Crime Machine

by Giles Blunt

  “Nervous. Wary.”

  Donna sat back against the booth. “You mean about my motives? Okay, that’s fair. You’re right that I definitely want all the information out of you I can possibly get. But that’s always true. I could have just made an appointment to talk to you at the office, or cornered you again at the next press conference. So if you mean my motives in asking you out to dinner, well …” She shook her head. “You’ll just have to keep guessing.”

  Cardinal tilted his wineglass, studying the ruby light within. “This is the first time I’ve been out for dinner with a woman other than my wife in … decades. I don’t have a clue what to do or say.”

  “Nonsense. In fact, you seem suspiciously smooth.”

  “Also because you must be about a dozen years younger than me and you’re, I don’t know, radioactive or something.” Cardinal shrugged. “Why don’t you tell me what else you know about the Bastovs?”

  She pushed her plate aside and sipped her wine. “Lev and Irena Bastov. Small-time buyer Irena falls in love with big-time manufacturer Lev. Two months later she marries him and moves to New York, just as her own little Russian furrier business goes belly up. What can I say? She’s a lucky girl.”

  “Was everybody happy for her?”

  “Ooh, you should be a reporter. Irena has a brother named Yevgeny. Apparently he was over the moon when the marriage was first announced—telling everyone Lev was going to buy his failing fur farm and set him up somewhere better, maybe get him eventually into manufacturing. His ship had finally come in. Unfortunately, he managed that fur farm into the ground and now things are not so lovey-dovey. Didn’t Ms. Kuritsyn tell you this stuff?”

  “Some of it.”

  “So, cut to the chase. All is connubial bliss, the Bastovs are the wonder couple of the fur trade. You see them in New York, you see them in Copenhagen, you see them in Seattle. All the major fur auctions, the two of them are there. Then, a couple of years ago, a funny thing happens on the way to the auction. This was in Copenhagen. A harvest of 460,000 mink and God knows how many other pelts goes up for sale, and guess what? Nobody bids.”

  “Nobody? They hold an auction and nobody buys anything?”

  “Not one fur is sold. True, we live in a globalized market, and true, we’ve had several warm winters recently. But not one fur?

  “Then we get to Seattle, last year. The furs sell as well as ever. But the prices—the prices go through the floor. Even though demand—except for the Copenhagen anomaly—was more or less stable. Global warming can’t account for a drop like that. That’s when I started getting interested. I got into this fur stuff through fashion. The paper had me covering the garment industry—I can’t tell you how boring that was. Before that, they’d had me covering the art market briefly. Anyway, one day I’m doing background on the Russian fur biz and I hear a rumour that Lev and Irena have organized a bidding ring. It was just a rumour at that point. You’ve heard of bidding rings?”

  “Sure,” Cardinal said. “People want to sell a painting, they get friends to bid the price way up.”

  “Exactly. Difference being, here, the point was to keep the price way down. Very good position to be in if you’re a Russian manufacturer trying to compete with cheap Chinese labour. But boy, when I started asking around about that, you wouldn’t believe how people clammed up.”

  “And you think they’re Russian mafia?”

  “Do I think Lev’s vor? No. But some connection, definitely. Who else is going to scare an entire industry into not buying a single pelt? Could be they were pure victims. Could be they were acting on behalf of the mob and someone else got irritated. But who else is going to cut heads off and stick them on a public wharf?”

  “Last I heard, the Russians were going legit.”

  “They go wherever money and Russians are gathered together. Banking, energy, hockey, you name it. As far as the fur business, there’s Marat Melnick—a Brighton Beach don who has a stake in at least three major fashion houses.”

  “One thing I do know about the Russian mob,” Cardinal said, “they don’t hesitate to knock off journalists.”

  Donna nodded. “Fifteen, at last count.”

  “That doesn’t scare you?”

  “It terrifies me. In fact, if I ever publish this thing, I’ll probably have to do it under a pen name. In the meantime, as you may have noticed, I want to stay close to cops.”

