Death in a Cold Climate (22 page)

‘You've given me precious little reason to think I've fallen down so far.'

‘In the first instance
his
downfall, of course. But eventually yours. I'll see to that. For some while I'd guess the scheme worked very well: Forsyth got the job with the Continental Shelf Research people. They were very happy to have him: he was significantly better than the men they usually recruited as hands on their boats. Suspicious in itself, I think. I've found out they were paying him decidedly
less
than he was getting in Stavanger, and my impressions of the sort of chap Forsyth was suggest that he wasn't one to take a pay cut just for the joy of working on boats. Everyone says he was a loner, a reserved sort of boy, but one who knew what he was doing. I feel pretty sure that what he was doing was feeding all the information he
could get hold of to you. And that you were doing what he wasn't qualified to do: interpreting it, and feeding it forward to one or other–perhaps more than one–of the big oil companies. Conceivably even to the Russians as well, who have oil interests of their own in the Barents Sea, and are very interested in everything Norway is doing in the way of oil exploration.'

‘Quite a lucrative little side-line. You make it sound as if the whole of the world's oil industry was knocking at my door and stuffing money through my letter-box.'

‘Not quite–but I should think you did very well. The big companies have a pretty good network of contacts, covering any area where they have an interest, or hope to have an interest: local politicos (I think they have one here); academics; journalists; any sort of leader of local opinion. They're interested in information, and they're also interested in shaping local feeling towards the coming of oil, and towards their own claims. I think they pay well.'

‘But from your point of view it's frustrating that it's so difficult to get proof, I should think?'

‘Very frustrating. But I'll go on with those little cobwebs of suggestions. When we look at you and your lifestyle, we can't help but wonder, sir. It's not many academics can afford these old wooden houses, particularly one as large and handsome as this. It's one of the best specimens in Tromsø. Then, you've got a large Swedish car, and more recently you've acquired a boat. Somehow all this takes you just that bit out of the academic rut as far as life-style is concerned–it's more the very prosperous doctors and lawyers, or the really successful businessmen who run to houses like this, to boats the size of yours.'

‘Of course, you know nothing about my personal background, about my family, and so on.'

‘I will, sir, I will. Did you inherit money? Did you make
a lot when you were with oil, and did you save it? I'll be looking at all that. I'll be looking at your bank accounts–not your Norwegian ones: those are too easy, too open to inspection. But somehow or other I'll have to get a look at your British ones, possibly an American one, a continental one? It won't be easy. Perhaps it will be impossible. But I've set things in motion already, and I think in the long term I'll get results.'

There was a silence as Dougal Mackenzie contemplated, still with a slight, thin smile on his lips, the long term opening up before him. His dog, Jingle, was now resting his head on his lap, seeming pleased with the restfulness of the conversation.

‘You haven't explained,' said Dr Mackenzie at last, ‘why I should kill this boy. Does your little trip into fantasy not include motivation? I should have thought it was the last thing I'd want to do if I was using him to make money out of all and sundry.'

‘I think that's quite easy, if you take in the human factor. I think you were two of a mind. Like you, Martin Forsyth could never get enough. You used him. I expect you despised him. You thought that because he had no academic background he was stupid, that he would be an easy tool. But Martin Forsyth was nobody's tool. And he wasn't stupid, though he was very, very unwise. You both slipped up on the human factor: if you had underestimated him, he certainly underestimated you. I think quite early on in the game he realized that he
was
being used; that provided he could make contacts higher up he could feed the information
direct
to the various potential customers, without having you as middleman, since it could be interpreted at base there. But above all he realized that now you'd entered into this arrangement with him, you'd put yourself in his power. It's something middle-class people almost always forget.'

‘What is?'

‘That if you
use
someone like Martin Forsyth, you're using someone who has nothing to lose–no stable job, no “respectability”, no reputation. Whereas someone like you, sir, has all of those things, and doesn't want to lose them. It puts you in his power.'

‘I should have thought an academic these days was one of the most generally despised members of the community,' said Dougal Mackenzie, his smile broader than ever.

‘Ah–that's just your little academic joke. In fact, an academic has an almost impregnable position. Perhaps that's what attracted you, after serving with the oil companies. You're virtually impossible to sack, however incompetent. You're actually looked up to by a lot of people, at least here in Norway: it's very much a “status” job, and in a country with no aristocracy, it's the people in the status jobs who are the cream of the cream. It's something you people in the university come to take for granted. I've heard a left-wing academic complain bitterly that when he went to jail for drunken driving he was put in with common criminals. He thought he could shelter behind some impregnable bourgeois fortress. No, the fact is that you had everything to lose, and Forsyth had nothing.'

‘You're saying, if I understand you right, that he blackmailed me. No doubt you hope my bank account will bear this out too.'

‘Possibly it will. More probably not. Because I should think this was just the beginning. He can't have been feeding you information for many months, and he'd need a really good hold over you. And, as for you, you'd realize as soon as the first hint of blackmail was made that this was something that could go on for ever. I think the sequence was this: Forsyth began with oblique approaches, you
spotted his game from the beginning, and made an appointment in Isbjørnvei to talk things over.'

‘And there killed him?'

‘Yes. I think he came up here a day or two early, to spy out the land and think things over. I don't know what he'd decided on when he went to the appointment, but I guess he was hardly in the door before you killed him, quickly and quietly.'

‘I see–the blood in the
vindfang
. You're building an awful lot on very little, Inspector.' ‘I know, I know,' said Fagermo. ‘I'm telling you my thoughts, not making out a case. I'm just at the beginning. There's going to be months of rummaging around after proofs. Now–as I say, I take it you hit him hard as he was turning to take his coat off in the hall, and that he fell backwards into the
vindfang
–hence the bloody mark. Then I think you pulled him into the hall or one of the downstairs rooms and stripped his clothes off.'

