Foul Deeds: A Rosalind Mystery

by Linda Moore

  I took it from him and looked at it. “Yes it does. It looks like a bit from a peasant skirt that Sophie wore frequently. Where was it?”

  “It was snagged half a flight down on the side rail of the back stairs.” Images of Sophie being dragged down the fire escape flashed through my mind.

  “Have you asked the apartment dwellers on the lower level if they noticed anything?”

  “You know, we thought of that,” he said.

  “And?” I asked.

  “So far, no luck. Tell me what you’re writing down there.”

  “This tarot reading,” I said. “She must have been in the midst of reading someone’s cards. She did do readings and horoscopes for people.”

  “Just for friends, or for strangers as well?” he asked.

  “Well, if someone called and wanted a reading, she would make an appointment for them and they would come here. The thing is, most often it would be somebody who knew somebody who’d had a reading, so it was a kind of network of acquaintances.”

  For the first time, Arbuckle seemed genuinely interested in what I had to say. “Did she keep an appointment book I wonder?” He began to look around, picking some scripts and notebooks up off the floor.

  “And,” I continued, “it looks to me like this reading was interrupted, because four of the cards are still face down.”

  “So,” he said, “we should be able to get prints of the person whose cards she was reading from those cards that have been turned over.”

  “Well,” I said, “certainly from this one—the Knight of Swords—that would be the card he would have pulled from the deck himself to initiate the reading.”

  “He?” This question came sharply as he picked up the card and dropped it into a plastic envelope.

  “Well, the person, I mean.” I held his gaze.

  By the time the crime unit was finished examining Sophie’s apartment it was just after six. Harvie and I took Molly with us and he drove me over to the Crypt so I could check in with the cast. I had an irrational hope that Sophie would be at the rehearsal, going over her lines, oblivious to all that had gone on in her apartment. But she wasn’t there. I was circumspect with everyone, saying that unfortunately neither she nor I could attend that evening. Since they were at the point of Ophelia’s exit from the play, there would be only minor adjustments to their schedule. They would move on to the last scene of Act Four and into Act Five.

  As I was on my way out, Liz, the actress playing Gertrude, asked me if I would mind taking five minutes with her while she went over the willow speech, which was coming up at the end of the scene. I knew Harvie was waiting for me but I agreed, and we sat down for a moment and began to go over it. By the time she got to ‘our cold maids do dead men’s fingers call them,’ I started to feel nauseous again. I was very fragile and concerned that hearing the end of the speech—an echo of Sophie’s cellphone message—might well be more than I could handle.

  “I’m sorry Liz, ” I said to her. “I’ll go through this with you in detail next week, but I think I might have the flu, and I certainly don’t want to pass it on to you.”

  “Of course Roz,” she said. “You really don’t look well.”

  I made a rapid escape up the little stone stairwell and sat on an outside bench for a moment. I tried to breathe slowly as I looked out at University Avenue. It was Saturday and the streets were fairly free of traffic. Then, out of the quiet, I heard the shrill sirens of the fire trucks as they pulled out of the station just on the next corner at Robie. The noise brought the nausea back in full force. I put my head down on my knees. Harvie’s gentle hand on my back was little comfort. “The sooner you can get me home, the better,” I said to him. “I’m a wreck.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  At home that night, I was feeling pretty grim. I’ve got to track down McBride, I thought. This is ridiculous. I don’t even have his ex-wife’s last name. I decided to start with the Vancouver hospitals. I sat at my desk and took out a pad of paper and got ready to call directory assistance.

  As I was reaching for the telephone, it rang. I looked at it. Isn’t this where this whole thing started a week ago? I thought. Please god, be McBride. I answered it.

  “Hi Roz. How’s it going?”

  “Thank heavens,” I said. “I really need to talk to you McBride. How’s your boy?”

  “Well, it was a clean break and he’s in good spirits. The team is conferring tonight to decide if he can go home to Victoria tomorrow.”

