A Quiet Kill

by Janet Brons

  Carpenter tried his last gambit. “Miroslav, it’s true that she found out about me. But she had found out about both of us. She saw us together, you see, in Montreal. At one of your parties a couple of years ago. When I was working undercover for the narcotics branch, when you and I first became—associates. Then after my time in Bosnia—where I did good work for you, Miroslav, you know I did—I came to London. She recognized me. She asked how I knew you. Of course I told her she was mistaken, that I didn’t know you at all.”

  Carpenter could scarcely get his words out. His voice was making curious gurgling noises, and his words were uttered in short, violent explosions, but he had no choice but to continue. “She was suspicious, I guess. Started following up. She must have heard something about the drug operation. I know she got in touch with people in Pale. She pieced together enough information to ruin me, to ruin us, Miroslav. She confronted me. She was upset, about us, about the operation. About what your involvement would do to her career. She threatened to turn me in, no matter the harm to herself or to you. You have to understand, Miroslav, you would have gone down with me. It would only have been a matter of time. I did you a favor, Miroslav. I did both of us a favor.”

  Miroslav Lukjovic leaned back on the hard wooden chair. “You did me favor, yes? Kill my daughter because she smarter than you. Why you not call me? Tell me what happens? I could talk to her, stop her do this thing. But no, you make so-called ecology killing. Kill my Natalia instead. And other man, too. Innocent fur man. You coward, Carpenter.”

  “Please, Miroslav. Please.” He was choking. “I had no choice.”

  Lukjovic shrugged his shoulders. “As you say, no choice. But thank you for confession. I am sorry I have no seal club. Just regular knife. What to do.” Lukjovic nodded slightly at his associate.

  The man sliced through Carpenter’s vocal cords.

  Of course they were too late. So were the local patrol cars they had radioed to get to the scene immediately. Now yellow crime scene tape was strung across the entrances to the block of flats, and across Carpenter’s door. The scene inside was ghoulish enough, but what Liz found the most jarring was that Sergeant Carpenter, sitting slumped in a chair with his throat slashed wide open, was proudly attired in his full dress uniform.

  ELEVEN

  Sergeant Gilles Ouellette was at Heathrow for the third time within the last two weeks and had long since lost the battle with chronic jet lag. Wilkins was not in much better shape, having slept at best two hours before waking to meet the 7:30 AM plane from Ottawa. Ouellette was sorely disappointed when Wilkins related the events of the previous night—events in which Ouellette would have loved to play a part but had missed entirely. At the time of the Carpenter murder and the late-night capture of Lukjovic, he had been cramped in economy class, watching some dumb romantic comedy and struggling with a faulty headset.

  “Cheer up, mate,” said Wilkins, as they waited at the baggage carousel. “If it hadn’t been for the information you phoned in, we’d never have pieced things together.”

  Ouellette, slightly cheered by this, scanned the conveyor belt for signs of his luggage.

  “We picked up Lukjovic and his henchman, some guy named Adam Mikievic, here at the airport,” Wilkins continued. “Well, when I say ‘we,’ I mean that an army of cars descended on this place once we put out the word. Not to mention the roadblocks and the rest; it was one hell of an operation. Anyway, Lukjovic and Mikievic were trying to buy tickets to Belgrade. They’re in custody now, although Lukjovic wasn’t saying much when I left. He was pretending he didn’t understand English, so we brought in an interpreter, but he is still keeping quiet. At least that was the case at about three o’clock this morning, when the boss sent me home for some sleep. He and your inspector were still trying to get something out of him.”

  “What about this—henchman—as you say?” asked Ouellette with one eye on the rapidly thinning crowd at the carousel.

  “Hay and Forsyth seemed to think they could get him to talk, although they weren’t convinced that he knew very much.”

  “They’re lost, aren’t they?” asked Ouellette a bit sadly.

  “Hay and Forsyth?” asked Wilkins, surprised. “Why, no, I don’t think so. I mean, I know they act a bit funny around each other sometimes, but frankly, I think that’s because—”

  “Not Hay and Forsyth,” sighed Ouellette. “My bags. They’re lost. Come on, let’s get to the missing baggage counter. I can do this in my sleep.”

