“Aye, but as ye can see, ah don’t lack for confidence. Ah’m also a wee bit fatalistic—we have ta be in our line of work, do ye na think?”
Seeing the surprise on MacNeice’s face, he added, “Ye and me are like rugby players. You’re city, ah’m international. There’s more at stake in my game—failure is fatal—but the pay packet’s thicker.” He smiled like a man who liked his chances. Putting on his coat, he added, “Ah honestly feel terrible about Anni, a bonnie wee girl, and Sherry too. Actually, MacNeice, to be truthful, ah just wanted to confess my sins to a fellow traveller.”
He shoved the cord back in MacNeice’s mouth, then winked and headed for the door, where he stopped to say, “Don’t bother looking for me on the motorways or waterways. Just imagine ah was the grim reaper tha’ came ta town, then left. We won’t meet again, MacNeice.”
The fire was now crackling in the kitchen. The moment Bishop stepped out to the landing, the smoke curled into the living room and travelled swiftly across the ceiling toward the door. Bishop leaned back into the apartment and gave a casual salute to Samantha.
As the door closed, the smoke detector came to life with a painfully loud blurp, blurp, blurp. MacNeice shoved his head back against the wall, trying to get the chair onto its back legs so he could use his feet. It was to no effect—the chair legs were too close to the wall. Finally, he managed to get the sole of his left shoe, then his right, flat against the wall. He pushed off sharply, forcing his head and shoulders forward for momentum. The chair tipped and fell, smashing his knees, then his forehead, on the floor. He was face down on the carpet with no ability to move to either side. The blood rushed to his head, into his mouth and out his nose. He was going to suffocate if he didn’t do something fast.
On top of that, smoke was curling around MacNeice’s head. He used whatever lung capacity he could command to exhale, sending spittle and gore whistling past the cord and onto the floor. But when he attempted to inhale, he took in smoke and choked, which left him with no capacity to breathe in or out. He blinked hard, the smoke searing his eyes. The last thing he saw were the flames rising in the kitchen. Then it hit him: he’d always wondered how his life would end, and here he was, upside down, literally out of breath, choking on his own blood.
Chapter 32
Bright … so bright. So cold … it’s freezing. He couldn’t tell if his eyes were open or closed, but his thoughts searched for Kate. He imagined blinking—but was he blinking? The light was so intense. Why would God take me away only to blind me, and why is it so bloody cold? Kate hated the cold; her request to be cremated was, in part, a final claim on warmth.
Beyond a mechanical wheeze, he couldn’t hear anything, but he felt no pain and his body felt weightless. He assumed he was floating upwards. Kate … Kate, I’m here. He was certain she’d hear him, but he couldn’t feel his mouth move—was this how it worked? You think you’re speaking, but you’re not. He blinked several times because he didn’t want to miss the first sight of her—she’d be wearing white. She always chose white. A summer dress, French and flowing. But it’s so cold here. And that wheeze—is that me? He held his breath, listening. The noise continued. Was he actually holding his breath? He couldn’t tell. Were his eyes open? He thought so, but when he blinked, it was the same: white, very white.
“He’s suffered heat and smoke inhalation damage to his upper respiratory tract,” Dr. Munez said to Aziz as he looked into the ICU cubicle where MacNeice lay. A breathing tube was inserted in his mouth and down his throat, the other end attached to a respirator. He had IVs in both arms. “Clinically, he was dead when the firefighters arrived, but the scans indicate there’s no brain damage. He’s heavily sedated so he will tolerate the respirator, and he’s on antibiotics and cortisone—steroids—through the intravenous drips.” The immediate concern, he said, was not brain function, though there was evidence that he’d received a concussion either due to the fall or a blow inflicted prior to it. “The very real concern now is clearing the carbon monoxide built up in his lungs.”
The doctor told Aziz there was the potential of a fatal chain reaction, a shutting down of MacNeice’s ability to take in oxygen. “After that, pneumonia follows quickly and, well …” Seeing the shock on her face, he added, “It’s only been twenty-four hours, detective; we just need more time. We’ll take him off the respirator in a few days and see if he can breathe on his own. If he can, we’ll move him to a step-down unit. He won’t likely be able to speak for a while—imagine a severe case of laryngitis. Being optimistic, I’d say he’s going to be in hospital for at least a week or two.”
