“Ms. Brion,” Vertesi began.
“Detective, we’ve shared coffee and Creole wafers. I think you can call me Celestine.”
“Thank you. We have two missions today, Celestine. One, as I mentioned when I called, is to review the first and last names of the faculty and staff. If we feel it will be helpful, we’ll want to interview anyone of interest. But we also need any information you or Mr. Westbrooke can give us on a former student, Luther Tirelle. He left for Cornell on a scholarship in 2002.”
“Oh my, a sports scholarship?”
Williams raised his eyebrows and glanced toward Vertesi.
“No, actually it was a business scholarship,” Vertesi said. “We’d like to speak to anyone who may recall Tirelle, any teachers he was close to.”
“Can you tell me why?”
“No … just that Mr. Tirelle may be able to assist us in our investigation.”
“Well, here’s the easy part.” Brion opened the red folder and retrieved the stack of paper inside, which she placed in front of them. “These are all the names of male staff at Mercy since 2000 with the initial S, either in their first or last name. Quite a few of them are no longer teaching here. I’ve provided additional anecdotal information and anything else I thought might be useful. For example,” she reached across and with a red fingernail pointed to the entry for Harvey Sharp. “Mr. Sharp is in a wheelchair.”
With the vice-principal’s help, Vertesi and Williams soon eliminated seven of the ten male staff: two of them were too short to have been the bomber, another had only been teaching for a year, Mr. Sangha because he was South Asian and Mr. Singleton because he was Trinidadian, Mr. Sharp because of the wheelchair and one had died of lung cancer. Of the remaining three, two were over six feet, but one of those, the shop teacher Sam Madden, weighed roughly three hundred pounds and walked with a pronounced limp. Unlikely. Both of the remaining S candidates had been at the school for at least ten years: Steve Bernard, Mercy’s religious studies teacher, who graduated from a seminary but didn’t enter the priesthood, and an English teacher, Mr. Swinton.
Something in the way the vice-principal spoke Swinton’s name caught Williams’s ear. “Tell us about Mr. Swinton.”
“Well, we don’t discuss these things, obviously, and he has never said anything, but I believe our Mr. Swinton is a bachelor by choice.”
“Are you saying Swinton’s gay?”
“Well, he’s a very committed bachelor.”
“You mean he’s a womanizer?” Vertesi asked.
“Well, the opposite, really,” she said, looking uncomfortable. “I’m going to go ask the principal to join us.”
After she left the office, Williams turned to Vertesi. “So, lemme see, we’ve got a gay guy forced to stay in the closet, a graduate seminarian and an obese, limping shop teacher.”
The meeting with the principal proved slightly more productive. Westbrooke told them he had helped Luther Tirelle apply for his scholarship. “Luther was exemplary, not only top of his class, he actually topped the entire graduating class of 2002. His interests were primarily academic. Though he played basketball, Coach Knox kept him mostly on the bench.”
“Has Tirelle maintained contact with anyone at Mercy?” Williams asked.
“Apart from a brief trip back from Cornell when he spoke to the senior student body about self-discipline and creative thinking, I don’t believe so. As often happens, once students leave the city, we rarely hear from them. I found out that he’d dropped out of Cornell after two very successful years, but I haven’t been in touch with him since and, as far as I know, no one else has, either.”
“Was he particularly close to any of your staff, sir?” Vertesi asked.
“Who wasn’t he close to? Luther had that spark every teacher looks for in a student. I wish I could be more helpful … Perhaps if you told me why you’re looking for him?”
Nice try, Williams thought, and Vertesi gave the stock answer.
Westbrooke took that to be the end of the discussion and stood up. “There are several photos of Luther in the halls. If you’re interested, Ms. Brion can point them out to you.” With that, he shook both their hands, thanked his vice-principal and was out the door.
“Celestine,” Williams said, “all we need now is a brief word with Mr. Madden, Mr. Bernard and Mr. Swinton.”
She nodded. “I’ll find a room where you can meet.”
