A Quiet Kill

by Janet Brons

  “Anyway,” he said, “all we have for the moment is circumstantial. I want around-the-clock surveillance.” Hay was driving his aging Rover back into town. “Look, Forsyth,” he began, “let me say my piece here and now. I was well out of order this morning. I was utterly in the wrong, and I want to apologize. I’d send flowers, but you’d probably feed them to your horse.” Liz couldn’t help smiling at the image. Hay continued, “I do ask you to consider how you’d have felt in my size twelves. I felt I’d been double-crossed. But I was out of line and I apologize.”

  “That’s alright. Received and understood. Let’s forget about it.” But no, she didn’t think she’d take him up on his offer of a drink. A cozy pub on a rotten night like this was exactly what she needed, but she was still stung by what she had taken to be the very personal nature of Hay’s attack.

  Mary Kellick felt better than she had for several days, better than she had since the murder. She was making chicken cacciatore tonight, so she was finely chopping a large green pepper, just like the recipe said. Hadn’t Paul Rochon been kind to her? He had only checked a few of her invitations, so she would know he trusted her. He was nice, Paul. He had seemed intimidating at first, but that was because he was Deputy High Commissioner and the rank was quite awe-inspiring. Paul was nice, a bit like Natalie. He talked to Mary, said hello. It made her feel like she fit.

  Mary smiled to herself. She wasn’t feeling quite so tired, quite so muddled up these days. It was a good thing she had stopped taking those tablets Dr. Barnes had prescribed last summer. They only made her groggy and a bit nauseous. She hadn’t taken anything for about three weeks now, and look at her: she wasn’t depressed at all. Feeling quite cheerful, really. She measured a teaspoon of oregano, a quarter teaspoon of pepper, and a quarter teaspoon of thyme into a little dish, then stirred the spices carefully into a bowl of tomato sauce. Mary Kellick felt just fine.

  Liz sat alone at a small table in the dimly lit dining room of the Roxborough Hotel, toying with a glass of Merlot. Only one other table was occupied, by an elderly couple seemingly on a first date. What an idiot she was, she thought, lighting a cigarette. Her wounded pride and some undefined hurt had led her to turn down the offer of a friendly drink, and now here she was, alone on her birthday for Christ’s sake.

  She couldn’t believe that she had completely forgotten her own birthday. The case, the Middleton affair, the interviews with Cox and Natalie’s father. And the incident with Hay. They had been getting along so well, too. She could cheerfully strangle Middleton for landing her in this mess, but he had prudently checked out of the hotel earlier and disappeared, doubtless back to Ottawa, without a word. Hasta la vista, baby, she thought, vowing to have his hide when she herself returned. So here she sat, turning forty-four, alone in London. “Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face,” she muttered to herself.

  Her waiter—was that French accent real or not?—presented her with a basket of assorted breads, setting it on the starched linen with a flourish. She had never understood why some women complained they were ill-treated when dining alone in restaurants. Liz had never found that to be a problem. Maybe it was because she routinely over-tipped. That was another myth: women were lousy tippers. So Liz had launched a one-woman crusade against the stereotype.

  She had been crusading around for a while now, she reflected. Not that many women study criminology. I’ll do that. Not many women in the Mounties. I’ll do that. Not many women make inspector. I’ll do that. (The last, of course, was not all that simple, but Liz was making a point here.) She wondered if Natalie Guévin might have been a bit the same. There weren’t a lot of senior women in the foreign service either. And look where it had gotten Natalie.

  The waiter—who was, in fact, French—went back into the kitchen. What a quiet night this was. He’d be home by ten at this rate. At least the customers were nice this evening, not like some he’d had lately. That old couple, out for their celebration. Quite touching, really, to know the old folks can still have a good time. And what was that pretty little woman doing in here all by herself? Maybe here on business. Perhaps some kind of executive secretary or something. She didn’t look very happy, though, smoking her cigarettes and staring at the tablecloth. He hoped she was one of those women who left a decent tip, anyway.

