Читать книгу The Snow Tiger / Night of Error - Desmond Bagley, Desmond Bagley - Страница 26

MacAllister was an electrical engineer, stolid and given to precise answers. When Harrison asked him when the power lines were cut, he answered, ‘Two minutes and seven seconds to midnight.’

‘How do you know?’ asked Professor Rolandson.

‘There is a recording device on the circuit breakers. When they kicked out the time was recorded.’

Harrison said, ‘What did you do?’

‘Established where the break was.’

From Rolandson: ‘How?’

‘I put a current on the line and measured the resistivity. That gave a rough idea of the distance to the break. I put it as a little short of Hukahoronui.’

‘And then?’

‘I rang my opposite number in Post Office Telephones and asked if he had the same trouble. He had, and he confirmed my findings. I then sent out an inspection crew.’

‘With what result?’

‘They rang me nearly two hours later to say that they had found the trouble. They said it was due to a fall of snow. A Post Office crew was also there and my men had used their portable telephone.’

‘They just said it was due to a fall of snow?’

‘Yes, sir. It didn’t seem reasonable to me that a fall of snow could cut the cables so I asked for further information. The entrance to the valley of Hukahoronui is by a cleft or gap, and my men said the gap was filled with snow to a height farther than they could see in the darkness. I know the place, sir, and I asked if the river which runs out of the valley was still flowing. My man said there was a little flow but not very much. I assumed there would be flooding on the other side of the snowfall so I immediately notified the police.’

‘Very quick-witted of you,’ remarked Harrison. ‘But why the police?’

‘Standard instructions, sir,’ said MacAllister stolidly.

‘Did you take further steps?’

‘Yes, sir. I went to the scene of the break in the cable. It was snowing quite heavily as I set out and conditions became worse as I proceeded. When I arrived at the break it was snowing very heavily – something like a blizzard. On my truck I had a spotlight but there was too much back reflection from the falling snow to show how high the blockage in the Gap was. I also investigated the flow of the river and found it to be minimal. I judged the situation serious enough to telephone the police again.’

‘And what was the reaction from the police?’

‘They noted the facts as I gave them, sir.’

‘Nothing more?’

‘They told me nothing more.’

‘You say you could not tell the height of the blockage. Obviously you could not tell the depth – how far back it extended into the Gap?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Did you take steps to find out?’

‘Not at that time. It was snowing heavily and it was dark. To investigate in those conditions would have been most dangerous. I would not climb up there myself, nor would I send anyone else. I judged it better to wait until daylight when we could see what we were doing.’

Harrison looked at Smithers. ‘It appears from the evidence of Mr MacAllister that this was the first occasion that anyone outside Hukahoronui had any inkling of trouble.’ He switched his gaze to Crowell who was sitting next to Rickman and amended his statement. ‘Or anyone who did something constructive about it, that is. Have you any questions, Mr Smithers?’

‘No, Mr Chairman. But I think the witness ought to be congratulated on the sensible steps he took – especially his quickness in passing on news of a potentially hazardous situation.’

‘I concur.’ Harrison turned to MacAllister. ‘To what time does your evidence take us?’

‘I made the second call to the police at three-thirty on the Sunday morning.’

‘Thank you. You may step down, Mr MacAllister, with the knowledge that you have done your duty well.’

MacAllister left the witness chair, and Harrison said, ‘I think it is time to get back to what happened in Hukahoronui after the lights were extinguished. We have just heard of a fall of snow which blocked the Hukahoronui Gap. I would like to hear Dr McGill’s professional views on that.’

McGill rose, walked to the witness chair, and set his briefcase on the floor. Harrison said, ‘You were present in the lobby of the Hotel D’Archiac when the lights went out?’

‘Yes, sir. As Mr Cameron said, there was a lot of confusion at that time. Mr Ballard was trying to talk to Mr Crowell and had difficulty in doing so because of the actions of Mr Charles Peterson. I went to his aid and it was about then that the lights went out. Mr Ballard said that the telephone had also gone dead.’

‘Did you hear the snow falling into the Gap?’

‘No. There was too much noise in the hotel.’

‘So what happened?’

‘The management of the hotel got busy and provided light. There were candles and kerosene lanterns ready for use. I was told that a breakdown of electricity supply was not uncommon, and there had been a similar occurrence only the previous month. Everybody took it as a matter of course. I asked about the dead telephone but no one seemed worried about that, either. The dance was over, anyway, so everybody went home.’

