by John Farrow
“Émile—”
“I know what you’re going to say.” “It’s circumstantial.”
“I knew you were going to say that. I’ve got more.”
“Let’s hear it.”
Only now did Cinq-Mars choose to slip off his bomber jacket, letting it fall back on the chair behind him.
“Your relationship with Carole Clément,” he said.
“What about it?”
“You looked after her. Brought her into the department as a police informant—essentially replacing her husband. You’ve taken care of her as though she were your best friend’s wife, which she is. You’ve watched out for her, as any man might do who felt guilty about her husband’s death.”
“I’m not impressed,” Touton told him. “You’re fishing without a hook.”
Cinq-Mars ignored him. “Your relationship to Anik Clément. Forgive me, sir, but you have a daughter of your own you’ve all but ignored—”
“She was adopted,” Touton reminded him.
“Meaning?”
“You said ‘daughter of my own'—”
“She is your only daughter, Captain. You adopted her, but anyone looking on might think you adopted Anik.”
“Move on, Cinq-Mars.” For the first time that evening, the captain’s tone expressed anger.
“The death of Michel Vimont. You let that one lie because it might have pointed back to Roger, and after that to you. I know you pursued that one on your own, but you kept it tight to your control, not wanting anything to leach out.”
Touton seemed to be formulating a reaction, but Cinq-Mars decided to blow through his objections.
“Pensions,” he said. He was developing a technique, and wanted to perfect it. Move information around, in and out, fast and slow, and come back to aspects seemingly at random, so that whomever he was interrogating could not anticipate what was coming next in order to properly formulate a defence. “That’s what scared you about Detective Fleury.”
“Me, scared of him? Are you doped up?”
“The pencil pusher might connect the dots. He was working with materials hazardous to your health. Numbers. Figures. Contracts. Arrangements. Confidential deals. Pensions. The civilian you were lobbying the department to receive a full pension, Roger Clément, was the guy killed in a park. Lately, you’ve made the same case for Carole. You want her to collect her husband’s pension, although you’re calling it her own, for all the work she’s done. A tough sell, but you have the people in place—the mayor, the police director, and Fleury, the administrator of pensions, or whatever the hell his trumped-up title is now, who will do your bidding. I’ve checked, by the way. So let’s not pretend that none of what I’m saying is factual.”
“But not incriminating. Carole deserves her pension just like Roger did.”
Cinq-Mars took a swig of his Scotch. “Okay, but another piece of the puzzle.”
“You’ve tied yourself up in knots over this.” Touton didn’t realize he had touched the junior cop’s primary insecurity—that he was in knots, and that he could unravel, as could his case. “Let me ask you a question. If I was so all-fired hot to conceal the truth, as the insider on this heist, why did I choose you to keep the case going? I could’ve shut this case down years ago, put it to bed. Drop that question into your think tank, Cinq-Mars, then imagine it being asked in front of a jury. Your so-called case falls to ashes. The first stiff breeze, poof, it’s blown away.”
The smile Cinq-Mars exhibited in response was that of a man who had anticipated the question and, having agonized over it himself, had devised an answer. “Boss, I never said you don’t want to solve the case. I’m not saying that now. Fact is, it’s one of the reasons why you’re so obsessed. You’re not just a cop on the job here. You’re also an interested party—the wronged party. Of course you want to solve the case. Your friend, your partner, got killed. One of your longtime colleagues, the coroner, also got killed. You don’t do this out of a sense of duty. Your motivation has been for justice, and for revenge.”
Touton shook his head and laughed a little. “I’m slowly becoming impressed again. Not with your evidence, which is bogus, but with your pig-headedness. Let me warn you about something, one old man to a young fellow. This is where conspiracy theories come from, before they evaporate into thin air. Cockamamie, trumped-up ideas. But don’t let me discourage you. Go on.”
“Let’s talk about your relationship to the Cartier Dagger.”
“What relationship?”
