by Giles Blunt
A piece of tarp hung from a small hook that had been screwed into the old four-by-four of the frame. The hook looked new, as did the tarp when Cardinal lifted it up. Matching hooks, three of them, had been screwed into the opposite post. He stretched out the tarp and hung it by a corner grommet from the top hook. It made a makeshift fourth wall that hid him from view. He was now the sole tenant of six square feet of country property. Handyman’s dream, as the real estate ads liked to put it. Amenities included a two-plank “table” supported by two diagonal planks underneath and a crippled chair with a rush seat, usable in an emergency but badly in need of more rushes.
The winter light was draining away and with it Cardinal’s interest. Whether standing or sitting—gingerly—he could see nothing of the Flint residence. He could peer over the tarp if he wished. And through the sagging wall on his right he could watch the headlights on Rockcliffe Road. The solid wall was covered with childish drawings and lettering. ALEX, HELP! MARNIE WAS HERE. It was hard to make out the smaller scribbles.
He unhooked the tarp so he could see better. Pictures of Charlie Brown and Lucy and Snoopy and Garfield and many highly active stick figures. Charlie Brown looked as if he had just had brain surgery and the cap of his skull had been reset a half-inch off-kilter. Same with Lucy’s haircut.
Cardinal touched the board second from the top. It was loose. A slight nudge to the left rendered Charlie and Lucy whole. He pulled the board right out and put it on the table. Through the space where it had been, he now had a clear view of the senator’s house. He could see one whole side of the house as well as the front entrance. Beyond the top of the garage, the iron gates were just swinging open in front of the senator’s car as it rolled down the drive away from the house. Cardinal watched the gates close behind him.
A box seat. Best view in the house.
Cardinal leaned close to the slot where the board had been. There was something written on the exposed wood of the frame. He pulled out his cellphone and held the screen close. In the pale glow he could see the number 25. There were no numbers on the other exposed struts, nor on the back of the removed plank. He snapped several pictures of it and of the tree house itself, then dialed the Ottawa squad and Delorme.
Delorme had arranged to meet Cardinal at Café Max, a small Parisian-style bistro just off Rideau. She ordered a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon and a basket of bread and sat back on the banquette reading the menu. Some of the dishes were French Canadian, but she didn’t recognize a lot of the others. Parisian dishes, she supposed. She had never travelled to France, let alone Paris. At one time, in her late teens, she had been keen on the idea, but over the years the urge had faded.
Cardinal came in and sat down and she poured him a glass of wine. He put on his glasses to read the menu.
“What do you think?” Delorme said. “Too rich for expenses?”
“It’s fine.”
“My mom used to bring me here when I was going to Ottawa U. I asked them to bring you an English menu, but they seem to have forgotten.”
“I’ll manage. The wine’s good.”
The waiter came and told them the specials in French. A Québécois, Delorme noted with pleasure. Waiters who considered themselves vrai français always asked her to repeat everything.
Cardinal surprised her by ordering in French as well. Beet salad and the steak frites. He did very well, even managing the French usage of entrée for appetizer, but then the waiter posed a supplementary question. How would monsieur like his steak prepared? Cardinal was decisive: he would like his steak half-baked.
The waiter smiled and said in English, “Did you mean medium?”
“Medium, yes.” And when the waiter was gone, “Isn’t that what I said?”
“It’s médium, not mi-cuit. But I’m impressed you’ve even heard of mi-cuit. Have you been reading Julia Child?”
Cardinal muttered something unintelligible and asked about her afternoon.
“Oh, it was exhilarating. I read the entire case file, all their reports, from end to end. Police are not great writers, you ever notice? Doesn’t look like they were getting anywhere, but they’ve saved us a lot of work.”
“Well, they should have their scene men all over that tree house by now. If there’s anything there, they’ll find it. What do you make of the number 25?”
Delorme suddenly felt a little oppressed, she wasn’t sure why. She didn’t want to talk about the case, but Cardinal was bright-eyed and eager. Of course, that was one of the reasons she and all the other detectives liked to work with him: it just never occurred to him to get tired of a case. “There wasn’t anything in the reports about ‘25,’ ” she said. “Guess you’ll have to take it to a numerologist.”
“It might be nothing. On the other hand, there were no other marks like it. The scene guys should be able to tell how recent it is. What’s up? Are you pissed off with me for some reason?”
“Where’s our food, for God’s sake?”
Cardinal looked down at the table and tapped his fork on the checkered cloth. He always turned away when she was upset, as if she was just too pathetic to contemplate. The guy lives with a wife who was in and out of psychiatric wards all her life and he doesn’t bat an eye. Me, I get a little annoyed and he can’t take it. Of course, Catherine had been beautiful and talented and not his boring colleague.
“So, one of us had a productive afternoon,” she said. “Must be nice.”
Cardinal looked up. The little-boy eagerness all gone, replaced by Mr. Calm and Inscrutable.
“John, did you ever think for a moment that I might have liked to be in on the interesting stuff? Why do I get sent to the file cabinet while you get to take a close look at the killer’s possible hideaway?”
“Hey, careful.” Cardinal looked around to see if anyone was within earshot.
