The storeroom contained an industrial washer and dryer for the bed linens and towels, kitchen and bar supplies, a stack of toilet paper, tiny bars of Ivory soap, and extra towels, sheets, blankets, pillows and pillowcases. Like the office, there was no room to spare.
The bar was empty, inhabited only by the sour smell of spilt beer from all the nights before this morning. MacNeice moved into the middle of the space. The washrooms were on either side of the stairs leading to the rooms above. The entry wall featured—what else?—grimy block and tackle, fishnets, framed black and white photos of large trawlers. Several featured docks—somewhere other than Dundurn—where large fish were hung for weight and length with men smiling and smoking pipes, wearing heavy sweaters or rain gear and waving to the camera. The windows that faced the street looked untouched from when they’d been installed in the 1880s.
Byrne watched MacNeice as his eyes took in every detail. He drew the detective’ attention back to the end of the bar and the cash register. “I usually keep the registries here the till. It doubles as the check-in counter.”
Byrne led the way up the stairs. On the landing there was a heavy door that he said was deadlocked between one and six a.m. The only way out was the fire escape on the south side of the building, and if someone returned after the bar was closed, they’d be locked out of the building until six a.m. “Saves me having an all-night clerk in slow seasons like this and keeps the sleepwalkers from coming down for a drink after I’ve gone home.”
“Not exactly code, Mr. Byrne. I would recommend you have a night clerk if you’re going to rent these rooms.”
MacNeice turned and opened the washroom door next to the stairs. Shiny painted white walls, a toilet stall, shower and two sinks set into a laminate counter. On the wall was a mirror and, next to it, soap and paper towel dispensers. Both appeared to be empty.
The corner room Byrne wryly referred to as the “Presidential Suite” had a shower stall that was so stained with use and age that it looked like nicotine plastic. Its faucet dripped, hitting the contained aluminum base with a plit, plit, plit.
The enamel was all but worn off the sink, and the mirror was so dull you wouldn’t bother looking for yourself in it. While cheap to begin with, the double bed was worn out, sagging from its hard life. There was a single night table of worn pine, with burns on the edges and circles from endless bottles. A nice touch for the port flophouse theme was an imitation hurricane lamp on the table, its metal base rusting. The bedcover emphasized a cigarette burn near the thin pillows, and underfoot, the carpeting was prickly and stiff. It reminded MacNeice of walking on the frozen grass at the bay. A pale yellowy green curtain covered the window, casting an uneasy tint across the room.
The room across the hall—with no such lofty designate—had only a sink, a 1950s armoire and an identical bed and night table. The lighting was provided by two four-foot fluorescent tubes behind a dirty acrylic lens. The colour scheme was hospital blue. It was a toss-up as to which room was the more depressing.
“No televisions?”
“There’s TV downstairs, and beer, if you catch my drift. We don’t have room service.”
MacNeice nodded. Abandon all hope ye who enter here. He told the barman to carry on, and Byrne swung the key ring theatrically around his index finger to isolate a key. He appeared to be enjoying the tour.
Byrne opened the next door. MacNeice stepped past him into a wall of musty air. The room was fitted out with a double bed and two straight-backed wooden chairs, a metal nightstand and, overhead, a bare fluorescent tube. A brown curtain was drawn over a small closet. When he pulled it back, he found three shelves with curling paper. Two dead flies lay together on the middle shelf. Byrne brushed them off and they fell to the cracked red and black checkerboard linoleum floor.
“Comfy, eh? I mean, yer here to sleep. It’s not a drawing room for receptions.”
“Next.”
The rest of the rooms were rented. Given how quiet it was, the three tenants were presumably still asleep. Byrne smiled, knocked sharply at the first door and announced, “Police,” before turning the key. Startled, an old man in pyjamas sat up and put his glasses on. “Mornin’,” he said, as if Byrne and MacNeice standing before him was the most natural thing in the world.
MacNeice asked him how long he’d been rooming at the bar. The old man reached over to a cup on the bedside table, put his hand in and retrieved his dentures. He positioned them and worked his jaw once or twice. “Well, I dunno … What do you think, Billy, three, four months now?”
