Authors: Giles Blunt
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The old geezer had a high-def seventy-incher in his living room, and Jack and Lemur were totally into an episode of
24
when Papa came upstairs and asked Lemur to turn it off. He and Jack would need some privacy. The kid didn’t say a word of protest, just switched the thing off and headed to his bedroom. “And don’t stay up all night,” Papa called after him. “You rendezvous with Nikki at the airfield at 07:00.”
Papa’s word choices amused Jack sometimes. The guy hadn’t been in the military for it must be thirty years, but airports were still “airfields” and train stations were still “railheads.” He had the bearing to carry it off, though, you had to admit.
Papa stood in silence for a few moments, his back to the living room, hands clasped behind his back, staring out the window. He had turned off the lights—turned them off on the entire ground floor. The fire burned low in the grate, casting long shadows across the floor and up the walls. Jack loved this place—all the wood, and the thick carpets and expensive furniture, and the peace and quiet of the forest. The past week they’d been bivouacked in the woods, and God knows Papa had trained them well for that sort of thing, but it sure made you appreciate a comfortable house. Part of Jack hoped they could stay there forever, and part of him knew that it would never happen.
The plate glass window, large as a movie screen, looked out across the lake, the black patches of open water. It was snowing hard now, and a high wind whipped the flakes across the window in wild swirls. Every few moments lightning detonated and lit up the blizzard with a flash that made the world leap then fade to mauve, then black.
Jack—his full name was Jackson Michael Till—had been with Papa for six years. Long enough that sometimes he thought he knew the man, understood him even. Sometimes he thought he never would.
Papa turned from the window, placed a hand on his chest. “Storms speak to me,” he said. And he said it in that confidential voice, that soft voice that implied he would never talk to anyone else in quite this way. Jack would never have admitted it, but he loved that voice. He waited for it with anticipation, even yearned for it, and having those feelings probably put him at some kind of disadvantage, but it didn’t stop him loving that voice.
“Lightning, thunder—especially in winter,” Papa said. “They get to me in here”—he patted his chest—“in a way that nothing else does.”
“Me too,” Jack said, realizing this was true only as he said it. Papa often got him to say things that were both true and yet surprising to him.
“Will you have a brandy with me? Mr. Kreeger has a bottle of Delamain in the sideboard.”
“Yeah, sure.” Jack’s voice and words sounded ugly and low-class to his own ears after Papa’s slightly formal manner of speech. Being around Papa made you want to improve everything about yourself, even the way you spoke. Jack had never in his life drunk a brandy except when he was with Papa, but he cleared his throat and said, “Brandy would be perfect.”
Papa went to the sideboard and poured out two glasses. Firelight glittering in pale amber. “I’d like to propose a toast.”
“Okay.”
“I feel a little formal about it, Jack. Could you stand up?”
“Sorry.” Jack got to his feet.
“No apology necessary,” the older man said. “The last thing I want to do is make you uncomfortable. I propose a toast to Jack—a man who has his own code of behaviour and follows it to the letter. A man with a mind of his own, who nobody can tell what to do if he doesn’t want to do it. A true soldier—with a sharp, discerning intellect, who doesn’t just blindly follow orders but who fights for what he believes in. In short, to you, sir …” He clinked his glass against Jack’s. “In gratitude for everything you’ve done for this family. For being my right hand. I owe you more than I can say.”
Jack took a sip. The brandy had a bite to it that almost made him cough.
“Okay, enough of this formal stuff,” Papa said, and clapped a hand on Jack’s shoulder. “What say we sit by the fire and you tell me your damn war story!”
There was one leather wing chair close to the fireplace. Papa lifted up another and carried it across the room. He placed it at an angle to the other.
“Take your pick,” Papa said. “And tell me everything.”
Jack sat down. He stretched his feet out and looked at them. Then he looked at Papa. “You sure? I already told you everything.”
“I know you did. But I’m like a kid with this—I want to hear it over and over. Or not a kid. It’s like in the old days. The days of Viking warriors. They’d sit around the fire and try to outdo each other with wild tales. Well, son, I can’t hope to outdo you, I’m just here to listen. And let’s face it, it’s not the kind of thing you get to tell a lot of people, so let me have it. I’ve got my brandy, I’ve got my fireplace, and I’ve got a total man of action with a hell of a story. You can’t beat that.”
