He was pretending to read as Margaret came in, but looked up as she greeted him, and smiled bravely. She examined him with her penetrating grey eyes. It was as if she saw through him, and she let him off the hook. “We’re both under a strain. I just need you to hold me.”
She looked quite lovely, really, her hair down, her slim, trim body casually revealed to him as she stripped. A peek at him, as if for reaction. Then strolling gracefully, nakedly, to the shower.
That vision stayed with him until she returned. As she slipped under the sheets, his book slid from his stomach onto the floor with a thud. He caressed the woman he loved, kissed her, passion welling. Her hand moved over his thigh, and felt the swelling there.
“Oh, my,” she said.
GRAVE SECRETS FROM THE MORGUE
A Monday morning layover in Vancouver gave Arthur time to stop at his law office, a visit prompted by his concern that Roy Bullingham might be vexed by the mounting costs of AltaQB-889, that being the Alberta Queen’s bench file more widely known as Farquist v. Blake.
Arthur was still glowing from the pleasures of last evening — he had risen to the occasion! — as he walked briskly into the BMO tower. Joining him in the high-speed elevator were several of Tragger, Inglis’s crisply attired young lawyers, new faces to him, though he was clearly known to them — they were sneaking looks at the smiling old warrior in his old-fashioned suit. All but Arthur got off at the fortieth floor, where the working class strove — he carried on to the forty-third, where the senior partners reigned.
The most senior among seniors was Roy Bullingham, known as Bully, but only to intimates, the last surviving founder of the firm — Tragger and Inglis were long deceased. Bully, at ninety-three, was still as sharp as a stiletto, a skinflint who had built his firm from five lawyers to five hundred in Vancouver, Calgary, Ottawa, and Toronto, with satellites in Shanghai, London, and Washington.
Arthur exchanged greetings with long-time staff as he made his way to his commodious old office. Bully had never quite accepted the notion that Arthur had retired, and kept it clean, empty, and unaltered.
Arthur ruefully studied an expense sheet from his in-basket. Francisco Sierra’s bill of disbursements for France came to $11,000 and change. That was on top of his fees, at three hundred an hour.
Arthur steeled himself, because Bullingham, whose antennae had somehow picked up his presence, had just strolled in. But the rake-thin ancient seemed unusually buoyant. Stabbing a bony finger at Sierra’s bill, he said: “Drop in the bucket. One of the best investments we’ve ever made.”
Arthur was confused, and Bully explained: file AltaQB-889 was bringing in business. Emil Farquist, an Ayn Rand devotee, was loathed by the new government, and hefty contracts were being switched to the firm from Conservative-leaning offices.
“You see, Beauchamp, that unreformed pothead, Yates, now has to curry favour with your Greens.” This was his way of speaking to Arthur, like a tutor to a new boy. But he was right. Prime Minister Yates, who was no fool, desperately needed the Green votes in the House. He was buying their support by helping at second hand to fund Margaret’s battle against Farquist.
Arthur was shocked to see Bully scrolling away on a sleek cell phone — he’d never seemed adept with such devices. “Two thirds counted, and your man is now only two votes behind.”
Your man . . . He realized Bully meant Lloyd Chalmers, the Halifax recount. Good luck to him. The smooth womanizer had lost the more crucial battle.
“I read Mr. Sierra’s reports,” Bully said. “Hope you don’t mind.”
“Of course not.” Nothing was kept from the senior partner.
“Is your case as weak as I suspect it to be?”
“It’s shaky, Bully.”
“What do you think they’ll settle for?”
“We won’t be settling.”
§
At the airport, waiting for his Calgary flight to be called, Arthur’s attention was drawn to the soundless TV mounted above him: CBC Newsworld, words and numbers rolling across the wide screen. A poll had either been miscounted or wrongly reported, and Lloyd Chalmers had won Halifax East with a thirteen-vote plurality. Footage of the esteemed professor, handsome, triumphant, greeting supporters.
