Authors: Scott Thornley
T
HE YOUNG WOMAN WAS WEARING
a housecoat, or maybe it was a bathrobe. It was cream-coloured, or maybe tan. She was cleaning, slowly, a counter or a table, perhaps in a kitchen. She and the place were unfamiliar to him. The light was tinged with yellow—lemon yellow, not sunshine. He didn’t know why he was there. Her hair was long and dark; it was morning hair, not all shiny and styled. As he walked by the doorway she turned to him, and she was naked under the housecoat. He saw the outline of her hip, the soft skin of her belly, the black tuft and puffy lips below. She made no move to cover herself or turn away. Neither of them spoke. He stepped slowly through the doorway, and somewhere a phone rang. As he reached out to touch her, the phone rang again. He put his hand inside the housecoat and let it slide along her hip to the top of her thigh. The phone rang again. He let his palm glide over the thigh and up to her navel,
where he gently circled its hollow and bump with his thumb.
The phone rang yet again, and MacNeice woke up. Turning quickly, he grabbed it, using his elbow to raise himself slightly. “MacNeice.”
“I was worried you weren’t there.” It was Aziz.
“What’ve you got?” MacNeice rolled over to the edge of the bed and sat up.
“Two things. The address for Antonin Petrescu. He’s apparently a widower, with one son and one daughter—Lydia. The IT director wanted to personally apologize to you for the delay, but I said that it wouldn’t be necessary.” Aziz paused, not for effect but because she suspected from the sound of MacNeice’s voice that he had just woken up. It was, after all, 7:46 on a Saturday morning.
“Right. Well, let’s go there together, say for nine. I’ll pick you up?”
“That’d be great, Mac. It’s 1102 Aberdeen Park—very posh, up by the escarpment. While I’d be happy to cycle up there, I’d have to leave soon, and I just woke up.”
“Me too. I’ll pick you up at 8:45—is that all right?”
“Yes, sir, that’s fine. I’ll jump into the shower, grab some toast and be ready.” She was about to put the phone down when she heard his voice again. “Aziz, Aziz … Fiza?”
“Sorry. Yes, Mac?”
“Where do you live?”
“Right, right—so we’re both sleepy. I’m at 354 Princess Boulevard, out by the university, apartment 312. I’ll be downstairs waiting for you.”
“See you soon.”
MacNeice hung up and sat for a moment, haunted by the woman in his dream. It wasn’t Kate. He didn’t know who it
was, but he wished Fiza’s phone call had come later—much later.
The dreams he had of Kate were never erotic in an obvious way, like this one had been. But then, this woman wasn’t Kate. Frantic searching was the through-line of every Kate dream, and most often he never found her. It was as if love—the act of love—was what he was pursuing and never finding. And, just like this morning, something always interrupted those dreams, leaving him spiritually restless for the whole day, wondering what would have happened. Would he have seen her, made love to her, or would he find her in the arms of someone else—or dead in their bed, as he had three years ago when he got out of the shower.
That morning he’d eased gently out of bed; her breathing had been shallow, interrupted by long pauses, as it had been for a week or more. When he returned, wrapped in a towel, she was gone, a tear resting like a drop of rain in the hollow below her right eye. He kissed it, then stood up to look at her. Stunned for a moment by the finality of her death, he realized that the tear, still wet on his lips, was the last thing he’d receive from her body, and he collapsed.
D
RIVING THROUGH THE WINDING STREETS
to Aziz’s apartment, MacNeice was struck by how little he knew about her. The fifties apartment block was well maintained and the landscaping showed signs of recent care. He pulled the Chevy into the lay-by directly in front of the walkway.
Aziz threw open the glass door, briefcase in one hand and shaking her hair with the other—the way women do when they’ve not had time to dry it completely—combing it with her fingers and fluffing it so it wouldn’t dry flat. She was walking
quickly, looking down, and it wasn’t till she reached the end of the walkway that she realized MacNeice was already there, watching her approach. She smiled, embarrassed, as she opened the car door. “Sorry, I didn’t see you.”
He turned on the ignition, but left the car in park. “Are you ready for this?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“We’ll have to ask him to identify the body, and let him know, as tactfully as possible, that it’s not going to be easy.”
“Well, I have worked hard on building a thick skin.”