“You deserved it. You hit the beach at Dieppe. Your friends went down around you. They died horribly. Sometimes slowly. You remember their voices in your sleep and you remember the stench of the dead. You swam out to a destroyer, which you thought blew up in front of you. Men around you drowned because of that ruse. Wounded, you swam back to shore to face either death or capture. Clarence Campbell did important work and a good job, you may want to agree with me on that, but who was the war hero? The lawyer, who didn’t arrive overseas until after the ceasefire, or the man who’d fought on hell’s beach, then was captured, interned and force-marched through winter?”
“Without boots.” “Without boots.”
Touton raised an eyebrow. “I never thought of it that way before. How can a man be designated as a war hero when the war was over before he got to do his job? Had I thought of that years ago, I might have become a bitter man.”
Cinq-Mars shook off the lie. “Oh, you were bitter all right. I don’t blame you. You wanted the knife because you deserved it. You had an incredible war record, and after the war you continued to serve as an officer of the law. You weren’t a CEO or a president, so you didn’t meet the letter of Sir Hubert Holt’s charter, but you were well within its spirit. Especially so when you made captain. When Roger Clément came to you with a plan to acquire the knife, how could you resist him? That’s why he thought to come to you, the squeaky-clean cop, but this one caper you could not resist. The knife was going to get stolen anyway—wouldn’t Duplessis see to it? And wouldn’t that be maddening? That fart, with the dagger. You knew who else wanted it, too—half the world, once people knew about it. Sooner or later, someone was going to snatch it up. Why not you? For the sake of those who died in battle right beside you, and died in the camp, and died on the march back to Germany. If for nothing else, you had to honour their lives and pay homage to their deaths. You owed that to them, not only to yourself.”
Touton was clearly becoming agitated during his spiel, but chose not to interrupt. Once Cinq-Mars was finished, he said, “One problem, Émile.”
“What’s that?”
“I never knew the knife existed. Remember? Sorry. But that sound of shattering glass? It’s your case crashing down.”
“No, sir,” Cinq-Mars claimed. “You just made it. Not for the first time.”
At least, the young man noticed, his opinion was not being quickly discounted. Touton took a drink, then asked, “Why’s that?”
“The French newspapers didn’t take an interest in the subject—an old soldier, English, receiving an award from an English institution, Sun Life. They should have cared about the dagger, but it had been dormant for so long, its significance had eroded. For that reason, I think, you weren’t aware that an English newspaper, the Montreal Star, reported that Clarence Campbell had been honoured for heroism in a time of war and been granted possession of a special artifact.”
Touton shrugged. “You’re right. I was not aware of it. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Knowledge of the knife had been lost to our countrymen. I knew nothing about it, either. The ironic thing is, we only really got interested again after it was stolen, after we found out about it.”
Cinq-Mars pulled his bomber jacket out from behind him, and from the liner pocket extracted an envelope, which was not sealed. From it, he withdrew a copy of a newspaper clipping.
“The article, Captain, details an awards ceremony. It mentions that Clarence Campbell, at the luncheon where he was presented with the knif
e, was accorded an honour guard of Montreal police officers who were also veterans. Sir, you’re mentioned by name. In the snapshot of Campbell—look for yourself. Who’s that in the background, to the right—the handsome young man in dress blues?”
Accepting the article, Touton perused it. He paid attention to the photograph. “You’re right,” he said. “He is a handsome young man.”
“Detective Sloan has told me—repeatedly, he’s a clear witness—that you denied having heard of the knife on the night of the riot.”
The older man nodded and pursed his lips.
“This is evidence,” Touton agreed.
“Yes, sir.”
“What happened here was personal. I’m a good cop.”
“I know you are, sir.”
“You’ve got some of it. Good going. But not all of it. I admit, this was personal. Men died on that beach. Within minutes. Their hearts blown out their backs. Their bellies lay across the sand. Eyes gone. Brain bits all over our faces. I probably swallowed brain bits in that crazy time. Like they were bugs.”