  Cardinal asked her if she wanted coffee or dessert, and when she said no, he signalled for the check.

  She grabbed his wrist. Her fingers were hot. “Hold on a second. I gave you some pretty good information here, now you have to give me something back. That’s how this game works. You do play fair, don’t you? And it’s my check, by the way.” She produced her notebook and clicked her ballpoint several times.

  “You realize I’m not allowed to talk about an investigation in progress.”

  “I do.”

  “You can’t use this in any paper, book, magazine, blog—anywhere—until after there’s a trial. Only after it’s part of the public record, understood?”

  “Absolutely.” She raised two slim fingers. “Scout’s honour.”

  “All right,” Cardinal said. “We just got this back from Toolmarks in Toronto. The weapon used to sever the heads was an axe.”

  She put her notebook down. “That’s it? An axe? You call that a fair trade? Boy, you really play hardball, don’t you.”

  “And the knife at the scene? You already heard about that. But it’s a Bark River Upland, a skinner’s knife—solid, not folding. The kind of blade used by hunters or trappers.”

  “Hunters and trappers. Very cool.” Donna scribbled in her notebook. Cardinal was good at reading things upside down, but not this time.

  “We’re not telling anybody about the make, model or type, so if this hits the papers, I’ll know who’s responsible.”

  She snapped her notebook shut. “The only way I’ll be in the news, Detective, is if I get killed.”

  11

  WHEN SAM GOT HOME, HER MOTHER looked up from the kitchen table. “Where’s your parka?”

  “It got torn. It got caught on the locker at the gym.”

  “Bring it to me later and I’ll fix it.”

  Sam got a plate and put some lamb stew on it. Her brother, Roger, was at a small computer desk with his back to the table and earbuds plugged in both ears, a thing his father would not tolerate at dinnertime.

  “Roger, say hello to your sister.”

  “Don’t bug him. You know he can’t hear you.” Sam poured herself a glass of skim milk and sat down opposite her mother. She took a bite of the stew and pointed at it. “Phenomenal, Mom.”

  “Why are you so late?”

  “Car wouldn’t start. I had to take the bus and I missed the four o’clock.”

  “That car is more trouble than it’s worth.”

  “Except the bus takes forever and I don’t see how I can ride my bike up to Algonquin once the snow gets serious.”

  Mrs. Doucette reached over and took hold of her son’s arm above the elbow. He jerked away. She reached again and he whirled around. “What! Stop plaguing me!”

  “Your sister’s home, Roger. Act human. Acknowledge her existence.”

  “I acknowledge your existence,” he said to Sam, and turned back to his game.

  “Cute, isn’t he?” Sam’s mother was a small, slim woman, still attractive, who worked as a nutritionist for the school board, overseeing cafeteria offerings at the local high schools. It wasn’t as exhausting as her previous life as a chef, but it still left her looking tired at the end of the day. “I wish your father would get home,” she said wistfully. “I don’t know why he insists on wandering off in the bush.”

  “Keeps him in touch with the spirit world.”

  Her mother laughed. “He doesn’t believe a word of that stuff. I don’t know why he’s always going on about it.” She picked up a TV remote and clicked on the countertop television.

  The mu
rders were still the top news story. They showed footage from the house and stuff from the government dock that Sam had already seen. When the announcer gave the names of the victims, Sam thought, Yeah, the woman had an accent. The announcer finished by saying the police were asking anyone with information to call the Crime Stoppers number at the bottom of the screen.

  —

  “What can you possibly tell them?” Randall wanted to know. “You don’t have any information. You didn’t see anything. And obviously you’re not going to save any lives at this point.”

  “Except maybe mine,” Sam said. “He saw me, Randall.”

  “He didn’t get close enough. He saw your car from a distance, you said. In the dark. There aren’t even any street lights out there.”

  “There’s one at the hydro turnoff—right where I was parked.”

  Randall was driving home. She could hear traffic and his car radio in the background.

  “Sam, you’re not calling me from home, are you?”

  “I told you, I lost my cell. I’m afraid to use my car, and there’s no pay phone for about three miles.”

