  Dinah gazed around the comfy and commodious Radisson conference room and took heart. At least she wasn’t undergoing questioning in some poorly-heated, depressing jail. In fact, there was so little crime in Longyearbyen that it had no jail. Only Aagaard had been formally arrested on a charge of interfering with police business. He was being held temporarily in Thor’s office. The rest of the “mistenkeligs” remained at large, somewhere in the hotel.

  Lyby’s pupils constricted. “Valerie Ives was not the only victim. Herr Eftevang was stabbed before you were injured.”

  “Eftevang had to be at least five-seven or eight,” retorted Dinah. “I’ll bet you’ve already concluded that the person who stabbed him was at least as tall, if not taller. I’m five-four and Erika’s maybe an inch taller. The killer had to have been a man.”

  Thor didn’t bat an eye.

  Lyby’s pupils constricted to pinholes. “Inspector Ramberg has informed me that you withheld important information regarding Mrs. Sheridan when he questioned you earlier. Are you withholding information now?”

  “No, I am not. But Mrs. Sheridan is available for you to question when you get tired of haranguing me.”

  “Norwegians do not tire easily, Ms. Pelerin. Now, will you tell us once more what Mrs. Sheridan told you?”

  It was up to Erika whether to divulge her quest for her long-lost daughter, but Dinah saw no reason to withhold anything else. “Mrs. Sheridan thinks that Jake Mahler murdered Eftevang.”

  “And did she say why?”

  “Other than her personal dislike, she gave no reason.”

  “Do you think Mahler killed Eftevang?” Thor’s voice made her jump.

  “I don’t know. But before I discovered Valerie’s body this morning, he and his bodyguards were searching Valerie’s room looking for documents relating to Myzandia. Mahler was angry. He blamed her for losing the e-mail from Sheridan saying that he planned to take care of the Eftevang problem, or words to that effect.”

  “How do you know what that e-mail says?” piped Lyby.

  “Colt Sheridan told me. Inspector Ramberg must have showed it to him.”

  “And how,” asked Lyby, “did Mr. Mahler know about it?”

  “I don’t know. But Valerie knew about it before it turned up in Jorgen’s room. She showed it to Sheridan and I overheard her telling Mahler about it the day we toured the seed vault.”

  “What did Mahler say about it when you spoke with him this morning?”

  Dinah thought back to Mahler’s words with a surge of disgust. “He said if he saw her Judas face again, he’d wring her neck. He seemed less bothered that Sheridan may have murdered a man than that Valerie had let the evidence out of her keeping.”

  Lyby consulted her notes. “Senator Keyes says that Ms. Ives suspected you of secretly working for one of Sheridan’s rivals and perpetrating dirty tricks against Sheridan’s campaign. Is it true?”

  “No.”

  “You didn’t lure Herr Eftevang to Longyearbyen to protest Tillcorp?”

  “No.”

  With a hesitant glance back to Thor, the sergeant terminated the questioning. The two of them conferred briefly and Lyby advised Dinah not to leave the hotel again without permission.

  “From whom?” asked Dinah, just to smart off.

  Thor gave her an unreadable look and left without deigning to answer. Dinah sidestepped Lyby and followed him out the door. “Inspector Ramberg. A moment of your time, please.”

  He stopped and turned around.

  “Why are you treating me like a suspect, Thor? You know I didn’t murder either of those people.”

  “I know it.”

  “Then why? And why the cold shoulder?”

  “By socializing with you, I’ve compromised the investigation. Compromised my job, perhaps. Senator Keyes has spoken to the governor. Sergeant Lyby is now the lead investigator. It’s a cliché in the TV cop shows. The cop gets in trouble for becoming personally involved with a civilian.” His mouth quirked up on one side as if he were enjoying a mordant joke at his own expense. “You’d already guessed that I’ve never worked on a murder case before, hadn’t you?”

  She hadn’t. Her face must have showed her surprise.

  He laughed. “The only killer I’ve ever brought down was a polar bear.”

  ***

  The lobby was packed with the British tourists who’d arrived that morning. They all had drinks in hand and their revelry seemed to be building toward a drunken Saturnalia. Dinah had one of those “time out of joint” sensations. Had it been only twelve hours ago that she found Valerie’s body? It seemed ages ago. And tonight people would be swilling cocktails and wishing one another a happy New Year one floor above where Valerie had been bludgeoned. Dinah couldn’t blame the Radisson for keeping the news of an in-house murder quiet, but it seemed heartless nevertheless.

  She weaved her way through the crowd to the Barentz Pub, hoping to find an empty table. It was past eight o’clock and she hadn’t eaten anything since her boiled egg and toast at frokost. She felt hollow as a gourd. A live band played soft rock in the corner of the room, the music barely audible above the hubbub, and every table in the restaurant appeared to be taken.

