Never Forget

by Martin Michaud

  “Maybe. But you’ll need to give me access to the forensics file.”

  “Not online, it’s too risky,” Victor said, slightly irritated. “I can make a copy for you. But I’m counting on your discretion.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll keep it to myself.”

  The photocopy area was next to the kitchenette, but it had a separate entrance.

  As he re-entered the conference room, the detective sergeant was unaware that Jacinthe had slipped into that area to keep tabs on him.

  A few minutes after Rivard’s impromptu statement to the press, Victor dialed the lawyer’s number in the presence of the other investigators.

  “Don’t play games, Rivard. It’s dangerous!”

  “Let the grown-ups handle this, Lessard. I deal with multi-million-dollar transactions all the time. And if someone comes forward, I may even get some payback before calling you.”

  “This isn’t just another legal file you’re sticking your nose into, Rivard. Your colleague’s life could be at stake. Yours too, if you become a target.” Victor reddened with anger and put down the handset.

  “What did he say?” Delaney asked.

  Closing his eyes, the detective sergeant shook his head in disgust. “The son of a bitch hung up.”

  SEPTEMBER 1964

  HONOUR

  The first thing Mom does is run a bath. With her customary gentleness and her tender, healing gaze, she uses a washcloth and soap to clean scraped elbows and skinned knees. Afterward, Charlie soaks in the hot water long enough to get pruney fingertips.

  Then, after putting on pyjamas, Charlie sits down at the table, where Léonard and Dad have already taken their places. Under the crucifix, they say grace together and eat the chicken that Mom has cooked. Léonard never stops swaying on his chair. Bits of food are scattered all around his plate.

  Dad asks Charlie how school was, but he doesn’t ask for details of the altercation that caused the scrapes. Dad also refrains from making any mention whatsoever of the scene that Léonard and Charlie witnessed when they got home.

  After the meal, while Mom is doing the dishes, Dad helps out with Charlie’s homework. Then he gives Charlie a dictation: a story about horses running free in the orchards, plucking apples straight from the branches.

  Later, while Charlie is watching television with Lennie, Dad and Mom have a heated discussion. Scraps of the conversation reach the kids’ ears. Dad thinks the money should be returned, but Mom says it would be better to keep it and forget the whole thing.

  With a noisy sigh, Charlie goes into the kitchen and, frowning, hands on hips, sharply puts an end to the debate. “Stop fighting, you two! We can’t hear the TV.”

  Mom smiles and gives Charlie a hug, while Dad hurriedly slips a big envelope into a drawer, out of sight.

  Now the house is silent. Mom pulls up the sheet and places a kiss on Charlie’s forehead. Before leaving the bedroom, she smiles, restoring balance to the world. Then she goes downstairs, most likely to delve back into her history books. For years, Mom has spent every evening working hard on her thesis. She never quits, never stops repeating that women are just as capable as men. Charlie knows that after coming in to say goodnight, Dad will spend the rest of the evening adding up columns of numbers.

  Through the open window, Charlie hears nothing but the crickets chirping. It’s a warm night for this time of year; summer has lingered.

  Dad opens the door and sits on the side of the bed, near Charlie’s pillow.

  “What happened after school today, Charlie?”

  “René Desharnais started it. He called Lennie a retard!”

  “So you fought with him.”

  “He insulted us, Dad! You’re always saying that we may be poor, but we have our honour.”

  Dad bites his lip, not wanting Charlie to see his emotions. “You’re right, Charlie. But sometimes you have to pick your battles.”

  Charlie sits up on the bed. “I picked mine. I wasn’t going to let them say mean things about my brother.”

  Charlie reaches up and, with one finger, brushes a tear from Dad’s cheek, then touches the bruise under his eye. “What happened to you?”

  With a love so great it could pull the moon down from the sky, Dad strokes Charlie’s hair. “Nothing. Sometimes, Charlie, honour costs a lot.”

