Читать книгу Charlie McKelvey Mysteries 3-Book Bundle - C.B. Forrest - Страница 13

Midweek traffic was light on the four-lane Trans-Canada highway from Halifax across central Nova Scotia to the north shore, and Kate McGrath made excellent time. She guided the unmarked Malibu with a calm, deft hand, and pointed out the scenery as she drove. Green was surprised, and a little embarrassed, to learn that Nova Scotia had been homesteaded since the 1630s and had already fought several wars with the French and the Americans when his own Ottawa Valley had been nothing but a wilderness of lumberjacks and fur traders.

“Some pockets were first farmed by the French in the 1600s,” she said, waving at the rolling hills dotted with pastures and forest. “And when the British conquered the land, the local French settlers who wouldn’t swear allegiance to the King were booted out. Then masses of New England loyalists moved onto the land they left behind. There are still Acadian enclaves interspersed with the Scots. The roots of family go very deep around here.”

He heard the pride in her tone. “Did you grow up around here? I thought you were a Newfoundlander.”

“I am. But I started my police career up here in Truro.”

“What made you move to Halifax?”

She hesitated, and a faint frown narrowed her eyes. “I wanted a change of scene. And I also wanted a city big enough for good policing opportunities. I’d gone to Dalhousie University for my degree and fell in love with the city.” She paused to peer at a highway sign, then slowed to turn right onto a smaller highway.

“Loch Katrine, Caledonia Mills,” he chuckled, reading the sign. “Right out of Scotland.”

She nodded. “Antigonish County was largely settled by Highland Scots, and about every second family is a MacDonald.”

Off the main highway, the road dipped through lush, hilly countryside covered with trees just beginning to bud. Rivers and lakes glinted through the lacy branches, and brightly painted farms clustered in the valleys. Sharon would have loved it, and Green felt a twinge of homesickness at the thought of her delight. She had always wanted to see the east coast, and he had left her green with envy yesterday morning with no more than a brief kiss and a promise to be back in two days. I probably won’t even get out of the police station, he’d told her, let alone get a chance to see a beach or a fishing village. Maybe this summer, they would make the effort to coordinate their work schedules enough to take a real road trip out here.

McGrath slowed again as a narrow gravel road appeared on their right. A small sign pointed to Hoppenderry. “It should be up here somewhere,” she said. They followed the twisty road for a few more kilometres, past sparse farms and rolling pastures. McGrath craned her neck and squinted against the midday sun as they approached a small lane. Almost hidden by brush was a carved wooden sign “Derry Brook Sheep Farm, lambs and fine wool”.

“Here it is!” she exclaimed, turning in the lane. As they bumped down the rutted drive, a meadow opened up on their left, a startling green against the greys and browns of spring. The meadow was dotted with sheep who barely gave them a second glance, but a black and white border collie sitting by the wood rail fence watched them with a baleful stare. Up ahead a collection of buildings greeted them, including three barns painted red and a yellow woodframe house with a steeply sloped roof and a sunporch stretching the width of its facade.

The farm had clearly seen better days. The paint was faded and peeling, and the front yard was little more than a swamp of mud and straw. In front of the house sat a rusty blue pickup and a tractor with chunks of mud stuck to their tires. A pair of red dogs clambered off the porch and hobbled towards the car, barking. Otherwise nothing stirred. The curtains were drawn on the windows, and the barn doors were shut tight.

“I told you his parents weren’t very enthusiastic when I phoned to say we were coming,” McGrath said.

Green eyed the dogs dubiously. Despite their greying muzzles, they were still a handsome pair, with glistening copper coats and white paws. They paced in half-hearted circles around the car, with their teeth bared. “Well,” he ventured, “we didn’t drive all the way up here just to—”

The front door flung back and a tall, gaunt man filled the doorway, arms crossed, glaring at them. Behind him, a woman peeked around his shoulder. Neither made any move to call off the dogs.

“We could always split the dogs up,” McGrath said. “You head for the shed, I’ll go for the house. They look so old, we could probably outrun them.”

At that moment, the woman ducked under the man’s elbow with a sharp shake of her head. When she whistled for the dogs, they stopped barking immediately and stood by the car, tails wagging and amber eyes alert. Green smiled. Whoever said men were the masters of their own domain? Dogs knew better.

Green sized up the stubborn couple in the doorway. “If it comes to it, I’ll take the mother. I think the father might respond better to a fellow Maritimer.”

