by Giles Blunt
Delorme reached into her bag and pulled out the oblong box. “Françoise Theroux told me you were fond of this stuff.”
The woman took the box and examined it as if it were an object of the utmost rarity. Museum quality. With difficulty she extracted the bottle and cradled it in her arms like a newborn.
“Are they doing well for themselves, the Therouxs?”
“They seem to make a good living.”
“God has a sense of humour, no? The murderer, he makes a good living; I live like a welfare case.”
“We need to know about this person,” Cardinal said. He handed her the photograph of Shackley as a young man.
She examined it without expression for a few moments before handing it back. A small smile hovered about her dry, cracked lips, and she shook her head gently from side to side. “Such a story I could tell.” She nodded at the bottle of champagne. “Open that for me, will you?”
Cardinal picked up the bottle and started removing the foil.
“Always such a pleasure, isn’t it?” she said to Delorme. “To watch a strong man work with his hands.”
Delorme let that one go.
“Glasses are over there, dear.” She gestured toward a row of metal cupboards above a half-size fridge. “Won’t you join me?”
“I’d love to,” Cardinal said. “But unfortunately …”
“Yes, yes. So sad. Can’t have intoxicated Mounties running all over the place, can we?”
“We’re not Mounties,” Delorme said.
“I was speaking metaphorically, my dear. You mustn’t be so literal-minded.”
Cardinal brought the bottle and a murky champagne flute. He poured her a glass and set the bottle down.
The woman held the glass under her nose a moment and inhaled. “Veuve Clicquot,” she said. “Everybody’s favourite widow.”
“Veuve means widow,” Delorme said to Cardinal.
“Thank you. I figured.”
“There was a time when I drank nothing else.” Ms. Rouault took a delicate sip, held the glass before her and examined the colour, then took another sip. “It hasn’t changed at all—unlike me.”
Cardinal and Delorme waited.
“I was beautiful,” she said. “That’s the first thing you must understand. I was very beautiful.”
“That’s easy to believe,” Cardinal said. Though veined with tiny violet capillaries, the fine high cheekbones were still apparent. The graceful arch of eyebrow. The grey eyes, almost hidden now in folds of skin, were so wide-set that in her younger days she would have had a look of wisdom beyond her years.
“It was an intensity I had,” she said in a factual tone. “An air of passion, coupled with a necessary aloofness that people found compelling.” She reached painfully toward a bookshelf and brought down a photograph of a young woman laughing at the camera. She had magnificent teeth, an invitingly plump upper lip, and the wide grey eyes were absolutely clear.
“At the beach. Summer of 1970. I was thirty-one.” Which put her in her sixties now. She looked closer to eighty. “Osteoporosis, arthritis, you name it,” she said, catching Cardinal’s thoughts. “I never did like milk. And I always loved these.” She pulled out a pack of Gitanes and lit one up. Then she took the photo back in a desiccated claw and pointed her index finger not at her younger face but at the clouds in the background of the photo, the hill to the left, foliage on the right. “You see that? You know what that is? Or rather, what that was?”
Cardinal shrugged. “You said you were at the beach.”
“Again so literal-minded. The two of you should get married. I was pointing at my future. That’s what that was. I still had one then. Would you mind?” She held out her glass to Cardinal and he filled it for her. She took a trembling sip and held the glass in her lap. “My future,” she said again. “How strange to think that this body—this face, this room—how strange to think that these were my future. If I’d known that then, of course, I would have hanged myself. You have some time, I take it?”
Cardinal and Delorme nodded.
“That is a great luxury, having time. Bon. I have your attention, I have my cigarette, I have a full glass. Let an old lady tell you where her future went.
“I was twenty-nine years old. Not so old, really. But in those days, youth was everything. To be young was regarded as an honour, just as in earlier times to be old was valued as an achievement. A load of crap, either way. Your age is your age and it’s not in your control. But back then—I’m talking 1968, 1969, now—if you were over thirty, you were over the hill. The Beatles were at the height of their fame. It was Trudeaumania—why? Because he was young and handsome—like Kennedy. Good television. There was even a government organization called the Company of Young Canadians. Of course, it was a make-work program designed to hide the high unemployment figures, but it sounded so romantic.