  “That must be a relief, ” I said. “Listen, something not so good appears to have happened to Sophie.”

  I told him as much as I could and fought to stop myself from dissolving into tears.

  “I don’t know what to do. I brought the file home with me. No one knows I have it. I didn’t tell Arbuckle anything about King or about Sophie’s meeting with Aziz.”

  “So what he knows is that I was assaulted and whoever did it took my phone, and that when it landed back in your house it had Sophie’s voice on it, and now she’s missing and her apartment’s been ransacked.”

  “Right. He has the phone—I gave him the package.”

  “Okay. I was planning to fly out tomorrow morning if all goes well. I need to be at the hospital for that meeting this evening, but let me see what I can do. Maybe I can catch a red-eye.”

  “Molly’s here with me,” I said.

  “Sit tight Roz, and make sure to keep that evidence under wraps.” He was gone.

  How many times had McBride told me to sit tight? I felt as though every second was an emergency and I had to do something. I went to my bag, took out the file and sat back down at my desk. Okay, use your brain Roz, I said to myself. Find out what’s so valuable. I flipped the file open.

  Inside were three separate pages showing what appeared to be photocopied journal entries, some emails stapled to some official-looking correspondence and an envelope that felt like it contained a disc. The photocopied journal entries must belong to Aziz, I thought as I examined them. The first one was dated early August—more than two months before Peter King’s death.

  Aug 3. Tonight I went to a special screening of Velcrow Ripper’s excellent documentary Scared Sacred down at the Art Gallery. I saw the environment lawyer Peter King there and mustered up the courage to introduce myself to him. I knew he had personal experience in the Cochabamba story which is probably why he was so interested in seeing Velcrow’s film. I told him I had seen him around City Hall, and asked him if he would let me interview him for my documentary film class. He said he was sure he could find some time for me, which is so awesome! I have a lot of respect for him and I want to ask him all about the Water Wars.

  Based on this entry, I realized that there was much more to Aziz than we had presumed. He was not just a lowly file clerk working for the City, but a serious film student with activist leanings. The next entry was dated two weeks later:

  Aug 17. After work I took my new digital camera over to Peter King’s law firm to interview him. He said he could spend the dinner hour with me. The secretary said he was on his way back from the law courts and let me in to his office to set up my camera. I couldn’t help noticing a file sitting in a box on his desk with my boss’s name on the label. Curiosity got the best of me and god forgive me for this but I opened the file and inside was a piece of paper with some disturbing notes on it. I took a picture of the page so I could study it more carefully later. This is what it said:

  Carl Spiegle:

  – silent partner in Europa Conglomerate/currently in planning stages for massive World Bank-funded water privatization scheme in West Africa

  – somehow connected to Aqua–Laben in Bonn, Germany, an aggressive bottled water company that is challenging for rights to Canadian bulk water—check Board of Directors again—pseudonym?

  – engineering planner with Thames Water ’85–’92

  – raised in Switzerland, attended polytechnical university in Zurich

  Aziz’s third photocopied entry,
dated September 15—less than a month before Peter’s death—was even more intriguing:

  Sept 15. This afternoon all the councillors were at an in-camera session about the contract for the sewage treatment plants. I was staying late to finish up some work. Peter King arrived at the Planning office around closing time today. He and I exchanged greetings but he was clearly distracted. When the boss arrived a few minutes later I could tell he was fuming and they went straight into his office. They closed the door but their voices were raised. I could overhear the boss accusing King of undermining all his work on the Europa contract and manipulating the vote. I had my camera in my knapsack and I decided to surreptitiously record their conversation. I just checked the disc and the argument is fairly audible. I couldn’t get the whole argument because some other people from the meeting came back to the Planning office, and I had to quickly put everything away. But I’m excited—I may be able to work some of this material into my documentary.

  For the moment, I ignored the other paperwork in the folder and went straight to the envelope containing the disc. It was marked “Copy of King Interview Etc.” I put it in my laptop disc drive and there was Aziz’s office interview with Peter King. I advanced to the “Etc.” section.

