The Detection Collection. Simon Brett
the great American wilderness. Four of us peeled off in the same direction, Manola, Harald, Trent Dunston, an Ivy League jock from the New York office, with blue eyes, a turned-up nose, gleaming teeth and a scheming brain, and myself bringing up the rear. We were all a little drunk, but Trent was drunker than the rest of us.
‘Good night, Manola,’ he said. ‘Good night, Harald. Sleep well, both of you.’ His words were laced with innuendo.
Manola stopped in her tracks. ‘Fuck off, Trent,’ she snapped, anger igniting in her voice. ‘If you can’t accept reality, that’s your problem, not ours.’
Trent looked meaningfully at me and disappeared off to his cabin. Manola noticed my presence and looked confused. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Good night, Harald, Peter.’ And we all retired to our separate cabins. My interest piqued, I dawdled on the way to mine, just to make sure.
My alarm went off at four, and I got stuck into the case. Two oil companies, one French and one American, were competing to buy drilling rights in the Peruvian rain forest. Harald and I were to play the role of the French company. It was fiendishly complicated. To the usual problems of reliability of reserves, valuation and negotiation strategy, were added an ethical minefield of officials to bribe, public-relations pitfalls and environmental risks.
I was exhausted. My head throbbed and my eyes hurt, but at least I had the five-hour time difference on my side. At a quarter to six I noticed a tinge of grey around the edges of my curtains and decided to go for a half-hour run to clear my head.
I set off down to the lake and ran for about a mile along the shore on a path beaten into the snow. The dawn crept pink over the mountains to the east, and I fell into a rhythm, my breath puffing in clouds in front of me like an ancient steam train. All was quiet around the lake, all was peaceful. The first half mile was bitterly cold, but once I warmed up the sharp air was invigorating. As I ran, it suddenly occurred to me that the case was a trap. The smart thing to do was not to bid for the Peruvian oilfield at all: it would cause more public relations headaches than it was worth. I grinned to myself, it was typical of the kind of test Bill Labouchere would set. Well, I would show him that I could step back and see the bigger picture.
On my return journey I met Trent powering towards me: he had turned left along the lake shore where I had turned right. He slowed up so that we would meet, wished me a good morning and then pulled away. There was no doubt that he was fitter and stronger than me. And, competitive fool that I am, it pissed me off.
As we ran past the main lodge I saw a grey four-wheel drive speeding down the dirt track towards us. I wondered vaguely who it was arriving so quickly at that time in the morning, but I was too wrapped up in the case to give it much thought. I had a shower in my cabin, and walked back to the lodge for breakfast, my brain buzzing with PR strategies to ambush my American competitors when they bid for the Peruvian oilfield.
I knew something was wrong as soon as I walked into the dining room. The shock was palpable. The mountainous paraphernalia of an American breakfast buffet was untouched.
‘What is it?’ I asked Manola, who was standing, stunned, at the edge of the group, next to a large ham.
‘Harald has been killed.’
‘What!’
‘He was found by the lake, early this morning. He was murdered.’
‘No! Oh, my God.’ I looked at Manola. Her bottom lip was shaking: she bit it to keep it still. I touched her arm. ‘I’m sorry.’
She took a deep breath and fought to compose herself. She succeeded. ‘Peter?’ she said quietly, looking ahead of her, blinking.
‘Yes?’
‘You may have guessed something about me and Harald, I don’t know, you may not have. But if you have, don’t tell anyone, please. I’ll do it, once I’ve figured out how.’
I looked at her sharply. From Trent’s comments the night before and Manola’s response, I had guessed there was something going on between Harald and her. People abandoned their social life at companies like Labouchere, men and women spent long days, and nights, working together on deals; it was easier to begin a relationship inside the firm than outside it. That kind of thing was heavily frowned upon at Labouchere Associates. I had no doubt that if Bill found out about it, both of them would lose any chance of partnership. But someone had been killed, for God’s sake! Would Manola still try to salvage her partnership hopes in those circumstances?
She returned my stare. Her dark eyes were moist. ‘Please,’ she mouthed.
‘Okay,’ I said.
The police had been called, including a detective from the nearest town. He didn’t waste much time before interviewing us all, in the manager’s office. I was first.
The detective’s name was Sergeant O’Leary. He was a middle-aged man with a policeman’s moustache, wearing a brown suit, and I could see the rim of a black sweater under the collar of his white shirt. His tie was brown with grey stripes, right out of the seventies. He was businesslike, and asked pointed questions in a distinctive accent, New Hampshire, presumably. He asked me about my movements, about the details of my run that morning, and about what I knew of Harald and the other candidates. I told him what I could, although I missed out my suspicions about Harald and Manola. It was hard to concentrate on his questions. The reality of the murder hadn’t sunk into my exhausted, jet-lagged brain. Apparently Harald’s body had been found near the lake. His head had been bludgeoned with a rock.
Something was nagging at my mind. As I left the manager’s office, I paused. ‘Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?’
O’Leary snorted. ‘I doubt it, sir. I took a vacation to London with the kids a few years ago, but it’s pretty unlikely we met then.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Of course not.’ But there was something. It was as much his mannerisms, that snort for example, as anything else. As you know, I never forget a face, or a name. But I couldn’t place him.
We waited in stunned silence as everyone was interviewed. Manola disappeared to her room as soon as her interview was finished. Trent made an attempt at light-hearted comments to break the tension, but failed and disappeared too. Myself, Charlie Cameron the Canadian, and Phil Riviani, a balding, overweight analyst who had been with the Houston office for fifteen years, waited in silence. The case was forgotten. I tried to go for a walk by the lake, but a uniformed policeman barred my way.
Eventually, Bill appeared, followed by Steve Goldberg, who had fetched Manola and Trent from their cabins. Manola’s eyes were rimmed red. Bill perched on the dining-room table and addressed us grimly.
‘This is clearly the worst day in our firm’s history,’ he began. ‘Harald was a great guy, he would have made a terrific partner, and we all miss him. We will all need time to mourn him in our own way. But for now, we have something very serious to consider. I have been speaking with Sergeant O’Leary, and he is of the strong opinion that whoever murdered Harald was staying at the camp. It snowed in the middle of last night and there are no fresh tracks anywhere leading in here. Of course, this suggests that the murderer could have been one of the staff at the camp, and the police are questioning them very closely as we speak. But, and I hate to say this …’ he paused and looked regretfully at each of our faces, ‘it is most likely that Harald’s killer is one of us. Or rather, one of you.’
He waited for our reaction. There wasn’t one for several seconds, before Charlie Cameron spoke. ‘You can’t be serious,’ he said.
Bill shrugged. ‘I find it very hard to accept, myself, but there is no other conclusion.’
‘It doesn’t make sense,’ I said.
‘Sergeant O’Leary thinks it does,’ Bill said. ‘But I have every confidence in the loyalty and integrity of our people. Before he takes you all off to the nearest police station, I have persuaded him to allow you an hour to discuss it amongst yourselves. You’ve all worked together in the past, I’m sure you can figure out which one of you is responsible. You have