“You agree with Chouinard, is that it? Anybody—even a guy like Loach—is preferable to having me on a case?”
“What’s Loach got to do with anything? We had to split up the work, that’s all. I wasn’t expecting to find anything at the Flint property. It may still turn out to be nothing.”
The waiter brought their food and Delorme observed her own transformation into a normal, polite human being. She even offered a few unnecessary pleasantries in French. When he was gone, she said, “Don’t shut me out of the interesting stuff, that’s all I ask.”
“That’s it,” Cardinal said. “From now on, you’re McLeod to me.”
“McLeod. Really. Now I’m fat and racist?”
“Prickly and unpredictable.”
“That’s not fair. McLeod is completely predictable.”
They ate in silence for a while. The food was good, but Delorme couldn’t bring herself to say so. She wished, as she did all too often around Cardinal, that she wasn’t so childish.
When they got to the hotel, Cardinal went to his room on the fifth floor and Delorme went to hers on the seventh. She took off her coat and boots and got undressed and put on the extra-large T-shirt that was her nightgown. She sat on the end of one of the double beds and thought about calling Cardinal’s room and inviting him to watch a movie.
She contemplated her reflection, a grey wraith in the television screen. “I don’t want to watch a movie,” she said.
From the Blue Notebook
Twice a week, Vanderbyl would set off on his skis for the seismic hut. This was several kilometres away, toward what had been the western end of the island but, owing to headwinds, encounters with other islands and underwater shoals, was now the southern end. He had government funding to complete the mapping of the Alpha Ridge, the hope in Ottawa being that it would prove to be firmly connected to Canada and not to Greenland—or, worse, to Russia. Kurt would sleep at the hut in order to begin blasting as early as possible.
Sometimes, when the others were safely engaged in their separate pursuits, I would go to Rebecca’s lab. Despite how it may appear in the movies, desks and countertops are not ideal surfaces for lovers’
encounters, even without all Rebecca’s electronic gear. Sometimes I would sit myself on her task chair and she would straddle me, and I could lose myself in the scent of the hair at the nape of her neck, the taste of her sweat.
On nights when Vanderbyl was gone—this was May, when the nights were still extremely long—we could still use her cabin. But if Vanderbyl was in camp, she would come to my hut, my dwarf planet, as she called it, and we would lie in each other’s arms. Afterward, it was a struggle for her to climb out of bed and venture once more into the sub-zero darkness. But we felt safer there, because there seemed little likelihood of Vanderbyl visiting me.
One night I was in bed and I put my book aside. It was another novel Rebecca had thrust on me, a “coming of age” story about a Pakistani boy growing up in Muskoka. His experience was remarkably similar to that of the Catholic girl in Newfoundland in the previous book she had lent me, and I resolved to accept no more. There’s a factory somewhere turning these things out, I had said to annoy her.
Why does everybody have to be kooky? I yelled in answer to the soft rapping at my door. Why does everybody have to have a heart of gold? Come in, for God’s sake. I want to berate you.
But it was Vanderbyl who opened the door and came in and quickly shut the door behind him.
He removed his gloves and pushed his hood back and stood there in his stooped way. His face looked as if it had crumpled with exhaustion and subsequent attempts to smooth it out had been unsuccessful. Dark circles under his eyes, points of white at the corners of his mouth. A man to whom sleep was a stranger.
I apologize for the disruption. May I sit down?
He removed his boots and sat on my desk chair in his parka. He stretched his hands out before him as if checking the lengths of his arms, then let them rest in his lap, a collection of long fingers, bony wrists. He lapsed into stillness.
There was nothing for me to say under the circumstances. I sat back against the wall, wrapped in my sleeping bag that smelled of Rebecca.
A rustling of parka as Vanderbyl roused himself. I thought he was going to go hurtling back out into the night, but he went down on his knees. He clasped his hands in front of his chest and shook them before me as if they were chained.
Is this what you want? he said.
Kurt, for God’s sake.
If this is what you want, you have it. All right? You have it. It must feel good, right? Must fill your heart with joy?
Of course not. Please get up.
But you’re the one who put me here. You must want me here, isn’t it?
No.
You and my wife. Together, you have crushed me into nothing.
She had reasons, you have none. Kurt, you split from her. You left her. You’re separated.
A trial separation. I wanted her to realize she wants to stay with me. It turns out I am the one doing all the realizing.
That’s the trouble with experiments. They rarely yield the data we expect.
Is it because of the hiring committee? Is it because you didn’t get tenure?
That was years ago, Kurt.
You must realize that was nothing personal. There was simply a more suitable candidate.
That’s debatable.
It was duly debated. It was not an easy decision. Nor was it unanimous. But in the end—for a number of reasons—Klimov was the committee’s choice.
You were chair. You had ultimate control.
And here I am.
He held his clasped hands out to me again. Even on his knees, Vanderbyl was looking down at me.
I was angry then, I said. Full of resentment, perhaps even hatred. But I’m perfectly content at Carleton, and I don’t believe in revenge.
Are you so certain? I didn’t believe in jealousy.