  If Ouellette felt unsuitably dressed when he arrived at Scotland Yard in his travel clothes—jeans and a Labatt Blue sweatshirt—he was even more taken aback when he saw Hay and Forsyth. They were dressed up for a party, and it looked like it had been a particularly rough one. Hay was, or at least had been, in black tie. The bow tie and tuxedo jacket had long ago been discarded and tossed carelessly on a nearby chair. Hay had rolled the sleeves of his quality dress shirt up onto powerful forearms, and his collar was open. A night’s growth of beard was hardly consistent with the formal attire. Seven or eight used styrofoam cups were stacked up next to him on the desk, a half-full one in his hand.

  Ouellette’s own boss looked even stranger for eight o’clock in the morning, if that were possible. She was wearing a rather crumpled black cocktail dress, which had probably looked quite nice twelve hours ago. Her RCMP jacket was slung about her shoulders, and much of her hair had escaped from the large gold clip clamped on her head. Her makeup was smudged, her eyes quite black. The high heels completed the picture. Looks like she’s been dragged in by Vice, Ouellette thought to himself with a grin, but of course he said nothing.

  “Good God,” said Wilkins, “you never got home at all?”

  “No,” said Hay in a voice thick with exhaustion. “The thug started talking earlier this morning, and then we couldn’t shut him up. We just finished a little while ago. We were waiting for you lads to get in so we could get out of here and get some sleep.”

  Forsyth turned her red-rimmed eyes to her young sergeant. “You’ve had an update, then?” she asked. Ouellette nodded. “You did great work. The implications of all this are staggering. We can expect a full-scale inquiry when we get home.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if they put you in charge after all this,” said Ouellette.

  “Please, don’t threaten me now,” she said. “I’m not up to it.” She was exhausted. “All I want is some sleep.”

  They arranged to meet back there later in the afternoon to swap notes and piece things together. Hay drove Liz to her hotel. Unusual for them, they rode in almost complete silence, too tired to smoke let alone converse. It was raining again, and Liz found the now-familiar slap of Hay’s windshield wipers somehow comforting. They were both exultant about the night’s work but too exhausted to enjoy it. Hay left her at the door with a quiet “Now get some sleep, Forsyth,” and she wasn’t inclined to argue. By the time she got inside her room—the empty little bottle of Ballantine’s still on the nightstand—she was incapable of coherent thought. She tossed the new dress and shoes into a corner and slept.

  Shortly after five o’clock that afternoon, the four reconvened. Liz still felt a bit sleepy and dazed but was shocked awake by Wilkins, who said, “I’m afraid we’ve had some bad news. Paul Rochon called earlier to inform us that Mary Kellick was found dead in her apartment this morning. Suicide, it seems. Several bottles of some type of anti-depressant next to her. It’s being checked out, of course, but there doesn’t seem to be much doubt. Rochon thought we ought to know.”

  Hay slumped back in his chair. “I guess we should have seen that coming.”

  Liz was stunned and felt an overwhelming sadness about the death of a woman she hardly knew. “We knew that she was fragile and very upset about the Guévin murder. Perhaps we could have done something . . .” But she knew there was nothing they could have done, and it wasn’t their place to do so anyway. Surely someone at the High Commission could have helped this unhappy girl?

  “I don’
t think there’s anything anyone could have done, Forsyth,” said Hay, reading her thoughts. “I expect this has been on the cards for some time.”

  They were silent for a while. Liz felt as though she was surrounded by death. Most of the lives lost had been innocent ones. Mary Kellick, she thought, had been something of a small, defenseless animal herself. Liz wondered suddenly if Sharon Carruthers might have had something to do with Kellick’s suicide. She wouldn’t have been at all surprised.

  As for Natalie Guévin, Liz reflected, she had been a decent person who happened to learn too much. Liz couldn’t bring herself to waste much pity on Carpenter; he had been a disgrace. But Lester Wilmot had only been a convenient target, an innocent in no way connected with other events. And Mrs. Wilmot was surely another victim, alone now in her tidy little home with the dried flower wreath on the front door.