His instincts proved accurate once he and McGrath had introduced themselves. The MacDonalds may not have been happy to see them, but Mrs. MacDonald at least welcomed them into the living room and insisted on brewing a fresh pot of tea, which she served with a warm apple cake she had clearly baked for the occasion. The delicious scent of cinnamon and yeast blended with the underlay of manure and damp wool that permeated everything.

Mr. MacDonald folded himself into an aging wing chair in the corner by the door, as if for a fast exit, and fixed them both with a chilly stare. Blue overalls with frayed cuffs hung on his bony frame, and a pair of oversized sheepskin slippers swallowed his feet. His wife flitted in and out of the kitchen as if she hoped to distract them from the purpose of their call.

“Mr. and Mrs. MacDonald,” McGrath began once the woman had finally subsided on the sofa. “Thank you for seeing us. I’m sure it’s not easy to talk about your son—”

Mr. MacDonald snorted. “I don’t see why you’ve got to be bringing it all up again. It’s over, more than ten years past now, and we answered all your questions about the accident back then. It’s all in your files, if you’d bother to read them.”

“Well, it’s actually about Daniel Oliver’s death—”

“And we’ve been through all that too. We don’t know anything about his murder, it had nothing to do with Ian. Ian and Danny hardly even saw each other any more.”

Mrs. MacDonald looked up from pouring tea. “Ian was back here on the farm working with his dad, and Danny was in Halifax.”

“I know,” McGrath said. “We’re just looking to clarify a few details.”

“Why?” the father said.

“There have been some new developments,” Green interjected quietly. McGrath had been following the classic police interview strategy of stonewalling, but after a brief deliberation, he decided that full disclosure might work best. That, and a touch of surprise. “Daniel Oliver’s former girlfriend was murdered last week in Ottawa, and when she died, she had your son’s army medal in her possession.”

Both parents gaped. The father uttered a small grunt, as if he’d been punched in the stomach. He swallowed convulsively before words would come. “Why would she have Ian’s medal?”

“That’s what I’m hoping you can tell us,” Green said.

Mrs. MacDonald flushed in confusion and busied herself cutting the cake into perfect squares. “I can’t imagine. We...” Tears unexpectedly robbed her of speech.

Her husband shot Green a scowl. “We wondered where it got to. Danny must have taken it.”

“When?”

“When he was here for the funeral, I suppose.”

“Why?”

MacDonald raised his bony shoulders in an impatient shrug. “How should I know? Jealous, maybe?”

“Oh, but dear,” interjected Mrs. MacDonald, recovering her voice, “I told you that doesn’t make any sense! Danny was very proud of him.”

“Doesn’t stop a man,” her husband muttered. “He probably wasn’t thinking straight. Got extremely drunk that day.”

“What did your son get his medal for, Mr. MacDonald?”

MacDonald squared his shoulders and met Green’s gaze with steely pride. “Risking his life for strangers half a world away who didn’t even appreciate what our lads were sacrificing for them,from the sounds of it. The town they were protecting was under fire, and Ian rescued a lot of local villagers. His company commander put him forward for the medal.”

Mrs. MacDonald’s eyes were brimming again. “On Danny’s recommendation, don’t forget. He was Ian’s section leader.”

Mr. MacDonald nodded grudgingly. “They were inseparable once.”

Green leaned forward, his tone soft. “What happened?”

“What do you mean, what happened? I just told you!”

“I mean when Ian came home. I understand he had some trouble readjusting to civilian life.”

“Who told you that?”

Green took a careful sip of tea. “He changed his plans about vet school and returned to the farm.”

“And what’s wrong with that? The lad hadn’t been more than a hundred miles from his home his whole life. The apples and hay were just coming in, and there was a lot needed doing on the farm. I think he was grateful for the peace and quiet after Europe.”

Mrs. MacDonald bent over her tea pot, her lips pursed, but Green thought he saw a tiny spasm of pain flicker across her face. He hated to add to it.

“I know this is difficult for you, but I understand he was shot in a hunting accident. Was he alone?”

Mr. MacDonald surged to his feet, bristling. “I don’t want you putting my wife through this! What do the damn details matter? He was duck hunting down by the creek, just like he loved to do, and the gun misfired. Danny wasn’t with him, if that’s what you’re getting at. Danny hadn’t been near the place in over a year, and if that was eating him up, it damn well should have!” He was hunched in the doorway.

