The Delicate Storm

by Giles Blunt

20

  “BERNARD THEROUX,” Sergeant Ducharme had said. “The second phone number belongs to Bernard Theroux. In 1970 he was nineteen years old. Member of the Chénier cell and, along with Daniel Lemoyne, served twelve years in the penitentiary for the kidnapping of Raoul Duquette. Married to one Françoise Coutrelle, a fringe member of the FLQ, a supporter rather than an actual terrorist. She was never charged with anything. They were occasional associates of one Simone Rouault—but we’ll talk about Simone later.

  “As far as we know, Bernard and Françoise Theroux no longer have any connection to terrorist activities, or to criminal activities of any kind. Still, this is definitely their phone number, and you have to wonder why your American is calling them three weeks before he turns up dead.”

  You certainly do, Delorme was thinking half an hour later. She was trying to steer her way through the middle of Montreal without getting in a multi-car pileup. The rain was not heavy, but apparently it was enough to sow confusion among the local motorists.

  At the next stoplight she dialed Szelagy on her cellphone.

  “What did you come up with on Dr. Choquette? Was he where he says he was on Monday night?”

  “This guy, I’m telling you, he oughta teach a course at alibi school,” Szelagy said. “Not only does he have three witnesses who were playing bridge with him, all three of them are like gold-plated. One’s the head of the Ontario Hospital, one’s a trustee on the school board and the other one’s local director of the Children’s Aid Society. Put them in a room, you’ve got an instant board of directors.”

  “You talked to all three of them independently?”

  “All three. They were all so polite, too. I wish my friends had manners like that.”

  “Fat chance. Your friends are all cops.”

  Delorme’s cellphone rang before she had even put it away. Malcolm Musgrave.

  “So, are you finished harassing my detachment now, Sergeant Delorme? Or will you be coming to interview all of us?”

  “Don’t give me a hard time about Simmons. You know I had to check him out.”

  “And—don’t tell me, let me guess—he turned out to be neither a kidnapper nor a murderer, correct? I mean, I do try to keep kidnappers and murderers off my team if I can help it.”

  “Craig Simmons is no longer a suspect in this case,” Delorme said. “Let’s leave it at that.”

  “And we’re all going to be very circumspect about how we handle an RCMP officer’s private life, aren’t we?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  A man in a black Saab swooped in front of her, making an illegal left turn—and had the gall to curse at her. She had an impulse to pull him over, not that she had any jurisdiction in Montreal.

  “I think you know exactly what I mean,” Musgrave said. “There’s not a police officer alive who wants their private life made public—not me, not your partner and not Craig Simmons—or perhaps you’re some kind of saintly exception.”

  “You’re telling me you know? I mean, you know about the corporal’s—”

  “Stop right there, Delorme. I know everything I need to know about my men—and women, for that matter. I’m just underlining a mutual understanding that I hope we have. Do I need to say anything more?”

  “No,” Delorme said. “You’ve made yourself perfectly clear, as always.”

  “Enjoy Montreal,” Musgrave said. “Nice town.”

  The Theroux address was on rue St-Hubert in Villeray, almost the exact centre of Montreal. Although the area was predominantly French, Delorme also noted signs in Italian, Portuguese and Arabic. The pedestrians looked to be a mix of students and working class. Dusty old fabric stores alternated with new boutiques and tiny cafés.

  Delorme parked the unmarked RCMP car in front of a ribbon shop. Number 7540, the address she was looking for, was half a block south, among a brood of small square houses lined up as if for protection behind a Greek Orthodox church. She rang the doorbell, noting the two brass signs next to it. One said Theroux, the other Beau Soleil. While she was waiting, it started to rain.

  The door was answered by a plump middle-aged woman with dark rings of curly hair framing her face. “Oui?”

  “Madame Theroux?”

  “Oui?”

  Delorme told her in French that she was a police officer from northern Ontario in need of help on a case, and that she believed Mr. Theroux could be of assistance. Shouts and chatter of little children rang out in the background. A small crash was followed by the howl of an outraged toddler.

