The Snow Tiger / Night of Error (6 page)

‘How many mine employees?’

‘At the last count it was a hundred and four – including office staff.’

‘And the total population?’

‘A bit over eight hundred, I’d say. The mine brought a fair amount of prosperity.’

‘That’s about what I figured,’ said McGill.

An electronic voice crackled in Ballard’s ear, and he said, ‘This is Ballard at the mine. Has Sam Jeffries left yet? Put him on will you?’ There was a pause. ‘Sam, Dr McGill wants to talk to you – hold on.’

McGill took the telephone. ‘McGill here. Do you know where Advanced Headquarters for Operation Deep Freeze is? Yes … near Harewood Airport. Go to the Headquarters Building and find Chief Petty Officer Finney … yes, finney as in fish … ask him to give you the parcel for me … McGill. Right.’

‘What was all that about?’ asked Ballard.

McGill took the drink which Ballard offered. ‘I just thought I’d keep myself occupied while I’m here.’ He changed the subject. ‘What’s with your Mr Dobbs? He looks as though he’s swallowed a lemon.’

Ballard smiled wearily and sat down. ‘He has a chip on his shoulder. He reckons he should have been put on the board of directors and have my job, instead of which he got me. To make it worse, my name is Ballard.’

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

‘Don’t you know? If you trace things back far enough the whole mine is owned by the Ballard family.’

McGill spluttered into his drink. ‘Well, I’ll be goddamned! I’ve been hobnobbing with the plutocratic capitalists and never knew it. There’s a name for that kind of thing – nepotism. No wonder Dobbs is acid.’

‘If it’s nepotism it isn’t doing me any good,’ said Ballard. There was a touch of savagery in his voice. ‘I don’t have a penny except my director’s fees.’

‘No shares in the company?’

‘No shares in this or any other Ballard company – but tell that to Dobbs and he wouldn’t believe you. I haven’t even tried.’

McGill’s voice was soft. ‘What’s the matter, Ian? Come from the wrong side of the family?’

‘Not really.’ Ballard got up to pour himself another drink. ‘I have a grandfather who’s an egotistical old monster and I had a father who wouldn’t co-operate. Dad told the old boy to go to hell and he’s never forgotten it.’

‘The sins of the fathers are visited on the children,’ said McGill thoughtfully. ‘And yet you’re employed by a Ballard company. There must be something there somewhere.’

‘They don’t pay me any more than I’m worth – they get value for money.’ Ballard sighed. ‘But God, I could run the company better than it’s run now.’ He waved his glass. ‘I don’t mean this mine, this is a piddling little affair.’

‘You call a two million pound company a piddling affair!’ said McGill in wonder.

‘I once worked it out. The Ballards control companies with a capital value of two hundred and twenty million pounds. The Ballards’ own shareholdings are about forty-two million pounds. That was a few years ago, though.’

‘Jesus!’ said McGill involuntarily.

‘I have three rapacious old vultures who call themselves my uncles and half a dozen cousins who follow the breed. They’re only interested in loot and between them they’re running the show into the ground. They’re great ones for merging and asset-stripping, and they squeeze every penny until it hurts. Take this mine. Up in Auckland I have a Comptroller of Accounts who reports to London, and I can’t
sign a cheque for more than a thousand dollars without his say-so. And I’m supposed to be in charge.’

He breathed heavily. ‘When I came here I went underground and that night I prayed we wouldn’t have a visit from the Inspector of Mines before I had time to straighten things out.’

‘Had someone been cutting corners?’

Ballard shrugged. ‘Fisher, the last managing director, was an old fool and not up to the job. I doubt any criminal intent, but negligence combined with parsimony has led to a situation in which the company could find itself in serious trouble. I have a mine manager who can’t make decisions and wants his hand held all the time, and I have a mine engineer who is past it. Oh, Cameron’s all right, I suppose, but he’s old and he’s running scared.’

‘You’ve got yourself a packet of trouble,’ said McGill.

Ballard snorted. ‘You don’t know the half of it. I haven’t said anything about the unions yet, not to mention the attitude of some of the town people.’

‘You sound as though you earn your pay. But why the hell stick to a Ballard company if you feel like this?’

