“Isn’t it enough,” cried one councilor, leaping to his feet, “that the city is now known as Vansterdam for providing free marijuana to drug addicts? And free booze to alcoholics? Now the mayor wants to provide a free home for lost chickens!”
Another idea of the mayor’s was that Vancouver citizens be encouraged to dig up their lawns and grow wheat or potatoes. It was called “sustainable food growth.”
It was much better for his peace of mind, Casey decided, to think about the problems of homeless chickens and sustainable potatoes than to dwell on what might or might not be going on between Emma and John Burns.
Councilor George Nash took very little part in the debate. He sat back in his chair, relaxed, smiling occasionally to himself. But contributing very little. Beside him, Councilor Angela Brill made up for Nash’s silence by speaking often. An attractive blond woman in her thirties, she regarded her fellow councilors with ill-disguised disdain.
Casey secretly agreed with Councilor Brill, who had declared both topics—homeless chickens and obsolete lawns—tiresome and absurd. These were matters of little concern to the majority of taxpayers, she argued. Homeless chickens should never have found their way onto the agenda, she said.
“It’s all really quite eggstrordinary,” one of the other councilors complained.
Except for Councilor George Nash, nobody laughed at the clever pun.
Taxpayers were starting to call city hall Silly Hall, another councilor said.
Enough for today. Casey could take no more Silly Hall. Besides, it was late. He left the council chamber, ignored the elevator and took the stairs down to the street.
A light rain.
What did Emma and her literary lover do when it rained in Ireland? Did they drive to a hotel in nearby Ballymagowan for a bally good time?
Casey tugged his old tweed cap from the pocket of his new Burberry raincoat and pulled it over his brick-red hair. He had bought the cap many years ago in a Donegal market and wasn’t about to give it up, even for Emma. It kept him in touch with his native Ireland. A sentimental fancy, he knew.
He stood in the rain at the bus stop beside a man wearing trendy rain gear from the local outdoors store.
“Bloody rain,” the man said.
“Soft,” Casey said, his mind in Ireland. “Falling soft.”
The man turned his back on him.
In twenty minutes, Casey was back in the West End. Sitting at the bar in O’Doul’s, sipping his first whiskey of the day.
When he emerged onto Robson Street a short time later, the rain had stopped.
Brenda at the front desk of the Clarion was getting ready to go home. She smiled when she saw him. “Two messages for you, Casey.”
Brenda was young, still in her twenties. Medium build, blond hair, hazel eyes. She looked nice in her cream blouse and gray pantsuit. Brenda was smart, friendly and efficient. She was the newspaper’s public face and sometime contributor to the Clarion’s pop music column.
“Thanks, Brenda.” Casey glanced at the two yellow slips before tossing them into Brenda’s wastepaper bin.
“Debbie still here?” Casey said.
“Went home fifteen minutes ago,” Brenda said.
Debbie Ozeroff covered the arts, fashion, environment and women’s issues. She and Casey shared an office the size of a postage stamp. They also shared duties when things got too busy.
“Goodnight, Casey,” Brenda said.
“See you tomorrow, Brenda.”
Casey typed up his city hall report and then left. The rain was keeping off. He walked home amid spring’s heady smells. Rain, earth, trees and flowers.
4
A month had gone by since Councilor George Hamilton Nash had walked out on his wife.
On Wednesday, he left his office just after five and started walking home along Beach Avenue at English Bay. The first two weeks of May had been mostly fine. Sun and clouds. Sparkling slate-green sea. Red rhododendrons and bright yellow and purple azaleas provided a colorful background to Vancouver’s latest work of art—fourteen giant bronze sculptures in Morton Park. The figures were frozen in convulsions of laughter. But Nash wasn’t laughing. Worried about business, he failed to notice either the beauty or the humor of his surroundings.
One of his companies, Oasis Investments, was handled by his longtime partner Joanne Drummond. In their meeting an hour earlier, they had argued about the business and the way Joanne was handling it.
Business partners for over fifteen years, it had been their first serious argument.
