“No. I don’t. Christ. Did Ed have handcuffs on him when he was pulled from the water?”
“No, he didn’t, but we think he may have had cuffs on him earlier. There are bruises on his wrists. You two didn’t get into a tussle with the Gatineau cops or anything?”
“No. We were happy drunks.”
“All right,” said Flanagan. “That’s all I’ve got for you now, but I think we’re going to have to have another sit-down soon.”
“Is there any chance that this could be connected to Ed’s work?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Well, I don’t know that much about his job, but there’d be a lot of money riding on some of his files,” said Jack. “And his boss is probably going to run for the Conservative leadership. That’s what the gossip is. I don’t know how any of that could be connected, but it’s worth looking into.”
“You got any specific ideas?”
“No.”
“My partner’s looking into that stuff. She’s on the Hill now, talking to the people in his office. You sure you don’t have any specific ideas, anything he ever talked about?”
“Nope,” said Jack.
“Okay,” said Flanagan. “Stay in touch. We get uneasy when we can’t get in touch with you, and when I get uneasy I get grumpy. You haven’t seen my grumpy side but you wouldn’t like it.”
“I hear you loud and clear.”
After he hung up, Jack checked his email and then scanned the Citizen. The front page was dedicated to Stevens’s surprise announcement.
Jack found a short piece in the local briefs at the back of the first section.
Man Rescued From Rideau Canal
A young Ottawa man was pulled from the Rideau Canal early Tuesday morning after nearly drowning.
Edward Sawatski, 28, was rescued by a jogger, who spotted him in the water next to the locks where the canal enters the Ottawa River, and dove in to administer mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, police said.
“If it wasn’t for the quick thinking of the jogger, who dove into the freezing water, the young man might have lost his life,” said Ottawa Police Service spokesman Dwayne Enright.
Enright said the heroic jogger didn’t want to be publicly identified.
Sawatski is being treated at Ottawa Hospital.
Jack was glad there were no more details. Whoever rewrote the police news release obviously didn’t know Sawatski was a Hill staffer, or hadn’t bothered to Google his name. Other reporters might notice the name in the paper, and put two and two together, but Jack had to be way ahead of them. He had a great story on his hands, and he grinned as he bent to look through the rest of the paper.
His grin disappeared when he read the next item in the column of briefs.
Two Killed In Single-Car Crash
Ottawa taxi driver Abdullah Arar and his passenger, Winnipeg man Duncan Powers, were killed Tuesday night in a single-car crash on the Airport Parkway.
The Ottawa Police Service said the men were killed instantly when the taxi crashed into the concrete overpass at about 8 p.m.
A witness in another vehicle said the taxi driver appeared to swerve to avoid a black sedan that lost control in fresh snow and entered the taxi’s lane.
Police are seeking more witnesses.
Claude Bouchard hadn’t bothered putting on his hat for the short walk from Centre Block to Langevin, and he was regretting it. The freezing wind felt like it was trying to rip the skin off his forehead, and he had to fight the urge to clamp his hands over his burning ears.
He wasn’t having a good morning.
He had spent years quietly planning for Greg Mowat to take over from Bruce Stevens, discreetly putting together a network of organizers and supporters across the country, and he was sure that Donahoe’s people had no idea how far behind they were. The race was Mowat’s to lose, but there was a last tricky bit of road to cover before Bouchard and his guy got to the finish line, and Balusi and Knowles were in a position to put blocks in his path.
The thought put a knot in his guts. But he had the inside track with Balusi, who, unlike Knowles, hoped to stay in Langevin after Stevens’ exit, and thus had good reasons to make himself useful to the likely next occupant of Knowles’ office. But Balusi had given him no indication of the subject of today’s meeting when he had summoned him by email early this morning, and he had ignored Bouchard’s messages and calls since then, which wasn’t a good sign.
Balusi still gave no hint of what was up when Bouchard got off the elevator on the fourth floor of Langevin. He led him straight him to Knowles’s office.