A half-hour later, they left the building, convinced that the man who blew up Nicholson and killed Constable Szabo wasn’t currently teaching kids at Mercy.
Chapter 27
MacNeice and Aziz headed over to the Block and Tackle Bar: it was time to tell Byrne about the evidence found in the boat and advise him to hire a lawyer.
As MacNeice reached for the handle, the door of the bar flew open so suddenly that he had to step aside for a large man in a hurry.
“Pardon me,” MacNeice said.
The man snapped a look his way, gave him a brief nod and headed down the steps. MacNeice turned to watch him. The man carried his significant bulk with an athletic and even jaunty bounce, and as if on cue, when he reached the street, a large silver Mercedes SUV with black-tinted windows lurched to a stop, and the big man climbed into the rear seat. The SUV moved south and turned down the first side street. Its licence plate was easy enough to remember: MACHT4.
“Cute,” Aziz said, also having followed the man’s progress. “A nice play on mach, or ‘speed,’ and macht, German for ‘power’ or ‘force.’ ”
“Hold on a minute, Fiza,” MacNeice said. He took out his cellphone and called Division. “Ryan, run a plate for me: Mother-Albert-Charles-Henry-Thomas-4. It’s a silver Mercedes, a big, lumbering retro job.”
Ryan began clicking away. “I know the model—G-Class—but I always imagine it in desert camouflage as Rommel’s North African staff car.”
“Desert’s too hot,” MacNeice responded. “Might work better for Rommel’s defence of the Atlantic Wall.”
“Oh yeah, no a/c back then. Here you are, sir: MACHT4 is registered to Canada Coil and Wire Inc., 1400 Burlington Street East, Suite 210.”
“Find out who owns Canada Coil and how many employees it has, and text the info to me as soon as you can. Thanks.” He hung up and said to Aziz, “Freddy’s a typical patron here. That man isn’t. Neither are his wheels.”
“Maybe he’s the man Freddy saw.”
Before MacNeice could respond, William Byrne opened the door to the bar. “You two want your refreshments out here, or inside, where it’s warm?” He didn’t wait for an answer, just let the door go.
Inside certainly was warmer, but there was a lingering smell of fish and chips, vinegar and spilt beer. Two geezers nursed pints in the corner by the window, staring out at nothing in particular. A trio of younger men had their faces glued to the muted television screen, watching a replay of a football game from the past season. Judging by the two large half-empty plastic jugs of beer on the table, it didn’t matter to them who was winning. On the sound system, Frank Sinatra was doing it his way but, happily, at early-afternoon decibels. Byrne led them toward his office
Approaching the door, he said, “First things first: Where’s me boat? You have no right to seize a man’s boat and not even tell the owner what it’s suspected of doing. If you want to go out fishing, get yer own bloody boat.”
MacNeice ignored the theatrics. “Who was that fellow who was leaving as we arrived?”
Byrne opened the door and headed for his desk. “He’s another customer, fairly regular, always enjoys a pint and the Fish ’n’ chips. I’ve never took note of his name, because he always pays cash.”
Following him in, MacNeice took his coat off and draped it over the back of the chair before sitting. Aziz did the same and, making a show of settling in for the long term, took out her notebook.
Before a word could be said, MacNeice stood up again and walked over to the small north-facing window to stare out at the sliver of the bay between the
buildings and trees. Somewhere unseen, but across the water, was the tiny bay called Cootes Paradise.
Byrne looked at Aziz, then up at MacNeice, then back at Aziz.
“Do you have a criminal lawyer on retainer, Mr. Byrne?” MacNeice asked from his spot at the window, his question leaving a little fog circle on the glass. It was so flatly delivered that Byrne didn’t react at first, as if he didn’t understand the meaning of what the detective superintendent had said. MacNeice breathed on the glass and drew an exclamation mark in the fog. The question hung in the air. Finally Byrne swallowed hard and asked MacNeice if he was serious.
MacNeice turned away from the window and looked down at him with searing contempt. He returned to his chair, dragging it around the side of the desk and closer to Byrne before he sat. Their knees were almost touching. Tiny beads of sweat were beginning to form on Byrne’s upper lip.