  23

  SLEEPLESS

  Victor started the service vehicle and cranked the heater to maximum. Then, grumbling, he got out of the car and went to work on the windshield with an ice scraper. It was dark out. His fingers and toes were freezing. He looked down at his Converse high-tops. “You really need to get a pair of boots,” Nadja was constantly saying. With the cold biting his face, he had never been so ready to concede that she was right. And while he was at it, a pair of gloves wouldn’t hurt, either.

  “Fucking winter,” he muttered, and kept scraping.

  As he drove west along Sherbrooke toward downtown Montreal, Victor turned on the radio. Sports commentator Ron Fournier, a man who defined the word colourful, was in the midst of one of his trademark musical numbers. Before taking listeners’ calls, Fournier was performing an improvised song in which he pleaded with Canadiens’ management to do something about the team’s power play. It took only a few seconds for a smile to appear on Victor’s face. He surprised himself by laughing out loud. Listening to Ron Fournier hold forth on the air was always a pleasure. The man didn’t always get the credit he deserved, but in Victor’s opinion, he was a brilliant communicator.

  The car was starting to warm up. His toes stung as they thawed. The rectangle he had scraped out on the icy windshield was growing, its edges becoming blurry, melting gradually into a shape resembling the wings of a butterfly.

  Victor slowed down when he came to Amherst Street. The car ahead of him slid on a patch of ice. While Fournier was dressing down a listener, the detective sergeant activated the windshield wipers. Big, soggy flakes were falling from the sky.

  Victor parked on Viger Street.

  With his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket and a large yellow envelope tucked under one arm, he walked quickly up Saint-Laurent. He’d just passed the Hong Kong Restaurant when he heard the blare of a car horn to his left. He looked toward the source of the sound, immediately spotted the vehicle, and ran across the street. He slipped the envelope through the half-open window and exchanged a few words with the driver.

  The car rolled away and Victor walked onward to De La Gauchetière Street, in the heart of Chinatown.

  Jacinthe waited for a few seconds before following him. As far as she could tell, Lessard hadn’t spotted her.

  Coming around the corner, she let out a frustrated “Fuck!”

  She peered through the shop windows and scanned the alleys but saw no sign of her partner. The car had been a Ford Escape, but she hadn’t been close enough to see the driver’s face or the licence plate.

  It was another one of those nights when Victor woke up at 3:00 a.m. and couldn’t get back to sleep. He lay staring at the ceiling for a while. He was sweating. The mattress was damp beneath him. To his left, Nadja was asleep, her head resting on his arm.

  They’d had dinner together around nine, after she’d gotten off work. Victor had brought home fresh pasta from Pasta Casareccia on Sherbrooke, just a few steps from his apartment.

  Over the meal, they’d talked about their experiences at work that day, and Nadja had offered her perspective on certain aspects of Victor’s investigation. As she was getting ready to do the dishes, he had pulled her toward the bedroom. Nadja hadn’t resisted. Watching her clothes come off, listening to the fabric whisper on her dusky skin, Victor had felt as though the air itself had rarefied and flowed from the room.

  Afterward, they’d fallen asleep, their limbs entwined.

  With infinite care, Victor liberated his arm, which had begun to go numb, and got out of bed. He picked up his clothes from the floor and tiptoed out of the room, closing the door softly behind him.

  He dres
sed in front of the living room window. The room was bathed in the orange glow of a streetlight. With a shake of his head, he grabbed his jacket and pulled on his high-tops.

  The air outside was dry; the snow crunched under his feet. City workers hadn’t yet cleared the sidewalk. Reaching Sherbrooke Street, the detective sergeant stopped for a moment and lit a cigarette before continuing on.

  He passed D.A.D.’s Bagels. Since he was awake anyway, Victor considered stopping for a bite to eat, but thought better of it. He could hear the laughter of a group of young people inside, no doubt on their way home after a night of clubbing downtown. What he needed right now was solitude. Following his usual route, he went up Wilson Avenue to Côte-Saint-Antoine.

