by Andy Maslen
Finishing her burger and fries, and starting on the pie, Stella let her thoughts centre on the plan to kill Collier. If he was on secondment to the FBI, the plus was he’d be easy to find. The minus was he’d be armed, she was sure. And during the day he’d be accompanied by a partner, also armed, probably given strict instructions to babysit the new boy. But to get within striking distance, she first had to get across the lake into the US. Find another rental car. Then make the long drive down through Minnesota and Wisconsin and into Illinois.
The plan she’d hatched out with Vicky had seemed wonderfully straightforward sitting in a cosy Victorian terrace house in Hammersmith. Out here in Lac La Croix, it had taken on rather more daunting aspects. Like, on her walk through the town after parking the rental car, she hadn’t seen anywhere she could hire a boat. Not even a paddle-boarding concession, not that she was planning on crossing a one-mile stretch of open water on that mode of transport. She also needed to acquire a firearm.
Yes, Other Stella was quite capable of finishing off another human being with virtually anything that came to hand, from skillets to hair-dryers, but Stella was running a parallel plan in her mind to get rid of her malevolent alter ego once and for all. That meant she – the real Stella – needed a gun. Five minutes’ research on the internet suggested that she could probably buy one from a private citizen. But the risk she might end up buying from a cop, or just a law-abiding individual with a suspicious mind, put her off the idea.
Stella didn’t fancy her chances going down the illegal route. If she was arrested, she could kiss goodbye to her chances of getting Collier. Not to mention the chance that some gangbanger would try to take her money, then her life – or vice versa – and keep the gun for the next punter. So maybe buying one in Canada was the answer. Plenty of people owned rifles, for hunting she supposed. Where there were longs, there might be shorts. She knew she’d never get a Possession and Acquisition Licence, what the Canadians called a PAL. But maybe she could find a way to circumvent the law. Hell, it wasn’t as if it would be a first.
When the diner lady came back to clear the table and offer her a refill, Stella asked the question she’d been rehearsing for the past ten minutes.
“Hi, er,” she checked out the name badge pinned to the woman’s matronly bosom, “Maureen. I was just wondering. If I wanted to try my hand at hunting, who would I talk to round here?”
“You mean bow hunting? A lot of folk do that round here.”
Stella presumed that Maureen couldn’t imagine a Brit wanting to use a firearm. She realised she’d seen a couple of people with what she’d taken to be archery equipment slung across their backs.
“Maybe. I was actually thinking, more of, you know, the rifle kind.”
“Oh, well, a lot of people do that too, of course. There’s not a range here or a tourist place or anything like that, but you could try seeing if someone with some land would let you hunt on their property, or—” she looked up and smiled. “Nope. Scratch that. I have a better idea.” She turned and called over to the man drinking coffee on his own.
“Hey, Ken? Could you possibly come over here and talk to this British lady, please?”
The man nodded, though he didn’t smile. He drained the last of his coffee, stood and ambled over.
“What is it, Maureen?” Then he looked down at Stella. “Hi.”
“Hi. Please, have a seat. Can I get you another coffee?”
Maureen spoke.
“Free refills at Franklyn’s. Here.” She topped up both their mugs. “Ken, this lady, sorry honey, I didn’t catch your name?”
“Stella.”
“Stella was interested in going hunting. So, I will leave you two to get acquainted. Shout if you want anything else to eat, honey.”
She bustled away to take more orders, collecting empty plates as she went.
Ken looked at Stella. He had striking eyes of the purest blue Stella had ever seen. The skin of his face was lined, and had the burnished look of old copper pans.
“My name is Ken White Crow.” He offered his hand across the table. Stella shook it. His grip was dry, and hard but not the macho bone-crusher her male colleagues liked to affect. “Pleased to meet you.”
To Stella’s ears, the greeting sounded formal. Almost old-fashioned. Even though Maureen had already given him her first name, she followed his lead.
“My name is Stella Cole. Pleased to meet you, too.”