“What do you think is going to happen next, Mr. Byrne?” MacNeice said.
Byrne wiped his upper lip. When MacNeice just stared at him, he finally answered the first question. “No, I don’t have a criminal lawyer on the payroll. I’m an honest man who’s just trying to get by, and I don’t appreciate being—”
“Shut up.”
Aziz flinched and Byrne looked like he’d just been slapped.
MacNeice leaned into him. “For the next five minutes, the wisest thing you can say is nothing. You need to grasp how seriously you’re implicated in the murders of two people. I will consider any smartass comment you make a refusal to co-operate and you will be cuffed and taken to the station.”
MacNeice reached over for the briefcase by Aziz’s chair, unclasped it and pulled out a folder. From it, he pulled three photos and slapped them on the desk in front of Byrne: the first of an Irish or Italian flag tattoo on bluish flesh, the second of a bathing beauty tattoo on an arm. “This one was done in Japan, apparently. I’m told it was a terrific tattoo.” The last image was of the bloated black head and blue-grey upper torso of Duguald Langan, formerly of County Meath, Ireland. MacNeice took one more image out of the folder: the porcelain face and matted hair of Anniken Kallevik.
Byrne’s bleary eyes had opened wide, not in shock or horror, MacNeice thought, but in disgust. MacNeice pulled out a plastic bag with the betting chit in it. He placed it over the photo of Duguald’s head and shoulders. Next to that, he set down a photocopy of a room registry page for November.
Byrne looked up at Aziz and found no sympathy there. He looked at the chit and the registry page, shrugged and sat back in his chair.
“And now for your boat.” MacNeice pulled out a stack of images of the boat, each a blow-up revealing something Forensics had discovered in it. One by one, MacNeice set them down, with commentary: “Pubic hairs, female; head hair, male; a turquoise stone.” MacNeice held the next shots up for Byrne: Duguald’s ear with its flattened ring, and his other ear with the matching stone. The last shot was of two identical anchors. “At least three people, possibly four, went out for a ride in your boat—two of them didn’t return.
“The pubic hairs came from Anniken Kallevik—one from the boat, the other from her body. They’re a dead match. The anchors and line were purchased at the same time, and that purchase makes this premeditated murder.” He sat back in his chair.
He tapped the photo of Duguald’s bloated head. “This young man had developed many skills in life, and one of those was as a bookie. Is that why he died? How did Duguald know Anniken Kallevik? Why was she in that boat? If I feel you’re not being honest in your answers to these questions, Mr. Byrne, you’ll be out that door and taken to the station quicker than you can say fish and chips. And my sincere recommendation is that you find yourself a criminal lawyer.” He looked at his watch. “So that’s my five minutes. Do you have anything you want to say?”
“I need a drink,” Byrne said, jumping up from his chair.
“Sit down. Detective Aziz will get it for you. Water?”
“No. Irish whiskey, a double.”
Aziz came back with a double shot of whiskey in a heavy glass, which she handed to him. Byrne looked down at the amber liquid. He took one and then several more sips from the glass, his hand shaking slightly. At last, he said, “Duguald was in love. There was no telling him to back off—he was that stupid about her. He couldn’t see what was obvious. She was educated and doing her grand tour, and getting deeply involved with Duggie—a young lad who’d never made it out of fifth form—wasn’t going to happen.”
“How’d he meet her?” Aziz asked.
“He had business at the yacht club and bumped into her in the hallway.”
MacNeice asked him what business Duguald had and who with.
“A woman named Melody was the go-between for the bets of some of the club’s members. It was supposed to be done on the sly, eh. None of the yacht club folk were supposed to know about Duggie, and he didn’t need to know who was actually placing the bets, just their initials. This was a win-win for everybody: he took the percentage owed a bookie and gave a small percentage to the woman, and she was also getting a slice from the members. But, pretty soon, more members wanted in.”