  As he walked through Notre-Dame-de-Grâce Park, he passed a man and woman carrying a Christmas tree tightly wrapped in plastic webbing. He gave them a nod. His years as a resident of Montreal had taught him not to be surprised by anything.

  His phone vibrated. He pulled it out of his pocket and read the text.

  Jacinthe Taillon rolled over in bed. She couldn’t sleep.

  The apartment had been filled with the aroma of stew when she got home. She’d kissed Lucie and taken a shower, then they’d eaten dinner together.

  Lucie and Jacinthe were yin and yang: two inseparable opposites, two stray pieces from an improbable jigsaw puzzle, fitting perfectly into each other. Lucie moderated her, calmed her, talked her down when she went ballistic, picked up the pieces when she fought with her family or took out her rage on the furniture. Slight, delicate, soft-voiced, Lucie looked a little like Jane Birkin. In a few weeks, they would celebrate their twentieth anniversary as a couple.

  They had met through Jacinthe’s mother, who was a friend of Lucie’s. Now in her early sixties, Lucie had filled her life with books, both at home and at the library where she worked.

  She’d suffered from health problems earlier in the year, but she was better now. Jacinthe often said that on the day Lucie died, she herself would have no reason to live. Lucie was gentleness incarnate. An angel. She was Jacinthe’s balance, the four points of her life’s compass.

  During Lucie’s convalescence, Jacinthe, who had never finished a book in her life, had given in and agreed to read a novel to her beloved. It was the story of a young boy who was learning to fly.

  Jacinthe tried to untangle herself from the covers clinging to her body.

  Her mind had begun to race the moment she lay down, and she’d made the mistake of giving in to it. Fucking Lessard. This was his fault.

  Had he concealed himself because he’d spotted her, or had he gone into a shop in Chinatown to meet someone? To whom had he given the envelope? What was in it?

  Jacinthe nearly picked up her cellphone from the bedside table to call him and put an end to the mystery. Honesty was always the best policy.

  She glanced at the alarm clock; it could wait until tomorrow.

  Besides, she trusted Lessard.

  Up to a point.

  Sitting on the side of the bed, his head in his hands, Paul Delaney wept in silence.

  He couldn’t remember how he’d gotten home from the hospital, couldn’t remember the doctor’s exact words. His mind had retained only one thing: Madeleine’s cancer had spread.

  In the early days of her illness, he had felt emptiness. The kids had taken shifts keeping him company. But the treatments had gone on longer than expected, and, little by little, everyone had gone back to the old routines.

  Delaney lifted his head. He wanted to scream.

  Madeleine’s side of the bed was vacant. The house through which he moved like a living corpse had become a prison. Each passing day failed to fill the void left by the day before. He felt the emptiness in his flesh, saw it everywhere he looked, was aware of it wherever he went.

  The emptiness was devouring him.

  Berger’s text asked Victor to call him back as soon as possible, which Victor did as soon as he had lit a fresh cigarette.

  “I thought you might be awake.”

  “Hello, Jacob. Apparently I’m not alone in my insomnia.”

  “You know how it goes. I’m trying to get everything done before the holidays, but it seems like the more I do, the more I still have left to do.”

  Victor sighed, discouraged. The holidays … What he feared most of all was the moment when he’d have to inform Nadja that the way things were going, he wouldn’t be able to join her at the chalet they’d rented in the Laurentians. She’d been overjoyed at the prospect of spending the week there between Christmas and New Year’s Day … “If it makes you feel any better,” he said, “I’m in the same boat.”

  “Sorry, but it really doesn’t.”

  They both laughed. Then Victor turned serious. The medical examiner’s text had intrigued him. “So, to what do I owe the honour, Jacob?”

  “I just looked at the lab results that came in today.” Victor heard a rustle of papers. “It may not be important, but I thought you might be interested to know that Judith Harper had chlamydia.”

  24

  FIVE ROSES

  Wednesday, December 21st

  Old Montreal was still asleep, its streets deserted.