So Jack tells him again how really it was Papa himself who laid the groundwork for the operation by telling the Bastovs he’d have a good realtor friend call them. Tells him again how he called the Bastovs with the news that he had the ideal house for a couple who liked winter sports. Tells him again how he drove them out to Trout Lake and showed them around. Tells him again how he pulled out the bottle of Stoli.
“Oh, that was smart,” Papa says. “A very good touch. Who knows—maybe one day you can retire to a life of selling real estate. You’d be good at it.”
Jack holds his snifter up in the firelight, watching the upside-down flames flicker in his glass.
“So you’re sitting down, the three of you having a drink,” Papa says. “What were they saying? What were they like? Were they suspicious at all?”
“Not really. The woman was real excited—about the lake, not the house. The location. The guy was, like, noncommittal.”
“Tell me again how you did it, Jack.”
So Jack told him again. The words came out and he couldn’t believe he was saying them, even though he’d done this before—told Papa other stories, about other “targets,” as Papa called them. Told him how he pours the third round—how those Russians like to just toss it back, not into sipping, those people. How the woman’s eyes are getting brighter, her laugh
a little louder. And as they’re tossing it back, how he reaches into his shoulder bag and pulls out the Browning. How he whips it out and points it across the table at the man.
“How’d he look, Jack? How’d he look when you did that?”
“He looked like …” Jack had to think how to describe it, not sure what to call the emotion or state of mind that was so plain on the man’s face. “He looked like, just, ‘oh.’ You know?”
“His mouth dropped open.”
“It did,” Jack says. “His mouth actually did drop open. Anyway, I shot him right then and there. Just bang, no hesitation, right between the eyes. Well, forehead, I guess you’d say.”
Papa nodded. “Again smart. Neutralize the man first.”
“It’s how you always told me, Papa.”
“Yes, but you did it. The pressure was on and you did it right. And the woman?”
“I didn’t give her no time to scream. Place was isolated enough, but I didn’t want no screaming. Bring people running. So I just whipped around again …” He held his gun arm out, finger pointing, and showed Papa how he pointed to his right. He closed one eye as if aiming anew. “Like so. And I let her have it.”
“Between the eyes also?”
“She was looking at the guy, so she was turned a little—like so? Caught her in the temple and went right through.”
“Two shots, two down. You’re good, Jack. They’re going to be talking about this. Russian mob circles? The oligarchs? This is not going to go unnoticed.”
“They really Russian mob, those two?”
Papa raised his hand level above his head, as if showing deep water. “Up to here, Jack. Up to here. When the Communist system imploded, they basically handed Lev Bastov the industry. Those people have no concept of our values. All he had to do was pay off the right commissars and it was his.”
“They didn’t seem like gangster types to me. They didn’t have the tone of it. Not to my ears. Leastwise not the woman.”
Papa put his glass aside and leaned on the arm of his chair. “And there were no witnesses, right? No one saw you with them? No one saw you at the house?”
“Hell, you saw that place, you found it.” Lying had always come easily to Jack. He couldn’t even remember a time when he didn’t lie. But he did not like lying to Papa. “There’s nobody out on that damn point
to
see.”
“You’re right.” Papa’s blue eyes looking into him, sparks of firelight in the irises.
“How’d you know that place was out there, anyway? How come you knowed it’d be for sale and all?”
“I didn’t. Not until we reconnoitred. You could call it luck. But luck will always favour those who study the terrain. Tell me the rest.”
So Jack told him how he put on the raincoat he’d brought with him. Zipped it up and took out the axe. Then the skinner. He didn’t mention the sound of a window shattering. His shock and terror. A witness that got away? He wanted to confide everything to this man who had taught him so much, given him so much. But part of him knew he couldn’t. Papa already knew about the heads in detail—they’d planned all that out together, from the axe to the bags to the local wharf—but now he insisted Jack tell him anyway. So he did, and somehow the telling of it made it weigh less inside him.