His wife looked up at him, her cheeks flaming. “Angus, the detectives are just doing their job.”

“And it shouldn’t involve stirring up Ian’s death, which was a pointless accident. The boy runs through bullets to rescue a bunch of bloody foreigners, and he ends up getting shot with his own rifle in his own backyard!”

Unexpectedly, Kate McGrath stood up and reached out a soothing hand. “Mr. MacDonald, I’m sorry to put you both through this again. To spare your wife, perhaps you and I can go outside, and you can show me where it happened.”

MacDonald hesitated, scowling dubiously at Green from under a bristly black eyebrow. “I don’t see any reason for him to be staying in here—”

“He can keep me company while you’re out,” his wife interjected, collecting her husband’s tea. The cup was untouched, and a faint tremor in her hands sloshed tea into the saucer. “Since Ian’s death, it’s been hard for me...to be alone.”

MacDonald took some convincing, but finally he snatched a sheepskin jacket off its peg, shoved his feet into massive work boots and jerked his head to summon McGrath outside. In the living room, Mrs. MacDonald sank back onto the sofa as if relieved to be rid of him and reached for the teapot.

“More tea, Inspector?”

He rose to take the chair closer to her and held out his cup. “Thank you, it’s delicious.”

She fussed over the cup and added a square of cake to the saucer. A frown pinched her brow, and her eyes avoided his. Green waited, sensing she was building up to something.

“That’s a terrible thing about the Ross girl,” she said finally. “I remember her. She came to Ian’s funeral with Danny, was a big help to him. Poor lad.”

“I gather the boys had a pretty rough time in Yugoslavia.”

“More than many of them bargained for, that’s sure.”

“Did Ian talk about those times? About what went on, or about the soldiers he was with?”

“We got letters from many of them when he died. They were so proud of him.” A tremulous smile played across her lips. She thrust aside her tea and struggled to her feet. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

He followed her through a low doorway and up a steep, narrow, wooden staircase to the upstairs hall. The ancient floorboards creaked as she led the way down a dim hall to a door at the end. When she opened it, light flooded a room barely larger than a closet. Dust motes danced in the shaft of sunlight from a gabled window overlooking the pasture. It was clearly a young man’s room, with a single bed neatly made under the window and an array of homemade shelves along the opposite wall, on which were orderly stacks of clothes,books, CD s and computer equipment. On a dresser by the bed sat a large studio portrait of a young man in a dress suit. He had his father’s blue eyes, poorly tamed brown hair, and a lean hatchet face that he had yet to grow into.

“That’s his high school prom, the first real photo we ever had taken of him. We never dreamed it would be the last.” Her eyes welled. She tugged open a dresser drawer and bent over it. Inside, he could see piles of cards bound together with elastics.

“We didn’t want too many people at the funeral,” she said. “Some of his reservists came, but we got cards from all across the country from men in his peacekeeping battalion.”

His interest piqued, Green came to look over her shoulder.“What did they write?”

“Mostly about his bravery. Some about his way with the local people, and about how he would always lend a helping hand or a listening ear. Also his gentleness with the animals. Ian always had a way with animals. Those two duck tollers outside, Rob and Roy, he got them as pups when he came back from Yugoslavia, and he trained them completely on his own. Hours, he’d spend with them out in the field. They’re old now, but they still miss him.”

She picked up one of the letters, opened it, and slid out a simple sympathy card with a long note scrawled on the inside page. “From his first section commander over there, Sergeant Sawranchuk. Ian was as steady and courageous a soldier as anycommander could hope for,” she read, “and he was the glue of thesection. He took on all tasks, small or large, and endured the manyhardships and personal discomforts without a word of complaint.He preferred talk to fighting, but he was as good with his weaponas any man, and in a crisis he could always be relied on to be in thethick of things. He believed in our mission, and he hoped we weremaking a difference in the lives of the people over there. He willreally be missed.”

She slid the card back into the envelope and replaced it carefully into the drawer. “The sergeant was sent back home on medical leave before Ian got his medal, but at least he was kind enough to write. Oh, here’s a picture of them all — his friends and the men he worked with.”

She drew out a photo of a group of soldiers posing around a large armoured vehicle.They were grinning and hamming it up.Green took the photo for a closer look. The sun was bright and the shadows sharp, making it difficult to distinguish facial features, but a lab technician could probably make them recognizable.

“Do you know who they are?” he asked.