By the time he bumped into Anniken, Byrne said, Duguald was feeling confident that he was finally on his way to building a real nest egg, something he never had in the old country and couldn’t get at sea. During the day he’d run the bets from the bar, and at night, he’d steal away from the front desk and wait for Anniken to finish her shift, so he could walk her home. “He told her the north end wasn’t safe and he could protect her. The thing was, Duguald didn’t want just to have sex with Anniken—he’d travelled the world and had sex enough for two lives, he told me. He wanted to take care of her, to be in her company, no pressure, so that finally, he hoped, she would grow fond of him.”
“What led him to bookmaking?” MacNeice asked.
“I don’t know. But a month into it, he told me, ‘Bookmaking is simple; it’s just numbers and relationships—mostly relationships.’ I wouldn’t trust a bookie, and I told him so, but his answer was, ‘You’d trust me though, wouldn’t ya?’ ” Byrne acknowledged the point. “I would trust him. I did. And it wasn’t about Duggie being family. I wouldn’t trust any of his people to pick up a packet a fags. But Duggie had real presence, and his looks were movie-star level, like a young Liam Neeson, but shorter and darker.”
Aziz looked up from her notes. “How did he convince people he knew anything about horse racing? He’d been at sea, not at the track.”
“The lad did his homework. As soon as he got here, he was studying the horses—their history, trainers, jockeys and lineage.” Byrne finished his whiskey and set the glass down near the photo of Duguald’s head. “In a few months, he was making more money than I was at the bar, and he thought that the people at the yacht club, who initially never knew who the ‘Irish bookie’ was, were his friends.”
“His friends didn’t mind losing money?” MacNeice asked.
“Maybe some did, but for the high rollers at the yacht club, this was ‘fun money,’ and Duggie had his Irish charm.”
“Did Melody continue as his go-between?” Aziz asked.
“No. Eventually the betters wanted to know who was taking their money. She was still getting her cut, from both sides.”
“So he bumped into Anniken at the yacht club, but how did he come to start walking her home?” MacNeice asked.
“Melody agreed to introduce him to her, and he offered to walk her back to the hostel. I knew, because he missed his shift that night. It was already light when he got back.”
“And you asked him about her?”
“I did. He said they just sat in the hostel lounge all night, talking about the places they’d been around the world.” Byrne shook his head. “Basically, Duggie was hungry for a settled life after drifting for years. Bookmaking made him a lot of money in a short time. He was working up to asking Anniken to run away, get married and see the rest of the world together. He upped his game because he thought he
needed a lot more in that nest egg to pull it off.”
“Had he proposed this to Anniken?”
“No, and I tried to tell him he was dreaming, that they were from two different worlds. But he knew that. I never met her because Duggie thought she was too fine to bring to the bar. I told him she was going to go back to Norway to become a doctor who’d marry a doctor, not an Irish merchant seaman bookie.”
“How did he take that?”
“It was a good thing we were family,” Byrne said, “not that Duggie wouldn’t pop his own brother. He’d knocked out his father and brother all in the course of one evening, back in the day. He said that for Anniken, he’d live in Norway, where he could fish or be a cabinetmaker or a farmer. He was crazy-stupid for her.”
“She had no idea of this plan?” Aziz asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t know even if she understood his feelings for her to be anything more than platonic, since Duggie never made a move on her. I know he wouldn’t have, because to him, Anniken was the Virgin Mary. He was a county boy, a rough diamond, and he believed she had the Virgin’s power. He was serious. He really had no way of knowing if she was, in fact, a virgin, but he told me, ‘Anni’s pure, Billy. She’s feckin’ pure.’ ” Byrne looked at Aziz. “He asked me if I knew what that meant and I didn’t respond.” Byrne twirled the glass slowly on its bottom. “He says, ‘I will be saved by the love of a pure woman, that’s what it means, ya dim twat. I’ll be once more as pure as the driven snow—no more drinkin’, fightin’ or whorin’.’ ” Byrne cleared his throat. “Duggie’s whole family are titched with a passion, ya know … That’s why he was a roustabout making his way around the world in the first place. The lad just didn’t have a proper outlet.”
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