‘To hinder identification, I suppose?'

‘Of course. That was very important. There's one interesting thing there. You stripped off not just his clothes, but also his ring. That must have been difficult to get off: it was tight, and left a deep ridge. A nasty, sick-making process, I think, for someone who wasn't a natural murderer. I've been mentioning rings to a lot of people, on the assumption that a once-off murderer would remember that most of all. I sensed a reaction when I mentioned it in the Cardinal's Hat, and I fancy it was
you
who reacted. You hadn't banked on the ring.'

‘Hadn't banked on it?'

‘I mean that not many ordinary young men in Britain wear rings. You hadn't expected it. But he was engaged–sort of–to a Norwegian girl, and she did what any Norwegian girl would do: she bought him a ring. And so you had to tug and tug to get it off. And you remembered that in
the Cardinal's Hat. I think you are remembering it now.'

A flicker of emotion had passed over Dougal Mackenzie's face. He said quickly, ‘And so I went and buried him in the snow, only to decide to discover him there three months later.'

‘Well, oddly enough, and as it turned out–yes.'

‘I've heard of murderers revisiting the scene of the crime, but other than Burke and Hare I've not heard of them burying the body and then enthusiastically digging it up again. It sounds more like my dog than me.'

Jingle looked up at the mention of his kind, and tentatively wagged his tail.

‘Told like that it sounds absurd,' said Fagermo confidently. ‘But what you're describing is what
happened
, not what you
wanted
to happen. Things didn't pan out as you expected on that occasion. As I say, I think the murder was a hurriedly planned affair. A quick response to a dangerous threat. You stripped the body of all identifying marks, and then–at night, probably–you took it a little way up in the mountains away from the houses and there buried it. It was snowing in any case. It must have been an easy job. But later I imagine you regretted it. Especially when that paragraph appeared in the papers about the boy missing from the Alfheim Pensjonat.'

‘I don't actually read Norwegian, Inspector.'

‘It was a topic of common gossip, especially among the British community. And when that came up, you realized there was a real danger if the body was discovered of its being identified; and if that happened, all sorts of connections might be made. Whereas if the body had been well weighted and thrown in the fjord, the chances are it would never have been found–or if it had been, it would have been totally unidentifiable. Difficult to do without detection from dry land; difficult to do from either of the bridges, because people keep a look-out for suicides, and
anything suspicious might have been noticed. But I think that about this time the question began to nag you: was it too late? And in fact it was about this time, the end of February, that you bought the boat, wasn't it?'

‘How well informed you are–already, Inspector.'

‘I've checked what I
can
check here, sir. That was one of the things. Anyway, you bought the boat, and then one day early in March, shortly after the first thaw, you went to look at the state of the snow. I don't think you realized how much difference even a brief thaw makes to the snow levels. You went to satisfy yourself that you could get the body up with comparative ease–it was a reconnaissance trip. But in fact he was already practically exposed.'

‘I could very easily have covered him over again, though.'

‘But in fact you had the most awful luck, didn't you? I've read over the accounts again, and it's clear how it happened. Your dog started tugging at the ear in the snow, and just at that moment Captain Horten skied down the mountain and came to the spot. And the aggravating fellow stopped to look. From then on, your plan was sunk. Horten realized there was a body there, and all you could do was participate in the discovery. A good, innocent-seeming role for a murderer, but much, much less safe than the one you had planned. We have an awful lot to thank your dog for.'

Dougal Mackenzie's fondling of that dog's head was by now becoming somewhat obsessive, but he slept on, head in lap, oblivious of all except the sounds of interest to dogs–birds, barks, nature outside the window. He looked, in fact, rather pleased with himself. But then, the expression on Dougal Mackenzie's face was hardly less complacent.

‘Well, sir,' said Fagermo, ‘that basically is my case.'

‘Your
case
, Inspector?'

‘You're quite right. As I said before, it's not a case at all.
Just a fantasy based on a few significant connections–Abadan, geological research for oil, number eighteen Isbjøravei, the blood in the
vindfang
 . . . just a series of slight, suggestive indications.'

‘Wouldn't it have been better to wait until you'd got something more substantial? At the moment what you have is hardly, I would have thought, worth mentioning.'

‘Right again, sir. Normally I would have got a great deal further before I even broached the subject. But then, normally any investigating I had to do would be within Norway–plodding work, painstaking details, but easy, open, accessible stuff. Now the investigation of this case is going to be very different. Heaven knows when–if ever–it's going to be possible to do any serious work in Iran. If it proves not to be, I'm going to make contacts with other people who were working for the same company–people on your own level, the sort of people who are getting out fast now. And perhaps I shall be able to find some who were friends of Forsyth, if he had any: he kept his cards close to his chest, that boy. Then of course there are the oil firms themselves, their central offices. And of course the consultancy work you did for State Oil here, and the reasons for their thinking you had been guilty of leaking information. Then, as I said, there are your own personal records–bank accounts, and so on.'

‘What a long, tedious prospect seems to stretch in front of you, Inspector.'

‘Very long. Not tedious, I hope. I expect at the end I shall be a lot better informed about the ways of the big world.'

‘Very foolish of you to put me wise to what you are going to be doing before you even start, isn't it? There's no knowing what I mightn't be able to have destroyed.'

‘Very unorthodox, certainly. But I had a reason. You see, I don't at this moment know the extent of your
activities. I will, but I don't yet. This may be an isolated–lapse, shall we call it? Or you may have a much bigger thing going than I know about. More Martin Forsyths doing dirty work for you–picking up pocket money while you go off with the big sums. As long as you thought you were entirely in the clear in this case, that kind of thing could still be going on. And that meant this thing could happen over again.'