Khattak brushed it aside.
“Did he often walk by the Bluffs?”
“I believe so, but the people who live here are well versed in the dangers of erosion. It’s easy to lose your footing out there.”
“Had you ever seen him from these windows?”
“You know these windows don’t face the path, Esa.”
There was a note of chiding in Nathan’s voice that took Rachel aback. The tenor of the whole conversation seemed strange to her, the room imbued with an inexplicable anxiety. The tasbih was taut around Khattak’s hand; Nathan Clare’s posture was stiff. That both men knew the source of it was clear: it was Rachel who was in the dark.
Nathan turned to her.
“Do you like the house?”
She couldn’t help being caught by the cloudy expanse of lake beyond the windows. Waterfront views were not to be had off the dim streets of Etobicoke, where she lived.
“It’s stunning. From the outside, I thought it might be a little pompous, but it isn’t.”
She bit her lip. Sometimes she was too honest and in this case probably naïve as well. There were thousands of dollars worth of antiques within the room, pieces she could neither name nor identify, yet all possessed of a consonance that pleased the eye. Things to live with rather than admire. The careless sprawl of music suggested as much.
“You can play the piano if you’d like,” he said, following her gaze.
Rachel couldn’t play. Though Don Getty had done well for himself in life, the arts weren’t a luxury he’d encouraged his children to indulge in. It was her mother’s old recordings she had listened to when her father was out of the house, the needle scratching over Chopin’s nocturnes, her mother’s favorite composer. Part of her mother’s life before she’d married Don Getty, as inaccessible to Rachel as her mother’s thoughts.
Rachel made her way to the piano, called there by a secret longing. The banner casually placed on the chair beside it looked like a miniature flag, a blue Superman shield imposed upon its green background, the initials CK appliquéd at one corner.
The two men followed in her wake like an entourage, Drayton forgotten.
Khattak reached around her and took the banner.
“You still have it,” he said.
He deposited the tasbih in his pocket, his hands relaxing.
“It was a pledge, Esa. You know that.”
Khattak’s gaze switched to the fireplace, taking in the blank space above the lip of white marble.
“The portrait’s gone.”
“It was more than time.”
A rectangular space between the white and blue chinoiserie was less faded than the rest of the wall. Something had been there, and again she was the outsider, in the dark as to why they were here at all when they should have been at Drayton’s house, searching for indications of homicide.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Clare. How do you and the inspector know each other?”
Nathan smiled at her and she blinked. The smile transformed her notion of the introverted writer into something much more visceral. A more than ordinarily attractive male, with glints of light turning his straw-colored hair gold.
“Didn’t Esa tell you? We were at school together. We’re old Seatonians.” And when she still looked blank, he clarified, “Upper Canada College.”
Openmouthed, the piano forgotten, she turned to Khattak.
“You went to school with Nathan Clare, the writer?”
“He wasn’t ‘Nathan Clare, the writer’ then. And we’ve come about Christopher Drayton, not my unsavory past.”
Nathan grinned at him, the first unforced gesture she’d seen from either man.
“It was unsavory, wasn’t it? At least, all the good parts.”
Her eyes lit up at the teasing. Here was someone who might deflate the always unruffled, ever-so-proper Inspector Khattak. She wanted to delve deeper into the mystery of this hidden friend, megawatt writer or not, who must be awash in particularly useful inside information. Despite their rocky start when she’d first joined CPS, she’d come to admire Esa Khattak and to value his opinion. She just wasn’t sure that she understood him as well as she’d like to. And if Nathan Clare could help her with that, she wouldn’t object.
But the mood died in an instant as Khattak answered, “Most of the bad parts as well, I’m afraid. I’m sorry to have bothered you. We should go.”
“Sir—”
There were at least a dozen questions she could think of that they hadn’t asked Nathan Clare—at least he could clarify the list he’d given them, why he’d had it to hand, and why it even mattered.
“Now, Rachel.”
She scurried along behind him, swallowing a grimace. Whatever brief connection she had felt to the author, Khattak was her boss. Her boss who ignored the question Nathan called after him.
“Did you ever read Apologia, Esa?”
And that wasn’t a question he seemed ready to answer.
3.
He was a modest and reasonable man.
They left their cars where they were. It was a silent ten-minute walk from the far end of the circle to Drayton’s address. There was no cordon of police tape around the house, a large home typical of those built on small lots when fifty-year-old bungalows were scraped down to make way for new luxury models. The exterior was stuccoed in white, a color Drayton must have repainted yearly, because the outside bore no traces of wear.
She wasn’t sure what they were looking for, wasn’t sure why a name like Christopher Drayton would pop up on the CPS radar. On the face of it, it didn’t seem like a minority-sensitive situation. All she knew was that her boss was doing a favor for a friend on his own time, and he had asked her along to the party.
“Figure the girlfriend did it, sir?”
“What?”
“Melanie Blessant. The one Clare mentioned. Maybe followed him out after dark, pushed him over the edge.”
They were meandering their way through the well-proportioned living spaces, a family room and salon that mirrored each other in dimension, furnished with expensive if generic taste. Everything was in order, well tended, as if death had not visited this house.