‘Oh, I don’t know – some remnants of family loyalty, I suppose,’ said Ballard tiredly. ‘After all, my grandfather did pay for my education, and quite extensive it was. I suppose I owe him something for that.’

McGill noted Ballard’s evident depression and tiredness and decided to change the subject. ‘Let’s eat, and I’ll tell you about the ice worms in Alaska.’ He plunged into an improbable story.

The next morning was bright and sunny and the snow, which had been falling all night, had stopped, leaving the world freshly minted. When Ballard got up, heavy-eyed and unrested, he found Mrs Evans in the kitchen cooking breakfast. She scolded him. ‘You should have let me know when you were coming back. I only learned by chance from Betty Hargreaves last night.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I forgot. Are you cooking for three?’ Mrs Evans usually ate breakfast with him; it was a democratic society.

‘I am. Your friend has gone out already, but he’ll be back for a late breakfast.’

Ballard consulted his watch to discover that he had overslept by more than an hour. ‘Give me ten minutes.’

When he had showered and dressed he felt better and found McGill in the living-room unwrapping a large parcel. ‘It came,’ said McGill. ‘Your truck got through.’

Ballard looked at what was revealed; it was a backpack which appeared to contain nothing but sections of aluminium tubing each nestling in an individual canvas pocket. ‘What’s that?’

‘The tools of my trade,’ said McGill. Mrs Evans called, and he added, ‘Let’s eat; I’m hungry.’

Ballard toyed with his breakfast while McGill wolfed down a plateful of bacon and eggs, and pleased Mrs Evans by asking for more. While she was out of the room he said, ‘You asked me here for the skiing, and there’s no time like the present. How’s your leg?’

Ballard shook his head. ‘The leg is all right, but sorry, Mike – not today. I’m a working man.’

‘You’d better come.’ Something in McGill’s tone made Ballard look at him sharply. McGill’s face was serious. ‘You’d better come and see what I’m doing. I want an independent witness.’

‘A witness to what?’

‘To whatever it is I find.’

‘And what will that be?’

‘How do I know until I find it?’ He stared at Ballard. ‘I’m serious, Ian. You know what my job is. I’m going to make a professional investigation. You’re the boss man of the mine and you couldn’t make a better witness. You’ve got authority.’

‘For God’s sake!’ said Ballard. ‘Authority to do what?’

‘To close down the mine if need be, but that depends on what I find, and I won’t know that until I look, will I?’ As Ballard’s jaw dropped McGill said, ‘I couldn’t believe my eyes at what I saw yesterday. It looked like a recipe for instant disaster, and I spent a damned uneasy night. I won’t be happy until I take a look.’

‘Where?’

McGill got to his feet and walked to the window. ‘Come here.’ He pointed at the steep slope above the mine. ‘Up there.’

Ballard looked at the long curve, blinding white in the sunlight. ‘You think …’ His voice tailed away.

‘I think nothing until I get evidence one way or the other,’ said McGill sharply. ‘I’m a scientist, not a soothsayer.’ He shook his head warningly as Mrs Evans came in with a fresh plate of bacon and eggs. ‘Finish your breakfast.’

As they sat down he said, ‘I suppose you can find me a pair of skis.’

Ballard nodded, his mind busy with the implications of what McGill had said – or had not said. McGill dug into his second plateful of breakfast. ‘Then we go skiing,’ he said lightly.

Two hours later they were nearly three thousand feet above the mine and half way up the slope. They had not talked much and when Ballard had tried McGill advised him to save his breath for climbing. But now they stopped and McGill unslung the backpack, dropping one of the straps over a ski-stick rammed firmly into the snow.

He took off his skis and stuck them vertically into the snow up-slope of where he was standing. ‘Another safety measure,’ he said conversationally. ‘If there’s a slide then the skis will tell someone that we’ve been swept away. And that’s why you don’t take off your Oertel cord.’

Ballard leaned on his sticks. ‘The last time you talked about avalanches I was in one.’

McGill grinned. ‘Don’t fool yourself. You were in a little trickle – a mere hundred feet.’ He pointed down the mountainside. ‘If this lot goes it’ll be quite different.’

