The Dead of Winter

by Peter Kirby

  “Perhaps you’re right. I have not told the story to anyone. It was 30 years ago. If it all happened today, things would be different. I can see that. There would have been counseling, some support. Perhaps it would have helped to talk to someone about it. But life was different back then. I was alone. I have loved three things in my life, Inspector, and each has taken that love and then rejected me. I joined the Church when I was 17 years old to escape my family. It was the only escape. I gave my life to the Church, and then the Church destroyed me. John’s father is Monsignor Michael Forlini. Back then, he was just an ambitious young priest following a calling that he thought he had. He’s been very successful. I loved him as much as I loved the Church, and I thought he loved me. He didn’t. He used me and then rejected me like I was nothing. As soon as our relationship was discovered, I was sacrificed, and he was protected. His sin was to have given in to the temptations of the flesh, an understandable sin that could be forgiven. My sin was the treachery of a woman, the devil’s handmaiden. I was left with nothing except my child, and I raised him with no help from his father. Then, 18 years later, he left without saying goodbye. But I still love him. John needs my help and I need him.”

  She reached for the box of Kleenex on the floor but it was empty. Vanier pulled a Second Cup napkin from his pocket and gave it to her.

  “I won’t give you the sordid details of how it happened. But, believe me, the holy Monsignor Forlini does not know where John is. He never even acknowledged that he was John’s father. He has never had anything to do with either of us. He even arranged to have me banned from the Cathedral. Not officially, of course, but any time that I go in, I am quickly asked to leave. When John first disappeared, I was convinced that his father might have something to do with it. Even though I couldn’t enter the Cathedral, I spent months walking around it, hoping to catch sight of John. I would wait outside all the Masses. I watched the doors for hours, more than I care to think of, winter and summer, but I never saw him.”

  “But that was years ago, Mme. Collins. Have you stopped watching the Cathedral?”

  “I came to the conclusion that I was wasting my time, so I stopped.”

  “If Monsignor Forlini decided to help John, is there any place he might hide him?”

  “I have no idea. His life is the Cathedral, and you can’t hide someone in the Cathedral.”

  “I suppose not. Thank you, Mme. Collins, this has been very helpful, and I promise that I will do everything in my power to find your son. Let me have someone drive you home.”

  “Thank you, Inspector. That would be kind, if it’s not too much trouble.”

  “No trouble. You just sit here and take it easy while I get a ride organized.”

  “It’s been a long day.”

  “I’m sure it has. I will be in touch.”

  Vanier arranged for Mme. Collins to get a blue-and-white taxi home. The uniform reported back that she had asked to be dropped off two blocks away. She didn’t want the neighbours talking.

  2 PM

  Vanier and Janvier followed a young priest down a carpeted hallway lined with fading drawings and photographs of the Church’s real heroes: not the saints on public display, but the men — and they were all men — who spent their lives in the back corridors and closed rooms nurturing the growth and power of the institution that gave their life importance. The dictators, bureaucrats, fixers and politicians of Mother Church. The priest stopped and knocked on one of the closed doors, then waited for some inaudible sign before ushering them into the presence of Monsignor Forlini. Walking on the plush ivory-coloured carpet was like walking on sponge. A wall of photographs of the Monsignor with famous people dominated the room. Vanier had seen these walls of self-celebration before, an invitation to an ice-breaking conversational opener for any meeting. He declined to break the ice.

  The Monsignor was all smiles and offered coffee. They declined, and the young priest left them alone. Vanier placed the sketch of Collins on the dark mahogany desk in front of the Monsignor.

  “Do you recognize this man?”

  Vanier and Janvier watched closely as he studied the drawing. There was nothing but a calm interest.

  “Of course I do. This is the sketch of the suspect in the homeless deaths, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. Do you recognize him?”

  “From the news, and the newspapers, yes. But apart from that, I’m afraid not. Should I?”

  “We’re told he’s your son, John Collins.”