  Holding a Thermos of coffee and a bag of bagels purchased at D.A.D.’s, Victor arrived at the agreed-upon location — the corner of Smith and De la Commune. The wind whistled against the graffiti-covered railway bridge, beside which two human forms were stretched out under a mountain of blankets and rags. In front of them, the Five Roses Flour sign loomed over the city.

  A fetid odour of sweat and urine wafted up to Victor’s nose. Having seen him arrive, one of the two figures wriggled out of his sleeping bag and came to greet him.

  “You okay, Loïc?” the detective sergeant asked a little anxiously, seeing his young colleague’s sunken eyes and waxy skin.

  “Yeah, just a little chilly,” the kid responded, taking the coffee offered to him. Blouin-Dubois clearly hadn’t slept at all.

  During Victor’s teens, when he had run away each time he was placed with a new foster family, he’d lived on the streets now and then himself. “You spent the night here?” he asked.

  Loïc nodded, shivering. “We’re not looking at the usual pattern with this guy. He’s totally brilliant. A doctoral candidate at the University of Montreal. He’s been in bad shape lately, doing heroin. He says it happens now and then, but I get the feeling this time it’s worse.”

  “I can’t believe it. A Ph.D. student living on the streets? Does he have a criminal record?”

  “I wasn’t able to check. He wouldn’t tell me his real name. He goes by Nash.”

  “How’d you find him?”

  “I visited all the homeless shelters and refuges, like you told me. I was starting to get discouraged, but I decided to give it one last shot. Went and hung out in front of the Accueil Bonneau shelter. Nash was there. He asked me for a cigarette. I don’t know why, maybe because we’re the same age, but he opened up to me. It didn’t take him long to figure out I was a cop. When I showed him the picture of Lortie, he recognized him right away.”

  “What else did you get from him?”

  “Nothing so far. But we made a deal.”

  “What kind of deal?” the detective sergeant asked.

  The kid waved a hand evasively. “You know … a deal. Nothing serious.”

  Victor gazed at Loïc with an expression that contained no judgment, but made it clear that he wasn’t going to let himself be played for a fool.

  “Okay. Fine. He wanted me to score a fix for him. And spend the night out here. He wanted company, someone to talk to. In exchange, he said he’d meet you and answer your questions.” He looked Victor in the eye. “Seriously, what was I supposed to do?”

  The detective sergeant nodded. He wasn’t about to scold the kid: he’d have done the same thing. Truth was, he’d done plenty worse. More than once. But that was no reason to praise the kid’s behaviour.

  “I understand. But the fix stays between us.
Not a word to Paul or anyone else.”

  Blouin-Dubois nodded.

  A train bound for Central Station rolled noisily over their heads. It didn’t seem to wake up Nash, whose loud, regular snoring became audible again after the last railcar had gone by.

  “Does he know why we’re interested in Lortie?”

  “I told him the guy’s family was looking for him.”

  Victor took out his cigarettes and offered one to Loïc. Shielding the flame with his hand, he lit the two smokes.

  They’d barely taken their first puff when a cavernous voice rang out: “Hey! Gimme one of those!”

  Nash’s bearded face poked out of his sleeping bag. His feverish eyes looked Victor up and down.

  The three men sheltered from the wind behind one of the pillars of the rail bridge. Nash had a greenish complexion, dark circles under his eyes, and terrible teeth. He made quick work of two bagels before attacking the Thermos of coffee.

  The detective sergeant guessed he was between twenty-five and thirty-five.

  The effects of the fix Loïc had bought him had worn off, but the young vagrant was showing none of the classic signs of withdrawal, which suggested that he was keeping his drug use under control.

  Victor knew from experience that, while very few people can actually pull it off, it is, in fact, possible to be a heroin addict and remain functional, for a while.

  At first, they talked about the weather and the difficulties of living on the streets in winter. Then, little by little, the questions became more specific.

  “Loïc tells me you’re studying at the University of Montreal …”

  “I’m doing a doctorate in mathematics. The department’s given me a scholarship to work on number theory.” Nash was blinking constantly.