“Yes, sir.”
He pointed a finger at the tabletop and used a stabbing motion to make his points. “Not for myself, Cinq-Mars. For a commemoration. Somebody who’d been in battle should have it, as a soldier. For the boys who died, that’s how I was thinking back then. The memories were still close to me. They’re not so far away now.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And poor Roger. He wanted a pension. For his family. If we’d gone a little further, his family would have been looked after. But he died too soon. We didn’t get that part done.”
“So you looked after his family for him.”
“He sacrificed his life. His big score. He didn’t want a million dollars. He just wanted a police pension, to show that he led an honourable life, that he done something right, and to make sure that his wife and daughter were provided for and respected him.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’re not being snotty, are you?”
“No, sir. I’m not being snotty. In my opinion, you made a mistake.” “Yeah, and you’re a self-righteous farm boy with a pitchfork up your butt. You could’ve been a priest. Should’ve been, maybe. Stayed out of my hair.” “Yes, sir.”
“The best part of what you said is this: the knife would have been stolen anyway. It didn’t need a riot—that only helped. But a break-in would have occurred. It was being talked about, even without de Bernonville. When he came along, he just bumped everything up.”
“You know this how?”
“Roger. He was my snitch. I had to let him be part of stealing it, even though he told me to make it impossible to steal. Making it impossible made it necessary for Roger to be the one to do it. Otherwise, he’d have been cut out of the action. For my part, I had to let Roger be in on the theft whenever it went down. Otherwise, the dagger would have disappeared forever. I’m not saying that Roger or I would have taken it. Stolen property? Not me. But after it was stolen and then recovered, I bet it would have been treated with greater respect. And greater security. Delivered to a museum, maybe.” “When you found Roger dead—”
“Heartbreaking. I have no words. But at least, at that moment, we hadn’t lost the knife. His death was not in vain.” Touton looked away. “Until minutes later.”
“I see,” Cinq-Mars murmured. “I get it now.”
Touton seemed to gather his strength under him. “Émile, being found out by you, that makes everything worthwhile. Know why?” Cinq-Mars had no answer.
“Because now I know who killed Roger. Now I can go to his wife and tell her who did it. I can tell her who else was involved. And that’s going to mean a lot to me. As a police officer, and as a man who was her husband’s friend.”
“I’ll tell Father François that maybe he should leave town. Lay low for a while.”
“That might be a good idea. She might knock his block off.” They were quiet awhile then. When their glasses were empty, they rose from the table.
“Know what?” Touton asked. “What?” Cinq-Mars asked him back. “I’m going to pay for this round.”
“Oh yeah?” He smiled. “They say the dagger possesses magic. I guess I can believe that now.”
Touton laughed, and the fullness of it, the lack of emotional detritus, surprised his companion, as did the drift of his next words. “I’ve enjoyed your big spiel, Émile, but now I have to tell you something.”
“Sir?”
Standing, the older man flexed his legs, which had stiffened under the small table, and grimaced as he did so. “You’re wrong.”
“Excuse me?” The remark bothered him. He expected that, faced with his evidence, Touton would not try to duck this.
“I did not steal the knife with Roger, although I knew he was going to try. With one limitation, I did everything in my power to stop him. I put my cops in position to defeat him. That they failed is to his credit. Although it cost him his life.”
For the first time that evening, Cinq-Mars felt out of his depth. “I’m not sure what you’re saying. You told people he was working for you. We just didn’t know it was as a crook.”
“I told people he was working for me because I wanted to get him a pension. I failed in that.”
“I see.”
“You don’t have a clue what I’m telling you.”
“Okay. I don’t.”
Touton reached around into his pocket and produced his wallet. He dropped a few bills onto the table. Then he looked Émile in the eye. “We’re taking this outside.” The two walked out into the night air, and the captain of the Night Patrol put a hand on the younger man’s shoulder. “This way,” he said.