“What’s the condition of the woman who was found with him?” Aziz asked.
“Ah … she had been gagged too, but she was upright, bound to a chair, and didn’t have the added complication of a broken nose. The ground floor door had apparently been left open so the dense smoke that enveloped your colleague mostly passed her by. She suffered some damage to her upper respiratory tract, however she’s already in a step-down unit.”
Aziz was still focused on MacNeice. “He has a broken nose?”
“Sorry, yes. What made his breathing difficult was the fact that it was broken at the bridge, but, ironically, it may have saved his life.”
“How so?”
“He couldn’t breathe, you see. There was so much blood in his nasal passage, mouth and throat that he was filtering some of the smoke and lethal particulates. Mind you, in the end he couldn’t breathe at all.”
“Was the woman … interfered with?”
“Ah, no. There appeared to be no physical interference other than the bruising caused by the ties on her wrists and ankles.”
“Is she conscious?”
“No. While she’s off the respirator, we’re keeping her sedated to minimize the stress on her throat and lungs. We’re going to keep her asleep until tomorrow morning, then wake her.”
Munez excused himself and left Aziz alone. She moved closer to MacNeice’s head and immediately regretted it. His face was pale and puffy, and his eyes were swollen shut, the colour of purple plums. She put her hand on his shoulder—it felt cold. Too cold. She removed her hand.
Waving to the cop sitting in his cruiser, Aziz climbed over the police tape surrounding Samantha’s apartment. Vertesi and Williams were on the way, but she’d have at least ten minutes alone. Even before she left the sidewalk, she was hit by the acrid smell of burnt plastic and wood. Reaching into her pocket, Aziz took out several tissues, covered her nose and mouth and stepped inside. She climbed the stairs, which were covered with fine black ash, and paused at the threshold of the unit.
To the right, between the living room and bedroom, was a chair on its side. Next to it lay a soiled blue blanket; plastic ties were scattered where they’d been cut from the woman’s wrists and ankles. A knotted blue gag-cord was looped over the bedroom door handle.
To her immediate left was another chair. The bloodstains smeared on its seat had for the most part been diluted by firehoses and left to form a large pink pool on the floor. Two pencils and four plastic ties were thrown against the wall, likely by the force of the hoses. A bloodied blue cord was tangled around a leg of the chair. She tucked the tissues in a pocket and kept her hands there. Though there was abundant smoke and water damage, there was no sign that the fire had actually reached the living room. However, the kitchen was destroyed. The laminates were buckled and blistered, and whole cupboard units were charred and cut through by axes. Their contents lay scattered and crushed on the floor. A champagne bucket had melted on the counter, and kernels of dark green glass, like a cache of emeralds, had been blown everywhere when the bottle exploded in the heat. They crunched noisily underfoot as Aziz walked to the staircase leading up to the office and roof patio. While charred, it was still intact.
Back in the living room, she picked up MacNeice’s coat and held it to her chest. Moving reluctantly to the bedroom, she stopped and looked back from the vantage point of the overturned chair. Whatever happe
ned, MacNeice’s lover had had no choice but to watch. Aziz stopped at the bedroom door, looked in and saw that the bed was untouched.
Aziz could hear Vertesi and Williams thumping up the stairs. She put MacNeice’s coat back on the sofa. When they came in, Williams touched Aziz’s arm briefly before he walked past her to squat, looking at the bloodied chair. Vertesi went into the kitchen and stood there, hands in his pockets, staring around at the damage. “Weird,” he said.
Using his pen, Williams picked up and studied the cord. “What’s weird?” he asked.
“Like we’ve just learned Dad’s been having an affair—weird.”
“Anyone know who she is?” Williams asked, putting the cord down.
Aziz descended the staircase from the mezzanine office. “A journalist. Apparently, a good one.”
