Blood Wine

by John Moss

  “Miranda,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Not ‘lady,’ Miranda.”

  She looked around, trying to penetrate the bustle, to make the frenetic activity resolve into a coherent scene. She was drenched in blood. She was shoeless and limping as particles gouged at her feet. Medics got to her and were at first confounded because, despite the blood, they could find only a few abrasions, no open wounds.

  “Where’s Elke?” she said to the fireman.

  He looked around. “The other woman? I don’t know. She made it, she’ll be fine.”

  Clancy walked over to where Miranda and the fireman were being fussed over beside an ambulance. He stared at her. The detective from Toronto, so far out of her own jurisdiction, was covered in a shroud of blood and filth. She looked like a disaster victim, but she was alive, on her feet, talking.

  “Where’s Elke?” she demanded.

  “Don’t know,” said Clancy.

  “You can talk!”

  “Yeah. Didn’t before. Had a lot on my mind.” He grinned almost shyly. “Linda Sebastiani has a few bruises. She’s hysterical about Carlo … you know.”

  “Where’s Elke?” Miranda declaimed again in a loud voice, anxiously looking around, trying to focus on someone who might answer her question.

  A policewoman approached. “The woman with the arm? Is that who you want?”

  “Yes, where is she?”

  “We got the arm off, it just pulled through the cuff.”

  “Where is she?”

  “The cuffs came off easily with snips — she got a ride to the hospital, just to be checked out. She’s okay.”

  “She’s gone!” Miranda declared.

  “Yeah, lady,” said the policewoman. “An ambulance took her. She said to tell you thanks. She sent you her love.”

  “Her love!”

  “Yeah,” said the policewoman. “It ain’t up to me.”

  Miranda could not even begin to imagine what was going through the other woman’s mind. She turned to Clancy. “Did anyone find my sandals?”

  “What sandals, where?”

  “My Cole Haans. They were in the car.”

  “Car’s gone, the whole house is ablaze,” he said, realizing he was saying the obvious.

  “She’s gone.”

  “She’ll turn up,” said Clancy, “sooner or later.”

  Miranda pivoted around and looked down the drive, smiling to herself. To the others she appeared like a smashed apparition, inconsolably sad.

  “Yeah,” she said, “she’ll turn up. She does that a lot.”

  She could hear Carlo Sebastiani inside her head. The Château Mouton was a fake. She could hear her own voice coming from a long way off, she could hear her father, whispering in her ear.

  Miranda turned to Seymour Clancy and smiled wanly then collapsed against him as she passed out, but he was too surprised to catch hold as she slid to the ground.

  17

  London

  The unmistakable smells of a hospital swarmed into Miranda’s mind as she came to a sense of herself before she opened her eyes. She could also sense the close presence of David Morgan, who was leaning over her, almost low even, to kiss her on the forehead, as if he were communing beyond words or perhaps quietly praying. In fact, he knew she was just recuperating from exhaustion and stress, and he was admiring her pores. He had never noticed before, because of her robust demeanour, how smooth her skin was, like porcelain.

  Shyly, he reached out and touched her cheek with his fingers.

  “Morgan?” Her eyes were still closed.

  He withdrew his hand with a start. “You’re awake.”

  “Yes. Have you been here long?”

  “A couple of hours. I flew in early this morning. They wanted you to get a good sleep.”

  “What time is it?” she asked, opening her eyes, trying to get oriented.

  “About eleven.”

  “In the morning?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What day?”

  “Day after yesterday. You’ve only been out since yesterday noon. They shot you with sedatives.”

  “Really?” she said dreamily.

  “I think so. It’s Friday.”

  “Already?”

  “Yeah. How’re you feeling?”

  “Good. Where am I?”

  “In New Jersey.”

  “I know, in a hospital. What kind of hospital?”

  “Not psychiatric. Convalescent.”

  “Does OHIP pay?”

  “What?”

  “Does the umbrella of socialized medicine reach this far south?”

  “Don’t worry about cost. It’s all right.”

