Bonereapers (18 page)

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 all 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.”

“Who did the
Times
name as its source?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Your Senator Frye is my best guess. But it could be anyone. Longyearbyen’s become a journalists’ hive and everyone’s buzzing about Sheridan’s involvement in the murder and his unfaithful rock-star wife. I don’t think Norwegians are as used to this kind of titillation as we are.”

The bartender, who was apparently also the cook and the waiter, brought their sandwiches and Dinah ordered a cup of regular coffee.

Tipton didn’t want another beer. He paused between each sip as if measuring its effect on his blood alcohol level. He sliced off a morsel of the fish sandwich, took a tentative bite, and said, “Not bad for a greasy spoon at the end of the world.”

“Mm.” Dinah’s grilled cheese tasted great. She considered ordering a second one to go.

“Was Erika loaded to the gills when you found her?”

“She had been drinking, but she covered it well.”

“The mark of a true lush. I agreed with Mahler and Valerie. She was Colt’s number one roadblock to the White House. She’s good-looking and telegenic for a woman her age and her history might have appealed to a segment of independents and women who like the fact that the candidate’s wife had some celebrity of her own at one time. But our values voters would never have gone for her, especially with her showing up tipsy at campaign functions and running off at the mouth about some lost child.”

“You know about that?”

“From Valerie. She was privy to Colt’s despair. She tried to persuade him to institutionalize her, but he wouldn’t hear of it. And Whitney let his feelings cloud his judgment, too. This election is just too momentous to let feelings enter in. Of course, Whitney decided over a year ago to back Colt, before Erika went ‘round the bend. Whitney is a fantastic tactician and an absolute master of the electoral map. He knows precisely where and how to rack up those two-hundred and seventy necessary electoral votes. And with his foreign policy expertise, he would have been an awesome Secretary of State.”

All that and a bag of potato chips, thought Dinah. She tore apart her bag of potato chips with her teeth and ruminated on the political calculus of Whitney Keyes. What kind of feelings had clouded his judgment? Feelings toward whom and why? There was no question now that he detested Mahler. He may have resented Mahler’s greater influence over Sheridan, but the antipathy ran deeper.

A man with your vulnerabilities
. What vulnerabilities?

Keyes was the one who’d arranged this trip. Might the fantastic tactician have summoned Eftevang to Norway in order to embarrass Mahler? If Eftevang’s ravings generated negative press back in the States, it would prove to Sheridan that Tillcorp was more of a liability than an asset and, perhaps, Sheridan would ditch Mahler. Keyes could have had no motive to kill Eftevang, at least not initially. But maybe his plan backfired and Eftevang threatened to tell Sheridan and Mahler who’d sent for him. Instead of ditching Mahler, Sheridan would have ditched Keyes. Keyes couldn’t let that happen, so he set up a meeting with Eftevang and when the man wouldn’t swear to keep his name out of it, Keyes retrogressed to his days in the Persian Gulf when killing was the short answer to a dicey situation. And when Valerie somehow found out that it was Keyes who had brought Eftevang to Longyearbyen, she confronted him and he killed her, too.

Dinah was willing to concede that she sometimes let her imagination run away with her, but the narrative was rolling and it all made sense. Keyes, himself, was the mole. Val neither liked nor trusted Dinah, but there was only Keyes’ word that she suspected Dinah of working for a rival campaign. Furthermore, as closely as Keyes worked with Sheridan, he would almost certainly have known the password to Sheridan’s e-mail account, or known enough to guess it. And except for that incriminating e-mail from Sheridan to Val, the case against Keyes was as strong or stronger than the case against Sheridan.

There was a definite whiff of pretense about the too-perfect Senator Keyes and the sly, malignant way that Mahler had told her to ask Keyes about Myzandia still perplexed her. Did Mahler know something unsavory about Keyes’ foundation and its operations? If so, the vulnerabilities ran both ways. Tipton would brook no criticism of his hero, but when her coffee arrived, she hazarded a tactful query. “While you were being interviewed by the police, Senator Keyes and Jake Mahler got into a row. Is there bad history between them?”

“Oh, they’ve crossed swords once or twice before.”

“Over how to manage Sheridan’s campaign?”

“That and Mahler’s love of the limelight.” Tipton picked breadcrumbs out of his hairy, gray cardigan. “Val and Whitney both pleaded with him to stop giving speeches all over creation, crowing about the wonders of gene modification and stirring up the food purists on several continents. He was pushing Congress to kill a bill requiring labels on GM foods before we had worked out a position paper and talking points for Colt. Tillcorp had problems in Africa and we were all afraid if that story broke, it would taint Colt’s image. But Mahler wouldn’t let up. He acted as if he owned Colt and expected value for his investment.” Tipton extracted a fleck of fried fish batter from his sweater sleeve. “Mind you, this is
before
we even have the nomination wrapped up.”

“So Senator Keyes’ grudge against Mahler has nothing to do with Keyes’ health clinics?”