George and Joanne had met as UBC students many years ago. They’d begun an irregular sexual relationship that had lasted right up to the present day. Joanne had never married. Their business relationship was more robust than their sexual one. A pretty, slightly plump woman, Joanne enjoyed all the good things that life had to offer.
But Nash was now deeply concerned. Drummond had become a big spender over the past year. First it was a three-bedroom home in Vancouver’s high-end Kitsilano district. That had to be worth a million and a half. Then she bought a “cute” waterfront cottage on Gambier Island. Not much less. To top it off, she’d recently gone out and bought herself a new BMW sports car. All this within the space of one year. Business was good, but not that good, Nash decided.
He had let himself into Joanne’s office late one night and examined a small sample of her client portfolios. The more he searched, the more worried he became. She was cheating. There was no other word for it. As far as Nash could see, Joanne had been mishandling clients for at least two years. She had been enriching herself at the expense of the company and its clients. Today he had confronted her.
“I’m keeping my clients happy,” Joanne argued.
“But you can’t offer clients a steady fifteen-to-twenty-percent return, Joanne. Where will the money come from?”
“From new clients.”
Nash threw up his hands. “You can’t pay clients with their own money. Or with money from new clients. What the hell do you think you’re doing, Jo? It’s called fraud. You want to pay constant high returns? Then you need an ever-increasing flow of cash from new investors. I’m not telling you anything you don’t know. It’s a Ponzi scheme, pure and simple. What the hell were you thinking?”
“No, it’s not. Not the way I’m running it. You’re exaggerating—”
“How long do you think you can keep it going, Joanne? One year? Two? Maybe three? What do we do when the tsunami comes? If our earnings are less than payments to our clients, we’re done for. The tsunami sweeps us away. The system collapses. You know that, Joanne. What the hell made you think—?”
“George, you worry too much. If you leave everything to me you’ll see—”
“I don’t plan to leave everything to you, Joanne. Not anymore. You’re finished. You want the pair of us to end up in prison? I won’t let you do it. You leave me no choice but to report it to the police.”
“Don’t even think of it, George!”
“Just you watch me, Jo!”
Sunday afternoon. Two o’clock Vancouver time. Ten o’clock in Belfast.
Casey waited, a whiskey and soda beside the telephone. His first today. Emma hadn’t called last week. He wondered if his phone would be silent again today.
But it rang. Right on time.
“Casey? It’s me, Emma.”
“It’s good to hear your voice, Emma.”
“It’s good to hear yours, Casey. I’m sorry I missed last week. I fell asleep reading to Ma in front of the fire. How are you? Are you keeping up with your gym workouts? And your jogs on the seawall?”
“I am. What about you?”
“I’m the same. Nothing ever changes here, except Ma. She won’t last much longer, I’m afraid. All she does is sleep. Father Grafton performed last rites yesterday, and the neighbors came in to pray. I made sausage rolls and shortbread for everyone to go with the whiskey.”
“You sound tired,” Casey said.
“I am so,” Emma s
aid. “It’s late here. Everyone is in bed by ten. I miss my runs in Stanley Park. I miss them terribly. But this morning I managed to get away for a gallop in the glen. Annie Murphy came in and sat with Ma.”
Silence.
“You’re not saying much, Casey. Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I’m all right,” Casey said. “I’m not one for chatter, you know that well enough.”
“I do. I still think of you as ‘the quiet man.’ I miss that quietness of yours. I’d give anything to have you here with me. To come walking in the narrow lanes and see the wild fuchsia hedges ablaze with purple and red. It’s lovely here right now.”
“Is it lovely for your friend John Burns? Do you take him walking through the lanes of red-and-purple fuchsia?”
“Oh, Casey, please! Don’t spoil things. I love you. You’re the only one. It won’t be long before I’m home, yours again. You’ll see. Don’t be bitter. Emma Shaughnessy is no saint. She’s just a woman. She makes mistakes. But she loves you, Casey. Please believe that.”
“You’re right, Emma. The devil’s in me sometimes. I’m waiting for you.”