Knowles, looking cool and bloodless in his blue suit, shook hands with him, thanked him for coming and invited him to sit down at the end of the coffee table.
There was a document on the table in front of each man. Knowles and Balusi both had marked up copies, with colour-coded plastic tabs sticking out the side. Bouchard’s copy was crisp and new.
“You want some coffee?” asked Knowles.
“Sure,” said Bouchard. “Cream and sugar.”
Knowles glanced at Balusi, who went for the coffee. Bouchard picked up the document.
It was thin, with a cover of thick white stock.
The coat of arms of the Auditor General was in the middle of the cover. It was titled: An Audit of the Correctional Infrastructure Renewal Program.
This can’t be good, thought Bouchard. The Auditor General, Adam Duncan, was a hard ass, with a long record of delivering blunt, harsh reports without regard to the political consequences for the party in power.
Bouchard looked at Knowles, who was regarding him with a thin smile.
“The AG is releasing this today,” he said.
Knowles nodded. “The journalists are in the lockup now. They’ll be out just before Question Period.”
“I understand it’s not a, um, positive report,” said Bouchard.
“That’s right,” said Knowles. He turned to look as Balusi came into the room with Bouchard’s coffee.
“Ismael, Claude wants to know if the report is positive?” Knowles said. “What would you say?”
Balusi put down the coffee in front of Bouchard. “I’d say Duncan’s fucking us in the ass today. And he’s not using any lube.”
Bouchard exhaled. “And you want Donahoe to carry this?”
“It’s not what we want,” said Knowles. “It’s what the boss wants.”
“You have lines for us?” said Bouchard.
“Well, that’s the good news,” said Knowles. “We do have lines. And the boss is quite particular about them. We’ve worked out a two-part communications strategy. The boss will reply in Question Period to the first questions from Pinsent. From there on, he wants the minister of public safety to take all the questions on the file. And he wants the minister to stick very closely to the script.”
Bouchard opened the document in front of him and glanced at the executive summary.
“Well, the boss wants what the boss wants, but I’m sure you know that the request for proposals for CIRP was set up by Donahoe when he was at Public Safety, and administered by Public Works,” he said. “Our department had nothing to do with handling the contracts. We’ve been completely out of the loop. Wouldn’t it make more sense for De Grandpré to handle the questions, since his department is actually the one that fucked this up? They have had this report for months. They’ve worked with that cocksucker Duncan on this!”
“As you say,” said Knowles. “The boss wants what the boss wants.”
Balusi cleared his throat. “Just between us, not to be repeated outside this room, the boss was upset about the leak yesterday. Until then, the plan was for De Grandpré to handle the questions today. This morning, the boss decided he wants your guy to carry the ball.”
Bouchard looked back and forth at the two men. “Okay. Fair enough. But at least put on some romantic music before we get started here.”
Jack was filled with dread as he approached Ed’s hospital room. He was afraid of
hospitals, and afraid at how he would react when he saw his old friend comatose. He felt a little better when he heard a familiar tune: “Gotta Get Me Moose, B’y,” by Buddy Wasisname and the Other Fellers, wafting from Ed’s room. He paused in the doorway, and saw that the music was coming from a portable stereo on a table near the bed on which his old friend was lying flat on his back, staring vacantly at the ceiling, his parents and Sophie clustered around him.
Sophie jumped up and hugged him when he arrived, and introduced him to Ed’s parents.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t visit yesterday,” he said.
Sophie said, “Mrs. Sawatski has been talking to Ed and she thinks he understands what she’s saying.”
“I’m sure of it,” said Mrs. Sawatski. “A mother knows her son.”
She led Jack over to the bed. Jack tried to smile down at his friend’s blank face, which he found terribly difficult to do. The fact that Ed’s eyes were open made it worse. There was no light in his eyes. He didn’t look like someone sleeping, but as blank and unmoving as a mannequin or a crash test dummy. Jack fought the urge to grimace and flee for the hallway. He felt the eyes of Sophie and the Sawatskis on him as he struggled to smile at his friend.