  The camera shows a still shot of what must be the door of Spiegle’s office. The audio is apparently the argument that Aziz refers to in his third journal entry. I turned up the sound on my computer.

  King is mid-sentence saying to Spiegle: “…for god’s sake, Europa was a disastrous choice and it’s clear to me you were pushing so hard for reasons of personal gain. I simply made sure that every councillor got the information they deserved to have before the vote.”

  Spiegle replies in his Swiss–German accent: “The City has been working diligently to hammer out this agreement. This was a very good deal for us. I know precisely what I am doing and I resent your implication.”

  Peter King’s response: “Let’s put the cards on the table. I know about your connection with Europa and about your undisclosed business activities in Ghana and in Germany, all of which puts you, my friend, in a serious conflict-of-interest position.”

  Spiegle answers: “Let me warn you now: You will regret interfering in my affairs. You have no idea what you’re playing at here.”

  To which Peter King replies: “I’m just getting started. I intend to blow you right out of the water, Spiegle. You and all your money-grabbing cronies.”

  That was the last of the information on the DVD. I was both horrified and exhilarated. This menacing exchange was more than posturing. The threats provided the justification to demand an exhumation of King’s body. The fact that we could have had our hands on this information a full week earlier was exasperating.

  I looked at the paperwork I had skipped over. It appeared to be promotional material for a program devised by City Staff to have the City provide certain enhanced services to councillors’ districts in exchange for a smooth ride on the sewage treatment vote. Attached to this was an exchange of email correspondence between Spiegle and a female councillor in which she cited points that had been raised privately by—guess who?—Peter King. She felt his arguments were valid and she was having serious second thoughts about voting in favour of the deal. She had become disturbed enough to distribute the correspondence to the other councillors.

  It was late. I poured myself a small glass of dry white port and moved over to the bed. I now had both cat and dog in the room. The cat was somewhat leery of the Lab, but had assertively claimed the bed. Molly was lying on the rug by my desk. She watched me as I reached out to scratch the cat’s ears. I swallowed a little port, leaned back against the pillows, and tried to listen to the Saturday Night Blues program on the radio.

  Around 2:00 a.m. the voice of the local newscaster slowly cut through my sleep. “In Halifax a young man of Middle East extraction was found badly beaten in the railway cut beneath the Young Avenue bridge early this morning. He has been rushed to the hospital. Police are asking anyone with information about the incident to come forward.”

  I started awake. “Aziz!” I was still dressed and the bedside lamp was on. I wasn’t even sure if I had really heard the news report or if I had been dreaming. The radio had gone back to Deutchavella on CBC Radio Overnight.

  Molly stood and started to whine. She was agitated. “Oh my god, Molly. I guess you can tell I’m not a dog person. Do you want to go out?” She was immediately alert and anxiously moving towards the bedroom door. She hadn’t been outside at all since Harvie and I had brought her out of Sophie’s building. “You’ve got a champion bladder,” I said. “Well, I have to find out more about this news report, so you and I are going to take a little hike up the hill to the police station.”

  I got up and put on my coat and boots. I looked at the file on my desk and McBride’s warning about the evidence came back to me. I closed the file and took it over to my closet. I had a loose floorboard that had come in handy on a few occasions, and this would be one of them. I tucked the green folder under the board. Then I remembered the DVD in my computer. “Just one more second,” I said to Molly, as I ejected the disc and put it in the file. I replaced the board and rearranged my shoes and boots.

  “Okay, let’s go.” The hall was in darkness, lit only by the shaft of light coming from my bedroom. We began to make our way down to the front door. The cat stood at the top of the stairs watching.

  Was it a trick of the wind in the trees? I distinctly saw a shadow moving away from the frosted glass of the front door. I stopped cold. Molly looked at me and gave an impatient little woof. I glanced up at the cat as she arched her back. “What?” I said to her. She turned and strolled back into the bedroom. I looked back down to the door and saw nothing. I decided it was all foolishness. I pulled the door open and looked out. The street was empty.