  “Jesus. You’re really playing fast and loose with my life here. I told you I’d call you.”

  “But you didn’t. If that maniac has my cellphone, he’s gonna find me for sure. This is a guy who cuts off heads, Randall. I’m fucking scared.”

  “There’s no reason to think he’s coming after you. He’s probably not even in the country anymore. He’s probably gone back to Chechnya or Brooklyn or wherever the hell he’s from.”

  “He didn’t sound foreign. The woman did, but he didn’t. See, that’s something the cops don’t know. And if he does have my cellphone, maybe they can find him with it. You know, trace it.”

  “Just sit tight, Sam. Let the cops do their job.”

  “Well, when am I going to see you?”

  “Not for a while, obviously. I mean, I don’t feel like sneaking into an empty house right now, do you?”

  “We don’t have to sleep together. I just want to be near you. I need you, Randall. Don’t you care at all?”

  “Of course I do. We just have to be careful with this, Sam. We can’t afford to go playing hero. There’s too much at stake. Okay, I’m turning onto my street. Don’t call me. You know I’m crazy about you, Sam. I’ll call your home number as soon as it’s a good time.”

  Sam tried to distract herself for the rest of the evening by working on Loreena Moon. A series of night scenes, Loreena’s dark, lithe figure vivid against the snow. Moonlight through trees and the bright silver tips of her arrows. Green-eyed hellcat on the quest for justice. Every once in a while Sam could hear her brother exclaim at some score or setback on his cyber-battlefield.

  Her mother went to bed early with a migraine. Sam shut herself in the bathroom with the gauze and rubbing alcohol. The cut on her knee was beginning to close at the ends, but in the middle it was still open. It would leave a scar, and the first time she wore shorts her mother would want to know how it happened and why she never mentioned it. It was one thing to have the private story world of Loreena to escape to now and again, but Sam didn’t like how her own life seemed to be splitting in two.

  She was getting into bed when the phone rang, and her heart immediately started to pound as if she’d been going all out on the treadmill. She reached for it from the bed and knocked the handset to the floor. She had to get under the desk to find it, and her knee sent a sting all the way up her body.

  “Hello?” Her voice to her own ears like the voice of a timid, fearful person. “Hello?”

  The line was open, she could tell by the sound. There was someone there.

  “Hello?”

  A few more seconds of dead air and then the click of disconnection.

  Her mother’s voice from the hall. “Who is it, Sam? Who’s calling at this hour?”

  “No one. Wrong number.”

  “Thank God. I thought for a second your father was in an accident or something.”

  Sam lay in the dark, pressing gauze on her knee. You’re quivering, she said. You’re actually quivering. Her black cat was outlined on the windowsill against the blind, dark ears angled and alert.

  12

  NORTHERN ONTARIO, AS THE TOURISM office is fond of declaring, is a land of lakes. Algonquin Bay itself sits between Lake Nipissing, one of the largest bodies of water in Ontario after the Great Lakes, and Trout Lake, which is small and bottomless. But there are many more within a hundred-mile radius, often linked by streams and rivers that were the traditional highways of the Nipissing First Nation and other Ontario tribes. Some are extremely isolated, rarely visited by anyone other than wildlife or the occasional lost hunter. Most lie within designated preservation areas controlled by the province. A few of the tinier ones are actually private property.

  One of these, not so small, was Black Lake—accessible, but just barely, via a former logging road. Black Lake was owned by a man in his seventies named Lloyd Kreeger. He had made a lot of money in the fur industry, and his intention had been to build himself a perfectly comfortable place of retirement where he would spend his time fishing and reading and keeping a watchful eye on his investments via iPhone and Internet.

  Kreeger was a man who liked his solitude. He’d had a wife or two along the way. One had divorced him because he basically ignored her and the other, to whom he had become much more warmly attached, had died. He never developed the inclination to pursue a third.

