Читать книгу Once Upon a Time - Barbara Fradkin - Страница 9

Three

November 7nd, 1939

Winter is young, just gathering strength.

It hurls through the flimsy walls

into the shed where we huddle at the end of the day.

Six strangers, made brothers by the whims of war.

We rouse the reluctant fire, and by its flame

I see my thoughts and fears in the strangers’ eyes.

We are not safe, even here.

Rumours fly eastward on the wind,

of hangings, houses burning and young men,

Poles and Jews alike, kidnapped off the streets,

to stoke the Aryan madness.

She droops against my chest, too weary for words.

Sickness hollows her cheeks and dulls the flame of her hair.

I am fine, she says, and the women laugh.

Laugh. While outside, the Nazi winter descends.

“Mike, it’s goddamn natural causes!” Brian Sullivan exclaimed the next morning. “I closed the case yesterday.”

“Did you or did you not get photos of the scene?”

“Ident did. Of course.”

“Then just give me a peek. I’m not questioning your judgment. I’m just playing inspector, okay? Reviewing the file. What’s the problem?”

“Your imagination,” Sullivan replied. “You’ve got that look in your eye.”

“It’s just a hunch, a piece missing in the puzzle. Humour me.”

Sullivan gave him a long, wary look, then booted up his computer, inserted a CD and pulled up the photo file. Green scanned the photos quickly. Some were closeups of the body, others of the larger area. One gave a clear overview of the death scene, showing the placement of the body and the surrounding cars. Green squinted intently.

Chad had been right. The car next to the Dodge was a dark sedan, at first glance probably something GM. The licence plate was visible but too small to read even with maximum enlargement.

Within seconds he had the Ident Unit on the line, and a few minutes later, he was examining a digital enhancement of the licence plate. Triumphantly he ran the number through the computer and jotted down a name and address.

“Green, you don’t think some guy knocked off the old man and then left his vehicle sitting there to show up in the police photos!”

Green cast Sullivan a look of exasperation as he pocketed his keys. “Lateral thinking skills, Sullivan. I’m looking for someone who might have witnessed something. This guy was parked beside Walker. Just a few quick questions, back before anyone even sees I’m gone,” he added, already halfway out the door.

The owner of the car lived in an opulent brick house on a quiet crescent close to but sheltered from the crush of the city. In the drive a royal blue Buick LeSabre sat sleekly without a speck of slush or salt on its sides. Green examined the side mirror curiously as he passed by. It was also immaculate. Forensics would be little help there, he thought with resignation, because the car had obviously been washed since the storm. But the mirror was rounder and thicker than the wound on Walker’s head, and more importantly, Walker’s wound was deeper at the hairline than down towards his brow. For a car mirror to have inflicted that shape of wound, Walker would have had to fall onto it from the sky.

That’s one for me, Green thought, as he rang the bell. Dr. Kopec had been on call the night before and was not pleased to be awakened, but the word “homicide” brought him clattering downstairs in his bathrobe. He consulted his appointment book to refresh his memory.

“Wednesday was the day of the storm. Yes, I remember, I arrived about noon. The parking lot was quite full, and I had to park near the end.”

“Do you recall the car on your left?”

Dr. Kopec frowned as he tried to mobilize his brain cells without the benefit of caffeine. Slowly, he shook his head. “Not specifically, no.”

“The body was found right beside your car. Between yours and the one on your left. When you pulled in, did you see the old man? Did you see anyone?”

Kopec was shaking his head. “I was late and in a hurry. The traffic on the Queensway had been terrible because of the storm. I just got out of the car and headed straight for the nearest entrance. But there was certainly no body.”

“Did you see anyone inside the car?”

Kopec sat at the kitchen table staring at the flowered table cloth and frowning as he focussed his thoughts inward. Then he raised his head slowly. “I do remember something. As I was getting out of the car, I heard voices. Male voices. I glanced at the car—just idly, you know—but I couldn’t see inside, because the windows were all frosted over. I didn’t give it a second thought.”

“Male voices. How many?”

“I couldn’t tell. Two, perhaps? It was just a low rumble, but it sounded like different people.”

“Could you make out any words?”

Slowly Kopec shook his head.

“What was the tone of the voices—happy, angry, conversational?”

“Something gave me the impression of anger. One voice rose for a moment. I heard several sharp words that sounded angry.”

“What did they say?” Kopec was shaking his head. “Think!”

“I don’t know. They may have been foreign.”

Foreign? Green thought blankly. Eugene Walker was a retired Englishman who rarely left the sanctuary of his country retreat. What the hell would he be doing with a foreigner?