He led him over the tracks across the street, through a hole in the fence, towards a dock for steamships that plied the Great Lakes. The boats were lit up with activity. Ice was melting. Soon the season would begin in earnest. Crews were working to awaken vessels from their winter hibernation.
Both men placed their arms on a railing and looked over the water.
“Roger came to me. He said he had something to steal. I asked what. He said none of my business. But you know, we talked about it before, so I guessed. I asked him why it was none of my business, and he said he had powerful friends. So I asked, ‘Why are you telling me?’ He said because I had to back off and let him do his job. I said, ‘Job? That’s not a job.’ He said, ‘You know I have friends in high places.’”
Touton went quiet, and Cinq-Mars took out his cigarettes. He opened the pack and let his boss take one for himself, then the two lit up.
“What did you say to that?”
“I was quiet awhile.”
They were quiet awhile.
Touton smoked. Then he said, “I knew this was no ordinary conversation. Roger had never come to me before to say he was going to commit a crime. But you should understand, together we were cleaning up the city. By this time, he was really an undercover cop, as far as I was concerned, which is why I wanted to get him a pension. We took out the gambling dens and raided secret whorehouses. Some of those used underage girls and boys. When bank robbing became organized, we disrupted that, and when the shakedown artists got too tough, too big, we shook them down. Roger contributed.”
“So you owed him,” Cinq-Mars concluded.
“Not only that,” elaborated Touton, “I needed him to stay right where he was. To do that, he had to remain a thief. So I said to him, ‘What do you want from me?’”
“What did he say?”
“Roger asked me to do everything I could to stop him.” “What? Why would he ask you that?”
“Think about it.” Touton didn’t give him much time to come up with any answers. “The theft was going to go down on my turf, under my nose. So he wanted me to cover my ass by doing everything in my power to stop him. Also, by making it tough for him, it wouldn’t ever look as though we might be connected. This kept him safe—we thought—as well as me. I remember him telling me that I was going to take shit for what he did
, so I’d better be able to show that I didn’t actually screw it up. So I asked him, ‘What if you fail?’ And he said to me, ‘There you go.’”
“There you go?”
“I didn’t know what he meant either. But I caught on. If he failed, he wanted a damn good excuse, and the only excuse that would work was that I had pulled out all the stops, that it wasn’t his fault. You see, he had some serious friends. If he screwed up, he had to demonstrate he wasn’t to blame. Tit for tat.”
Nodding, Cinq-Mars didn’t feel like smoking his cigarette down, so he tossed it into the dark water. Touton had taught him, so he knew how to keep the tangents of a conversation together. “You said that you had one limitation to deal with.”
“Two, really.” The senior cop gazed at the smouldering tip of his cigarette between puffs. When he inhaled, he drew the smoke more deeply into himself than usual, and held it longer, watched as the smoke he exhaled drifted up into the sky, then gazed at the red tip again. “He said he was going to tell me what he was going to steal. But that I could not know it.”
“Huh? What the heck did that mean?”
“I asked him the same question. He said I could defend the building it was in, but I could not defend the thing itself, because theoretically I should not have that knowledge. I had to find some other reason to defend the building, but the prize, that had to be left alone. So I said, ‘Just tell me what building it’s in.’ And he said the Sun Life, which I had already guessed. I told Roger, ‘I know what you’re going after.’ And he said, ‘You can’t be there.’ He said I could oversee everything, but on the night in question, I could not be the cop on duty.”
“In case something went wrong,” Cinq-Mars noted.
“I agreed for that reason. I told him I’d make the building so impenetrable he’d have to quit before he started. He just smiled, said we’d see about that.”
“Then how’d he do it?”
“An inside job.”
“Do you know who?”
“In a way.”
“Then what I am doing on this case if you’re not sharing information?”
“It was your job to prove what I suspect.”