Ballard felt uneasy. ‘You’re not really expecting an avalanche?’

McGill shook his head. ‘Not right now.’ He bent down to the backpack. ‘I’m going to do a little gentle thumping and you can help me to do it. Take off your skis.’

He began to take aluminium tubing from the pack and to assemble it into some kind of a gadget. ‘This is a penetrometer – an updating of the Haefeli design. It’s a sort of pocket pile-driver – it measures the resistance of the snow. It also gives us a core, and temperature readings at ten-centimetre intervals. All the data for a snow profile.’

Ballard helped him set it up although he suspected that McGill could have done the job just as handily without him. There was a sliding weight which dropped down a narrow rod a known distance before hitting the top of the aluminium tube and thus driving it into the snow. Each time the weight dropped McGill noted the distance of penetration and recorded it in a notebook.

They thumped with the weight, adding lengths of tubing as necessary, and hit bottom at 158 centimetres – about five feet.

‘There’s a bit of a hard layer somewhere in the middle,’ said McGill, taking an electric plug from the pack. He made a connection in the top of the tubing and plugged the other end into a box with a dial on it. ‘Make a note of these temperatures; there’ll be fifteen readings.’

As Ballard took the last reading he said, ‘How do we get it out?’

‘We have a tripod and a miniature block and tackle.’ McGill grinned. ‘I think they pinched this bit from an oil rig.’

He erected the tripod and started to haul out the tube. As the first section came free he disconnected it carefully and then took a knife and sliced through the ice in the tube. The sections were two feet long and the three of them were soon out. McGill put the tubes back into the pack, complete with the snow cores they contained. ‘We’ll have a look at those back at the house.’

Ballard squatted on his heels and looked across the valley. ‘What now?’

‘Now we do another, and another, and another, and another in a line diagonally down the slope. I’d like to do more but that’s all the core tubing I have.’

They had just finished the fourth trial boring when McGill looked up the slope. ‘We have company.’

Ballard turned his head to see three skiers traversing down towards them. The leader was moving fast and came
around in a flashy stem christiania which sent the snow spraying before he stopped. When he lifted blue-tinted goggles Ballard recognized Charlie Peterson.

Peterson looked at Ballard with some astonishment. ‘Oh, it’s you! Eric told me you were back but I haven’t seen you around.’

‘Hello, Charlie.’

The two other skiers came up and stopped more sedately – they were the two Americans, Miller and Newman. Charlie said, ‘How did you get here?’

Ballard and McGill looked at each other, and Ballard wordlessly pointed to the skis. Charlie snorted. ‘You used to be afraid of falling off anything steeper than a billiard table.’ He looked curiously at the dismantled penetrometer. ‘What are you doing?’

McGill answered. ‘Looking at snow.’

Charlie pointed a stick. ‘What’s that thing?’

‘A gadget for testing snow strength.’

Charlie grinned at Ballard. ‘Since when did you become interested in snow? Your Ma wouldn’t let you out in it for fear you’d catch cold.’

Ballard said evenly, ‘I’ve become interested in a lot of things since then, Charlie.’

He laughed loudly. ‘Yes? I’ll bet you’re a hot one with the girls.’

Newman said abruptly, ‘Let’s go.’

‘No, wait a minute,’ said Charlie. ‘I’m interested. What are you doing with that watchamacallit?’

McGill straightened. ‘I’m testing the stresses on this snow slope.’

‘This slope’s all right.’

‘When did you have this much snow before?’

‘There’s always snow in the winter.’

‘Not this much.’

Charlie looked at Miller and Newman and grinned at them. ‘All the better – it makes for good skiing.’ He
rubbed the side of his jaw. ‘Why come here to look at snow?’

McGill bent down to buckle a strap. ‘The usual reason.’

The grin left Charlie’s face. ‘What reason?’ he asked blankly.

‘Because it’s here,’ said McGill patiently.

‘Funny!’ said Charlie. ‘Very funny! How long are you going to be here?’

‘For as long as it takes.’

‘That’s no kind of answer.’

Ballard stepped forward. ‘That’s all the answer you’re going to get, Charlie.’

Charlie grinned genially. ‘Staying away for so long has made you bloody prickly. I don’t remember you giving back-chat before.’

