Читать книгу Depth of Field - Michael Blair - Страница 8

I drove home, undressed, and got into bed. I was exhausted, but I couldn’t sleep. My eyes kept sliding open and it was too great an effort to keep them closed. I got out of bed, went downstairs, and out of desperation made a cup of camomile tea from the box Reeny had left behind. After the first sip, I poured the vile stuff down the drain. I trudged upstairs and climbed back into bed, to lie staring into the dark for another hour, unable to erase the image of Bobbi, battered and bruised, surrounded by muttering machines, with tubes down her throat, needles inserted into her veins, and electrodes glued to her head and chest. I didn’t know what frightened me more: that she might die, that she might never wake up, or that when she did wake up she wouldn’t be Bobbi anymore.

I finally gave up trying to sleep, got out of bed, showered, dressed, and at ten past six was standing on the quay by the main entrance to Broker’s Bay Marina. The sun was rising over the coastal mountains. The fog of the previous day had moved out and the cool morning air was so clean and clear it had an almost surreal quality, like cut crystal. Gulls wheeled and shrieked, squabbling over the carcass of a big fish in the water by Fisherman’s Wharf. Above and behind me, thirty metres over Anderson Street and the entrance to Granville Island, morning traffic hummed and rumbled on the Granville Street Bridge, the deeper notes resonating in my chest cavity.

It hadn’t been difficult to locate the Wonderlust. She was a fifty-foot-plus motor yacht, easily the largest pleasure boat in the marina, occupying the full length of the T at the end of the fourth and longest of the marina’s eight floating docks, almost directly opposite Fisherman’s Wharf. Although she was a bit dowdy and her chrome was dull and her hull grungy from neglect, she was a sturdy, well-equipped boat that would sleep eight without crowding. Although I was no expert, I guessed she would easily fetch a quarter of a million or more if she was cleaned up. It struck me as odd that Ms. Waverley had wanted photographs of the boat before she was shipshape. A few dollars invested in sprucing her up would have added considerably to the price.

The marina entrance was gated, but the gate was propped open, despite the sign that read “Do Not Prop Door” in large white lettering. I walked down the ramp and out to the end of the floating dock to where the Wonderlust was moored. I climbed the short, portable gangway onto the afterdeck, and knocked on the hatch to the main cabin. A few seconds later, I knocked again, harder. Then harder still. The hatch rattled in the frame. If Ms. Waverley was aboard, she was a very sound sleeper indeed. I tried the handle; the hatch was locked.

From the afterdeck of the Wonderlust, through a thick forest of masts and spars and booms, I could see the area under the Kitsilano end of the Burrard Street Bridge where Greg Matthias had told me Bobbi had been pulled from the water. The shoreline of Broker’s Bay, from the western tip of Granville Island — technically not an island at all, but a mushroom-shaped peninsula joined to the Kitsilano mainland by a thick stem of land — around to the little park known as Cultural Harmony Grove just east of the Burrard Street Bridge, looked like one continuous marina. It was really three marinas: the Broker’s Bay Marina, the False Creek Harbour Authority, and the Burrard Bridge Civic Marina. The latter extended a hundred metres beyond the bridge and had moorings directly beneath the span. I didn’t know precisely where Bobbi had been found by the off-duty paramedic in his kayak, but I guessed it must have been somewhere near the docks under the bridge.

I returned to the quay.

Bobbi was supposed to have met Ms. Waverley on the Wonderlust at eight. Matthias had said she’d been found just past eleven. Where had she been between eight and eleven o’clock? What had she been doing under the bridge? Had she been fleeing from her attacker or attackers? Or had she been attacked somewhere else and dumped into False Creek under the bridge? At some point while I had lain abed and sleepless after returning from the hospital, it had occurred to me that I hadn’t asked Matthias if the police had found the van. Had someone assaulted and dumped Bobbi in order to steal the van and the photo equipment? That didn’t explain how Bobbi had ended up in the water under the bridge. She’d have parked the van in the nearby lot between the boat works and Bridges restaurant and pub. It wasn’t there; I’d looked.