  “Says you! Who’s paying, if the Ontario government won’t?”

  “A friend.”

  “Morgan, I can tell by your voice that it’s Francine Ciccone. I don’t need any favours from your Mafia friends, old girlfriends, you, or anyone else. I’ll pay my own way.”

  “Feisty, aren’t we?”

  “Don’t speak in the precious plural, it doesn’t become you.”

  “And we’re pedantic as well. Why did you think Frankie was involved?”

  “I don’t know. Is she?”

  “Not directly.”

  “Morgan?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Thanks for coming down.”

  “No problem.”

  “I feel disconnected, you know what I mean?”

  “In the hospital, or in New Jersey?”

  “In the States, I guess. I’m at home, here, but I’m not home. The proverbial stranger in a strange land, only the land isn’t strange.”

  “Why don’t you rest. I’ll go grab a coffee and come back in a bit.”

  “Black. No double-double, no doughnuts.”

  Morgan chortled to himself as he walked out of the room. He was naturally fit but she watched over him as if he had an eating disorder. And perhaps he did. They had been together so long, for over a decade, since she finished three years with the RCMP right out of university and joined the Toronto Police. He could not be sure if his dietary habits were his own or shaped by his partner.

  Miranda sank back against her pillows, feeling gravity mold flesh to her bones as she ran a leisurely inventory in her mind, checking out her body from the inside. Everything seemed to be intact. She knew about ghost limbs providing sensation to amputees, but she couldn’t think of anything missing.

  She could taste smoke and realized her throat was scorched in the fire, and then she remembered that Elke had disappeared from the scene. She was anxious to ask Morgan if he knew where she was and waited, feeling strangely bereft, for him to return.

  Morgan sat in the hospital cafeteria, looking out over the manicured grounds. He had received a call after he landed in New York, telling him to cancel his hotel reservation and take the day flight to London. He assured his superintendent there was not enough time. He was already en route from Manhattan to the hospital in New Jersey.

  Alex Rufalo knew he was lying, that he was still at JFK, but he acquiesced.

  “Take the overnight, then. And give Miranda my best.”

  “Yeah, of course.”

  “You have your passport with you, right?”

  “For sure.”

  “Check to make sure she doesn’t have hers. Make the point, make it stick. She’s not going with you. When she’s rested, I want her back here.”

  “She’s not gonna like that.”

  “Morgan, I don’t give a damn. She’s too much involved on a personal basis in this whole affair, there’s no way I’m going to compromise a conviction because one of the principals was travelling the world when she should have been home.”

  “Okay, I’ll tell her that, those exact words.”

  “You tell her she’s lucky she’s not in shit for going to the States.”

  “Yeah, she owes you. What’s with London? Is this a vicarious thrill thing, where I check out all your old haunts?”

 
“I’ve never been to London. We always go straight to the Continent.”

  “Really?” said Morgan, surprised. “Good, then I’ll go to my own favourite places.”

  “What you will do is get in touch with New Scotland Yard when you get there.”

  “And say what?”

  “Find Alistair Ross. He’s your man.”

  “In what sense?”

  “Elke Sturmberg, Morgan. She’s in London. She arrived this morning.”

  “Really! Right, Guv. I’ll give Miranda your love.”

  When Morgan returned to Miranda’s room, she was up and dressed in her filthy clothes that she had retrieved from a bag by the bed. Her feet were bare; her toes on the terrazzo floor looked embarrassed.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded.

  “I’m going to hunt down Elke, and then I’m going to … I don’t know what. Get clarification.”

  “That’ll scare the hell out of her. She’s in England —”

  “The bitch!”

  “Because?”

  “Because she isn’t here. She’s bad, Morgan, she’s playing with fire.”

  “Literally. But she’s gone, like the ladybug, she’s flown away home.”

  “How did you know about the ladybug?”

  “The rhyme, ladybug, ladybug, you remember, fly away home.”

  “Yes, I do. Morgan, she’s going to burn.”