* * *

I don’t care what MacPhail says, Green thought triumphantly as he left Kopec’s house and dashed through the frigid air back to his car. The old man was murdered. No matter that all they really had was a snatch of conversation which could have been the radio and a fresh head wound minor enough to be sustained in the fall. All his instincts cried foul. As a police officer, he’d seen hundreds of beatings, and this looked all the world like a lead pipe brought down on the old man’s head.

And he’d heard enough evasions and subterfuge in his career to suspect that Walker’s family was afraid of something.

He glanced at his watch. He’d told Sullivan he was only going for a quick jaunt, and he had to prepare for a meeting with the Crown attorneys in the afternoon. At this rate, he’d be lucky to get back to the station on time even without one more minor side trip. But he was already out in the west end, already halfway to the Reid house as it was. Half an hour more, that was all he needed.

* * *

“Murder!” Don Reid exclaimed. Green had summoned the family into the Reid living room and had plunged headlong into his theory, hoping to catch their first reactions. The son-in-law leaped to his feet, effectively placing himself between Green and the two women. This blocked Green’s view of the widow, but he was able to see the expression of panic which flitted across the daughter’s face before she brought it back under control.

“The idea hasn’t occurred to you?” Green continued blandly.

“Why should it?” Don blustered. “The old man had one foot in the grave! Even the coroner says so.”

“But someone might have helped him.”

“Why! What could anyone have to gain?”

“Precisely my question, Mr. Reid.”

A shocked silence descended on the family as Don Reid eyed Green, speechless. After a minute, he snorted in derision. “That’s ridiculous. Eugene was a recluse, he never saw anyone. He had no friends any more, and he wasn’t involved in any activities where he could have made enemies. Right, Ruth?”

Ruth Walker was staring at Green in dismay, and he felt a twinge of pity. He didn’t like putting her through this.

“What makes you think he was murdered?”

“I have to investigate all angles, Mrs. Walker.”

His evasion deepened her confusion. “Then you’re not saying he was or wasn’t?”

“I can’t.”

His bluntness brought colour to her cheeks, and when she saw he was still awaiting an answer, she cast about in bewilderment. “I really can’t think what anyone had to gain. Eugene saw no one but the family. He’s been retired fifteen years, and even before that he kept to himself.”

“Who knew you were going to the hospital that day?”

“No one, except Margaret and Don, of course. But no one would have known he was in the car. Unless…unless it was a stranger—I mean, a robbery, or…”

“It’s possible, but for the sake of my paperwork, I’d like to explore some background. First of all, what did your husband do before he retired?”

“We owned a hardware shop in Renfrew. It was a small family business, and it gave us a comfortable living, but nothing more. We sold it when Eugene got too…” She hesitated. “Too tired to handle it. We made enough money from the sale to buy a house in the country. He wasn’t especially fond of crowds.”

“Did he speak any foreign languages, or know someone who did?”

“Well, he was—” Don began, but Ruth held up her hand. Sharply, Green thought.

But her voice was sweet. “Why on earth do you ask that, Inspector?”

“Because he was overheard speaking to someone in the car before he died.”

Ruth grew very still. “Someone foreign?”

“Possibly.”

“I have no idea—” she faltered. “No one knew he was in town.”

“Ruth,” Don burst in, “you don’t know the half of what Eugene does. There are lots of Poles and Germans out in the Renfrew area where you live.”

“But they’re all third or fourth generation Canadians.”

“Some of the old-timers still speak their language. And what about that guy who—”

“There must be some mistake.” Ruth rose, brisk with purpose. “Goodness, look at the time! Howard and Rachel’s plane will be in soon.”

Green glanced at Don, who shrugged his apology. Don knows something, Green thought, but now is not the time to pursue it. “Who are Howard and Rachel?” he asked instead.

Ruth sat down with visible relief. “My son and his wife. They live in Montreal—Howard’s just finished his residency at the Montreal Neurological Institute—but he’s been in Toronto at a conference, and Margaret only managed to reach them today.”

Green looked at the daughter, who had been staring out the window as if in a trance. She jerked her head around at the mention of her name, and Green saw her flinch. Something is definitely off-kilter in this family, he thought.

“Just to help me get the whole picture,” he said affably, “I’d like some background on the family. Howard’s married—any children?”

Ruth answered for the lot of them. Howard and Rachel had no children yet, but Don and Margaret had been married twenty years and had two sons. Don was in business, although she was vague on the details.

Don was sitting in the corner, jiggling his legs restlessly. “I work for a management consulting firm,” he interjected brusquely. “Although I don’t see what relevance it has.”

