Delaney nodded. “Good idea.”
Two uniformed cops had just entered the room, escorting a young Asian man.
“The witness is here!” Loïc exclaimed.
The kid jumped to his feet and hurried over to meet the arrivals.
Victor got up with a sigh. “The fun never stops.” He paused. “Jacinthe, can I talk to you for a second?”
The two cops conferred briefly in private, after which the detective sergeant headed for the interrogation room.
Victor was on his feet, circling the chair in which the young man sat. The young man seemed intimidated, and Victor was having trouble getting anything out of him.
“How can I be sure you’re telling the truth, Wu? First you told the other officers that you were Mr. Lawson’s son. When I mentioned that he had no children, you changed your story. Now you claim he’s a friend of your parents and he’s putting you up. But we can’t get through on the phone number you gave us.”
“Telephone lines not so good in China, sir.”
Victor gazed into the black depths of the young man’s eyes. Loïc, sitting at the end of the table, was following every word, his head swivelling like a spectator’s at a tennis match.
“You have no passport. No identification. On top of all that, you say your wallet was stolen. Are you playing games with me?”
Loïc laughed. Victor gave him a sharp look.
“I tell the truth. Mister Lawson, he call me, say he is leaving for vacation. He say to me, please prepare overnight bag and passport.”
“Which you gave to the doorman.”
“Like Mister Lawson tell me to do.”
“You didn’t see him?”
The young man shook his head.
“And when did all this happen, Wu?”
“Like I say to you, Friday afternoon.”
“Loïc, keep an eye on him. I’ll be right back.”
“Okay, Vic.”
The detective sergeant looked at the young cop and raised a forefinger. “No screwing around, kid.”
Victor left the room and filled a paper cup with water at the fountain. Then he stepped into the adjoining room, where Delaney was watching the interrogation from behind a two-way mirror.
“I think he’s being truthful about what happened Friday,” Victor said, crumpling the little paper cone and dropping it in the wastebasket. “But he’s lying about his relationship with Lawson. He may be keeping quiet to protect someone, or he’s scared to talk. Either way, he’s hiding something from us.”
His tie loosened and his shirtsleeves rolled up, Paul Delaney leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on the table. “What do you think he’s hiding?”
“I could be wrong, but I get the feeling he’s an illegal immigrant.”
“What was he doing at Lawson’s place?”
“Come on, Paul. You saw the note in the file. Lawson’s gay.”
“Yeah.” Delaney sighed. “And the stolen wallet story?”
“That’s getting to be a lot of stolen wallets, if you ask me.”
They heard a loud voice in the hallway.
“I forgot to tell you,” Delaney said, “the young man called a lawyer before the patrol cops brought him in. I suspect that’s the lawyer we’re hearing. We’ve got nothing on Wu for the moment. Let him go. I’ll have him put under surveillance.”
The moment Victor opened the door, he was accosted by a large individual with brush-cut blond hair, a square jaw, and a quarterback’s build.
“Are you Lessard?” the individual demanded.
Crossing his arms, Victor placed himself in front of the interrogation room door, blocking access. He raised a hand to calm Delaney, who was getting ready to intervene.
“That’s me. And you are …?”
“Louis-Charles Rivard. I’m a lawyer at Baker Lawson Watkins.” There was arrogance in his voice. “Where’s Wu?”
“In there,” Victor said, indicating the door with his chin.
“You have nothing on him. Is it a crime for a person to get his wallet stolen?”
“Absolutely not, Mr. Rivard,” Victor said in a harsh tone.
Alerted by their voices, Taillon arrived to provide backup.
“But that leads me to wonder,” the detective sergeant continued, “why does he need a lawyer?”
Rivard’s face reddened. Victor stepped aside to let him enter the interrogation room.
“Get your things, Wu. We’re leaving.”
A loud pop broke the silence. Under Rivard’s irritated gaze, Loïc Blouin-Dubois sucked in his deflated bubble and resumed chewing. For once, Victor couldn’t suppress a smile.
The frightened young man rolled his weary eyes and put on his jacket.
“While you’re here, I have a couple of questions concerning Mr. Lawson.”
“Mr. Lawson is on vacation. There’s nothing else to say.”
“Oh, really? He went on vacation without his wallet?”
There was a momentary light in Rivard’s eyes, then it went out.
“What if I wanted to reach him?” Victor asked.
“Out of the question. He’s resting.”
“In that case, I’ll have to put out a missing person alert.”
Louis-Charles Rivard darkened and advanced on the detective sergeant. Rivard was a very large man.
“You’ll do no such thing,” he growled, a threatening finger hovering inches from Victor’s chest.
The atmosphere was getting tense. Delaney and Taillon stood by, ready to intervene.
“He has until tomorrow to get in touch,” Victor said.
“Is he suspected of something?” Rivard demanded.
“Murder,” Victor said without hesitation.
14
GOING HOME
The Gnome was the first to leave, after getting a distress call from his wife at 8:30 p.m.
“It’s Sunday, after all,” he had said, as though apologizing for walking out on the team.