  She must stop being so gloomy, she thought. This was her birthday, after all. A celebration of sorts. Time was an odd concept, she mused, realizing immediately how trite that thought was. Sometimes it crawled: she had sat through meetings that seemed longer than the average lifespan. Yet here she was, in her mind only having joined the RCMP weeks ago, but now closer to retirement than recruitment.

  She looked over at the elderly couple, who were laughing and clinking their glasses. The woman with the pretty white hair and soft laugh was gently flirting with her partner. So, what am I to be celebrating now? The good news, of course, was that she was back in London. She had loved it here when she had come back for the first time, as a teen. Maybe there was some kind of law enforcement exchange program or something, and she could work here for a while. That way she could ride in Hyde Park whenever she wanted.

  She had enjoyed her ride with Colonel Lahaie; perhaps she could fit in another while she was here. And that Anglo-Arab mare had been an excellent ride, though challenging. Something in her temperament reminded Liz of Centurion, the black gelding with which she’d been partnered during her musical ride days. Lahaie was an interesting man, and very charming. Hay could take a few lessons from the colonel. What an interesting life he’d had.

  She found herself wondering what had really happened with that hospital business in Bosnia. It had rung a bell when the colonel had mentioned it. The papers had been full of Bosnia for some time; she must have read something somewhere. She let out a ragged sigh. She wasn’t sure what was bothering her, apart from the fact that there were two bodies in the police morgue and one or two murderers on the loose. Something else was bothering her.

  Hay was bothering her, for one, she thought. She’d come across his type before: moody and grumpy, thought that the quality of his mind would make up for his personal shortcomings. If she were honest, she’d almost been frightened of him this morning. Some old instinct, born of some past pain, had raised itself up to protect her from a man who, for an instant, had seemed menacing.

  She was being unfair. She knew that Hay hadn’t come close to threatening her, that doubtless he’d be horrified to know the thought had crossed her mind. She knew she was overreacting. Hay was just something of a grouch, that was all. With a finely tuned sense of humor, too. He seemed to find her funny anyway. Not everybody did. She suspected that some people thought her a smartass.

  The smoked salmon arrived, and the smiling waiter topped up her glass. So what if she was spending eighty percent of her per diem on smoked salmon, she thought. It was her birthday, after all.

  “Bon appétit, madame.” Accent sounded real enough. Accents. That Miroslav Lukjovic had one heck of an accent alright. Sounded like something straight out of a John le Carré novel. He mustn’t spend a lot of time with non-Yugoslav Canadians. Although perhaps his French was more fluent than his English. Hadn’t he said that Natalie had gone to school in French?

  Liz wished her French were better. She had learned that being considered “officially bilingual” didn’t carry a lot of weight when visiting Trois-Rivières. She had been taught French as a child in Calgary and had continued with it during her university years. Nonetheless, her attempts at speaking French to francophones did not seem to be welcomed very graciously. She must ask Ouellette if her accent was really all that bad.

  She chewed her smoked salmon thoughtfully, watching the couple at the other table. They were now deep in conversation. What were they talking about so earnestly? She and Rick had started out having wonderful conversations but had run out of things to say after about six months. Her thoughts returned to Hay, as they sometimes unexpectedly did these last few days. Maybe he wasn’t so ba
d after all, just terribly passionate about his work. Maybe he was really quite a passionate man. She supposed these intense, inward types might be like that. Good grief, she thought suddenly. This must be their anniversary. Certainly the waiter is offering his congratulations. Thirty-five years? Thirty-five years and she’s still flirting with her husband?

  Damn, what was bothering her? What had she been thinking of a few minutes ago? The case, yes. Lahaie. The hospitals. Lukjovic. The papers had been full of Bosnia. That was it. The papers had been full of Bosnia. And so was this case, Liz suddenly realized, pushing away her half-eaten salmon. This case was full of Bosnia.

  EIGHT

  They were being kicked out of the High Commission. It was inevitable, of course, but Hay would miss the Brandy and Cigars room all the same. He stuffed some documents and his own sheaf of notes into his battered briefcase, recalling how poor Thistlethwaite, wearing his butler’s hat, had apologetically explained that Madame wanted the reception areas cleared in anticipation of the Christmas reception. Hay was relieved that it had been Thistlethwaite, and not She Who Must Be Obeyed herself, who had relayed the message.