Ballard smiled. ‘Maybe I’ve changed, Charlie.’

‘I don’t think so,’ he said deliberately. ‘People like you never change.’

‘You’re welcome to find out any time you like.’

Newman said, ‘Cut it out, Charlie. I don’t know what you have against this guy and I don’t much care. All I know is he helped us yesterday. Anyway, this is no place to pick a fight.’

‘I agree,’ said Ballard.

Charlie turned to Newman. ‘Hear that? He hasn’t changed.’ He swung around and pointed down the slope. ‘All right. We go down in traverses – that way first. This is a good slope for practising stem turns.’

Miller said, ‘It looks good.’

‘Wait a minute,’ said McGill sharply. ‘I wouldn’t do that.’

Charlie turned his head. ‘And why not, for Christ’s sake?’

‘It could be dangerous.’

‘Crossing the road can be dangerous,’ he said contemptuously. He jerked his head at Miller. ‘Let’s go.’

Miller pulled down his goggles. ‘Sure.’

‘Hold on,’ said Newman. He looked down at the penetrometer. ‘Maybe the guy’s got something there.’

‘The hell with him,’ said Charlie, and pushed off. Miller followed without another word. Newman looked at Ballard for a moment, then shrugged expressively before he followed them.

McGill and Ballard watched them go down. Charlie, in the lead, skied showily with a lot of unnecessary flair; Miller was sloppy and Newman neat and economical in his movements. They watched them all the way to the bottom.

Nothing happened.

‘Who’s the jerk?’ McGill asked.

‘Charlie Peterson. He’s set up as a ski instructor.’

‘He seems to know you.’ McGill glanced sideways. ‘And your family.’

‘Yes,’ said Ballard expressionlessly.

‘I keep forgetting you were brought up here.’ McGill scratched his cheek reflectively. ‘You know, you could be useful. I want to find someone in the valley who has lived here a long time, whose family has lived here a long time. I need information.’

Ballard thought for a moment and then smiled and pointed with his ski-stick. ‘See that rock down there? That’s Kamakamaru, and a man called Turi Buck lives in a house just on the other side. I should have seen him before now but I’ve been too bloody busy.’

McGill hung his backpack on a convenient post outside Turi Buck’s house. ‘Better not take that inside. The ice would melt.’

Ballard knocked on the door which was opened by a girl of about fourteen, a Maori girl with a cheerful smile. ‘I’m looking for Turi Buck.’

‘Wait a minute,’ she said and disappeared, and he heard her voice raised. ‘Grandpa, there’s someone to see you.’

Presently Turi appeared. Ballard was a little shocked at what he saw; Turi’s hair was a frizzled grey and his face was seamed and lined like a water-eroded hillside. There was no
recognition in his brown eyes as he said, ‘Anything I can do for you?’

‘Not a great deal, Turi,’ said Ballard. ‘Don’t you remember me?’

Turi stepped forward, coming out of the doorway and into the light. He frowned and said uncertainly, ‘I don’t …, my eyesight’s not as good as … Ian?’

‘Your eyesight is not so bad,’ said Ballard.

‘Ian!’ said Turi in delight. ‘I heard you were back – you should have come to see me sooner. I thought you had forgotten.’

‘Work, Turi; the work comes first – you taught me that. This is my friend, Mike McGill.’

Turi beamed at them. ‘Well, come in; come in.’

He led them into the house and into a room familiar to Ballard. Over the great fieldstone fireplace was the wapiti head with its great spread of antlers, and a wood fire burned beneath it. On the walls were the wood carvings inlaid with paua shell shimmering iridescently. The greenstone
mere
– the Maori war axe – was still there and, in pride of place, Turi’s
whakapapa
stick, his most prized possession, very intricately carved and which gave his ancestry.

Ballard looked around. ‘Nothing has changed.’

‘Not here,’ said Turi.

Ballard nodded towards the window. ‘A lot of change out there, though, I didn’t recognize the valley.’

Turi sighed. ‘Too much change – too quickly. But where have you
been
, Ian?’

‘A lot of places. All over the world.’

‘Sit down,’ said Turi. ‘Tell me about it.’