“Oh, I don’t think so. Both Tillcorp and Whitney’s Global Health Foundation have had to fight rumors of one kind or another. They have attorneys working full-time on damage control.”

“What were the rumors about the foundation?”

“Some problem with the tetanus vaccine the doctors administered to the women in Myzandia, allegations that it was tainted.”

“Tainted? Tainted how?”

“I don’t have anything to do with that aspect of Whitney’s life. All I know is there was a memo from one of his foundation lawyers about some hormone or other that caused spontaneous abortions. I think Mahler is the one who alerted Whitney’s lawyer to the rumor, which didn’t set well with Whitney. It wasn’t true and Whitney saw it as, oh…provocation on Mahler’s part. Like, he was calling attention to a false story to take the attention off his own scandals in the region.”

A galvanizing thought struck Dinah. What if the rumor was true? Or even if not true, what trouble might it cost Senator Keyes, legally and financially to defend against it? What damage would it cause to his prestige? Would stopping the spread of such a rumor be a sufficient motive to commit murder? She jettisoned tact. “Would Eftevang have known about this vaccine rumor?”

“Oh, he was in and out of Africa.” Tipton seemed to realize that he was about to be mousetrapped. He drained his beer and, to Dinah’s surprise, made a big to-do of ordering a second. She asked the bartender for another splash of hot coffee. She wasn’t counting on much sleep tonight anyway.

The man in the Soviet hat paid his bill and put on his coat, another somewhat tattered relic from the U.S.S.R. He started for the door and she braced herself for another gust of wind. This time when the door opened, a framed photograph blew off the wall.

“
Skitt!
” The bartender grabbed a dustpan and a broom and began sweeping up the broken glass.

Dinah flashed to the legend she’d read about the mysterious pair who brought the Black Death to Norway. The man carried a rake. The woman carried a broom and where she went, all were swept away to their deaths. She wrested her eyes off the broom, tried to wrest her thoughts off death. “That’s an unusual sweater, Tipton. I noticed it earlier. What type of yarn is that?”

“Oh, it’s dog fur.” He seemed delighted that she’d asked. “My mother knitted it for me from the fur of our English sheepdog. Reagan was my best friend from the time I was eight years old. Mother wanted me to have something to remember him by and she spun his fur into yarn. I have a vest and scarf, too.”

The bartender returned to their table with Tipton’s beer and a pot of viscous looking coffee. “No rush, but this is the last round. I’m closing early tonight. I promised my wife I’d be home before next year.”

Tipton yakked on about Reagan the sheepdog and life growing up in Boston. In spite of the limitations of living in a bastion of liberalism, his mother was apparently an awesome political fundraiser for the Republican Party. Tipton had met all of the major figures in the party and two members of the Supreme Court called him by his first name. He had decided at the age of fourteen to make his mark in the world of politics. Dinah was grateful for the diversion. She didn’t want to think about death and unhappiness. The sound of a friendly human voice making small talk was comforting. Her thoughts drifted occasionally to Valerie, but she wrenched them back to the present and tried to ask intelligent questions from time to time.

The other two diners put on their duds and, being careful not to let in another gust of wind, said “
God natt
” and took their leave. Finally, with Tipton’s chronicle of his ambitions pretty well covered and the bartender staring at his watch, Dinah acknowledged that it was time to go.

Tipton helped her into her pea jacket and she suited up with all the rest of the paraphernalia. Dressing and undressing had become a tiresome ritual. There were so many layers of clothing to put on and take off. Tipton held onto the ends of his cardigan sleeves to keep them from riding up as he struggled into his huge, puffy coat. He got one arm into a sleeve, but couldn’t catch the other and writhed about helplessly. Like a little kid, thought Dinah.

She laughed and held the loose sleeve out for him. “This isn’t the coat you wore when we toured the vault.”

“I bought it today at that sporting goods store next to the hotel. If we’re going to be here for another week, I plan to stay warm.”

“Maybe you could lend me your old parka. I’d like to stay warm, too.”

“It’s yours.” His arm finally found the armhole and pushed through.

“There you go.” Dinah patted him on the back and a small chip of something red fell onto the toe of her boot.

A small red chip like…

Her heart lurched. She turned away quickly and slipped her balaclava over her face. Tipton was pulling on his gloves and didn’t notice.

“Drat it.” She tried to keep her voice nonchalant. “I have to go to the ladies’ room. You go on ahead, Tipton.”

“That’s all right. I’ll wait.”

“No, really. I’ll have to take off all this paraphernalia again and put it back on. I’ll be fine. There’s no one on the streets tonight.”

“All right. I have a few memos to write tonight, so I guess I’ll see you in the morning. Happy New Year.”

“Same to you.”

He opened the door and the wind rushed through like a freight train. Her heart was racing. She reached down and picked up the red chip. It was an acrylic fingernail. Fire-engine red. Valerie’s color.