Читать книгу Once Upon a Time - Barbara Fradkin - Страница 10

Four

February 10th, 1940

In my mind the bayonet pricks me still.

I’ve cleared rubble from the square for three days,

barehanded and hatless in the bloodied snow.

German orders pummelled my ears, their bayonets spurred me on.

As I lie against the soft swell of her belly,

her fingers probe, her tongue clucks.

She will not lose me to German sport, she says.

Already fear and death have taken half of us.

Henryk arrives with bread stolen right off a Nazi truck.

He roams everywhere, hears everything.

As she feeds me, he smiles

And tells of a farm in the rolling hills far from town.

The farmer reads the pain in my eyes, takes my hand gently.

By planting time, he says, you’ll be strong again.

At eight o’clock Saturday morning, Green and Sullivan were headed west along Highway 17 towards Renfrew. The sun lay pale and cold on the horizon behind them, and the rolling fields and scrub on either side were blanketed with snow.

“I don’t believe I’m doing this,” Sullivan muttered as he accelerated around a slow-moving pick-up. “What the hell am I doing here with you, Green?”

“The valley’s your turf, and I need your experience. You think they’re going to talk to a city boy like me?”

“And what the hell are you doing here? You should be home with your wife and son.”

“I promised Sharon and him this evening and the whole day tomorrow. I even promised to paint the living room.” Green had practically had to sell his soul, but he didn’t admit that to Sullivan. Sullivan loved his home, and to him, fun was a weekend spent finishing the basement or restaining the deck. Fifteen years of listening to Sullivan’s do-it-yourself tales had almost put Green off home ownership for good.

Sullivan turned off the main highway and wove expertly down the narrow country road toward Renfrew. After a few minutes of silence, he shrugged. “Well, she’d better not be holding her breath.”

Green had no time to think up a comeback before they pulled onto the main street crammed with little shops, and he had to turn his attention to finding the OPP station. The Ontario Provincial Police were housed in the Town Hall, a self-consciously impressive brick building set back behind the town’s war memorial. Inside the grand exterior, the reception area of the OPP was little more than a closet. On the other side of a glass window, a huge uniformed officer was wedged into one of the chairs behind a desk, sipping coffee. He glanced through the glass as the two detectives came in, then leaped to his feet, eyes lighting up.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Brian Sullivan!”

“Kennelly!” Sullivan had time to reply before the door flung back, and he was clasped into a thumping embrace. When the two separated, Kennelly looked him up and down. They were the same height, broad shouldered and powerfully built, although Kennelly’s midriff sagged even lower than Sullivan’s. He grinned with delight.

“What’re you doing back here? Thought you hated these parts.”

“Back for my adrenaline fix,” Sullivan laughed. “I’m with Ottawa CID. This is Mike Green.”

Sullivan slipped the introductions by casually, without reference to Green’s rank, which would have torpedoed any chance for collegial solidarity. As Green had hoped, Kennelly engulfed his hand in a friendly iron grip, tossed in a greeting, then swung back to Sullivan with a laugh. “Will you look at you! I couldn’t believe it when I heard you were a cop! I thought you were going off to the big city to make a million.”

Sullivan grinned ruefully. “Well, I made it to the big city, anyway.”

“I used to play football with this guy,” Kennelly said to Green. “We went to the same high school up in Eganville, and I tell you he was one fine mean ball player. I heard you married Mary Connolly. That still on?”

Sullivan nodded. “Three kids too.”

“Oh well, you always were a good Catholic boy. Fell in love with the first girl you laid eyes on and then never looked at another.” He shook his massive head mockingly. “Boy, I tell you, it’s a small world. So is this a social call, or are you boys here to learn a thing or two?”

“A man named Eugene Walker used to own a hardware store here,” Sullivan asked. “Did you know him?”

“No, but maybe my partner did. He’s been here since the Great Flood.” Kennelly led them inside and bellowed in the direction of the back room. “Tom! Come out and meet a buddy of mine.”

A smaller, older man emerged from an office behind the main desk and came forward, smiling expectantly. Once the introductions were complete, Sullivan explained their mission.

