Murder in Focus

by Medora Sale

  “I hope you’re investigating the violinist as well,” said Sanders. “Do you realize that every time we went near Lang’s house she was there, in the middle of things?”

  “Precisely,” said Higgs, nodding in a pleased sort of way at Sanders, as though he had invented him. “But you were obviously aware of her complicity,” he added, turning to Hoffel.

  Hoffel shook his head and grinned. “She’s good, isn’t she? Although I think Lang was getting a little suspicious of her in the last couple of days. I told her she would have to stop, uh, hanging around his house so frequently. You see, we hadn’t been able to get anywhere near Lang on our own. But he can’t resist these glamorous, artistic types, though, and so—when he seemed to become, uh, well, infatuated with her—we used it.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” said Higgs. “You mean she’s one of your people? No wonder . . .” He turned toward Hoffel and shook his head. “Let me give you a piece of advice. The next time you have someone under cover, don’t hang around staring at them all the time. I picked her out right away, only I figured her for a psycho with a Beretta in her handbag and you knew about it. No wonder Lang was getting suspicious.”

  Hoffel reddened and raised his hands in a gesture of acknowledgment. “Mea culpa,” he said. “I found it difficult to let her operate on her own.”

  “You have world-class musicians in your organization? That’s very impressive,” said Sanders.

  Hoffel laughed. “No. That was the problem. She’s not really in the organization. She’s my friend, uh, girlfriend? Is that what you call it?”

  “Only if you mean that you and she are . . .” Higgs paused, looking for a precise term to cover the situation.

  “Right. My girlfriend from the old days. We come from the same small town. When we both moved away, we . . .” Hoffel paused as if baffled how to explain the situation. “But we hadn’t seen each other for several years,” he said simply, “until we met again in Vienna, and Herr Lang never discovered that I was in her background.”

  “Weren’t you worried that he would?” asked Higgs curiously.

  “Worried? At times,” Hoffel answered with a suddenly grim and tight-lipped countenance.

  “What was Lang up to?” asked Sanders, partly to change the subject and partly because everyone else appeared to take his mission for granted.

  “Oh, to assassinate the prime minister, of course, and take over, if possible, in the ensuing chaos. He belongs to a group of maniacs in the right wing of our politics. Very difficult to deal with, because he has many friends who are reasonable people and who believe him to be a good man, conservative in nature, but loyal. We had information, from Anna Maria, of course, that his organization was going to try something here. They have, it appears,” Hoffel said, turning to Deschenes, “some sort of contact of an official nature helping them in this country. You might wish to investigate that, Superintendent. Perhaps later in the evening, Miss Strelitsch and I could discuss what she has discovered with you.”

  “Contact?” said Deschenes in the ensuing silence.

  “Yes. If you would excuse me, Superintendent, gentlemen, I must report to my ambassador. I will return, if you wish, with Miss Strelitsch.” Hoffel rose, and nodded gravely to the assembled company. Henri Deschenes rose as well and followed him out into the secretary’s office.

  Charlie Higgs and Ian MacMillan got to their feet as soon as the two men were out of the room. Higgs looked around him vaguely and reached for his briefcase, which was lying on a chair. “I think I ought to be going now,” he said. “You people don’t need me anymore.”

  “And I think you never needed me,” said Ian MacMillan genially. “Good night, Andy.”

  “I really don’t think you guys had better go,” said Andrew Cassidy with a slightly worried frown. “I think the old man has a lot more he wanted to go into.”

  “So, tell him I’ll call in,” said MacMillan. “Look, I haven’t had supper. I have to go over today’s reports for any snags and revise our plans for tomorrow. I don’t have time to sit around and mumble about spies and Austrian terrorist organizations. If you ask me, nothing happened today because nothing was supposed to happen. That prime minister could have walked back to Ottawa and no one would have touched him. Coming, Charlie?” And the two men walked out of the office by the rear door.

