Murder in Focus

by Medora Sale

  Green parked the red Toyota on a firm patch of ground behind some bushes and followed Don across the road. He looked back to check on the car and smiled. It had disappeared completely from view. Don was moving quickly along a small path, making no noise at all, apparently completely sobered up. Suddenly he stopped dead and gestured for silence. Then he eased himself back to where Green was standing and spoke directly into his ear. “Got to be quiet as hell. There’s a big path up there where the Mounties patrol. With dogs and all. You get by them and it’s a piece of cake.” He slithered ahead, stopped beside a tree, listened, moved farther, and gestured toward Green to follow. Suddenly they were in front of a chain-link fence looking at an enormous yellow-brick house, standing, mellow in the sunshine, in the middle of sloping lawns. “This what you wanted to see?” said Don in a whisper and stepped back.

  “That’s pretty nice,” said Green. “I don’t suppose you can get in there, though, for a closer look, can you?”

  “You want a closer look?” said Bartholomew vaguely, and looked around him. “If you go up there where that stream is, the fence is broken and you can get in.” The part of the garden they were beside had been left to grow wild, and they were screened from observation by flowering shrubs and small trees. “This is a good time to try it, too. Guys are all in the back of the house having coffee. No patrols right now. You can go up this way and look right in the windows if you want.” Don crouched down to see under the low-lying branches, reaching casually into his jacket as if to scratch his ribs. A shout from somewhere nearby distracted him, and for one disastrous moment he turned his head toward the fence. Green reached into his pocket and extracted a neat, professional-looking cosh. Before Bartholomew had a chance to look back at the man he was leading, that man raised his arm and swiftly drove it down. Don crumpled without a noise.

  Green stopped and listened for a full thirty seconds. He bent over, pressed a finger delicately into the side of the still neck, and waited another few seconds. He opened Bartholomew’s grubby jacket and noted the shoulder holster and pistol without surprise. He pried the dead man’s fingers off the butt and transferred the weapon into his own pocket; he picked up the body carefully and easily, and walked away at right angles to the fence. When he hit the larger path, he paused to listen again, long enough to make sure that it was not being patrolled, and then retraced his steps back to the road. He carried his burden over to a small hollow on the edge of the wood. There was a thud as Don Bartholomew landed in the flower-filled clearing, the noise covered by the sound of indignant birds chattering and chipmunks scurrying for shelter.

  The sun burned through the windows onto his face and neck as Sanders followed the long line of cars into the center of the city. Chrome, glass, and water glittered hard and unpleasant around him. His head ached. He had clearly missed the turning for the parkway that would whisk him up the east side of the Rideau River and then into his motel—a turning that at least four people had assured him he couldn’t miss—and was condemned to fight his way through the heavy downtown traffic. On the grass beside Dow’s Lake, young women with fish-belly-white skins shivered in bikinis in the bright sun; on the pavement beside them, other young women rushed by, clutching coats and jackets around them to protect themselves from the cold. The much-vaunted tulips—pride of the city—were huddling in the dry wind, too, looking short and scraggy, their foliage thin, their blossoms small and dry-looking. The grass appeared brittle and yellow, as if it had dried up before it had begun its spring growth. But it was no drier than he was himself this bleak sun-filled afternoon. Dust and debris—pollen, dried-up tree blossoms, and scraps of old paper left over from the winter—beat on the windshield and flew in the half-open window, making his exhaustion-gummed eyes burn.

  Why, in the name of God, hadn’t he just yelled no into the phone when they told him to pack up at once for five days in Ottawa? He knew why, of course. If he hadn’t said yes, he would be finishing off today’s paperwork right now and facing a week’s leave. Leave he had been postponing for months now, getting more foul-tempered and erratic by the day. Leave he would have to spend alone, watching the walls of his concrete rabbit warren of an apartment slowly close in on him until he went mad. Before Eleanor packed up the green tracksuit and herbal shampoo that she kept in his drawer and walked through his front door for the last time, she had pointed out with bitterness that he was incapable of sharing even a corner of his life with anyone else. Perhaps it was true. Perhaps he was doomed to live out his existence in echoing solitude. And if that were so, then there wouldn’t seem to be much point to it.