He’d pulled on his boots, grabbed his coat, and rushed headlong toward the exit, pressing his phone to his ear. There were seven children in the Lemaire family, each as diminutive as their father. The ages of these youngsters, collectively dubbed “the Seven Dwarfs” by Jacinthe, ranged from a few months to thirteen years.
“No, Mathieu, you can’t spend the night in the shed! … Why? Because it’s not heated and the weather’s freezing! … Yes, it does matter! Let me speak to your mother …”
Looking worn out, with the Tupperware that had contained his lunch in a plastic bag under his arm, Paul Delaney had left an hour later. Knowing where his superior officer was headed, Victor had given him a look of heartfelt sympathy, but Delaney, caught up in his own thoughts, hadn’t even noticed.
Loïc Blouin-Dubois had waited ten minutes after the boss’s departure before leaving himself. Every evening since he’d been sidelined, the young detective had felt obligated to put in long, conspicuous hours at the office, but everyone knew he was spending those hours on Facebook.
Victor was peering through a magnifying glass at the unknown woman’s face in the Polaroid pinned to the big board when Jacinthe approached.
“Did you call?” he asked, turning to look at her.
“A while ago. She should be here any minute. What do we want from her, exactly?”
“Have you read the incident report?”
“Skimmed it.”
“What was Lortie talking about before he jumped?”
“I don’t remember,” she answered, unruffled, as she put her hand in her pocket to retrieve her ringing phone. “Hello? … Hang on, I’ll come down and open the door for you.”
“Speak of the devil,” she said without turning.
Victor invited Constable Gonthier, a friendly young woman with laughing eyes, to sit down in the conference room. He gave her a cup of coffee, resisting the urge to have one himself. Between his reflux and the digestive problems that assailed him, he could permit himself only one or two decafs a day.
&nbs
p; The detective sergeant regretfully poured himself a glass of hot water and sat down facing the policewoman. Jacinthe was pacing the room, drinking a Red Bull and looking at the big Plexiglas board.
“Sorry, we were on a call,” Gonthier said. She smiled, displaying white teeth.
“We’re grateful to you for coming so quickly. Listen, I read your incident report, and I have a few questions.”
At Lessard’s request, Gonthier gave him a general account of the intervention.
“So, Lortie was searching for a heart carved into the brick wall along with his initials and those of a woman,” Lessard said.
“Yes.”
“Do you remember the woman’s name?”
The policewoman searched her memory before finally shaking her head.
“Could it be Sylvie, by any chance?”
“Sylvie! That’s it!”
Victor asked a few more questions and confirmed some details, then accompanied the patrolwoman to the elevator.
Taillon questioned him when he got back to the conference room. “How did you know the woman’s name?”
He picked up the magnifying glass from the table and handed it to her. “Look at the smudged letters on the Polaroid.”
“You could be right,” Taillon conceded, one eye closed, the other peering through the lens. “But a first name by itself doesn’t get us very far.”
“It’s a start. We can bring in the experts. They may be able to tell us the model of camera that took the photograph. That could help us date it.”
“Pfff. That’ll take days and get us nowhere. I don’t need an expert to tell me this picture was taken in the seventies. Look at the woman’s clothes, her hairstyle.”
“In any case, there’s another detail that’s more interesting.”
“When the dude said he wished he could remember, or something like that.”
“Exactly. We need to talk to his doctor at Louis-H.”
“Maybe his medication left holes in his memory.”
“We’ll look into that.”
Taillon opened the envelope that she’d been holding since Gonthier’s departure and laid out a series of photographs. “These came in from forensics. Pictures of the cardboard sheets found at Lortie’s place.”
They looked at the images in a silence that was almost spiritual. The writing conveyed agitation; the letters and symbols had been drawn with urgency.
“It looks like a series of mementoes,” Victor said at last.
“A series of what?”
“Memory aids. Look closely … what do you see?”
“Well … dates, street names, words without any logical connection. This part looks like a grocery list.”
“Precisely. This is where Lortie wrote down his notes.”
“So it was like an agenda?”
“More than that, Jacinthe. I’ll bet Lortie was experiencing memory loss, and he wrote notes on the cardboard in an effort to stay on track. What you’re seeing here is the inside of his brain.”
Coming out of the Villa-Maria metro station, Victor texted Nadja to let her know he’d be home soon. His old, rusted-out Corolla, which had served him faithfully for nearly two decades, had given up the ghost in November. The day before it expired, the car had started without a hitch. But on that fateful morning, when he had put the key in the ignition, there had been no response. Flatline. He’d felt a twinge of heartache when the tow truck came to cart away the remains, but he’d consoled himself with the thought that his car had had the kind of death he dreamed of for himself: to lie down for the night and never wake up.
He hadn’t bought a new one yet. Not that he couldn’t afford it, but for the moment, he was making do with the metro, with taxis and occasional lifts from Jacinthe, and, now and then, with borrowed service vehicles. On weekends he could count on Nadja to drive him wherever he wanted to go.