“Yeah, I knew him,” Tom Wells said. “In a small town like this, you get to know pretty near everyone. Walker wasn’t a troublemaker, he kept to himself pretty much. I’m not sure we can be much help to you up here. When I heard he died, I asked around to see if anybody’d heard from them recently, just out of curiosity, you know? ’Cause I used to get my fishing and hunting gear at his shop. But no one seen much of them since they moved out to the country.”

Green spoke for the first time. “I understand he had an assault charge, maybe twenty years ago. Any chance there’s still a file on that?”

Tom Wells scrunched his craggy, sun-weathered face in an effort to remember, then shook his head. “We don’t keep stuff that long, and in that case, the charge was dropped.”

“So you remember the case?”

“Yeah, I was the one took the call,” Wells said. “I remember I was surprised. Eugene was a regular at Paddy’s place on Saturday nights. There were more than a few times when me and my partner had to bring him home and put him to bed. But he was a quiet drunk. Never got into fights, never bothered anybody. So I thought it was kind of strange. In fact, I asked him about it. I didn’t want to lay an assault charge, and I was hoping he’d tell me why he did it, but he never said a word. Just said he’d had one too many, his mistake.”

“Why were the charges dropped?”

“The fellow he assaulted wouldn’t press charges. I tried to persuade him to—I mean, when Eugene wouldn’t give any excuse. The fellow was a visitor, and I had a bar full of drinkers waiting to see if I was going to apply the law. But nobody would say a word if Dubroskie and his cousin weren’t going to. In this town, everybody minds everybody else’s business, including the cops’.”

“Dubroskie?”

“Local farmer, good man. Cousin’s name was something unpronounceable. Polish, began with G.”

“So what did this Mr. G. say about it?”

“Nothing,” Wells said with a shrug. “He was an immigrant, heavy accent, seemed awful confused. Apologizing all over the place if he’d upset anybody.”

Immigrant! Green hid his excitement as another possible piece of the puzzle slipped into place. “And Dubroskie? Did he or anyone else in the family have any idea what was going on?”

Wells shrugged his shoulders. “I’ve known the Dubroskies all my life. Family’s owned a farm west of town since the pioneer days. I went to high school with Karl, and my kids went to high school with Karl’s kids. We never been close friends, because here in the valley, the oldtimers tended to stick with their own. Poles with Poles, Irish with Irish. And people kept the secrets within their own group, you know? I mean, the Poles might fight like cats and dogs among themselves and one family hate another’s guts, but a Protestant Welshman like myself is never going to find out why.”

“So you think people are hiding something about this assault, but only a Pole is going to find out what it is. But Walker’s British—why would he keep an insider’s secret?”

Sergeant Wells’ eyes widened. “Walker? Are you kidding? He was Polish!”

It was Green’s turn to be surprised. “Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure! He had an accent thick enough to cut with a knife. He came here after the war.”

“But his wife… And his name…”

“The wife’s British, you’re right. Fine lady. We always figured he took her name. When he first came, there was quite a stir in the Polish community. I remember my father talking about it. Back then, the communities around here were very traditional—you’d know that, Brian—everyone had their place. Walker fitted nowhere. His wife was British and a Protestant, and the Poles thought he’d turned his back on his Polish roots when he changed his name. Plus he would never talk Polish. He would never talk about the old country. He was one of them, but he avoided them. Him and his wife didn’t really fit in anywhere.”

Green turned to Sullivan. “Call Gibbs. He’s looking into Walker’s war record. Get him to check immigration too and have the reports ready when we get back.”

* * *

“Why are you so interested in a twenty-year-old barroom brawl, Mike?” Sullivan took his eyes off the narrow country road long enough to glance questioningly at Green. They were on their way out to the Walkers’ country house, having left a disappointed pair of OPP officers behind at the station. Sullivan had seen the curiosity in Kennelly’s eyes and had tried to persuade Green to let them participate in the inquiries, since it seemed a slow day in Renfrew County, but Green was adamant. He didn’t want extra officers he didn’t know trampling all over the evidence in the house. The extent of Green’s diplomacy had been to assign the officers the task of setting up interviews for them in the afternoon with people who knew the Walkers.