“Fifty percent of the population was under thirty, and that meant we had power. With numbers like that, politicians had to listen. At the universities, students went on strike to change their curriculum, even to have a say in hiring and firing, in tenure. And of course the endless marches against the Vietnam War. They were radical times.
“You’d go to a march, a sit-in, and there’d be not a soul over thirty—or very few. So exhilarating to be surrounded by thousands of people who look just like you. All saying the same things, singing the same things, believing the same things. Of course, there’s a frightening side to it: so many people all wearing the same things—flak jackets and blue jeans, tie-dyed T-shirts and blue jeans, Indian silk and blue jeans—all saying the same things. George Orwell knew a thing or two.”
She took a sip of champagne and a deep drag on her cigarette. She exhaled slowly, contemplating the stream of smoke. “I was terrified of growing old. It was the times I lived in, not just my own neurosis. That is point number one. Point number two: I had married young and badly. My husband considered himself a great artist, but the rest of the world disagreed, and he took it out on me. Anyway, it ended, and I felt all washed up the moment I turned thirty.
“I was already too old to be involved in the student activities. I had gone to the University of Montreal for two years but dropped out when I got married. After the breakup, I put myself back together very slowly. Got myself a job with an oil company, about as boring a job as you can imagine, and took up a serious interest in politics—as much for the social life as anything.
“I was a separatist back then. René Lévesque had formed the Parti Québécois, and I believed in it with an absolute passion. Quebec would become its own sovereign power, but it would remain tied to the rest of the country with an economic association, like the countries in the European Union have now. And the PQ would achieve this through democratic means: first, get itself elected as the provincial government; second, get the people to vote in a referendum for or against separation; third, found the new nation.
“I was lonely, desperate to fill my empty hours. I was happy to do all the legwork, seal the envelopes, lick the stamps, take the leaflets door to door. There were lots of other young Québécois helping out, so I made a lot of friends. I’d get up at six in the morning to stand outside the metro with our candidate, then do the same thing in the evening after work, and then the endless planning meetings at night.
“But being young, of course, we thought it would happen right away. When our candidate lost, and René Lévesque lost, I was completely astonished and depressed. And I’ll tell you one of the reasons we lost: the FLQ. The Liberals were quick to associate the PQ with the bombs going off in Westmount, and it frightened people away. It didn’t matter how many times Lévesque said he did not condone violence, that the PQ stood for democracy; the FLQ scared people, so we lost, and we lost badly.
“It affected party workers different ways. One of the young men I worked with, Louis Labrecque, said it made him want to join the FLQ. He even asked me if I’d join, and I was so depressed that I said I might. I didn’t think anything would come of
it. To tell you the truth, I forgot about it.
“Bon. About six months later, he shows up at my door and asks if I would be willing to help the revolution, meaning the FLQ. I said I didn’t want anything to do with violence. He said, no, no—no violence. What they needed was money. He asked if I was still working at the oil company. For some reason I had told him about one of my duties there. Once a month the company delivered large sums of money to the various offices to make the payroll. This was in the days before electronic transfers, obviously. But they didn’t use a Brinks truck or anything. I just drove along with my boss and delivered these large manila envelopes to the various offices. He sat in the car while I went in with them.
“I told him I was not going to steal from the company where I worked. And he said, no, of course not, I would be the victim. They would rob me and my boss as we did our rounds. There was another payday in two weeks, they would do it then. I said I needed time to think about it.
“Well, he looked at me differently then. He didn’t like that at all. And I could see in his eyes exactly what he was thinking: if she doesn’t go along with it, that means I have opened myself up to the bitch in a completely insecure manner. He would be in trouble with other FLQ members. I can tell you, that look scared me. He gave me three days.