Plugged into his iPod, Victor crossed the overpass bridging the Décarie Expressway, the long scar that disfigured the city. At the corner of Girouard, he stopped for a moment to admire the spectacle: windblown snow was swirling in the air, bathed in the greenish halo of the Monkland Tavern’s neon sign. A few steps farther along, through the fogged-up window, he saw a press of people inside the Old Orchard Pub. The door opened and a wave of noise spilled out, along with two girls who teetered away through the snow, laughing.
Victor had quit drinking a long time ago, but he liked going to the pub for breakfast now and then on weekends. At the corner of Marcil, he almost stopped at the Provigo grocery store for milk and bread. It was just an old habit: since Nadja had come into his life, his refrigerator had never been so well stocked.
He checked his messages.
Usually she replied when he texted her, but not this time. With the tip of his nose numb from the cold, he walked down Oxford Avenue, watching the tree branches sway to the rhythm of The Dears’ “Tiny Man.”
His son, Martin, had created the playlist he was listening to. After several difficult years of flirting dangerously with drugs and hanging around with friends who had criminal connections, Martin had finally gotten a grip on his life. He was still working in the music business as a sound engineer.
Lost in thought, Victor narrowly avoided being hit by a car as he crossed Sherbrooke. He stepped into his apartment building to an accompaniment of honks.
Moving through the semi-darkness, he pressed the light switch.
“Nadja?”
As he took off his jacket, he wondered where Martin was at this moment. It had been several days since his son had called. Nothing unusual about that; Martin would turn up again as soon as his girlfriend, Mélodie, threw him out after their next fight.
Victor walked into the living room, puzzled by Nadja’s absence. She had texted him earlier that she’d be there when he got home.
“Nadja?”
He was about to turn on the TV to watch the news when he heard a faint noise: a scraping sound in the bedroom. His dread was irrational, but now that it was in his mind, he couldn’t dislodge it: there was someone in there.
His pulse accelerated. Fear released a rush of adrenalin into his veins.
“Nadja?”
Pistol unholstered, hands trembling, he advanced noiselessly, saw a light under the door, and, with a swift movement, kicked it open.
“Put away the popgun, cowboy. You won’t be needing it. Not that one, anyway.”
By the soft glow of a candle, his girlfriend’s sweet features were shining. Her ebony hair fell in a wave over her shoulders. Her jade eyes held him transfixed. Her naked body was a coppery flame against the white sheet, whispering its invitation. The taut buds of her nipples teased him.
Victor shook his head, hands on his hips, and let the air out of his lungs in little bursts. Relaxing gradually, he put his weapon on the dresser and finally smiled. “That could have gone very wrong. Why didn’t you answer when I called?”
“Sorry, handsome. It’s no picnic trying to surprise a paranoid cop. Come on over here,” she said, patting the mattress with her right hand.
Victor ran his fingers through his short, thick hair, then smiled and took off his T-shirt. The muscles and veins rippled under his skin. During the last few years, pumping iron had become a release for him.
He and Nadja had been together since the King of Flies case. They had met at Station 11, to which Victor had been demoted after a serious blunder. Still living with the mother of his children back then, the detective sergeant had gone through a terribly bleak time.
It was only later, in the aftermath of his painful relationship with his girlfriend, Véronique, that he had become aware of Nadja’s interest in him. He still found it hard to understand that interest, mostly because of the difference in their ages. It had, in fact, become a source of humour in their relationship.
“Oooh, not bad for a man in his forties,” Nadja breathed suggestively.
The young woman caught him before he could slide down next to her. She opened his zipper. Reaching in wi
th her fingers, she pulled him out and began to fondle him.
“What were you thinking about when you came in?” she asked, feeling him harden in her hand. “Your investigation?”
She sped up her movements; he was having trouble focusing. “Just now? Mmm … oh, that’s good … No, I was thinking about …” The image of his son rose up before his eyes. “I was thinking about Martin.”
“Oh, really? And now?” she asked in a wicked voice.
“Not so much …”
When she took him in her mouth, Victor stopped thinking about Martin, or about the outside world that devoured a little more of him each day.
He was, at last, living in the infinite space of here and now.
15
THE THIRD MAN
On the northern flank of Mount Royal, the three masked men were advancing, the ice-encrusted snow fracturing under their feet. Dressed in white, economical in their movements, they progressed unhesitatingly with the precision of a military unit, avoiding the glare from the streetlights on De la Forêt Road.
The leader stopped in the middle of the graveyard and raised a hand. Without a word, one of the other men joined him. Working together, they started toppling gravestones methodically, one after another. As the monuments fell, they crashed noisily through the icy layer that covered the snow.
Armed with an aerosol can, the third man approached a gravestone topped by a Star of David. After shaking the can to mix the paint thoroughly, he began spraying red slogans on the monuments: Muslim power, Death to the Jews, You will pay.
He had just finished tagging his fifth grave when a hand touched his shoulder. “That’s it. We’re done.” He glanced to his right and saw that his two accomplices had overturned a dozen monuments.
The third man tossed his aerosol can into the snow and followed his companions. They left the Shaar Hashomayim Cemetery, climbing over the iron fence that marked its perimeter. The entire operation had taken minutes. The plan had gone off without a hitch.
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