I was still standing on the quay at a few minutes to seven, wondering if I really wanted to walk around the bay to where Bobbi had been found, when a man in a red squall jacket and a Seattle Mariners baseball cap arrived to open the marina office. He wasn’t alone. With him were two uniformed cops. The cops worked out of the Granville Island Community Police Office and I knew them both. Constable Mabel Firth was a friend, a strapping dirty blonde in her forties whose husband Bill also worked for the city. Mabel’s partner, a former professional football player named Baz Tucker, was younger and bigger and blonder. Neither appeared pleased to see me.

“What’re you doing here, Tom?” Mabel asked. Before I could reply, she said, “Go home. Let us do our job.”

“I won’t get in the way,” I said.

“Since when?” she said.

“I just want to talk to Anna Waverley, the woman who owns that boat.” I pointed toward the Wonderlust. “Bobbi was supposed to meet her last night, to take some photographs of the boat. Maybe she saw who attacked her.”

“Have you spoken to her?”

“No. She’s not aboard.”

“Leave it to the RAS investigators, Tom. They’ll be here in a minute. Go on home now,” she said sternly, as if speaking to her ten-year-old. When it was obvious I wasn’t going to leave, she said, “I understand how you feel, Tom. Bobbi’s my friend, too. Look at it from our point of view. You could be a suspect yourself. I know,” she added quickly, holding up her hand to cut off my response, “it’s ridiculous, but tell that to the suits. As far as they know, you and Bobbi could’ve had a falling-out over business. It happens all the time. Or maybe you were more than just business partners and had a lover’s quarrel. See how it can get complicated?”

“Heads up,” Baz Tucker said quietly as two men came along the quay, dressed almost identically in suits so plain they were like uniforms.

“Which one of you is Firth?” the older of the two men asked. He was in his mid-fifties, with watery blue eyes and a pale, acne-scarred complexion. His partner was in his thirties, with a smooth, olive complexion, and full, almost voluptuous lips that I imagined many women would envy. There was nothing even remotely feminine about his piercing, dark eyes.

“I am,” Mabel said.

“I’m Kovacs. He’s Henshaw. Who’s this guy?”

“Tom McCall,” Mabel said. “The victim’s partner.”

“As in husband? Boyfriend?”

“Her business partner.”

“Okay,” Kovacs said. “But he still shouldn’t be here.”

“I told him that.”

He turned to me. “We’ll come find you when we need to talk with you.”

“I’ll save you the trouble,” I said.

He turned his head slightly, squinted one pale blue eye and peered at me with the other. “Are we gonna have a problem with you?”

“A problem? With me? Heck, no.” Mabel looked as though she wished she were home in bed.

He scowled and shrugged and said to Mabel and Tucker, “We can take it from here.” He and his partner went into the marina office.

Mabel turned to me. “Go home.”

“I’ll just hang around out here till they’re finished talking to the marina operator.”

She heaved a sigh of resignation, then she and Baz left. A few minutes later, the detectives came out of the marina office.

“You still here?” Kovacs said.

“So it would appear,” I replied, which earned me another scowl.

“Tell me about the woman who hired you to take pictures of her boat. What’d she look like?” I assumed Greg Matthias had passed on the information I’d given him.

“She had medium-length blonde hair,” I said, “but her eyebrows were dark, almost black. She had an oval face with big green eyes and even features. Good teeth, except for a slightly crooked left upper incisor. She wore a little too much makeup perhaps, but she was quite attractive. In her early thirties. Say five-six in her bare feet. Well built, but Bobbi didn’t think it was all natural. She may have been joking, though.”

“That’s a very detailed description,” he said. “Mostly we get crap. You got a good eye. I suppose that comes with being a photographer.”

“I suppose so,” I said.

He consulted his notebook. “And she told you her name was Anna Waverley and that she got the boat as part of her divorce settlement.”

“That’s what she told me.”

“Who’s Bobby?”

“My partner, the victim. Bobbi — with an ‘i’ — Brooks.”

“Right. Bobbi. Short for Roberta. Does she usually work alone?”

“Not always, but we both do from time to time, especially when we’re busy. Depends on the job. I would have taken this one, but something came up with another client.”

“Did Anna Waverley give you a billing address?”