  “I’m sorry,” the woman said. “My husband doesn’t speak to police.”

  A small, lithe man with dark eyes and dark hair shot through with grey appeared behind her, putting on his coat. “Get lost,” he snapped at Delorme. “You heard what my wife said.”

  “Nobody’s after you,” Delorme said. “I just need some information.”

  “Just some information? Is that all?” The man pushed by her and started down the stairs. “Information gets people killed.”

  He hopped into his truck and drove away.

  “Sorry,” the woman said. “But I did tell you …”

  “Yes, you did,” Delorme said. “May I perhaps use your phone to call a cab? My partner took the car.”

  The woman opened the door wider. Delorme entered a front hall that contained a piano and a dozen tiny plastic chairs. To the right, beyond a pair of French doors, a young woman in very tight jeans was leading a group of preschoolers in a round of “Bonhomme, Bonhomme.”

  “The phone’s in the kitchen. This way.”

  Delorme disconnected the moment she dialed. Then, speaking directly into the dial tone, she ordered a cab. “How long? That’s the best you can do? Yes, I realize it’s raining. All right. Thank you.”

  Mrs. Theroux was setting out a tray of apple juice and arrowroot biscuits, which she carried into an adjoining dining room. Everywhere the walls were decorated with children’s drawings. Several carried declarations of preschool devotion—”Je t’aime, Françoise!” “Ma deuxième mère,” and the like—with appropriate misspellings. The entire house smelled of soup and baking. It was hard to imagine a terrorist living here, even a former terrorist.

  “The cab is going to be half an hour, I’m afraid,” Delorme said.

  “It’s always that way in the rain. Would you like some coffee?”

  “Oh, no, that’s all right. Please. Just ignore me.”

  “I can’t ignore you, you’re in my house. Have a coffee.”

  “Thank you. You’re very kind. “

  Pouring the coffee, adding the milk, Françoise Theroux was the picture of domesticity—plump, almost matronly, the sort of woman that reporters interview when they want a mother’s opinion on the local school board. The coffee was a dark, aromatic roast without a trace of bitterness. Delorme could feel the caffeine illuminating strings of lights along her nerves.

  “What time would be a good time to come back?” she said. “I’m afraid it’s very important that I speak to your husband.”

  “Please don’t come back.” A shadow crossed the woman’s face. “Bernard hasn’t been involved with anything criminal for thirty years.”

  “I know. It’s thirty years ago we need to talk about. The FLQ, the October Crisis.”

  “You mustn’t come back. Bernard goes crazy whenever the police are around. It brings back that time and he just wants to forget. Maybe I can help you. You probably know I was part of the FLQ too.”

  “But you were never charged with anything.”

  “No. Bernard kept me at arm’s length from the more dangerous activities.”

  “I wonder if you can identify the people in these pictures for me.” Delorme showed her the picture of Miles Shackley from his fake driver’s licence, and the file picture Musgrave had provided. “Can you tell me who this man is?”

  “No. He doesn’t look familiar. Who is he?”

  “I’ll come back to him. What about these people?”

  Mr
s. Theroux took the group picture from Delorme. “Oh, they look so young! They were young! That’s Bernard in front—he would have been nineteen years old back then. My goodness, he’s so skinny. That’s Daniel Lemoyne on the left. The girl I don’t know. The one on the end, my God, that’s Yves Grenelle.”

  “Yves Grenelle?”

  Mrs. Theroux’s hand had risen to her mouth.

  “Who is Yves Grenelle?”

  “It’s not him. I must have been mistaken.”

  “But you were certain it’s Yves Grenelle. Why can’t you tell me about him?”

  “I just can’t. Please. I can’t help you any more.”

  “No, I have to ask you about this man.” Delorme held up the 1970 picture of Shackley. “Does the name Miles Shackley mean anything to you?”

  “No. And I don’t recognize that person.”

  “There are two things you should know before you answer, Mrs. Theroux. The first is that this man called your house less than one month ago. The second is that he has been murdered.”

