The Last Witness

by John Matthews

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Sure.’ Massenat straightened up and turned away, taking out his mobile.

  Roubilliard pulled out a twenty-dollar note and held it in front of the passenger. ‘Some guy who owes our friend money – you could be his twin brother. Now lose yourself and make sure to lose your memory too about all this. Okay?’

  The passenger looked between the note and Roubilliard, hardly believing he was being let go, there must be some last minute surprise in store; then with a hasty nod, ‘Okay,’ he took the note and was out of the car, practically breaking into a run as he passed Massenat on his mobile to Roman.

  Roman nodded knowingly at the other end. ‘Yeah, thought it was too good to be true. Finding him in less than thirty-six hours – and right on our fucking doorstep in Lavalle. Yeah, yeah. Catch yer later.’

  Roman stayed staring at the dead phone for a moment afterwards, cracking some knuckles. The third false alarm already – but this was the first where Roubilliard hadn’t been able to eliminate them himself. At least it meant that Roubilliard was busy, and in a few hours there’d be news too from Funicelli on just why this woman all the way from England was visiting Donatiens’ parents out in Beaconsfield.

  The news item came on at 11.32 am. Female newscaster against a backdrop of a faint grey map of Canada with Quebec highlighted in yellow, talking about a RCMP breakthrough in their investigation against Montreal’s Lacaille family. She glanced to one corner as prompt, and the news-clip started of Neil Mundy’s press conference just half an hour beforehand. Mundy sat in the centre flanked by Michel Chenouda and Inspector Pelletier as camera flashes went repeatedly.

  The television was at the end of a counter-style deli, the sound on low. One of the three sandwich servers closest to the TV looked up for a moment in interest, and two of his customers seemed engrossed, but hardly anyone else, including Elena and Lorena at the other end sharing a large french-stick sandwich, paid it any attention.

  Elena had woken up late, so she decided that they should grab a quick brunch: lunch might be late with them seeing the Donatiens at 1 pm. After the deli they spent twenty minutes window-browsing in Place Ville-Marie before heading out there. Alphonse had told her it should only take thirty-five, forty minutes to get to Beaconsfield, but she wanted to leave some leeway to be safe.

  Talk was stilted on the drive, she was far too pre-occupied with what lay ahead to give anything more than brief responses to Lorena, and didn’t instigate any conversation herself. She got there seventeen minutes early, so spent a while slowly cruising the area: a small lake two blocks over with a park one side verging into a pine forest, a parade of shops three blocks in the other direction. They’d passed some messy industrial areas on the outskirts of Montreal on the way there – grain silos, dilapidated warehouses and car dumps – but this was a nice area. A good place to bring up a child. George would have… she shook her head. She was doing it again. For all she knew the directory listing for this address was recent, the Donatiens could have moved several times since they took George from the orphanage.

  She spent the last few minutes parked a hundred yards along the road from the house, checking her hair and make-up and that she still didn’t look like a half-crazed heroine addict – then continued the last distance and pulled up outside. She didn’t notice the man in the green Oldsmobile saloon parked thirty yards back, his gaze following her and Lorena intently as they walked up the path to the front door.

  She tried to even her breathing as she approached the door, tried to relax – her nerves had mostly settled since last night – but all that pent-up tension was suddenly back in her body ringing the bell and in the anxious few seconds lull before the door opened. Then suddenly she was on remote, her senses bombarded: smiles, handshakes. Claude. Odette. Yes… and this is my daughter, Katine. Come through, come through. Odette was compact and well-presented, and Claude dwarfed her and was heavy-set, but with his broadness and height carried it well. He had a shock of stone grey hair and a ready smile, and Elena immediately warmed to them. Odette offered freshly made coffee, and Elena asked if her daughter could perhaps wait in their kitchen or play in their garden.

  ‘…Some of what I’ve come about could be a bit sensitive.’ She’d covered with Lorena about the orphanage by claiming her son had some schooling there, and that the Donatiens now were ‘sort of Godparents’ – but if Lorena sat in on their conversation, she’d know the truth. ‘I didn’t want to leave her in the car outside, you see.’