“Hey honey,” said Mrs. Sawatski. “Look who’s here. It’s your friend Jack.”
“Hey buddy,” said Jack. “What are you at?”
Ed blinked but his eyes showed no flicker of recognition.
“See,” said Mrs. Sawatski. “He blinks. That’s how you can tell that he’s hearing us. Tell him what you’ve been doing.”
Jack smiled at Mrs. Sawatski and glanced at Sophie, who looked back at him blankly.
“Well, b’y,” he said. “I hope they’re treating you all right in here.” He looked up at Sophie and Mrs. Sawatski, who nodded encouragingly. “You’ve got some tunes, eh, b’y? Tunes from home. That’s just great.”
“It was Mrs. Sawatski’s idea,” said Sophie. “She sent Mr. Sawatski to buy the stereo and got me to bring in Ed’s iPod today.”
“It perked him right up,” said Mrs. Sawatski. “Ed loves music.”
“He sure does,” said Jack. He turned to his friend. “Remember when we saw Great Big Sea on George Street? By Jesus there was some crowd of ol’ drunks out for that, eh? Thousands of people, all jumping up and down, singing along with every song. That was a time, eh?”
Ed blinked.
“See,” said Mrs. Sawatski. “He’s saying yes. He does remember. Don’t you Ed?”
But Ed didn’t blink again.
“You’d better get better soon,” said Jack. “Because it looks like your guy Donahoe is going to need all the help he can get. I think he’s in the race, but people think he’s likely already fallen behind that arsehole Mowat.”
Jack remembered who Sophie worked for and frowned at her in apology.
“Whoops,” he said. “I guess I’d better watch what I say in front of your girlfriend, here. Sorry, Sophie. I was just kidding with Ed here. Ed likes a joke, don’t you, b’y?”
He babbled on for a while longer, telling Ed what little Hill gossip he could think of but he found it painful. When a nurse came in to feed Ed his lunch, Jack took it as his excuse to leave.
“Well, Ed, I got to get back to the Hill,” he said eventually. “You hang tough, okay? I’ll come back to see you as soon as I can. You get better, now. I got plans for us to have a bit of fun, all right.”
When Jack took Ed’s limp hand in his to shake hands goodbye, he pulled up his sleeve to have a look at the fading bruise on his wrist.
As he said his goodbyes, promising to visit again soon, he thought about asking the Sawatskis if they had anything they wanted to say for his story, but he couldn’t make himself do it.
There was a good crowd in the press gallery for Question Period, including a gaggle of reporters fresh from the Auditor General’s lockup. They had filed their initial stories on the report into the wasteful and possibly corrupt federal prison-building program, and were now keen to watch how the government would cope with the Opposition’s attacks.
Jack didn’t know what was in the report, and his paper would rely on Canadian Press copy for stories about it, but he still wanted to watch the action. He tucked in his earpiece and opened his notebook just as Pinsent got to his feet to deliver the first question.
“Mr. Speaker,” said the Liberal leader. “When will this government realize that its approach to fighting crime is wrong? Mr. Speaker, let me tell you what the Auditor General found. I quote: ‘Billions were spent without appropriate controls.’ The government relied on private prison contractors with links to the government and now it can’t show how the money was spent. How can the prime minister explain this?”
The Liberal MPs nodded as Pinsent spoke, and when he finished they rose to their feet and applauded enthusiastically. The report was damning and the government was on the hook for it. Finally a scandal that might damage Stevens had fallen into their laps.
Stevens rose calmly to his feet, his hands clasped in front of him. “Mr. Speaker, the Auditor General’s report has identified some administrative problems with the Correctional Infrastructure Renewal Program. The Auditor General’s opinion and ours is different on some details of the public-private partnerships. Departmental officials have already taken the steps recommended by the Auditor General to provide a more complete accounting in the future. That’s what we will do. What we won’t do is go back to the bad old days, when the Liberals ran our justice system with a revolving door for criminals. This government will not turn back.”
The Tories rose to their feet and applauded the prime minister; when Pinsent stood again, they jeered.