“Tell me,” he said, still unsmiling. “What is a biiwide doing all the way out here in Lac La Croix, wanting to go hunting?”
Stella’s understanding snagged on the foreign-sounding word.
“Sorry, bi- what?”
He repeated it slowly, as if talking to a child, sounding it out as bi-wi-DEE.
“It means stranger in Ojibway. I’m Lac La Croix of the Salteaux First Nation. Part of the Ojibway tribe.”
“OK. Biiwide. Sorry, I didn’t mean to cause any offence.”
“You didn’t. We’ve suffered far worse, believe me. So tell me, why here? You’re a long way from Toronto, let alone home. Where are you from?”
“London. That’s England, not Ontario.”
Her knowledge of local geography earned her a smile.
“Very good. And the hunting?”
She shrugged.
“I’m doing some travelling. I sold my house. I went straight from school to university then into work. I wanted to get out of the city and see some wilderness. The lakes looked pretty on the map.”
“You ever fire a gun before?”
Like you wouldn’t believe.
“I did some shooting in England. I can handle a rifle and a shotgun.”
Ken didn’t respond at once. He kept his eyes fixed on hers. It wasn’t an aggressive stare. Stella had seen plenty of those, from drunks, football hooligans, terrorist suspects, rapists, the psychopath Collier had sent to kill her. They didn’t faze her. She just stared back until they blinked or she got bored and started asking them her questions over again. Politeness, relentless, quiet politeness, eventually wore down even the most hardened criminals, she’d found. Ken’s stare was more appraising. She waited. Letting him come to his judgement as to her character.
“We have land. Plenty of game. I can take you hunting.”
Stella rejoiced inwardly, letting a fraction of her emotion out in the form of a wide smile.
“That’s great, thank you. Of course, I’m willing to—”
“Pay? Sure. First you gotta show me you can shoot. I’m not having any gutshot animals running off to die in pain. Don’t have the time to track ’em down and put them out of their misery.”
“Fair enough. I can do that. And if I pass your test, how much would you want?”
“Why don’t you tell me how much you think a day’s hunting on authentic First Nation land is worth to a biiwide?”
Given her plans, Stella wasn’t inclined to penny-pinch.
“A thousand dollars. US.”
Ken smiled.
“For that, I’ll even give you a tour round our town. Give you the full experience to take back home with you.”
“It’s a deal. Now, my next question. Where can a biiwide stay around here?”
“Talk to Maureen. She and Joe let rooms.”
Later that evening, having arranged to meet Ken outside Franklyn’s at 8.00 a.m. and booked one of Maureen’s guest rooms for a few nights with the option to renew, Stella dozed off and dreamt of Lola again. For once, her baby wasn’t burning.
48
Target Practice
Dressed appropriately, she hoped, for hunting, in jeans, a green sweatshirt and her bike boots, Stella arrived outside Franklyn’s at 7.50 a.m. Twelve minutes later, a silver GMC Sierra pickup scabbed with rust and bandaged with silver duct tape stopped outside the diner. Checking Ken was the driver, Stella pulled open the door, which squawked in protest, climbed in and slammed it shut behind her. The cab smelled of smoke, and she realised she hadn’t had a cigarette since arriv
ing in Canada. Trouble was, now she really wanted one. She glanced at a crushed pack of Camels on the dashboard.
Ken must have caught the look because he offered her a smoke.
“Light for me, too, would you?” he asked.
She wound the window down and blew out a lungful of silvery-grey smoke into the still air.
“Oh, Jesus, that’s good!” she said.
“They’ll kill you in the end.”
“I don’t plan to live for ever.”
He grunted.
“That’s good. Live for now.”
He pulled away from the kerb and accelerated down the long, wide main street towards the edge of town. Everyone coming the other way waved or gave a thumbs-up. The trucks were mainly older models, some even rustier than Ken’s, although Stella’s gaze was arrested by a shiny silver Mercedes. The driver, a brunette in large-framed sunglasses, stared straight ahead as the two vehicles passed and was the only one not to acknowledge Ken.