  Claude Donatiens nodded knowingly, his expression suddenly more sombre. Odette took over and led Lorena down the hall, asking what drinks she’d like. Claude looked up at Elena in the moment they were left alone and forced a smile; but its openness had gone, he was obviously nervous, concerned – and that same mood prevailed when Odette returned with coffee and Elena launched into the reason for her visit.

  Claude and Odette exchanged glances at intervals as her story unfolded, and looked increasingly troubled and uneasy. They asked few questions and fell quickly back to their eyes cast down, heads nodding slowly and sombrely, and the occasional awkward glance between them. At first Elena thought it was just a reaction to the poignancy and drama of her story, but after a while she got the impression that there was something else troubling them, some unspoken cloud of worry that she’d triggered in their minds. And before she even reached the end, Claude Donatiens was shaking his head, his lips pursed tight together.

  ‘I’m sorry… I thought you knew. Haven’t you heard the news?’ Again those downcast eyes; he could no longer bring himself to look at her directly.

  ‘What news?’

  ‘You shouldn’t be so surprised, Claude – it was only on a few hours ago,’ Odette rallied to her defence. ‘She could easily have missed it.’

  ‘I know.’ Claude nodded and looked up briefly at Elena. ‘It’s just that before you explained, I thought your visit might have had something to do with what’s happened – that you somehow had advance notice, or maybe even had links with the RCMP.’ He ran one hand unevenly through his hair and let out a slow sigh. ‘It’s just the timing threw us… the two things happening at the same time, you understand.’ He shook his head again. ‘And… and after all you’ve been through now.’

  ‘Why – what’s happened?’ Elena looked keenly between them, and her heart fell. Their looks said it all before Claude Donatiens had finally gathered the composure to explain.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  ‘Sorry, Georges. Roman wanted us to tell you that he never liked you. Always thought you were a smarmy shit. He said it would give him great satisfaction to know that was the last thing you were thinking about. But for us, Georges, it’s nothing personal. Just sorry.’

  Georges felt everything tilt and slip away into darkness. He wasn’t sure initially how long he’d blacked-out, the first thing he was aware of was the rapid shuffling of footsteps – then as two bangs sounded, he jolted for a second that that was the shots he’d been expecting before realizing it was the sound of the Econoline’s doors closing. He’d probably lost less than a minute. The engine was revved high and there was a sharp squeal of tyres as they sped away. Then the sound of another engine, headlamps playing for a second across his body – the approaching vehicle had obviously disturbed his two abductors.

  The sharp slam of two more car doors, then after a second the sound of another car pulling up, and more lights: the stark beam of a torch swung haphazardly on the ground close-by before finally settling on his body. And voices: frantic, jumbled, he found it hard to pick out what was said at first, but as they came close he recognized Chenouda’s voice.

  ‘Is he okay? Did we make it in time?’

  Georges was given fresh coffee and donuts and left for almost two hours to rest before his first de-briefing by Chenouda, which lasted only forty minutes. Georges discovered in that session that Chenouda knew from a contact close to the Lacailles – Chenouda didn’t elaborate who – about him being lured away the night before by one
of the Sherbrooke club girls, Viana. They suspected a likely set-up by Roman, so started closely following his movements. Two of his men saw the abduction go down and radioed straight through to Chenouda. They lost the van at one point and there was a scramble to catch up, which was why Chenouda arrived almost at the same time as them.

  ‘And none too soon by the looks of it. Thirty seconds more and we wouldn’t be sitting here talking now. Your body would be being tagged in the morgue.’

  Michel Chenouda made no demands on him that first session, asked no questions: he ran through the events of the past twenty-four hours almost dispassionately, except for that final stress that Georges was lucky, very lucky, to still be alive, and he had the RCMP to thank for that. Then he was left alone for the night to sleep. Chac, one of the men from the lead car tailing his abductors, stayed to keep guard. That was the first thing to strike Georges as strange: they were in some nondescript three-star hotel near Dorval Airport, not at Dorchester Boulevard or another police station. Chenouda instructed no calls, strictly no calls, upon leaving, and Chac reminded him just before they bedded down for the night.

