The Dead of Winter

by Peter Kirby

  “I’m afraid so, Madame.”

  “You are looking for him because you think he kills people.”

  Vanier didn’t like that she was still using the present tense. She had to realize he was dead. “We want, I’m sorry, we wanted…” He waited for that to sink in. It didn’t seem to. “We wanted to talk to him about the deaths of these homeless people.”

  “And now you can’t.”

  “And now we can’t.”

  “Well, at least I can see his body.”

  Vanier thought of the pain of looking at the charcoal remains of her son.

  “After he left, did you report him missing?”

  “The police said there was nothing they could do. He was an adult. He chose to leave. I did what I could.”

  “I’m sorry, Madame Collins. That was a terrible burden to carry.” Vanier meant it.

  “How would you know, Inspector?”

  Vanier didn’t answer. “Did he have any friends?”

  She stared at him for a few moments. Laurent shifted uncomfortably.

  “Do you think I might have overlooked something in the last ten years?”

  “I have to ask, Madame Collins.”

  “I racked my brains, trying to think of where he might be. Places he might be working, people he might have contacted. I went through every single possibility. Friends? There were none. He didn’t have friends. He wasn’t an ordinary child. He had an internal life. He was always thinking. We’d sit here at nights in silence, and he’d read his books and wouldn’t say a word for hours on end. We never argued. I used to think it was because he was spiritual, holy somehow.”

  “Perhaps his father? Where is his father?” Vanier was pushing, and he knew it.

  “I don’t know,” she said, her hands grasping into fists.

  “Who is his father?”

  “I don’t know,” she repeated.

  “So, Madame Collins, just for the record, your son has not been in contact with you recently?”

  “Inspector, one day the only person who mattered to me left without saying goodbye and never came back. I’ve spent ten years searching for him, and in all that time, not one call, no letter, not even a card at Christmas, or Mother’s Day, or even my birthday. Do you know what that’s like?”

  “I can only imagine.”

  “Imagine all you like. You can never know.”

  They rose awkwardly to leave.

  “Can I see him?”

  “The body is badly burned.”

  “I want to see him.”

  “I’ll have someone contact you.”

  “Thank you, Inspector.”

  She walked past them and opened the door to let them out. No goodbyes.

  11.30 AM

  The Squad Room was quiet as Laurent walked in followed by Vanier. Faces looked up, then turned back to the desultory paperwork of closing the investigation: finishing reports and closing circles. There was none of the elation that follows a successful investigation. When you don’t have the suspect to deliver to the crowd, there is always the feeling of a job half done. All they had was an explanation and a charred corpse. There was still the question of why, but it was New Year’s Eve, and unanswered questions were losing ground to the prospect of forgetting all about it in a New Year’s celebration. Those who had been brought in to help were dumping piles of file folders on the desks of anyone who would still be there in January. People were tired and there wasn’t anything that wouldn’t keep until another day.

  Vanier sat down heavily and began tapping out a summary of the meeting with Mme. Collins. Eventually, only he and Laurent remained. Vanier put his hand on Laurent’s shoulder.

  “Why don’t you go home? You can finish that next year.”

  Laurent leaned back in his chair and exhaled deeply.

  “It’s never the same when they kill themselves, is it?”

  “No. We’re supposed to catch them and bring them in. If we don’t bring them in, we’ve failed.”

  Laurent was standing, putting on his coat. “We didn’t fail. We got the right guy. It’s just that he was so used to killing that it seemed like a convenient way out. He had maybe an hour left before we got to him.”

  “And that’s all he needed. Happy New Year, Laurent.”

  “And the same to you, Chief,” said Laurent, putting on his coat.

  Vanier sat down and started typing again. He was in no hurry to go anywhere. He hardly noticed as it gradually got dark. He was thinking about where he was going to eat supper when the call came in. Another homeless death. He grabbed his coat and headed down to the car.

  Even with the siren going and his red dome light flashing, he made slow progress along boulevard Rene-Levesque. He pushed forward, trying to intimidate cars out of their lane, but Montreal drivers don’t intimidate easily. Eventually, he arrived outside the Forum, the former home of the Montreal Canadiens, once hockey’s greatest shrine and now a forlorn multiplex in a lost corner of the city. St Catherine Street was blocked and lit up like a movie set, with the lights from squad cars and snow removal trucks reflecting off the snow banks lining the street.

  A uniform removed the barrier, and Vanier drove slowly into the cordoned-off area. He got out of the Volvo and walked towards a group of men who were staring up into the back of an eight-wheel snow removal truck. He followed their gazes to the edge of the dump box where an arm dangled over the side, as though its owner was sleeping peacefully on the snow in the back. A snow blower was parked beside the truck with its motor running, but without the driver. There was a dark fan-shaped stain in front of the blower, and Vanier wondered what it must be like to go through a snow blower and be spat into the back of a truck.

  He walked up to the first uniform he saw and pulled out his badge.

  “Who’s in charge here?”

  The officer pointed to another uniform standing beside the blower with two city workers, “Sergeant Gamache.”

  Gamache saw Vanier approach and eyed him suspiciously.

  “D.I. Vanier, Major Crimes.”

