Until the Night jc-6

by Giles Blunt

  “Fabulous meal,” Cardinal said. He tapped his wineglass with a fingernail. “Wine too.”

  “You never thought Catherine might be trying to get in touch with you?”

  “No, Ron. Why, has Evelyn been phoning you?”

  “Phoning, no. But I hear her voice sometimes. I think I do. I mean, it’s bad enough I even saw a doctor about it.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Stress, of course. Overwork.”

  “Well?”

  “Okay, I’ll stop. I’m being silly. Let’s move.”

  Cardinal followed him into the game room. Babstock’s house was a series of rectangles, mostly glass, overlooking Lake Nipissing. The lights of Algonquin Bay glittered across the frozen lake, making it look a much larger city than it was. Babstock had another house in town, but Cardinal had never visited him there.

  They sat at the poker table and Babstock patted his pockets for his reading glasses. “Oh, listen-before I forget-I want you to come to my party.”

  “It’s nice of you to ask, but I’m really not a party person.”

  “I don’t want party people. I want real people. Feel free to bring someone, of course. Are you seeing anyone?”

  “Not just at the moment.”

  “What about that detective colleague you told me about? Why not bring her? You said you like her.”

  “Lise is even less of a party person than I am.”

  “All the better. Be good for both of you. Listen, what did you make of that case in California? That little girl missing for eight years.”

  Babstock made a charming effort to be up on crimes Cardinal might be interested in-no matter how far afield they had occurred. This was a California case in which a child had been abducted at age two. Her mother recognized her eight years later, now age ten, at a playground in a different city. DNA tests confirmed her identity, and the couple who had stolen her were now in federal prison. Cardinal hadn’t paid much attention.

  “Of course, what I really want to ask you about is this motel murder. But I know you can’t talk about it.”

  “ ‘Fraid not. Ongoing investigation.”

  “I know, I know. There’s the doorbell. Come to my party, John. Meanwhile, get ready to part with a serious amount of cash.”

  Giles Blunt

  Until the Night

  From the Blue Notebook

  Back in the winter, when the plane deposited Wyndham and me and the construction crew on T-6, we had somehow contrived in that polar darkness to assemble the prefabricated structure of the mess hall in such a way that it ended up with an extra stub of a room, a kind of alcove. I had dragged one of the more comfortable chairs into it and stacked some of my books around it. I liked to sit there at night and read.

  Rebecca (this was weeks later) was doing a crossword in the mess. Of all of us, Rebecca was the one most able to keep to a regular schedule despite the unending twilight. When she was finished recording and sorting her data for the day, she devoted her evenings to crosswords, board games or reading. I was in my alcove, from where I could see Wyndham but not Rebecca. He was tinkering with his laptop, trying to improve the insulation pack around his jerry-rigged car battery. We weren’t supposed to do such things in the mess, but Wyndham always did.

  I don’t know which of them started it-probably Wyndham, who was always good for a philosophical ramble-but they were talking about different kinds of cold. For some reason their easy conversation put me in a sneering mood and I couldn’t focus on my book. Rebecca told a story about a young monk who travelled thousands of miles to study under a great Zen master.

  Rebecca’s voice in the twilight:

  The master told the student to sit still and meditate. Told him to meditate every day. Told him to meditate his every waking hour, to ignore everything else in the world except for the demands of nourishment and sleep.

  I couldn’t see her, but I pictured her face, her mouth. Full lips forming the words.

  So the student meditated for months on end-until he was exhausted, wasting away. Time and again he would go to the master and say, Why have I not attained enlightenment? I have done everything you say. The master grew angry and told him not to come bothering him with any more complaints. Not to come to him at all until he attained enlightenment.

  I know how this ends, I thought. I was half tempted to heckle.

  The student went away and managed to stick with it for another month. Then he climbed up the hill to the master once more, and all he wanted to ask was, Am I nearly there? Am I making any progress at all? Is there the slightest hope? But the moment he began to speak, the master pulled out his sword. With a single motion-it flashed just once in the sunlight-he cut off the student’s finger.

