His wanderings had led him to the Alexandra Quay, where he had leaned against the railing for a long time, contemplating a moored freighter, imagining what it would be like to leave his nightmares behind and set sail for some hypothetical elsewhere. Though he had already taken several anti-anxiety pills, he still felt the need to smoke cigarette after cigarette, but nothing could quell the dark thing that was gnawing at him.
Then, hands in his pockets, ignoring the cold, he had followed the cobblestones of Saint-Paul Street, advancing into the depths of the darkness.
It was as he walked up McGill that he saw the poster on the door: Our second annual “Christmas for Losers” starts at 9 p.m. at Le Confessionnal. You are not alone! After unwrapping your crappy presents, come party through the night with us.
His watch showed 9:35 p.m. when he surrendered.
The door was at sidewalk level; there were no stairs to climb. Victor walked in without pausing to think about it. He made scant effort to appreciate the décor: the place was long and narrow, with exposed bricks on one wall, ceramic panelling on the other, and crystal light fixtures hanging from the ceiling. Walking to the back, he sat down at the illuminated, glass-topped bar. Moments later, with his cap pulled low over his eyes, he found himself alone with a glass of Scotch that he hadn’t yet touched. It stared fixedly at him, murmuring dark incantations.
The place was gradually filling up with its trendy young clientele.
Nadja’s arrival in the restaurant parking lot had been catastrophic.
Everything had gone against Victor, starting with appearances. She had found him between the two cars, brutalizing her brother. He hadn’t heard her arrive, and — this was one of the disadvantages of having a cop for a girlfriend — she had put him in an armlock to make him release his victim.
Jacinthe had emerged from the Crown Victoria. Diego had gotten to his feet, and everyone had started shouting until Nadja ordered them to leave. Victor had tried to explain, to argue, to make her listen to reason, but Nadja was having none of it. Her angry glare had pierced his heart.
Victor had then shifted into Cro-Magnon mode, slamming the car door, then opening it and slamming it a second time to convey the extent of his anger. Seething, his face blood-streaked, he had roared away in the Crown Vic.
Jacinthe had dropped him off at his place. Despite all her efforts, she hadn’t gotten him to open up. She had offered to stay and keep him company, but he’d shaken his head vehemently. He wanted to be alone with his bleak fate.
To top it off, entering the apartment, he had found a note from Charlotte on the dining room table — she had gone to spend the evening with her mother.
Victor had taken out his frustration on the kitchen wall. A series of punches had opened a hole in its surface.
The DJ’s nasal voice roused Victor from his thoughts. The volume had risen on the electro beat.
Two young women in clingy, sleeveless tops, bare-shouldered, with plunging necklines, had sat down beside him. He turned and glanced at them briefly. They were in their thirties and might as well have had red labels on their foreheads: Single and Desperate.
One of them offered him an engaging smile. He responded with a compression of his lips, then looked back at the ice cubes in his glass.
The anger was a vortex from which he couldn’t escape, a torrent he couldn’t resist.
And it was a protection.
Running away had always been his first reflex. Putting some distance between himself and whatever was troubling him. Nadja had crossed a line she should never have crossed: she had sided with her brother. Everything was black and white. There was no reason for them to be together.
He knew the void would come. The void always followed anger. And he would start thinking about all the good qualities of this amazing woman he didn’t deserve. He loved her …
Then the anger would return, reclaiming its ascendancy.
Victor knew it would fade eventually. And when it did, he’d be left in a state of indecision, not knowing what to do or how to behave.
He had no illusions about the future of his relationship with Nadja. He’d beaten up her brother. He’d lost his temper with her. He’d acted like a fool and thrown unjust accusations in her face.
Looking to his left, he saw a couple. The guy was laughing. The girl was rubbing his back, a tender gesture that hit him like a punch in the gut.
His fingers tightened around the glass.
Before entering Le Confessionnal, Victor had done some thinking as he walked through the streets of Old Montreal. He had put in a call to Marc Lagacé, a criminal defence lawyer whom he’d squared off against in the past when he was called as a witness for the prosecution.
Lagacé was known for his relentlessly aggressive methods. He was a fighter, a pit bull whose teeth were tearing at you almost before the judge was seated on the bench. He was also exactly the kind of lawyer you wanted on your side when the time came to go to war.
The detective sergeant had left his phone number on the lawyer’s answering service, hoping he was in town and not on some Caribbean beach; and hoping, as well, that he’d call back promptly, and … and fuck this! Summoning his courage, Victor had also called his ex-wife, Martin’s mother.
Having heard nothing about Martin’s arrest, Marie was stunned by the news. Sensing that she was too shaken to talk further, Victor had asked to speak to her live-in boyfriend, Derek. The two men had met a couple of times. Despite their differing personalities — Derek was a soft-spoken accountant — they respected each other.
Victor had given Derek a quick summary of the situation, describing the steps he had taken to secure a lawyer. Before ending the call, he had promised to keep them informed. Then, unable to remain inactive, he had contacted the ginger-haired officer who had custody of Martin and asked for more details on the case.