  But it turned out Kreeger had overestimated his capacity for solitude, and underestimated his attachment to business. His solution to the first problem was to hire a full-time assistant, a skilful handyman named Henry, to help look after the place. His solution to the second was to turn his property on Black Lake into an exclusive hunting lodge. It was still mostly in the planning stages—construction would not begin until the spring—but it was good to have the feel of a future again, however short that future might prove to be. He certainly didn’t care to think of his life entirely in the past tense, and a few months alone in the woods had made it clear to him he was not someone who could live entirely in the present.

  One night shortly after the murders at Trout Lake, Lloyd came out of the bathroom wearing his plaid robe. His skin was pink from a hot bath, and his white hair was damp and slicked back. He went down the stairs to the living room, not gripping the banister exactly but letting it glide under his hand.

  The lower floor was an open-plan arrangement and he could see Henry setting out the breakfast things in the kitchen. Lloyd lowered himself into his favourite club chair and put his feet up on the ottoman. The big toe of his left foot was visible through a hole in the top of his slipper that had been developing for about a year. He heard the cereal box being set on the table, and the bowl and spoon.

  “Do you need anything else tonight?”

  “No thanks, Henry. You go on to bed or whatever it is you do out there in the bunkhouse.”

  “Okay, then. Good night.”

  “Listen, Henry …”

  Henry was reaching for his big parka by the kitchen door. He stopped, with his hand poised above the hook..

  “I was thinking maybe you should set two places for breakfast.”

  Henry turned around and looked at Lloyd, at the silent house, and at the night-black kitchen window. “You’re expecting company in the morning?”

  “Naw.” Lloyd fanned the air in front of his face, banishing the idea of visitors. “I was just thinking maybe it’s not right that you eat out there in the bunkhouse all by yourself.”

  “Why not? You eat in here all by yourself.”

  “Exactly. Seems kind of dumb. Also, I may have been fortunate in my life, made a lot of money and so on, but the fact is I wasn’t raised that way. I never had a servant the entire time I ran the company—unless you count a cleaning lady—and I never intended to have one now.”

  Henry shrugged on his parka and folded his arms, making the fabric rustle. “You see a servant around here? I d
on’t see a servant. I see an old guy lives out in the woods needs things done. I’m ready to do them and he’s got the money to pay me. It’s just work. Doesn’t have to be called anything else.”

  “I know, but it doesn’t seem right. Mind you, I don’t want chatter. Chatter’s what I came out here to avoid.”

  Henry looked down at the floor for a moment then back up. “I appreciate your thoughts, but on the whole I think I’d prefer to keep things as they are. It’s a good arrangement. I like my bunkhouse. It’s the nicest place I’ve ever lived.”

  “All right, if you’re comfortable being my slave, I’m not going to moan about it. Good night, then.”

  “Good night, master.”

  “Master.” Lloyd nodded. “Funny.”

  Henry went out the door. It took a minute or so, but the wall of winter air eventually reached the living room and chilled Lloyd’s damp head. He clutched his robe together over his bony chest and picked up his book. His feet were already getting too hot from the fire Henry had built in the grate, and he shook his slippers off.

  He heard the door of the bunkhouse open and looked up to see the wedge of light illuminate the snow before the door closed once more. He went back to his book. Now the only sound was the creak of various joints in the structure of the house, adjusting to the cold.

  —

  Even before he took his coat off, Henry knew the bunkhouse was much colder than it should have been. The wood stove was still glowing and he could feel its radiant heat from ten feet away, but the air inside was chill and fresh. He hung his coat on a peg and hung his scarf over it, and then took off his boots and put on a pair of moccasins decorated with beadwork.

  The main room was basically a den with a kitchenette, a dining table and a lounge area with a couple of armchairs and a sofa. It would house four male staff members when Lloyd’s lodge opened two years from now. There were two bedrooms, each with two bunks. Henry could feel the cold air coming at him from the right, so he headed for that room. When he touched the light switch, a large hand grabbed his wrist and the muzzle of a gun was pushed up under his chin. The intruder must have broken in through the bedroom window, which faced away from the main house. Henry had seen no tracks outside, despite the fresh snow.