Until the Night jc-6

by Giles Blunt

  I thought of the dead youth the Inuit “ghost” had brought us. We had heard back from researchers at Laval-terribly excited researchers-that they were pretty sure he was a member of the doomed Franklin expedition. The recent opening of three graves on Beechey Island had revealed that one of them, marked “Roger Arlington in his twenty-first year,” was in fact empty. Their theory: Young Arlington had been banished from the expedition-effectively executed-for some unknown crime. The empty grave was an effort to avoid uncomfortable questioning upon their return.

  It was thought best not to mention any of this to young Deville, who was already spooked enough. In any case, for those few moments under Wyndham’s gentle prodding, the candlelight seemed to reach him, and he shone.

  On clear nights such as this one, the stars were preternaturally bright, their ancient energy made new. When a few hours later I woke from a deep sleep, the walls of my cabin were glowing. I thought I was still dreaming, because my cabin seemed so absurdly colourful that it could occur only in a Disney film.

  I sat up in my sleeping bag and looked out the porthole window. The night was awash with light. Some of the others were already outside: Rebecca and Vanderbyl, Wyndham and Dahlberg, four dark figures, faces to the sky in attitudes of amazement, as if all four were simultaneously receiving the stigmata.

  High above, a waterfall of red poured down from the black heavens.

  The next thing I remember, I was standing outside. The cold must have been blistering, but I have no memory of it. I stood like the others, drinking in the aurora. Red is the rarest, and this red was so brilliant and mobile it was as if an incision had been made in the exact centre of the sky and ruby light cascaded from the wound.

  So incredibly red-I think it was Jens who spoke-I’ve never seen red before, never even heard of it.

  It’s at least two hundred kilometres up, I said. Solar wind colliding with high-altitude oxygen. Green and yellow are generated at about sixty kilometres.

  I saw a blue one once, Vanderbyl said. They think it’s caused by ionized nitrogen. I’ve only seen it that one time-in Svalbard. Our pilot actually wept.

  Jens, ever practical, said, It’ll kill our radio contact. We’ll be blacked out for days.

  The display curved away from us at its sides, shifting from a curtain shape almost to a funnel. A long crimson tail danced toward us, hovering on one side, then whipping to the other, a tornado of light.

  And it’s composed of nothing, Wyndham said. Just broken bits of atoms.

  Words fled me. At that moment I understood the pilot who had broken into sobs. I yearned for a new language, an idioglossia to span the unbridgeable distances that separate one human mind from another. This was unlike me, and probably had more to do with Rebecca than the aurora.

  I wanted to hold her close, feel her warmth and reality, the human scale of love and desire, the infinitesimal beauty in the brush of her eyelashes on my cheek, the heat of her breath on my neck. But at that moment, she too felt the need of contact. And there, silhouetted against the ruby light, encircled by its corona of stars, she reached to rest her hand upon her husband’s shoulder, then tilted her head against him, Kurt’s arm in answer reaching around her waist.

  11

  Cardinal was late. He stepped out of his car and took his parka off. Cold gnawed at his ribs, his belly, his nerves. He tossed the parka onto the back seat and opened a flat plastic package and took out a bunny suit. He walked over to the motel room and stepped into the suit just in front of the door.

  Everything about the Broadview Motel was generic, even the pervasive smell of carpet, but the mirrors, the lamps, the TV screen were already speckled with fingerprints where the ident guys had dusted for latents. The desk was done, the phone, the television remote. Collingwood and Arsenault were now working silently at the bedside tables.

  Loach was by the window, holding his phone out now and again at elbow level as if checking a compass reading.

  “Reception sucks in this dump,” he said to no one. Then, into the phone, “I’m very glad to hear you say that. I agree. It’s crucial for law enforcement in this country.” He clicked off, put the phone in his pocket and contemplated the plate glass window.

  “You’re late.” The room was studio bright with Ident’s lamps, and Loach had no trouble identifying Cardinal’s reflection in the window and speaking to it.