Her question was meant as a gentle reminder that nothing about this assignment appeared to fall within their purview.
They had reached the kitchen at the back of the house: dark cabinets, earth-colored stone, stainless-steel appliances, a desk where the mail was tidily sorted. She thumbed through it. Credit card statements, utility bills, a landscaping service, the usual. Adjacent to the kitchen was the study, a glimpse through its French doors disclosing bookcases and a wide desk. She tried the handle. The doors were locked.
Khattak produced the keys.
“Local police were asked to leave this room locked so we could take a look for ourselves. Take some photographs, will you?”
Rachel pondered this. Drayton’s body had been found two days ago. Why had Justice moved so swiftly to secure this particular scene when the body had been found at the base of Cathedral Bluffs?
She had her answer when the doors spread wide to reveal a room twice the size of any other on the main floor. She unearthed her camera and set to work.
The chair from the desk was situated in the center of the room, facing windows that looked out upon the garden. It was an old-fashioned oxblood leather chair without casters, but that wasn’t what had captured Rachel’s attention. Nor was it the reason Khattak stood still beside her.
On the floor in front of the chair lay a 9-millimeter pistol, pointed away at the windows.
“Uh, sir…”
“I see it.”
“What’s it still doing here? Has it been printed?”
“There are only Drayton’s prints on the gun. It isn’t loaded. The forensic team was asked to leave the room once it had finished, so we could take a look.”
Rachel knelt down for a closer look. She knew it was a 9-millimeter, but the make was unfamiliar. There was a black star inside the circle on the p
lastic grip. Something else caught her eye on the floor not far from the gun. It was a resinous puddle the size of a quarter plate. She scraped it lightly, her nails raising a white line on the puddle as the flaky residue came off beneath her fingertips.
“Candle wax,” she breathed. She rose to her feet, perplexed. “Sir.”
She described a semicircle with her index finger.
“There’s several of them.”
She counted the puddles under her breath.
“Someone’s tried the door as well.”
He showed her the scratch marks around the keyhole.
“But they couldn’t get in or they would have cleaned this mess up?” Rachel hazarded. “What does any of it mean? Drayton didn’t die here. The gun hasn’t been fired, his injuries were consistent with a fall.” She looked around.
“There aren’t any candles in the study, sir.”
“Rachel.”
Khattak was at the desk, trying the drawers. One was locked.
“Maybe he kept the gun there.”
Her guess proved correct. The wide drawer yielded to Khattak’s key. Inside, a kerchief was folded to one side, boxes of ammunition were stacked on the other.
“What did Drayton do?” she asked slowly. There was no permit in the drawer. It didn’t make sense that a retired man in his sixties would need a small army’s worth of firepower.
“He was a businessman.”
“What kind of business, drugs?”
Khattak shrugged, not meeting her eyes.
That was Rachel’s first clue. Khattak was never evasive with her. When he withheld information, he told her the reason for withholding it. His leadership at CPS had been characterized by a spirit of inclusion. He wore his authority more lightly than any other police officer Rachel had ever worked with. He was certainly nothing like the old bull Don Getty, thirty-five years in the police service, the last fifteen as superintendent, and God help you if you got under his skin or in his way. As Rachel, being his daughter, was prone to do.
Khattak was the polar opposite of Don Getty’s bluster. Urbane, soft-spoken, respectful, decisive. The only thing he had in common with her Da was his insight into human behavior. And he’d been candid about his shortcomings as well, something Don Getty could never be. With the great Don Getty, one didn’t participate or contribute ideas. One merely bowed and scraped like the rest of his sycophants. Yes, Chief. No, Chief. Of course you have it right, Chief.
Khattak allowed her to tell him when he got it wrong. He asked her to tell him. Just as he had told her to do during their first case in Waverley, when she’d thrown his affair with Laine Stoicheva in his face, using the well-known sexual harassment claim Laine had brought against him like a machine-gun attack. His composure hadn’t altered. He’d taken her aside and in simple, blunt phrases told her the truth about Laine.
There’d been no need to share the truth with Rachel: she was no threat to him. Rachel had fallen as far as she could go before Khattak had brought her into CPS. She’d thought it a consolation prize of sorts, won for her by her father’s influence when no one else was prepared to take her on.
But Don Getty had had nothing to do with it. Esa Khattak had asked for her. He had chosen her specially.
We’re not just two birds wounded by the same stone, Rachel. Your evaluations were phenomenal.
They had been. It was the claim she had brought against her former boss, Inspector MacInerney, that had seen her fall as swiftly as she had risen. The claim that had died for lack of evidence when his other victims had stayed quiet to salvage their careers.
And just like that, she was a pariah in the service.
You know what it’s like to be judged, Rachel. You know in your bones what it’s like to shatter the truth against a wall of disbelief.
Khattak had been cleared of all charges brought by his former partner, Laine Stoicheva. He hadn’t gone into details, Rachel hadn’t asked. It was enough to know they had this in common. His confidence earned her trust. She didn’t always agree with him, but she’d learned to respect him. She didn’t want to take a step back.