“No. She paid cash. Something to do with her divorce. She told me she lived in Point Grey, or rather that she got the house in Point Grey in her divorce settlement, but I assumed she was staying on the boat. She isn’t aboard now, though. She told me she had a possible buyer who was leaving for Hawaii today, which is why she needed the photographs last night.”

“All right, thanks.”

He nodded to his partner, then they both walked down the ramp onto the floating docks. I guessed the younger detective hadn’t lived in Vancouver long, or else he hadn’t spent much time on the water; he walked with the exaggerated care of a drunk as the linked sections of the floating docks rolled beneath his feet. As they climbed aboard the Wonderlust, I went into the marina office. The man with the Seattle Mariners baseball cap was behind the counter.

“I know you,” he said. “You live in Sea Village, right? It was your house that almost sank a few years back, wasn’t it?”

“It was,” I confirmed.

“Bernie Simpson, the salvage guy who patched her up, he’s my uncle.”

Living on Granville Island was like living in a small town or a large goldfish bowl. Everybody knew everybody else’s business. The residents of Sea Village were the only permanent residents, except for a few who lived (semi-illegally) on boats in the marinas. We tended to stand out and were frequently the subject of local gossip, not all of which was undeserved. A few years before, a small deadhead — not a Grateful Dead fan, but a water-saturated log that floats below the surface, usually more or less vertically — had drifted under my house. When the tide had gone out, the log had cracked the ferroconcrete hull and my house had begun to sink. The barman at Bridges had probably known about it before I had.

“Name’s Witt DeWalt,” the Mariners fan said, sticking out his hand. “What can I do for you?”

I introduced myself and said, “Did the police tell you that a woman was assaulted near here last night?”

“Yeah. They did.” He shook his head slowly. “Terrible.”

“The woman who was assaulted is one of my closest friends and my business partner. We’re commercial photographers. We were hired to take photos of Ms. Waverley’s boat. Bobbi, my partner, she was supposed to meet Ms. Waverley here at eight last night. You didn’t happen to see anything, did you?”

“Sorry. I got off at six. But you sure you got the right boat? The police asked about the Wonderlust.”

“That’s right.”

“Well, like I told them, there must be some kind of mistake, then. The Waverleys don’t own that boat. It’s owned by some company that’s just a number. They’ve been trying to sell it for months, except they haven’t been taking care of it. The Waverleys have a sailboat.” He waved in the general direction of the docks. “Thirty-eight-foot Sabre called Free Spirit. They don’t use it much, either, but take better care of it.”

“Anna Waverley,” I said. “Is she blonde, about thirty, with green eyes and, um, a full figure?”

Witt DeWalt shook his head. “Not even close. She’s at least forty, maybe a bit more. Slim on top, a bit huskier down below. What you might call a low centre of gravity, but not fat or anything. A runner. I don’t remember what colour her eyes are, but her hair’s a dark red. Auburn, I guess you’d call it. About this long.” He held his hand level, just below his earlobe, and sliced it back and forth. “Good-looking woman. Handsome, you might say. Always friendly, too, although she doesn’t smile much.”

“Do the Waverleys come around here often?”

“They haven’t kept the Sabre here long, just since the winter before last. But, like I said, they haven’t used it much. I don’t think it’s been out in months. Mrs. Waverley comes by in the evenings couple of times a week. Just to check her out, I guess.”

“Where does she live?”

He looked uncertain. “Point Grey,” he said. “But, look, I’m sure Mrs. Waverley didn’t have anything to do with your friend getting hurt.”

“You’re probably right,” I said. “Mr. Waverley, what does he do?”

“No idea. Whatever it is, though, he must do all right to have a house in Point Grey and that boat.”

“What’s he like?”

“Only seen him a couple of times. Seems friendly enough. About sixty, sixty-five, a little on the chunky side, but not obese or anything. Lotsa hair. Might even be his. Both times I seen him he was wearing a suit that looked like it cost as much as my car. He drives a big Mercedes.”

“I appreciate your help,” I said.

“No problem,” he said.

I hesitated, then said, “Can you give me the Waverleys’ address? I promise no one will know where I got it.”

He shook his head. “Look, man, I’m sorry about your friend and all, but it would be my ass — not to mention my job — if my boss ever found out I gave out the addresses of the people who keep boats here.”

“Just this one,” I said.