  ‘If room service calls or the phone goes at all – let me get it. You’re incommunicado, for the moment don’t exist.’

  The session with Chenouda the next day was more intensive and lasted over two hours. Chenouda made it clear within the first minutes that he wanted Georges to testify against the Lacailles. Georges refused, stuck to his ground from their last confrontation, that despite what Roman might have done, he wouldn’t betray Jean-Paul. Chenouda fired back with just who did he think ordered that little number last night?

  ‘…Because if you think Roman acted on his own, think again. He went to the trouble of setting you up with the girl purely to get Jean-Paul’s final go ahead. If he was going to take you out on his own, he’d have done it weeks back.’

  It made sense, Georges knew it, but still he refused to accept that Jean-Paul, who he so admired and trusted and looked up to almost like a father, would have ordered his death.

  Michel paced, cajoled and waved his arms as he threw across every possible rationale in his armoury, and at one point his patience finally ran out. ‘Fine. Okay – you go back out there and take your chances. Let’s see how long Roman is willing to let you live. I won’t have to waste my time beating my head against a brick wall with you – and we can even have some fun in the squad room making bets on just how long you’d last. Three days, a week maybe?’

  Finally, after almost an hour, they reached the bones of a deal. Georges agreed to testify against Roman about that night with Leduc, but nothing beyond that. He wouldn’t talk about any of the inner financial workings of the Lacaille family’s enterprises; besides, they’d just support what he’d been saying all along, that Jean-Paul had moved away from crime these past few years. And he could only comment that Jean-Paul had sanctioned the meeting with Leduc, not that he might have arranged or had prior knowledge that Leduc was to be murdered – because Georges himself hadn’t known, the attack on Leduc had come as a complete surprise, looked at first to be an attempt at self-defence gone wrong. Georges ran through the mix-up with the notebook and the gun and then Roman flipping his own second gun onto the floor before Savard reached the car.

  ‘…But that’s as far as I’ll go. If you want to get some sharp Prosecutor to fill in the gaps and try and show a link to Jean-Paul, then that’s up to you. But I’m not testifying directly against him – because there’s nothing I really can say. That’s it, take it or leave it.’

  Michel spent another twenty minutes fleshing out the details, and took it. With Savard’s murder and now the attempt on Donatien’s life, a pattern could be shown. Donatiens confirmed that he’d obviously open up as well about his abduction and the set-up the night before with the girl, and Michel’s mind went for a moment on overdrive: hopefully with some persuasion he could get Azy to spill about the girl being Roman’s pet favourite, and maybe even something from the girl herself. But when he pushed his luck with whether Donatiens thought that night with Leduc had also been a set-up by Roman – ‘He probably knew damn well Leduc didn’t have a gun, but he needed it to look like self-defence for your benefit, and maybe for Jean-Paul’s too, if he wasn’t already in on it’ – George’s reluctance resurfaced.

  ‘With what’s happened since, I can see how that probably makes sense. But I can’t really say beyond what I saw that night. Again, that’s going to be down to your Prosecutor earning his pay by trying to make the connections.’

  Michel quit while he was ahead. He spent the remaining time going back over and making notes on what they’d agreed, skeleton structure for Donatiens’ later statement – then called S-18 straight after and explained his dilemma: a hot informant in his grasp and concerns about leaks within his own department.

  Each RCMP regional office had their own section operating a WPP* and Internal Affairs for investigating police corruption. But when that corruption could lead to a leak and endanger the person in the programme, S-18 had been set up in Ottawa.

