Until the Night jc-6

by Giles Blunt

  Miranda Heap was forty-five and good-looking, and she ran a business services concern that so far had managed to thrive in a niche that was too small for the big-city competition to bother with. She did most of her work out of her home office, and that was where Delorme found her.

  “Your face looks much better,” Delorme said.

  “Yes, not so much like a raccoon now. Amazing what a little foundation can do. Would you like a coffee? I’m about due for a break.”

  “No, that’s okay. I just stopped by to see how you were getting on.”

  “I’m fine. Really, I think I kind of overreacted.”

  “No, you didn’t. He hurt you. You should tell me his name so we can press charges.”

  “He didn’t mean to hurt me. He’s just a passionate guy, that’s all. That’s part of the attraction, you know? A big part. It’s hard for you to understand because you’ve never met him.”

  “Tell me his name, I’ll go meet him right now.”

  Miranda laughed. “You’d probably get along great. You’re obviously passionate too.”

  “Passionate is not the same as violent. Are you gonna let him keep hitting you just because he’s good in bed?”

  “You’ve only seen the very worst of him. He hates that part of himself too. He’s so ashamed after. He purposely waits until he knows I’m out and then he leaves these incredibly long, heartfelt phone messages. Really. His apologies are masterpieces.”

  “I imagine he gets a lot of practice.”

  “You would never guess from meeting him that he could lose control that way. He’s so intelligent, so generous-a good, good man in lots of ways.”

  “For all the difference it makes. Did you ever contact the therapist I recommended?”

  “I did, I did. And she’s great. I’ve been seeing her twice a week. I know she’s doing me good, so I have to thank you for that. Really.”

  “That’s the thing about women,” Delorme said when she met Cardinal at the coffee shop. “We have an endless capacity to fool ourselves. To see what we want to see-and nothing else-especially when it comes to men. I do it myself.”

  “No, you don’t.” He might have said a little more on the subject, but he could see she was in no mood. “Listen, I had a very interesting name come up in one of my interviews.”

  “Who’ve you got?”

  “Were you going to order a coffee?”

  “Lineup’s too long. Tell me on the way.”

  They went outside and got in the car and Cardinal drove up toward Airport Hill. “I finally got to speak to Laura Lacroix’s best friend-Mia Neff? Hasn’t heard from her. Has no idea where she might be. She’s the most upset of anyone I’ve seen so far. Says this is totally out of character-the vanishing, that is, not the affair. Miss Neff knew all about the marriage breakup and the fling with Trent. Turns out that the love affair wasn’t so out of character.”

  “Oh?”

  “Apparently the former Mrs. Rettig had another love interest before she took up with Mark Trent.”

  “That who we’re going to see?”

  “Leonard Priest.”

  “You’re kidding,” Delorme said. “Are you serious?”

  “I’ve got no reason to doubt this woman. Everyone agrees she and Laura were best friends. She said right off no one else knew about it.”

  “Leonard Priest,” Delorme said. “Wow. This just got a whole lot more interesting. Man, I would love to nail that bastard.”

  “Tell me about it. I thought I had him for Choquette.”

  Regine Choquette had been murdered in a boathouse on Trout Lake. She was found chained to an overhead beam, and nude, except for a zippered leather hood that covered her face. The weight of the evidence suggested that an evening of highly charged sadomasochism had got out of hand and ended in her being shot between the eyes with a Nazi-era Luger.

  “I never understood why the Crown didn’t charge him. It was Garth Romney, wasn’t it?”

  “Assistant Crown. Yeah, it was Garth.”

  “I remember that picture of him holding up that mask. Fighting the forces of evil.”

  “Don’t get me started. Take a look in that envelope on the back seat.”

  Delorme undid her seatbelt and reached around. She opened the envelope and took out two eight-by-tens.

  “See any resemblance?”

  “Both long blond hair, wavy. Both have brown eyes, natural eyebrows, good cheekbones. Could both definitely appeal to the same guy.”

  “Both small framed as well. Five-two for Regine, five-four for Laura Lacroix.”