 
It was the same story next door in the hotel’s elegant Nansen Brasserie. To her amazement, a smiling Herr Dybdahl—his eye patch gone—was yukking it up at a large table with Jake Mahler and a stout woman with a tight blond bun. Mrs. Dybdahl, Dinah assumed. If there had been animosity between the two men, as Thor had thought, it seemed to be bygones now. From the semblance of bonhomie, Dinah could only surmise that those peasant farmers working on or near Norwegian plantations in Africa would soon be getting a “nudge” as to what seeds to plant next season. Evidently, Sheridan’s troubles hadn’t been as great a setback to Tillcorp’s plans as Mahler had feared and Valerie’s murder seemed not to have dimmed anyone’s spirits.

  Dinah’s stomach growled. If all of the merrymakers in the lobby were waiting for a table, she’d never get anything to eat. And the kitchen was probably too busy to bother with room service. She wished Thor had asked her to join him for New Year’s Eve at Løssluppen Hole or somewhere away from the madding crowd. But he obviously felt the need to distance himself from her and rightly so. She faulted herself for the spot he was in. She shouldn’t have let anyone see them together. She definitely shouldn’t have let him kiss her, although an encore would be highly enjoyable tonight around midnight. Again, she felt a twinge of guilt about Jon. It wasn’t cricket to switch one’s feelings from one man to another this abruptly. It was a character flaw, the upshot of her fickle genes.

  Her stomach growled more insistently. Where was she going to get something to eat? Lyby had ordered her not to leave the hotel, but what could she do about it? It wasn’t as if she could throw her in the pokey and her absence for a couple of hours wouldn’t be noticed with all this carousing going on. The thought of venturing outside again was discouraging. The pea jacket wouldn’t keep her warm over many blocks, but she might make it as far as the Beached Whale without freezing. The Whale served soups, hot sandwiches and cheese plates. She’d seen a menu posted in the window. And in spite of the recent reminder of the dangers of alcohol, she needed a drink. Valerie’s dead face and blood-matted hair came back to her every time she closed her eyes. She thought about what Thor had said about Erika. She had the grace to ask if Eftevang had a wife. Dinah hadn’t had the grace to think about Valerie’s family or the people who would mourn for her until now.

  Back in her room, she bundled herself into all the usual outdoor accoutrement. She was getting the hang of “taking the air” in Longyearbyen. She returned to the foyer, booted up, and ducked out of the hotel into a howling wind and a horizontal snow. Passing through doors in this part of the world was like inhaling fire. She cupped her hands over her nose, took one moist, warming breath, and plodded off in the direction of the pub.

  The streets were empty, the shops and businesses closed. The feeble street lights made no dent in the gloom. The darkness felt palpable, dense as liquid asphalt. There was even a tang of asphalt in the air, probably smoke from the power station. She’d read that Longyearbyen, with its numerous research centers set up to preserve the Arctic environment and slow climate change, had the only coal-fired power plant in Norway. The pollution from the smokestack was described as a blight on the landscape when the sun shone. However ugly it might be, Dinah would rather see the source of the smell. In this infernal darkness, things not seen conveyed a sense of the sinister.

  The light in the front window of the Beached Whale signaled that it was open for business. She crossed the street and peered in the window. Two men sat in a booth near the back and another man in a long shearling vest and a battered Soviet army hat sat at the bar talking to the bartender. She darted a nervous look down the dark alley where Fritjoe Eftevang had been stabbed and went inside. There was no boot rack and no sign. She pulled off her cold weather trappings and seated herself in a booth facing the door. She took off her mittens and blew on her hands for a minute.

  The bartender came around the bar with a menu and handed it to her. He was a rawboned man with a ruddy complexion and a web of creases fanning out from the corners of his blue eyes. “British or American?”

  “American.”

  “Good. I ran out of gin an hour ago.”

  “Do you have something warm? A hot toddy?”

  “Will an Irish coffee do you?”

  “Perfect.”

  He turned to go and changed his mind. “The dead woman a friend of yours, was she?”

  “No. We met for the first time on the flight from Washington.”

  “Strange it happened here. Hasn’t been a murder in Longyearbyen since the Germans occupied Svalbard in the Second World War.”

  Dinah didn’t know whether to take that as a neutral comment on local history or an indictment of the American propensity to violence. She trotted out a lame cliché. “News travels fast around here. How did you hear about the murder?”

  “It’s a short grapevine.” He went back behind the bar and picked up his conversation with the man in the Soviet hat. Their accents sounded more Russian than Norwegian, but they were speaking in English.