  “I wouldn’t be here at all if Chouinard hadn’t called me.”

  “Found it sooner than we expected. Narrowed it down to motels near Mark Trent’s house, and when that didn’t work, to places near Laura Lacroix. Manager says he stayed a little over a week. Paid cash. Description: Maybe sixty, slicked-back hair, in shape or at least not fat. No visible deformities, although manager did notice a limp.”

  “A limp. Like from an accident? A birth defect? What kind of limp?”

  “He’s a motel guy, not an osteopath. He says the guy has a limp. Left leg kinda stiff. Oh, and he wore gloves a lot.”

  “You’d never know it.” Cardinal gestured at the storm of fingerprints.

  “Yeah, well, who knows if any of them are his? You’d expect by this time the room woulda been cleaned up, except the grampa running the place saves money in the off-season by waiting till he’s got half a dozen dirty rooms. Here’s his sign-in.” He handed Cardinal a flimsy sheet of paper. “Plate number’s a phony. Manager confirms dirty white Econoline with some kind of painted-out logo, but the plate number doesn’t check out. We already ran it down.”

  “Roger Arlington,” Cardinal read. “ ‘Arlington’ could be fake too.”

  “Getting nothing from the records so far. Garbage cans are mostly McDonald’s and Subway wrappers. And I nearly tossed out the Tim Hortons receipt too, until I noticed the date and location. Highway 17, Pembroke, twelve days ago.”

  “The day Marjorie Flint vanished.”

  “Good solid policing combined with good leadership-you can’t beat it.” Loach took his phone out and put it to his ear and turned once more to the window. “Hi, honey. Hey, just heard from a contact at the academy-they may fly me down there to give a talk on the Montrose case.”

  Roger Arlington. Cardinal made a note of the name and went over to Arsenault, who was photographing a print on the Gideon Bible. “How’d the Identi-Kit go?”

  “Well, the one lady gave us good stuff on the van, but the other witness was a no-show.”

  “This was the hooker, right?”

  “Turns out hookers are not reliable people. But we got the manager here, who’s likely to do better, and a chambermaid also. Says she saw the guy a couple of times and he gave her twenty bucks to stay out of his hair.”

  “That’s interesting.” Cardinal glanced in Loach’s direction. “Nobody told me that.”

  “Unfortunately, not so good on prints. Bob, you want to tell him?”

  It was charming the way Arsenault always included his silent colleague. It was like trying to bring a Corgi into the conversation. Collingwood gave no sign of hearing, so Arsenault led Cardinal over to the front window. The glass was frosted at the corners and speckled with red fingerprint powder.

  “We’ve got tons of partials, but I got a feeling they’re not going to lead anywhere. Why? First, because they’re all different and that makes me suspect they’re old and not his. Second, because there are lots of smudges that don’t show a single loop or whirl. See? Look here. And here.” He pointed out a couple of blank smudges. “Even here.” He pointed to two marks, about three inches long, that were slightly curved toward each other like parentheses. “Karate prints, like when you shade your eyes to see out a window?”

  “Or in,” Cardinal said. “How many thieves have we caught that way?”

  “Exactly. But again, no skin lines at all. We’re striking out here. I think this guy is wearing gloves everywhere.”

  “Yes, the manager said he wore gloves a lot.”

  “That’s interesting.” Arsenault glanced in Loach’s direction and back again. “Nobody tol
d me that. But check this out.”

  Cardinal followed him over to the desk. Cigarette burns and watermarks. Tattered Yellow Pages open to Chinese restaurants. Beside this, another crescent-shaped mark.

  “The guy’s not all that careful about being seen,” Cardinal said, “and yet he’s wearing gloves indoors. Is there any chance our boy has a prosthetic hand?”

  “You read my mind,” Arsenault said.

  “This is good work, Paul.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I’m going to double your salary.”

  “Too bad you’re not in a position to do that.”

  “But you know I would if I could.”

  “Will you throw in a Porsche as well?”

  “Consider it done.”