The officer had initially been coldly reticent, but Victor finally managed to learn from him that Martin and a co-conspirator named Boris had been arrested as they tried to buy detonators from an undercover RCMP operative.
Dynamite sticks stolen from a warehouse in the Laurentians had been found during a search of a storage space leased by a third member of the gang. When Victor hung up, his mind was teeming with a thousand questions, one of which stood out: if his son was under surveillance, why had no one told him?
But he already knew the answer. Investigators couldn’t take the chance of compromising an ongoing case.
Even so, he was surprised that he hadn’t received a call from headquarters in advance of Martin’s arrest. That was the informal practice generally observed in situations like this.
Maybe the new police chief didn’t much care for him. Maybe the list of his detractors on the force had gotten longer without his realizing it. It was certainly true that Tanguay, his former boss, never hesitated to piss on Victor’s good name whenever he got the chance.
Life on the force carried its share of risks if your methods were unorthodox. You needed someone influential on your side to offset your critics. Paul Delaney was a powerful man in the police hierarchy, and his support for Victor was unequivocal. But lately, with his wife’s illness taking up all his energy, Paul had been a less assiduous defender than usual.
Victor swept these thoughts into a mental wastebasket. At the moment, he wasn’t terribly worried about the repercussions that Martin’s arrest might have on his career. In fact, he didn’t give a damn.
The glass burned in his trembling hand. How much longer would he be able to hold it without bringing it to his lips and draining it? Doing so would be the end of everything; it would be the return to hell. The sad poetry of Fred Fortin’s old song Scotch ran through his head.
Victor had an intuitive sense that someone was watching him. He looked up sharply.
Something moved in his field of vision. Was it an illusion, or had a guy in the depths of the bar, his face hidden by an old red, white, and blue Expos cap, lowered his head? Being the object of a gay man’s interes
t didn’t bother Victor, but right now he wanted to be ignored and forgotten. He longed to be transparent, invisible.
The crowd was thickening around him. Fingers were grazing hips, mouths were floating forward, speaking into ears, smiles were being exchanged, promises of sex were being measured out in glasses, in half truths, in lies and disappointments.
The barmaid’s breasts jiggled beneath her sleeveless blouse each time she picked up a bottle or put down a glass, and Victor saw in a flash of alienated lucidity that the spectacle of those breasts was her stock in trade, as much as any drink the bar had on offer.
Returning to his thoughts, he remembered the ginger-haired officer telling him that Martin wouldn’t appear in court until the 28th. That gave Victor time to seek more information and start to develop a defence strategy with the pit bull — assuming the pit bull agreed to take the case.
At the same time, Victor had no illusions about how the newspapers would handle the story. He could already see the headlines: MONTREAL COP’S SON CHARGED IN TERRORIST CONSPIRACY.
Let the media say what they liked; nothing could hurt him anymore.
Once again, the intense gaze of the guy in the baseball cap began to bother him. Victor put on his best back-off-if-you-don’t-want-your-face-rearranged expression. The suture tape over his split eyebrow accentuated his menacing appearance. The guy lowered his eyes.
Whether this case cost Victor his job or his relationship with Nadja was secondary. All that mattered for the moment was making sure Martin didn’t spend too much time behind bars.
Because if he did, Victor would never forgive himself.
The bar was packed by now. Young women were standing unsteadily behind him as they ordered their drinks, leaning on his shoulder and laughing, but he had withdrawn into himself. Nothing existed but the glass in front of him, which he was gazing at with due solemnity.
Self-Destruction for Dummies, by Victor Lessard. His fingers stiffened around the glass. He lifted it from the bar, brought it to his nose, and sniffed deeply. The malty odour made his nostrils tingle and his head spin. He felt as though he were greeting an old friend after a long absence, a friend he had missed terribly and wanted to take in his arms.
A shadow passed behind him. He didn’t pay attention.
Suddenly, it was as though all the people in the bar were on their feet, possessed, clapping their hands as their bodies rubbed up against one another, limbs entwined, and every mouth chanted his name:
Victor, Victor, Victor …
Just as he was bringing the glass to his mouth, he saw an open matchbook balanced on the illuminated surface of the bar. It hadn’t been there a second before. Instantly, Victor saw it was the same brand of matches as the ones that had been found in Parc Maisonneuve.
Everything froze as he extended a hand to pick it up. When he opened it, his heart began to race. Under the flap, someone had written:
10 23 1964
there were others
Stunned, he raised his head and looked around. In an instant he was on his feet. The information that had been stored in a corner of his brain now lit up: a shadow had passed behind him a few seconds ago …
The washroom!
Pushing people out of his path, he made his way through the crowd and rushed into the men’s room.
Looking around quickly, he saw a couple of guys dousing the urinals’ porcelain and a man standing at the mirror, trying drunkenly to cover up his bald spot. None of them, Victor knew, had left the matchbook on the bar.
The stall was closed.
The first kick made the metal door buckle; the second tore out the bolt. The couple inside, who’d been snorting powder and fondling each other, stared in terror at the Glock in Victor’s fist. After a hasty apology, he was back in the bar, the pistol jammed into his jacket pocket.