  Mrs. Theroux looked up at the ceiling for a few moments, breathing deeply. She got up and went into the other room, collecting cups and cookie plates. Childish voices called her name, begging her to come and draw with them. She came back into the kitchen and set the tray down on the counter, hard.

  “Bernard never killed anyone,” she said. “He had nothing to do with any murder.”

  “Excuse me, but your husband was convicted in the death of Raoul Duquette. He confessed to it.”

  “He was convicted for kidnapping, not for murder. And his confession was thrown out.”

  “Mrs. Theroux. A man who was known to be involved in the October Crisis called your house last month. That man is now dead. Your husband has been involved in a killing before; it’s possible he is involved again.”

  “Listen to me: my husband never killed anyone. I repeat it for you. Please, take it down. Write it in your notebook, type it in your computer, carve it someplace—anyplace—where you will remember it, because this is God’s truth: my husband never killed anyone.”

  “You’re referring now to Raoul Duquette?”

  Mrs. Theroux let out a long sigh and lowered herself into a chair. “Yes. I am referring to Raoul Duquette.”

  “The forensic evidence showed that he was strangled. Your husband said he held Duquette down while Daniel Lemoyne strangled him.”

  “You have a picture of Bernard. He was nineteen. He weighed 120 pounds. Do you know how big Duquette was? He was six foot two, 190 pounds, a former football player. My husband did not hold him down.”

  “Mrs. Theroux, the minister’s hands were tied. He’d been held prisoner for a week.”

  A small boy wandered into the kitchen, holding a piece of sketch paper before him like an offering. “Françoise, I made a picture for you.”

  “Oh, that’s lovely, Michel,” Mrs. Theroux said, bending low to examine the blue blur of watercolour. “Who is that in the picture?”

  “It’s my father. He’s a policeman.”

  “You should show it to Officer Delorme, here—she’s with the police too.”

  The boy looked up at Delorme, eyes two pools of wonder. “You are a police?”

  “Yes. I’m a police too.”

  “He probably hasn’t seen a policewoman before. Michel, are you going to show the detective your lovely picture?”

  The boy swivelled toward Delorme, holding the picture uncertainly. It was two swirls of blue and a slash of black.

  “It’s very good,” Delorme said. “He looks like an excellent officer.”

  The boy turned back to Mrs. Theroux, picture forgotten. “Françoise, will you read to us now?”

  “In a little while, Michel.” Mrs. Theroux closed the door after him. She offered Delorme more coffee, which was declined, poured herself another cup and sat once more at the table, stirring it slowly. “I don’t want you to come back here,” she said finally. “Our peace here is too fragile, too hard-won. Certain memories can be like earthquakes. So, I will tell you everything I know, because I don’t want you harassing my husband. And then I don’t want you to come back.”

  “I don’t know what you’re going to tell me. I can’t make any promises.”

  “I wouldn’t believe them if you did. But I will tell you what really happened all those years ago, and then you won’t ever have to come back. If you do, I will say nothing more. Nobody knows the real story. It was as if they’d already decided what the story was before they arrested anybody. But listen to me, and I will tell you the truth.

  “The first thing you have to understand is the absolute loyalty we all had for one another. Everyone in the FLQ felt it—absolute and unshakeable—but Bernard and Daniel Lemoyne in particular. They met at a demonstration. We were always going to demonstrations in those days. At one of these—perhaps it was the one in support of the Seven Up workers, I don’t know, or perhaps the taxi drivers—in any case, Bernard was injured, bleeding from the head where some bastard cop had hit him with a billy club. Sorry, but—”

  “It’s all right. I don’t have any love for violent cops.”

  “Anyway, there he is, bleeding in the back of the paddy wagon. Daniel Lemoyne tore up his own shirt to make a bandage.”

  “Comrades-in-arms,” Delorme said.

  “Comrades-in-arms. Exactly. They became like that.” She held up two fingers, crossed. “Inseparable. But there isn’t a day that goes by I don’t wish they hadn’t met. I don’t know about Lemoyne—I think he would have been the same no matter who he was with—but I’m sure that Bernard would never have kidnapped anyone if he hadn’t met Lemoyne. Bernard was always for group action, mobilizing the people. He wasn’t one for individual plots. But somehow it became a shared madness, this kidnapping.”