  That thought carried him through a bizarre series of left turns and right turns—including one that seemed to lead him in and out of a parking garage—to the street where, three lanes over on the left-hand side, he could see his motel. Of course. As he waited for a break in the traffic, he glowered sourly at it. Scruffy, standard, two-story North American, sitting, as far as he could tell, in the middle of a couple of major construction projects, surrounded by more swirling dust. The department was on one of its cyclical money-saving kicks, evidently. And he had been assured that this was the room booked for Tom Flanagan. Not bloody likely. Flanagan would have been staying with all the politicians at the Chateau Laurier at one-fifty or so a night.

  When he finally stumbled into the room, he dropped his suitcase on the bed by the door, yanked the curtains shut, and began ripping off his clothes as soon as he had two free hands. He gave his surroundings one quick look, decided he had been in worse rooms, and headed for the shower. Three minutes later he stepped naked out of the bathroom, ripped the covers off the nearest bed, and collapsed on the cool sheet. The mattress billowed up around him, rocking with the motion of the road and swaying dangerously into the corners of the room. As he drifted into unconsciousness, he was troubled by the thought that he had seen, or heard, or done something that should have been noted, reported, called in, filed.

  Whatever it was, it had to do with a telephone that kept on ringing and ringing and ringing. He reached into the space where it should have been and found emptiness. The ringing went on. Oh, God, he groaned, that must be a real phone, and pulled his eyes open. The room was still bright with the daylight that filtered through the motel room curtains; he finally located the phone over on the table by the door. The ringing persisted. He lurched dizzily off the bed and scooped the receiver from its cradle. “Yes,” he said, his mouth thick and dry and foul-tasting.

  “Inspector Sanders?” It was a cold voice, unpleasant and peremptory in tone. “Higgs. RCMP temporary liaison, civilian police forces. We were expecting you this morning.” He waited, apparently for a reply. “Toronto called us yesterday when Flanagan came down sick. We understood that his replacement would be leaving before six in the morning.”

  Sanders stared at the receiver in his hand, stupefied. “At six this morning,” he said, finally, anger rising and clearing away the sleep, “I was on the roof of an apartment building, being shot at by a man wanted for the murder of three juveniles. No one thought to tell me to let him go so I could jump in my car and drive to Ottawa.”

  There was another pause. “The motel switchboard says that you checked in at two o’clock. Your orders were to call at once.”

  “I used my initiative,” said Sanders. He was getting bored with this conversation. “And got some sleep first. If you object, you can go to hell—or call Toronto. Or both. I’m reporting in now—or are you people about to go home for the day?”

  From the length of the pause this time, Sanders figured that he had got it in one. “The group, or most of it, is meeting for drinks and an early dinner at the Belle Mireille.” Higgs pronounced the two words as if they rhymed. “It’s on Albert Street, a couple of blocks west of Elgin. Albert’s two blocks south off Confederation Square. We’ll see you there at five-thirty.” Inspector Higgs hung up the phone without waiting for a response.

  “Go get yourself a bloody horse,” said
Sanders as he slammed the receiver down and headed back to try what another shower might do for him.

  Superintendent Henri Deschenes was sitting behind three files spread out on his desk. “I’ve been spending a lot of time on the Sea Gull files, going back to when we first heard of the conference,” he said. “There’s something that doesn’t feel right about them.”

  Inspector Ian MacMillan was wandering restlessly around Deschenes’s office, fiddling with the blinds, circling the small seminar table at the far end, lining up a couple of chairs that had been left in slight disarray by the cleaning staff. He stopped and looked over. “What do you mean?”

  “There’s a leak, Ian,” said Deschenes, looking steadily at him. “Or a blockage, which amounts to the same thing.” He tapped the file marked “Reports: Canadian Security Intelligence Service” in a neat hand. “Hadn’t you noticed?”