  “So what about Cox then?” asked Ouellette. “He had nothing to do with anything?”

  Hay answered, toying with a recently drained cup. “He did send the threats to both Guévin and Wilmot, and to God knows how many others. He said as much, and we can have him for that. I’m also thinking seriously of charging him with wasting police time and perhaps impeding an investigation. He committed no murder, but he didn’t go out of his way to defend himself. In fact, he deliberately strung us along, making us believe he had no alibi for the second killing. It was the publicity he wanted all along, you see. Anything to keep his name and Eco-Action in the papers.” Hay shook his head in disgust.

  “Remember how quickly the papers put the two crimes together,” Hay asked, “and made the so-called environmental connection? I’ll bet you any money that was down to Cox. As I say, he committed no murder, but he was more than happy to come along for the ride.”

  Liz was still thinking about Mary Kellick. “I still wish it had been Sharon Carruthers,” she muttered. “She deserves locking up. And it’s hard to blame Wesley Carruthers for falling for Natalie when he had that to come home to every night.”

  The two younger men nodded vigorously in agreement. Hay reflected for a moment, then remarked, “I still find it deplorable that Carruthers was willing to collude in his wife’s slander against Natalie Guévin. Remember, Natalie had already had to cope with that kind of character assassination from the weasel Jarvis when she was alive. The same thing happens to her after she’s gone, with the tacit approval of her lover.” He shook his head as if to clear his thoughts and continued, “But it was you, Forsyth, who made the Bosnia connection and got us on the right track.”

  Wilkins picked up the thread. “In the so-called Bosnia connection, then, Lahaie was the odd man out, right? He had nothing to do with any of it?”

  Hay said, “That’s right. He was a victim of rumor and suspicion fueled by previous problems in the Canadian military. That’s all. His nose is clean. Again.”

  Liz smiled to herself. She always found Hay’s reaction to whom he described as “the dashing colonel” somewhat amusing. She said, “What I want to know, Hay, is how you put two and two together so quickly last night—God, was it only last night?—and figured out that Carpenter might be in trouble.”

  Hay wandered over to the coffee pot and absently picked up another cup. He was trying to remember when he’d last had a meal. “Well, of course I wasn’t sure. It was pretty sketchy at that point. But the possible connection between the drugs and Carpenter and Lukjovic was by then established by Sergeant Ouellette’s good work in Ottawa. It struck me that perhaps Guévin had figured something out. And it was you, Forsyth, who saw Lukjovic at the reception, seemingly looking for someone. He had mentioned something about ‘unfinished business,’ remember?”

  Liz nodded.

  “And then he left,” Hay continued. “None of us saw Carpenter last night, so I wondered if Lukjovic might not have been after him.”

  “And this drug operation, then,” said Wilkins, “Carpenter and Lukjovic were working together?”

  “Not exactly,” said Liz. “It seems that Carpenter was working for Lukjovic. We finally started getting some information out of Lukjovic’s goon, Mikievic, early this morning. He started spilling the beans when we told him his landed immigrant status in Canada could be revoked if he didn’t talk.”

  “Could it?” asked Ouellette, interested.

  “Damned if I know,” replied Liz, “but it worked like a charm. Mikievic claims that, in fact, it was Lukjovic himself who slit Carpenter’s throat, and that he knew nothing of their dealings until last night. I don’t much believe him on either score. He’s big, he’s tough, and he’s much more likely to be capable of subduing Carpenter than the old man would be.

  “Anyway, his story goes something like this. I’m filling in a few blanks here, but I think it’s pretty accurate. For most of his time in Canada, Lukjovic was an honest businessman with a highly successful string of dry-cleaning establishments. Things started to change, though, when the situation began heating up in his homeland. He started cultivating Carpenter when Carpenter was working undercover in the RCMP narcotics branch. I expect Lukjovic got to know him casually, then started inviting him to dinners, parties. You know the routine. Eventually he bought Carpenter off, and Carpenter started feeding him information from RCMP files.