  The next morning he was sat before an S-18 review board chaired by Superintendent Neil Mundy, and from there everything moved rapidly: that same night, Donatiens was escorted by two S-18 officers out of Montreal to a safe-house, where he would stay until the trial. Then he would go fully into the Witness Protection Programme and be given a new identity. Chenouda himself didn’t even have the location of the safe-house, only Donatiens’ escorting officers and an ‘eyes only’ handful within S-18 had the details. At 11 am the following morning, by which time Donatiens had already been ensconced in the safe-house for over twelve hours, Mundy called a press conference to announce their breakthrough with the Lacaille investigation, with Inspector Pelletier also present to dampen any speculation about inter-departmental wrangling. It was hailed as a joint operation between Montreal’s Criminal Intelligence division and S-18.

  The whole process from Donatiens’ abduction to final announcement had taken two and a half days. For that time Donatiens’ whereabouts had been a complete mystery; and now with him at a safe-house until the trial, six or seven months of the same lay ahead. Then he would disappear completely, never to resurface again as Georges Donatiens.

  *Witness Protection Programme.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  ‘Witness Protection Programme… never to be seen again.’

  Elena drove back from Beaconsfield in a daze. Claude Donatiens’ words spun through her head like some mad mantra; though he hadn’t directly said the second part, she’d extracted that from between the lines while he fluffed around and tried to soften the blow: ‘We’re not sure when even we might be able to see him… if at all. We’re going to phone later and find out. Maybe there’ll be a loophole by which we could see him and, if so, hopefully you’d be able to as well at some time.’

  Loopholes. Hopefully. At some time. Claude Donatiens just didn’t want to say it straight out – ‘Look – I just don’t think you’re going to be able to get to see him now’ – especially not right on the heels of her heartrending saga of ups and downs that had finally brought her to their door. It would have seemed cruel to push the trap-door lever straight away, much kinder to send her down in the express elevator: she’d get there almost as fast, but she’d hardly feel the motion and she could listen to piped music on the way. Sugar-coat the pill.

  She’d spent over an hour at the Donatiens after the bombshell, getting all the background she’d hoped for originally: What was he like? Had they lived here long? Where did they live before? His general home-life, schooling… then later college, girlfriends and work. And every small trait and nuance and what he’d had for breakfast the past twenty-nine years – if she could have kept them on the subject long enough.

  Odette brought out some photo albums as guide-posts to the passage of time and events since they’d taken Georges from St Marguerite’s. Georges. Odette explained that the minor name change was because they were a French-Canadian family, his school was Francophi
le, and they hadn’t wanted it too obvious that he was adopted.

  Elena found herself reaching out and gently touching some of the photos as she leafed through: his ninth birthday party, a school photo from when he was twelve, throwing a Frisbee in a park for a red-setter, Odette with one arm around him at a woodland picnic table, a family group photo from a Florida holiday with Georges as a teenager against a marina backdrop… his twenty-first with some college friends spraying him with a shaken champagne bottle. She’d just felt numb, stripped of any emotion with the shock news, but in that moment the tears started to come – though she quickly wiped and sniffed them back, embarrassed. It wasn’t only from all those lost years coming home stronger with the sight and feel of something tangible, a face to finally put to him – but the sudden realization that this now might be as close as she’d ever get to him.

  It was all too much for her to bear at one point with Claude and Odette looking on concernedly and Lorena by that time back from playing in the garden to join them, and she got up and went over to the back window, looking out. She’d managed to control from bursting into sobs, but still her eyes were welling strongly and she was having trouble biting it back. The land sloped away at the back and there was a partial view of the lake two hundred yards away between the trees. Claude Donatiens left her alone for a moment before coming alongside to join her.

  ‘We used to bring Georges to the park by the lake to play when he was younger, and it became something of a dream for us to one day live in this area. We managed to grab one of the last plots going with a lake view.’ Claude was a builder and, reading between the lines, there had been a few ups and downs through the years, their previous homes hadn’t been quite as salubrious – though Claude was eager to point out that they had been comfortable, in good neighbourhoods, Georges’ schooling had been excellent, and he’d been well-provided and cared-for and always loved. But business had been good these past six or seven years, partly thanks to some money from Georges and his financial savvy, Claude conceded. ‘And so we finally built our dream home.’