“I’m for bed,” Emma said. “Say a prayer for us.”
“That’d be you and me?”
“That’d be right.”
“Then I will,” Casey said.
He hung up the phone, poured himself a second whiskey and soda and sat for a while, thinking. Beyond his job and beyond his colleagues at the office, Casey lived in a deep silence. This silence often tightened around him and almost smothered him. It was why he needed Emma. To bring air and color and sound to his life. It was why he sometimes spent an hour alone in the noise and clatter of O’Doul’s bar.
He wouldn’t be himself until she was back with him in Vancouver once again.
5
She let herself in to Nash’s apartment with her key and was waiting for him when he got home. Naked on the bed, lying on her side, one milk-white hip thrust up in a perfect arc. Leaning on one elbow, a magazine partially hiding one plump breast. Enticing smile. Two drinks waiting on the night table.
He threw off his clothes and slipped into bed beside her.
The digital clock on the bedside table read 6:35 PM, Wednesday, May 23.
She turned to him eagerly. Her magazine fell to the floor.
She was on something, he could tell. That smile. Something in the eyes, something wild. He reached out to her, fondling her breasts.
She giggled and wriggled away. “Just wait and see what I’ve got for you.”
He watched her glide naked across the carpeted floor. At the foot of the bed she picked up a large handbag. From it she took several silk ropes.
Ropes. Good. He liked it when she steered the ship.
She carefully tied his wrists to the bedposts with two lengths of the rope. They had played this game before, but these fancy ropes were something new.
“No handcuffs today?” George said.
“Not this time. Last time we played this game, they left marks on your wrists. You will find this more comfortable. Now move down in the bed so your arms are stretched.”
He wriggled down.
“Spread your legs, darling,” she whispered, kissing his toes.
He obeyed, and she tied his ankles to the bottom posts. Then she bit the toe she had just kissed. Bit it hard.
“Arrgh!” George screamed.
While his mouth was open, she gagged him. Quickly stuffing one of his socks into his mouth as far as it would go.
He shook his head wildly. What was going on? Was she mad? She had never done anything like this before. The sounds in his throat sounded to his own ears like animal noises. He struggled but couldn’t free himself. He tried to cry out but could make very little noise. Tried to spit the gag out, but she pressed a strip of duct tape across his mouth, over the sock.
She pulled up a chair and sat beside his head, looking into his eyes. She was still naked.
“Now comes the best part, George,” she said. Her intimate smile was gone. Eyes spinning with excitement.
She held a twelve-inch butcher knife in front of his eyes. He could see it clearly. Excellent quality. Expensive. From his own kitchen.
He’d known that tonight she was different. He had been a fool to let her tie him up.
She gently tested the blade of the knife on his arm. Sharp like a razor. Blood, bright red, leaping to the surface of his skin. He struggled. He fought. He kicked. He wrestled.
In vain.
“Just one more cut,” she said. “That’s all. But deep enough this time to finish you off. I’m here to watch you die, George. You miserable excuse for a man. You know how much I hate infidelity.”
She was slurring her words.
He jerked his arms as hard as he could, but the ropes and bedposts held. He tried to scream, but the gag silenced him.
She was holding the knife in front of his face again.
A tiny drop of his blood shone on the bright knife edge.
He squeezed his eyes closed as he felt the blade slice into his flesh. He howled behind the gag as the blood flowed down his arm and onto the bed.
She sat back, watching.
She was talking, but he could not understand a word. He sucked air in through his nostrils. His heart pounded. His blood flowed.
“Minutes. That’s all you have left of life, George. Minutes.”
He knew she was right. He knew he was dying. She was mad. But he couldn’t stop her. The crazy bitch was killing him. He watched the blood. Then he closed his eyes. It wasn’t something he’d thought much about before—blood. He was dying because he couldn’t stop her from stealing his blood, emptying his life onto the bed.
He was still young. To die with so much more living left in him was a terrible waste. There was so much he’d wanted to do. So much.