  “Here?” said MacMillan.

  “Yes. We’re getting too much of the wrong kind of information and not enough of the kind you’d expect. As though it’s all being filtered through someone who’s making sure it stays distorted. Whose desk did those reports land on while I was off?”

  “Sylvia’s, I think,” said MacMillan, nodding in the direction of the door that led to Deschenes’s secretary’s office. “At least, she was the one who passed them on to me. And that doesn’t seem likely, sir,” he added, giving his attention back to the blinds. “More likely to be those bastards over at CSIS deliberately screwing things up for us, don’t you think? I mean, you can’t suspect Sylvia. . . .” His voice trailed off and he shook his head. Suddenly he crossed over to the desk, sat down, and smashed the flat of his large hand down on the file. “After all, what in hell do they expect? The goddamn government takes a fully operational and functioning intelligence service and just because a few reporters start bitching over a couple of operations that go wrong and scare the hell out of some politicians they rip the whole thing apart. And then they take the most important part—the most sensitive part, intelligence gathering—and dump it into the hands of civilians? Jesus, that’s where you really need the discipline and training and that sort of shit. Even if most of the bastards at CSIS trained with us originally, it can’t work. There’s no discipline over there, no morale. Of course they’re going to screw up. And that name,” he said, “that goddamn stupid name. The Canadian bloody Security Intelligence Service. Yeah. What do you expect?” He stood up again. “And where were you—or for that matter Charlie Higgs or any of us—when they were doing all this? We just lay back and let them destroy us.” The indignation faded from his voice and he wandered over to the window again.

  Deschenes followed him steadily with angry eyes. “For the time being, Inspector MacMillan,” he said, “I am going to assume that you, like the rest of us, have been working too long and too hard and I’m going to forget that you said what you have just said.” He stacked the files in front of him. “I also assume that you must have forgotten what some of your friends were doing in the old days. Remember? Planting evidence? Filing false reports? I don’t know why in hell you have always believed that the fault lies somewhere up the road, Ian, and not with us. You can’t run Operations if you don’t accept the possibility of error—or sabotage.”

  MacMillan shrugged lazily. “You want me to look into it?” he asked. His tone reduced the problem to the level of a late delivery of office supplies. “Tell you what, let me get on to someone we can trust at CSIS. I’ll give Steve Collins a call. No, better yet, Andy Cassidy. He’ll be working downtown. Who in hell ever knows where Steve is? He’s probably under cover again.” He reached casually for Deschenes’s telephone. “Andy’ll know what they think they’re doing. Let me have a word with him before we start messing around here with a full-scale inquiry. I’ll do it tonight—no problem.”

  The telephone rang before MacMillan could dial or Deschenes could reply. Deschenes paused for a second, then nodded in agreement, picked up the receiver, and listened intently for less than a minute. “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” he said, and turned back to MacMillan. “Sorry. My wife, reminding me that we have dinner guests. Life goes on in spite of Sea Gull, doesn’t it? Let me know tomorrow what you find out—if anything.”

  Chapter 3

  Inspector John Sanders strode angry and unseeing along the broad sidewalk, daring pedestrians to get in his way. His shoulder brushed against the edge of a large kiosk that should have offered tourist information but didn’t, and he looked up. “Bloody hell!” he muttered, realizing that he was still heading along Wellington instead of down Elgin as instructed. He swung quickly to his left. Where he could have sworn there should have been empty space, however, he found himself in direct contact with a sizable solid object. He felt, then heard, a dull thud and stared horror-struck down at the ground.

  “For chrissake, don’t you ever look where you’re going?” said a voice, female, and trembling with anger.

  In front of him he saw a young women, dressed in jeans, sprawled awkwardly in a half-squatting position. She had one hand on the pavement and with the other she was holding up an aluminum suitcase-like object. Sanders reached out to help her as she started to pick herself up from the concrete sidewalk. “I’m sorry,” he muttered, grabbing her wrist firmly. “Can I give you a hand?” As he gave her arm a yank to bring her upright, her green knapsack, already hanging by only one strap, slipped off her shoulder and landed on the pavement.