“Sorry. No can do. There must be some other way you can get it. Maybe they’re in the book.”

“You gave it to the police.”

“Sure, but that’s different, isn’t it?”

I didn’t press him. When I went outside, the two detectives were climbing the ramp from the docks. The younger detective looked relieved to be on solid ground again.

“Look,” Kovacs said to me. “I appreciate that the victim is your friend, and that you’re a pal of Constable Firth and Greg Matthias, but neither one of them will be a help to you if you interfere with our investigation. Am I making myself clear?”

“Yes, you are,” I said. “I have no intention of interfering with your investigation, but I don’t think you can do a damned thing to stop me from talking to people.”

“Don’t count on it.”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“You can ask,” he said. “No guarantee I’ll answer.”

“Bobbi was driving our van. A white ’94 Dodge Ram. She also had a few thousand dollars’ worth of photo equipment with her. I don’t give a damn about the van or the equipment — it’s all insured — but if either turns up it’ll provide you with a lead, won’t it? Have you found the van?”

Kovacs shook his head. “I haven’t heard,” he said. “Give me the plate number.”

I gave him the van’s license number, which he wrote in his notebook. “I’ll have to look in my files to give you any information about the equipment. Can I fax it to you?”

Kovacs wrote something on the back of a card. “That’s the case number,” he said, handing me the card. “Write it on each page of the fax. Are we done?”

“Just one more thing, if you don’t mind.”

“Why should I mind?”

I told him what Witt DeWalt had told me, that Anna Waverley didn’t own the Wonderlust, and that the woman who’d hired us probably hadn’t been Anna Waverley.

Kovacs nodded. “Yeah, so what’s your question?”

“If the people who own that boat didn’t hire us, who did? And why?”

“Yeah,” Kovacs said again. “Good question. The woman who called herself Anna Waverley, she touch anything while she was in your office?”

“Now that you mention it, no, I don’t think she did.”

“She paid you in cash. What about the money?”

“We used a couple of twenties to pay for pizza last night. The rest Bobbi may have still had on her.”

“So fingerprints are out. How much money are we talking about?”

“Not a lot. Two hundred and fifty.”

“We’ll put out a description of the woman, but if it was a set-up, chances are she altered her appearance. Did she seem upset or disconcerted at all that your partner was going to meet her here, not you?”

“As far as she knew, I was going to meet her, not Bobbi.”

“We’ll canvass the area to see if anyone saw your partner here last evening,” Kovacs said. “Do you have any idea why anyone would want to set you or her up like this?”

“You mean you think it was just a ploy to get Bobbi or me, or perhaps both of us, here to beat us up?” Or worse …

“It’s a possibility,” Kovacs said. “Sergeant Matthias told me you’ve had your share of excitement in the last couple of years. Trouble tends to follow you around, he says. Usually wearing a skirt. Figuratively speaking, of course. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a woman in a skirt.”

“Maybe you hang out with the wrong crowd.”

“No doubt about it,” he agreed. “So have either you or Bobbi pissed anyone off lately?” He said it as though he’d be surprised I hadn’t.

“No one who would hurt her like that.” As far as I knew, Vince Ryan was still in the wind, and since I’d thrown a wrench into his resort development deal in Whistler a few years earlier, he might think he had reason enough to beat the crap out of me and throw me into False Creek to drown. He was certainly crazy enough. As crazy as he was, though, he had nothing against Bobbi. Chris Hastings, Reeny Lindsey’s old boyfriend, was also out there somewhere, but he had even less reason to hurt Bobbi.

“What about ex-boyfriends?” Kovacs asked. “She break anyone’s heart lately? Or their balls?”

“Well, there was a guy she was living with three or four years ago,” I said. “An artist named Tony Chan. He tapped her credits cards out to the tune of about twenty thousand dollars, and she sued him. The van she was driving last night used to be his. He might hold a grudge, but the last we heard, he was doing okay.”

He made a note. “That’s it? No one else?”

Besides Greg Matthias? I wondered. “Not that I can think of.”

“Well, if you do think of anyone else, you’ll let me know?”

“Of course.”

“And,” he added emphatically, “don’t go poking your nose where it doesn’t belong.”

“Certainly not,” I said. From his expression, it was obvious he didn’t believe me.