  “A madness they shared with Yves Grenelle, no? Why has his name never come up before?”

  “Yves Grenelle was never caught, never charged with anything.” The woman’s manner suddenly changed. She looked down at her hands as if she held between them a fragile screen on which the events of her youth played out. “That was part of the agreement, you understand.”

  “Agreement?”

  “Among the members of the cell. It was like blood brothers. The agreement was that if the cops found them, anyone who got away was never to be mentioned—not to the cops, not to the press, not to anyone. It was to be as if he or she never existed.

  “That’s what happened with Yves Grenelle. He was not captured with the others. He disappeared off the face of the earth the day Raoul Duquette was killed. Nobody has heard from him since that day. Probably he went to France—a lot of people did when things got hot. Mostly they came back. But Grenelle was never seen again.”

  “How was he recruited, this Grenelle? Was he a friend of your husband? A friend of Lemoyne?”

  “He must have been a friend of Lemoyne’s. Bernard didn’t know him. I think he was introduced to Lemoyne a year or two previously by Simone Rouault. That’s who you should talk to if you want to know about recruitment. She was so beautiful, they could have made posters of her and the membership would have tripled overnight. She brought a lot of the young men in. She gave the revolution a pretty face, a beautiful mouth. And of course, she fucked everybody in sight.”

  “I’ve heard the name. Were you close?”

  “We were friendly. We didn’t see much of her, because of the need to stay separate, but she was something. A real character.” Mrs. Theroux shook her head, remembering. “She drank nothing but champagne. French champagne—Veuve Clicquot, that was it. And she was always smoking Gitanes. I hate those things. They stink like cigars. I’m telling you, if you talk to Simone, take her a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and she’ll tell you her life story.”

  “But Simone Rouault was with the Liberation cell, the cell that kidnapped Hawthorne, no? So she and Grenelle couldn’t have met.”

  “Oh, but they could, you see. Grenelle was the contact between the cells. He moved back and forth. A big ta
lker, Grenelle, always full of ideas, always wanting action, always wanting to move ahead. Bernard and even Lemoyne were, I don’t know, more thoughtful.”

  “So, how did Grenelle avoid being caught?”

  “Partly because of my husband. Bernard is a carpenter, like his father. Before they kidnapped Duquette, they had arranged another safe house as a fallback. A place on the south shore. Bernard built a false wall inside a closet. That was the extent of their escape plan. It seems pitiful, in retrospect, but you see, they never intended to kill anyone, so they never planned an elaborate escape.”

  “That’s not what the communiqués said. They threatened to execute Duquette from the first day.”

  “They were negotiating. Using their hostage for leverage. You don’t believe me, but it’s true—thirty years later I have no reason to lie. They were astounded by how the government reacted. Suspending civil rights. Calling out the army. Nobody saw that coming. Bernard and Daniel thought they had a pretty good chance of getting a couple of the political prisoners released. Nobody thought the government would let the hostages die. At worst, they figured they themselves would get transport to Cuba or Algeria or somewhere.”

  “You would have gone to Cuba with your husband?”

  “Yes, of course. Algeria. Anywhere.” Mrs. Theroux shrugged. “I was young.”

  “And you never believed they would kill anyone. Even when they kidnapped a provincial cabinet minister like Duquette?”

  “No. It never occurred to me. Not for one second.” She stood up and went to look out the window. Delorme thought it was only so she could turn away. “The taxi is taking a long time.”

  “Yes. If they don’t come in a few minutes, I’ll call again.”

  The door opened and a little girl came in, her face the image of tragedy. “Sasha spilled paint all over my picture.”

  “Well, that’s a shame, Monique.” Mrs. Theroux leaned forward and placed a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “I’m sure he didn’t mean to.”

  “He did! Sasha’s mean!”

  “Well, you go back and talk to Gabrielle about it. You can always draw another one, you know.”

  “I don’t want to!”