  “But I thought Priest sold his house up here-after all the trouble.”

  “Nope. And apparently he was in town this weekend. Miss Neff saw him at the Quiet Pint on Friday night.”

  “Leonard Priest,” Delorme said again. “Wow.”

  They drove up Airport Road and then took a number of smaller streets until they got to a dead end called Crosier Place. There was only one house, a tall cedar A-frame that to Delorme’s eyes looked as if it belonged in Switzerland. A Jaguar X-Type gleamed in the drive.

  Cardinal pulled in and parked behind the Jaguar and switched off the ignition. Usually the two of them would decide in the car who would do most of the talking, but she got out and went straight up to the side door and pushed the doorbell.

  Cardinal came up behind. “You in a rush?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  The door opened and Leonard Priest was there, holding a cellphone to one ear and looking annoyed. He snapped the cellphone shut and slipped it into his shirt pocket. “Yes?”

  Delorme started to introduce herself, but Priest recognized both of them before she finished.

  “No, thank you,” he said. “Don’t want any.”

  Delorme stopped the door with her foot. “We just need to ask you a few questions.”

  “I don’t care. Move your foot, you’re freezing the place out.”

  “About Laura Lacroix.”

  “I still don’t care. Now do me a favour and fuck off out of it.” A dozen years back in Canada had done nothing to soften the London accent. Not to mention the rock-star attitude.

  “Mr. Priest, it’s just a few questions. A woman has gone missing-under violent circumstances-and we’re talking to everyone who knows her. Why make it such a big deal?”

  This time Priest spoke to Cardinal. “You tried to put me away. And now you come round here expecting me to be delighted to see you?”

  “No, I expected you to behave like an asshole,” Cardinal said. “You’re not disappointing me.”

  Priest took out the cellphone again and pressed a button. “I have my lawyer on speed-dial.”

  “Really,” Delorme said. “You must be so proud.”

  “We’ll never get a subpoena with what we’ve got at this point,” Cardinal said in the car. “A single person’s hearsay that he once went out with Laura Lacroix.”

  “I know. He knows it too. He has a great accent, though, I’ll give him that.”

  “You know he’s actually from here originally, right? Moved to England with his parents when he was a kid. Moved back here after his band broke up. It’s funny who moves back here. Guy like that, you’d think he’d stay in London or Los Angeles or somewhere.”

  Cardinal made the turn and headed downhill. He had to stop again at the highway intersection. It was a long light and they sat there in silence. Then it was finally green and they were on Algonquin.

  “I seem to remember Priest made a pass at you during the trial,” Cardinal said.

  “More than one.”

  “Yeah, I think you might be his type. Regine Choquette and Laura Lacroix? You have the same colour hair, same colour eyes, about the same height. Same age too, pretty much. And look at their last names.”

  “Choquette. Lacroix. Bon, donc, nous sommes toutes les trois Canadiennes-francaises. Trois soeurs. All French Canadians look alike now?”

  “No, but all three of you do look French-Canadian.”

&nb
sp; “You think I should cozy up to him? Dinner and a movie and wearing a wire the whole time?”

  “Hell, no. He’d find the wire too fast.”

  “Very funny.”

  From the Blue Notebook

  There is something ludicrous about a man shovelling snow in the Arctic. Wyndham had a photograph tacked above his desk of him and me doing just that. We were out there day and night, along with one or two of the others, sometimes with shovels, other times on our knees poking about with implements smaller than kitchen spatulas.

  Snow cover on T-6 averaged about three feet. And yet the polar ice cap is a desert. Most areas receive less than eight inches of precipitation a year, but whatever comes stays. Snowstorms are most often a matter of blowing snow, not falling snow, but they can play havoc with a runway. Keeping the huts and equipment in running order fell to old Arctic hand Murray Washburn, but keeping our landing strip clear was the responsibility of Hunter Oklaga, an Inuit and former Army Ranger who was possibly the only man alive-and certainly the only man among us-who had parachuted into both the Antarctic and the Arctic, feats none of us yearned to duplicate. If anyone voiced discomfort with the environment, he would say, You’re crazy, man. You should try Laurie Island. Antarctica? Now, that’s cold. This is Miami we’re in here.

