The assistant put a plate of assorted cookies in front of them before leaving. Blaikie thanked her with a stiff smile as Jacinthe reached forward.
“In any case, the MK-ULTRA program has given rise to all kinds of baseless legends.”
Victor asked a few more questions, but he ended the discussion when it became clear that he’d get nothing out of Blaikie. Even so, he understood the man’s reticence. For years, the events in question had tarnished the reputation of the department he now chaired.
After the usual thank yous and handshakes, Victor turned to go to the door. As he did so, he saw that a single cookie remained on the plate.
He gave Jacinthe a dark look. She responded with a shrug, as though wondering what he was upset about.
The two detectives didn’t exchange a word as they walked to the car, which they’d left in the parking area off Pine Avenue. Deep in thought, Victor turned up his collar and lit a cigarette. As he smoked, he looked up at the outline of Mount Royal looming in the darkness.
Taillon was on her phone, telling Lucie she’d be home soon.
“That guy made me hungry,” she said, hanging up. “Didn’t you find he looked like Colonel Sanders?”
The reaction was impossible to suppress. Victor spluttered and coughed out his smoke. Colonel Sanders! That was the resemblance he’d noticed in the department head. For once, Taillon had him laughing heartily.
“Ha ha! It’s true!” The laughter faded. “But seriously, Jacinthe, do you ever think about anything except food?”
“Now and then,” she replied without hesitation. “On the other hand, I never think about smoking.”
42
ICE RING
As soon as they arrived at Versailles, Taillon got into her car and left. Though he was tired and eager to get home, Victor went up to the office. In the corridor, he ran into the Gnome, who was on his way out. Bennett’s condition was critical but stable. The doctors would alert the detectives as soon as he was out of his coma.
Next, Victor went to check up on Paul Delaney, but his office was empty. Victor hoped his boss hadn’t received any more bad news.
He found Loïc at his desk.
Searching the web, the young detective had discovered a portal for medieval resources in Quebec. After more than a dozen calls, he still hadn’t found a shop that sold heretic’s forks. Nor had his luck been any better with online sellers. If there was a market for such things, it was marginal at best.
“Go on home. You can keep trying tomorrow.”
The kid nodded. He looked downcast. Victor sat on the edge of the desk. Something had been bothering him since the team meeting that afternoon, and he wasn’t going to pass up this opportunity to clarify some things.
“You know, Loïc, Jacinthe doesn’t pussyfoot around. Not with me, not with Gilles, not with anyone. She’s a warrior. She won’t hesitate to put her life on the line to save yours. But she’s short on tact and sensitivity. And chances are, that’ll never change.” Loïc was watching Victor, clearly wondering what would come next. “I’m telling you this because you need to know who you’re dealing with, and, above all, because you mustn’t let yourself be hurt by the things she says. You were right to defend your opinions today. Even if she makes fun of them, that’s no reason to back down. Keep your head up, kid. You’ve been doing good work lately.”
Victor knew right away that his instinct had been right. Loïc’s face brightened. The detective sergeant gave the young man a pat on the shoulder, grabbed his jacket, and left. Before getting on the metro, not having heard from his son in a while, Victor texted him with a reminder that they were spending Christmas Eve at Ted’s place. A reply was waiting in his inbox when he stepped out of the Villa-Maria station: Martin confirmed that he’d be there.
Nadja had made a beef-and-vegetable stir fry, and Victor had washed the dishes. He was about to make himself comfortable on the couch and watch a documentary on Muhammad Ali (which he had downloaded more or less legally) when Nadja approached, holding an old pair of white skates and wearing a broad smile.
“Say yes,” she pleaded.
First, he claimed not to know where his own skates were, but she’d foreseen the objection. They were waiting in the closet by the front door. For form’s sake, he invoked all the half-hearted excuses in his repertoire: he’d eaten too much, it was cold out, his blades weren’t sharp, he was sleepy, his back hurt.
