"If you can get there," I said.
He smiled. "Which is where you come in, my friend. In Godthaab they told me that Joe Martin was the most experienced pilot on the coast." He took out his wallet and produced a typewritten document which he passed across. "That's the necessary clearing certificate from the Ministry."
I examined it briefly and passed it back. "Have you considered that there might be a logical explanation for this whole thing?"
There was something in his eyes for a moment, a greenish glow that appeared like some warning signal then faded.
"I'm afraid I don't understand," he said politely.
"That this Marvin Gaunt was up to no good, that Kelso never really existed at all, except for the specific reason of getting that plane out of Grant Bay. That he was really Harrison all along."
"That's good," Desforge said. "That's damned good."
Vogel sighed. "Ingenious, but unfortunately it won't wash, Mr. Martin."
"Why not?"
"Because Jack Kelso was most certainly flesh and blood and the London and Universal Insurance Co. has the best reasons for remembering the fact. You see under the terms of Marvin Gaunt's policy, the pilot was also covered for the same death benefit."
"And you paid out?" Desforge said.
"Twenty-five thousand pounds," Vogel nodded. "To Mrs. Sarah Kelso, his widow. She's waiting in the bar now with my associate. Perhaps you gentlemen would like to meet her?"
CHAPTER SIX
The crowd in the bar, although exclusively male, was reasonably well-behaved. There were one or two of the more prosperous locals, some Danish engineers and surveyors who were on the coast to work on government building projects during the short summer season, and a handful of young officers from a Danish Navy corvette that was doing survey work on the coast that year.
As we pushed our way through, Sarah Kelso was the subject of more than one conversation and I didn't blame them. Sitting there at a booth in the corner in the half light of the shaded lamp that stood on the table, she looked hauntingly beautiful.
Her companion stood up as we approached and Vogel introduced him first: "This is Ralph Stratton, an aviation expert from our Claims Department. I thought it might be a good idea to bring an expert along."
Stratton was tall and lean with a neatly clipped moustache and the look of a typical ex-RAF type except for the eyes which had the same sort of shine that you get when light gleams on the edge of a cut-throat razor and which contrasted oddly with the slightly effeminate edge to his public school voice. He placed a hand as soft and boneless as any woman's briefly in mine and Vogel turned to Mrs. Kelso.
"I'd like you to meet Mr. Martin, my dear, the young man we were told about in Godthaab. I'm hoping he's going to help us."
"In a way Mr. Martin and I have already met," she said and held my hand for a long moment, the dark eyes full of anxiety. When she carried on, the soft, musical voice was charged with emotion. "I'm afraid the last three or four days have been something of a nightmare. None of this seems real at all."
There was a slight silence and Desforge said quietly, "Maybe I'd better see you later, Joe."
"Not at all." Vogel cut in quickly. "Mr. Jack Desforge, my dear. I'm sure you've no objection if he stays."
She stared up at Desforge in something close to bewilderment. "Now I know I'm dreaming."
He patted her hand gently. "Anything I can do--- anything at all. You just name it."
She held his hand for even longer than she'd held mine--- long enough to hook him good and hard, which was obvious from his face as we all sat down and Vogel snapped his fingers at a hovering waiter and ordered coffee. Desforge gave Sarah Kelso a cigarette and she leaned back against the padded wall of the booth, her eyes fixed on me.
"Mr. Vogel will have told you what all this is about, I suppose?"
"Except for one thing. I'm still not too clear why you should be here."
Vogel said: "I would have thought that was obvious, Mr. Martin. The whole point of our investigation is to determine the identity of the second man found in the wreck beyond reasonable doubt. Is he the mysterious Mr. Harrison, whoever he was--- and that has yet to be determined--- or Jack Kelso? It seems to me that Mrs. Kelso is the only person who can give an opinion on that point with any certainty."
"By going out there and viewing the body?" I said, and laughed out loud. "Considering Mrs. Kelso's vested interest in a positive identification, I must say you show a touching faith in human nature for a businessman, Mr. Vogel."
Surprisingly it was Desforge who reacted first. "That's a hell of a thing to say," he said angrily.
Sarah Kelso put a hand on his arm as if to hold him in check. "No, Mr. Desforge, your friend has made an obvious point. If that body is not my husband's then I am in a very difficult position. Mr. Vogel is well aware of that."
He leaned across the table and for a moment they might have been completely alone. "You know I'll do everything in my power to help you, my dear, but you must know also that my hands are tied."
She smiled gently and turned to me. "I have two young sons, Mr. Martin, did you know that?"
"No, I didn't, Mrs. Kelso."
"Then perhaps you'll realise now that there is more to this than the money--- much more. I must know if that man out there is my husband. I must know. Can you understand that?"