  Stunned, howling, the student staggered back from the master, turned and stumbled down the hill. He hadn’t gone far when the master shouted his name. The student stopped, clutching his bleeding knuckle, and looked back up the hill. The master slowly raised his hand and, with a smile of utter bliss on his face, wagged his own index finger.

  Rebecca paused, and I knew she was demonstrating to Wyndham. Wyndham looking up from his task to see her imperturbable face. Beautiful slender finger wagging at him.

  And at that moment, she said, the student attained enlightenment.

  Ah, yes, said Wyndham, a very different kind of cold.

  My regard for religion, any religion, has always been low, but Zen Buddhism-perhaps because it is fashionable in those urban enclaves where fashion is everything-seemed to me particularly bogus, precious, its masters the spiritual equivalent of mimes. As for sub-zero pedagogy, the High Arctic is the coldest teacher of them all-I have lost far more than a finger under its instruction-but I have yet to attain even a modicum of wisdom, let alone enlightenment, for all its fabulous array of blades.

  Not like Vostok, Wyndham added.

  Rebecca’s laugh, brief, throaty. Not like Vostok at all.

  Oh, smug! Oh, Annex! I thought, my sneering still at full roar when it was blown from me as if by a sudden blast, a shock wave that rolled outward from their easy concord. It had been stupid of me to imagine Rebecca and I sharing the warmth of that unspoken contra mundum attitude that seems to envelop certain couples.

  A few days later, I changed my mind yet again. We had a globe at Arcosaur, quite a big one. Close to the poles, there’s nothing like a globe to give a proper sense of geographical relationships. But I had another globe of my own that I kept on display in my area of the lab. It was a scruffy, disreputable-looking thing I had picked up at a flea market. (I am a frequenter of such places when in a big city, not because I have any expertise or love for antiques, but because I have a certain affection for things that survive, especially if they survive for no apparent reason.) The market stall had two globes on display, high school models of the same vintage. One of them was the familiar blue and white sphere interrupted by nations of less natural shape and colour, many with vanished names. Siam. Yugoslavia. The GDR.

  Someone had painted the other globe, an identical high school model, matte black.

  How much is that? I said to the vendor. It looks like something they’d use in a TV version of Hamlet.

  He looked at the black sphere and back at me. Three bucks.

  My black Earth went with me on all my travels after that. Whenever people would ask me about it, and they invariably did, I would give them different answers.

  What is that? Rebecca was standing behind me in the lab. I could smell the faint cucumbery scent of her hand lotion.

  My mother, I said.

  It’s like something from Hamlet, she said. If it had been written for television.

  4

  Delorme parked in the lot of the Algonquin Bay Public Library and got out of the car with her hood up. She took her briefcase from the back seat and shut the door. She walked as far as the sidewalk and looked across the street. A half-dozen cars were parked behind the Quiet Pint, none that she recognized. The night was cold, snowless. From somewhere,
the repeated grinding of a car engine refusing to start.

  She crossed the street and entered. Two young men with long hair and nose rings were chatting in one of the booths, a paperback copy of The Corrections between their pints. The fireside table where she had sat with Priest last time was occupied by a couple. The woman stared at the tabletop while the man traced her hand with a fingertip. Illicit lovers, Delorme thought, or perhaps just a couple recovering from a quarrel.

  Priest himself was hunched over a newspaper at the bar. Delorme sat a few stools over and ordered a glass of red wine. “I’ll pay now,” she said when Tommy brought it.

  Priest glanced over, then turned his face right back to his newspaper. His cellphone was on the bar beside a half-empty pint of Guinness.

  Delorme took out several papers from a conference she had attended months ago and opened the top one. “Developments in Case Management-A Success Story.”

  “You intent on making this your home office?” Priest said without looking up. “That your plan?”

  Delorme turned to him and raised her glass. “I’m fine, thank you. And how are you this evening?”

  “Sod off.”

  “Here’s to British hospitality.”