“Who’s she?” Stella asked.
“Mayor.”
“She didn’t seem to like you much.”
“Bad blood.”
Stella smiled.
“Are you always this talkative, Ken? Or are you just putting on the chatty act for this dumb little biiwide?”
He laughed, and the action transformed his face. The creases at the corners of his eyes revealed themselves as laughter lines, and his mouth softened.
“You got me. It’s not you. I’m kinda suffering for the sins of last night. Too many beers.”
“Oh, right. No, I mean, don’t worry. I’ve heard about, er, First Nations people having problems. I’ve had my own struggles with alcohol, so, you know, it’s—”
“Wow, that’s pretty racist. What, a guy has a hangover and you’re seeing the poor alcoholic Indian already?”
Stella felt the heat rush to her cheeks. Jesus, Stel. You’ve been in the guy’s truck for five minutes and you’ve bummed a fag off him and played the white oppressor card. Way to go!
“God, I’m, look, I’m sorry. That was unforgivable. I’m a guest in your country, in your car and now—”
Ken’s laughter was even louder this time. Stella frowned. What had she done this time?
Wiping the corners of his eyes with the sleeve of his denim jacket, Ken finally found the wind to speak again.
“Oh, man, I’m the one who should be apologising. That was a cheap shot. I was joking. I was playing backgammon with a few of the boys last night, that’s all.”
Relieved, Stella leaned her head towards the open window, letting the breeze cool her flaming cheek.
“And when you say ‘backgammon’, that’s not a trap, right? You were actually playing it. Or were you dancing around in your underpants covered in war paint?” OK, feeling confident, Stel.
“Yeah, we were playing backie all right. We only do the war dance on alternate Wednesdays.”
An easy, bantering relationship established between them, Stella relaxed. Ken drove at a steady forty-five along a two-lane blacktop through pine forest, which gave way from time to time to reveal a series of small lakes, their surfaces ruffled by the breeze.
Suddenly he leaned forward and stared up through the top edge of the windshield. He pointed.
“Look. Red-tailed hawk.”
Stella followed his pointing finger.
Above and to the left, circling above the trees was a large bird of prey. Black-tipped flight feathers extending from the tips of its wings like fingers and a fan-shaped tail of tawny-red that seemed to extend directly out of the trailing edge of the wings.
“It’s beautiful. Tell me its name in Ojibway.”
“Meskwananiisi.”
Stella listened, processed and tried to repeat it faithfully.
“Mes-kwon-a-neesy?”
Ken offered one of his trademark grunts that Stella interpreted as grudging respect.
“Not bad.”
“For a biiwide.”
“For a biiwide? No. Pretty good. We got some of the youngsters now who don’t want to learn our language. They say we’re living in the past. They want to leave, go to Toronto. Get white-collar jobs.”
“Can you blame them? It’s not just Ojibway teenagers who want to do that. Kids everywhere want to get away from their roots and see the world. Get jobs, houses, you know, they have a need to fit in.”
“Huh. Maybe.”
Ken lapsed into silence after that. They drove on for another couple of hours.
Stella fell into a trancelike state, hypnotised by the thrum of the engine and the unspooling landscape of wetlands, scattered stands of trees and the ever-present lakes.
Ken spoke, startling her into full alertness.
“We’re here.”
Stella looked ahead. A turning on the right was signposted, “Lac La Croix First Nation.”
“Is this your—?”
“Reservation? Yeah, you can call it that. We just call it home.”
He was smiling, so she smiled back. And punched him lightly on the right bicep.
“Teaser!” she said, and was rewarded with another crinkled smile.
Ken introduced Stella to everyone they met as they walked down the main street through the village. The women in particular struck Stella as attractive. Most wore their dark hair in long plaits.
“Come on, we’ll go get a couple rifles,” Ken said.