Byrne shrugged his shoulders. MacNeice turned to the old man again. “So, what’s your name?”
“Freddy Dewar.”
“When was the last time you had a decent breakfast, Mr. Dewar?”
Freddy looked over his glasses at the detective. “What, you mean like bacon and eggs and hash browns?”
That was exactly what MacNeice meant. “How about you come along with me and you can eat while we chat?”
The old man’s face brightened. “Sure. Gimme a few minutes and I’ll be right with you.”
The other two roomers had awoken when they heard Byrne call, “Police.” They were both new to the bar. The first had arrived two days ago. An Italian immigrant in his thirties, he was looking for work as a carpenter. He retrieved his passport and landed immigrant status papers from a heavy corduroy jacket and handed them to MacNeice. The detective made a mental note of the name and handed both back to him.
The last of the roomers stood up shakily as they came through the door. He was a heavy man in his late fifties. His wife had thrown him out of the house the week before because of his drinking.
If there was anything left in the rooms from late November or December, it might be very tired evidence, worn down by disinterest, disinfectants and stale air.
Byrne walked MacNeice to the front door and out on the porch, where he lit up another cigarette. MacNeice was going to ask the question anyway, but this seemed to be the best time to do it.
“Do you own a boat, Mr. Byrne?”
“What for?”
“You mean, why am I asking, or why would you want a boat?”
“The former.”
MacNeice watched Byrne, patiently wondering if the barman would answer, curious to know what he might be thinking.
“I’ve an old eighteen-foot aluminum boat. In season, it’s tied up at the far end of Macassa, far enough away from the yacht club that people won’t be embarrassed.”
“And where is it now?”
“In the garage beside me house and it stays there till the beginning a May, when I put it in the water to go fishing again.” Byrne looked at his watch, snuffed the cigarette against a column and turned to go inside.
“There’ll be a unit down here for the boat and a forensics team to do a thorough search of the premises—they’ll be as efficient as possible so as not to interrupt your business.”
Byrne exhaled dramatically but said nothing.
When he’d gone, MacNeice called Aziz to get the additional warrant to have the boat picked up.
Chapter 7
The Committed Chick was dedicated to all-day breakfasts and never-ending coffee. Freddy Dewar read the menu, taking his time over the cartoons of cavorting yellow chicks and photos of the specials. He settled on Chickin-lickin-blues, pancakes with two strips of bacon, maple syrup and blueberries—whipped cream on the side—and said yes to the bottomless cup of coffee.
Though it was a lie, MacNeice said he’d already eaten and ordered tea with milk—referencing the chick in a bowler hat with an umbrella tucked under its wing. He pulled a notepad from his briefcase and set a pen down on top of it. “Tell me about your life, Freddy.”
“I don’t recall ever being asked that question.” Dewar smiled. He absent-mindedly ran his fingers over the crease in the paper napkin, and then he started at the beginning. Born in Halifax, Freddy was eighty-four. He joined the merchant marine at fifteen, surviving the war ferrying supplies, equip
ment and men across the Atlantic. Afterwards, he tried settling down in Halifax, but it didn’t take. There was no steady work on land for a stoker. He eventually came west to Dundurn and worked with the city’s road crews patching cracks in the summer and spreading sand, and later, salt in the winter. For a few years, he signed on to the lake freighters, but he found working the lakes deadly boring.
Freddy paused as the waitress put the stainless steel teapot and china mug in front of MacNeice. He said he went back to spreading gravel in Dundurn and a year later married Florence—Flo—a girl he’d met at the Woolworth’s lunch counter. She worked next door in the lingerie department of The Right House. They had a daughter together—Edith.
The waitress slid the plate of pancakes in front of Dewar and filled his cup with coffee.
“Three years ago, almost to the day, Flo died of a heart attack. She was seventy-six. I sold the house on Province Street, including its contents, and moved to Edith’s dairy farm near London.”