Nadja gracefully overcame every excuse: a little exercise would help him digest; he could wear his new coat, the one he usually found too warm; since he’d played hockey in his younger days and she was a beginner, his unsharpened blades would put them on an equal footing; he’d sleep better after getting some fresh air; and she’d give him a back rub when they got home.
There was never really any doubt. Victor couldn’t resist. He’d have followed her to hell if she’d asked.
“Okay, fine.”
She whooped joyfully, put her arms around his neck, and smothered him in kisses.
He savoured the moment with a smile.
There were a couple of dozen skaters circling the ice ring at Beaver Lake in Mount Royal Park. The air was frigid. Victor didn’t notice the cold. This outing was doing him a world of good, allowing him to clear his head and think about nothing.
They skated arm in arm. The sky was cloudless. Nadja’s lips shone in the glow of the overhead lights.
“I’ve been thinking about the weapon used in the murders. Did you talk to local role-play organizers? I know there are groups that do that kind of thing.”
Victor said Adams had already raised that possibility, and he described Loïc’s ongoing efforts to find a lead. In a few sentences, he summarized the day’s developments. Nadja’s questions helped reassure him that he hadn’t overlooked any angles so far.
“The thing that doesn’t fit with your murders is the suicide. I’d make that my starting point. There has to be a connection somewhere.”
“I agree. Lortie baffles me. The psychiatrist said there’s often an element of truth in a bipolar individual’s delusions. I looked through his file. The problem is, his delusions are so extreme that it’s hard to get a clear sense of what’s real and what isn’t. Was he a patient in the MK-ULTRA program? Was he in the FLQ? Did he have other wallets in his possession, apart from the ones belonging to the victims?” Victor sighed. “I don’t know what to think. I feel like I’m missing something …”
“So you’ll go back and see the psychiatrist at Louis-H. tomorrow?”
“Yes. I want to find out what he knows about MK-ULTRA. I also want to ask if it’s possible that Lortie was treated somewhere else before being admitted to Louis-H.”
Next, they discussed their plan to move into a new apartment together. They agreed to resume looking at condos after the holidays. And they kept skating until their faces froze.
All of a sudden, Victor felt happy and optimistic. Nothing would disturb their happiness, not even a maniac who killed people with instruments of torture straight out of the Middle Ages.
Nadja was laughing wildly as she did an awkward pirouette. Catching her before she fell, Victor murmured the words in her ear for the very first time.
“I love you.”
43
NEVER DO ANYTHING AGAINST YOUR CONSCIENCE,EVEN IF YOUR CONSCIENCE DEMANDS IT
Martin woke up sweating in the midafternoon. Harsh light from the street was coming in through the curtains. Dry-mouthed, he staggered to the bathroom.
Luckily, Boris kept acetaminophen in his medicine cabinet. Martin drank from the bathroom tap, then, nauseated, he knelt beside the toilet bowl.
The will to live returned when the tablets started to ease the excruciating pain in his temples.
Going up the hallway was an ordeal. Empty bottles littered the living room floor. Memories of the previous evening flooded back when he stepped into the kitchen. Sitting there with a cup of coffee, reading a newspaper, Boris answered the question that Martin lacked the strength to ask.
“Hello, sleepyhead. Muriel left last night. Roxanne an hour ago.”
Before going back to his paper, Boris added with a yawn, “There’s coffee on the counter.”
Martin ate a couple of croissants and gazed out the window. The winter day was grey and dirty. Taking out a pair of scissors, Boris began clipping articles in silence. Waiting for him to say something, Martin felt his worries returning.
Had Boris seen his text?
After showering, Martin dropped onto the couch and turned on the TV. While channel surfing, he landed on a twenty-four-hour news channel. A reporter was talking about a robbery committed the night before “in the Laurentians, at an explosives-storage warehouse.”
Martin raised the volume and called out to Boris.