“Fair enough. Boss deserves the best.” It was an absent-minded comment that Vertesi immediately regretted.
Williams turned to Aziz as she passed by. She glanced at him and smiled briefly.
“Ah, Mac’s coat,” she said, taking the keys from the pocket. “I’ll check on the car.” She was out the door a moment later, walking quietly down the wet stairs.
Williams went over to the doorway of the kitchen. “ ‘Boss deserves the best’—well done, Rocky.”
“I knew it was wrong the moment it left my mouth, but what the hell. The guy almost dies up here in some woman’s apartment, a woman none of us knew existed. Don’t you think that’s weird?”
Aziz found Mac’s holstered service weapon locked away in the Chevy’s glove compartment, sitting on top of a tattered volume of e. e. cummings’s poetry. She opened the book to the slip of paper marking “dive for dreams” and recognized MacNeice’s scratched star in the corner and his underlining of the last two lines:
dive for dreams
or a slogan may topple you
(trees are their roots
and wind is wind)
trust your heart
if the seas catch fire
(and live by love
though the stars walk backward)
Aziz said the lines out loud before putting the book back and locking the compartment. Stepping out of the Chevy, she locked the doors and looked up at the apartment’s windows. The rain that had stopped the day before had begun again in earnest, pelting her face until tears were indistinguishable from water.
Chapter 33
“Listen, and don’t try to speak,” Aziz said.
Four days had passed, and while there was no sign of pneumonia, this was the first day MacNeice was fully conscious and breathing entirely on his own. His voice was a whisper. When he tried to push it, he started coughing so badly he felt sharp pains in his back. Dr. Munez had told him, “That’s your lungs complaining. If you insist on speaking, you’ll only slow down your recovery.”
MacNeice hadn’t been debriefed, nor had he been told how Samantha was, beyond Dr. Munez mentioning matter-of-factly that she had been discharged the evening before.
He’d been dozing when Aziz arrived, and while he was getting used to the shock on people’s faces—Wallace, Swetsky, Williams and Vertesi—he wasn’t prepared to see her. It was morning, the step-down unit window faced east, its pale blue curtains were drawn and she was a silhouette.
Whispering, he asked, “Are your eyes smiling?”
“I told you not to speak … and yes, they are.”
He nodded, and closed his eyes. She was being kind. Wallace and Swetsky had made a point of telling him he looked like a raccoon or worse. The white of his left eye was crimson after he’d blown a blood vessel during a coughing fit.
Aziz proceeded to brief him, all business. “Sherry Berryman’s roommate called to say that several friends had seen Sherry dancing with someone who looked like Bishop at the Boogie Bin.”
MacNeice nodded.
“The bouncers, bar girls and several customers confirmed that a big man danced through the night with her. They described tattoos, names that ran down his arm, though the only ones anyone could recall were the words Iraq and Afghanistan. There was also a negative blue X on his chest. No one went near the big man because he seemed so intimidating, especially after he stripped off his sweater. They said Sherry was drunk and falling all over this stranger more than twice her size.”
MacNeice wanted to tell Aziz that he already had a confession from the big man himself, but she raised a hand to stop him, so he closed his eyes and listened.
“A waitress said he’d finished his tenth blueberry martini before grabbing his sweater and leaving with Sherry. The bouncer who hailed the cab added that she climbed on top of him the moment he shut the taxi door.”
Aziz had tracked down the driver, who confirmed dropping them at the apartment. “He said he was worried they were actually going to do it in the back seat and leave him with a mess to clean up. But every time he glanced back in the mirror, the guy was looking at him, so he decided cleaning up was preferable to pissing the guy off.”
“That it?” he asked, his eyes still closed.
“Samantha told us about him too, but she said she couldn’t hear most of what he said to you, and she couldn’t recall his name or even if she had heard it.”
MacNeice opened his eyes, took the pen and pad off the enamel table and wrote, “Jacko ‘Mars’ Bishop.” She took it and looked up at him.
“Mars?” she said.