He had his own room at the farm and the food was fine—there was always plenty of it—but there was nothing for him to do. His daughter was a teacher and her husband farmed from sunrise to sunset. They didn’t have kids, so he couldn’t even babysit. Before the first snow came, he moved back to Dundurn with nothing but a duffle bag and the nest egg of his savings account.
“Why would you live at the Block and Tackle rather than take a small place of your own?”
“I considered it. But I’d have to get furniture—everything from a bed to a lawnmower—and it didn’t make sense since I could be dead in a year or two.” The napkin’s crease was now crisp; he patted it gently, a job well done. “I stayed at the bar a couple a times when I was working freighters, eh. I like the old guys there, always somethin’ to talk about, something to watch on TV, and I’m crazy about Fish ’n’ chips. Reminds me of a place in Southampton during the war. That was the best you could hope for: getting there in one piece, then Fish ’n’ chips and a pint. Funny eh? Unlucky, and you were fish food; lucky, and you ate good fish … Anyways, it’s pretty clean, and I’ve only ever had one thing swiped—my duffle bag. And I don’t know why anyone would want that old thing. My name was on it—F. A. Dewar—and stencilled below was “Stoker.” The thing has to be sixty years old or more.”
“When was the bag stolen?”
“Pearl Harbor Day—last December 7th.”
MacNeice watched the old man mop up the remaining syrup and cream with the last section of the pancakes, creating an elegant series of looping blue and gold and white swirls on the plate. Freddy had a steady hand, absent of any tremors of age. When he was done, the waitress came by and scooped up the plate in one hand, pouring Freddy a top-up with the other.
At last, MacNeice produced the photograph of the young woman. Before showing it to Dewar, he told him that she had died violently out on the bay. He said there was a chance, a remote possibility, that she may have had a beer, or fish and chips, or even stayed a night or two at the bar. He laid the photo on the table and waited.
Freddy wiped his mouth with the napkin, adjusted his glasses and looked down at the face.
“She’s a goner in this picture?”
MacNeice nodded.
“You been to the bar, detective? I mean when they’re serving?”
“I have.”
“Well there aren’t many women who come in for a beer, let alone dinner. The ones who do are geezers like me and some don’t bother putting their teeth in.”
“Her face isn’t familiar to you then?”
“Oh, I didn’t say that. No, I’ve seen her all right.” He tapped the photocopy with a crooked right index finger. “I can’t say where … but not at the bar. I can tell you the hair’s wrong. You’ve made it straight, eh, and this gal’s hair was wavy.” He handed the photocopy back to MacNeice.
“Try and recall where you saw her, Freddy, and why you’d remember her at all—especially her hair.”
“Oh, that’s easy. An early life at sea, eh. The only thing we ever talked about was girls. We had pin-ups taped everywhere.” Freddy sat up and said, “Betty Grable, that’s it. Her hair was blond and wavy like Grable’s.”
MacNeice was struck by how animated the old man had become. “Anyways, ever since then, I’ve liked looking at girls—though not without clothes Our pin-ups always had something on, a bathing costume, a fancy dress …”
MacNeice asked again, “Can you recall where you saw this particular young woman?”
Freddy sipped his coffee, taking warmth from the mug, thinking hard, but finally gave up. “I can’t.”
“Give me an idea of your typical day. Do you go for walks?”
“Oh yeah, I walk everywhere. Over to the main library … I can spend a day there. Or down to the water, sometimes the botanical gardens or just along Burlington to see the ships coming and going. Mostly, folks pass you by like you was invisible, eh, and I don’t blame them.”
After breakfast, MacNeice dropped Dewar back at the BTB. He wrote his cell number on the back of a card. “You’ve seen her face, Freddy. When you remember where you saw her, call me right away.”
On his way back to the division, MacNeice drove slowly past Byrne’s house. A patrol car was already parked in the driveway, facing the street with its engine running. The uniform inside spotted the unmarked Chevy passing slowly and nodded.
Chapter 8
The name appeared for the first time on November 14, not as a roomer, but scrawled across the spot for Day/Night Clerk, the final box in the column: Duguald—no last name. The entries prior to that had been Byrne, and on December 28, Byrne was back. MacNeice put the name on the whiteboard under the Block and Tackle Bar.
