Ice Lake: A gripping crime debut that keeps you guessing until the final page

“Well at least that rules me out.”

“Now that I think of it, where were you yesterday morning?”

“What if I said I was murdering somebody in the Poconos?”

“It would make my life easier.”

“Sorry, trooper, I only kill locally.”

“Worth a try; I’ll fill you in when you get here.”

“I didn’t say I was coming.”

“I know the mayor. He’s a real estate guy and I got you a house lakeside – on the Commonwealth’s tab.”

“I gotta a job today in Manhattan. How long will it take me to get there?”

“Two hours – two and a half if you stop to buy a bathing suit.”

“If I can finish this corporate thing by closing time today, I’ll be there tomorrow by ten. I’ll call you tonight. Should I really buy a bathing suit?”

“Oh yeah. It’s a little corner of paradise. I’ll text you directions.”

* * *

The corporate thing in New York was the usual. Harry would show up with his oversize polygraph machine, which he would use to intimidate whoever had embezzled the cyber-millions that had vanished from some cyber-account somewhere. It was the kind of gig that Harry could usually stretch out for two or three glorious New York expense-filled days and it annoyed him that he would have to do a rush job. Not that his rush job would be any less thorough than his usual job, it’s just that if he did it quick this time, they might be suspicious when next time it took a week.

Harry dragged his equipment into the downtown offices of Harcom, Eckart, and McCarty. They were an overseas investment firm that made sure rich Americans didn’t get their savings diluted by that pesky Internal Revenue Service.

He spotted the guilty guy within the first five minutes. A youngish junior exec with foppish hair popped his head over a cubicle divider. To Harry’s trained eyes it was almost as if he’d jumped up and down and shouted, “It was me!” He was so highly strung that Harry was amazed they had even bothered to call him. But experience had taught Harry that signals he could see as easily as a dog could smell a buried bone were invisible to the general population. Normally Harry would have spent the morning setting up his polygraph, going for a leisurely lunch, and then the rest of the day interviewing all of the office staff. But Trooper Cirba’s phone call made it hard to concentrate on or, to be honest, even care about this job.

Harry waved off the office formalities and niceties and asked where he could set up his equipment without being disturbed. He was ushered into a conference room where he laid his flight case on the table and then asked for directions to the washroom.

Walking back while still drying his hands on a paper towel, Harry stuck his head into suspect number one’s cubicle and said: “Mr?”

The young man stared at Harry like a rabbit caught in headlights.

“Your name?” Harry asked again.

“Ah… Toliph.”

“Do you have a first name, Mr Toliph?”

“Of course I do,” Toliph said with nervous laughter. “Doesn’t everybody?”

Harry laughed dutifully and said: “Could you help me set up my stuff?”

“Oh… ah, no,” he said pointing to his computer screen. “I have to monitor the Asian markets.”

“It will only take a moment; your boss said you would help me.”

“Which boss?”

“The one that hired me to…” Harry lowered his voice. “You know why I’m here, don’t you?”

“I uh… you’re investigating the Isle of Man account?”

“That’s right,” Harry said even though he hadn’t yet been told what he was investigating. “So you know how important this is. I just need a hand setting up; my assistant isn’t here today.”

* * *

In the conference room Toliph stood on the other side of the table while Harry opened the flight case that held his polygraph. It was a standard Dermograph 793, top of the range as far as polygraphs go, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at it. A standard 793 simply has a couple of ribbon-like wires coming out of a leatherette black box but Harry didn’t like his machine looking so innocuous. He had removed the leatherette box cover so that all of the internal wires were visible. In fact he had added phoney wires to make the device look even more daunting. The sleek flat cables that normally attach to the blood-pressure cuff, the respiratory band, and the dermal-response pads, had been replaced with the kind of wiring you would associate with an electric chair. Harry liked his subjects feeling ill at ease, and the more his machinery resembled something out of a Frankenstein movie, the better he liked it. He called his polygraph – “The Beast”.

“It’s Walter, right?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Your first name,” Harry said, “it’s Walter.”

“No,” Toliph said, “it’s James.”

Harry looked James Toliph directly in the eyes. “Is James a family name?”

“Yes. It was my grandfather’s name.”

“Good. And what did your grandfather do?”

“What?”

“Your grandfather, what was his job?”

“He was a grocer. Why would you want to know that?”

“No reason. Now James, who do you think stole the Isle of Man money?”

The junior executive stood thinking for a moment and said: “It could be anybody.”

“OK Jim, before I unpack all of this crap, let me ask you one more question. Is the money gone?”

“How would I know?”

“’Cause you took it, James.”

“That is ridiculous.”

“No, it’s not. An innocent man would have just said, ‘No, I didn’t’. Guilty people, or to use the common term, liars, normally respond with an equivocation, like, ‘That is ridiculous’. And liars tend to not use abbreviations. Saying, ‘That is,’ instead of ‘that’s’ makes you a liar.”

“This is nonsense.”