He eased the Chevy onto the street and proceeded well below the speed limit, as if he too was dreading this meeting. Turning right at the next intersection, he glanced at Aziz. She was wearing a charcoal grey suit with thin dark green pinstripes, and a green silk blouse with a scalloped collar. Aware that MacNeice was scrutinizing her, and curious as to why, she met his eyes.
“Everything okay, boss?”
“Very okay.”
“I had already gotten dressed like a cop, and then I realized that it might be inappropriate, so I changed.”
“Yes, indeed. One cop suit in the room is more than enough.”
They drove on in silence, back down Main and then right on Aberdeen Street to the leafy lanes and boulevards where Saturday papers had been tossed onto porches, waiting to be retrieved, where tricycles sat abandoned on front lawns, colourful Japanese carp banners fluttered among tinkling wind chimes, and wicker chairs on front verandas signalled family comfort.
He thought about turning on the police radio, but he didn’t. He thought about slipping some Johnny Hartman and Coltrane
into the CD player, but he didn’t. He was getting more and more uncomfortable the closer they got to Petrescu’s home. He turned off Aberdeen Street onto Aberdeen Park Boulevard, so called, he imagined, because the homes and lots could more accurately be defined as estates.
Outside the iron gate of a stately grey stone house, MacNeice parked and turned off the ignition. He didn’t get out of the car.
“You see, the strange thing about the killing is the symbolism of it,” he said. “A syringe loaded with acid would have been effective injected pretty much anywhere. Her heart, for example, would have exploded like a birthday balloon. Last night I did some reading on the medial temporal lobe and the hippocampus. The needle and its contents effectively disappeared her memory and her brain imaging—the ability to form thought. It had nothing and everything to do with her. I think it was a message to someone who loved her.”
“When I was working on my thesis,” Aziz said, “there was a stat that stuck in my head: there are fifty to a hundred billion neurons and a hundred trillion synaptic connections in the brain. In short, there’s an unlimited capacity to do harm … and good.”
“I think we are about to deliver the killer’s message. In a way, we are about to become accomplices.” He turned to see her face. There was no sadness there, perhaps only acceptance of their role. He found it slightly unsettling.
In his mirror every morning he’d noticed the slight downturn of his mouth and the weakness of his smile as he tried to correct it. The bags that had appeared under his eyes never went away, no matter how long he slept. Was it age or the residue of grief? Whatever it was, Aziz seemed free of it.
“Okay, let’s do it.”
—
T
WO SQUARE STONE COLUMNS
stood on either side of the locked iron gate. On one, a small stainless steel speaker and a silver button were mounted below the brushed chrome street numbers—1102—which looked like they would light up at night with a blue neon glow. MacNeice pressed the button and glanced through the gate. Two stone planters stood on either side of the columned entrance to the house. Petrescu liked symmetry and order.
A curt voice emerged from the box. “Who is it?”
“Detective Superintendent MacNeice and Detective Inspector Aziz here to speak to Antonin Petrescu.” There was a pause, marked by static that indicated the line was still active.
“Come in.”
An electronic trigger in the locking mechanism swung the gate open slowly. MacNeice motioned for Aziz to enter ahead of him. At the front door, he was about to use the enormous knocker when it swung open. An older woman in a white blouse and grey calf-length skirt looked at them both before speaking.
“Monsieur Petrescu is in the garden. Please come to the library and he’ll be with you shortly.”
She ushered them into a large room to the left of the main entrance. It was lit by the front bay window, and the walls were panelled in dark oak, with built-in bookcases. In the middle of the room was an ancient oak table with four matching chairs, two to a side. A low white ceramic bowl sat in the centre of it, elegant but empty. At the far end of the room were four upholstered chairs, a low table and another bay window, looking out to the garden. On one wall the books gave way to a floor-to-ceiling fireplace, the mantel clad in stone. The ceiling was
vaulted, with fanciful plaster moulding that seemed to have no set pattern, and the floor had a shiny dark oak finish and the widest planking MacNeice had ever seen.
“What’s that smell?” Aziz said.
“Money.”
“I think it’s the wood, and maybe the books.”
“I think you’re right … along with the money.”
