Honour Among Men

by Barbara Fradkin

  Which means you didn’t even ask, asshole, Green thought. He forced himself to take a deep breath. “Why did Daniel Oliver leave the reserves?”

  Norrich picked up a claw and splintered it with vigour. “He developed a serious attitude problem. He picked fights with friends, said none of them knew what the hell being in the army was all about. He was disrespectful of superior officers, derelict in his duties. The way the fellows on the base talked, if he hadn’t left, he might have been in for some disciplinary action. He was becoming a disgrace to the uniform.”

  Green filtered his thoughts through his anger, trying for some tact. “I know a few guys who served with the UN police in Yugoslavia, and they had some trouble readjusting when they came back. And we know from highly publicized cases like Romeo Dallaire that a lot of soldiers encountered situations overseas that haunted them when they came back. Didn’t Oliver’s behaviour ring any alarm bells with his regiment?”

  Norrich slapped the table impatiently. His plate jumped, and his cuff came to rest in a pool of grease. Wordlessly Anne jumped up, rescued both men’s plates and disappeared into the kitchen. “I think all this stress stuff is a load of horseshit. It’s their job, for Christ’s sake! It’s why they signed up, and if they don’t have the stomach for it, they should just pack up and leave the job to the men who do. Last thing a soldier needs, just like a cop, is a mate who freezes up under fire and second-guesses whether he should act. It’s an insult to all the brave men who’ve ever served their country to pander to these guys and offer excuses. Worse, it makes them doubt themselves. Makes them wonder if they’ve got what it takes to be a hero when the shit hits the fan. A soldier, just like you and me, has to act. Not analyze or feel or whatever other lily shit the shrinks have come up with for our own good.”

  His jowls quivered, and he had turned a dangerous purple. In the kitchen, Green heard dishes clattering, and he wondered if Anne was deliberately staying out of her husband’s way. His own very personal outrage threatened to overpower him, and he debated the wisdom of continuing, but in defence of all the police officers and emergency workers he’d known, he tried to find a dispassionate response.

  “No one questions their heroism or their ability to act when they need to. But with the guys I knew, it was the aftermath that was tricky. When they had time to think—”

  Norrich slapped the table again. “The problem is Canadians are soft! We haven’t had a war on our own soil in nearly two hundred years, and two generations have grown up never feeling the threat of any war. We’ve pampered them at home and at school. Car pools and after-four programs, and when they grow up, welfare and unemployment insurance and health care. What the hell’s left to fight for? So when trouble hits, there’s no backbone. Hell, most of the world sees more trauma—”

  The kitchen door burst open, and Anne came out carrying a massive platter mounded with lemon meringue pie. She had a determined smile on her face, but her eyes glittered with warning.

  “Enough shop talk, gentlemen. You wouldn’t want a good pie to go to waste in the heat of discussions. Mike, would you like some tea? Or coffee perhaps?”

  Green seized on the latter offer with gratitude. A dull ache was beginning to replace the spinning inside his skull. While they had coffee and dessert, Anne skilfully steered the conversation to harmless realms. Although Norrich continued to sputter and huff, his colour gradually returned to a dull pink. As soon as he could respectably do so, Green rose to say his goodbyes.

  Norrich had been drooping over his Bailey’s, and he lifted his head in surprise. “Here, I’ll drive you.”

  Fortunately he seemed to have exhausted all spirit of argument, for he accepted Green’s hasty refusal and merely propped himself in the doorway to wave goodbye as Green climbed into a cab. Cruising through the neat, tree-lined suburbs towards downtown, Green drew a deep, cleansing breath and glanced at his watch. Just past ten o’clock. There was nothing to do in his hotel room except go to bed, but it was too early, especially with his biological clock still set on Ottawa time.

  Part of him longed to curl up in a warm bed and phone home, but Sharon would still be out at work, and a conversation with Hannah would last all of two minutes. Besides, another part of him was restless. Ill at ease. More disturbed by Norrich’s passionate accusations than he cared to admit. Norrich was the last person who would have noticed any troubling undercurrents between the soldiers who were the pride of the nation. Green didn’t relish more alcohol or more conversations with drunks, but there were places to visit and questions to ask that could only be done at night. He fished out Kate McGrath’s business card and punched in her cellphone.