  We were less than eight hundred miles from the Pole.

  “Hunter” was a translation of a nine-syllable name no English-speaking person could even remember, let alone pronounce. Hunter told me it actually meant “hunter with impressive penis” but he hadn’t liked to adopt the second noun for everyday use. He was a cheery, chatty sort, always showing me photographs from the Antarctic and other expeditions he’d been on. I think it was because he knew I was a former bush pilot and was under the mistaken impression that I was cut from the same rough-and-ready cloth. All his photos had been taken on sunny days.

  There aren’t that many photographs from Arcosaur, and most of the ones I’ve seen look black-and-white. But they are not’ it’s simply a reflection of the weather, which was so often overcast. The tallest object in every shot is the sixty-foot radio mast, barnacled with instruments. One becomes inured to the crudeness of an ice station. I don’t notice it in memory, only in photographs. Empty fuel drums. We made no effort to corral them. They got blown from place to place like so much tumbleweed until they got snowed into place, some canted on end, others lengthwise.

  We set boards on top of spent drums weighted with sea water, creating an elevated walkway between the radio shack and the lab and the sleeping quarters. Even so, we sometimes had to clear away high drifts. I remember a shot of Rebecca-it must have been a warm day-sitting on the walkway, the antenna rising like an ugly Eiffel Tower in the background. She is eating an apple and mostly has her back to the camera. Her red down vest the only colour in the picture. Dark hair lifting in a slight breeze.

  There’s another one of Ray Deville, looking shaggy and unshaven in front of one of the AARI buoys. He’s going down on one knee, arms spread wide in the classic posture of the big Broadway number, huge grin on his face. Next to the buoy sits a Nansen sled loaded with crates of dynamite destined for the seismic ridge and a series of reflection experiments. The picture is the only instance I can think of where Ray is smiling.

  Somewhere online there is a shot of the supply plane landing. Sky pale grey at the zenith, deeper grey at the horizon. The snow and ice scalloped and torn into strips of grey on grey, almost white in the foreground. The whitest object is a cloud hugging the NE horizon. It isn’t a cloud at all, of course, but a windstorm. Wyndham stands in the middle of the shot cradling a twelve-gauge. We were having a lot of trouble with bears at the time.

  Rebecca. Seated in the pale wash of light from one of the porthole windows. It’s not a photograph-I was never a photographer and have frankly never understood shutterbugs-but the image is as fixed in my mind as a studio portrait: Rebecca in jeans and that ivory turtleneck, reading a volume of poems. I’m noodling calculations in my notebook. I’ve been growing increasingly alarmed at some of the findings, and I’m trying, not very hard at this moment, to find the errors.

  I don’t know anyone who reads poems, I say.

  She doesn’t respond. The place is silent except for the thrum of the generator. It’s early in a new six-week rotation and everyone is somewhere else, perhaps watching a video of a ball game that took place weeks ago. Perhaps working. People fall into odd patterns when there is no night. The first day there is a kind of exhilaration at the unlooked-for escape from the dark. Many stay up until fatigue finally drives them to bed and a fitful sleep. Scientists go out at all hours.

  I put aside the notebook and stand before her and slip my hand into the masses of curls. The warmth of her face against my wrist. She doesn’t move. Doesn’t look up.

  Do you always just take what you want?

  I can’t, in this case. That would be your heart.

  It’s taken.

  That’s not how it looks.

  Lots of things are more complicated than they look.

  She has her finger under the next page, ready to turn. The paper trembling. There are pencil marks next to a couple of lines of verse: Let me break/Let me make/something ragged, something raw/Something difficult to take.

  I remove my hand from her hair and lean down. So close I can smell her hair, her skin, the ghost of cedar from her sweater. I know she can feel my breath on her ear as I whisper one word.

  Vostok.