“Beautiful job,” Papa said. “Terror and confusion, Jack. We’ve sewn terror and confusion—and you pulled it off. Flawless. Absolutely flawless. And the woman—Irena Bastov was quite a looker.”
“Really? That your assessment?”
“Be honest now, Jack. We can tell each other these sorts of things.”
“Truth is, I don’t get all fired up about Slavic sorts of women. But yeah, you could say she was good-looking.”
“And after you shot Bastov—how did you feel about her? You know you have a problem with lust—we’ve discussed that. You didn’t go after her sexually?”
“Never even thought of it. I just shot a guy and I’m about to shoot her. Never crossed my mind.”
“Didn’t cross your mind? Or it did cross your mind but you chose not to do it? It’s two different things, Jack. Think about it before you answer.”
Jack took a deep breath and let it out through his nose. He drank down the last of his brandy and could feel the room tilt a little. “Okay,” he said at last. “You’re right. As usual. I did want to mess with her. I can own that. But I remembered what we discussed and I chose to stay focused.”
Papa reached over and squeezed Jack’s arm. “That’s my man. I know that was difficult for you”
Jack shrugged.
“Discipline,” Papa said, sitting back. “God, I admire discipline. And to think how wrong people were about you. I can’t get over it.”
Jack couldn’t either. The schools he had been thrown out of, his pathetic attempt to become a cop, how even the army—an institution staffed entirely by maniacs and retards—had turned him down. And those reports in the juvenile detention facility. He wasn’t supposed to see those, but he snuck a look when the psychologist got distracted one day: low impulse control, emotional disturbance, personality disorder, all kinds of crap. That day marked the first of several suicide attempts. He had never thought about suicide since meeting Papa. Not once.
Papa stood up and they said good night. Papa shook Jack’s hand, looking him in the eye as he said it, as if saying good night was some special manly ceremony.
Jack went to bed in one of Lloyd Kreeger’s many rooms. He lay on his back for a time with a cellphone in his hand, flicking through images that were almost all of grinning teenagers, quite a few of them Indian-looking. Dark-haired girls making faces or laughing like crazy. The images weren’t labelled, but he was pretty sure which one was her.
D
ELORME CAME INTO THE SQUAD ROOM
and stood in front of her desk, which was next to Cardinal’s. It was her habit to check her e-mail without sitting down and before even taking off her coat. She did that now—Cardinal knew the sound of her keystrokes by heart—in a penumbra of cold air and the smell of snow. Then she took off her coat and shook it, sending tiny water droplets onto his desk. She always did that, on purpose, and she always said sorry, as if she hadn’t.
“I’m having an idea,” Cardinal said. “I realize I haven’t had an idea since 2006, but I’m having one now.”
“No, remember in August that time? You said, ‘Let’s stop at Tim Hortons’? That was totally you. Me, I would never have come up with something like that.”
“I’ve been replaying that phone message over and over in my head, and here’s what I’m thinking. I’m thinking this girl sounds First Nations—not strong, not obvious—but you know, that slightly compressed sound they sometimes have? Vowels a little flat, and maybe a little more in-the-nose kind of sound?”
“Nasal, you mean?”
“I’m not describing it right. Listen to it again. Try it with headphones.”
They both had the message on their computers now. Delorme sat down and put on her earbuds and listened again. “You could be right,” she said, a little loudly, before it was even finished. She put her hands over her ears and listened to the end. She took off the buds and swivelled to face him. “Definitely. I should have heard it before.”
“So if Randall Wishart is having an affair with a First Nations girl, the question is, how did they meet?”
“They could’ve met anywhere. It’s not like she’s going to be living in a teepee.”
“A wannabe real estate tycoon married to a hotshot financial whiz has an affair with a First Nations kid, and you think they could’ve met anywhere? You really think we’re that multicultural? Not to mention the age difference, which sounds substantial.”
“Maybe she moved and he sold the family’s house.”
“Possible.”
“So let’s check Carnwright’s recent sales. Or maybe there’s something on the
Lode
online or ABdaily.com.”
Cardinal shook his head. “Already did. Nothing useful. But it occurred to me that there’s going to be more Web stuff on Laura Carnwright than on him. That’s the thought I was having when you came in and shook snow all over my desk.”