His catlike eyes were watching her. She could tell he knew what she was thinking.
“What’s up then, sir? You know more about this than you’re telling me.”
Blunt as ever. Direct and to the point. It was the thing about her she knew Khattak valued most. And she couldn’t change her spots if she tried.
The handsome face that looked back at her in the dimmed light of the study was troubled. And not about the case, she thought, or noncase, as it were. It was something deeper. His fingers were working the beads again.
“Tell me what you see,” he said.
She nodded, trying to ignore the stale, slightly smoky scent in the room. This was often how they began.
“No photograph of Drayton yet, but here we are in a house that looks and feels expensive, probably about right for a retired businessman. It’s a little large for a man on his own, at least four bedrooms, I’m guessing. It’s well kept, somewhat impersonal, suggesting he might have had a touch of OCD and maybe not much personality. There’s no art anywhere on this floor, just a map above the desk. He keeps a gun in a locked drawer with plenty of ammo, but on the night of his death the gun is found on the floor in this room, although it hasn’t been fired. And there’s several puddles of what looks like candle wax on the floor without any sign of candles. Maybe they’re in the garbage. Maybe he took them with him on his walk and dumped them over the Bluffs.”
She ran over the summary in her mind.
“I haven’t seen that make before,” she added. “Nine millimeter is my guess. We’ll have to look more thoroughly to see if there’s a license anywhere. Has it been identified?”
“Not yet.”
“I admit it’s odd, but there’s no sign of a struggle here, nothing in the coroner’s report to indicate that he was restrained or dragged or pushed over the cliff with unusual force. But, if he was taken by surprise, I don’t know that we’d see any evidence of that. He was probably sitting here looking out at his garden before he went for his walk and lost his way. So I ask you again, sir, what’s going on?”
Khattak hesitated, then he picked up a set of picture frames that rested on the desk, handing one to Rachel.
“There’s Drayton for you. Possibly with his girlfriend. I don’t know who this is.”
Primming her lips at the evasion, Rachel studied the first photograph. It had been taken in broad daylight in Drayton’s garden. A stocky man with a head of white hair and a square jaw had his arm around a beautiful woman who came to his shoulder. She was petite and curvy. Rachel squinted at it. Maybe not beautiful, with those bloated lips and that hyperinflated chest. She looked like a Barbie doll, her clothes straining over a nipped-in waist and the flare of her hips. Her loosely curled hair was an unlikely shade of platinum blond. It tumbled over her chest in a style suited to a much younger woman. Like Drayton, she wore sunglasses.
The other photo was of two teenage girls in tank tops and shorts. They looked alike with their clever heart-shaped faces, a smattering of freckles, and long, straight, toffee-colored hair. The younger one was smiling at the camera.
“His daughters? An estranged former family?”
Khattak shook his head.
“I haven’t answered your question, I know. There’s a reason for that. I’d like to see what conclusions you draw without the weight of prior knowledge.”
Weight was a peculiar choice of word, Rachel thought. Maybe that was the reason that Khattak looked almost haggard. Or spoke to her so formally.
She gave him back the photographs, marched over to the bookshelves she hadn’t inspected yet.
“But eventually you’ll tell me. It’s not exactly a thrill to work in the dark.”
“The light’s no better, believe me.”
* * *
As Khattak worked through the other drawers, she turned her attention to Drayton’s library. Nathan Clare had said he was an ed
ucated man. The books reflected that. An educated businessman with a more than passing interest in languages. Italian, Russian, Albanian, German. He also had a complete set of the works of Nathan Clare. Several volumes of essays and at least a dozen novels. All except Apologia. The rest of the selection was unremarkable, available at any bookstore display. Some new fiction, some books on health, a little political humor, and a set of gardening books. Plus the classics, with new hardbound covers.
On the last shelf she found a curious assortment of teen fiction interspersed with atlases and books on medieval history. A navy wool jacket hung on a peg beside the shelf. Absently, she checked the pockets.
The outer pockets were empty. The inner pockets held a pen and Drayton’s wallet. She went through this. Driver’s license, check. Credit cards, check. Gym membership, check. The discount cards of various retail chains. The billfold contained a modest amount of cash and a folded piece of paper. She withdrew it, frowning at what she read.
“Sir. Here’s something.”
She handed the paper to Khattak. Its edges were torn at the top and at the bottom, leaving no more than half a page. Even that was more than enough for the single sentence typed at its center.
Is this waiting more desperate than the shooting?
“Something’s been torn away. There must have been more to it. It explains the gun, doesn’t it? Maybe an indication of suicidal ideation?”
Khattak didn’t answer, so Rachel went on.
“Of course, we could ask why he typed it. There’s a computer and printer on his desk but suicide notes are usually handwritten, unless there’s some kind of manifesto attached.”
“Was there anything else?”
“I haven’t been through these cupboards yet.” She pointed to the cabinets at the base of the bookshelves. “His taste in reading is pretty bland. What about the desk?”
The Unquiet Dead Page 2