  “Kate? How would you like to meet me for a drink? Dress for the trenches. I hear the Lighthouse Tavern is a rough place.”

  NINE

  Calling the Lighthouse rough was like calling Baghdad unsettled. It didn’t nearly do credit to the place. The raucous blend of music, raunch and shouting could be heard from a block away every time the door burst open to spit another drunken patron out into the street. Green and McGrath pushed through the swinging saloon doors into a dimly lit cave of scarred tables and pockmarked walls, murky with smoke and rancid with the stink of booze and sweat. A bar ran down the middle, separating the pool tables from the strip club. Serious drinkers were propped up along the bar, while others lolled around tables littered with beer, leering at the young girl on the brass pole. She was decked out in leather and black lace, just getting started on her routine.

  Kate McGrath was the only other woman in the place. Fortunately, she had told Green to ditch the tie and jacket, but even with his shirt unbuttoned and his undershirt hanging out, he was in a league of his own. Heads swivelled in unison as they walked in.

  “I guess there’s no point in our trying to be undercover,” Green muttered.

  “Jeez,” she replied, her hand instinctively covering her nose. “It’s gone downhill even in the last ten years. It was always a blue collar bar and proud of it. No knotty pine tables or amber microbrews here. But I’m not sure even your most hard-bitten sailor out for a night with his mates would choose this place any more.”

  He glanced at her. She was wearing a no-nonsense athletic jacket, jeans and walking boots, but she hung back in the entrance to the pool room, scanning the tables uneasily.

  “Do you want to go?” he asked.

  His question seemed to challenge her. A frown flitted across her brow, and she squared her shoulders defensively. “I’m a cop, inspector, not a date.”

  He opened his mouth, but before he could think of suitable words to extricate himself, she strode up to the bar and picked a stool by the wall. He wanted to say that his question was no reflection on her capability as a police officer, but merely an admission of the obvious. That they were two plainclothes officers with more brains than brawn, walking into an unknown, potentially hostile situation. Circumstances, not gender stereotypes, advised caution.

  If he were honest, though, he had to admit that sex played a role. He was a bit drunk, and his defences were down. Women had always been his weakness, and tonight, after a trying evening with a lobster and a loutish host, Kate McGrath had seemed the perfect antidote. He’d invited her as much for her company as for her professional assistance with the case.

  He was still sufficiently sober not to say so, however, but instead joined her at the bar, where she had already ordered a Keith’s and struck up a conversation with the bartender. She cocked her head towards Green brusquely.

  “Rob, this is Inspector Green of the Ottawa Police. Rob was here the night Daniel Oliver was killed.”

  Rob was a tank of a man with a cauliflower nose and a paunch that ballooned over his apron. He flicked Green an oblique glance from under one bushy white eyebrow, then continued pulling the pint of Keith’s.

  “I’m hoping you can answer a few questions for me,” Green began.

  “What’s it to you?”

  “Someone murdered Patricia Ross in Ottawa three days ago
.”

  Both bushy eyebrows shot up. “No shit. How?”

  “Strangled, by a powerful man who crushed her vertebrae like twigs. The same kind of power that killed her fiancé with a single blow,” Green added, varnishing the truth a little, for he was convinced there was a connection. Someday he’d get the evidence to back it up.

  Rob said nothing for a moment, then turned to a young man who was collecting empties from the counter. “Sal, take over.”

  He gestured the two detectives to an empty table at the back of the pool room. It was littered with bottles, but he sat down without bothering to clear them.

  “This is where Daniel was hit,” McGrath said as she pulled back a chair. Out of the corner of his eye, Green saw her wipe the chair surreptitiously, but his attention was focussed on the bartender. The big man’s face was set.

  Green’s instincts quickened. “You’ve got something to tell me, don’t you.”