His house was a wooden, single-storey building, hung with silvered shingles and painted a bright kingfisher blue with white door and window frames. Inside, everything was immaculate, from the floral curtains to the highly-polished dining table. A flat-screen TV dominated the living area, but it was the room beyond that interested Stella. She could see a rack of long guns, fishing rods and other evidence of an outdoor lifestyle, from snow shoes to fur hats.
Ken led the way and stood back as she admired the kit.
“See anything you like?”
She leaned forwards and picked up a rifle with a highly-polished greyish-brown wooden stock and what looked like an old-time lever action behind the trigger.
“This one,” she said. “It looks like something John Wayne would have used.”
“Marlin 336XLR. Good choice. I’ll take this one. She’s my favourite.”
Ken picked up a wooden rifle with a blued barrel and a telescopic sight.
“Nice. What make is that?” Stella asked.
“It’s a Remington 798. It belonged to my father.”
Half an hour later, Ken pulled the truck off the dirt road into a scraped-flat parking area surrounded by birch trees. Stella climbed out and, rifle slung across her back, followed Ken into the woods. The sun was warm on Stella’s back and she found herself smiling. Birdsong filled the air along with a fine pollen dust that glinted in the sun arrowing down between the trees in light and dark stripes.
They emerged from the woods into a broad clearing, maybe two hundred yards by eighty. In the middle, a group of rabbits were nibbling the grass. Ken worked the Remington’s bolt and fired into the air. The rabbits scattered as the report of the shell shattered the calm, running full tilt for the closest edge of the clearing and the protective cover of the scrub.
“Now we have the place to ourselves, let’s see whether you can shoot,” Ken said. “Can you hit that?” He pointed to a blue steel oil drum beside a wide-trunked tree. The distance was no more than fifty feet, Stella estimated. OK, so you’re not patronising me, but you want to be sure. That’s fine, Ken, I can do that.
She unshouldered the rifle and worked the lever, which travelled down then up with a smooth, easy action. She pulled the butt hard against her shoulder and pressed her face against the stock’s cheek-piece. The rifle wasn’t fitted with a telescopic sight, just front and rear iron sights. The trigger fitted comfortably against her curled index finger, which she rested there while sighting on the drum.
On her first indrawn breath, she squeezed the trigger to what felt roughly like first pressure. As the breath left her lungs, she incr
eased the pressure a little more. She waited for a beat of her heart, then squeezed off the shot.
The recoil jammed the gun butt back against her shoulder. Her tight grip meant it was a shove not a thump. So hopefully, no bruising.
With the noise of the shot echoing around the woods she peered at the oil drum. Thought she could discern a black hole left of centre surrounded by bright grey steel.
“Did I hit it?”
“Yeah. You hit it. That was the kindergarten shot. Let’s move up a class.”
Over the next twenty minutes, Ken led her to shooting stations progressively further away from the target. Each time she plugged the oil drum until its face was peppered with holes. His final request was for Stella to hit the drum from the far end of the clearing. A full two hundred yards distant. Before they set off away from the drum, he rotated it so Stella would be shooting at a clean face.
He said, “Your grouping is pretty bad, but you haven’t missed it yet. Put a round into it from away over there and we’ll go hunting tomorrow.”
“Why not today?”
“I got stuff I need to do today. My truck’s running rough, you mighta noticed on the drive over here.”
Stella smiled. “OK. You’re the boss.”
And she thought about how pleasant it was not to be the boss. Not to be making decisions. Not to be responsible for anything more complicated than smacking holes in an old, blue oil drum with a rifle. Nor, she suddenly realised, to be taking orders from Other Stella, who had been absent for more than 24 hours.
When they reached the far end of the clearing, Stella turned to look back at the oil drum. Suddenly it looked very small indeed. She remembered shooting one of Ramage’s bodyguards outside his house, Craigmackhan. She’d had a scope that day and a nice comfortable sniper’s nest in the bracken.