“Probably none,” Green said cheerfully. “Just getting the whole picture. Margaret, do you work outside the home?”

Margaret’s eyes were fixed on her husband, and for a moment she merely nodded before finding her voice. “Part time. I’m a nurse at the Civic—casual relief. I’m trying to upgrade myself.”

“Try psychiatry. It’s a nice, cushy job.”

He had meant it as a joke; his four years with Sharon had taught him how mistaken that stereotype was. Psychiatric nursing was intense, emotionally draining work. But Margaret was clearly not up to jokes.

“I wouldn’t have the patience,” she replied. “Or the emotional stamina.”

Green studied her for moment. She was pale, and a shredded Kleenex was wrapped around her quivering fingers. He wondered whether it was simply grief, or something more. She seemed frightened, and Green sensed she was withholding something too. But with her husband and mother standing guard, it would be futile to press her. He jotted the thought down for future use and turned back to the widow.

“Did Mr. Walker have a will?”

He threw the question out quickly, hoping to catch someone off guard, but Ruth did not miss a beat. A woman used to surprises, he wondered? Or used to covering up?

“Yes, he did. It’s back at the country house. Once Howard arrives, we’ll drive out to get it. Not that there’s much in it. We have no real money. Just the house and ten thousand in investment certificates which I’d managed to put aside for…well, for our old age, in case we needed care.”

A clatter from the corner of the room startled them. Don had placed his drink on the table. The guy’s tight as a drum, Green thought, and jotted that thought down too for future use before retrieving his line of questioning.

“What about the sale of the hardware store? Didn’t that bring in some money?”

Ruth coloured slightly. “No, there were some debts. Those were hard economic times everywhere, and…”

Don roused himself from the corner. “And Eugene drank everything away, Ruth. Why don’t you simply say so!”

“Don, please. Under the circumstances…” Ruth tried to silence him again, but this time he shook his head.

“If the cop thinks it might be murder, then he should know what kind of a guy Eugene was. He was a drunk. You know it, I know it, and Howard knows it. Hell, even this cop knows it. He’s probably seen the autopsy report! The reason you’re stuck with no money now is because the bastard drank it all away.”

Margaret leaned forward and reached for the tea pot. “Inspector, some more tea?”

He looked at her in surprise. “No, thanks.”

Ruth had not taken her eyes off Don. “You children don’t know what he’s been through. He’s had a hard life.”

Don rolled his eyes. “Oh, here we go again. The old war trauma.”

“Yes! The war.”

“Ruth, the war’s been over for almost sixty years!”

“For the men who were in it, it is never over,” she retorted.

“My father fought in the war,” Don replied. “It didn’t turn him into a drunk.”

Unexpectedly, Margaret burst into tears. She slammed down the tea pot and whirled to her husband. “He’s dead! Can’t you let up on him just for once! He’s gone now!” With that she hurried out of the room.

* * *

Striding through the major crimes squad room, Green caught Sullivan’s eye and gestured to his office. Once inside, he dropped the bag he was carrying on the desk and extracted two juicy smoked meat sandwiches from Nate’s Delicatessen.

He handed one to his subordinate with a sheepish grin.

“Minor detour. Food to feed the brain cells.”

“I’d say they’re overfed already, at least the imagination part,” Sullivan replied, picking up the three-inch thick masterpiece. Chunks of succulent meat tumbled from his grasp. “Cough it up, Green. Let’s get this over with. The Crowns will be pacing.”

With quick, deft strokes, Green filled him in while they ate. “I tell you, there’s a lot more to the Walker family than meets the eye.”

Sullivan was sprawled in the chair opposite, his huge feet taking up most of the spare space on Green’s desk. “Not really anything that points to murder, though.”

“Oh, come on! We’ve got a long-suffering wife, a son-in-law who doesn’t buy the family’s pact of secrecy, a daughter caught in the middle and an old recluse slowly drinking his family’s savings away. A lot of strange, repressed passions in the air, Brian.”

Sullivan chewed awhile, then shrugged. “Just an ordinary day down on the farm, buddy.”

Green glanced up from picking stray bits of meat from the wrapper, surprised by Sullivan’s tone. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.” Sullivan shook his head as if to banish an irritation. “Nothing. Just thinking what the hell is normal anyway.”