  “That’s pretty dire.”

  “Morgan, she’s connected to the Sebastiani family, probably to the mob in Toronto as well.”

  “The superintendent talked to Clancy at NYPD. I heard about her and the mob. He wants me to back you up on this.”

  “Well, good.” She paused. “In what sense?”

  “Sorting out how she fits in. Spivak and Eeyore are in a holding pattern. They can’t resolve the Philip Carter thing until we sort out the context. And for that, Elke Sturmberg is the key.”

  “Good, we’ll work together.”

  “After you’ve had a chance to rest, maybe changed your outfit, and cleared out your lungs.”

  “I’m not hanging around here, doing nothing.”

  “Yeah, you are.”

  “Morgan, you can’t do it without me. I know her. For God’s sake, I’ve slept with the woman.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “You know what I mean. Literally. We’ve shared the same bed, the same bedroom. To go to sleep with another person, we’re talking trust — and then betrayal. She’s …” Miranda could not think of an appropriate epithet. “She’s a manipulative manipulator,” she concluded.

  “No doubt.”

  “I just want to look the absolute bitch in the eye.”

  “And?”

  “That’s it. My smug self-righteous double whammy will reduce her to a puddle of nothing.”

  “Well, maybe I’ll do that on your behalf. I’m on my way to London tonight.”

  “You’re not!”

  “I am.”

  “Me too!”

  “No way.”

  “Way.”

  “No.”

  “Says you!” she exclaimed.

  “Says Superintendent Alex Rufalo of the Toronto Police Service, Homicide Squad, your boss.”

  “I’ll go on my own time.”

  “There’s no such thing. You’re on the payroll again.”

  “Good! And what better way to earn my pay than bringing Elke Sturmberg back to Canada?”

  “You’ve got a point. Do you have a passport?”

  “No.”

  “Good.”

  “Good?”

  “You can’t go. I promised Rufalo.”

  “You are beneath contempt.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really. You go. I’ll stay here. I don’t care.”

  “Miranda, take off those ridiculous clothes, crawl back into bed. Spend a couple of days, get a good rest. Go home.”

  “I was never off the payroll. I just wasn’t working.”

  “I know.”

  “Give Elke my love.”

  “For sure. How ’bout I go away now and buy you some clothes.”

  “Yeah, maybe some sandals. Cole Haans. I’ll settle for Nikes. You don’t even know what I’d wear, you don’t know my size, none of my sizes.”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  “You’re gonna buy me underwear?”

  “You bet.”

  “Have fun imagining.”

  “I do.”

  “You do!”

  “I will — see you later.” He grinned at her lopsided smile and wheeled out of the room, intent on finding a store with a saleswoman who occupied space in exactly Miranda’s proportions.

  Riding the tube in from Heathrow, Morgan struggled with exhaustion. He hadn’t slept on the red-eye, but he was too tired to doze off and too unsettled by the barrage of memories from two decades before, when he had last been in London. He lived there for a couple of years after university, travelling back and forth to the Continent with England as home base. It all seemed familiar, the smells of the carriage, the sounds of the wheels on the tracks, and, especially, the familiar and resonant names. Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square, Covent Garden, tube stops on the underground map, cultural capital echoing through his mind from earliest childhood, from songs, movies, books, history lessons, and lectures, the latent colonialism of Cabbagetown.

  Miranda in the States felt she was a stranger in a familiar land. She was not overwhelmed but uneasy. It was different for Morgan in Britain. He felt at home, but the world surrounding him seemed more substantial than his own presence in it. He felt it would be easy to lose himself here and stay forever.

  That’s the power of memory, he thought. His mind swarmed with clusters of images, mostly of himself with the girl he lived with in Knightsbridge for the better part of a year. He tried not to think of her when he was at home, because he should have married her and not Lucy. She had flown to Canada to console him for the choice he was making, just before his wedding, being prescient enough to know marrying Lucy would lead to disaster.