  Cardinal went back outside. He took off the bunny suit and got in the car and started it. He switched off the heater’ the sunlight was so strong it had warmed up the interior. He took out his cell and called Delorme on speed-dial. Then he remembered she was out sick and he hung up. He thought about maybe stopping by later to see how she was doing and then wondered if that might be a bad idea. He was pretty sure he’d handled things poorly.

  The ARC hotel in downtown Ottawa. The kind of place where the staff all wear black and a visiting cop would never dream of staying. The room was small, the furniture minimalist to the point of severe. Delorme sat on the edge of the bed and gave it a testing bounce. Firm.

  She took out her cell and checked the list of calls. Chouinard, Cardinal, Cardinal, Loach, Cardinal. You can damn well wait, John Cardinal. She dialed an old number she had for Leonard Priest. There was no ring, no response of any kind. She dialed Club Risque and asked to speak to him.

  “I’m sorry, Len is not in tonight. Perhaps I could help you?”

  “I was told he’d be there.”

  “He was, but he took off for Toronto. Is there anything else?”

  Delorme shut the phone book and opened the room service menu. The idea of eating in the room depressed her. A heaviness settled over her chest and stomach and she heard herself sigh. Really depressed.

  A desk card caught her eye. It showed a woman wrapped in a towel with a dreamy smile on her face. Delorme picked up the desk phone and dialed. A recorded voice told her the spa was closed. She opened her overnight bag and hung a little black dress in the closet, placed her other items on the shelves.

  She got undressed, put a shower cap over her hair and stepped into the shower. The pleasures of high water pressure and expensive soap. She resolved to change her shower head when she got home.

  She dried off quickly and brushed her hair. She opened the closet again and put on her underwear. Her reflection in the full-length mirror nagged at her and she tried to ignore it. Then she couldn’t stand it and turned to look.

  Ugh. You used to have a good body. Where did that go? The twenty-year-old she had been would have hated her as she was now. Then again, that twenty-year-old bundle of ego was hardly her present-day idea of good company.

  She slipped into the black dress that was shorter than the one she had worn to the party. She hadn’t worn this one for, what, five years? She smoothed it over her thighs and submitted to a train of unhappy thoughts. It looked better with the shoes, but it would take at least two glasses of wine before it looked good. She had no credible reason to get dressed up in the first place. She would have dinner by herself and come back up to the room and watch some terrible movie on TV.

  She went to a restaurant a couple of blocks away that she remembered as a lively place. Naturally, this particular night it was all but deserted. A trio of men stood at the bar, too busy jawing about sports to notice her or her vampy little dress. The waiter came and greeted her in French and English, and for reasons Delorme didn’t bother to ruminate on, she chose to answer in English. Normally she was happy to speak French-it was one of the pleasures of visiting the nation’s capital-but tonight apparently she was anglophone.

  The waiter had asked only if he could bring her a drink to start, but she ordered the whole meal: steak frites without the frites, double the salad instead. No point in getting even more grotesquely misshapen.

  The house red had no edges to it at all and went down too quickly. She was on her second glass before the steak arrived, just the right shade of pink.

  The place had gone from subdued to tomb-like. Two of the men had left the bar, leaving the last one, who looked very French Canadian, to pick at his beer label. He had a good face and seemed about Delorme’s age. A left-hander. Wedding band gleaming on the hand that held the beer. He glanced at her and her stomach tightened at the thought that he might come over and speak to her.

  She ate her steak and thought about Leonard Priest and the questions she wanted to ask him. She remembered their last conversation and how he had said cock so many times. Not something men did, in her experience, outside porno films. The word repeated itself in her mind without her wanting it to.

  The waiter brought the check for her to sign. The man at the bar was gone. The bartender scooped up his tip and the beer bottle with its half-peeled label.

  Back at the hotel, she had to wait for the elevator. When the door finally opened, a young couple released each other, none too quickly. The girl’s dress settled against her thighs as her lover withdrew his hand. Delorme got in and the three of them rode in silence to the third floor, where the couple got out. She heard them burst into laughter as the doors closed once more.