§
The next morning, Tuesday, in Calgary, Arthur popped into Tragger, Inglis’s branch office. He had conscripted its sharpest litigator to help guide him through the civil processes: fortyish, bookish, bright-eyed Nanisha Banerjee, well versed in the Rules of Court.
For Arthur, this was a strange world, the civil courts — he’d done a few personal injuries as a young barrister, but the rest, the thousand other trials, were criminal. Both specialties demanded endless prep, slow slogging, and quick thinking. Civil cases were more flexible, the rules more relaxed, the burden of proof was less, and counsel met few surprises — all secrets had to be bared, all documents, and plaintiff and defendant faced probing pre-trial examination.
So far, Farquist’s lawyers had not agreed on a date for such discovery and were claiming solicitor-client privilege for all records except copies of the alleged, much-tweeted slanders. But the defence documents, including Sierra’s reports, were similarly protected. The Glinka video had never been in Margaret’s possession, and Arthur would resist until the last minute making it known that Sabatino had copied it. The plaintiff’s legal team had to be assuming that Sabatino had merely described its contents to Margaret.
“Are we opposing or not?” Nanisha asked. The motion for the six-month delay, she meant.
“Let us test the waters.”
“I have some law, Mr. Beauchamp, if you need it.”
He glanced through her brief on contested adjournments. In summary, the court ought to use its discretion wisely. Meaning the judge must justify making a gut call.
It was time. They headed off to the gleaming modern Calgary Courts Centre, Canada’s largest house of justice, seventy-three courtrooms in two towers separated by an even taller atrium, on busy Fifth Street. Farquist v. Blake had been allotted one of the roomiest of them, on the thirteenth floor, the lucky one, Arthur hoped.
§
Chief Justice Cohon-Plaskett was trying to wrap up a boring chambers issue — about a presumed trust, as far as Arthur could make out — and was goading counsel to finish their submissions.
Arthur had done a duet with Cohon-Plaskett many years ago, as co-counsel on a bookmaking conspiracy. Her quickness of mind had impressed him, her brisk, edgy demeanour complementing his cooler, folksier style. Short, stout, and pug-nosed, a tough little package. Right now, she was nagging a harried-looking lawyer. “Is this submission included in your memorandum of law?”
“Yes, Milady.”
“Then why do you need to repeat it?”
Next up would be Farquist v. Blake. Arthur had a motion of his own, to set a peremptory date for discovery — the other side had been stalling.
Sharing the barristers’ bench with Arthur and Nanisha, but several empty places down, were George Cowper Jr. and two attendants. Cowper, a tall, dignified septuagenarian with a sad, weary expression, must be uncomfortable, Arthur figured, with having to come cap in hand to ask for a delay of the trial.
Cohon-Plaskett reserved her ruling on the trust issue, and counsel packed their book bags and filed out as a clump of reporters pushed in. Her Ladyship waited for the rustling to stop, then asked Cowper why he wished to adjourn the trial.
“Unanticipated matters have caused extreme time pressure, Milady.”
“That seems rather vague, Mr. Cowper.”
His sad face creased into a smile. “Let me be plain. It has been widely reported that my client is seeking the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada. The convention has been scheduled for late in March. It is surely too much to ask Mr. Farquist to proceed to trial under such pressing circumstances. Nothing will be lost if the trial goes over to the Sept
ember sittings.”
Measured, concise, and to the point, the way the no-frills judge liked it. As Cowper recited the salient points of Farquist’s two-page affidavit, Arthur asked Nanisha to fish it out, and flipped to the last paragraph: Farquist’s complaint that democracy would be ill served were he forced to lose focus on his leadership campaign. It seemed an overly blunt afterthought, maybe at Farquist’s insistence.
He was no shoo-in for the leadership, but remained the favourite. So far, two others had announced, including Clara Gracey, the finance minister, a penny-pinching economist but liberal on social issues, and friendly with Margaret. Arthur would be willing to bet that the Chief Justice, a Red Tory, would find herself more comfortable in Gracey’s camp than Farquist’s.