  “I wondered if you guys would even show up. We got orders to call you guys with every death on the street, even the accidents and natural causes. So that’s what we did.”

  Vanier looked up at the dangling arm. “Doesn’t look like natural causes.”

  “No, but I don’t think anyone threw him in front of the blower either. He probably collapsed in the snow bank during the storm and got covered up. With any luck he was dead before the plow came along; I wouldn’t like to think of anyone going through one of those things alive.”

  “Who noticed?” asked Vanier

  “We had a car out working with the crew, and all of a sudden the driver of the blower was screaming. Seems there was an explosion of blood and body parts over his windshield and he lost it. That’s him over there.”

  Gamache pointed to a man sitting in the back of a cruiser. The door was open and the man sat immobile, staring straight ahead with a blanket around his shoulders, steam rising from a coffee in his hand.

  Gamache continued, “So my guy looks up and sees the arm hanging there and stops the work. We’re waiting for the Coroner to come and tell us what to do with the truck. Maybe he’ll have us get into the back with shovels. Who knows?”

  Vanier looked around. Other than the blood and some bits of flesh, there was little to see. He kicked into the snow where the plow had stopped. There was about two foot of loose, grimy snow, freshly ploughed from the street, and below it the older snow was hard as concrete. It hadn’t been ploughed from the last storm. It had been dark and snowing since five o’clock, so it was possible that it happened just as Gamache described: the guy collapsed, was covered and disappeared until the plough came along.

  Vanier bent to look at the business end of the blower. There was a four-foot hole behind the huge screw, but no screen over it. He turned back to Gamache. “Aren’t these things supposed to have screens on them?”

  “Yes. It’s a city regulation. But when t
he snow is hard packed it slows down the work, everything gets clogged up. So the driver takes off the screen, and everyone’s happy.”

  “Till something like this happens.”

  “The screen wouldn’t have saved him,” said Gamache. “He might have taken a few more turns in the grinder but he would still have gone through.”

  Just then, an Urgel Bourgie van arrived to pick up the body, causing murmurs of gallows humour; nobody had told them they would need a sieve. Vanier called Dr. Segal for a suggestion, and she arranged to have the truck parked outside the Laboratoire de sciences judiciaires et de medecine legale for the night. Given the temperature, leaving the truck outside the Laboratoire was as good as putting it in a refrigerator. Vanier arranged to have a squad car watch it overnight, and they could figure out what to do in the morning.

  10.30 PM

  From the street, the Blue Angel looked like a dive, the kind most people avoid. It was Vanier’s oasis. It was run by Jan and Pavlov, two Polish brothers who came to Montreal on a freighter in 1976 and never left. One of them married the beautiful Gisele, and all three moved into an apartment over the bar. No one knew for sure which brother was Gisele’s husband. It was a delicate question to ask directly, and you couldn’t tell by the way she treated either of them; she had no obvious favourite and was loving and caustic to both in equal measure, complaining to either about the other and praising the absent one to the chagrin of the present. Vanier had long since given up trying to figure it out, putting it down to a simple menage a trois.

  A long mahogany counter dominated one side of the room with wooden stools lined up in front. The wall behind the bar was lined with fridges topped with shelves of back-lit liquor bottles and a 1960s cash register. A single television screen sat on a shelf suspended from the roof. The rest of the room was lined by a Naugahyde-upholstered bench along the length of the back wall and filled with tables and chairs for those wanting a more intimate evening. There was even a postage-stamp dance floor with music from a jukebox that got stuck in 1986, the year the service company went out of business. It worked fine but didn’t play anything released after 1986. The walls were decorated with neon beer signs, with their cords descending to electrical sockets. One advertised Dow, a Montreal beer that killed sixteen people in 1966 without denting its popularity. It was twenty years before the brewery finally pulled the plug on it.

  People didn’t go to the Blue Angel for the atmosphere; they went for the psychic and physical space to drink. No rubbing shoulders in crowds trying to catch the eye of an overworked bartender. No hustlers and preening hunters. When your glass was empty, someone would show up to fill it. If you wanted to talk, you could, and if you didn’t, you could sit in silence.

  The New Year’s Eve trade was brisk, but nobody was rushed. The hockey game was on the TV, and the Canadiens were up 3 to 1 against Pittsburgh, so all was right with the world. Vanier was watching the game and listening to Van Morrison on the jukebox, drinking Jameson with the occasional beer when he got thirsty. He was thinking about Elise and Alex. Elise would be out with friends at some party in Toronto. There would be the inevitable boyfriend that she changed like library books. There would be the promise of a new beginning. On New Year’s Eve, everything is possible, even love. And Alex? Vanier wasn’t sure. Would he be on duty or celebrating in the comfort of camp?

  He felt a hand on his shoulder.

  “I thought I would find you here, Inspector.”

  He turned to see Dr. Anjili Segal standing behind him, not sure how he could have missed her entrance. He broke into a smile. “There’s nowhere to hide, is there?”

  “Not when you’re so predictable, Luc,” she said, lifting herself onto the barstool beside him. “It’s a hell of an evening to be alone.”

  “Who said I’m alone?”