  If that had an impact on him it didn’t show. He looked up and gave a short laugh. “I don’t know who you’ve been talking to, Inspector, but I don’t have a son. There was a malicious accusation many years ago but it was totally unfounded. I do not have a son.”

  There are several kinds of liars. The good ones actually believe they are telling the truth. Others are arrogant enough to think the rest of the world is too stupid to know the difference. Still others work from a rule book only they know, strategizing like poker players, mixing it up: truth, lies, truth that sounds like a falsehood, and invention that sounds like fact. Vanier couldn’t make up his mind about the Monsignor, but he didn’t have to, just yet.

  “Just for the record, sir, I am going to ask you a series of simple questions, and Sergeant Janvier here will record your answers. Will that be OK?”

  “Perfectly.”

  “So, once again, you do not know the person in the photograph.”

  “Just for the record, Inspector, it is not ‘once again.’ You did not ask me if I knew this person, you asked if I recognized him. But the answer is the same in both cases. No.”

  “Does the name John Collins mean anything to you?”

  “Of course it does. If I recall the news correctly, Collins is the suspect in these recent deaths. But just in case you fell that I am not being entirely forthright, there is another reason for me to recognize the name John Collins. It’s a little delicate, but I can tell you. There is nothing to hide. Many years ago, a certain Yvette Collins, Sister Agnes as she was then, accused me of fathering her son. Absolutely preposterous of course, but she maintained that I had seduced her and caused her to become pregnant. She had a son, and I believe he was called John. She carried on a campaign against me and against the church for several years. I’m sure you understand Inspector, women can be, how shall we say, irrational at times, and the sisterhood seems to attract more than its fair share. It’s likely that her sin pushed her over the top, so to speak, and she became convinced that I was the child’s father.”

  “Have you had any contact with John Collins in the last few years?”

  “None at all. I wouldn’t know him if he were to walk in here.”

  “So, just for the record, you deny ever having contact with this man, John Collins.”

  “Correct, Inspector. Now, was there something else?”

  “I don’t think so. Sergeant Janvier, did you get everything.”

  “Yes, Chief.”

  Vanier stood up, “Well, I think that will be all for the moment.”

  The Monsignor came around the desk, hand out for a shake.

  “Well, I don’t think that I have been of much help, but anytime you want to talk, feel free to set something up with my secretary. I’ll have him show you gentlemen out.”

  As they walked to the car Vanier looked up at the clear blue sky and nodded at Janvier, “It’s a change from the darkness in there.”

  “Yeah,” replied Janvier. “Did you notice the smell?”

  “I think it was the absence of women,” said Vanier.

  4.30 PM

  The investigation had been shut down prematurely, and it was proving difficult to get the extra people back. Everyone was involved somewhere else. Vanier and St. Jacques were the only ones in the Squad Room. Roberge, Janvier, and Laurent were out interviewing workers from Xeon Pesticides and from the homeless shelters, trying to find anyone who might have been close to John Collins.

  Vanier turned to St. Jacques. “Sergeant.”r />
  “Yes, sir? Just a second.” She was typing at a screen.

  “Where did Audet do his time?”

  “He got eight years, so he must have been at a Federal facility. I’ll check.” She started typing searches and pulled up what they had on Audet. It didn’t take long. “Donnacona, sir.”

  “That will do. Give them a call and get his medical records as quickly as you can. Then get them over to Dr. Segal.”

  “You think Audet might be the guy in the van?”

  “Not really. It’s a bit of a stretch, but it’s worth a try. Nobody’s seen him since the day of the fire, and we have an unidentified corpse. Who knows? It’s worth a shot.”

  St. Jacques was on the phone immediately, sweet-talking her way through the bureaucracy of Donnacona penitentiary. Fifteen minutes later she walked over to Vanier’s desk. “Denis said that if he could put his hands on it he would fax it to me, otherwise it would have to wait until tomorrow.”