The reporter said that authorities were “declining to reveal the exact number of explosives taken by the two armed, masked men,” and described the operation as “carefully planned.” He wrapped up his report by noting that the investigation had been handed over to the organized crime unit of the Quebec Provincial Police, suggesting that the robbery was probably linked to “the turf war between motorcycle gangs that has been heating up in recent months.”
“You hear that?” he said to Boris, muting the TV.
Boris had barely raised his head to watch the report. “Yeah, I saw the news this morning. They think it’s the bikers. Perfect. That means they don’t have any leads. Take a look.” Boris handed the newspaper clippings to Martin.
The articles were a few days old, taken from Montreal’s main dailies. They all dealt with the same subject: the desecration of a Jewish cemetery attributed to “a radical Islamist group that has been increasingly active on the island of Montreal over the past three months.”
Acts of vandalism against two synagogues had also been blamed on the group, which was said to operate “in the shadows, with no clear motive other than hatred toward Jews.”
Though the group was dismissed as a “marginal phenomenon” by a professor of ethnic studies at the University of Montreal, it was becoming a source of concern. Especially in “a city where peaceful multiculturalism prevails, despite recent tensions arising from the debate over reasonable accommodation for religious minorities.”
Barely suppressing his anger, Martin looked over the articles. Then, concealing his emotions, he forced himself to smile as he turned to Boris.
“What did I tell you?” Boris said. “It’s working.”
They spent the rest of the day playing video games and drinking beer. Boris gave Martin a couple of chances to recount the details of his wild night with Muriel and Roxanne, but Martin’s answer was brief and truthful: he hardly remembered a thing. Afterward, they talked about hockey and smoked a joint. Then Boris stood up and grabbed his jacket.
“Come on.”
It was more of an order than a suggestion. Martin stretched his limbs before hoisting himself upright and putting on his coat. “Where are we going?”
“For a drive. Now that we have explosives, we’re going to be needing some detonators.” Boris turned and gave him an inscrutable look. “If you’re looking for your phone, I put it on top of the fridge.”
Martin swallowed with difficulty, terrified.
44
IN FRONT OF THE ALLAN MEMORIAL INSTITUTE, IN THE SUNSHINE
Friday, December 23rd
Victor walked painfully to the Villa-Maria metro station, his face contorting as he went down the stairs. The previous evening, without a warm-up, he had foolishly gone all out and done a few high-speed laps of the ice ring to impress Nadja.
On the drive home, he had felt a twinge in his lower back. When they arrived at the apartment, rather than use his head, he had given in to the urges of his lower anatomy and invited Nadja to join him in the shower.
After a couple of acrobatic moves, he had found himself on the cold tiles with his manhood shrivelled and his back immovable. Unable to stop laughing, Nadja had done her best to provide relief with a massage. Victor had finally fallen asleep around one in the morning. The pain radiating down to his buttock had woken him up at five. He had left at dawn, before Nadja was awake. In a homicidal mood, he had no desire to talk to anyone.
In the elevator, feeling the buzz of the muscle relaxants he’d taken on his way out of the apartment, Victor promised himself that he’d resume his healthy habits as soon as this investigation was over. He wanted to get back into regular cardiovascular training. Forced to give up jogging because of his leg, he had turned to swimming. It was a full-body workout and much easier on the joints. But, little by little, he had let it slide.
For one thing, his swimming technique was hopeless; he couldn’t master the front crawl. After a few lengths of breaststroke, he was ready to drown himself.
But more fundamentally, he hated the environment. The chlorine smell of the YMCA pool gave him a headache, and the sight of other swimmers, with their flabby bodies and loud bathing suits, made him sick to his stomach.
Expecting to be the first to arrive at the office, Victor was surprised, as he walked through the main entrance, to see that the place was a hive of activity. The whole team, or just about, was already at work. Delaney’s door was closed, indicating that the chief himself was there.
Gilles Lemaire gave him a smile and a hearty “Good morning.”