The door opened to reveal a trim, aristocratic man in his early sixties. His hair was grey and coarse, the kind MacNeice thought would make a good brush cut. He was wearing tan summer-weight corduroy pants, brown suede shoes and a white shirt open at the neck and rolled up at the sleeves. He entered without hesitation, looked first at Aziz and offered her his hand.
“Antonin Petrescu. And you are …?”
“Detective Inspector Aziz, sir, and this is Detective Superintendent MacNeice.” Both of them held out their badges but Petrescu only glanced at them.
He shook hands with MacNeice and motioned them to the chairs near the garden window. “Please sit down. How can I help you?” His voice was clipped, his English perfect, and he showed no signs of fear or concern. “I’ll order tea or refreshments?”
“That’s very kind, but it won’t be necessary, Mr. Petrescu,” MacNeice said as he sat down next to Aziz.
“Then tell me, how can I help you?”
“Can you confirm that your daughter, Lydia, just graduated from the professional program at the Conservatory?”
“Yes, I can, but—”
“And you have not seen your daughter in the past forty-eight hours?”
“No. She was supposed to come for the weekend on Saturday, but her graduation …”
“I’m afraid, sir, that I have the difficult task of informing you that we believe your daughter, Lydia Petrescu, has been killed.”
Petrescu leaned forward as if he was hard of hearing, then fell back in his chair, his hands clasping at the upholstered arms. “I don’t understand you.… I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re saying.”
Aziz gently reinforced the news. “Sir, your daughter, Lydia, has died. She was killed last night.”
“Not my daughter … No. Lydia is not dead. You’ve made a mistake.” He stood up and waved his hand as if showing them the door. Neither moved. “What do you mean, you—you—What do you know of my daughter?”
“Sir, is this your daughter?” MacNeice held out the snapshot.
The older man rocked back on his heels and then forward. His mouth was half-open but he said nothing, just sank slowly into his chair.
“Please, Mr. Petrescu, we will need you to identify the body, sir, but—”
“Was it … an accident? A car crash? How can you be certain? I mean, you don’t know my daughter. How …?” He looked down at the snapshot again, and he knew it was true. He sat up straight, bracing himself with his arms.
“It was not an accident, sir. Your daughter was murdered.” MacNeice’s voice was low and calm. His eyes stayed on the older man’s face. He hoped, although he couldn’t know for sure, that his own conveyed some compassion, but he was also observing Petrescu. A sad part of his job was that this wouldn’t be the first time a father had killed a daughter.
“Who would have any reason to kill my Lydia? No one. Everyone loves her.” His eyes welled and a tear dropped to his thigh. “You’ve seen her? She’s beautiful … so talented …” Petrescu held out the snapshot and looked at it again before placing it gently on the table. His voice trailed off, but his eyes still wanted answers to his questions. He made no move to wipe the tears tracking down his cheeks.
“We know some of the details of her death, enough to know with some certainty that she didn’t suffer. But we have no idea at the moment who could have killed her, or why.”
Petrescu’s head fell back against the chair, his mouth opened, and a cry that sounded at first like it was far away came from somewhere deep inside him. His hands turned to fists and slammed several times into his face before he began to sob uncontrollably. The library door flew open and the woman who’d let them in rushed to his side.
“What has happened? What have you done?” She stared at MacNeice and Aziz accusingly.
MacNeice stood up, followed by Aziz. Neither responded to the woman’s questions as she held Petrescu’s shoulders. MacNeice could feel his right leg shaking at the knee; he hoped it wasn’t visible to anyone. After several minutes passed, the older man removed his trembling hands from his face and looked up at them. He knew there were no more answers, and it did not look as if he had the courage to ask any more questions.
Glancing up at the woman, he said, “It’s Lydia—she’s dead.” The woman threw her hands to her mouth, her eyes opened wide and she shook her head several times in disbelief. Then she again moved close to Petrescu and placed a hand gently on his shoulder, her eyes filling with tears.
“We do need you to identify her, sir,” Aziz said.
“How do I do that?”
The woman handed him a tissue from the sleeve of her blouse. He wiped his eyes and cheeks.
“Detective Aziz will come back to pick you up when you’re ready, Mr. Petrescu, to take you to the morgue. It will not be easy, and I’d recommend that you bring your son or someone else close to you.”