  “Denis?”

  “Yes, Denis. He sounded like a nice guy, not at all like a prison guard.”

  Sergeant St. Jacques must have made an impression on Donnacona Denis, because a bundle of pages came through the fax 90 minutes later. St. Jacques faxed them on to Dr. Segal and then called Denis to thank him. Vanier heard them on the phone for twenty minutes, and St. Jacques was laughing. He hadn’t heard that in a long while.

  8 PM

  Knowledge is power. And in the Church the humble confessional box has always been fertile black soil for harvesting knowledge. Monsignor Michael Forlini knew that, and he loved the sacrament of confession, as long as he was doing the listening. The anonymity of the confessional box was a farce. Its dark boxes separated only by a grille, covered and uncovered for each new penitent, served only to lull the unsuspecting into believing in a protected spiritual conversation with the Almighty. But a priest could identify the most of the penitents by their voices, and was familiar with their weaknesses and unimaginative appetites for the forbidden. But you can build dependence by instilling guilt and then releasing it with divine forgiveness. Priests carry the secrets of the confessional with them, and when they look into the eyes of a sinner leaving Sunday mass with his wife and children, when they greet the wife with a beaming smile and tousle the heads of the children, the sinner knows how much is owed. It isn’t blackmail, it’s a sacrament. A tool that Jesus gave his priests to help them build and protect the Mother Church, the first and most important goal of every member of the clergy, all the way up to the Papacy.

  To influence secular life for good, you need power, and the confessional was the place where power shifted. That’s why the decline of the sacrament is seen as such a threat to the Church. While the Protestants might accept that people can confess their sins in a vaguely worded public acknowledgement of weakness, that idea is vigorously resisted by the hard core Catholic clerics. The Church wants to know the sinners and it wants to know the details of their transgressions.

  Monsignor Forlini had a sermon that he liked to give to stiffen the spines of believers. Jesus had told His apostles that those whose sins they forgave were forgiven and those whose sins were retained, were retained. This meant that God had given the apostles — and only the apostles — and through them the priests — and only the priests — the divine authority to forgive sin or to refuse to do so. So Jesus Himself had decreed that sin could not be forgiven directly. He put the apostles between the people and Himself, and the priests were the heirs of the apostles. The only way to have your sins forgiven was by confessing them to a priest in the sacrament of confession. And you had to gain forgiveness in this lifetime, because it would be too late after. So the faithful kept confessing their sins.

  That was how Monsignor Forlini knew exactly where to go to solve his problem.

  He was sitting in Moishe’s Steak House, a legend on boulevard St. Laurent, the historic fault line between Montreal’s English and French communities that had served Montreal’s powerful for over 50 years. Antonio DiPadova, one of Montreal’s better known criminal defence lawyers, sat opposite Forlini, nervously scanning the room for clients and potential clients. Being seen dining with a senior member of the Church could be bad for business.

  They talked easily of politics and sport, of DiPadova’s charitable work, and his substantial donations to the Church. DiPadova was going to Rome in the summer, and an audience had to be arranged and, Monsignor Forlini hinted, a possible Papal acknowledgment of his contribution to the works of Mother Church. Forlini opened at dessert.

  “Antonio, I have a problem.”

  Well fed, and relaxed under the effects of a pound of marbled sirloin and a bottle of a 1998 Barolo that cost as much as the two steaks, DiPadova answered: “And I hope it’s something that I can help you with, Monsignor.”

  “Perhaps you can. But it’s somewhat delicate.”

  “In my experience, between friends it’s always better to put everything on the table.”

  “Perhaps you are right, Antonio. You have been such a good friend. I should put my trust in you.” The Monsignor hated being humble but thought it might be effective.

  “So, how I can I help?”

  “Antonio, there is a child, a child who has reached a dead end and needs a second chance. I can vouch for him, nothing serious, just a second chance.”

  “And? How can I help?”