  Dinah studied the menu and decided to pass on the brine-cured herring with raw onions, the whale in pepper sauce, and the seal stew. A bowl of tomato soup and a simple grilled cheese sandwich seemed to be the most comforting foods on offer.

  The bartender returned with her drink and she ordered. Before he got away, she asked, “Did you know the man who was murdered behind the pub? Mr. Eftevang?”

  “For about two hours. He sat where you’re sitting, drinking aquavit and beer and spouting about hybrid corn they feed to livestock in some place in Africa and the price in some foreign money I’d never heard of. It was an off night or my customers would have told him to shut up and drink.”

  “Did anyone sit with him or talk privately with him?”

  “Reporter asked me that. Thor, too. You know our policeman?”

  “Yes.”

  “Like I told him, the man acted like he was expecting somebody who never showed up. Then about ten o’clock, he paid the check and left.”

  “Tobejas! Another one!” The man in the Soviet hat held up an empty beer mug.

  The bartender stuck his order pad in his belt and went back to the bar. Dinah sipped her Irish coffee and wished she’d brought a book with her. Not the book of Norse myths. Something lighter, more hopeful and escapist. In hindsight, it would have been better to hang around the Radisson even if she had to go hungry. It was a bad night to be alone.

  The door flew open and a gust of icy wind blew her hair back. A masked person in a puffy down overcoat the size of a blimp stepped inside.

  “O…M…G!” He pulled off his cap and his ski mask and the cowlick spiked up. “Great minds think alike.”

  “Tipton.” For the first time in too long ago to remember, Dinah laughed. “Did you come for supper?”

  “There’s a two hour wait at the Radisson and I’m famished.” He doffed his coat and flung himself into the seat across from her. “What a day, huh?”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Without the thickly-padded coat, Tipton looked like a gangly twelve-year-old again. He sat down and ran his eyes over the menu. The bartender returned to the table and he ordered a fish sandwich, a green salad with radishes, scallions, and cucumbers, and a beer. The beer surprised Dinah. She halfway expected the bartender to card him, but he didn’t. Like Lars at the Kantine, Tobejas didn’t seem persnickety about the rules and, after all, it was New Year’s Eve.

  After his beer was delivered, Tipton took a sip, wiped the foam off his lip, and turned his attention to Dinah. “You must be a bundle of nerves. How gruesome to look up and see a dead body. And then tearing off through the snow with that Aagaard bozo to find Erika. Ramberg should deputize you.”

  His friendliness surprised her. His idol, Whitney Keyes had accused her of being a mole for a rival campaign. She would have expected Tipton to take that as the gospel and shun her as a traitor, but he was al
l smiles and she was glad for the company. She said, “You seem well informed about the events of my day.”

  “Everybody has some tidbit of information. Whitney told me how you’d found Valerie and the police give away more than they should in their questioning. I don’t think they have a lot of experience investigating major crimes here in Norway. Of course, it’s pretty obvious now that Colt is the killer.”

  “I’d have thought you’d be defending him passionately and trying to salvage his candidacy.”

  “Oh, I would if all there was to it was a lot of idle gossip about a dead Norwegian protester and a pack of liberals squawking about his close relationship with Tillcorp. We could have rehabilitated Colt’s image within three or four news cycles. But now there’s a smoking gun. Can you believe he wrote that e-mail? But we hear it over and over again, killers are known for doing stupid things.”

  Dinah didn’t doubt that Sheridan was capable of doing stupid things, but sending that e-mail went beyond the pale. “He says his account was hacked and you and Valerie tried to figure how the hacker got through the firewall.”

  “Yes. Valerie believed the hacking story, which I think was a little naïve of her. I ran a virus scan and didn’t detect anything suspicious. The campaign’s technology security is absolutely first rate. Even if Valerie bought into Colt’s story, I can’t understand why she didn’t show the e-mail to the police as soon as she received it and let them decide. She’s a lawyer. Lawyers are supposed to be sticklers about evidence and the rule of law and that sort of thing. And Whitney was adamant from the start that we cooperate fully with the Norwegian police.”

  Dinah reined in her sarcasm, but Tipton was the naif if he hadn’t tumbled to Valerie’s pash for Sheridan. She said, “If Valerie didn’t believe that Sheridan wrote the e-mail or that he’d done the murder, she wouldn’t have done anything to jeopardize his campaign.”

  “If she’d been more forthcoming,” he said with a sniff of self-righteousness, “she might still be alive. Anyway, Colt’s campaign is all over but the postmortem now. Valerie’s murder and Erika’s carryings-on are already fodder for the media. I got a text an hour ago from our campaign spokesman and The New York Times is already in full gloat.”