  Hay had acquiesced immediately, of course. There was no way his superiors would want to turn something like this into an international incident. There wasn’t much more they could do on these premises now anyway.

  It was only 7:40 AM, according to the wall clock. Hay was first on the scene as usual. He had not spent a restful night, despite a quiet evening reading Molière and sipping a nice Glenlivet. Both had almost but not quite prevented him from reliving that nasty scene with Forsyth. What had fueled his unexpected anger yesterday morning? He had even surprised himself. It was out of character, and it bothered him. He must keep himself under greater control.

  Worse, he had felt yesterday that for a brief instant he had actually frightened her. It might not have been fear, of course, but after so many years on the force he was familiar enough with that look in the eyes. He thought he had seen that look yesterday, very briefly, and had been both shocked and baffled by it.

  Finishing his packing, he dropped into the overstuffed armchair patterned with yellow and white sunflowers. It was peaceful here this time of morning. The slow ticking of the antique clock and familiar gurgle of the coffee urn were all that he heard. There was no Annie Mallett, at least not yet, dropping objets d’art and making sheep’s eyes. Thistlethwaite was clearly already on duty, and doubtless that odd little chef was banging about in the kitchen. But here, at least, it was silent.

  He looked at the little stack of envelopes on the table. As some sort of compensation for their eviction, he supposed, he, along with Forsyth, Wilkins, and Ouellette, had been invited to the Christmas reception. Thistlethwaite had said that representatives of the diplomatic community were expected, as were some British officials and other figures, cultural and academic, who were particular friends of the High Commission.

  Hay didn’t much care for formal functions, but it might be interesting to see if all diplomats were as glum as this lot. It wasn’t just the shock of the Guévin murder, either. He had never seen a workplace so full of strain, of fatigue. Paul Rochon, the deputy, looked like he was on the brink of collapse. And Mary Kellick. There was something very odd about her. She seemed so nervous that she might shatter into pieces at any moment. And that Jarvis was a little weasel. He had been virtually leering at Forsyth throughout his interview. Just last Friday, he realized. It seemed a million years ago.

  “Good morning, Hay,” said Forsyth, appearing in the doorway.

  “Good morning, sir,” said Ouellette, heading straight for the coffee urn.

  “Good morning,” said Hay. He stared at the young sergeant, who was pouring spoonfuls of sugar into a cup. “What happened to you, Ouellette? You look like hell.”

  Liz grinned. “Self-inflicted injury, I suspect.”

  Ouellette leveled a bloodshot gaze at his superiors with some difficulty. The bluish circles underneath his red-rimmed eyes were in stark contrast with the unusual pallor of his skin. He felt a throbbing in his temples and a creasing pain around the middle of his forehead. He was surprised by a slight tremor in his fingers as he picked up the china cup, and quickly rattled it down again.

  “Rather a late night last night, sir. Ma’am. Wilkins thought that since it was my first time in London, I ought to see the sights.”

  “And which of our famous sights did he choose to show you?” wondered Hay aloud. “The Victoria and Albert Museum, perhaps? Our Wilkins is quite the culture vulture, you know. Or would it have been Whitehall? Maybe the Tower of London?”

  Liz smothered a laugh.

  “Not exactly, sir,” replied Ouellette weakly as he sat down carefully at the table.

  “Well, at least you’ve got the intestinal fortitude to turn up. I wonder where my own good detective sergeant might be right now?”

  “I’m here, sir,” said Wilkins from the doorway. Wilkins was wondering why no one else seemed to find the ticking of the wall clock preternaturally loud this morning.

  Colonel Claude Lahaie was typically the first to arrive at the High Commission, military tradition dying hard as it does. He leafed through his morning traffic, which appeared to consist largely of irrelevant reports from other capitals. The staff were all back at work now, of course; the workload didn’t evaporate simply because there had been a murder on the premises. The High Commission, however, remained in a state of collective shock. No one was really back up to working speed. How could they be, with murder so fresh and the police still encamped on the premises? Not to mention that the murderer was still on the loose.