The soft eyes were filled with anxiety, one hand reaching out in a kind of desperate appeal to touch mine gently. She was good--- more than that. She was brilliant. For a moment she actually had me going along with her and I had to make a real effort to pull myself back to reality.
"Yes, I can understand that, Mrs. Kelso. I'm sorry."
"I had to inform Mrs. Kelso of what was going on," Vogel said. "She asked to come along and we were glad to have her. I should add that as well as a full physical description and photographs, she has also volunteered certain additional information as to identity which can only be confirmed on the spot. Under those circumstances I can't honestly see how she could get away with a deliberately false identification."
"Have you got a photograph with you?" I said.
He nodded to Stratton who produced a manilla file from a leather briefcase. He passed two photographs across. One was a straight portrait job in half-profile that looked as if it had been taken a year or two back and showed a reasonably handsome man in his late twenties with a strong jaw and a firm mouth. The other was more recent and showed him in flying gear standing beside a Piper Comanche. I think it was the face that had changed most. In the other picture he'd seemed pretty average, in this he looked like a man who'd decided that in the final analysis only the price tag was important.
I laid them down in front of Sarah Kelso. "So that's what he looked like?"
She stared at me, a slightly puzzled frown on her face. "I don't understand."
"Let me tell you about the ice-cap, Mrs. Kelso. What it's really like up there. To start with it's so cold that flesh can't putrefy. That means that as soon as life leaves it a body freezes so quickly that it's preserved indefinitely."
"But from the expedition report, I got the impression that the bodies were in an advanced state of decomposition," Vogel said quickly.
"There's only one thing living up there on top, Mr. Vogel," I said, "the Arctic Fox, and he's a scavenger as savage as any hyena."
I didn't need to elaborate. Sarah Kelso leaned back, real pain on her face as she closed her eyes for a moment. Now she opened them and there was an astonishing strength in her voice.
"It doesn't matter, Mr. Martin. Nothing matters except the knowing."
There was another heavy silence broken by Desforge. "For God's sake, Joe, what's got into you?"
"I just wanted to make sure everyone had got the facts straight, that's all." I turned to Vogel. "Now we all know where we are, we can get down to business. First of all I'll have to know where the wreck is."
Stratton produced a map from the briefcase and spread it across the table. The position had b
een marked not as a meaningless dot but by two cross bearings that had been neatly pencilled in by someone who knew his job.
"Can you guarantee this is accurate?" I demanded.
Stratton nodded. "I drove over to Oxford myself just before we left and had a chat with the two men who led the expedition. They must have known their business or they wouldn't have got across surely?"
Which was fair enough. Only an expert navigator could chart a course with any certainty across that wilderness of snow and ice.
The route of the expedition had been plotted in red ink. It had started from old Olaf Rasmussen's place at Sandvig and had crossed the glacier at the head of Sandvig Fjord by the most direct route, following the high valley through the mountains beyond that led to the ice-cap. They had discovered the plane about a hundred miles inland not far from Lake Sule.
I studied the map for a while then shook my head.
"You're talking to the wrong man, Mr. Vogel."
He frowned. "I don't understand."
"It's simple. I fly an Otter amphibian, but I also have wheels which means I can put down on land or water, but not on snow."
"But what about this lake that's marked here," Stratton said. "Lake Sule. It can't be more than fifteen miles away from the wreck. Couldn't you put down there?"
"It's usually ice-free for about two weeks during September," I said. "Never any earlier than that within my experience."
"But you could take a look couldn't you? Tomorrow perhaps?" Vogel said. "I'll pay well. You'd have no worries on that score."
"I'd be taking your money to no purpose. I can tell you that now and in any case I've already contracted to make three charter flights tomorrow."
"Whatever you're getting paid, I'll double."
I shook my head. "No you won't. I'll still be here trying to make a living after you've gone and I wouldn't last long if I treated people like that."
"What about getting there by land?" Stratton said. "I see there's a road from Frederiksborg to Sandvig according to this map."
"A hundred-mile cart track through the mountain. You could get to Sandvig by Land-Rover all right in five or six hours depending on weather conditions, but getting to Sandvig isn't the problem. I could fly you there inside an hour. It's what lies beyond that's the trouble. The glacier and the mountains and then the ice-cap. A hundred miles on foot over some of the worst country in the world. At a guess I'd say it took that Oxford expedition the best part of a fortnight." I shook my head. "The ideal solution would be a helicopter, but the nearest one of those to my knowledge is at the American base at Thule and that's a thousand miles up the coast from here."
There was another of those heavy silences and Vogel looked across at Stratton glumly. "It doesn't look too good, does it?"
Up until then I'd rather enjoyed myself pointing out the difficulties and making the whole thing look impossible, but there had to come a time when I offered the only obvious solution.