‘Including you?’

‘Yes. I went home with Mr Ballard and went to bed.’

McGill was woken from a sound sleep by Ballard. He awoke to darkness and automatically flicked at the switch of the bed-side lamp, but nothing happened. It was then he remembered about the power failure. Ballard was a deeper shadow in the darkness. McGill said, ‘What time is it?’

‘Five-thirty. Cameron just rang up with a funny story. It seems that one of his men, Jack Stevens, left early this morning to go to Christchurch to see his mother. He says he can’t get out of the valley.’

‘Why not?’

‘He says the Gap is closed off with snow. He says he can’t get through.’

‘What sort of car does he have?’

‘A Volkswagen.’

‘Well, it’s not surprising, is it? Look at what happened to those two Americans the other day. Is it still snowing?’

‘Very heavily.’

‘Well, there you are. It’s probably been snowing all night. I couldn’t guarantee to get through myself with a Land-Rover.’

‘According to Cameron, Jack says it’s not like that. He’s talking of a wall of snow so high he can’t see the top. I told Cameron to bring him here.’

McGill grunted. ‘Light that candle on the dressing-table, will you?’

Ten minutes later he was saying, ‘You’re sure, now. This is not just a deep drift across the road?’

‘I’ve told you it’s not,’ said Stevens. ‘It’s a bloody great wall of snow.’

‘I think I’d better go and look at it,’ said McGill.

Ballard said, ‘I’ll come with you.’ He looked at the telephone and then at Cameron. ‘If there’s no power how did you manage to ring me?’

Stevens said, ‘The exchange has a bank of batteries and an emergency diesel generator to top them up. We’re all right for local calls.’

McGill nodded. ‘Whatever happened at the Gap must have taken out the electricity cables and the telephone lines both.’ He picked up a heavy anorak. ‘Let’s get going.’

‘I’ll come, too,’ said Cameron.

‘No,’ said McGill. ‘I’ve just been handed an idea. Do you have diesel generators at the mine?’

‘Sure.’

‘Then you see that they’re in working order. I have a notion that we’re going to need power before long.’

‘That means 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 with a steady throb. ‘Let’s go up to the Gap.’

He drove into town, and as they were passing the Supermarket, McGill pointed to a car just pulling out. ‘Looks as though he’s leaving, too.’

‘That’s John Peterson.’ Ballard accelerated to get ahead and then waved Peterson down.

As Peterson drew alongside McGill wound down the side window. ‘Going far, Mr Peterson?’

John said, ‘I’ve an early business appointment in Christchurch tomorrow, so I thought I’d leave early and get in a couple of rounds of golf there today.’ He laughed as he waved at the snow. ‘Not much chance of golf here, is there?’

‘You may be disappointed,’ said McGill. ‘Our information is that the Gap is blocked.’

‘Blocked? Impossible!’

‘We’re just going to have a look. Maybe you’d like to tag along behind.’

‘All right. But I think you’ll find yourself mistaken.’

McGill closed the window. ‘As the White Queen said – I can think of six impossible things before breakfast. Carry on, Ian.’

They drove up the road that rose towards the Gap and which paralleled the river. As the headlights’ beam swept across the ravine which the river had cut McGill said, ‘Jack Stevens could be right. Have you ever seen the river as full as that?’

‘I’ll tell you when we come to the next bend.’ At the next corner Ballard stopped the car. The beam from the headlights played in calm waters which swirled in smooth eddies. ‘I’ve never seen it so high. The ravine is more than thirty feet deep here.’

‘Let’s get on.’ McGill turned in his seat. ‘Peterson is still with us.’

Ballard drove as far as he could until he was stopped by a cliff which suddenly appeared from out the darkness – a cliff which had no right to be there. ‘My God!’ he said. ‘Just look at it!’

McGill opened the door of the car and got out. He walked towards the wall of snow and was silhouetted in the headlights. He prodded at the snow and then looked upwards, shaking his head. With a wave of his hand he gestured for Ballard to join him.

Ballard got out of the car just as John Peterson drew alongside. Together they walked to where McGill was standing and beating his gloved hands together. Peterson looked at the piled snow. ‘What caused it?’