  Lahaie fired up his computer, reflecting back to the weekend. It had really been most pleasant. Sunday, especially, had been a beautiful day for a walk. He looked forward to his wife’s return from her vacation in Victoria, where she was visiting her parents. She was a rock, and there were some disturbing things going on. The murder, certainly. Then that unpleasant incident with the sniveling Carpenter in the park. Lahaie hadn’t liked Carpenter much to begin with, and he certainly had no time for him now. Sniffing around about that hospital business. Who did he think he was, a bloody journalist? And who said a war zone was supposed to be a Boy Scout camp anyway? Peacekeeping is a bit tricky when there’s no peace to keep, he reflected for the hundredth time.

  It wasn’t as though there hadn’t been other things going on in Bosnia, both before and after his own tour. Like the rumors of that drug operation a year or two ago—who had bothered to follow up on that? They always wanted to know about the bleeding hospital. It wasn’t the Somalia Affair all over again, that was for sure. There had been nothing to it. Nothing to it at all. Anyway, that was all in the past now. Dead and buried. Lahaie inhaled deeply, then turned back to his stack of telexes.

  Sergeant Gilles Ouellette was waiting in the elegant lobby of the Roxborough Hotel for a car to take him to Heathrow. His head still hurt, and he was damnably thirsty. He certainly hadn’t been prepared for Inspector Forsyth to ask him to return to Ottawa for a few days. He wasn’t in shape for it either, not today—no matter how interesting the assignment.

  He would bounce back, though, he knew. Ouellette was not a tall man, but he was tough and stocky, with the build of a hockey player. Which he had, in fact, been, almost through to the National League. Eventually deciding he would rather use his head for something other than being rammed into the sideboards, he had joined the Mounties. He had done well, had made sergeant at a relatively young age, and had served in three detachments across the country prior to going to Ottawa. He would have been very surprised to learn that he had left a string of broken hearts and angry recriminations across the country; it wasn’t his fault if his personnel people kept posting him before he had a chance to get serious.

  At the moment, he was thinking that Forsyth got some awfully funny ideas. Now she was convinced there might be a few too many Bosnia connections in this case. She’d asked him to go back to do some digging. Check in the files at
the RCMP, Foreign Affairs, National Defence, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. “Speak to whoever will speak to you. Find out about that hospital business, any other rumored improprieties, the alleged drug-trafficking operation. Check into Lukjovic, and get the security files on his daughter. Have a good look at Lahaie, as well as at Carpenter and anyone else at the post who has ever been stationed in Bosnia.”

  It was hardly surprising that Bosnia had come up once or twice during the course of the investigation, he thought. After all, Canada was often involved in peacekeeping operations, and it seemed that many members of the Canadian forces had served in Bosnia at one time or another. The RCMP as well—Ouellette knew personally a number of guys who had been over for a tour. And Canada, as was often remarked, was a country of immigrants. Natalie Guévin’s background came as no surprise. There might be something to it, but he wasn’t sure it warranted his returning to Canada. At least not when he felt like this. Surely Forsyth could have done this by telephone.

  He had seen that Hay found the idea interesting, although he hadn’t said much at the time. Ouellette liked the British DCI. He thought his boss did as well, but he didn’t have a clue what was behind yesterday’s behavior. They’d been going around all day like a cobra and a mongoose, although it had been unclear which was which.

  God, he was in no shape for this. Not today of all days, with his head ready to crack open at any time. Wilkins’s fault entirely, of course, he smiled ruefully, with his beer-tasting tour of historic London. But it had been a good night out. He liked Wilkins a lot. Maybe Wilkins would visit Canada later this year, and Ouellette could provide a reciprocal headache. Although he wasn’t sure if Wilkins could get away from his girlfriend—what was her name? Oh yes, Gemma. Odd name, thought Ouellette, but then this was England.

  He flipped through his airline tickets. The High Commission had been very helpful in arranging them so quickly, he thought. He checked his watch, making the calculation. It was the middle of the night in Ottawa. With any luck, he could sleep a bit on the plane. And he would stick to orange juice this time.