  “The second chance involves a change of identity. I assume that means a new passport, a driver’s licence, social insurance card, the whole thing. A deluxe package if you will. He needs a new life. I am willing to pay whatever it takes.”

  “Monsignor, I think I can help. Don’t worry. My line of work brings me into contact with all kinds of people. I know who can arrange this. But these things aren’t cheap. You need to give me details. You know, since 9/11, this whole identity business has come under close scrutiny. Things are not what they were. Perhaps you could write out some details.” DiPadova took out a pen and a scrap of paper, handing it to the Monsignor. “Some simple information, the name that you would like, the height, weight, place of birth. Basic information.”

  The Monsignor began writing, knowing he was putting himself into the debtor column with every word. DiPadova took the paper when he had finished and read through it quickly.

  “Let me see what I can do. I’m sure I can help you.”

  “Anything that you can do would be appreciated. I really didn’t know where to turn. What else do you need? You mentioned the cost.”

  “You will need to give me ten photographs. Let’s wait for the rest. I’ll let you know.”

  “I can imagine that things have become strict, even with passport photographs, I heard you need identification even to have a photograph taken.”

  “Have your friend go to one of those photo machines and take a bunch of head shots. These people will turn them into passport photographs.”

  “Your service to the Church will not go unrewarded, Michael.”

  “It’s the least I can do, Monsignor,” he said, putting the hand-written note into his pocket.

  The delicate business was finished, and Monsignor Forlini ordered brandies and relaxed into the habitual friendly role of the clergy. He asked about DiPadova’s family, and about how the children were doing at school. He talked about how difficult it was to love and serve God in the modern world.

  DiPadova didn’t rush to pick up the cheque. Forlini looked at the leather folder that the waiter had put on the table, and eventually reached for it, already feeling the change in their relationship.

  DiPadova had no trouble convincing the Monsignor to accept a lift back to the Cathedral, and watched the priest relish the soft leather seats of the Mercedes, stroking it unconsciously as the radio played piano jazz through BOSE speakers. As he left the car outside the Cathedral, the Monsignor made eye contact with DiPadova.

  “What I asked is very important, Antonio. Your assistance in this will be greatly appreciated. Good night in the grace of God.”

  DiPa
dova pulled away, resisting the urge to pump his fist in the air in celebration at something as simple as having Monsignor Forlini in his debt over a new identity. New identities were sold on the streets of Montreal every day. A first class, deluxe package that would withstand scrutiny by U.S. Customs was $10,000 at the most. But to have a future Archbishop, or even a Cardinal, in your pocket for $10,000, well that was priceless.

  TWELVE

  JANUARY 3

  12.30 PM

  John Collins had disappeared or, more accurately, he had never reappeared. Everyone at Xeon knew him, or thought they did, but each said that he had been closer to someone else. Truth was he was close to no one. He worked among them but was alone. Nobody knew where he lived or what he did outside work. Just about everyone said he was a little strange, but no more than that, not strange enough to be unusual.

  It was the same thing with his neighbours. They all recognized him and would nod to him in the street, but that was all. The police had questioned and re-questioned everyone who had attended the Circle of Christ sessions and, again, the face was familiar, but that’s where it stopped. They remembered him, but didn’t know him and never remembered seeing him with somebody. He was a loner, living within the hive as though he belonged, but passing his life in a universe of one.

  Vanier was frustrated. It was like Collins had never existed. And Vanier didn’t know how to find someone who was so disconnected.

  His phone rang.

  “Anjili, any news?”

  “News indeed, Luc. How did you know?”

  “About what?”

  “About Audet.”

  “He’s the corpse?”

  “There’s no doubt. The dental records, blood, measurements, height, everything matches. The corpse is Marcel Audet.”

  “You’re certain.”

  “Luc, we could do a DNA but it seems pointless. In my opinion, there is no doubt it’s Audet.”

  Vanier took a long breath.

  “So what does it mean, Luc?”