  “Lukjovic was already into the drug game by then, and Carpenter’s information helped him stay out of trouble. When Carpenter was posted to the International Police Task Force in Bosnia, it was like manna from heaven for Lukjovic. He had a man, his own man, well placed on the ground to facilitate the illegal transfer of drugs out of Bosnia and into Canada. An ardent Serbian nationalist, Lukjovic could then recoup the profits and use them to help finance the regime back home.”

  “And Natalie Guévin figured this out by herself?” asked Ouellette. “She must have been quite an investigator in her own right.”

  “She was,” acknowledged Hay, “but don’t forget, she knew her father and his politics. This Adam Mikievic said that apparently Natalie had seen Carpenter in company with her father some time ago, and had recognized Carpenter when he arrived in London as the RCMP liaison. Something must have struck her as odd, and she started checking. Remember that Carruthers told us she had been making contact with people in Bosnia and was extremely preoccupied? And that she spent an afternoon with a cousin from Pale who was passing through London? It must have been about that time that things started falling into place for her.”

  Liz continued, “So whether she confronted Carpenter with facts or just suspicions we’ll probably never know. It was enough to frighten him into killing her, anyway. And he, as one of the High Commission’s key security personnel, would have known about the death threats she had received and about the anti-sealing campaign. He was also someone who could roam the High Commission and Residence premises at will, at any time, without alerting suspicion. As such, he would have had easy access to her appointment book and would have known that Dr. Cox was expected on Thursday afternoon.

  “Carpenter staged what seemed to be a murder by an environmental madman. He was clever, I’ll give him that. He must have brought the ax handle and knife to the office in his gym bag. He was something of an athlete after all and probably carried the bag around with him all the time. Knives and axes are not all that difficult to come by in London, as we know all too well. He would have lured her into the anteroom—the one with the white carpet, for effect—perhaps on the grounds that he wanted to talk to her about her father. He probably waited for her to enter, making sure at the same time that no one else wandered into the dining room, and knocked her unconscious from behind. Then he killed her, leaving poor Mary Kellick to find the body.” Liz slumped backward, out of breath.

  Hay added, “The knife is probably at the bottom of the Thames by now, along with a lot of other murder weapons. As for the second killing, that of Lester Wilmot, it was solely Carpenter covering his tracks. He may have panicked, or it might have been thought through in advance. In any event, he was keen to ensure the environmental link wasn’t
missed, to ensure the eco-warriors were in the frame. He couldn’t have known that Cox was more than willing to do that for him.”

  He continued, “Remember that Mrs. Wilmot told us her husband had visited the High Commission to report the harassment he was facing from the eco-warrior types? For all we know, he may have spoken directly to Carpenter, which was all Carpenter needed to stage the second murder. It’s quite easy, murder, once you know how. Or so I’m told,” he added quickly when he saw Liz’s quizzical glance.

  Wilkins interjected, “And wasn’t it Carpenter who identified the ax handle as the kind used to kill baby seals? He didn’t want us to miss the connection.”

  “That’s absolutely right,” agreed Liz. “When Lukjovic came here to retrieve the body, he must have started putting two and two together himself. After all, he had more information than we did to start with. Carpenter was away for a couple of days, so Lukjovic, on the pretext of ‘unfinished business,’ waited for him to return. And murdered him in retribution for the killing of his daughter.”

  Wilkins whistled. “So that’s it,” he said. “Simple, isn’t it?” He thought for a moment. “And Carpenter, of course, was in an ideal position to cover his tracks. He would just be part of the woodwork as far as the security personnel were concerned.”

  “And to think,” added Ouellette, “that bastard was even taking notes for us during some of the interviews.” He was appalled that someone who wore the same uniform as he did could commit such atrocities.

  “Never, ever trust a Mountie,” said Hay gravely.

  Liz was about to react when she realized it was supposed to be a joke.

  “And now, there’s a great deal of paperwork to be done,” said Hay and was greeted by a general groan from the others. Wilkins opened his notebook, while Ouellette looked with dismay at a stack of forms in the middle of the table. DCI Hay watched Inspector Forsyth search for a pen in her purse.