  Rob leaned his massive forearms on the table, displaying an elaborate collage of snake tattoos in vivid red and black. He fixed his dark eyes on Green. “In a place like this, you hear things. Guys drink, they blab, they brag, and sometimes the truth has nothing to do with it. Daniel Oliver’s death was the talk of this place for months. Lots of guys knew and respected him, because he was a genius with engines, and he’d seen real combat. He became almost like a legend. Guys said the man who KO’d Daniel with one punch must have been some kind of pro—a championship boxer, a tenth-dan black belt in karate. Or a special forces commando.”

  A roar rose from the crowd in the club section. The bra must have come off, Green thought, momentarily distracted. He resisted the urge to look as Rob paused to scan the crowd with a practised eye. Then, apparently satisfied that all was under control and that no one was paying them any attention, Rob resumed.

  “We get a lot of servicemen in here, usually on two-day leaves, and all they want to do is get hammered and laid. It’s a word of mouth place, like a home away from home.”

  Green glanced around the grubby room. His disbelief must have showed, because the bartender’s eyes grew hooded. “It’s going through some changes.”

  “So, are you saying someone recognized our killer after all?”

  “I’m saying somebody got drunk and blabbed. Said the killer was military and that he and Danny had served together in Yugoslavia.”

  Green opened his notebook. “Do you know this witness’s name?”

  “Roger somebody.”

  Green looked across at him with exasperation. “Can you do better than Roger somebody? A last name, or an address?”

  “Well, he wasn’t military. Local, maybe?”

  “Do you recall if this Roger was actually in the bar at the time of Oliver’s death?”

  “Yeah, he was at the table with Danny. Would have seen the whole thing if he hadn’t been passed out on the table top.”

  “When did Roger report this information?”

  “He didn’t report it. Like I said, he blabbed it to his buddies along with a whole lot of bullshit about the army. This was maybe a year after Danny’s death. I remember it was the same time as the government shut down the Somalia Inquiry, just when all that stuff was coming out about the Airborne Regiment torturing civilians on their peacekeeping assignment over there. The guys at the table were all saying the UN and the government doesn’t know the half of what goes on. Roger just added his story about Danny’s death to top the pack.”

  “So you didn’t believe it worth passing on?”

  Rob fixed Green with an exasperated stare that said one more snarky crack out of you and your big city snout will be sticking out your ass. “Listen, I told Norrich and—”

  “Wait a minute. Norrich was still investigating the case?”

  “Naw. He was in here one night drinking with some of his army friends. He thought the story was a crock.”

  Green glanced at McGrath, whose frown spoke volumes. The Lighthouse was hardly the type of place you want your high-ranking police officers hanging around. Keeping his expression neutral and disinterested, he flipped ten dollars onto the table and stood up. “Well, I guess we’ll go see if we can find anything on Roger buried in those boxes down at the station.”

  She looked dismayed. “Tonight?”

  He checked his watch, which read nearly midnight. He smelled a lead, but in a ten-year-old trail, a few hours was not going to change anything. He forced himself to behave. “First thing tomorrow will be fine.”

  When Green strode into the incident room at eight o’clock the next morning, however, he found McGrath already ensconced at the table and surrounded by files. Her face was haggard with fatigue and her blue eyes were bloodshot. She was still wearing the same cableknit sweater and jeans she’d had on the night before.

  He grinned. “You’re worse than me.”

  She rubbed her eyes. “I couldn’t sleep. I figured you only have one more day here, and I can always sleep tomorrow.”

  Worry pinched her brows despite the smile on her face. Green suspected he knew the source—Norrich—but he sidestepped her unspoken fears. “I appreciate your help. Find anything?”

  She shoved the files away and slumped back in her chair. “Not so far. Whatever the bartender told Norrich, it didn’t end up in his official reports. Norrich probably considered the information unreliable.”

  “No evidence that he followed up either?”

  She pursed her lips, as if to keep her thoughts to herself. “At that point it was a pretty cold case and we had a few other things on the go. Plus . . . Norrich got promoted out of the unit.”

  Green had his own theories as to why Norrich had never followed up on the tip. For one thing, it would have meant admitting he frequented the strip club, but more likely, he’d been too damn drunk to remember anything he’d been told. From McGrath’s disgusted expression, he suspected it was not the first time.