“Because it’s out of character with what we’ve learned about Walker,” Green replied, “and it seems to be a mystery. Maybe his neighbours and acquaintances can shed some light on what he was really like.”

“They won’t tell us a thing, I can guarantee you that. A couple of big city cops barging in out of nowhere? Forget it.”

Green grinned at him. “Give me some credit.”

The directions Ruth Walker had supplied were clear and precise, but even so, after the fourth turn into progressively narrower back roads, Green was glad Sullivan was behind the wheel. All around them stretched nothing but drifting snow, icy fields and the grey lace of barren trees against the sky. Ruth had been surprised when the two officers had asked her permission to search the house, but she had not hesitated an instant. If she had anything to hide, Green thought, she seemed confident it wouldn’t be found.

When they finally turned into the long, narrow lane, they saw the Walkers’ white clapboard cottage set in a windswept clearing at the end. It looked shabby and neglected in the harsh morning sun, and as they drew nearer, Green saw it was badly in need of paint. Sullivan plowed up the lane, parked about fifty feet from the house and surveyed the snowy expanse stretching to the house. At first glance, it seemed to be unbroken except for the tire tracks leading from the shed to the front door and then to the lane.

But as they began their approach on foot, Green suddenly held up his hand.

“Don’t move!” He squatted in the snow, peered at the tracks, then took out his notebook and glanced up excitedly.

“Come look at this! Carefully! What does this look like to you?”

Sullivan studied the marks in the snow. Inside the tracks, at roughly two foot intervals, the tire markings were blurred in an oval shape. “Like someone has smudged the tire track. To wipe out something?”

Green’s eyes narrowed speculatively. “The tire tracks are partially erased by the wind and snow, and that stopped about noon Wednesday. Before Walker was even discovered dead. But these marks are clear. Someone has walked in this tire tread since the snow stopped, and has tried to smudge over the footprint as they went. Which suggests someone has been out to the house since the Walkers left but tried to conceal that fact. Do you still think his death was natural causes?”

Sullivan backed up carefully. “I’ll get the camera.”

Thirty minutes later, they had a roll of detailed photos of the tracks leading up to the house and of the footprints in the snow at the front door. One set of partially obliterated prints with a deeply treaded sole led from the front door and trampled around in an aimless circle before disappearing at the edge of the tire track. Suspecting the prints were Eugene Walker’s, Green made a note to check his boot soles. Inside two of these large boot prints were the remnants of smudged smaller prints again, leading towards the house. These too had been carefully brushed over in an attempt to erase them. Someone had been very, very careful.

Curious, Green bent to scrutinize the front door, but there were no scratches to suggest forced entry. Using a key provided by Ruth Walker, he eased the door open and stepped inside, scanning the hall rapidly for signs of intrusion or disturbance. There were none. The house was quiet and neat. Sullivan took fifteen minutes to photograph every aspect of it before they put on latex gloves and began the search. Methodically they made their way through the small house, sketching and making notes. The front door opened into a small living room on the right with a fireplace at the far end and a door through to the kitchen and pantry beyond. Upstairs were three doors, the first leading into the bathroom and the other two into bedrooms. The furniture in all the rooms was old and frayed, testimony to the Walkers’ limited budget, but the slip covers had been assiduously darned and redarned. The bookcases were handmade by an inexpert carpenter, and the piano keys were yellow with age and wear.

Green tapped the keys idly and was surprised that the sound was still rich and warm, evoking memories of his own mother, not withered by disease but vibrant and tireless as she’d been in his youth, coaxing melody from the leaden fingers of the children on the block. Or all alone at night, after the day’s work, racing her fingers over the keys for hours for the sheer rapture of the sound.

He moved on to study the titles in the bookcase curiously. There was a large collection of British mysteries ranging from Agatha Christie to P.D. James, an aging leather-bound collection of Dickens, a sampling of Atwood, Shields and Robertson Davies, and a shelf of Romantic poets. These all suggested the refined feminine taste of Ruth Walker. There was a corner of gardening and bird-watching books which Green also intuitively connected to Ruth, and another small shelf of best-selling spy thrillers of a more masculine genre. Wedged in the corner was a faded black Bible, St. James version. Green opened it to see the inscription on the inner cover in quilled black ink. “To our beloved daughter Ruth, London 1932”.