Too late now.
This was death. This was how it felt.
She was talking, but he could not understand what she was saying. His mind seemed to be wobbling, losing its balance.
The room was growing dim…dimmer…
Regret…life could have been so different… the son he’d never had…
Silence.
She sat still, watching him until he lost consciousness.
She waited a while longer. Then, to be sure, she pressed an ear to his chest.
When she was certain he was gone, she removed the ropes, tape and gag. Stuffed everything into a plastic bag to take away with her. Then she placed Nash’s arms by his sides. Wiped the knife handle and blade, erasing any fingerprints. Pressed the weapon into Nash’s hand. Curled the dead fingers around its handle.
She looked down. Spatters of blood on her breasts, arms and legs. There were even spatters on the carpet. Careful not to drip any more onto the carpet, she stepped into the shower and soaped herself all over. Stood under the hot spray for a long time. Then she cleaned the bathroom thoroughly. Dressed. Placed the suicide note on the bedside table. Grabbed the plastic bag containing the ropes and stuffed it into her handbag. Looked around carefully to make sure she had left nothing. Checked the bathroom once again.
Finally, she took one last look at the man on the bed. He was quite dead.
“Goodbye, George,” she said.
She pulled a fashionable black hoodie over her head, opened the door and stepped into the hallway.
Closed the door quietly and left.
Dropped her key in a garbage bin on Thurlow Street.
6
Casey’s main duty at the Clarion had always been reporting on municipal affairs. Especially as those affairs affected the West End. Inspired by the diaries of Samuel Pepys, he also wrote his “Up and About” column, human-interest pieces.
But things had changed when senior reporter Jack Wexler retired. That was in April, soon after Casey’s return from Ireland. Casey now had the crime beat. Always more interested in crime than in city-hall politics, he was more than happy. His first job every weekday morning was what they called cop
shop.
This meant taking a bus to the Public Safety Building on Main Street for the daily police crime briefings. There was only one downside to this new arrangement. He was still expected to cover the city-hall beat as well.
Casey had tried reasoning with his editor, Percy Simmons.
“Look, Percy, I can’t do both jobs properly. It’s too much. I’m happy to do cop shop, but you’ll need to hire someone to help out with city hall. Then there’s the park-board meetings. And all the face-to-faces with council members.”
“I’m sorry, Casey, I’ve no choice,” Simmons said. “Debbie’s up to her ears in work already. I can’t give her more. We can’t afford extra staff. It’s the way the economy crumbles these days. I could maybe raise your salary a few bucks—”
“I don’t care about the money, Perce, you know that.”
The editor had laid a hand on Casey’s shoulder. “Just do the best you can, Casey, okay? I’ve asked Debbie to pitch in and help whenever possible. I rely on you two.”
Now, Casey waited with other journalists and TV camera operators in a large bare room furnished with a small scatter of folding chairs. Sergeant Joyce Hastings entered the room. She was the communications officer, a tall young woman in police uniform. She sat at a desk in front of a microphone, ready to brief the media.
Casey listened to the usual stuff about robberies, fires and traffic accidents. Then Sergeant Hastings said, “Final item. Shangri-La Hotel staff discovered City Councilor George Hamilton Nash’s body in his fortieth-floor condominium early this morning. The councilor’s death appeared to be a suicide. Foul play is not suspected. There are no further details. Detective Inspector Plank is in charge of the investigation. That will be all. Good morning, everyone.”
Sergeant Hastings got up and left the room.
Casey stared in bewilderment at the empty space left by Hastings. George Nash dead? Suicide? It didn’t make sense. Casey had chatted with him at city hall about a month ago. He’d known Nash for—what—five years? Nash had never struck Casey as the suicidal type. He was a rich businessman who enjoyed the good things of life. Food and wine, luxury travel, arts and culture, the company of rich friends. He was the last man in the world to kill himself. Besides, wasn’t he planning on running for mayor? If Nash was dead, then it had to be something else. A heart attack or a stroke or something of that sort.
A Woman Scorned Page 2