  “Have Ian and Charlie left?” asked Deschenes as he came back in. He seemed neither surprised nor disturbed. “We have a few other things to ask you about, Inspector. That’s why I invited Andy Cassidy to be here. He’s been looking into the death of Steve Collins.”

  “Steve Collins?”

  “Don Bartholomew to you, probably,” said Cassidy. “He was under cover, for us. CSIS.”

  “And the regional police seem to feel that they have been stumbling across you everywhere they go. Some of it we can understand—we have heard about the business of the picture—”

  “Just one thing,” said Sanders. “Unofficially, off the record, no lawsuits, nothing, was it you guys who trashed my motel room? Obviously it was Lang and Green, or whatever it was that Hoffel called him, who broke into Miss Jeffries’s apartment, because they had the pictures. Do you know how she is, by the way?” he asked, suddenly conscious that some time had passed since they had whisked her off.

  “The doctor has been in to see her. She’s fine. My secretary and the staff nurse have her tucked away in some warm corner lying down. And no, we didn’t do that. At least it was not authorized from here,” Deschenes added cautiously. “But when you turned up in Stittsville . . . What were you doing?”

  “Trying to get Miss Jeffries’s pictures back. Since we didn’t have much hope of finding the man in the picture on our own, I thought I’d nose around the victim’s end of things, on the assumption that Green hadn’t just picked him out at random. And actually, we did find the other man in the picture, but we lost him again.”

  “Indeed?” said Deschenes. “And who was this man?”

  “Don’t know,” said Sanders. “Average to tall, just under six feet, I would guess. About thirty, blond hair, tanned, slender build, very fit-looking, maybe one-hundred-fifty-five to one-hundred-sixty pounds. No obvious distinguishing marks. He was attending a conference at Carleton University and we spotted him there. He lost us very smoothly and professionally.”

  “Andy, could you collar someone out there to do something about it?” Cassidy got up and left the room. “It would have been very helpful, Inspector Sanders,” said Deschenes, the ironic edge to his voice getting sharper and sharper, “if you had let us in on these secrets a little earlier.”

  “I realize that,” said Sanders. “But I had a certain problem about it all.” He paused. Deschenes regarded him steadily. “The local police seemed to regard me as a dangerous maniac addicted to arson. I wasn’t really excited about letting anyone here know, either, because I wasn’t sure what was going on. You see, when I was in Brockville, Green made a telephone call.” He reached into his pocket and found the piece of heavy paper still sitting there. “To this number.”

  Deschenes looked at it, impassive. “Interesting. Did you recognize the number?”

  Sanders shook his head. “Not at that point.”

  “Odd that you should write it down, then.”

  Sanders was about to describe the mynah bird and checked himself. No need to develop a reputation for insanity at this point. “I don’t know. I’d been driving for hours on no sleep and I suppose I wasn’t being very rational. I heard him punch in the numbers and jotted them down. He dialed twice, you see,” added Sanders, trying to give an air of possibility to his tale. “It was the second time around that I caught the numbers.”

  Deschenes didn’t react. “It’s fortunate you were sitting close enough to the phone to hear.”

  “By the time he called, the place was deserted,” said Sanders.

  “What did he say?”
asked Deschenes.

  Sanders saw the trap and hedged. “He was muttering. I could hear him, but I couldn’t make out the words clearly enough to get a sense of the conversation. Besides, I had no reason to try to listen in. So you see, I really didn’t know what was happening.”

  “What in hell were you doing out in Stittsville?” asked Cassidy, who had come back in and was listening again.

  “I went out to see Bartholomew’s landlady,” said Sanders uneasily. “An odd type. You know, beads, long hair, bare feet, and organic food. She let me see some of his stuff.”

  “The devil she did!” said Cassidy. “There wasn’t a cracker crumb that belonged to Steve Collins in that place after Tuesday night. We cleaned out everything.”

  “Then you didn’t look in Miranda’s Christmas cake tin,” said Sanders. “She was hiding stuff for him in there.”