The Bible, despite its age, did not look much used. As Green flipped through it, a brittle, yellowed square of folded paper fell out. It was a letter, dated Feb. 26, 1947, and written in the same elegant, old-fashioned hand as the bible’s inscription.

Dearest Ruth,

Your father and I received your letter of Christmas time and although we are delighted that you have found new friends and new purpose in your work down there, we urge you not to move too quickly without ensuring that any relationship is firmly founded in mutual interests and values. You are young now, and full of hope and the desire to heal, but two wars have taught your father and me that there are differences between people, differences in upbringing, outlook and values which may loom large once the initial excitement has had a chance to calm. As well, we don’t know what these people have endured and how deeply they may be scarred.

This is not to dampen your enthusiasm nor to deter your generous nature, but rather to temper it with care, lest you suffer again the pain which I am sure is still all too fresh.

Enough said of prudence. Things are still very hard in the city, with long queues and shortages, and people still homeless. The winter has been very hard on your father and his cough is much worse. I only hope that we can come down to see you when spring arrives, for the sun and the sea air would do him good. I don’t believe he has ever recovered from Albert—Lord knows I never shall—and the sorrow saps his strength. But we shall manage, my dear, and we count the days until we can visit you. All our love,

Mother

Pensively, Green turned the letter over in his hands. By itself, it was a mere fragment of history, yet it added one small piece to the mystery of Walker’s life. He called Sullivan over to photograph it, and then he replaced it and the Bible carefully back into place. He and Sullivan then searched through every book on the shelves. If a book could be used as a storage place once, why not twice? But they found nothing, either there or in the rest of the cluttered room.

Next they moved up to the larger bedroom. It had been intended as a master bedroom, but they found only men’s clothing in the closets and drawers. Ruth’s clothing was next door in the smaller bedroom.

“Looks like they slept apart,” Green muttered.

“It’s not much fun sleeping with a drunk. He probably crashed around a lot and got up in the middle of the night to piss.”

“Check the desk drawer for those investment certificates Mrs. Walker mentioned.”

Sullivan opened the drawer of a battered maple desk and found it crammed full of papers—mortgage agreements, house deeds, sales receipts, most over five years old. He found the certificates inside a folder and counted them carefully.

“Eight.”

“Eight?” Green said. “There are supposed to be ten.”

Sullivan counted again. “There aren’t.”

Green raised an eyebrow. “Two thousand bucks. If this was a robbery, why not take all ten?”

“Maybe he was hoping they wouldn’t be missed. Remember how careful the person was to erase their tracks.”

Green shook his head. “Or maybe they weren’t stolen. At least not then. Leave them out. I’ll try to get Ident up here for fingerprinting. And I want to check up on Don Reid’s finances—”

Sullivan frowned. “Why him?”

Green was remembering Don’s reaction the day before when the investment certificates were mentioned. “Just a hunch.”

“Two thousand bucks isn’t much of a motive for murder.”

“Depends on how desperate you are,” Green countered, rifling through the shoe boxes on the floor of the closet. “Remember the junkies who kill for one more fix, or the winos—”

“Yeah, but we’re not talking about drug dealers and bums here, Mike. This guy lives in Arlington Woods and drives a BMW. Two thousand bucks is peanuts to him.”

“Maybe. But something is wrong. Margaret is scared, and Don’s trying to put me on another track. Let’s just see what turns up.”

They found nothing else of interest in Eugene’s bedroom. Ruth’s smaller bedroom had another desk with all the recent bills and receipts, neatly bundled and labelled. Their bank balance was modest, but in the black.

Sullivan grunted. “Better than mine. Lizzie wants to take up downhill skiing with the school this winter, but you should see the price of the equipment. And that’s just one kid! Wait till my littlest starts wanting to be a goalie like his brother.”

“Cheer up, Brian. Look, I’ll be sixty-five by the time I pay off that little vinyl-sided cube I bought at the End of the Earth.” Green turned for one last glance around the room before closing the door. “Check out the kitchen while I do the basement.”