“What’s going on?” Victor growled. “Why is everyone here at this hour?”
“The Christmas party’s tonight. We’re getting off early, remember?”
Victor smacked his forehead. He had completely forgotten. His Secret Santa gift was at the apartment. And it wasn’t wrapped. Muttering to himself, he sat down at his computer and sent an email to Nadja, asking her to bring the gift when she came to join him. Pretending to consult his messages, he sat staring at the screen for several minutes. Feeling hollowed out, a hair’s breadth from catatonia, he struggled to beat back the depression that was assailing him.
With an effort, he roused himself from his reverie and dialed the number of the chief of psychiatry at Louis-H. When he asked for an appointment with Dr. McNeil, the assistant answered that the doctor would be in a meeting all day long. Victor almost insisted, wanting to say that he was a police officer and it was an emergency, but he didn’t have the strength — and anyway, it wouldn’t have been true. He wrote down the time of their appointment the next day and hung up.
Taillon’s massive form appeared at the end of the corridor. She came directly toward Victor. It was more than he could endure; he wasn’t going to put up with another of her attacks. Not today. The detective sergeant prepared himself for battle, ready to go ballistic on her at the smallest unpleasant remark. Without bothering to say hello, she tossed a cardboard envelope on his desk.
“You’ve got mail.”
Oblivious to his response, she walked on. Without slowing her pace, she took a notebook off her desk and headed for the conference room.
Victor’s tension faded. He sighed, almost disappointed that no confrontation had occurred.
He held the envelope between his fingers, noting the absence of a stamp or postmark, or any return address. The only writing was his name in block letters in the centre of the envelope. Using the letter opener that lay on his desk, he unsealed it and was surprised to discover a photocopied black-and-white photograph of two men and a woman. They were standing in front of a building. From their squinting faces and the clarity of the image, it was clear that they were standing in bright sunshine.
Victor immediately recognized Judith Harper, though she was easily forty years younger in the picture. From the more recent photographs he’d seen, he’d formed a clear sense of her appearance and knew she’d once been what one would call an attractive woman. But until now, he hadn’t realized just how attractive. Making an effort to detach his gaze from the goddess smiling at the camera, he looked at the caption under the photo:
Dr. Ewen Cameron and colleagues posing in front of the Allan Memorial Institute, where MK-ULTRA experiments were conduc
ted. Montreal, Canada, circa 1964.
Victor guessed that the older man must be Ewen Cameron. He turned his attention to the younger one. The detective sergeant needed a moment to make the connection in his head, but once it was made, he had no more doubts about the man’s identity. Forgetting the pain in his back, he jumped to his feet and walked quickly to the conference room.
With her fingers deep in a bag of Cheetos, Jacinthe was looking at the photos that the forensics team had made of the cardboard in André Lortie’s room.
“Don’t start getting ideas, Lessard. I’m still convinced this’ll lead nowhere. Lortie’s just a fucking whack job. But I thought I’d look over the puzzle anyway, just in case …”
Victor made a face and put a hand to his lower back. The stabbing pain that ran through his buttock now descended as far as his knee.
“You gonna pull through, big guy?”
“Sciatic trouble. Where’d this envelope come from?
“No idea. It was at the reception desk this morning. Why?”
Victor put the photograph down in front of her. “Take a look.”
Jacinthe wiped her orange fingers on her pants and picked up the picture.
“Fuck! That’s Harper and Cameron.”
“Recognize the second man?”
Taillon examined the snapshot for another moment, then gave up.
Victor got Dr. McNeil’s assistant on the line once again, and once again she told him her boss was in an all-day meeting, and —
Cutting her off, the detective sergeant informed her peremptorily that if she didn’t clear a space in the agenda right now, he would get an arrest warrant against the doctor.
“We’ll be there at nine o’clock,” he said drily.
“Nine-thirty,” the assistant replied, panic stricken.
Jacinthe nodded approvingly. She liked it when Victor got tough.
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