  In her room, she took the bathrobe from its hanger and threw it on the bed. She took off her shoes and started to unzip the black dress. Then she folded her arms and stared at her reflection in the TV screen. A thinner, more ethereal Delorme stared back. According to her watch, she’d been wearing the dress for less than ninety minutes. She shook her head.

  “Pointless,” she said. “Totally pointless.”

  She sat on the end of the bed with her hands on her knees and thought about why she might be feeling this bad. John, of course. She thought about Loach and discounted him. She thought about Reicher and the depth of her fear in that locked room. It wasn’t that. She dealt with lots of creeps. A little shakiness for an hour or so afterward, but that was it. A little anger at the idiot guard.

  It occurred to her that she might have entirely misunderstood the word loneliness. She had always thought it just meant wishing there was a friend around to talk to. Especially when you were feeling bad about yourself, your character and your life. She’d felt like that often enough, but this crushing, nameless weight was new. This awfulness that seemed to fill not just her heart but the entire room.

  She leaned forward and opened the mini-bar. Pulled out a bar of dark Swiss chocolate and a half bottle of Pelee Island red and put them on the bed beside her. She picked up the remote and turned on the TV. Crackle of static as it came alive. The movie selection was long, but most of the titles meant nothing to her.

  She scrolled through eight iterations of Barely Legal alone, Horny Housewives, Cum-Crazed Coeds, Gang Bangs, Ass Masters, Sweet Slavery, DP Debutantes. The Info button informed her that DP meant “double penetration” and watching seventy-five minutes of this would cost $13.99. Titles, the screen promised, would not appear on her bill.

  She switched off the TV and got out of her dress and hung it up. She slipped into the envelope of cool sheets and opened the paperback novel she had brought with her, highly recommended by Oprah. Page one struck her as less than engaging, and page two was worse. The prospect of losing herself in a story dimmed and went out.

  She reached for the light switch and caught another glimpse of the woman wrapped in the towel, the dreamy smile. The whiteness of the towel, the smiling lips remained as an afterimage as she closed her eyes. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone had rubbed her back.

  I’m not supposed to be here. I don’t even know what I’m doing here.

  Two minutes, maybe three. She throws off the covers and switches on the light. The little black dress is still warm.

  He
was astonished by the simplicity of the place. A whitewashed attic, angular walls, slanted high ceiling, little more than one room, but whether through frugality or good taste she had managed to make it look large and inviting. She had painted the baseboards walnut brown and papered one wall with a spacious frond theme that maintained the brightness of the space but saved it from monotony.

  The floor was covered with scraps of carpet in various shades of grey, fitted together in random squares and rhomboids. A single artwork dominated the place, a poster from the Musee de Cluny, bright red, showing a princess in medieval dress. Other than that, the most vivid object was a double bed draped in a spread of scarlet corduroy. Beside it, a wooden library table, with books packed into the shelves at either end. No television, no CD player, but she wouldn’t need one. In the past five days he hadn’t observed her more than twice without the white audio arteries of an iPod dangling from her ears.

  An Apple laptop front and centre. He had followed her to Starbucks and watched her pull out a stack of papers to mark. It seemed early in the term for papers to be due, but perhaps she was earning extra money marking for someone else.

  He had entered by the fire escape, the only way into what must be an illegal sublet. The door had a solid enough lock but he had managed to jimmy a window without much problem. It opened beside the galley kitchen, if that was not too grand a term for a built-in hot plate and sink. She had forgotten to switch off the overhead light.

  The pay for a contract teacher, even at a major university, had apparently not improved much over the years. She didn’t even have bookshelves. Instead, forty or fifty volumes were lined up along the baseboard. Chaucer, Dante, Villon. Norton anthologies. Not following in Daddy’s footsteps, obviously. Not living on his money, either.

  The clothing in her closet consisted mostly of neatly stacked T-shirts. A few pieces suitable for lectures, two small dresses, nothing expensive. He made a mental note of sizes.