  He smiled at her. “You had breakfast yet?”

  She looked up, her face lighting at the idea. “Oh man, I’d kill for a double shot of Columbian Dark.”

  He laughed. “My kind of woman.” He unhooked her jacket from the door knob and held it out. “Lead on, Sergeant.”

  She led him on foot down Duke Street to Argyle at a pace that soon left him huffing. Her long, effortless stride suggested an athlete, and once again he cursed the long hours he spent behind his desk. Walking the dog from tree to tree around the block did not seem to be doing the trick.

  The Economy Shoe Shop was a trendy bistro tucked into a block of heritage storefronts on Argyle. At eight o’clock, it was packed with workers catching their last dose of caffeine before heading to the office, and the hiss of cappuccino machines rose over the general chatter. Green breathed in the smells. Strong coffee, fresh muffins, and the buttery sweetness of croissants. His stomach contracted, and he selected a banana chocolate chip muffin, feeling virtuous for having passed on the croissants.

  The shop had a cluster of cast iron chairs outside on a cobblestone patio. A brisk breeze kept most of the patrons indoors, but McGrath found a small patch of sunlight and sat down, tilting her face to the rays and shutting her eyes. A smile spread across her features as she savoured her first sip.

  Arousal tingled unexpectedly through Green, bringing a mixture of idle pleasure and caution. It was just as well he was going back on the ten o’clock flight tomorrow morning, he thought, as he busied himself unwrapping his muffin.

  “So,” he said, “in your search last night, did you find any references in the bar to a military connection?”

  She opened one eye almost reluctantly. “There were several soldiers among the witnesses. In fact, the man who was seen in conversation with the assailant—the one who gave me the fake ID—he seemed military. The precise language and the ramrod back tend to give them away. At the time, I figured he was slumming it and didn’t want to be found out.”

  “Did he think the assailant was military?”

  “If he did, he didn’t volunteer it. He s
aid they just talked about the news on TV.”

  Green mulled this over. In his experience, soldiers, like police, shared a kinship that they could sense a mile off. If the two men had both been military, the first words out of their mouths would have been “What’s your unit?”

  Maybe it had been. “Did you believe him?”

  She opened both eyes and turned to face him. In the sunlight, her blue eyes were startling. They held a glint of excitement. “Not particularly, especially once I found out he’d lied about his ID. But at the time I had no reason to be suspicious, so I just let him go. I had a whole bar full of drunken witnesses to go through.”

  He returned her smile for an instant before his thoughts scattered again. “So now we’re stuck with not just one, but two unknown soldiers. Maybe if we poke around in Danny’s military service, we can get some names to go with them. Did you find out anything else?”

  Her smile broadened as she flipped a page in her notebook. “I did. I found an interesting witness who was at the bar that night. In his statement at the time, he said he’d been asleep and had seen nothing. But his name was Roger Atkinson.”

  Back at the police station, McGrath set out to track down the current whereabouts of Roger Atkinson while Green put in a call to Gibbs. He relayed the information about Daniel Oliver’s murder and its potential connection to his military past, then asked Gibbs to start tracking Oliver’s army associates. Normally Gibbs was conscientious and thorough to a fault, and Green knew if there was any information to be found, Gibbs would pry it loose. But this morning he sensed the young detective was barely listening.

  “What’s up, Gibbs?”

  Gibbs’s newfound confidence echoed through the phone lines as he filled Green in on his own inquiries. He didn’t stutter once.

  “Yesterday Detective Peters and I interviewed the desk clerk and other residents of the Vanier hotel where our Jane Doe—I mean Patricia Ross—was staying. They said she seemed to spend her time like any other tourist. She’d go out in the morning, catch a bus on the corner and be gone most of the day. They always noticed her because of that big flowery purse she carried everywhere. She had a street map, and once she asked the desk clerk in the lobby how to get to the Voyageur Bus Station and also the House of Commons. She seemed quite disappointed that it wasn’t in session because of the election.”