He got to his feet and reached for the chair. For a moment I feared he was going to raise it over his head and smash my skull with it. He dragged it closer and sat down.
But now I do. Proved upon the pulses, as the poet says. How ridiculous that I—I, who pride myself on nothing so much as my reason—should see that reason overthrown by a simple fact of anatomy. All logic, all judgment gone from me, leaving me reduced to whatever is left when they are gone. I am yearning and appetite, loneliness and lust. I am rage and grief and helplessness, the whole sorry—no, the mere sorry, the merest, weakest, sleepless sorry thing. Amusing for you, of course—to see me devoured alive.
No, Kurt. I’m sorry you’re in pain.
Yes, yes. Of course you are.
Well, that’s the nature of jealousy, isn’t it? Keeps you at the centre of the story?
When you’re being eaten by a shark, it’s difficult to see it from the shark’s point of view.
I’m in love with her, Kurt.
Then I ask you, as a man in love, to recognize what I am going through. And if revenge is your motive, I am here to tell you the knife is in my heart and yours is the hand twisting it. I am on my knees before you. Begging you to stop.
Kurt.
We have worked together many times. We do not know each other well, but well enough. You know that I have a large ego. Such an easy target. I ask you to measure my words to you now against that nature and calculate what it is costing me.
Kurt.
I don’t come here empty-handed. Brenner is retiring next year. You’d start with full tenure.
I have tenure at Carleton.
You’d have almost no teaching, no committees. Full research sabbaticals. And the salary would be higher. We could probably make it as high as mine.
Jesus, Kurt.
If I had money of my own, I would give it to you, but you probably have more than me. I am not a wise investor. Perhaps we could come to some quiet arrangement.
Kurt, she isn’t mine to sell.
She isn’t yours at all. Rebecca is my wife. Do you know what that means? Do you have any idea? It’s not a piece of paper. It’s not a matter of a ceremony. It means I have watched her grow from a graduate student, still a girl really, into a fully mature and wise woman. I have been there in the big moments of her life—achieving her master’s degree, the day she defended her dissertation. I have been there for the disappointments, the setbacks. I have watched her walk face first into the most cruel academic traps. She thinks everyone is her friend, everyone wishes her well, until they don’t.
That was not my experience of Rebecca, and I said so. Whether he heard me or not, I’ve no idea.
I held her at her mother’s funeral, he said. I have heard her talk in her sleep, stroked her hair when she woke up from some nightmare. Driven her to the emergency room and sat with her hour after hour. I’ve never seen anyone so sick. They gave her five bags of fluid, Durie, five bags of saline. It caused her temperature to plummet and she shook on the gurney as if possessed by epilepsy. And the car accident—did she tell you about the car accident?
I said no, but it hardly mattered. He didn’t hear me.
Norway. We were going far too fast. Terrible weather, fog and sleet, and the driver lost control and we woke up in some tiny little outpost clinic, not a hospital. I received a broken arm only, but Rebecca had a deep gash in her leg and desperately needed a transfusion. I woke up covered in her blood. They had a line in my arm and took my blood for a transfusion—we have the same type. She is literally of my blood, Durie, that’s what the word wife means in this particular instance, in case you don’t happen to know or care.
I tried to speak some calming words, but he was raving now.
It means also, yes, I have hurt her. Because I am a man and I am vain and stupid and weak. I have hurt her and felt her tears soak through my shirt when I have given her my abject apologies. But it isn’t just that. It is not such big things always. Not so long ago I was looking for a stamp or some scissors or something and I opened her desk drawer and you know what I found? I found a ticket, a torn ticket, for an evening of Bach concertos. No great virtuoso, no acclaimed orchestra, but it was the first place we had gone together, and she had kept th
e ticket and glued it to a piece of fine paper and written the date underneath in her beautiful handwriting, with the words The first place I went with Kurt.
Kurt, please. It’s late. Let’s just work together as best we can.
I have heard her giggle on the phone like a schoolgirl, I have heard her singing off-key at the top of her voice when she thought no one was home. You think because you fuck her you’re somehow closer? Yes, sure, look away, I don’t blame you. And it’s not just the little things either, it’s the less than that. The nothings. I get up in the morning and she is there, Durie. She is there, you understand. Year after year, day after day. This person I know I don’t deserve, every day.
Was there. You took her for granted, Kurt.
Yes, of course I did. I’m selfish and vain and not very noticing of things. But it’s not all bad, you know, taking each other for granted. You get used to each other, as you get used to a landscape—living on the plain or in Toronto or in the shadow of some mountain. Yes, they are your landscape, they surround you, you forget they’re there. In a way, taking a person for granted is a mark of love.
Good night, Kurt.
A mark of trust.
He swiped at his tears with the sleeve of his parka. God, I’m a stupid man. Of all the people to ask! I’ve long known you for a cold person, Durie, an unfeeling person. But it would take a microscope to measure the distance between unfeeling and cruel. Sometimes to be cruel requires no action at all, just the willingness to stand by and do nothing. I am a man engulfed in flame, begging you to piss on me, but of course you won’t. Give her back? God, I’m an idiot. You’ll never give her back.