  He lost track of her after that. He had not fallen in love with her until after she had exited from his life, stage left, as he thought, and he knew that by then she was likely no longer in love with him. Their relationship was theatre of the absurd, something by Ionesco or Sartre — in love, but in different dimensions of time. He tried to envision her now, and her life. But she was still twenty-two in his mind, with copper-red hair, forgiving eyes, and the lips of a compromised angel.

  Morgan rode the Piccadilly Line through to Russell Square, then wandered down into Bloomsbury and found a small hotel close by the British Museum, past Needlenose Court on Thackeray Street. He was enthralled by the names, like redolent snippets of poetry that shaped how he saw wherever he looked.

  At the Vanity Fair Hotel, he slept for a couple of hours, then went down to the lobby for a coffee and used the phone at the desk to call New Scotland Yard, only to discover that Alistair Ross was in the country for the weekend but would be available for consultation on Monday at nine.

  It’s Saturday, Morgan thought. Time is a gift. He had two whole days to relax, to subdue the gnawing effects of jet lag and act the tourist, renew old haunts, and take in some culture. Lovely, he thought, and went back to sleep until four.

  When he woke up, he was famished, but he was not sure which meal he craved. After cleaning up, he walked over to a small Italian restaurant in Soho where he and Susan had once shared a frugal dinner, both of them being poor at the time, he because he was saving travel money from his job in a pub and she because secretarial wages were miserable. It was still there, exactly the same, across from the Windmill Theatre with its anachronistic slogan emblazoned across the marquee: WE NEVER CLOSED. The Windmill was a burlesque theatre that stayed open right through the Blitz, two decades before Morgan was born.

  He changed his mind and walked west for an hour, e
nding up at The Bunch of Grapes on Brompton Road. He devoured two meat pies with a pint of Guinness and tried to picture how it used to be, the same setting, twenty years ago. This was their regular pub. Everything seemed as it was, everything in place, yet he was sure it was different.

  He retraced his steps back up Brompton Road past Beauchamp Place and turned into Beaufort Gardens, a cul-de-sac with two rows of flourishing trees down the centre boulevard. He knew at a glance that things had changed. Jaguars and Mercedes lined the street. When he and Susan had lived there, in fifth floor walk-up adjoining bedsitters, not all of the buildings had yet been converted to leasehold condos. It was one of the few places in Knightsbridge where you might encounter a Morris or an Austin.

  Walking along the east side of Beaufort Gardens, Morgan puzzled about which set of steps leading up from the sidewalk between pair after pair of identical white pillars had been theirs. At the end, he crossed over and walked back toward Brompton Road, peering through the trees at the handsome colonnade across the boulevard. He marvelled that he could not tell one entryway from another.

  Staring off in reverie, he stumbled into a woman climbing out of a sleek sedan.

  “Excuse me,” he mumbled, doing a two-step, trying to let her get by.

  “Stand very still,” she said. “I’m going due west. We should be able to manage this.”

  “Sorry,” he said, nodding to her as he ambled on toward the traffic on Brompton Road.

  “Not at all,” she said as he moved away. Her voice lingered with a familiar cadence, but when he allowed himself to look back she was gone, swallowed up through one of the doorways.

  He shook his head, trying to get a grasp on the moment. Surely, he thought, she had copper-red hair. But that was twenty years ago. Susan Croydon has long since settled into the sweet life she deserved, and this other woman, this was a ghost, nothing more.

  By the time he reached the South Kensington tube station he was tired, but he walked on, cutting up along the Fulham Road. The woman who might have been Susan had faded like a dream on awakening, and he could only remember what he thought he had seen, not the encounter itself.

  Half an hour later, when for the first time he was beginning to feel lost, he turned a corner and came upon a massive exhibition hall. There were flags all around, flapping in the evening breeze, some familiar but most intimating parts of the world that had been renamed so many times in their surge toward sovereignty, he would not have been able to find them on a map. There were faces of every hue, and most of the people wore military uniforms of one sort or another, some resplendent, some even more resplendent.