The Snow Tiger / Night of Error. Desmond Bagley
me,’ said Stevens. ‘I’m the mine electrician.’ He winked at Cameron. ‘Do I get double time for Sunday work?’
Ballard left to put on ski pants and an anorak and then he joined McGill in the garage. He got behind the wheel of the Land-Rover and pushed the self-starter; it whined but the engine did not fire. ‘She’s cold,’ he said as he pushed again. He tried several times but still the engine did not take. ‘Confound the bloody thing.’
‘Take it easy,’ said McGill. ‘You’ve flooded her. Wait a couple of minutes.’ He pulled the anorak about him and then put on gloves. ‘What’s between you and Charlie Peterson? Last night he acted like a bull moose in rutting season.’
‘It’s an old story,’ said Ballard. ‘Not worth repeating.’
‘I think I’d better know. Look, Ian: the Petersons are forty per cent of the town council and that fool of a mayor, Houghton, will do whatever John Peterson tells him to do.’
‘John’s all right,’ said Ballard.
‘Maybe. But Eric is steamed up about the mine and he hates your guts. As for Charlie – I don’t know. There seems to be something else sticking in his craw. What did you do? Take away his girl or something like that?’
‘Of course not.’
‘If an old quarrel is getting in the way of co-operation with the council I’d better know about it. Charlie did enough damage last night.’
‘It goes back a long way.’
‘So tell,’ said McGill. ‘The snow in the Gap won’t go away if what Stevens says is true. We have the time.’
‘I never knew my father,’ said Ballard. ‘I was born in the January of 1939 in England, and I was brought here as a babe in arms. Something else also happened in ‘39.’
‘The war?’
‘That’s it. My father had split with old Ben and he decided to leave England and farm here. He bought the land and then the war came and he joined the army. He was in the Western Desert with the New Zealand Division and I didn’t see him to recognize until he came back in 1943 when I was four years old. My mother wanted him to stay – a lot of the men who came back in ‘43 refused to return to active service – and there was a bit of a quarrel between him and my mother. In the end it was academic because he was killed in the avalanche here. I saw it happen – and that’s all I got to know of my father.’
‘Not a lot.’
‘No. It hit my mother hard and she turned a bit peculiar. Not that she went round the bend or anything like that. Just peculiar.’
‘Neurotic?’
‘I suppose you could call it that.’
‘What form did it take?’
Ballard stared past the whirling snowflakes eddying in the wind beyond the open garage doors. ‘I think you could say she became over-protective as far as I was concerned.’
‘Was that what Charlie meant when he said she wouldn’t let you out in the snow for fear you’d catch cold?’
‘Something like that.’
‘He made another crack about you wouldn’t go on a slope steeper than a billiard table.’
Ballard sighed. ‘That was it. It was made worse because my mother was the schoolteacher here. She tried to run the farm herself but she couldn’t, so she sold off most of the land to old Peterson, just keeping the bit the house was on. To earn a living she took the job of schoolmistress. She was qualified for it. But there I was – in the middle. Over-protected and regarded as a teacher’s pet into the bargain.’
‘“Don’t go near the water until you learn how to swim,”’ quoted McGill.
‘You don’t know how true that was, Mike.’ There was an edge of bitterness in Ballard’s voice. ‘Like all kids everywhere we had our swimming hole over by the bluff behind the Petersons’ store. All the kids could swim well except me – all I could do was dog-paddle in the shallows and if my mother had known about that she’d have given me hell.’
He took out a packet of cigarettes and offered one to McGill who produced a lighter. Inhaling smoke, he said, ‘I was twelve when it happened. It was in the spring and Alec Peterson and I were down by the river. Alec was the fourth of the Peterson brothers. There was a lot of melt water coming down from the mountains – the river was full and flowing fast and the water was bloody cold, but you know what kids are. I dipped in and out of the shallows – more out than in – but Alec went farther out. He was tough for a ten-year-old, and a strong swimmer.’
‘Don’t tell me,’ said McGill. ‘He got into trouble.’
‘I think he got cramp,’ said Ballard. ‘Anyway, he let out a yell as he was swept out into the main stream. I knew I wouldn’t have a hope in hell of getting him out, but I knew that river. It swirled around the bluff and on the other side there was an eddy where anything floating usually came ashore. It was common knowledge among the kids that it was a good place to collect firewood. So I belted across the bluff, past the Peterson store as fast as I could run.’
He drew on the cigarette in a long inhalation. ‘I was right. Alec came inshore and I was able to wade in and grab him. But on his way around the bluff he’d bashed his head on a rock. His skull was cracked and his brains were leaking out and he was stone dead.’
McGill blew out his breath. ‘Nasty! But I don’t see how you could be blamed for anything.’
‘Don’t you? Well, I’ll tell you. Two other people heard Alec when he yelled but they were too far away to do anything. And they saw me running like hell. Afterwards they said they’d seen me running away and leaving Alec. The two witnesses were Alec’s brothers – Charlie and Eric.’
McGill whistled. ‘Now I’m beginning to see.’
‘They made my life a misery for the next four years. I went through hell, Mike. It wasn’t just the Petersons – they set all the other kids against me. Those were the loneliest years I’ve ever spent. I think I’d have gone nuts if it hadn’t been for Turi’s son Tawhaki.’
‘It must have been tough.’
Ballard nodded. ‘Anyway, when I was sixteen years old Ben appeared in the valley as though he’d dropped from the sky. That was when the preliminary exploration was made for the mine. He listened to the local gossip, took one look at me and another at my mother, and then they had a flaming row. He beat her down, of course; very few people could withstand Ben. The upshot of it was that I went back to England with him.’
‘And your mother?’
‘She stayed on for a few years – until the mine started – then she went back to England, too.’
‘And latched on to you again?’
‘More or less – but I’d learned the score by then. I’d cut the apron strings.’ Ballard flicked his cigarette butt out into the snow.
There was a brief silence before McGill said, ‘I still don’t get it. Grown men don’t behave like Charlie’s behaving because of something that happened when they were kids.’
‘You don’t know Charlie,’ said Ballard. ‘John’s all right and, apart from what he believes about the mine, so is Eric. But for one thing, Charlie and Alec were very close – Alec was Charlie’s twin. And for another, while you can’t call Charlie retarded, he’s never really grown up – he’s never matured. Only last night you said he sounded like a schoolboy.’
‘Yeah.’ McGill stroked the side of his cheek. He had not shaved and it made a scratching sound. ‘Anyway, I’m glad you told me. It makes things a lot clearer.’
‘But there’s nothing much any of us can do about it.’ Ballard prodded at the starter again and the engine caught