Green snorted. “That’s fine, go philosophical on me. But something is fishy. Margaret’s scared, Don’s scared, and even the old lady’s hiding something. I intend to find out what.” He licked the last of the juice from his fingers, then rose and stuck his head out his door. To his relief he spotted the very person he needed. Constable Bob Gibbs had been with CID for over a year but still jumped like a startled rabbit whenever Green pounced on him, which he did with alarming regularity. No one was more obsessive and dogged with details than Bob Gibbs. The young man listened, jotted down the strange request without missing a stroke and disappeared behind his computer.

Sullivan eyed Green warily. “And while you have poor Gibbs running around after old war records, what else do you have up your sleeve?”

Green smiled. “You and I are going to Renfrew.”

“Now? Are you crazy? The Crowns are waiting.”

“After the Crowns. It’s the next logical step in the investigation.”

Sullivan picked up his sandwich wrapper, crunched it into a ball and lobbed it over the desk, hitting the basket dead centre. “Forget it, Mike. I’ve got some statements to review, then I’m going home. Home. Where all good family men should be around supper time.”

“How about tomorrow?”

Sullivan removed his feet from the desk and stood up to leave. “Tomorrow’s Saturday. My day off, remember? A day when all good family men…you know the drill.”

Green followed him out, trying to quell his frustration. Sullivan was right; the meeting with the Crown attorneys would take all afternoon, and it was too late to set up a trip to Renfrew that day anyway. As for tomorrow, Sullivan was also right. Green couldn’t run his life as if he were the only one in it. Walker’s case would still be around Monday.

But Fate would not let the case slip from his mind for that long. No sooner had he returned to his office later that afternoon when his phone buzzed. Mr. Donald Reid was downstairs in the foyer, requesting to see him, the desk sergeant said.

Surprise, surprise.

Green ushered Don Reid into an empty interview room and took out his notebook expectantly. Don had clearly not relaxed one iota since Green’s visit out to the house. He drummed his fingers on his thigh and shifted from one side of his chair to the other as he looked for a place to begin.

“You have some information for me?” Green prompted.

“Yeah. Look, I’m not trying to badmouth Eugene, but if you’re thinking he may have been murdered—well, there’s a lot Ruth will never tell you. She’s so protective, and she can never see the other side of him.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, he’s a complex guy, and there are things that went on that Ruth didn’t know anything about. I think he could have known people and done things that he kept secret.”

“Like what?” Green demanded, getting tired of the vagueness.

“Like talking with someone in his car the day he died. Ruth thinks he doesn’t know anybody foreign, but the truth is— before they moved to the country, every Saturday he’d go drinking at this bar in Renfrew. He had a whole life there that he never told Ruth about, and he must have met guys there. Twenty years ago, just as an example, he got in a fight. The police were involved. You guys probably have it on your computer, if you want to check.”

Green’s ears perked up, but he kept his expression deadpan. Contrary to common belief, the police didn’t have Joe Public’s every little transgression on their national database, and each jurisdiction guarded its own cases jealously. “Why don’t you tell me about it? Save me the trouble of tracking it down.”

Don waved his hand as if to distance himself. “Eugene beat somebody up. Bar fight. I don’t know that much about it. Eugene never talked about it, and he never said why it happened.”

“Did he get in a lot of bar fights?”

“No, that’s the thing. When he drank he usually got morose and surly. He’d say bitter, vicious things, but I never knew him to use his fists.” Don’s words began to flow faster, as if his pent-up thoughts had just been released. “It was a surprise to me when Ruth called and said he’d been arrested for beating up a man in a bar.”

“So tell me what you did learn.”

“Well, in those days he was a weekend drunk. The hardware store would close at six o’clock on Saturday, and Eugene would head for Paddy’s Bar and Grill on Raglan Street for a couple to unwind. That couple would stretch to seven or eight, and he’d usually roll into the house at two in the morning when the bar closed. He’d spend Sunday nursing a hangover with more booze and Monday sleeping it off.”

“Did he hang out with a particular group at Paddy’s place?”

Don shrugged. “Eugene wasn’t a party animal, but Renfrew’s a small town, and it was probably the same crowd of serious drinkers who closed the place each Saturday. They drank, watched the hockey game, argued about sports.” He made no attempt to keep the contempt out of his voice. “The night of the fight, one of the local farmers brought along his cousin from out of town—Hamilton, I think—who was visiting the family. This cousin and Eugene exchanged words —no one knows what it was about—and suddenly Eugene jumped him. He threw him against the bar and started beating the shit out of him. The others broke it up as fast as they could, but it put the guy in the hospital. Eugene was charged, but I don’t know what happened to the case. He probably got off.” Don shook his head, and his lips curled in a curious sneer.

“You didn’t like your father-in-law, did you?”

Don shifted in his chair edgily. “Does that make me a suspect?”