“Mr. Cowper, it was only about ten weeks ago, on September 3, that you came before me, saying” — the Chief Justice checked a transcript — “saying it was vital that your client’s name be cleared as quickly as possible. You sought an early trial date. Mr. Beauchamp consented. I was forced to do some difficult juggling to free up a court for early March.”
“As I say, Milady, we were not anticipating the former prime minister’s resignation and a leadership contest.”
“Might you not have seen it as a reasonable possibility? And am I to be accused, as seems implied in your client’s affidavit, of acting undemocratically by declining to delay the trial?”
“I beg your Ladyship to believe no such imputation should be found.”
Once again, the Chief Justice seemed to be doing Arthur’s work. He hoped he wasn’t being set up. Beware the overly supportive judge, giving counsel every break, then calmly throwing him under a truck at the end. Who then would accuse her of harbouring bias against the defendant?
“What’s your position, Mr. Beauchamp?”
“I oppose. We are eager to go to trial. My learned friend sought an early date — may I quote him — due to the ‘massive and unseemly publicity this case has roused.’ Nothing has changed in that regard. The defendant equally has an interest in putting this matter to bed without further delay.”
“You also have a motion to speak to, Mr. Beauchamp?”
“To require the defendant’s timely attendance at examinations for discovery. Your Ladyship will recall, when setting the March 2 date, instructing counsel to arrange for early discovery. Our several efforts to bring the plaintiff to the table have been to no avail.”
Cowper went to bat again, strove mightily, but went down swinging.
“The motion to delay the trial is denied,” Cohon-Plaskett said. “Reasons for judgment reserved. Now let us agree on a discovery date.”
They spent half an hour digging through calendars for free days. Cowper finally, candidly, conceded that Emil Farquist had booked a post-Christmas holiday in the Bahamas. He looked more lugubrious than usual as Cohon-Plaskett cancelled that holiday and set discoveries for Friday, December 27, and the following Monday and Tuesday, which would be New Year’s Eve. Farquist would be examined first.
Watching the courtroom empty out, Arthur noticed a portly gentleman in a suit pause at the door: Francisco Sierra, an unexpected guest appearance. He acknowledged Arthur with a slight nod before he disappeared. Arthur packed his valise, apologized to Nanisha, and hurried out.
§
They met at a nearby coffee house, the Urban Bean, and settled down at a corner table with their roasts — light for Sierra, who seemed jolly; dark for Arthur, who worried that Frank was masking annoyance over having been denied an extra six months of sleuthing.
He obviously had news — Arthur could read it in his cherubic smile — but seemed in no hurry to divulge it, instead commending Arthur for his performance in court.
“I do not question your wisdom in pushing ahead with the trial, though like Minister Farquist I face extreme time pressure. Lou Sabatino, alias Robert O’Brien, remains an elusive figure. As a desperate effort, I have placed carefully worded ads, with my contact information, on select Kijiji and Craigslist websites.”
“I admit to some bravado in pressing for a quick trial. A calculated gamble, Frank.”
“Prompted, I assume, by the apparent disarray of the opposition.”
“They’re sweating. Farquist has a hotly contested campaign on his hands, and he doesn’t know what we have up our sleeve.”
Sierra sipped his coffee, mused. “Are you harbouring the hope that his leadership ambitions will trump his suit for damages, and that he will abandon it?”
“That might require more face-saving than Farquist is capable of. But we have to appear confident, and we do that by squeezing them. They are gambling that Lou won’t show up; we are betting everything on him. Now tell me what you’ve got.”
“I’ve been in the Calgary morgue, to wit, the records office.” Sierra tilted his cup again, dabbed his lips with a paper napkin, teasing Arthur, making him wait. “Lee Farquist, née Watters, was with child when she took her life.”
He savoured Arthur’s look of consternation for several beats, then reached into his briefcase and passed over a copy of an autopsy report by a Calgary pathologist, dated August, 1987.
There it was, a reference to the deceased carrying a foetus, estimated at four to five months post-conception. Farquist’s forty-year-old mother, the deserted, troubled wife of his faithless father, Sandor.