  “You mean she managed to hold out on us?” said Cassidy. “Jesus! Why?”

  “You turned up as the heavies, the forces of law and order,” said Sanders. “And she didn’t trust you. Now I turned up pretending to be an unsuccessful writer, and she thought I was pretty great.” There was a certain bitterness in his tone. “Of course, since I was probably followed out there, trusting me wasn’t the best thing she ever did.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about that,” said Cassidy dismissively. “Anyone who was after Steve knew he was staying at Miranda’s. He never tried to hide that. What did she have?” he asked, and leaned forward across the table, his arms stiff with tension, his eyes bright with nerves.

  “A notebook,” said Sanders. “Entitled ‘Dawn in Vienna.’ It was filled with jottings in his own sort of shorthand, semiclear, most of which I can’t remember because they meant nothing to me. What I could remember, I wrote down after I left the place.” He reached into his inside breast pocket and took out his own notebook, opened it, and placed it in front of Cassidy. “Inside the notebook,” he said, drawing out his words and conscious of an almost sadistic quality in his enjoyment of their suspense, “was a slip of paper headed up ‘R.T.’” He paused again and fished into his breast pocket once more. “Here. I palmed it. Which is just as well, since you guys seem to have burned the place down along with the landlady and the notebook.”

  “Hey, we didn’t burn the place down. We thought you did.” Cassidy took the paper and opened it up very carefully. He looked at it for a while before placing it neatly in front of Deschenes. “That’s it,” he said. “And I suppose that’s how you turned up at the Echo Drive address, too.”

  “Sure,” said Sanders. “Does that help?” he asked innocently.

  “It’s our key, Inspector.” Cassidy’s voice danced in triumph. “The key I’ve been turning Ottawa upside down for.”

  “Clearly a simple book code,” said Deschenes. “Do you know what the book is?”

  “Doesn’t he say?” asked Cassidy, leaning over. “Sure, there. Hardy, F.F.T.M.C.”

  “You have the advantage over me,” said Deschenes. “I wasn’t educated in English. Is this a common book?”

  “Well,” said Sanders, “it’ll likely be Thomas Hardy.” He thought for a moment. “Ah, Far from the Madding Crowd. It doesn’t say which edition, though. There’ll be a lot of them, you know.”

  “The one in his apartment, I imagine,” said Cassidy. “He had a hell of a lot of books.”

  “Then take the file and get over there and see what you come up with,” said Deschenes. “Just a minute,” he added, raising a hand. He went over to his desk, picked up the telephone, and spoke briefly into it. “I’m sending you with an escort, Andy, in an official car. Just as well to have witnesses, I think.” He sat down again at his desk. His face was gray with fatigue and he was beginning to breathe shallowly. “I think we might take a break, Inspector,” he said after a minute. “The constable out there will locate Miss Jeffries for you and you might want to get some dinner if she is feeling recovered.” He waved his hand in a gesture of dismissal.

  The hotel corridor was quiet and deserted. Most guests were at dinner or out for the evening, many to the official events of varying levels of prestige lavishly scheduled for the end of the first day of the trade conference. The elevator stopping at the floor below made a distinctive pinging sound that could be heard in the silence of the floor. It would have taken excellent ears, though, to hear the soft footsteps on the staircase, or the door being gently opened. A tall man stepped into the carpeted hallway, glanced around to check the sequencing of the room numbers, and padded noiselessly toward the other end. When he reached Room 507, he pulled a key on a heavy tag out of his pocket and slipped it into the lock. It turned without a sound, and he opened the door a fraction of an inch. No reaction from inside the darkened room. He pushed it open a little farther. He was assuming that she would be at dinner, but he was a cautious man, and quite prepared to back discreetly out of the room again if she was in there. He stepped inside, gently pushed the door closed behind him, and blinked to accustom himself to the dim twilight created by the tightly drawn curtains.