His eyes scanned every inch of the room, studying faces, watching movements. Was anyone behaving unusually or nervously? The man he sought was of medium height and weight. A cap could be removed in an instant, and Victor hadn’t seen his features, which were concealed by the brim. But if he tried to melt into the crowd, the detective sergeant would spot him.
The barmaid approached, lips glistening.
“There was a guy in an Expos cap at the bar a minute ago. Where is he?”
She laughed tipsily and pressed her ample breasts against his arm. Her breath smelled of sambuca and mango, which in other circumstances wouldn’t have been disagreeable. She ran a hand along his back. “Don’t know.” She laughed some more. “Feel like a shooter, baby?”
As she attempted to hand him a glass, she spilled liquor on him, then tried to clean up the mess with a rag. Victor took her by the wrist and disengaged himself.
“It’s okay,” he said, walking away.
His heart was hammering as he stepped outside, looking in all directions. An unlucky Lexus was parked in front of the building; it had to endure the kick with which Victor unleashed his frustration.
The man in the baseball cap had slipped through his fingers.
Holding his phone between his shoulder and ear, Victor groped for his cigarettes. After four rings, as he was taking his first drag, he heard a rasping, semiconscious voice. “You better have a fucking good reas—”
His system was supercharged with adrenalin. He felt goosebumps rise at the thought of what he was about to say. “Shut up and listen, Taillon! I know what the numbers on the fridge mean.”
“Ahh, not this shit again …”
The front door of Le Confessionnal burst open. A man wearing a T-shirt came out and projectile-vomited onto the sidewalk a few feet from where Victor stood.
“The numbers represent a date: October 23rd, 1964.”
“You could have waited until tomorrow instead of waking me up at one in the morning to talk about some theory.”
“It’s not a theory, Jacinthe. The killer was here.”
64
ARCHIVES
Monday, December 26th
After arriving home from Le Confessionnal, Victor had tried to sleep, but he’d finally given up. His mind was racing, his thoughts skittering between Martin, Nadja, and his dead brother, Raymond. At three in the morning, realizing that the ghosts haunting him would allow him no rest, he’d gotten up and smoked a cigarette at the open window.
After that, he had sat down at his laptop to read the email sent to him by a lawyer named Pageau, who worked at Baker Lawson Watkins. The subject was the Northern file. Pageau confirmed the identities of the three board members who had been tracked down by Lemaire.
The email also provided some technical information about the company, along with a considerable amount of legalese that Victor didn’t altogether grasp. But he did eventually figure out that the file had to do with preparing Northern Industrial Textiles for a due-diligence check regarding a transaction that had never taken place.
Pageau added that the file seemed unimportant and would normally have been destroyed a long time ago. This confirmed the conclusion that the Gnome had reached after meeting the former president of the company.
Victor had then spent a fair portion of the night searching the internet and the Quebec Police Information Centre database, hoping to find some link between the various pieces of the puzzle.
In particular, he tried different combinations and permutations of certain keywords: 10 23 1964, Kennedy, MK-ULTRA, and the names of the victims and primary witnesses in the investigation, as well as those of the directors of Northern Industrial Textiles. The detective sergeant had also tried to find records of any violent crimes or murders that had been committed on that date on the island of Montreal.
Apart from giving him a headache, the effort had yielded nothing of value, though he had learned that the French writer Théophile Gauthier had died on an October 23rd, that the 1964 Olympic Games had taken place in Japan from October 10th to 24th, and that on the same date — which clearly wasn’t a red-letter day in the history of humanity — the number-one hit song was “Doo Wa
h Diddy Diddy.” In a daze, Victor had watched the song on YouTube, performed by a man who wiggled his hips while shaking maracas with both hands.
He slept for an hour or two. When he woke up, his eyelids felt like they were lined with lead. A profound weariness weighed on him. Anxiety was closing in, invading his head. Victor knew from experience that this kind of fatigue was the precursor to a depressive episode. What else could he do but take his medication?
It was an automaton that showered and made breakfast, a robot that rode the metro to Place Versailles. The only good news was that the worst had been avoided: his desire to drink had vanished along with the man in the baseball cap.
He refused to admit to himself that he was hoping for a call from Nadja. None came.
But his phone had started to ring at eight o’clock and hadn’t let up since. A reporter assigned to the criminal court beat was trying to reach him. Victor turned off the phone and let the messages pile up in his voice mail.
Jacinthe listened without interruption as he recounted what had happened at Le Confessionnal. Feeling helpless, he blamed himself: the killer had been there, under his nose, and he’d let him get away.
“You think it was him, but you didn’t see him.”
“He was watching me, Jacinthe. The matches were the same brand as the ones we found in the park. Look! You can’t tell me that was a coincidence.”
Jacinthe was turning the bagged matchbook over between her thick fingers.
“No, but it doesn’t make much sense. Have you considered the possibility that the killer paid someone to slip you the matchbook?” She paused. “And besides, why would the murderer be giving us more clues?”
A shrug was the only answer Victor could come up with. After another silence, Jacinthe asked the question that had been nagging at her since she’d learned he spent the evening in a bar.
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