“I couldn’t sleep, I was so terrified. If I didn’t go along, I felt that I might be killed, and if I did go along, I was afraid I would go to prison. So, two nights later I put on a blond wig, and in the middle of the night I went to the police station and told them I had information about the FLQ. And that’s how I met Detective-Lieutenant Jean-Paul Fougère—may he rest in peace.”
She took a long pull on her cigarette. “Jean-Paul Fougère … Jean-Paul Fougère was thirty-five, slender, not big at all, and graceful—if graceful is a word you can use about a man—he just moved in a way that was fascinating to me. Just watching him light a cigarette was a pleasure—the way he would hold it while he was talking, or tap it against the ashtray—it was like a performance or something.
“Over the next few months he told me a lot about himself, but you don’t need to know that now. All you need to know is that he was high up in the CAT Squad and desperately wanted to infiltrate the FLQ. The cops never had any idea when they would strike next, they had no idea of the size of the threat. They knew who many of the members were—people from the extreme left wing, people in the Communist party, labour activists. But they couldn’t prove anything. They needed someone inside.
“Their attempts to recruit informers were pathetic. It made Jean-Paul crazy. You know how they would attempt to recruit someone? They’d simply pick him up on the street, take him to some horrible little hotel and terrorize him for hours. Pull out their guns and so on. As if this was going to make the poor bastard loyal to the forces of law and order. Or they would threaten some kid with exposure as a homosexual—which might have worked if they had actually picked one who was also close to the FLQ, but they always got it wrong. Bombs are going off all over Montreal and Quebec City and the CAT Squad is just getting nowhere. Jean-Paul’s boss is screaming for blood, the prime minister is screaming for blood, and they were just at a complete loss. Which is when I came along with my dilemma about the holdup.”
“You must have been a godsend,” Cardinal said.
“Oh, Jean-Paul couldn’t believe his luck. ‘What am I going to do about this robbery?’ I wailed. ‘They’ll kill me if I don’t go through with it.’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘you must go through with it, no question.’ Just like that. I thought he was crazy. There was no way I wanted to get robbed. What if they shot me or my boss in the process?”
She paused for a moment to pour herself more champagne, filling her glass to the top, careful as a surgeon, making sure nothing foamed over the rim. She lit another cigarette, even though the last one was still smoking in the ashtray and Cardinal’s eyes were already stinging. She sipped thoughtfully for a few moments. Then, holding her glass in her lap and staring down into the pale gold liquid as if it were a crystal ball, she said softly, “That was the beginning of my life as an informer.”
Delorme leaned forward. Cardinal had almost forgotten she was there. She had that ability, to settle into a quiet so intense that you forgot she was right beside you.
“They didn’t warn your company about the holdup?” she asked.
Rouault shook her head, scattering ashes over her chest and lap. “The company knew nothing. Fougère arranged with the bank to give them all marked bills, but other than that, everything proceeded as normal. Payday comes, the boss and I go to make our rounds, same as usual.”
“And who actually did the robbery?”
“There were three of them: Labrecque, a more senior guy named Claude Hibert and a true believer named Grenelle. Yves Grenelle—he was the only amateurish part of the whole thing.
“Three o’clock on the dot, the boss and I are about to deliver the cash to the first office. We stop out front, same place as usual, and before I can get out with the envelope, there are two men, one on either side of the car. There’s a third—Hibert, I later learned—ready with a car across the street. They demand all our money—wallet and purse to start with, so it doesn’t look like a set-up. And then—as if it’s on an impulse—Labrecque grabs the envelope I’m holding.
“It had all gone perfectly smoothly up to that point. Then, completely for no reason, Grenelle bashes my boss in the head. I think it was a blackjack he used. My boss had done nothing. He hadn’t resisted in any way. But Grenelle hits him with this thing and knocks him cold. It was stupid, you know, because it raised the crime from armed robbery to robbery with violence, for no reason. And my boss, well, I didn’t like him—he was always pinching me and making eyes at me—but I didn’t dislike him either. I certainly didn’t want to see him in hospital for three days, which is what happened. It’s not like in the movies where you get bashed in the head and you’re perfectly fine two minutes later.”