  They sat in silence for a few minutes. Even the jukebox was silent. Murmurs of conversation from the two occupied tables. Priest folded his paper. The Guardian. He picked up his phone and swivelled on his stool, facing Delorme. He keyed in a number and put the phone to his ear. “Yes, I want to report an incident of police misconduct, please.” He kept the phone to his ear, looking at Delorme the whole time. “Yes, Sergeant, I wish to report a case of police harassment… At a pub. The Quiet Pint. Yes, that’s right…”

  Delorme kept her eyes on the case management study. The institution of new protocols over the course of several months resulted in significant upward deviations in clearance averages. She read the sentence several times. If Priest was really calling the station, it could be embarrassing.

  “Delorme…” Priest said into the phone. “I don’t know her first name. She says she’s off-duty, but she keeps coming round here asking questions. I’ve asked her to stop, but she refuses…”

  Delorme turned a page. Precincts where protocols remained unchanged reported lower clearance averages or similar averages with less desirable outcomes.

  “No, I think what it is, Sergeant, is she’s one of those cunts who thinks she’s so bloody hot she can do whatever the hell she wants and the blokes’ll just fall all over begging for more… Certainly…”

  Priest got off his stool and came over to Delorme, holding the phone out. “He wants to speak to you.”

  Delorme took the phone and glanced at the little screen, but it was blank. She could hear a man’s voice, and put the phone to her ear. “You work hard all day,” the voice said, “and now it’s time for some serious relaxation. Call 970-COCK and we’ll lick your pussy for as long as you want. Talk to real live studs, with massive erections ready to serve you-anywhere you want it. Any way you want it. Just open your legs and dial 970…”

  Delorme handed the phone back. “I think it’s your dad.”

  Priest placed the phone on the bar and slid it down toward his newspaper.

  “So tell me. What do I have to do to get rid of you?”

  “I’m a paying customer-trying to be. Why do you want to get rid of me?”

  “You know why.”

  Delorme shrugged. “And you know how.”

  Priest turned his back on her, went to the end of the bar, collected his phone and his Guinness, and went to an unoccupied booth and sat down. When Delorme didn’t move, he held out both his palms and raised his eyebrows. Well?

  Delorme put her papers into the briefcase, picked up her wine and brought them over to the table. Her knees brushed his as she slid into the booth, and she wished they hadn’t.

  Priest half stood and reached across the table for her briefcase and placed it between their glasses. He leaned forward and spoke in a low voice into the handle. “Thirtieth January, two thousand eleven, interview with Leonard Priest in the matter of Laura Lacroix, disappearance of. Present, D.C. What’s-Her-Name and God knows who else.”

  Delorme stood awkwardly and opened the briefcase, tilting it toward him. “No microphone.”

  “Could you open your shirt as well, please?”

  Delorme sat down and placed the briefcase on the seat beside her.

  “It’s open to the third button already, I notice. Freckles, I see-very nice.”

  “How did you meet Laura Lacroix?”

  “Come on, then. Just one more button.”

  “How did you meet Laura Lacroix?”

  He closed his eyes and leaned forward, and the wide nostrils flared. Then the vivid blue eyes opened, taking her in once more. “Incredible,” he said softly. “You actually use Ivory soap.”

  This was true, as it happened.

  “Should I come back another day?”

  “I’ll tell you how I met Laura Lacroix. But I have to be sure you’re not wearing a wire between those tastefully freckled tits. Are you going to show me or not?”

  “No.”

  “We appear to be at a standoff, then, don’t we.”

  Delorme reached for her briefcase. “I’ll just come back another-”

  “Wait.” Priest grabbed her forearm and squeezed.

  Delorme froze, looking at his hand until he let her go.

  “I’ve thought of a way. I’ll tell you what you want to know, but first you have to ask if you can suck my cock.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake.” She got up and went across the room for her coat.

  “You won’t leave,” Priest said after her. “Laura’s been missing-what? — three days now? And you’re afraid of words? So repressed you’d screw up a case rather than say a few little words Sister Mary Tightarse wouldn’t approve of?”