“No more than anyone else at this point,” Green said amiably.

“Eugene was a cold, self-absorbed bastard. My wife suffered a lot because of him, and I get sick of the whole family making excuses for him.”

“What was he like as a father?”

“Unpredictable. That was the worst of it, really. If he had always acted like a cold, disinterested bastard, his kids might have been able to write him off and get on with their lives. But he’d dole out these tiny morsels of love at unexpected times, and it kept them coming back for more.”

“That’s a classic abuser’s technique. Keep ’em guessing, keep ’em hoping, but afraid. It’s a powerful way to control people.”

Don nodded his head slowly up and down, and his edginess dissipated. “Yeah, that was Eugene. And it left its mark on Margie. She’s so goddamn unsure of herself. The least hint of trouble, she crumbles. I don’t have the patience for all this love and understanding shit, Inspector. I mean—not that I don’t believe in love, but I figure you’ve got to take what life gives you and get on with it. None of this I-can’t-be-a-decent-human-being-because-of-what-I-went-through-in-the-war crap. I mean, if we had that attitude, we’d let all the crooks out on the streets and you’d be out of a job, right?” He grinned, but when Green did not join him, he sat forward as if preparing to leave.

“Did Howard have the same insecurities as his sister?”

Don sat back in the seat again. “Howard was trying to write him off and get on with his life. But Eugene still played him like a trout on the line. Even three hundred kilometres away, the hook is well set. The poor kid is going to kill himself trying to be everything his father was not.”

* * *

After Reid left, Green ran Eugene Walker’s name through the police computer, hoping at least to find out the outcome of the assault charge. But as he feared, there was nothing. The Canadian Police Information Centre coughed up no record of the case at all, merely one conviction of impaired driving five years earlier, which had resulted in suspension of his licence. Whatever had transpired between Walker and the visitor from Hamilton, only the Renfrew police files would tell. If they even still existed.

It was Friday night, and November darkness had long since set in. Green locked up and hastened out to begin the homeward trek before he was hopelessly late for Shabbat dinner. The trek to Barrhaven took an incredibly long time, he’d discovered in the two months they’d lived there. He called the suburb the End of the Earth and had only moved there as a concession to Sharon, who wanted clean air, safe streets and a house that wasn’t falling apart. They’d acquired that, plus a fifty-minute commute across the cornfields of the Greenbelt, then along the congested Queensway that traversed the city.

He hated it. Hated sitting in his car crawling from red light to red light. Hated living in a plastic cookie-cutter house on a postage-stamp sized lot with a few twigs for trees and endless acres of baby carriages as far as the eye could see. He was an inner city boy raised in the crumbling brick tenements of Lowertown. The rooftops had been his playground and the narrow alleys perfect for a pick-up game of hockey. Pick-up hockey was against the law on the back crescents of Barrhaven.

His suburban neighbours were all ten years younger than him, fresh-faced high techies or junior company managers with their foot on the bottom rung of the ladder and their eyes on the top. Unlike him, they didn’t have ex-wives and hefty support payments for a teenager who’d been forced into every West Coast therapy her desperate mother could find. All for being the same type of ornery, restless teenager he’d been, Green suspected. No doubt his ex-wife was trying to eradicate even the remotest gene that tied the girl to him.

That night it was brittly cold and the road was a icy sheet as he nudged his car into the traffic jam on the Queensway. Red tail lights danced in the swirls of exhaust that stretched ahead forever. With a sigh he slipped in a Tragically Hip CD and let his mind roam. Usually the Hip put his mind in a mellow, meandering mood. But not tonight. Tonight his mind was like a hound on the scent.

It headed straight back to the case. What had really happened in that bar twenty years earlier? What foreigner had Walker talked to on the afternoon of his death? And were the two events linked? So many questions, and no one interested in the answers but Green.

Saturday was his day off as well as Sullivan’s. Tony’s first birthday was coming up later in the week, and Green had been planning to spend the weekend getting ready for the big celebration, to which Sharon seemed to be inviting half the neighbourhood. The house sported a few pieces of furniture from their old one-bedroom apartment, but it was entirely without decor. Sharon had a long list of chores for him to perform, which included painting and picture hanging to be completed in time for the birthday party. He knew she was right, and he owed her that much, despite his aversion to the Dreaded Vinyl Cube. But given his facility and enthusiasm for household chores, he suspected Tony would be married and moved out before he made it to the bottom of the list.

Given a choice between painting walls or chasing murder, if it were up to Green, there would be no contest. Renfrew beckoned. And the lure of a puzzle waiting to be solved.