“Ryan, what’s the etymology of Duguald? Please tell me it’s Irish.”
“I’ll check.” Click click click pause … click pause. “Irish, sir … means ‘dark stranger.’ ”
“You’re serious?” MacNeice looked up from his desk as the young man spun around in his chair.
“Completely. There are different ways to spell it, but that’s what it means. It’s Gaelic.” Ryan spun back to the computer, where he was searching the missing persons files of several forces, looking for a lead to either the body in the bay or the one blown up in the wagon.
Standing back from the board, MacNeice let his mind wander, flipping the red marker over and around the fingers of his right hand, the way Clint Eastwood would a silver dollar.
Did the name trace back to the Black Irish and the myth surrounding the fate of the Spanish Armada after its catastrophic defeat at Gravesend? Many of the men who survived that battle and its desperate retreat—the long way around the British Isles through gut-wrenching storms—were shipwrecked off Ireland’s northwest coast. Most were slaughtered on the beaches, stripped of anything useful and rolled back over the cold stones into the sea. Those not put to death were taken into service as soldiers by the Irish warlords. As the story goes, these men married or otherwise impregnated the fair and freckled girls of Kerry and Antrim. The product of their coupling was born: fair and freckled, dark and fair, or simply dark. Born with them was the story that Black Irish were the descendants of Spaniards that had washed ashore. The myth refuses to die, but then great myths never do.
“Black Irish” may also have been an ancient English slur suggesting the treachery of the Irish. If so, it was a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black. Putting the marker back in the tray, MacNeice cautioned himself not to read too much into the name.
Aziz appeared, espresso in hand, hanging her wet coat over the leading edge of the cubicle.
MacNeice sat down at his desk again. “Tell me, how are the casualties doing?”
“Michael says the paramedic will live, but it could be weeks before the doctors will know if he’ll be able to return to work. The damage to his upper arm and shoulder will heal, but a portion of the lung on that side is gone. As for Szabo, the neurosurgeon was able to stop the bleeding and reduce the pressure in his brain. But
he’s in an induced coma and no one is giving a prognosis. Both these men have young wives. The cop has two small children, a two-year-old girl and a baby boy. The paramedic has only been married a year.”
The phone rang. Ryan had taken to wearing a headset and answering the team’s phone without having to leave his keyboard. “Boss, it’s Forensics calling about a boat.”
MacNeice picked up.
“It’s Nathan Ho, sir, senior scientist up at the Mount Hope Forensics. Can you tell me what I’m looking for?” Byrne’s aluminum boat had been taken to one of the decommissioned RCAF hangars at Dundurn’s regional airport.
“DNA—anything female. Hair, pubic hair, clothing, a lost lipstick tube, an eyelash, a fingernail.”
“What I can already tell you is that this really is a fishing boat. I’ve found dozens of small silvery scales and a fair amount of dried slime.”
“Is there an anchor?”
“A twenty-pounder. It appears to be old, what fishermen call a bass river anchor. It’s attached to a coiled half-inch white rope … about thirty feet long.” MacNeice could hear him walking around the boat, his voice booming in the hangar. “There’s another anchor too,” Ho said, “but it’s not so fancy. It’s a makeshift job—an industrial-sized juice can with a heavy-duty galvanized eyelet set in concrete and a similar length of the same rope.”
MacNeice asked Ho how long it would take to do a thorough sweep, but Ho was reluctant to promise anything specific. He was about to hang up when he volunteered something else. “The guy that towed it in said it’s not local. The numbers on the side are American and the draft is so shallow, it really is meant for bass fishing on a river, not Lake Ontario or even Dundurn Bay. We’re checking the registration now.”
It wasn’t just that a shallow draft boat couldn’t make it across the bay in November or December. To dump a body wrapped in a rope with a heavy anchor overboard would take a man much more robust than Byrne. But, when the winds of winter were howling over the water, crossing with three people might have drowned them all. No, MacNeice didn’t think Byrne was the prime suspect, but he wasn’t ruling out that Byrne knew who was.
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