“How did the FLQ respond to your involvement?” Cardinal asked.
“Oh, I was in with flying colours. Labrecque said he’d never seen them so excited. He got a lot of mileage out of it, of course, for having recruited me. They got away with five thousand dollars, not realizing it was all marked bills, of course. So they loved me.”
“And did you see more of Grenelle?”
“The first thing I said when Lebrecque told me I was accepted was, I never want to work with Yves Grenelle again. Stupid violence.”
Ms. Rouault poured herself more champagne. “Over the next few months they mostly used me to recruit new people. They didn’t ask me to do anything extreme. Mostly I sat in the Chat Noir café—that’s where all the activists hung out—and waited for some young separatist to come on to me. We would talk about the revoloution and pretty soon he’d be committed to the FLQ. It’s amazing the trouble an infatuation can get you into.
“The truly fantastic piece of irony, however, was that I had no clue what was being done to me. You see, right from the first night, Detective Fougère treated me like the love of his life. He was so good to me, so considerate, so concerned for my safety. I was in danger all the time, of course, leading this double life. I’d be at FLQ meetings in the evening and two hours later I’d be relaying every word to the CAT Squad. I was frightened all the time. My nerves were a ruin. I hardly slept. Couldn’t eat. People like Hibert, like Grenelle, they were dead serious. There’s not the slightest doubt they would have killed me if they had known what I was up to.
“Well, the result was that I fell totally in love with Fougère.” She hung her head for a few moments. Cardinal was about to prompt her with a question when the grey head jerked upright again, and the grey eyes shone. “I just lived for our meetings. It was the only time I could be real, you see, the only time I could tell the exact truth without fear. After a few months I can’t tell you what a relief that was.”
“I can imagine,” Delorme said. “It must’ve been quite addictive.”
“Exactly, my dear.” Ms. Rouault nodded, spilling ash all over. “Both parts were addictive. The double life—what a sense of power I had. What importance! After being the rejected little housewife, here I was risking my life and saving my country at the same time. Fougère knew I was a separatist, of course, but he didn’t care. Both of us wanted the FLQ stopped, though for different reasons.
“And he was so kind to me. So tender.” She stopped again, her cigarette in mid-air. The grey eyes looked into an indeterminate distance, as if Fougère’s face hovered amid the smoke. “Just holding his hand meant so much to me. I felt so safe, so secure. Oh, he played me like a violin.
“Bon. All these months, Jean-Paul wasn’t interested in Labrecque. Too low-level to bother with. Didn’t care about Grenelle either—a blowhard, he called him. Not important. It was Claude Hibert he wanted me to get close to. Hibert wasn’t suspected of committing any violent acts, but he had become head of the information cell—the FLQ’s public relations office, if you like. He was bound to have contacts with the other cells. So I had two assignments: to win the confidence of Claude Hibert and to become head of my own cell.
“To be convincing as the head of a cell, of course, I would have to be able to blow things up and put out communiqués. I asked Hibert to get me some dynamite. He refused. ‘You’re not ready,’ he told me. I asked him for FLQ letterhead. We never did find out where they had it made. It had a watermark that went from the top of the page to the bottom—a picture of a patriote with a pipe in his teeth and a rifle in his hands. The CAT Squad was dying for me to get my hands on the genuine article. I didn’t understand why, at the time.
“But I kept bugging Hibert for explosives and letterhead. And he just kept saying, I’ll try, I’ll try. Fougère was getting more and more fed up. Then one night—it came out of the blue—he took me out to a very special restaurant, Ma Bourgogne. The finest restaurant in the city. Normally, we couldn’t do things like that because we couldn’t risk being seen together. But Jean-Paul went to infinite trouble—we had I don’t know how many men watching our backs and securing the area around the restaurant. He was bolstering my ego, showing how highly I was valued by the squad, and also he was making good use of the romantic setting.