  “Don’t bother,” she snapped, pulling her arm back. “Just get the hell out of my way before you wreck all my equipment.” By now she was back on her feet and leaning concernedly over the objects on the ground. With a slightly sick feeling, Sanders noticed that one of them was a tripod—a large, heavy-looking, and without a doubt very expensive tripod. Beside it lay the green knapsack.

  “Is it damaged?” he asked.

  She stared down at it for a considerable length of time. “It shouldn’t be,” she said finally in a grudging tone. “But no thanks to you. It’s sturdy and well packed, that’s all.”

  “Look,” he said, “I’m sorry. All right?” He was turning to go when a thought suddenly occurred to him. “My God! Are you hurt? I should have asked that before worrying about the equipment.”

  “Why?” she said crisply. “I heal—it’s equipment that has to be replaced. Anyway, I’m fine. It takes a lot to damage me.”

  At that, a belated surge of conscience prompted him to grab the knapsack and drop it onto a nearby bench, and then come back for the tripod. “Let me at least help you pick up this stuff,” he said.

  “For chrissake,” she yelped. “Will you leave it alone? It may be well packed but it’s not a collection of old bricks.”

  “I’m just trying to get it out of the way before someone steps on it,” he said stiffly, picking up the aluminum suitcase and stacking it beside the tripod.

  “It’ll be fine,” she said emphatically. “Now if you’ll get out of my way I would like to catch the five o’clock sun.” With a grimace, she unzipped the knapsack and peered inside. Sanders bent his tall frame over her anxiously, trying to see what damage he had done.

  She leaned back on the wood-and-concrete bench and glared at him. “I can’t see a goddamned thing with you standing in my light,” she said at last.

  With a guilty jump, he stepped backward and smashed the back of his head against something very hard. “Watch what you’re fucking well doing,” yelled an aggrieved pedestrian behind him. “Jesus,” the man said, and planted one large hand between Sanders’s shoulder blades. With a “There, you bastard,” he shoved Sanders back before disappearing into the crowd. The unexpectedness of the attack caught Sanders off guard, and he catapulted toward the girl on the bench. He grabbed the back slat, missing her shoulder by inches, and lurched awkwardly over to the side.

  She bent over in a spasm of laughter.

  Sanders regained his balance, clutched the back of his throbbing head, and
glared furiously at the laughing woman; finally a slow grin spread across his face and he sat down quietly beside her.

  “Well, then, let’s see what’s happened to this stuff.” She peered into the knapsack once more, this time without interference. “It seems to be fine,” she said. “But thank you anyway.”

  Sanders glanced at his watch. “You’ve missed the five o’clock sun,” he pointed out. “It’s already ten past. Why don’t you let me buy you a drink? To make amends for what I did. And because I’m a stranger here.”

  “All lost and alone? You should work on other ways of getting to know people, I think. But what the hell.” She looked at her watch and sighed. “Let bygones be bygones,” she said, zipping up her knapsack. “Where would you like to go?”

  Sanders followed the woman through the crowds sitting six and seven to a table on the broad sidewalk into the darkened interior of the pub. The rush hour throng of drinkers were all jammed around small metal tables in the bright sunshine and exhaust fumes of the outdoors, leaving the indoor section silent and almost empty. She took her knapsack and camera case from him and settled them on the floor in a corner before slipping into a small, damask-covered chair. “My apologies for the bordello atmosphere,” she said, glancing around at the crimson walls and velvet curtains. “But it was close by and they have English beer on draft.”

  “Good idea,” said Sanders, and ordered each of them a pint. “And since I was the one who knocked you down, I guess I should start,” he said. “My name is Sanders, John Sanders. I’m from Toronto, and I’m here for a week.” He stopped—not willing to commit himself any further—and looked inquiringly at her.

  “Convention?” she asked casually.

  “In a manner of speaking,” he said evasively. “And you must be a photographer. With all that equipment.”