“Other than Ian and Danny, no. There’s Ian...” She pointed to a young man in the middle with his arms slung around two others. “Always surrounded by friends. He touched so many people.”

“May I borrow this? I’ll reproduce it and send it back, I promise.”

“Oh...it’s just sitting in a drawer now. Those days changed him so much—they aren’t how I want to remember him.” She stared out the window for a moment with sadness in her eyes, before she seemed to pull herself back from the brink of memory. Delving deeper into the pile, she pulled out a small, austere card without the purple roses and embossed script that adorned most of the others.

“Even months later we still got cards. This was from his platoon commander Richard Hamm, promoted to major by then and stationed out in Edmonton, so it took him a while to get the news, I suppose.” Her hands trembled slightly as she opened the card and held it out to Green. “He’s not much for words, but what he said about our Ian...it says a lot.”

Green glanced at the card, which contained two lines of terse prose in a brusque, heavy hand. Dear Mr. and Mrs. MacDonald, my condolences on your loss. Ian was a tireless and committed soldier whose bravery saved many lives.

“Tireless, committed, that was our Ian. If he believed in something, he’d give it his heart and soul.” Her chin quivered, and she dropped her gaze. “Nice of the major, don’t you think?”

Green studied the card with a nagging unease. He’d heard many expressions of condolence in his time. Perhaps it was his imagination, but he sensed the major’s choice of words was important not for what they said, but what they didn’t say. No mention of a pleasure to have under my command, or an example to his fellow soldiers. These words were carefully chosen to comfort the bereaved without eulogizing the dead man. There was no warmth in the sentiment expressed; on the contrary, Green sensed a chill in his words. Yet Ian was a soldier who’d received a rare medal of bravery under the man’s command.

“Was this the man who recommended Ian for his medal?”

Her gaze flickered for only an instant before she shook her head. “That was Danny. It was when the company moved down to Sector South in Croatia, and conditions were much more dangerous for them. There wasn’t much peace to be kept, truth be told, and Danny had to take over command of the section. That’s normally a sergeant’s job, and Danny was only a corporal then, but I guess something happened to Sergeant Sawranchuk–” She leaned towards him, her eyes glittering. “Exhaustion was the official word, but that covers a multitude of sins, doesn’t it?”

“I’ve certainly heard that the missions were very hard on a lot of men.” Green steered her gently back. “So it was Daniel Oliver, not an officer, who recommended him?”

“Put his name forward, yes. Oh, don’t get me wrong. They all supported it. His battalion commander, company commander, and this Major Hamm. Captain Hamm back then and probably General by now. He was that kind of soldier.”

“What did Ian say about him?”

“That he was a bit of a slave driver. But then they have to be, don’t they? They had their orders too. Still, with our Ian, that wasn’t the way to handle him. Tell him why he should do something, point out the good in it, trust him to give it his all, and he will. Always been like that, which was something his dad had trouble seeing. This sergeant who went on medical leave, he was much more Ian’s type of leader. I think it was hard on all the boys when he left. But Danny stepped in and did the best he could.”

Green nodded slowly. “They were all just boys, weren’t they? Thousands of miles from home.”

He heard her suck in her breath and expel it in a long,sigh. “And it wasn’t like in a war, where the soldiers all come back home as heroes who’d defended their country. No one knew what our lads had been through or what they’d seen. Why they couldn’t stand the smell of a barbeque or a trip to the dump. Why they couldn’t sleep at night or take a walk through the orchard without their gun.” She gripped the card and struggled to get it back into the envelope before abandoning the effort. “That damn gun... I was his mother. I should have known.”

He felt sorry for her, hovering over the abyss of her loss. He hated to tip the balance, but sensed if ever there was a time for truth, this was it. “Should have known what, Mrs. MacDonald?”

She shook her head. “He didn’t take the dogs that day. The only time he left them behind.”

He waited. In the silence, the distant bark of a dog penetrated the windowpane. She took a deep, shuddering breath. “His father calls it a hunting accident. He has to. To Angus, our boy is a decorated soldier and a tribute to his country. To face the truth is to dishonour his memory. Our boy was a hero. Nothing takes that away.”

Still he waited. Barely breathing.

“But he was also afraid, and tormented and confused. In the end, he took his damn hunting rifle, left his dogs behind because he didn’t want them to see, and he went down to the river marsh at the bottom of the farm. Where he propped his rifle against a tree and shot himself.”