A light blinked on. “I was a bad boy, very bad! Please, Mother, I beg you!” Svetlana Glinka’s cryptic comment: “His mother. Never mind. As an ethical therapist I can’t repeat.”
Arthur was stunned. “Emil was sleeping with his mother?”
If so, the veils had fallen from the riddle that was Emil Farquist, a man buffeted since adolescence by deep, insurmountable forces, a man who had sought to atone for the sin of incest through the masochistic agency of a riding whip.
LANDSLIDE LLOYD
Corks popped from organically grown Prosecco as Lloyd Chalmers was prodded to the front of a room packed with aides and volunteers. Margaret joined in the applause as he turned to face his celebrants with an apologetic shrug. That disarming grin on his craggy mug. Margaret sensed a mass swooning of straight women and gay men.
The conference room at party HQ in Ottawa was the locale for this tribute to the Atlantic provinces’ first Green MP. Landslide Lloyd, they jokingly called him.
He riffed on that for a while, to laughter, then turned serious, emphatic, proclaiming his dedication to the program of his party: preserve Canada’s precious natural heritage, move from a carbon-based economy, ungag the scientists, all the right things.
None of which allayed Margaret’s niggle of doubt about Landslide Lloyd. One of her staff had spotted him Friday evening at Wilfrid’s in the Château sharing canapés and cocktails with an attractive Liberal backbencher. Just wolfing about, Margaret hoped.
As she downed her Prosecco, another bottle appeared, hovered over her plastic flute, and poured.
It was just after noon on Saturday, November 23, two days before the opening of the new Parliament and two weeks after the outgoing administration, having shredded about a ton of documents, turned over the reins to the Liberals.
Though he was short of a majority by one vote, Marcus Yates had yet to ask Margaret for a sit-down. That was annoying, but the Greens held the trump card, and Margaret wasn’t about to go crawling to him. Among the shiny new faces on the front bench would be a former marine biologist as environment minister. Other than protesting the previous government’s muzzling of scientists, she had no history of activism.
Chalmers raised his glass, fixing his gaze on Margaret. “Let me add only this, that I shall continue gladly to serve as a loyal foot soldier under the command of Margaret Blake. Let us salute our gifted, tireless, lovely leader.”
A scatter of cheers. Margaret grinned but felt uncomfortable. “Back at you, Lloyd,” she said, holding high her own plastic flute. “To you, to your amazin
g campaign team, and to all the dedicated workers in this room.” Hearty applause as she tilted the flute.
After mingling for a few minutes, she slipped into her office, needing time alone. She went to the window and studied the thick grey sky, the pelting rain, the splashing of tires on the busy street, oppressed Ottawans walking by, umbrellas braced against a sharp north wind. The soft, temperate clime of Garibaldi was calling again.
A man in a dark coat paused, glanced up, carried on. Tall, long-haired, unshaven — she’d seen him before, shadowing her. Presumably one of Farquist’s minions.
The dreaded examinations for discovery were looming, less than six weeks away. Farquist’s team didn’t need a spook on her tail — the discoveries would reveal how weak her defence was. Transparency would be demanded, their case stripped naked. She had not a smidgen of proof to corroborate what she’d seen on the copied video.
An element of queasiness was now in play among the many repellent feelings Margaret held for Farquist. Arthur, ever cautious on the phone, had dispatched Frank Sierra to confide the shocking but plausible surmise of an incestuous relationship between Farquist and his mother. It was not demonstrably relevant, said Arthur, nor easily proved — unless Sierra dug up a witness to bedroom taboos being broken a few decades ago. A neighbour, a housekeeper, an unexpected visitor.
Everything would be so easy if Lou Sabatino somehow found the grit to do the right thing. The cowardly little bugger.
The door squeaked open, and Jennie Withers sidled in with a wine bottle and two glasses. “Interrupting?”
“Not at all. Lock the door, Jen.”
She did, then poured. “The fawning was making me ill. Pinot okay? The bubbly ran out.”
Margaret nodded. She was already high; one more drink wasn’t going to do any damage. Jennie seemed a little tight too, her voice teasing. “He likes you better,” she said.
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