by John Moss
“That’s sad,” said Morgan. “Truly sad. So many died and nothing is changed.”
“Oh, but it has, Morgan, changed utterly. Each act of terrorism takes us little by little farther away from the world we know and closer and closer to anarchy.”
“And what rough beast slouches towards Bethlehem.”
“You know your Yeats, too.”
“Who else?”
“Besides me?” She looked at him thoughtfully. “You know, others. Come on, let’s get out of here.”
“How? I guess Mr. Savage made quite a splash on the street. Toronto’s finest will be up here, sooner or later, we just have to wait.”
“I wonder what his real name was,” said Morgan. “I suppose we’ll find out soon enough.”
“Perhaps he didn’t have a name,” said Miranda. Najim Mustafa Tanimi. She didn’t say it out loud. “He was the man who never was.”
“Wouldn’t it be nice to think so?”
“Nice? Even necessary.”
Morgan tousled her hair and she shook off his condescension with a friendly flourish.
“Here,” he said, hoisting a marble pedestal to chest height, after setting the vase that was on top of it carefully on the floor, “let’s test out the building code. I’ve got a theory that walls are conventions.”
“Me too,” said Miranda.
Morgan swung the pedestal like a battering ram against the wall beside the heavy front door. It jarred violently, sending spasms of pain through his shoulders.
“But, but,” said Miranda. “You want to find a soft spot, Morgan. I think you just hit solid cement. Try over a bit to the left.”
“You try,” said Morgan, flagging his arms through the air, trying to make the pain fade away.
“Can’t,” she responded, holding up her injured hands.
“Where’s your glove? You’ve lost one of your gloves, did you know that?”
“Yeah. Come on, heave the marble, let’s get out of here. I’m betting —”
“Between the two of us, we’ve been betting a lot —”
“And coming up winners. Morgan, I’m betting the wall right here is non-supporting, it’s six-inch cement blocks. They’ll crumble on impact. Try it again.”
He hoisted the column back into the air and swung it with all his might, this time releasing his grip just before it hit the wall. It penetrated out into the marble-walled foyer, a marble slab dropping whole to the floor. Another couple of swings and there was a hole big enough for them to crawl through. After what seemed an interminable wait, during which they exchanged embarrassed glances as if they were lovers, the elevator opened. There was a uniformed cop on board with a key in his hand. He was refracted into multiples of himself as he stepped from the mirrored interior. Morgan recognized the officer who had insisted on seeing his ID in front of Frankie’s in Rosedale the night he turned up in her bedroom.
“Good to see you.” He nodded.
“Yeah, Detective Morgan. And Detective Quin? You two see anything funny going on up here?” He looked past them through the dust-laden air to the hole in the wall and the marble slab lying aslant on the floor.
On the street where the body of Mr. Savage lay splayed like a dropped sack of blood, a crowd had gathered behind a cordon. The body had been covered, but Ellen Ravenscroft was holding the sheet away for a better view.
She looked up when Miranda and Morgan moved around Spivak and Stritch, who were interviewing the building manager by the front door. The man’s nose twitched and his beady eyes brightened when he saw them.
“How are you two?” said Ellen. “You know anything about this guy?”
“No,” said Miranda.
“Not much,” said Morgan.
“Has he got a name?”
“I don’t know,” said Morgan, looking at Miranda.
“Not really,” said Miranda.
“Strange,” said Ellen, crouching down and removing a crumpled surgical glove clutched in his grip. She glanced up at Miranda’s hands.
“You must have dropped this,” said Ellen. “I heard your hands got burned pretty bad.”
“Yeah,” said Miranda, taking the glove. It was flecked with blood. “We’ll talk. I’ll call you. I’m going home now. I’ve had enough for one day.”
She leaned gently against Morgan. No one but Ellen from her crouching position would have noticed.
“Come on,” said Morgan. “Talk to you soon, Ellen.”
“Please,” said the medical examiner. “I wait by the phone every night.”
They walked off down Avenue Road. When they got to Bloor Street, Isabella was to the east and the Annex to the west.
“You want a shower?” said Miranda.
“Your place or mine?”
Back in front of the condo, Ellen Ravenscroft rose to her feet above the smashed body on the pavement and let the cover drop over what was left of the face. She looked south and saw Morgan and Miranda, turning west. She glanced down again. She knew exactly who the dead man was, even if he had no name.
Acknowledgements
Miranda and Morgan and I are fellow travellers; I’d like to thank them for being such challenging company along the way. Writing novels is a paradoxical endeavour. It is a solitary pursuit, populated with engaging characters doing interesting things, and a sedentary pursuit, writing for hours that merge into months with a computer on my lap, living and reliving forays through Toronto streets, Muskoka haunts, and favourite destinations around the world. It is a wonderfully rewarding pursuit, where reviewers seem friends, whether hostile or enthusiastic — I have friends who are both — and where other writers and readers are co-conspirators and publishers are actual people, working on the same side of the fence. After a full career doing other things, I am grateful to have found myself here, doing this. I share my passions with my wife, Beverley Haun, who is a writer herself, and I owe her so much, words can’t begin to convey. I’d like to express my deep gratitude to my daughters, Julia Zarb, Laura Moss, and Beatrice Winny, for their unstinting critical and editorial generosity. Once again, I’d like to thank my friend Jack Morgan for his indefatigable patience and keen critical intelligence.
More Quin and Morgan Mysteries
Reluctant Dead
Murder casts a long shadow, reaching from fabled Easter Island in the South Pacific to the desolate shores of Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic. Detective Miranda Quin of the Toronto Police Service takes time off to write a mystery in the tropics and gets trapped in a sinister plot with global implications. Her partner in homicide, David Morgan, is left alone to resolve the case of a beautiful corpse on a Toronto Island yacht and ends up precariously compromised in the mysterious North. Their stories converge when they both return to Toronto. They discover themselves trapped in a labyrinth of deadly complexity, and the only way out is together. Much more than their own survival depends on it. Islands, they learn, are an illusion. Everything connects, especially when murder is involved.
Still Waters
This psychological mystery introduces David Morgan and Miranda Quin, two maverick and culturally sophisticated Toronto police detectives. When a man is found dead in a garden pond in the wealthy heart of Toronto’s Rosedale neighbourhood, Morgan is led to speculations about Japanese ornamental koi fish and Quin into a chilling sequence of revelations that could destroy her. But the real mystery begins not with the deceased but with a woman who walks onto the crime scene and without emotion declares herself to be the victim’s mistress. From that point on everything changes, even the past.
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Copyright © John Moss, 2014
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All characters in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Project Editor: Shannon Whibbs
Editor: Allister Thompson
Design: Courtney Horner
Epub Design: Carmen Giraudy
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Moss, John, 1940-, author
Blood wine / John Moss.
(A Quin and Morgan mystery ; 4)
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-4597-0814-3
I. Title. II. Series: Moss, John, 1940- . Quin and Morgan
mystery ; 4.
PS8576.O7863B56 2013 C813’.6 C2013-905477-4
C2013-905478-2
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Cover
Blood Wine
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Acknowledgements
Promo
Copyright