  3

  Assistant Crown Attorney Garth Romney took a stack of files from a cabinet and put them into a cardboard box that was open on his chair. After eight years as a prosecutor, he was being elevated to the bench of the Superior Court. “I can’t tell you how good it feels to transfer these cases to someone else. Two more weeks here and then I have a month in Tuscany,” he told them. “And next time you see me I’ll be on the bench, with a very good tan.”

  Cardinal told him why they were there.

  “You’re nowhere near a subpoena. The fact that you had a date a year ago with a woman who is now missing does not make you a suspect, even if you’re Leonard Priest.”

  “The missing woman looks a lot like Regine Choquette.”

  “Ah, yes. Regine Choquette.” Romney moved the box of files to the floor and sat at his desk. He opened a manila folder and quickly closed it again. “Regine Choquette broke my heart. I would’ve loved to nail Leonard Priest for that-if we’d had the evidence.”

  “I thought we did,” Cardinal said.

  “I know you did. But you’re not the one whose ass is in a sling if the judge decides the Crown has brought a meritless charge.”

  “We had an eyewitness who put Priest at the scene. He saw Priest and Reicher coming down the path to the boathouse just as he was leaving.”

  “You’re referring to Thomas Waite. But Thomas Waite did not see Regine Choquette. He claimed he saw Leonard Priest and Fritz Reicher. And then his memory got mysteriously foggy.”

  “Yes, because a few weeks earlier, Leonard Priest had Reicher dress up like a Nazi and tie the guy up and beat him within an inch of his life. Priest’s idea of foreplay. Waite was convinced he’d be dead if he hadn’t managed to escape.”

  “Prior action. Not admissible unless the defence brought it up, and Priest’s lawyers were far too smart for that. Plus Waite did not report the incident when it occurred.”

  “That’s not unusual for victims of sex crimes,” Delorme said.

  “Look, the guy changed his mind and there’s nothing I can do about that. It’s irrelevant now anyway, seeing as he’s dead.”

  “What? When did this happen?” Cardinal said.

  “I don’t know, six months ago. Blood clot, apparently.”

  “But there was Fritz Reicher,” Delorme said. “In his statements to us he said the whole thing was Priest’s idea. Priest ordered him to shoot.”

  “Courts are extremely reluctant to convict where the sole evidence is the testimony of an accomplice-especially a
murdering accomplice. And that’s when they’re under oath. Fritz Reicher was not under oath when he made those statements, and you seem to forget that he recanted and then refused to ever open his mouth against Priest again.”

  “We had Priest’s prints at the scene,” Cardinal said. “That alone-”

  “From a previous occasion,” Romney said. “Priest never denied being there. Never denied having sex in that horrible place. He just denied being there on the night in question.”

  “We could have gotten Reicher to turn,” Delorme said. “To go back to his initial statement. You could have offered him a better deal.”

  Romney laughed. “Did you ever meet Reicher?”

  “Once in chambers for depositions, that’s all.”

  “Fritz Reicher-aside from having a remarkably low IQ-was a known fantasist, and that’s putting it kindly. All sorts of claims about his background and huge ideas about the future, both unencumbered by any connection to reality. He would have made the world’s worst witness-he had the affect of a zombie and an accent right out of the Berlin bunker.”

  “The Luger was found at one of Priest’s sex clubs,” Cardinal pointed out.

  “A club where Reicher was employed. He had twenty-four-hour access to the Ottawa club. And they were Reicher’s prints on that gun, not Priest’s. Please. I know you both as first-rate investigators, but it was a weak case against Priest two years ago and it’s a lot weaker now.” Romney stood up and transferred the cardboard box back to his chair. “I frankly don’t even know why you’re here.”

  “Because you and I have presented a lot of cases together,” Cardinal said, “and we usually see eye to eye. It wasn’t like you to give Priest a free pass.”

  Romney slammed a stack of files into the box. “The Charter of Rights and Freedoms gave him the free pass. The facts gave him the free pass. Do you seriously think I’d not press charges if I thought we had a case? You think the guy paid me off or something?”

  “I might,” Cardinal said, “if it was somebody else. But you enjoy winning too much.”