“After the candy bar, not the god,” MacNeice whispered, struggling to suppress the rattle in his chest. He motioned for the pad and wrote, “Bishop confessed to killing Kallevik, Langan and Berryman, before setting the apartment on fire. I don’t think he intended to kill us—but he wouldn’t have lost any sleep if he had.”
Over the next half-hour he wrote notes to Aziz about the SAS, Bishop’s service tours and the record of his service and contract work tattooed on his arm. He whispered that Bishop had said he was leaving for another assignment, and began coughing again. When he recovered, he wrote on the notepad: “Try Ex Affairs/Bishop not his real name/ tattoos/a good physical description—esp. SAS.”
Aziz took the note and stood to leave. MacNeice whispered, “Samantha was discharged yesterday. I haven’t heard from her.”
She smiled at him. “Samantha was relieved to hear you are recovering.”
He made a move to sit up but couldn’t, and fell back, coughing hard. She held his shoulder until it subsided.
“Samantha told Vertesi she’s going to stay with family till the apartment’s refinished. She’ll call you when she can.” Aziz did up her coat and paused at the door to wave like Queen Elizabeth—something she hoped he’d find funny—but his eyes were closed.
Three days later, Samantha still hadn’t called.
MacNeice was washed, shaved, and dressed in the clothes Vertesi had retrieved from the stone cottage. He was sitting in a chair by the window, waiting to be discharged. While his breathing was still shallow and even a slow walk around the ward left him winded, MacNeice felt desperate to get out of the hospital and back to work.
If Bishop was still in Dundurn—which he doubted—he wanted to be the one to find him. If he wasn’t, he’d press for his extradition from wherever he’d gone. Looking down at the knotted plastic bag containing his soiled clothing, MacNeice considered whether to have it cleaned or just dump it in the trash because he couldn’t face the smell of it.
A half-hour later an orderly wheeled him down the long corridor to the elevator, the bag of smoky clothing riding on his lap. A melody entered his head as he was pushed into the elevator, something inspired by the rhythmic thump, thump, thump of the chair’s small front wheels—a piece of gum was perhaps stuck to one. “Bum bum bum bum bum …,” he hummed to himself as the elevator descended, wondering what it was.
“Sir?” the orderly asked, looking down at him.
“Sorry … just a piece of music stuck in my head.”
Idling at the curb was one of the department’s Chevys, sleek black under the steady rain. As the orderly
pushed him through the front doors, Williams emerged and jogged over to help.
“Just take the bag, Montile. I’m okay,” MacNeice said. He thanked the orderly and got to his feet. He walked to the car hoping that he looked strong enough for what he was about to ask.
The wipers cleared away the blur to reveal another grey morning in Dundurn. Descending the hill to Main Street, Williams stopped at the intersection, signalling a turn to the east.
“Not home, Montile. Take me to work.”
“Boss …” Williams kept his foot on the brake and looked over at his passenger.
“Work.” Wanting to avoid a debate, he turned to look out the window. Though his voice was hoarse—vaguely reminiscent of Brando in The Godfather—its tone was nonetheless resolute. Williams turned off the indicator, checked his side mirror and accelerated through the intersection.
Parking near the rear entrance, Williams came around and opened the door for him. With great effort, MacNeice pulled himself from the car. When Williams handed him the plastic bag, he walked over to the trash bin and dropped it inside. “I believe I’ll take the elevator.”
“No problem. I’ll fire up the espresso machine.”
That sounded wonderful to MacNeice. He hadn’t had coffee of any kind in a week.
At the cubicle MacNeice managed the hellos efficiently, conveying with a few words his complete disinterest in talking about how he was feeling. He settled into his chair and looked up at the whiteboard, searching for something new. When Williams handed him the coffee, he closed his eyes and inhaled. Bliss.
An hour later he was exhausted. He was about to leave, when the telephone on his desk rang. Ryan picked it up. “It’s Dylan Nicholson, sir.” MacNeice nodded that he would take it.
“MacNeice.”
“You sound bad,” said Dylan. “You’re probably too sick to come, sir, but my mom will be buried tomorrow. I was just thinking …”
“Do you want me to be there with you?”
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