  We stepped into the chill night. Standing atop the porch steps, I bent over to attach Molly’s leash to her collar. Suddenly she emitted a low growl. I started to turn but it was too late. My hands were grabbed, yanked behind me and lashed together at the wrists. I was pushed down onto my knees. Molly leaped into the air and snapped at my attacker but he gave her a hard push and she landed three steps down on the sidewalk.

  She cringed, growling. I knew he wouldn’t hesitate to hurt her, so I shouted, “Go home, Molly. Go! Go! Home.” She knew her way to McBride’s. She barked loudly. “Go!” I said again. She ran down the sidewalk a few paces, then turned back and started barking frantically. A Dartmouth taxi came along the road from downtown. I yelled out “Taxi! Help!” but my attacker, crouching behind me, put his arm around me in mock affection and used his hand to cover my mouth. He pulled my head towards him saying in my ear, “Shut up, bitch.” The taxi slowed to a crawl but my attacker smiled and waved him on. As the cab turned down Cornwallis and disappeared, the thug hauled me up to my feet and backed me up against the door.

  “Keys!” he yelled.

  “My coat pocket,” I said.

  Keeping one hand around my throat, he pulled the keys out of my pocket, unlocked the door and pushed me into the house. He banged the keys down on the hall table and slammed me hard against the wall. We were nose to nose and I wasn’t enjoying the close-up. He was a bug-ugly bruiser with a scar below one eye. He didn’t look at all like the Matrix-eyed driver of the Dodge who had followed me to the lab. This must be the other one—the one who had whacked McBride across the back of the head.

  “Today, you took a file from the girl’s apartment. Where is it?” His breath was vile.

  “Where is Sophie?” I said.

  In a split second, he smacked me hard across the mouth. I’m not cut out for this, I thought. I’m not going to make it through this.

  “Hand it over, or you’ll take the kind of beating I gave to your nosey little Arab friend.”

  “You mean the body the police found tonight in the railway cut,” I said, implying more than a beating.

  I could see I’d caught him off guard. “What do you k
now about it?” he asked.

  “I heard it on the radio. Just a few minutes ago. They found him,” I said.

  “So you know I mean business. So cough up the file.”

  My mind was racing. What were my options? Stall as long as possible while he beat the crap out of me? Agree to give him the file? Take him on a wild goose chase? I took a risk.

  “Okay,” I said. “You’re right, I did find a file at Sophie’s today, but I gave it to Detective Arbuckle. And I explained everything to him, so it’s already too late. The beans have been spilled. So far you’re not part of the story, but as soon as they figure out who Aziz is, they’ll be after you for murder. And what’s more they got some prints off the cellphone, and they’re not McBride’s so they must be yours.” I was on a roll now. “So if I were you, I would stop trying to protect whoever is paying you and get the hell out of town.”

  I was leaning against the hall wall, my hands tied behind me, the cords cutting into my wrists.

  Molly was still barking loudly, and sounded as though she was just outside the front door. I could also hear car doors closing and men’s voices. Molly stopped barking and started whining. The doorbell rang.

  He looked at me. I could feel the hall light switch jabbing into my back. If I forced my tied hands upwards, my fingers could feel the switch.

  “Please,” I said. “Where’s Sophie?”

  “That smart-mouthed little bitch is in deep shit,” he said.

  There was some loud rapping and we heard, “Police! Open up.”

  “Tell me where she is and I won’t turn you in,” I said hastily.

  “Fuck you,” he said, his spittle spraying in my face.

  “HELP!” I screamed. “HELP ME!” He grabbed my throat and squeezed. I forced my hands higher and frantically switched the hall light on and off, on and off. There was a loud crack against the frosted glass.

  My attacker turned and flew into the dark kitchen. I could hear him grunting and struggling with the back door. There was a sliding bolt lock a few inches up from the floor—you wouldn’t notice it if you didn’t know it was there.