  She raised an eyebrow as she settled onto the stool beside him, not even bothering to see if some woman was walking back from the Ladies.

  “You never change, Luc.”

  Vanier grinned. “What are you having, Anjili?”

  “White wine.”

  “White wine it is.”

  Jan had been watching from a discreet distance, waiting to see how the meeting would play out. Now he approached with a broad grin, his arms outstretched as though he could hug her over the bar.

  “Dr. Segal. How wonderful to see you again. I am thrilled. Thrilled and prepared!” He reached deep into the fridge on the back wall and pulled out a bottle of white wine. “This is just for you. It has been waiting, what, six months for you come back. Cloudy Bay, a Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand.”

  Anjili examined the label and beamed.

  “I can’t wait to taste it.”

  Jan made a show of uncorking it, and Anjili made a show of tasting it; swilling it in the glass, admiring its clear pale green-gold colour, smelling the bouquet, and finally tasting a sip, inhaling air through her lips. Her eyes flashed.

  “Jan, it’s wonderful, I hope you have a case of it back there, but only for me. Luc couldn’t appreciate a thing of this much beauty.”

  “Then Luc is a retard.”

  “I’ll have a Jameson, Jan. That is if you serve retards in here.”

  “Of course we do,” he said, without taking his eyes off Anjili. “We serve almost anyone.”

  A bottle of Jameson was in his hands as if by magic, and he poured a glass. And then, like all great bartenders, he faded into the background, leaving only goodwill behind.

  “So how have you been, Luc?”

  “I’ve had better times, Anjili. But I am glad to see you. And you?”

  “I’m on the brink of a new year. What’s not to like about that? The past is packed away, and I’m off to the future with a smile. This is a great night. Tomorrow is day one. The key is to make sure that it’s not like day 365. And it’s all in here, Luc,” she said, touching her head with her finger, “and in here,” touching her heart.

  “Turn the page and everything changes. If only it were that easy.”

  “It’s not that easy, but you have to make the effort to break with the past and embrace the future.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Here’s to the future, Inspector.”

  She held her glass up for a toast, and he clinked the whiskey against it.

  Gisele appeared before them, dumping fistfuls of quarters on the bar.

  “Do me a favour, Anjili,” she said, as though continuing an uninterrupted conversation, “fill that maudit jukebox up with some happy music. It’s a time to celebrate, no?”

  “Yes.”

  With the help of Gisele, she filled the jukebox with happy music, and as the music, the drink, and the company worked on their spirits, they danced. Vanier and Anjili; Vanier and Gisele; Gisele with the two Poles, separately and together; and the two Poles with Anjili. Midnight came and went. At two o’clock, they finished with hugs and tears, promises, resolutions, and Polish vodka.

  PART THREE

  TEN

  JANUARY 1

  7 AM

  Vanier was surfacing into wakefulness in the half-light before dawn, and he felt the sleeping presence next to him. He didn’t move, replaying the previous night. There were no flashes of regret or shame. He took an exaggerated deep breath and rolled over, pulling himself to her sleeping body. She stirred without opening her eyes, and relaxed again, and he wondered if she was also rewinding the night before committing to the day. They both lay still, and he fell back into sleep. When the sun finally blazed its way into the room, he felt her stir again.

  “Well?” he said, the non-committal opener that says you go first.

  “Well, Inspector. This is not what I expected,” she said, rolling into him and making eye contact.

  He reached and brushed the hair back from her face. “Me neither. But I feel good, Anjili.”

  “Careful, Inspector.”

  “I was just thinking…”

  “Don’t.”

  He looked at her and saw that it was her mind
that was racing. She was the one doing the thinking.

  “I’m starving. How about breakfast in bed?” he asked. “I’ll be back in five minutes.” He kissed her on the lips and got out of the bed, pulling on a pair of boxers that were lying on the floor. She smiled at him, closed her eyes and lay bathed in the sunlight that was streaming through the window.

  Standing up, he knew it would be a tough day. His stomach was churning, his head hurt and his mouth felt furry.

  10 AM

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I will read from a prepared statement and then I will take questions.” The journalists were subdued, and Vanier guessed that he wasn’t the only one nursing a hangover.

  He was getting used to Sergeant Laflamme’s press conferences and knew his place was to stand behind her and look dignified, a difficult task on New Year’s Day, but not insurmountable. This one had been arranged too quickly, but the Chief had insisted. Vanier would have preferred a positive I.D. of the body first.

  Laflamme continued, “During the course of our investigations relating to the murder of several homeless people on the evening of December 24, we identified a suspect, a Mr. John Collins. We believe that Mr. Collins may have been responsible for the deaths of several people, poisoning his victims with liquid laced with potassium cyanide that he stole from his place of employment. Several facts point to his involvement in these murders, and we have reason to believe that the suspect died in a fire at his home on the night of December 30. We are continuing our investigations to determine whether the suspect acted alone or with others. Now, I will take questions.”

  “Two part question, Sergeant Laflamme. Did the suspect’s stash of potassium cyanide go up in the flames, or is it still missing? And if it did go up in flames, does this pose a health risk for Montrealers?”