McGill said blandly, ‘What you are seeing, Mr Peterson, is the end result of an avalanche. Not a big one, but not a small one, either. Nobody will be leaving Hukahoronui for quite some time – at least, not in a car.’

Peterson stared upwards, holding his hand above his head to stop snow driving into his eyes. ‘There’s a lot of snow there.’

‘Avalanches tend to have a lot of snow in them,’ said McGill drily. ‘If the slope above the town gives way there’ll be a hell of a lot more snow than you see here.’

Ballard walked over to one side and looked at the river. ‘There’ll be floods in the valley if the water keeps backing up.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said McGill. ‘The water is deep here and there’ll be considerable pressure at the bottom. It will soon drill a hole through this lot – I’d say before the day is over. That will leave a snow bridge over the river, but it won’t help any to clear the road.’

He went back to the snow wall and took out a handful of snow and examined it. ‘Not too dry but dry enough.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Peterson.

‘Nothing. Just being technical.’ He thrust his hand under Peterson’s nose, palm upwards. With the forefinger of his left hand he stirred the snow around. ‘Soft, harmless stuff, isn’t it? Just like lamb’s wool.’ His fingers closed on the snow, making a fist. ‘There was a man in my line of business called Zdarsky,’ he said conversationally. ‘He was a pioneer working before the First World War. Zdarsky said, “Snow is not a wolf in sheep’s clothing – it is a tiger in lamb’s clothing.”’

He opened his fist. ‘Look at that, Mr Peterson. What is it?’

In the palm of his gloved hand lay a lump of hard ice.

‘So that was the first avalanche,’ said Harrison.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And it meant that no vehicles could leave or enter the valley?’

‘That is correct.’

‘So what happened next?’

McGill said, ‘It had been my intention to persuade the town council that the best course of action was to evacuate the population of the valley until the danger had receded. This was now impossible.’

‘You say impossible. Surely the obstacle could be climbed.’

‘It could be climbed by the fit and active, of course; but what of the elderly, the handicapped and the children? But at least one member of the town council was now convinced that avalanches were something to be reckoned with in Hukahoronui. He was now ready to go back to town and throw his full weight into implementing any action I recommended. Mr John Peterson had been the first mayor and his words and actions would count for a lot. We went back to the town to get some action going.’

Harrison nodded and made a note. ‘What was the name of the man you quoted to Mr Peterson? How do you spell it?’

‘Z-D-A-R-S-K-Y, Matthias Zdarsky. He was an Austrian and an early pioneer in snow studies.’ McGill hesitated. ‘I have an anecdote which may have some bearing on what I quoted to Mr Peterson.’

‘Proceed,’ said Harrison. ‘As long at it does not take us too far from our purpose here.’

‘I don’t think it does. A couple of years ago I was in Western Canada as a technical adviser on avalanche protection. There was a cartographic draughtsman who had been given the job of drawing a map of the area showing all the sites of avalanche hazard. It was a long job but he had nearly finished when, one day when he got back from lunch he found that some joker had written in medieval lettering on each avalanche site the words “Here be Tygers”, just as on an old map.’

He smiled slightly. ‘The draughtsman didn’t think much of it as a joke, but the boss of his department took the map, had it framed, and hung it on the wall of his office as a reminder to everyone about avalanche hazard. You see, everyone in the game knows about Matthias Zdarsky and what happened to him.’

‘An interesting anecdote,’ said Harrison. ‘And perfectly relevant. At the risk of wasting more time I would like to know what did happen to Zdarsky.’

‘He was in the Austrian army during the First World War. At that time both sides – Austrians and Italians – were using avalanches as weapons in the Dolomites and the Tyrol. It’s said that eighty thousand men died in avalanches during the war. In 1916 Zdarsky was going to the rescue of twenty-five Austrian soldiers who had been caught in an avalanche when he himself was caught in one. He was lucky enough to be rescued alive but that’s about all you can say. He had eighty broken bones and dislocations, and it was eleven years before he could ski again.’

The hall was hushed. Presently Harrison said, ‘Thank you, Dr McGill.’ He looked up at the clock. ‘I think we will now adjourn for the weekend. This hearing will recommence at ten in the morning on Monday.’ He tapped lightly with the gavel ‘The hearing is now adjourned.’