  Delorme took her coat from the hook and struggled into the sleeves.

  “She could be tied up somewhere. Or lost in the bush. Freezing to death. But you can’t bring yourself to say a few little-”

  Delorme came back, coat and all, and sat down opposite him, banging his knee hard. She grabbed hold of his turtleneck and pulled him closer and looked into those gleaming blue eyes. “Oh, please master, please master, please, mister British rock star master, won’t you please let me suck that huge cock of yours? Please? Please? Won’t you, huh? Huh? Oh my God, it’s so big. It’s so huge. How do you even get around? Really, something that size, you ought to get it fitted for a shoe. Maybe build it its own garage.” She pushed him away and sat back.

  Priest frowned at her and half stood, twisting a little to see himself in the mirror. He fussed with the material of his turtleneck for a minute, then slid back down to his seat.

  “Are you really that pathetic?” Delorme said. “Is that really what you need to hear?”

  “As a matter of fact,” Priest said, “I think this is going very well.”

  He signalled for more drinks, and when they arrived he began to talk.

  Eleven months earlier. He said he remembered because he had just returned from Christmas vacation with the aged ones in London-Hampstead Garden Suburb, to be exact. Then to Algonquin Bay to get in a little skiing and northern solitude before venturing back into the belly of the monster in Ottawa and Toronto.

  “I was invited to dinner at a friend’s place. Fella named Brian I met at the squash club. I forget why Laura was there-they weren’t trying to set me up. I think she works with Brian’s wife up at the hospital. Pleasant evening, blah blah. Anyway, few days later I head back to Ottawa and-”

  “Where do you live, exactly? Here? Ottawa? Toronto?”

  “Ottawa. I’ve got my Swiss cottage here and a loft in Toronto, but the Toronto club runs itself at this point. It’s Ottawa I got to keep an eye on-thanks to your colleagues. Believe it or not, police investigations do tend to have a negative effect on the libido, as well as everything else.”

  “Doesn’t seem to h
ave affected you.”

  “Yeah, but I’m exceptional.” He took a sip of his Guinness and contemplated the glass. “So I’m back in Ottawa a couple of weeks and I get a call from Laura. In town for some kind of conference. Wonders if I have time for a drink. Not dinner. Not coffee. Drink. I know what that means, and so do you. So, fine. We meet at the Shadow and we have a drink.”

  “I’m sorry-the Shadow?”

  “Yeah, the hotel. Shadow Laurier. Oh Christ, you’re not taking the piss about my accent, are you?”

  “I thought you said Shadow. I thought it might be another club.”

  “Non, c’est une plaisanterie. Que tu es snob! Tu penses que t’es tellement superieure? La petite Pepsi avec son accent qui donne l’impression d’une chatte en chaleurs? C’est insupportable.” His French was infuriatingly good.

  “First point,” Delorme said, “you’ve never heard my accent. Second point, did you actually call me a Pepsi?” It was an age-old put-down of uncertain derivation for French Canadians, especially dizzy young girls.

  “I did. And I notice you’re sticking to English. Bit self-conscious, are we? Let me give you some advice, darling-never get between an Englishman and his accent. We grow up with a hundred of ’em buzzing in our ears, each with its own little class marker-and believe me, every one of us learns to negotiate that minefield very quickly indeed. That’s why we produce the best fucking actors in the universe.”

  “So why do you sound the way you do?”

  “If I felt like it, I could sound like Bertie Fuckin Russell, but I prefer to sound like someone with a dick between his legs. Awright, sistah?”

  “So you met for a drink.”

  He nodded. “Laura’d already had a couple. She was fun in a small-town kind of way. Very innocent. Marriage was in trouble, told me that straight off. And she pretended to be concerned that she was feeling sexually restless. Sexually restless-I’d never heard it put quite that way before.

  “So I take her back to the Lord Elgin, where the conference was, and I know this will shock you, Sister Delorme, but, well, I’m afraid we went to bed together. I cannot tell a lie. Would you like the details?”