Sing a Worried Song
Page 29
Or, are they his ashes?
Because there is no body to exhume, positive identification cannot be made.
People who were close to Wurtz are unwilling to confess to police that he is in fact dead. That could open up charges against them of harboring a known criminal.
So, for the time being, police must consider Wurtz, described as a bisexual, alive and the case still open, even though they think he’s dead.
“We are reasonably certain that he is dead but we can’t say conclusively without the help of others who are obviously reluctant to co-operate without a guarantee that they will not be charged,” a Kingston police source says.
Court testimony in Vancouver had shown that Wurtz had talked to a homosexual friend about killing someone just for the thrill of it. He had later returned home with teeth marks on one leg.
Police picked Wurtz’s fingerprints from a beer bottle in the dead man’s West End apartment.
Rui Flores Romao, 44, a janitor, “had been stabbed at least 56 times” with a pair of scissors.
(Vancouver Sun, December 1984)
Incidentally, a truer version of the actual trial, based on a script I wrote, “Death of a Stranger,” was broadcast by CBC Radio in its Scales of Justice series, produced by the power duo of the late, great Edward Greenspan, QC, and best-selling novelist Guy Gavriel Kay.
William Deverell
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
WILLIAM DEVERELL has worked as a journalist and lawyer, and he is a founder and honourary director of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association. He is the creator of CBC’s long-running television series Street Legal, which has aired internationally in more than 50 countries. He is also the recipient of multiple literary awards, including the $50,000 Seal Prize, the Dashiell Hammett Award for literary excellence, and the Arthur Ellis prize in crime writing. His novels have been translated into 14 languages and sold worldwide. He was recently awarded an honourary Doctor of Letters by Simon Fraser University. He lives on Pender Island, B.C. Find him online at deverell.com.
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Copyright © William Deverell, 2015
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Deverell, William, 1937–, author
Sing a worried song : an Authur Beauchamp novel / William Deverell.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-77041-245-3 (bound)
978-1-77090-727-0 (PDF)
978-1-77090-728-7 (ePub)
I. Title.
PS8557.E8775S49 2015 C813’.54 C2014-907592-8 C2014-907593-6
Editor for the press: Dinah Forbes
Cover illustration and design: Natalie Olsen | kisscut design
The publication of Sing a Worried Song has been generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $157 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country. We acknowledge the support of the Ontario Arts Council (OAC), an agency of the Government of Ontario, which last year funded 1,793 individual artists and 1,076 organizations in 232 communities across Ontario, for a total of $52.1 million. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities, and the contribution of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.