“Mr. Speaker, the Auditor General has found that hundreds of millions of dollars were spent without basic accounting. I quote: ‘The contracts with service providers did not have elementary mechanisms to allow the government to ensure that money was spent appropriately.’ One of these firms, SecuriTech, employs the prime minister’s former chief of staff. It won $440 million in contracts. How does the prime minister explain the stench of corruption?”
The Liberals rose to applaud their leader, and the Tories shouted and heckled. Stevens sat with a small smile on his face while the Speaker rose to quiet the screams and catcalls.
“Mr. Speaker, the Liberal leader is right,” said Stevens, calmly. “Our party is tough on crime. He would prefer that we follow the Liberal policy, of allowing violent criminals off with a slap on the wrist. He would rather that gangs be free to terrorize law-abiding citizens, that seniors live in fear. Well, that may be what the Liberals want, but it’s not what Canadians want, and this government won’t ever apologize for being tough on crime! Never!”
The Conservatives rose to their feet and applauded and stomped their feet.
The next question was from Eileen Cross, the Liberal justice critic. It was to the point.
“Mr. Speaker, the Auditor General identifies dozens of contracts that were let to a handful of private prison construction companies for services that the contracts define so vaguely that the auditors could not determine that taxpayers received any benefit. Can the government provide this House with what it failed to provide the auditors: an explanation of where the money went?”
Greg Mowat stood to answer. He smiled at the Speaker and said quietly, “Mr. Speaker, in 1997, when the Liberals were in power, a drug dealer named Ivan Baldwin was released on parole after serving only four months of his two-year sentence on three counts of aggravated assault. He was released under a Liberal community sentencing program. Do you know what happened next? He killed a six-year-old child a week later in a drive-by shooting. That is Liberal justice, Mr. Speaker. This government will not stand by while children are murdered in the street!”
Cross rose again.
“Let’s try again,” she said. “The Auditor General identified one $8-million contract that went to SecuriTech. The prime minister’s chief of staff used to sit on the board. The contract was for security c
onsulting. The Auditor General found that departmental staff could provide only, and I quote, ‘vague generalities,’ to describe the services performed. Mr. Speaker, where did the $8 million go?”
Mowat smiled as he rose to answer.
“Mr. Speaker,” he said. “Liberal justice is not justice. Consider the case of Daman Winston. In 2002 the young man was released on probation after serving only six months of a three-year sentence for sexual assault. He had received a three-for-one bonus for the time he had spent in remand. That was Liberal justice. Do you know what happened? He sexually assaulted five more women before police apprehended him. That is Liberal justice, Mr. Speaker, and the honourable member should have the guts to stand in this place and apologize to the women who were assaulted by Daman Winston!”
The Conservatives applauded as he sat down, and heckled Cross. “Apologize,” they shouted. Stevens was reading though a stack of documents on his desk, but he allowed himself a small smile.
Ashton sat at her desk in the investigations unit at the Ottawa Police Service headquarters, working on the timeline of the events in the Sawatski case, and making a list of leads to pursue. After a day and a half of investigation, she and Flanagan hadn’t made much progress. They had no suspects, no motives and no compelling evidence that a crime had even taken place, except for some bruises on the victim’s wrists, and some inconclusive videotape.
It wasn’t looking good.
She was staring at the paperwork when her phone rang. It was Captain Wayne Zwicker, the director of criminal investigations. He wanted to see her in his office.
He was waiting for her with the door open, sitting at his big oak desk, a tall, athletic man in his fifties with a bit of a pot belly that barely showed under his thick blue uniform.
“Detective Sergeant,” he said, standing as she arrived. “How’s it going?”
“Good, Captain,” she said. “Working this Sawatski case.”
He gestured for her to sit down. “That’s what I want to ask you about,” he said, his face neutral, his blue eyes unblinking. “Fill me in.”
“We’re working our leads, trying to reconstruct the hours before Sawatski ended up in the water. Flanagan’s over in Gatineau, at Pigale, trying to see if any of the staff remember anything.”
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