  Hands grasped him from each side at his next step, two pairs of hands. They drew his arms behind his back and snapped handcuffs around his wrists. Another hand reached out and turned on the overhead light. “Sergeant, what in hell do you think you’re doing?” said the man as soon as he saw his captor.

  “Sorry, Inspector Higgs, sir. Orders from the superintendent. He would like you back at headquarters.”

  “Like this?” said Charlie Higgs, moving his arms slightly. “Sorry, sir.” And the three men headed out toward the elevator.

  An hour and a half later, Harriet Jeffries and John Sanders were sitting once more in the outer office, waiting for Superintendent Deschenes. He had come out of his office a few minutes before, this time looking not merely tired, but stricken with a hideous illness. “I’ll be with you soon,” he said curtly. “Something has come up.”

  Whatever further he might have considered saying was interrupted by the sound of rapid footsteps in the corridor outside the office. A fist was raised and banged on the glass once and then the door was flung open. It was Sergeant Carpenter, red-faced and furious-looking. “Excuse me, Superintendent,” he said. “They told me downstairs that you were still in.”

  “What’s the problem, Sergeant?” said Deschenes, pushing aside the In tray and sitting down on Sylvia’s desk. “And who is that cowering behind you in the corridor?”

  “It’s Corporal Fletcher, sir,” said Carpenter, looking even more ruffled. “And it’s about him that I came in.”

  “Yes?”

  “I was going over the reports on this afternoon’s activities, sir, and I discovered that according to at least two different people, Corporal Fletcher wasn’t at his station this afternoon.”

  “Look, Frank, I know things are tough out there. You’ve had a lot of problems, but so have we. More than you can imagine right now. Write it up and we’ll deal with it after the conference. We can’t even afford to suspend someone right now. We need every man we’ve got out there.”

  “No, sir. It’s not that. I wouldn’t have bothered you for a simple breach of discipline. I hope you realize that, sir. It was what he said when I called him up on it.”

  “And?”

  “He said that he had been posted in Sector LG by a senior officer, with orders to shoot an army sniper as soon as the man fired his weapon.”

  “What?” said Deschenes, sitting up erect again.

  “And I called Lieutenant-Colonel Williamson—he was in charge of that group of men the army lent us—and he said they didn’t send a sniper. Got real mad at me, sir, said that no one had asked for army snipers, thought we did that sort of thing on our own, and on and on, like I was criticizing him for not having a sniper there. But Fletcher saw the man, said he was in army uniform and carrying a rifle. Sat in a tree, Fletcher said, facing the house. Then Fletcher said he was really bothered abo
ut it because he was supposed to shoot to kill. Fletcher’s a crack shot, sir, and felt that he was capable of disabling the man temporarily without killing him. So he didn’t like to kill him. Isn’t that so, Corporal?”

  A mutter from behind him could have been taken for assent.

  “Did he say who the senior officer was?” asked Deschenes.

  “No, sir, he refused to say. He said that he had been told that there would be the severest consequences if he said anything about it. So I brought him down here.”

  “Come into my office, Fletcher,” said Deschenes, standing up again. Sanders watched the superintendent walking to his door, erect, but like a man going to the gallows.

  Charlie Higgs was standing at the window, looking out at the dark outlines of the trees against the night sky, thinking of nothing of all, when the door opened to admit the two men. “Hello, Corporal,” he said wearily. “What are you doing here?” Two shadowy figures lounged by the boardroom table, watching and taking notes.

  “Reporting to the superintendent, sir. We had some excitement out at the secure site this afternoon.”

  “So I heard, Fletcher, so I heard.”

  “Now, Fletcher,” said Deschenes sharply, “tell me who it was gave you those extraordinary orders. Right now. This needs to be sorted out tonight.”

  Fletcher looked around in panic. “Excuse me, sir, but I can’t say, especially in front of three people who don’t know anything about it, sir. I mean, I was told it was top secret, sir. That no one was to be told without authorization. I told Sergeant Carpenter too much already. And he told everyone in the outer office—”