"Of course it's just possible that someone could put down a ski plane up there."
Vogel was all attention. "Is there one available?"
I nodded. "A friend of mine runs an Aermacchi. An Icelander called Arnie Fassberg. You're in luck. He usually takes his skis off for the summer, but this year he's left them on because he has a regular charter contract with a mining company on the edge of the ice-cap at Malamusk."
"And you think he could land in the vicinity of the wreck?" Stratton said.
"He might with luck. It would really depend on whether he could find a snowfield."
"But not otherwise?"
I shook my head. "It's a nightmare world up there, a moonscape carved out of ice by the wind, cracked and fissured in a thousand places."
"This friend of yours, Fassberg I think you said his name was? He is here in Frederiksborg?" Vogel asked.
"He's based at the airstrip here. You could phone him through from the desk and leave a message for him. He'll get it first thing in the morning."
"Doesn't he live here at the hotel?"
"No, he has his own place on the edge of town."
"Perhaps we could see him tonight? I would like to get things settled as soon as possible."
I shook my head. "Tonight, he's otherwise engaged, Mr. Vogel, believe me."
"Which means a woman if I know Annie," Desforge put in.
Vogel looked at me enquiringly and I nodded. "Something like that. He takes that side of life very seriously." I turned to Sarah Kelso. "You've already met, by the way, just before dinner outside your room."
Her eyes widened. "The handsome young man with the white hair? How interesting." Vogel frowned in puzzlement, but she didn't bother to explain. "If you don't mind I think I'll go to bed now. I'm very tired."
"But of course, my dear." His voice was instantly filled with concern. "I'll see you to your room."
"That isn't necessary."
"Nonsense, I insist. Time we were all in bed anyway. It's been a long day and tomorrow could be even longer."
We all stood and she held out her hand to me. "Thank you, Mr. Martin--- thank you for all your help."
Desforge smiled down at her. "Don't forget now. If there's anything I can do--- anything..."
"I'll remember." She smiled up at him warmly, the dark eyes shining for a moment, then walked away on Vogel's arm. Stratton said good night and followed them and Desforge and I sat down.
He sighed and shook his head. "There goes a real lady, Joe. I thought they'd gone out of style."
"You think so?"
"I know so." He frowned. "I don't know why, but you seem to be doing your level best to give her a hard time."
"She'll survive," I said.
Either he hadn't detected the acid in my voice or chose to ignore it, but he carried straight on as if I hadn't spoken. "She reminds me of someone I used to know a long time ago--- Lilian Courtney. You ever heard of her, Joe?"
"I don't think so."
"She was one of the great original stars of the silent screen. Made her first picture before the first world war. She dropped out when talkies came in. It sounds crazy now, but she thought the whole thing was just a flash in the pan."
"I think I remember her now," I said. "Wasn't there some scandal concerning her death? Dings or something?"
He flared up instantly. "That's a damned lie. There were always people who hated her--- hated her for what she was--- a lady. A real lady in a world of phonies."
He beckoned to the waiter and ordered whisky. "Strange, but the older you get, the more you start looking back and the harder you look, the more you realise what a game of chance the whole thing is. The right street corner at the right time."
"I'm with you there," I said. "What was yours?"
"The end of the pier in Santa Barbara in 1930--- a fine rainy night with the fog rolling in. That's when I met Lilian. She'd gone out for a walk in the rain--- one of her weaknesses as I discovered when I got to know her better. Some bum tried to get fresh with her."
"And you intervened?"
"That's it." He stared back into the past, a slight smile on his mouth. "I was just sixteen--- a raw kid fresh from Wisconsin who wanted to act. She did everything for me. Clothes, grooming--- even sent me to drama school for a while and, most important of all, she got me my first part in pictures."
"And what did you have to do in return?" I said. "Sit up and beg?"
It was a cruel and senseless remark that I regretted at once, but I got no chance to apologise. I wasn't even aware of his hand moving, but he had me by the throat with a strength I never knew he possessed and there was a fire in his eyes like hot coals as I started to choke.
"Not a thing--- not a solitary damned thing. She treated me like a son. She was a lady, do you hear me? The last time I heard a man say a wrong word about her I broke his jaw."
He released me suddenly and I sucked in air. "I get the message. Sarah Kelso's the first lady you've met since?"
"She's got quality, that's for sure and it's a scarce commodity
in the world we live in." He emptied his glass and shook his head. "What's it all about, Joe? Life, living, the whole bit. Ever ask yourself?"
"At a rough average I'd say around twenty-seven times a day."
"You can always see the funny side," he said, "I wish to hell I could." He stared sombrely, into space. "I've been living on Stage 6 at Horizon Studios for so long that nothing seems real any more."
Jack Higgins - East Of Desolation Page 6