Downstairs he found a ceiling bulb controlled by a chain and turned it on to reveal a dank, cobwebby cellar. The corners were stacked with the relics of a lifetime—old bicycles, buggies, broken chairs, a sewing machine, boxes of old clothes. Green tried to dig through the clutter and immediately began to sneeze.

The hell with this, he thought to himself. No one’s been near this stuff in ten years. He was just about to leave when something caught his eye. He had moved some boxes and a card table aside, and in the process uncovered three cartons which looked less dusty than the rest. Pulling them out into the room, he opened them to reveal thirty-two quarts of cheap Scotch whiskey. Surprised, he called Sullivan down to photograph them.

“So this is where the old man kept his stash!” Brian observed. “Jesus, there must be almost five hundred bucks of whiskey in there.”

Green closed the boxes and stepped back, dusting off his gloves. “Let’s get Ident to fingerprint this stuff too. I’d like to know who brought it in here. It’s too heavy for Ruth, even if she did want to feed her husband’s habit. And I don’t think Walker could have carried it, either, in his poor health.”

The two men began back up the stairs. “Find anything in the kitchen?” Green asked.

“It was easy to search,” Sullivan replied. “Nice, neat lady. Not a packrat like her husband seems to be. I bet he wouldn’t let her throw out one damn thing in the basement there when they moved. Looks like they ate simply but managed okay. I didn’t find anything weird. Except this,” he remarked almost as an afterthought, picking up a small black box from the kitchen table. Inside were some rusty instruments and a bunch of oversized keys. “I found it at the back of the pantry. Looks like an old tool box that hasn’t been used in at least ten years. I found a newer tool box in the cupboard over the fridge with the usual screwdrivers and wrenches in it.”

Green examined the pantry from which the box had been removed. A rim of dust and grime marked the spot where the box had long sat undisturbed. It was virtually hidden behind household cleaning equipment, bottled drinks and cans—all dust free, fresh-looking, and neatly arranged by contents. By contrast, the rusty old tool box seemed out of place.

Green carried the box over to the window. On closer examination it looked more like a small metal storage box painted black with a hand-painted border of coloured flowers barely visible beneath the rust and the grime. It had a small lock like a jewelry box, but it was broken. Inside the box was an old rusted screwdriver with a badly worn wooden handle, a hammer of similar vintage, a hand gimlet and a pair of blackened pliers.

“Jeez, these tools look really ancient,” Green muttered, turning the hammer over in his hands. “I know the guy owned a hardware store, but was he into antiques?”

“They remind me of some old tools I found in the back of the barn once when I was a kid. My mother said they were used by the early farmers who settled the valley in the nineteenth century. Handmade by a blacksmith—that’s what gives them the primitive look.”

“Let’s take them back to town and see if we can get any information on them.” Green turned his attention back to the black box. He turned it over, scrutinizing the metal carefully. On the bottom, in the corner, he found what he was seeking—a name. Kressman, Ozorkow.

“Ozorkow. Sounds Polish,” he muttered. Then to his surprise, he felt the bottom shift and as he turned the box over, a false bottom came away in his hand. In the tiny space between the inner and outer plates, he found a small, tattered booklet. Inside, it was covered in cramped, foreign script. He flipped through it, then gasped.

“Fuck! This could be why Walker didn’t fit in with the Polish community. This is a goddamn German identity card!”

* * *

Back in the car, heading down the lane to the highway, Green sat in the passenger seat and pored over the document. The black metal box and the rolls of film sat on the seat behind them. The Ottawa Ident Unit had been called to come up to dust the house and check out the tracks in the snow.

“Jeez, this language has long words. My German’s not the greatest, but it’s a lot like Yiddish. I can’t understand everything, but enough to tell that these papers belong to a Wilhelm Ganz from Potsdam, and he’s some kind of rank in the Wehrmacht. Unterfeldwebel or something.”

“Walker a Kraut? Do you think Mrs. Walker would lie about something like that?”

“I wonder if she even knew. If he’d even tell her. After two world wars, the Brits hated the Germans’ guts.”

Sullivan whistled. “Boy, that would be some secret to keep from her.”

“Still think this is just an old stiff in a parking lot?”